Dr Greg Bahnsen - Philosophy of Christianity: The Problem of Evil Part 1 (Part 19)

Well, today, at long last, we're getting around to one of the most difficult problems in Christian apologetics that has ever been formulated. Indeed, many people consider it the major apologetic problem for Christians to deal with, and that's the problem of evil. Just exactly what is the problem of evil? On pages 169 to 172 of your text, McCloskey tells us that we must distinguish between two kinds of evil if we're going to properly understand the problem and find a proper solution to the problem of evil. And he designates these two kinds of evil as physical and moral evil. Physical evil on the one hand, moral evil on the other. And this designation for the two different types of evil is fairly common. You'll find it acknowledged in all of the articles that you read. However, everybody who uses the designation recognizes that there's something terribly inadequate about this kind of designation that is very misleading to suggest that certain evils in the world are moral in character and have no physical implications, or that certain physical evils in the world have no moral connotations. And so it's an awkward way of designating it, but it's, I guess, rough and ready enough for people to make use of. I'd like to point out that when the problem of evil is stated by an unbeliever, and he wants to refer to physical and to moral evil, I think you would do well to challenge him to point out just exactly what it is these two forms of evil have in common. Why is the one word evil applied to both of these things? Let's say we're talking about pain, and he speaks of the pain that a deformed child is undergoing. Why is that pain called evil? And then we see the problem of torturing a child, and we call that moral evil. And it would be, I think, very helpful for people to reflect on what it is these two things have in common. Is it just that they both are unpleasant, and therefore what we have is really the problem of unpleasantness, or is this the problem of pain over against the problem of immorality? I mean, how many different problems do we have to clarify the question that you have to answer for the unbeliever? It's necessary to go through that kind of analysis and may very well be that the unbeliever to whom you speak would be willing to grant that. If men bring injustice and pain upon themselves, then of course, that's their responsibility. But how do you account for the fact that there are earthquakes that seem to kill thousands of people? Indiscriminately so you have two different kinds of problems that might be generated. And we'd like to know what it is that makes both of these things, earthquakes as well as torture. Evil. Now, the problem of evil is best explained, I think, on pages 157 and 158 of your text, and I'd like to look at that in J.L. mackey's article, Evil and Omnipotence. Mackey points out, as Plantica is very quick to note, that the problem of evil is a logical problem. This is something that most Christians that deal with the problem evil need to get clearly into their minds that the problem of evil, as understood by the unbeliever is a logical problem, is not a scientific problem. It isn't as though we lack information which after more empirical study of the world, we'll be able to supply. It is not as though more study, somehow more observation, more empirical study is going to come up with a solution. Whether you have lights to read by at night is a scientific problem. It required an Edison, an inventor of some sort doing enough observations and research and inventiveness with respect to the world to come up with a solution. The problem of evil isn't that sort of thing. It isn't as though, if we really apply ourselves, we'll be able to come up with an answer to this just by observing more about the world. But more importantly, the problem of evil is not a counseling problem. There is such a thing as the problem of evil for which you have to counsel people. But the problem of evil as it's used in apologetics is not a problem for counseling. Repeatedly, I find in evangelical literature that deals with the problem of evil, the kind of attitude that goes something like, well, we really don't have a solution to the problem of evil. Who knows why God would do this sort of thing? It sure doesn't seem consistent. But the Bible doesn't concern itself with theoretical questions. The Bible concerns itself with practical questions. And on the practical question of what attitude we should have toward evil, the Bible has a lot to say. We can study the Book of Job. We can look at the theodicy in the Book of Romans. We can look at Paul's understanding of the Christian living. We can, in an age of tension, still under the curse of sin, anticipating the consummation. We can look at any number of things to help us in terms of our attitudinal difficulty toward evil. But as Mackey points out, very decidedly, this is not a practical problem. It's not a problem for counseling. It's not a problem with respect to one's attitude. It's a problem in logic. How can it logically be said that God is all powerful, all good and that there is evil in the world? It's not a matter of how we face evil or overcome evil. It's a question of how there can be evil at all logically, given the Christian conception of God. You know, Mackie gives us three propositions that he says will not hold together. He says God is omnipotent. God is wholly good, yet evil exists. Now, what he is claiming is that these three propositions will not logically comport with each other. And consequently, somebody can hold to two of the propositions and reject the third. But nobody can logically hold to all three. You could hold that God is wholly good and evil nevertheless exists because God is not omnipotent. Or you can say God is omnipotent and evil exists and therefore he's not wholly good. Or you could say God is omnipotent and wholly good and there is no evil. But you can't have all three. One of the three propositions has got to be rejected. However, at the bottom of page 1 57, Mackey admits that the contradiction does not arise immediately. Do you understand the significance of that admission? The contradiction does not arise immediately. Can anybody put in his own words what Mackie is getting at here? If the contradiction does not arise immediately, then we see a contradiction on the board. A formal contradiction where you have A is not a. Anybody see a formal contradiction on the board? Do you have a proposition to the effect God is omnipotent, but God is not omnipotent? God is all good, but God is not all good. Evil exists, but evil does not exist. No formal contradiction. And so I would like you to underline that admission by mackay. Because as it turns out, the problem of evil arises once men try to flesh out the syllogism. When men try to fill in the missing propositions to create. You see, you have not reduced your opponent to absurdity. You have not shown a contradiction. Until you can, by logical rules, infer A is not A, you've got to get straight on contradiction. Same term being affirmed and denied. Same proposition, affirmed and denied. And in order to do this with these three propositions that we have on the board, we're going to have to do some bridging, aren't we? We're going to have to fill in some gaps in the reasoning, okay? Now, Mackey attempts to do that. And what he wants to fill in is given at the top page158. He says, A good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can. Okay, so if God is wholly good, that means that he will eliminate evil as far as he can. The next proposition Mackie wants to add is that there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do. So if God is omnipotent, there are no limits. Do what he can do. And then Matthew says from these it follows that a good omnipotent thing eliminates evil completely. If God is wholly good, that means he eliminates evil as far as he can. Okay, and how far can God eliminate evil if he's omnipotent? There are no limits. And consequently a omnipotent and wholly good God would completely eliminate evil. If God would completely eliminate evil and evil exists, then you've got a contradiction. Does everybody follow the argument this is the syllogism that is destructive of the Christian's conception of God? If we grant that there's evil in the world, then our conception of God seems to be in flagrant violation or contradiction to the fact of evil. Physical evils, moral evils enumerated at length. Pages 169, 172. And now pike suggests that there's something wrong with the syllogism on the board. I'm not going to get into all of Pike's article today, but I would like to look at pages 202 to 204 in which he tries to correct this syllogism that we have on the board as a statement of the problem of evil. He says, at the top of 202, it is not at all clear that God exists and there occur instances of suffering are logically incompatible statements. Okay, Then at the bottom of that page, he gives us what the rub is going to be as he looks at the syllogism. The paragraph right before the end of the page. I do not think it follows from the claim that a being is perfectly good, that he would prevent suffering if he could. Pike says, I'm not at all sure that this way of defining the goodness of God is proper. It doesn't seem to follow that a being that is wholly good eliminates suffering or eliminates evil as far as he can. And page 203 gives this example. Given only that the parent knowingly caused an instance of discomfort, we are tempted to blame him for his action, that is, to exclude him from the class of perfectly good beings. But when the full circumstances are known, blame becomes inappropriate. The case here is the parent giving or Administering a certain amount of medicine that is very uncomfortable to the child, it's distasteful, perhaps makes the child hurt in some way, and consequently the parent has administered an instance of suffering. But we wouldn't call the parent evil, we call the parent good. When the full circumstances are known, blame becomes inappropriate. In this case, there is what I shall call a morally sufficient reason for the parent's action. To say that there is a morally sufficient reason for his action is simply to say that there is a circumstance or condition which, when known, renders blame, though of course not responsibility for the action, inappropriate. As a general statement, a being who permits or brings about an instance of suffering might be perfectly good, providing only that there is a morally sufficient reason for his action. And now pike is suggesting, then that if God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing the pain or even causing the pain and the suffering and the evil that we see in the world, that he might still be a perfectly good being. That is, when we say God is wholly good, we do not mean, as it had been suggested by Mackie, we do not mean that God eliminates pain or evil or suffering as far as he can. This is simply an inappropriate definition of the goodness of God. God does not eliminate evil as far as he can. So pike says we have to reformulate the problem. Does anybody have any difficulty with what I'm saying? We all understand what's going on here. He's not correcting the syllogism. He's correcting the definition of God's goodness that has been offered by Mackie. Before you raise the board, I just want to remind the body several times I've done this, that in that film, the Hiding Place, Corrie Tendon in the Stalag, they all agreed that putting people in death camps, evil exists. And the unbelievers said to Corrie, look, your God is either impotent or he's sadistic. She was either denying, number one, omnipotence or his holy goodness. The second one says they all had admitted, number three, God exists. Hope, evil exists. Yeah, evil exists. And her response was, God did not build this place. God doesn't build Stalagit. He doesn't hoard people into death camps. Yeah, well, we can look at the adequacy of that answer perhaps later on in the hour. But I remember in our church there was a one hour discussion of that line, because that's where the movie for me came to a peak, Right? There was the meaning of the Second World War in the meaning of the whole Nazi experience is A parent sadistic. If the parent causes his or her child to suffer by having to say, undergo a series of very painful anti rabies vaccinations. Often enough children, children get bit by a dog and they can't find the dog and the fear is the child is going to suffer rabies and so the child has to go through this terrible ser of inoculations, you know, injections, right? Directly into the stomach muscle itself. It's extremely painful. Parents, if you loved your children, would you ever make your child go through that? Would you? Any parent who made a child go through that would be sadistic, right? You see the foolhardiness of that kind of reasoning on the human level and then it seems to me au fortiori, from the lesser to the greater, how much more is it ridiculous to say of an all wise God that he's wholly good? There'll never be instances of suffering or pain. And I think pike is exactly right. This conception of the goodness of God is simply not the Christian conception. The Christian believes that if there is suffering or evil, then it is for a morally sufficient reason. And so pike wants to reformulate the challenge. On page 203 in the middle, he says the world contains instances of suffering. God exists and is omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good. And an omnipotent and omniscient being would have no morally sufficient reason for allowing instances of suffering. The goodness of God is redefined as never allowing instances of suffering without a morally sufficient reason. So it's not a question of eliminating but not allowing without a morally sufficient reason. Now as pike reformulates the argument, instead of showing that God should completely eliminate evil as a conclusion, the, the atheologist has got to show that there is no morally sufficient reason for evil. So the two conclusions are quite a bit different. One conclusion says that God completely eliminates evil. And since there is evil necessarily there is no God. The other one says there is no morally sufficient reason for evil. Given the Christian conception of God. And we'll get into this later, and it's something that I'm going to come down very hard on in my own solution to the problem. That's a rather difficult premise to prove. I mean the unbeliever can hardly prove that he exists. If you want to get really nasty philosophically, I mean, you want to really push. He can hardly prove anything at all. And now he's going to prove that he's going to have to talk about morally sufficient reasons and then he's going to have to show that There is no search high and low search under every rock in the world. There is no sufficient reason anywhere to be found for God allowing the evil that we see in the world. That universal negative statement becomes quite an onerous responsibility. The unbeliever. If he's going to indict the justice of God, he's going to have to show that God could not have any sufficient reason for what he's doing. Now we will get back to that. But I just want to point out to you that the way the problem of evil is formulated depends a great deal upon what you mean by evil. You know, two kinds of evil are mentioned, physical and moral. But what is it they have in common? One begins to wonder whether there is anything in common. Secondly, the problem of evil depends a great deal on how you conceive of the goodness of God, or the omnipotence of God, for that matter. As we've done it here, it's the goodness of God that's come into question. But you could reformulate the problem on different conceptions of the omnipotence of God as well. A great deal has to do with how you define your theological terms. And if everything rests on how you define your theological terms, how does the evangelical Christian define his theological terms? Where do we get our conception of all powerfulness or the almightiness of God? And where do we get our conception of the goodness of God? Well, do we begin with an a priori notion of goodness and then come to the Bible and see that the Bible says God is good and therefore we conclude that God is good in the sense that we have preconceived? Is that an evangelical theological method? No, not very well, is it? I mean, after all, what is the purpose of revelation? The purpose of revelation is to give us information none of us in our own strength would be able to figure out. We can't have a preconceived notion. Only God can tell us what his goodness means, what his almightiness means. And consequently, the evangelical is going to use his terms as the Bible defines them. If we presuppose the authority of Scripture, that is to say, we allow it to define our theological jargon. We allow the Bible to tell us what the goodness and power of God mean, then what is the likelihood that there's going to be a contradiction in the overall scheme of things, since the Bible is the one that has to give us the meaning of the terms. You see, in order to create a contradiction here, you've got to define these terms. We've Been looking at this back in the last few minutes that you don't get a contradiction automatically just by putting these premises on the board. You only get a contradiction after you define the terms. Now, whether there's a contradiction between what you mean by holy good and what you mean by omnipotent, when one being is both of these things and evil exists, it's going to depend upon how you conceive the terms. But if the Bible is supplying the definitions of the terms, it's not very likely the Bible is going to be supplying us with a contradictory outlook. What I'm suggesting is that the Christian wants to say there is a sense in which God is omnipotent, a sense in which he is wholly good, and a sense in which evil exists and they're all compatible. Somebody says they can't be compatible. And the answer to that is in the sense in which you define the terms. Of course they can't be in the sense in which I define the terms. They can be. My definition of the terms is according to the scheme of biblical revelation. Now, we're not talking about whether that's going to persuade the unbeliever who's looking for something to attack in the Christian faith. We're not talking about emotional satisfaction being gained from that answer. We're talking about logical adequacy. And a logical contradiction will only be generated if people can take biblical conceptions of God's power and goodness and show that they do not comport with each other. Having noticed that there's evil in the world, I'm spending a good deal of time on the formulation of the problem because my own personal feeling is often enough Christians are sucked into this difficulty and they are found to be inadequate in answering it because they have not thought through the implications of how the problem has been stated. There's an awful lot of slippage, you see, in the argumentation of the atheologist. Pike said that it is not at all clear that God exists and there are instances of suffering that are logically emphasis statements. And then to go on and say a reason. We don't know the whole story. Pike says we don't know the whole story. How can you conclude then that there are no morally sufficient reasons for evil? That's his point. Since we don't know the whole story, how can anybody be in a position to say there is no morally sufficient reason for the evil we see around us? You'd have to know an awful lot to be able to make that universal negative statement. What if I tell you that There are no fairy giraffes with butterfly wings. There aren't any. You say you believe there are fairy giraffes in butterfly ways. If I'm going to prove that you're wrong, I'm going to have to demonstrate an awful lot of knowledge. I have to demonstrate that I've been to Venus and I did an exhaustive survey in Venus. Every cave on the planet I checked. I also put up sensors everywhere so that when I went to one side of the planet, I know the fairy Jurassic butterfly wings weren't on the other side of the planet. Always eluding my grasp. I mean, I've got to be able to demonstrate an awful lot, by the way. And having done that for Venus, we better do it for Saturn as well. Probably wouldn't hurt to do it for Africa and Asia and other places on this globe. For me to say to make a universal negative statement calls for omniscience. You don't have to be omniscient to make a universal affirmative statement, but to make a universal negative statement means that you've covered all the ground and you know that it's excluded. See, I don't have to make. I don't have to go to Venus to tell you there's such a thing as a watch, okay? Because, I mean, I could prove that just by doing a survey of this classroom, okay? So I can prove that there is such a thing as a watch without knowing everything there is to know. But to know that there is no fairy giraffe with butterfly wings or that there is no morally sufficient reason for evil, I've got to do an exhaustive survey. And since we don't know the whole story, pike says, how could we know there is no morally sufficient reason for evil? Okay? That's what he concludes. I thought for a minute there, I thought you were saying that he is concluding by making the statement that there is no morally sufficient reason for evil. No, no, no. When I put this up on the board, what I was saying is that his formulation of the problem is clarifying the problem. Saying, this is really what we're getting at. Not this that God completely eliminates evil, but that there could be no morally sufficient reason for the evil that he's allowed. This is one of the, I think, prime examples of the importance of having clean tools when it comes to your intellectual homework. I know a good number of people, and I confess myself in my own undergraduate student days, would get very frustrated with professors or writers who spent a good deal of time saying, well, now, just what exactly do we mean by okay, and just, and just how is this argument working? What is the structure of this argument? What is what? How does this argument turn? What is crucial to this argument? And you know, you can get very analytical and very precise and it's frustrating. It doesn't nearly have the flamboyancy or the kind of interest generating power as popular preachers. A lot easier to listen to somebody who can just go on and on and on, give you all these wonderful illustrations and just go for one, one topic to another. But there's always this slippage. And one wonders, well, is he talking about the same thing in this paragraph? Is he talking about in this paragraph? You know, you get difficulties when you get popularizations of apologetics or Christian theology and you can get frustrated when you look at just the analytical approach to it. But the importance of the analytical approach is what pike is pointing out to us, I think, or demonstrating for us, illustrating for us. When pike says the problem of evil, is it this, that God completely would eliminate evil given the Christian conception? Or is it that given the Christian conception, somebody's going to have to show there's no morally sufficient reason for evil? I mean, whose intellectual foot is being pinched when we formulate the problem this way? Well, ours is, because that makes it look like we've got to come up with some kind of an answer. After all, if God completely eliminates evil, what do you do with the fact there's evil? However, if you formulate the problem this way, the pinch is on the other foot, or actually on the other person's foot, intellectually speaking. For he's got to now come up with some kind of justification for his universal negative statement. Or you can attack, logically explain, if he can show this, why was evil created in the first place? We grant that God is pre existent to all creations and that evil is something that came after his existence. Why did he allow the creation of evil to begin with when there was no evil to start out? Why did he allow the creation? Are you speaking for the atheologist or the. Okay, the atheologist is saying, why did God allow it? Okay, now we're looking at the problem of evil as a logical problem. Now this, this is going to probably go down a little hard because it's not the way we usually reason with people. But if somebody says, with respect to the logical incompatibility of these three premises, why did God allow it? It is logically sufficient to say, I don't know. I want you to stop and think about that. If somebody says, why did God do that? You can say God doesn't owe us an explanation. All I can tell you is that for whatever reason he did it, it was morally sufficient. I have that faith. The Bible tells us he does all things well. Well, but what I'm getting at, the atheologist, is how can you trust the Bible? The Bible gives you a conception of God. It's contradictory. You say it is. Where's the contradiction? Well, if God is omnipotent and God is wholly good, he never would have allowed evil. Oh, you mean parents never do anything evil or bring any pain for their children, for their better good? Well, no. Well, you see, you start pressing the ad hominem. If it's true on the lower level, why couldn't God have a morally sufficient reason? Well, if he has a. If you want me to believe he has a morally sufficient reason, you've got to tell me what this. That reason is. I said, no, I don't. I don't have to supply a morally sufficient reason for God. I mean, do you think God is in the dock and I'm at the bench? As a matter of fact, in the biblical perspective, we are in the dock and he is at the bench and he wants to know what reason we have for the way we live. I mean, you can really start turning the ad hominem thing on. This becomes quite an evangelistic tool. And you say, who are you? Who are you to reply against God? Don't you understand? You're going to have to give answer. You think on the day of judgment, God's going to wait for you to pass judgment on him, and then he's going to say, well, now that we've shown that I am to be the judge of all men, now I'll judge you. I'll return the favor. There's not going to be a negotiation on the day of judgment. God doesn't owe us an answer. Okay, so logically speaking, I grant you, it would be a lot easier to evangelize. Well, I think there's something to be counterbalanced in that statement. It apparently would be a lot easier to evangelize people if we could tell them why God did. Because people do use that as a reason for not believing the biblical conception of God or trusting in God. And if we could supply an answer, so they say they would, they would find Christian belief easier. However, the Bible tells us a lot about that kind of rationalization too, that if once we could get God under our control, just once we could force God to answer to us, then we would finally Submit ourselves wholeheartedly to him. Very unlikely. If God would once allow the autonomy of man, then man would give up his autonomy. God, if you'll just grant me autonomy for five seconds, okay. While I interrogate you, then of course I'm going to submit to you and I'll never question again anything. It just doesn't work. As Jesus explained using the words put into the mouth of Abraham with respect to the rich man who had gone to Hades, they have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear that. For if they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe, though one rise from the dead. Even if we give them miracles, they won't believe even if you satisfy the demand for an answer or for a reason, or for a miracle or some sign. Isn't it amazing to you how often the Jews demanded a sign and Jesus gave them signs over and over again? Jesus gave them signs and the Jews still crucified him. And if that weren't enough, they paid the soldiers to lie. I'm rather amazed when I look at my evangelical brothers and I love them and I honor their efforts evangelistically and I unapologetically. But when they make so much of the resurrection argument. But as a matter of fact, the Jews didn't need a resurrection argument. They had a resurrected savior right there and they knew they had one and yet they paid soldiers to lie about it. So we need to come to grips with the fact that man's heart is radically wrong and he is going to have a spite against God no matter what, unless his heart has changed. And so I'm not really sure that if we could give the answer it it would change them. But apparently it would be easier. At least we would put off the argument to another day or to another issue or something like that. But logically we need not know the answer to that question, as pike says. Well, I don't know everything. God's wisdom is above my wisdom and I just trust him. Why do you trust him? Well, I can give you reasons why I trust him, but I don't have to give you a reason for why he does what he does. Go ahead then. If there is a morally sufficient reason for everything that has happened, how can we also say that something is evil if God has allowed it? Certainly he has a good reason behind it. And how can we call that bad? How can we admit that evil really exists from God's perspective? Seems to be an issue of perspective. From our perspective, something may happen that is evil with a rabies shot. That is evil stuff to be taken. It is current, it's his salvation. It seems to me that from the standpoint of the reasoning being used that the pain is not genuinely painful, but since it's accomplishing a good end, preserving the health of the child, it couldn't possibly hurt. See, I'm trying to find you. You're right on the nose to bring this up because that is said over and over again. Well, if God makes use of the evil, is it really evil? And while we hear that I have struggled with that for years, I don't see any sense to the question. I'm having a hard time seeing why anybody would question the painfulness of rabies vaccinations just because it's preserving health. It serves a good end. Question of the painfulness is a question of is that pain evil? Are the parents evil in what they've done? Well, we say no, they're not evil in what they've done. And since God is bringing good out of the evil situation in which we live, we don't think that he is evil, we think he is good. But that doesn't take away the character of the pain or the misdeeds, the immorality that God is making use of. Are we talking about the same thing? Possibly. We're agreeing that, okay, using the analogy, the parents are not evil, God is not evil. Okay, but the pain is real for the child and the pain is real for us as children of God. Exactly. Okay. Therefore I cannot call the pain evil. Evil. Precisely. It is unpleasant. That's what pike is getting at. And so there is no problem of evil as long as you believe there's a morally sufficient reason for what God is doing in the world. So we end up denying the third premise. Evil exists. No, we don't. No, we agree with all three of these premises. What we want to say is there's no logical contradiction. I think what he's trying to say is that there can be such things as pain, but there doesn't necessarily have to be evil. That's right. Pain should be outside of being evil. And the way interpret or the way I read you saying is that pain and evil are equated. No, as a matter of fact, that's one of the points I was making at the beginning of the lecture. I have difficulty saying that there's one thing called the problem of evil. When we are thinking of pain on one hand and natural calamity and on the other hand talking about, for instance, torture of little children, which is definitely immoral, immoral deeds over against painful consequences and all that. I'M not sure that we have one problem of evil. And I want to keep that in mind when I'm talking to the unbeliever. I want to keep forcing him to say, now in what way are you thinking of evil? Now? If he's thinking of evil, is anything unpleasant that happens? God couldn't have any reason for allowing unpleasant things to happen. I'm saying, hey, even as a parent, I have reasons for doing unpleasant things to my children. And although this is not the most favorable illustration in our day and age, I mean, I even inflict pain on my children, you know, I take them and use the rod on them, okay? And I happen to think that I am loving my child in doing that. And although it's hard to convince the child at the moment, it is for his good and God. God could be a loving parent the same way. How then do we as Christians interpreter define evil? Okay, I think you may be getting to the punchline here. Later on I'm going to be dealing with this. And in a nutshell, the solution to the problem of evil is that the unbeliever can't show us that evil exists. Only the. Only the believer can show us that evil exists. Give you an illustration of this. Okay, somebody. Dostoyevsky and the Brothers Kazov gives a long list of terrible things that happened with the Turkish invasion. And he gives an illustration also of these cruel parents who put their five year old child out in the privy on a cold winter night in Russia, after all, and the child was just crying and crying and crying. And because the child wouldn't be taken up so that the child could use the privy. And the parents went out and smeared the excrement in the child's face and beat the child to a bloody pulp because the child would not stop crying out in the cold. And he says, why? Why? If you were constructing a universe, if you were the architect for a universe that was supposed to have as its end the beatific vision and the enjoyment of men, would you, if it required the suffering of that one child to accomplish your ends, would you do that? You remember the monk? He finally whispers, no, I wouldn't. It's so hard to believe that God would allow that sort of thing to happen. Okay, When I make secular presentations on campuses about the problem of evil, I usually start with that illustration, mainly because it makes it look like it's going to be so hard for the Christian to escape. I mean, that is a pretty wicked illustration. Okay? And at the very beginning I say, now look, if we as Christians are going to escape this difficulty at all. We have to take it seriously. We have to play for keeps. We have to play hardball. You know what I mean? This is not different strokes for different folks. This is evil. You know, nobody's going to stand back and say, well, I mean, if some parents get their kicks doing that sort of thing, it's all right. No, sir, we want an objective and absolutely sure standard of evil, don't we? And of course, you can see all the unbelievers in the audience saying, that's right, boy. And what are you going to do? You know how you. Well, what happens by the end of the lecture is, okay, now, how do we say that this is an objectively and absolutely. That's evil, okay? If you're an unbeliever, what makes that evil? That it's painful to the child? If I happen to be utilitarian, I believe in intellectual inflicting pain on some people for the greater good of others. And as I see it, two parents enjoyed the suffering of the child and there's only one child. So if I was utilitarian, I'd say that wasn't evil at all, okay? And if I was a modern hedonist and a relativist, I'd say, well, it's just different strokes for different folks. You know, some people get their kicks that way. That's all right, right? If it's good for you, it's good. Isn't that the spirit of our secular age? You know, and what happens is you finally start pouring it on the unbeliever and say, is there any such thing as evil given your worldview? I mean, you people can't even get upset about it. In the illustration like that. All you have to say is, well, I mean, in that culture, that's what happens. I guess some people are brought up to do that sort of thing. Or maybe it's biological determinism. You know, poor people, you know, some kind of brain defects, and they couldn't help but do that to their child. I'll tell you apologetically, the unbeliever, if you are playing your cards right, and I'm not saying I always do, but if we play them right, Paul's right. The unbelievers left without an excuse because the unbeliever in his heart of hearts knows that's evil, but he can't make good on that statement. He cannot show us that that's absolutely evil. All he can say is, well, I mean, seems evil to me. And so the problem of evil in the End becomes an apologetical tool for the believer rather than against the believer. Because the problem of evil demonstrates that the unbeliever has a problem in defining evil. Now, at that point, the unbeliever usually says, well, okay, given your conception of God, so you can prove that it's absolutely evil, how do you account for the fact that God would allow that? And I say, I believe that God does all things. Well, there's a morally sufficient reason for what is going on in the world today. How can you know that? God himself told me. How do you know it was God speaking? Okay, then you're back into the apologetic for revelation, right? And we're on pretty good footing there. Not so much difficult. Somebody says, unless you can tell me what the reason is, I won't believe it. I'll say, well, I mean, you can play that game until the day of judgment if you want, but I mean, God doesn't owe you a reason. Well, do we have reasons to trust him? Sure, we have reasons to trust him. Look at his faithfulness to his covenant. God's never once broken a promise to his people. Okay? So, I mean, we have reasons to believe in the goodness of God. We have reasons for faith, we have reasons for revelation. And given the revelation we have, there is a morally sufficient reason for why God's doing this. True, he hasn't shared it with me, but he doesn't have to share it with me. He expects me to follow, you know, in terms of faith, not in terms of sight. He doesn't say, now, look, Greg, I know that this is going to hurt, but here's what's going to be accomplished if we go through this. And so then, you know, as it hurts, I say, well, you know, I know what's happening. No, trusting God happens to be a matter of saying, I don't know where he's taking me. You know, Abraham left his homeland for a land. He didn't know where it was or what it was all about, but he trusted the Lord. Then you can say, you don't want a God who calls for that kind of faith. Well, well and good. I mean, you can take your comeuppance, you know, if God is as you want him to be, then you're going to be fine if he's as I say he is. And your lack of faith is not going to be so fine. But all of this, you see, is yet to show any logical contradiction in the problem of evil. Okay? So again, I am not talking about a counseling problem, and I'm not talking about how to persuade unbelievers and make them satisfied emotionally with the answer. We're talking about the logical contradiction that is allegedly involved in saying God is omnipotent, all good, and yet evil exists. Is it as stuffy in here to you as it is to me? I wonder if somebody would mind opening the back door. We won't make it to the next 20 minutes. Okay, I'd like to look at. In a sense, I've gotten into the end of my lecture Wednesday's material, but I'll go over it again. So you get it. I'd like to look at some adequate solutions to the problem of evil that are not genuinely adopted by people. And you'll find these on pages 158 and 159. Mackey has, I think, a very good discussion of these different approaches to the issue. It's under the subheading of adequate solutions. And he says one way you can solve the problem of evil is to deny God's omnipotence. You can? Yes. When you say adequate solutions, from whose perspective are you? From Mackey's. And neurologically adequate, too. However, what I said is they are adequate solutions that are not genuinely adopted. He's going to go on to say in the next paragraph, while these are adequate solutions, the people who speak of them don't really adopt them. They only appear to adopt. Okay, first place, you can deny the omnipotence of God, restrict its meaning in some way. Secondly, you can claim that evil is an illusion. He points out, by the way, two ways in which you might say that evil is an illusion. Again, the advantage of an analytical approach to philosophy. He points out, evil may be an illusion because everything is an illusion, everything temporal is unreal. Or it could be that evil is an illusion, meaning that while temporal things are real, what appears to be evil is not genuinely evil. And that is taking the expression evil is an illusion in two different ways and quite different ways. The logical implications of the two are different. Thirdly, a person could say that evil is merely the privation of good, Which in the Middle Ages was a rather popular doctrine, although it was not always formulated as a solution to the problem of evil. Later apologists have thought, well, if evil is the privation of good, then there isn't any such thing as evil at all, that it's just, if you will, a defect that comes about because the good is there to begin with. And then fourthly, Disorder and harmony is not understood and partial evil is universal good, that is, for a lack of having the total Picture before us, we think we have disorder and evil, but as a matter of fact we have universal good and order harmony. Okay, now he says these would be adequate solutions. However, often enough these adequate solutions are only almost adopted. Almost adopted. People don't go all the way with these solutions. Okay? In the first place, thinkers who restrict God's power but keep the term omnipotence may reasonably be suspected of thinking in other contexts that his power is real, unlimited. That is to say, when you give the problem of evil to some evangelical theologians, they'll say, well, that's right, God is not all powerful. But when they preach on other subjects or speak on other subjects, they go on talking as though he really did have all the power necessary to do whatever he wanted to do. Very few theologians who deny the omnipotence of God consistently deny the omnipotent omnipotence of God. They denied it. Convenient points, if you will. This is what I call the smorgasbord approach to God's almighty power. God is almighty, you know, at those particular junctures in the theological meal that you want him to be almighty at, usually at the point of your own eternal security. You get the point, as we want God to be all powerful when it comes to our well being being, but we're not so sure we want him to be all powerful when it comes to evil and having to answer for that sort of thing. So that's one thing to remember, that certain people that deny the omnipotence of God don't go all the way. Secondly, in one sentence he has really captured the difficulty of the approach that says evil is an illusion. Those who say that evil is an illusion may also be thinking, if inconsistently, that this illusion is itself an evil. Just think of the paradox that's created in saying that evil is an illusion and therefore God. We have a theodicy, okay? We have vindicated the justice of God because there isn't such a thing as an evil. Well, if evil is an illusion, shouldn't we really see things that way as evil? If the person says no, then what you have is an evil. We are doing something that we shouldn't do, saying something is evil that isn't really evil, and so the illusion is an evil. And if the illusion is an evil, then you've got the problem of evil. However, if we are supposed to see things that way, then you don't really have an illusion because that's the way you're supposed to see things as evil. And therefore you've got the problem of evil in its original form. So it doesn't seem that this is a very well informed or well thought out approach to the difficulty. Thirdly, those who say that evil is merely privation of good may also be thinking inconsistently. That privation of good is and evil. Okay, let's say you're talking to some evangelical and he says, well, problem of evil is no problem for me because I think evil is really a lacking. I think it's the whole in being. I think it's nil. Hell, I think that it is nothing. I think that it's simply like a cancer. No, wait a minute. Not like a cancer. That's not a good illustration. I think evil is just. Is the lack of goodness. Well, the question is, is the lack of goodness evil? If so, then you've got evil to deal with. I mean, the fact that evil has this, if you will, negative cast about it metaphysically, that its privation doesn't in any sense show that it fails to be evil and has to be dealt with. And then fourthly, those who say that if you see the whole picture, the partial evil is really universal good. On page 159, Mackie says, In fact, this view hesitates between two views, that partial evil isn't really evil, since only the universal quality is real, and that partial evil is really an evil, but only a little one. Okay, people who take this approach, remember the Pope once said this, that partial evil is universal good. People who take this approach sometimes mean that if you see things in terms of the whole, then only universal qualities are real. And therefore partial evil not being universal is not genuinely evil. On the other hand, some people say, well, yeah, there is a little bit of evil in the picture. Like, there are a few red specks in this picture, but overall the picture is of a different quality or cast or color. Okay, so you're not quite sure when people say this whether they mean, well, evil is there, but it's just a very teeny, teeny little bit, or they're saying it's not really evil. When you see it against the backdrop of the whole. These would be adequate solutions if people genuinely adopted them. But people, as it turns out, don't genuinely adopt them. And I have to add, although Mackey doesn't, that if somebody did genuinely adopt these solutions, he would not be adopting a biblical perspective. And consequently, these are not options available to us who want to be evangelicals in our approach to philosophy. Any questions about the adequate solutions which are not fully endorsed? Kim? It keeps kind of sounding to me like the One you just shared comes back to the same explanation that you gave, that how's that evil, while it appears to be evil in the rabies shot, isn't really evil when you look at the whole picture. Remember that as I explained my illustration, that the pain that the child undergoes getting the rabies vaccinations is genuine pain. You know, it's not as well. You can walk up to the child on the doctor's table right as the injection's being given and they're suffering and say, oh, by the way, you're going to be a lot healthier for all of this. All of a sudden, oh, it doesn't hurt after all. I'm not suggesting anything of the sort. I think it's genuinely painful and I think the torturing of small children is genuinely evil. I don't believe it's an illusion. I believe it's genuine evil. By the way, one of the reasons, as a philosopher, I believe in the eternal quality of damnation, there's not going to be any illusion about it that is genuinely evil, and for all eternity it will remain remain genuinely evil. And for that reason, for all eternity, the evil person will be genuinely punished. So, no, I'm not suggesting that it's just an illusion that if you kind of see the whole picture, it no longer is evil. I'm saying that there's evil in the whole picture, but that God's not guilty for anything. There's no blame we can lay against God, that his justice is not impugned by the fact that there's evil in the world. There is genuine evil, and there's going to be a separation of the evil from the good for all eternity. So there's going to be a constant reminder, or at least a constant witness to the fact that the evil is evil and doesn't change its character. C.S. lewis used the illustration of God allowing us to choose to plant corn or strawberries. It says, but if God wants to strawberries to grow and we plant corn, and he causes the corn seeds to turn up strawberries, and he's really violated our integrity, hasn't he? He's really said, you have the freedom to choose between corn and strawberries, but it's going to be strawberries no matter what you do. Okay, what we as Christians want to say is when men decide to plant corn, they're going to reap corn for all eternity. It's going to be corn. God's not going to turn the corn into strawberries for anybody. It's a devastating doctrine. But I mean, it's just, it seems to me a counterpart of the justice of God. God will not unjustly make corn into strawberries for anybody. So I think it's evil. For all eternity, it's going to be evil. There's not going to be any mitigation of that fact. What there is going to be mitigation of is our hesitance to affirm the justice of. Of God in the light of the evil we see the Day of judgment. There'll be no question in anybody's mind that he had a morally sufficient reason for what he was doing. Going back to about 15 minutes ago, before we started on Wednesday, did I hear you write that then? That when we get back to the question, the origin of evil, that it's then posited in mystery, we really don't understand why and the overall purpose. And that's a mystery that perhaps we'll never understand as far as the origin how God or why he allowed it to come into existence. Well, you're talking about two questions, I think, Kim. One is the origin of evil. What are the psychological dynamics by which a man created possibly positively good, makes a positively evil decision? Okay, that is a question about the origin of evil. And another question has to do with the purpose of evil. Why did God allow it or decree it, depending on what your theological perspective is on that question? Why is it that God, if he's all good and all powerful, decrees evil? When is the overall purpose for it? And I didn't talk about the origin of evil. I don't think as yet in this class hour. Maybe that's what I was hearing coming from here, that I think he was looking for. And maybe that's why this went off. He was looking for an answer to that. Okay, if I'm jumping ahead, fine, I can wait till Wednesday. Yeah, we'll get that answer. The only thing I suggested is that God does not have to give us the overall reason for it. That he can have a morally sufficient reason that he isn't shared with us, simply expects us to trust him. Now, as to the origin of evil, it seems to me the origin of evil is the free will of man. God made man able to fall. Did God make man evil or did he make man able to be evil? He made man able to be evil. And now the question is, well, how did a man who was positively good make an evil decision? I don't know. If I tell my child not to go into a dark room at night because I know there's something wrong with the doorknob. And then if he goes into the room and shuts the door, he's not going to be able to open the door and it's going to be dark and the child goes ahead and does it, okay? The child can't expect that I'm going to be able to find the doorknob and figure this out. I told him, you know, once you make the decision, it's irrevocable. Then you're going to have to depend upon your father to come in and take the door doorknob off and get you out of the room. And that's exactly what man did. When man decided to take a step of rebellion against God. He put himself in a dark room where he couldn't understand his mistake. And the only way it's going to be taken care of is if God comes along and unlocks the door. I'm not preaching, you know, or trying to give you simple homilies to share with your people, but as a matter of fact, it is conceivable that men have gotten themselves into a situation where they can't understand the origin of evil because they are evil men. They've gotten into a dark place, and now they're complaining that they can't see. And so on that question, although I grant that I don't know how Adam made positively good, made a bad decision. I don't know the psychological dynamics of it. I do know what it means to say that he had the free will to do it. And I do believe that in so doing he rendered it impossible for us to understand. We're looking for a rational explanation for an irrational act. Do you understand what I'm getting at when I say that we're looking for light when there's only darkness? There's nothing rational about what Adam did. So again, it's a question of trusting what God's word says. Other questions. Okay. Certain solutions that are commonly adopted to the problem of evil can be listed here. We won't go over them today, but I will give you a list of them. There are those who say that evil is the necessary counterpart to good. And I'd have you look at pages 159 to 161 and pages 172 to 173 in the text. Evil is a necessary counterpart to good. Secondly, there are those who say that evil is the natural accompaniment of the laws of nature. God created a world in which laws of nature permit evil or, if you will, physical evil in the nature of the case, no pun intended there. Thirdly, that evil is a means to the good. Page 161. Then I give you pages for the laws of nature explanation 174 to 175 on the laws of nature. Okay. Evil is a means to the good. Page 161. Evil maximizes the good. Pages 162 to 164 and page 175. And evil is God's punishment for misdeeds or a warning of God's coming punishment. It's either punishment or a warning of punishment. Pages 173 to 174. And then finally, evil is to be accounted for on the basis of man's free will. Pages 164 to 165. Pages 181 to 183. The page numbers I've given you are the criticisms of these common moves. Okay, let me go over them one more time. Evil is the necessary counterpart to good. Evil comes as the concomitant to the laws of nature. Evil is a means to the good. Evil maximizes the good. Evil is punishment for or warning of punishment for misdeeds or evil is accounted for on the basis of man's free will. And you'll get yourself in a good position to write up that question for the final exam as well as facilitate our conversation on Wednesday. If you'll look at those pages and kind of get very clearly in mind what criticisms are being made of these common moves. And then what I want to do on Wednesday, after surveying them fairly quickly, is I want to look at the free will defense as Plantigood defends it. And I want to point out what I think is inadequate in free will defense.