Dr Greg Bahnsen - The Problem of Evil: Is God Good? (Part 2)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. That was very good. I would imagine one of the things that motivates you to sing in that way is the goodness of God. The perceived goodness of God, the experienced goodness of God. The goodness of God that you profess to believe in as Christians that we think the Bible teaches. The question before us tonight, however, is an apologetical question, is just that, is God good? Can it really be said that God is good? I'm going to be doing a little bit of reading tonight in my lecture because there are some, I think, choice passages to take advantage of on this subject. And I'd like to begin with the question of the goodness of God and use as my introduction the introduction to John Wayne's book, the Goodness of God. He begins by saying, look at the goodness of God, says the Christian teacher. But when we look into the Bible, things seem far from good. The book contains many horrors. There is tyranny, cruelty, mutilation, eyes gouged out, hands lopped off, deceit, licentiousness, war. Not only war, but God sent war. Assyria, one of the cruelest nations of history, is called the rod of God's anger. By the way, Wenham is presupposing a little knowledge of biblical backgrounds here, and I think it would probably inappropriate, in light of some of the clientele at tonight's meeting to take you of some of the things that Assyria did when they went to war. It is surely remarkable that the Bible could ever think that Assyria was the rod of God's anger, that God himself could be using Assyria as a tool of his purposes. When Assyria did such heinous things to the people that it conquered, God is angry and wreaks vengeance. A man here is struck blind, another dumb, another is covered with leprosy, another falls down dead, another dies in agony, another goes mad. Whole populations are devastated by plague or famine or flood or fire and brimstone. With God's full permission, the devil and a host of other powerful and malevolent spirits stalk the earth, tempting and tormenting men, even to the extent of depriving an innocent man of health and wealth and family. There are cursing psalms. There are terrible pictures of hell in which a man craves water to cool the tip of his tongue, and in which the smoke of torment arises forever from a lake of fire. There is war on earth. There is war in heaven and war in human hearts. Lord Platt, writing in the Times about the New English Bible said perhaps now that it is written in a language all can understand, the Old Testament will be seen for what it is, an obscene chronicle of man's cruelty to man, or worse, perhaps his cruelty to woman and of man's selfishness and cupidity, backed up by his appeal to his God. A horror story if ever there was one. It is to be hoped that it will at last be proscribed as totally inappropriate to the ethical instruction of school children. These are strong words, by the way, words which, from one standpoint, I think you have to take very seriously. When people talk about this meek and mild Jesus and the sweet little Bible that comes with the Christian faith, we ought to remember there's an awful lot that perhaps we don't want our school children to know about. We certainly don't want them to know about it. Apart from the biblical context. I continue. Look at the goodness of God, says the Christian teacher. But when we look at the world of solid reality as seen in history and in the contemporary world, things seem far from good. He's made one point. If you look at the Bible, things don't look so very good. Now look at the world. They aren't any better. There is the long continuing tale of man's inhumanity to man. Every age has known oppression and torture in the sighing of prisoners. Spain had its Inquisition, Britain, its Atlantic slave trade. Germany its gas chambers, Russia, its Siberian labor camps. A world torn by war now lives under the protecting threat of the hydrogen bomb. But it is a world still swept by fear and lust and greed and racial tension. It is a world where the ordinary man feels himself the pawn of irresistible, impersonal forces which govern his life? Is it conceivable that a kindly providence of unlimited power presides over this world? How can God look on in silence as the bombs rain down on defenseless cities, as widows and orphans cry to heaven for protection? How can God endure the age long grinding poverty of the Eastern multitudes further than this? Human wickedness does not by any means appear to be the sole cause of human misery. Babies are born deformed, both physically and mentally. They inherit diseases. They inherit tendencies to insanity. Why does he allow apparently purposeless torture to the sick, producing at times not purification, but agonized bitterness in their lives? Why does he allow one of his faithful servants to endure torment on the borderline between sanity and and insanity? Is this world of praying animals, of parasites, of viruses, of bacteria, the work of a good creator? Is it God's design which allows a quantum of energy from outer space to cause some hideous mutation in an unborn child. Men find themselves in a world of earthquake and typhoon, in a world accident prone, where bereavement and inconsolable grief may strike without warning. It is a world united only in expectation of death, a world to many without purpose or hope, against which there is a deep despairing hatred. A good God. That is the question, and hence the title of his book, the Goodness of God. Many people have said, and I think rightly so, that the most difficult of all apologetical questions is precisely the problem of evil. Many philosophers have tackled the problem of evil only to their spiritual detriment and ultimate damnation. Many Christian apologists have tackled the problem of evil only to modify orthodox premises in their theology because they could not, at least to their own minds, be satisfied with the incoherence of orthodox theology about evil and a good God. It is the most difficult of apologetical problems, and in a sense, I think we can say it is the test of all apologetical systems. If you want to test the strength of a man's apologetical system and you can only choose one question, there can be no doubt but that you must choose this one. This will strain a man's defense of the Christian faith to its limits. It will show its true strength or weakness. It is the most salient point, it seems to me, of testing. It's the crucial point of testing for any defense of the faith. Let me illustrate that fact. A very popular apologist these days, I don't think, necessarily the most philosophically astute, not the one who's going to make the greatest academic impression, if that's important at all. He's not the sort of person who writes articles for scholarly journals, philosophical journals, and that sort of thing, but he's undoubtedly, in the Reformed world, the most popular speaker in the area of Christian apologetics. That person is R.C. sproul, and I think it's interesting. In his popular book on Christian apologetics, just recently published, entitled Objections Answered, Sproul, for the sake of the layman, he says, tries to give answers to the most popular problems that are raised against the Christian faith. Now he comes to the problem of evil, and one expects, well, here we're going to get at least some kind of handle. It may not be sophisticated, it may not be the most philosophically astute answer to be offered, but we're going to get something we can work with. I think it's interesting, although Sproul probably thinks he has given something to work with. Nevertheless, if you want to Put his apologetical system to the test. Listen to what he says about the problem of evil. After discussing a lot of inadequate solutions to the problem of evil, he says, finally, I am trying to make it clear that the problem is a severe one and one for which I have no adequate solution. I do not know how evil could originate with a good God. I am baffled by it, and it remains a troublesome mystery to me. He continues, we are left with a serious unresolved problem. Now he thinks that although the Christian has a problem, that's alright, because the non Christian has a greater problem. Sproul says, we can account for good in the world, but we can't account for evil. But the unbeliever can't account for either. And so we're only half as bad as he is. And while those of you who have studied the presuppositional approach will, I think, properly chuckle at that, there is a sense of pathos in that. You see, this is what the best. This is the best that non presuppositionalists can offer. You've got a bad system and ours is bad, but it's not as bad. We're both on a sinking ship, but you see, our end is going down slower than yours. Sproul continues, in the final analysis, the evidence for the existence of the good. And then parenthetically, he says, God evidence for the existence of good, which is to say evidence for the existence of God, is not vitiated by the anomaly of evil. Evil remains a perplexing mystery. But the force of the mystery is not enough to demand that we throw out the positive evidence for God. Now, this is a sleight of hand. I don't think it's a witting one, but this is sleight of hand. Philosophically, if ever there was sleight of hand, he says, that's true. Evil sure is a problem. It's a perplexing one. It's a mystery for which I can give no answer. I'm baffled by it. I can't give you an adequate solution. But I'll tell you this. For all of my ignorance of how to answer this problem, I know that the problem's not big enough to throw over the evidence for the existence of God. Wait a minute. The unbeliever says, it's precisely this evidence that I propose as being sufficient to show that the Christian God as portrayed in the Bible cannot exist logically, cannot exist. And so when you say, well, I haven't got an answer, but I'm sure that whatever the problem is it's not great enough to throw over the other evidence. This is just the counter evidence that does overthrow that evidence. And if Sproul is ignorant of the proper answer to this problem, how can he know that his ignorance is not of such a nature that what he considered positive evidence for God is only evidence? Apparently so. Well, that's just one example of how it puts a real apologetical system to the test. Another example from John Wayne. I just read the opening words of his book because I think it grabs our attention. But I don't recommend the book, you see, because Waynam has the chapter in which he proposes that in this day and age, although it is unorthodox, he says we really must give another consideration to the question of annihilation. Is it really adequate for us to believe that a good God could allow eternal torment? He does not come down on it and say, certainly annihilation is true. What he does say is it really would help the problem here. And I think that past heretics on this question haven't been given a fair hearing. And why don't we think about it some more? Well, obviously I don't say that to you, and the reason I don't say that is because I don't believe it does deserve a fair, open further hearing. But the fact that Wayneham does indicates that this problem of evil is so gripping, it is so problematic, that it forces an otherwise orthodox man to start proposing unorthodox ways of escape. My opening point is if we're going to ask the question is God good? We should recognize that that is a very probing question, the most difficult of apologetical problems, the very test of one's system of apologetics. I hope that you'll take seriously what we're talking about tonight, and I hope, secondly that you'll play for keeps as you consider this problem. It's very easy, I think, especially for those like myself, who have in many ways been cooped up in an academic environment and spend a lot of time dealing with students and, if you will, problems of the mind and theoretical issues that you can do well with on paper. It's easy enough for us to treat this as an academic question, a matter of intellectual chess, if you will, when the there's something far more gripping to this problem than just that. One has got to become very serious. One cannot take this problem of evil in a cavalier way. One must, if you will, play for keeps, and I think it will help us to play for keeps. If I read just the section that some of you know of, but I think it's valuable to start with it from a well known novel, Dostoevsky's the Brothers Karmazov. I can't tell you the whole story. I don't think anybody in an hour's time can tell the story of that. That's an amazing book. Undoubtedly one of the classics of Western literature. But nevertheless, in one section of the Brothers Karmazov we find two brothers, if you will, not so much arguing with each other, but certainly discussing in intense terms what we call the problem of evil. Aloysia is a monk. Aloysa believes in God. He believes in theodicy, which is to say he believes in the justice of God in the face of evil. He believes that God's ways can be justified even though there is evil in the world. Ivan says he's a believer, but Ivan has real problems. And I'm only going to excerpt certain sections here. But I'd like you to hear what Ivan says to his brother Eloisha. He says, the innocent must not suffer for another's sins. And especially such innocents as children. You may be surprised at me, Aloysa, but I am awfully fond of children. People talk sometimes of beastial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beast. A beast can never be so cruel as a man so artistically cruel. I've collected a great, great deal about Russian children, Aloysa. There was a little girl of five who was hated by her father and mother. Most worthy and respectable people of good education and breeding. You see. I must repeat it again. It's a peculiar characteristic of many people, this love of torturing children. And children only to all other types of humanity. These torturers behave mildly and benevolently like cultivated and humane Europeans. But they are very fond of tormenting children, even fond of children themselves. In that sense, it's just their defenselessness that tempts the tormentor. Just the angelic confidence of the child who has no refuge and no appeal, that sets his vile blood on fire. In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden. The demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat. At the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain. The demon of diseases that follow on, vice, gout, kidney disease, and so on. This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason, till her body was one bruise. Then they went to greater refinements of cruelty. Shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy. And because she didn't ask to be taken up at night as though a child of five sleeping its angelic sound sleep, could be trained to wake and ask. They smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement. And it was her mother, her mother did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing the poor child's groans. Can you understand why a little creature who can't even understand what's done to her should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and cold and weep her meek, unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it cost so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to dear, kind God. You see, Elisha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that moment or rise again to see it, I too perhaps may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child's torturer. Thou art just, O Lord. But I don't want to cry aloud. Then, while there is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse with an unexpiated cheer to dear, kind God. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. Tell me yourself. I challenge you. Answer me. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. But that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature, that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance, and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me. And tell me the truth. No, I wouldn't consent, said Aloysa. That's pretty hard to take. Would you be the architect of such a world, where you're told simply that the higher harmony, the ultimate truth, calls for the torturing to death of that one innocent child in the outhouse? Eloisha, the monk who said he believed in a good God, said no. If it were left to me, I have to admit I wouldn't. I wouldn't operate that way. You see, we've got to account for this evil. We can't just give glib answers. All things work together for good, you see. By the way, have you ever attempted giving that kind of answer when you've gone into a hospital room where a mother has just lost her child? It's not that what you're saying is not true. I think you all know me well enough to know that when all is said and done, I'm going to come back to that. But you see, that is so glib. And we can say it, especially those of us who are theologically oriented, we can say that with so little, it seems to me, emotional investment into the situation. One has got to account for this evil. One's got to play for keeps. You can't have a cavalier attitude here. One can't merely say that. It's a whimsical choice of perspectives. You know, different strokes for different folks. Some people see that as evil, other people get their kicks out of it. So I guess it's just a matter of how you see it. Now, you can't be arbitrary about this. One has got to give account of that evil. It's not simply a matter of inclination. It's not simply a matter of how one looks at it. It's not just a matter of what gives one pleasure. It's a question, how can this be accounted for? So this is the most difficult of apologetical problems. That's my first point. And secondly, one's got to play for keeps. If you really want to do apologetics, I tell you, you're going to enter in this room, if you will, of the Mansion of Apologetics, but you aren't going to leave until you have an adequate answer to this one. This is the tough one. This is the one where the heart springs are tugged. This is the one where you're really going to give up an awful lot of what you are as a person if you don't come out with the right answer. So there's a lot resting on what we're talking about tonight. Now then, let's go on. Thirdly, to what is this problem of evil that we've been talking about? How can we state the problem so that we can now take it up and try as Christians, to resolve it? And I'm going to give you a number of statements of the problem, because I think by doing that it will help make the point. No one of these has to get into your notes as such. But listen to them all and you'll get the point. I'm departing from my customary, if you will, post graduate method of presenting the problem of evil. We don't have a blackboard and syllogisms and all that sort of thing. But I do want to read at least a couple philosophical accounts so you get some idea of the logical incompatibility of the statement. The alleged logical incompatibility of the statements that God is an all good God, an all powerful God, and yet there is evil in his world. The philosophical form of the problem, I'm saying makes it one of logical incompatibility, not just of suffering, not just of emotional turmoil, not just of, oh, this is terrible. But it's a logical problem. It strains one's ability to put together the various aspects of his Christian theology in a coherent whole. Boethius, the philosopher, asked, if there be a God from whence proceed so many evils? That's one way of putting it. If there is a God, then where do all these evils come from? Now, Boethius might have framed this question in greater detail in the following way. If God is omnipotent, then he could prevent evil if he wanted to. Y' all with me? If God is omnipotent, if he is all powerful, if God can do anything he wants, then he could eliminate evil if he wanted to. And if God is perfectly good, then he would want to prevent evil if he could. Okay, let's change around. Let's say we're talking about a God who is perfectly good, totally apart from his powers. If God is perfectly good, then he's going to want to eliminate evil, right? Don't good beings want to eliminate evil? So if he could, he would eliminate evil if he's really a good God. On the other hand, if he's all powerful, he could eliminate evil if. If he was so inclined, if he wished to. Thus, if God exists and is both omnipotent, all powerful and perfectly good, then there exists a being who could prevent evil if he wanted to, and who would want to prevent evil if he could. And if this last is true, then how can there be so many evils in the world? That, in broad outline, is the traditional theological problem, evil. Now, many philosophers have said that this problem of evil is decisive. It is a decisive disproof of Christianity. For you see, you cannot take three aspects of biblical teaching and bring them together in a coherent whole. God is all powerful, the Bible says. God is all loving. He's a good God, the Bible says. And yet the Bible says evil exists in the world and those three are logically incompatible. A good God could eliminate a good God would want to eliminate evil. An all powerful God could eliminate evil. And therefore we have allegedly in a good and all powerful God, one who is not going to let evil come about. And yet it is there. Now that problem has been decisive against Christianity according to many philosophers. David Hume in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion says why is there any misery at all in the world? Not by chance, surely from some cause then is it from the intention of the deity? But he is perfectly benevolent, perfectly good. Is it contrary to his intention? But he is almighty. And then Hume says nothing can shake the solidity of this reasoning. So short, so clear, so decisive. Only three sentences. And Hume says there goes Christianity. It is shot. This refutation is short, it's clear and it's decisive. Where does evil come from? If it comes from God then he's not benevolent. And if he couldn't prevent it, then he's not almighty. And that's the end of the story. W.T. staist, who I use a 20th century philosopher now, also thinks that this problem is decisive. He says, assuming that good and powerful are used in theology and as they are used in ordinary discourse, we have to say that Hume was right. The charge has never been answered and never will be. Those are the words you underline, you see when you're studying this sort of thing. It's not just that he says the charge hasn't been answered, but he says never will be. It is impossible to answer this charge. The simultaneous attribution of all power and all goodness to the creator of the whole world is logically incompatible with with the existence of evil and pain in the world. More particularly there have been secular philosophers who have written articles appearing in the journals of philosophy against Christianity. This is technically the realm called atheology or anti theology if you will. It's not just we live in a new day and age, apologetically speaking. There was a day when some philosophers were Christians and others weren't Christians. And the Christian philosophers occasionally would publish things in the journals trying to defend Christianity. But now you see philosophers publishing things in the journals that are taking it one step further. It's not just that they're saying there's no evidence for Christianity, they're saying the evidence is against Christianity. And so in a well known article entitled Evil and Omnipotence in the Philosophical Quarterly for 1960, H.J. mcCloskey wrote Evil is a problem for the theist in that a contradiction is involved in the Fact of evil on the one hand, and the belief in the omnipotence and perfection of God on the other. God cannot be both all powerful and perfectly good if evil is real. One more and I'll stop pages 46 and 47 here. J.L. mackey's article Evil and Omnipotence adds to this. The traditional arguments for the existence of God have been fairly thoroughly criticized by philosophers. But the theologian can, if he wishes, accept this criticism. He can admit that no rational proof of God's existence is possible. And he can still retain all that is essential to his position by holding that God's existence is known in some other non rational way. Follow what he's saying. He's saying, let's assume that all the positive arguments for God's existence prove to be bad arguments. I think they've all proved to be bad ones. But a theologian can say, that's true, they're all bad arguments. But I don't have to give up my theism because to say that I don't have a valid positive argument is not to say that there is an argument that shows that it's wrong. Let me give you an illustration of this because it's an important point. Let's say I believe that there are presently 19 ants living on the planet Venus. All right? That's my most rigorous belief. I mean, I'm going to live and die for the 19 ants on Venus. All right? All right. Now I'm going to try to prove to you that there are 19 ants on Venus. You ever heard the story about the cow jumping over the moon? Well, if cows can jump over moons, ants can live on Venus. And you say, now wait a minute, that's a stupid argument. And you go about disproving it, okay? And I say, well, come to think of it, you're right, that's not a very good argument, but it's still true. And by the way, if there are 19 ants on Venus, then it is true. And the fact that I don't have a good argument for it doesn't take away the truth of it. It just takes away any justification for believing it, any rational justification. Now what Mackie is saying here is okay, if all the arguments for the existence of God have been criticized thoroughly, the theologian can accept that. He can say, well, there's a non rational way of knowing God. A lot of theologians say that. They say we know him by faith, we know him by some emotional experience. Then he continues. I think, however, that a more telling criticism can be made by way of the traditional Problem of evil. Here it can be shown not that religious beliefs lack rational support, like me not having an argument for the 19 ants on the moon or Venus. Here it can be shown not that religious beliefs lack rational support, but that they are positively irrational, that the several parts of the essential theological doctrine are inconsistent with one another. You sang about the goodness of God tonight. Is God good? Stop and look at the Bible. Stop and look at the world and realize that if God is good, then he would want to eliminate those bad things we see around us. And if God is all powerful, he should be able to do so. And therefore the reality of the evil that we have just noted seems to pose a logical incompatibility with an orthodox view of God. In the hiding place. I don't know how many of you have seen that, but in the hiding place, you'll recall at one point that one girl, and I'm vague on this in terms of the setting myself, that girl who poses the question this, Is your God sadistic or is he impotent? Which is it? Okay, now, Christian, you choose. Which of those alternatives do you take? Is your God sadistic? He's all powerful and he is making all these things happen, or is your God impotent? He really grieves for it like you do, but he just can't do anything about it. Is he without power or is he without goodness? Is he sadistic? Are impotent? Now, at this point, having introduced the problem and I hope made you serious about it, and at least given you roughly the outlines of its logical difficulty, let's start talking about some of the alternatives that are possible. What are some of the ways in which we might try to resolve this problem of evil? As Christians, I'm going to offer nine or ten of them to you in rapid succession. And then I'd like to get on to an illustration of the presuppositional method in apologetics, not only as a way of showing that this school of thought is a good one, that's important enough, I suppose, but more importantly to show that we do in fact have a good and all powerful God, one who should be trusted. All right, There are those who say, well, we as Christians look upon this evil that we've seen in the world as ultimately unreal. It appears evil right now, but ultimately it's not real. Not a very adequate solution. In fact, it commits one of the most heinous crimes according to the Bible, because it really ends up saying that evil is good. Calling evil good and good evil is considered the very essence of Sin, in fact, in the Bible. And here we have an apologetical approach, not a popular one in evangelical circles, but it has been used historically to say, well, evil is not metaphysically real. It's only an illusion. Of course, if evil is only an illusion, then it doesn't make any sense to talk about values at all. I mean, because it seems fundamental to any value system that there's a difference between good and evil. But if there is no evil, then there's no difference between good and evil, and there's no sense to talk about values. And so, I mean, we're really throwing the baby out with the bathwater if we take that approach. Well, then somebody else says, well, it's not that evil is not real. It's that evil is really good in disguise. This is very similar to the first option. The first one was evil doesn't really exist. The next option is, well, evil could exist, but all the forms of evil we've talked about are illusions. They really are good in disguise. Now, that's a hard one to follow for most people who aren't philosophically oriented. It's not very interesting. But let me give you a little bit better form of something that's similar to that, and you start to get the point. Somebody says, well, evil is really a means to the good. Evil is, you will, a disguise for the good, in that evil always works out for the good. Evil is always a means to the good. And here's where Romans 8:28 comes in. All things work together for good, right? So even the sufferings of that little child in that outhouse will work together for good. And in that sense, it was only a disguise for good. Or if you will, it was only a springboard for God to accomplish his better ends. What's the problem with saying that evil is a means to the good? Well, in the first place, one would want to ask, is God limited to those means? Couldn't he have used other means? Wouldn't there have been. Couldn't there have been a good springboard to a good end rather than an evil springboard to a good end? Even if evil works out for the good of God's plan eventually, why was there evil to begin with? By the way, in this context, evil does contribute to the ultimate good. How can one be sure that good itself doesn't contribute to an ultimate evil? I mean, you see, the unbeliever can reverse the tables on you when you start playing that little game of something is disguised as something else that looks evil, but it's really good. If you just wait around and somebody says, yeah, well, all those good things you're talking about, your God does they look good. But man, he's gonna zap you in the end, so you better watch out. When you use these two edged swords, they cut, you know, both of us. Moreover, if evil is really only a means to the good, then we don't really have an obligation to remove it, do we? I mean, if evil is there to serve the good ends of God, who would we be to thwart the good ends of God? By all means, let the people rape and pillage and carry on. No, this is not an adequate solution. So let's go to another one. Somebody says, well, evil is really a necessary counterpart to good. Have you ever looked at a mosaic? Okay, if you get up close to the mosaic and you just look at the individual pieces, then nothing seems to make much sense. It all seems so chaotic and random and all that. But if you back up, all of a sudden things fit into the pattern. What may seem like red out of place in the mosaic, you back up and you see the red set over against the contrast of the blues or the yellows or what have you makes the picture. And so evil is a necessary counterpart to good. Moreover, how would one know what good is without evil to begin with? Do you know what health is without disease? Do you know what happiness is without sadness? Well, I think this approach to the problem again makes God evil by necessity. For you see, if evil is the necessary counterpart to good and God is good, then that means there must be another supernatural being necessarily who is the counterpart to that, an evil one. Moreover, if evil is necessary to good, then God's creative ability has been limited because it says God can't create a good world without simultaneously creating something evil in the world. And so we don't have an omnipotent God after all. This seems to challenge the all powerfulness of God. There are those who tell us now to follow another approach that evil is there to enhance our appreciation of the good. It may not be necessary, but it does enhance our appreciation of the good. The question is, does God appreciate good for all that it is? Well, if evil is necessary to enhance appreciation of the good, then God must experience evil, undergo evil, or be evil in order for an all knowing God to perfectly appreciate the good. And that again attacks one of the premises that says that God is not perfectly good. He is good to a certain extent, but then has some evil too. All these approaches that I've been using thus far would probably not be tempting to Anybody in this room, I'm assuming. So you would not have been inclined to take that approach to the problem of evil if an unbelieving relative or friend had posed it to you. But they are important. Historically, they have been raised and we do need to dismiss them by saying at least as much as we have. Let's go on to a more popular option. This is one that you hear over and over and over. In the evangelical world. Evil came from Satan. Alright, what's the next question? How did Satan become evil if God is all powerful? You see, for the approach that says evil came from Satan to be a valid one, you must believe in an ultimate dualism. You must believe, you see, that there is an all powerful good God and an all powerful evil God. Satan. And Satan is the source of the evil. God's the source of the good. But that kind of dualism is totally contrary to the biblical portrayal of God. If it were true that Satan is the ultimate source of evil, then God is not omnipotent. And by the way, if there is an ultimate malevolent deity that is an ultimate all powerful bad demon, then our redemption is certainly in question, isn't it? Who knows whether God will be powerful enough to redeem his people in the end? You see, once you start talking about trying to shift the blame to Satan and forgetting the omnipotence of God, everything gets out of whack in Christian theology. Well, let's try another approach that I've heard in sermons even in some of the best churches. Evil is permitted as God's warning against sin and as God's punishment for sin. Sin is its own punishment, which is true, by the way, but I'm talking about that premise being used in this context. God warns us by showing us the evil of our sin, what comes from our sin, and God punishes us when we do sin. Was that supposed to be God's way of turning men to himself to make innocent children suffer in that outhouse? I mean, is the unbeliever supposed to be impressed that God uses such a means to bring men to himself? It seems, it seems, I think it seems to me a most ineffective way for God to turn men to himself. There ought to be a benevolent way for God to turn men to himself. But more importantly, if evil is supposed to be the punishment for sin and God's warning against further sin, the distribution of suffering, we must recognize, is not proportioned to man's virtue. And if the distribution of suffering is not proportioned, then is God good after all? Seems like he ought to warn evil men more than he warns good men or relatively good men. Moreover, why does God punish the wrong men? Why is it the Christian pastors have their houses destroyed in a tidal wave, as well as the prostitutes in town? Why do the good men have to suffer for the evils of others? Why do animals have to suffer? By the way, are they guilty? Why does God allow animals to be tortured if this is supposed to be a warning to men? So there's something inadequate about that. Well, then there are those who say you have to have a stiff upper lip. You've got to really believe that good is going to come of this. God works through evil. God is restraining evil, we are told, and God atones for our evil. Eventually, he will eliminate evil. Therefore, if you just understand the full scope of redemption, if you see that God is working through it, he is restraining it, it could be worse. He's going to atone for evil, has atoned for evil, and he will eliminate evil eventually. But you see, this apologetical approach is saying, God's going to clean up the mess someday, but what's the problem? The question is, why did he allow the mess in the first place? Moreover, if we take the approach that says God's going to clean up the mess, that is, he's atoning for evil, will eliminate it, what are we to make of hell? What is accomplished by eternal torment? You see, it's not just that we have men tormenting men on earth in this day and age, but the Bible teaches that God will torment men eternally. He won't torment them for sinning eternally, but the torment will be eternal. And so the unbeliever, again, is not going to be very convinced by this approach. And then finally, there are those who say, and I think this is the most popular approach to the problem of evil, those in the evangelical church would say evil has its origin in the free will of man. C.S. lewis, by the way, I'm going to be telling you something that I think is true and applicable in another context. But what C.S. lewis has said is often pressed to service here. Lewis once commented that if. If God takes human dignity and freedom seriously, then when men decide to plant corn, he will not bring up strawberries. That's an excellent point. Men must reap what they sow, if you want to use the biblical phraseology. So God gives man free will. God gives man the ability to follow him, the ability not to follow him in the garden. Man chooses not to follow him. Now somebody complains against God. At this point, many Christians will say but don't you see? It's much better to have a world where men have dignity as free creatures and yet have chosen the evil than to make them automatons, to make them robots, to make them so subject to God's direction that they have no individual dignity, they have no freedom. And so the price that we pay for our dignity as human beings is the indignity we bring upon ourselves by sin. That's a very appealing approach. It's one which I think a lot of people hold. I know a lot of people hold. And even many of us may have held it for a long time. I used that approach for many years as a college student. That makes sense. God granted Adam the freedom to go one way or the other. And the price of giving him that freedom was leaving the door open for corn to be planted rather than strawberries. You can't expect now that corn's been planted for God to raise up strawberries. And so now we live because of the freedom of man, which is better than having a world full of automatons. Because of the freedom of man, we live in an evil world. Once you reflect on that for a minute, see if you can come up with the difficulty there. It sounds very orthodox. In fact, for the most part, it is orthodox. God did allow Adam to choose for himself. Well, I think a person would say here that God was still God when Adam freely fell into sin. Nevertheless, Adam freely did it within the plan of God, and Adam is responsible for that. And this is all orthodox up to this point. Adam is the immediate cause of his sin. God is not the author of evil, even though God predestined it. God is not the one who forced Adam to evil against his will, drug him into the realm of evil. Adam did it willingly, and therefore Adam's responsible for it. Now, if God wanted men to have the dignity of free agents, and then Adam made the wrong choice, then we have evil. But God is not to be blamed for that. Well, the difficulty is found, I think, very well in the chapter on free will in the Westminster Confession of Faith. This is chapter nine, and I'm going to read for you section five, Section five of the chapter on free will. It's one sentence. It says, the will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to do good alone in the state of glory only. What is the background to this statement? Well, in the garden, man was free to do good, free to do evil. After the fall, man is not free to do good. With redemption and regeneration, man is now free again to do good. Or to do evil. But what about heaven? What about the eternal state? In the state of glory, only will the will of man be made perfectly and immutably free to do good alone. What the confession is teaching, and I think it's very biblical, what it's teaching is that men are not going to sin in the state of glory. They will immutably and freely choose to do the good throughout all eternity. Notice that man's freedom is consistent with immutable good choices that he never alters, that he always chooses the good throughout eternity, but he does so freely. Ask yourself this. When we go to heaven and we're made perfect, does that mean we're going to be made robots? We're going to lose our human freedom. We're going to lose our dignity as human beings. We're not going to have that volition that we have now. No, we're going to have volition. We're going to be like we are now, but we're going to be sinless. What does that indicate? That indicates that God can be in ultimate control, that we can be free and we can immutably do the good. That situation is logically possible. In fact, it's the one we're anticipating, where we as free human beings will do the good and only the good throughout all eternity. But if we can have our freedom and immutable goodness, then the question is, why didn't God make it that way from the start? Now do you see the ultimate problem of the free will defense? If man's free will is compatible with him always doing the good, why didn't God give him free will and always make him do the good? Why didn't God, if you will, bring heaven on earth to begin with, if you want to put it that way. So the free will defense is ultimately inadequate also. Well, I hope that at this point you would all be somewhat upset if I said let's close up the books and go home. That's right. This is not appropriate. Teacher, we don't want to stop now. If you were willing to stop, you obviously are not taking the problem of evil seriously, or you haven't caught on to the fact that all these traditional answers are not good answers. They are not adequate answers. Well, then what are we going to say? Well, I'm suggesting that the presuppositional approach can answer the problem of evil, can show that it's not logically incompatible to have a good God who is all powerful and an evil world. But let's stop for a minute. We've got to Kind of shelve the problem if you can. I realize it's, you know, gripping you. I hope it's gripping you, but we got to talk about presuppositional method for a minute. And then if you just understand the method, I'm going to review it a second. Well, go and apply it to this problem. You've been studying presuppositionalism for a while, and it seems a likely thing that you've been studying it adequately. So what are you going to say to the problem of evil? If you know the method, if it's been taught to you accurately and you caught on, then you should be able to apply it now, right? Kind of like coming in, sitting down. You have the black warden person teaches you how to catch a football, right? These muscles do these things. The legs go like this, the arms go like this, the football does this, so forth. And so now you just go right out on the field and apply your knowledge, right? Here's the method. Go do it. Okay? You know the method. Go do it. Apply this now, this presuppositional method to the problem of evil. Notice the nine or ten failed methods we've looked at straining the imaginations of some of the best minds in Christian history. Does presuppositionalism really work? I said it was the test of any apologetical system to pose for it the problem of evil. Well, let me review just for a minute, if you don't mind, the presuppositional method. Okay, let's look at Colossians, the second chapter. Colossians, chapter two. Now, I'm not going to be talking about evil for a minute. I'm going to be talking about presuppositional method. I want to give some background. Then take this and apply it. Colossians 2, 3. In Christ are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge deposited. Verse 8. Take heed, lest there be anyone who makes spoil of you through his philosophy, which is vain deceit, which is after the tradition of men, after the elementary principles of the world, and not after Christ. In a nutshell, there's presuppositional method. Remember that all knowledge and wisdom is deposited in Christ. If you don't make Christ your starting point, you can't have knowledge and wisdom. The beginning of knowledge is what? The fear of the Lord. If you don't begin with the Lord, if you don't begin with Jesus Christ, you can't have knowledge and wisdom. Starting point of knowledge and wisdom is Christ, because all knowledge and wisdom is deposited there is. Now Paul says, beware Lest anyone does what to you make spoil robs you. In the Greek it actually means mugs. You beware, lest somebody robs you. Of what? That treasure of wisdom and knowledge that you have in Christ. You see, you have a treasure, making Christ your starting point. You can know things. You can give an account of your knowledge. The unbeliever can't account for his knowledge. He doesn't start with Christ. He has been robbed of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Why? Because he follows the traditions of men, the elementary principles of the world, and not Christ. His ABCs of learning, if you will, are taken from humanistic philosophy. Humanistic assumptions. Well, there's an awful lot more here. But if nothing else, Paul is telling us we've got to look at the assumptions, the starting point, the ultimate foundation, the presuppositions of our thought. If our presuppositions aren't after Christ, we aren't going to be able to know anything. And if they are after Christ, then we can't have wisdom and knowledge. So the presuppositional method says we've got to question one's presuppositions. Ask the unbeliever to make an account of his assumptions. Everybody has assumptions. I'm speaking very simply now. There's nothing sophisticated or hard about this. You all can understand it. Whenever you talk to anybody about anything, whether it's last week's USC football game or whether it's the problem of evil, everybody has assumptions. Now, the unbeliever cannot give an account of his assumptions. He cannot justify his assumptions not being able to justify them. He can't be said to know anything. In principle, he can't give an account of it. So the proverbs tell us that if you don't begin with the fear of the Lord, then you'll be a fool. And a fool despises wisdom and instruction. The Proverbs also say, in dealing with fools, fools are those who think more highly of themselves than they do of the wisdom of God. That's a theme in the book of Proverbs in dealing with fools. The book of Proverbs says, don't answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him. Now, it's very practical wisdom. Don't use the assumptions of your opponent, or else you're going to get trapped in the problems of your opponent. If I can put it to you a little bit different way, don't answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be life through. But then the Bible says, answer him according to his folly. Lest he be wise in his own conceits. That is, show him where his folly leads. Because if you don't, he's going to think, whoa, pretty wise, pretty smart guy, right? Lest he be conceited, think that he's wise. Answer him according to his Folly. That's what Dr. Van Tillen has been saying for years. If you will, first of all put yourself on the unbelievers foolish position and show him where it leads. Then invite him to put himself on your position and show where it leads. Don't use his presuppositions when you're making a positive approach, but use his presuppositions when you want to do an internal critique of his system and show where it leads. Paul says in Christ, make Christ your starting point. Then you can have wisdom and knowledge, the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. But if you don't, if you're beguiled, if you're mugged by philosophy that's after the traditions of men and the elementary principles of the world, then you're going to be robbed of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Okay? That's in essence the presuppositional method. Ask the man to give an account of his assumptions and showing that only your assumptions will account for knowledge at all. Okay, now let's go back to the problem of evil. It's at this point that I want to point out that when I started my lecture tonight and said, you must play for keeps, I wasn't just talking to Christians. But that's something we've got to say to non Christians as well. They've got to play for keeps. It's good to tell them. I realize that evil is a great psychological problem. It troubles me. It baffles me. I'm disturbed by it. Logically, it appears to be a difficulty. So you let him know that you're playing seriously, that you're not just being cavalier about it, but either can he. And at this point the unbeliever and the believer are going to say that over there is evil. Okay, let's use Dostoevsky's example. There is that poor innocent child in the outhouse, beating its fist on its chest, asking for God's protection and not getting it. That's evil for those parents, those sadistic parents are doing to that child. That's terrible and that's evil. Now take that seriously. You know that's evil, don't you? Unbeliever. The believer knows it, the unbeliever knows it. And it's at this point that we say Give an account of your assumptions. Why should you call that evil? Give an account of evil now. Well, evil means something that's contrary to good. That's true by definition. Evil is known as that which is not good. We want to know then how do you account for intrinsic evil? Which is to say, how do you account for intrinsic good? If the unbeliever says, well, there's no absolute standard of good, it's just different strokes for different folks, then what do you got? Relativism. And you can answer this person, well, then we don't know that's evil over there. For all we know, that's just the way some people get their kicks. Don't call it evil. Who are you to judge somebody else? After all, there's no absolute standards of judgment. How can you judge? Don't judge. That's such a bad thing. Then what are some of the philosophical notions of goodness that have been used? Well, basically, there are three different camps philosophically for defining the good one. Kampf says that good is an objective quality. It's there no matter what people think of it. Good is something that is objective, okay? And so whether you know that it's good, whether you care that it's good, it's still there. It's out there. It exists in itself. It's not something that's just dependent upon the whims of human beings. All right? Now, among those who believe in an objective form of good, there are those who are naturalists and those who are intuitionists. This is going to be simple. The outline only has two breakdowns, okay? The naturalists say that good is a natural quality, a natural characteristic. It's something that through examination, through natural investigation, one can see. Let me give you an illustration. Somebody says good means that which is conducive to the most pleasure. That's an objective, natural quality. Some things give pleasure, some things don't. And you can not so much measure, but you can investigate. You come along and poke a pin into your finger objectively, that either does or does not give you pleasure. Here's a natural, objective quality. Difficulty with this approach to evil is that it commits what is called the naturalistic fallacy. That because something is the case, therefore it ought to be the case, okay? But somebody comes along and says, now look, if we allow abortions in our society, more people are going to be happy than the people who are unhappy are going to be unhappy. More people are going to get pleasure out of that than the people who don't like it are going to get displeasure out of it therefore, since it is conducive to the greatest happiness and the greatest number, then it's good. Now, how can you prove that? You can prove that more people are happy, perhaps. I have questions about that. But Grant, for the moment, you can prove that more people are happy. Can you prove that more people ought to be happy? You can't reason from what is the case to what ought to be the case. Therefore, this theory of goodness cannot give an account of goodness. It can only tell us what is the case. It can't tell us what ought to be the case. What is good. For all we know, what is the case is very evil throughout the world. Well, there's another school of objective goodness in philosophy. That's the intuitionist school. The intuitionist says you don't go about investigating to see what is good. You just intuit is objectively out there. But we all intuit it. That school of philosophy held pretty strongly in England until the turn of the century when a certain person came to Oxford to teach English. His name was D.H. lawrence. Problem with Mr. Lawrence is that, you see, he didn't seem to intuit the same way that G.E. moore and the other guys did. You know, later, Lady Chatterley's Lover and all the rest just didn't. They didn't think intuitively was good, but he thought it was very good. He wrote it. So intuitionism, you see, doesn't settle many disputes. In fact, it doesn't answer anything. It's just to say there is a good, but we don't know how. We know it. Well, okay, if you don't have an objective approach to good, then you have a subjective approach to good. Good is dependent upon the subject. It's not out there independently of his thinking and willing and desiring. It's dependent upon his thinking, willing and desiring. And there are two schools of private subjectivism and social subjectivism, since they both have the same problem, subjectivism. Well, let's get on with the problem. Private subjectivism means good is whatever you think is good, whatever you like. Social subjectivism is good, as whatever your society says is good, depending on the wills, whims, thinking of your society. Well, that just reduces the different strokes to different folks. That's subjectivism. That's relativism, pure and simple. But on the basis of relativism, you cannot say that it is evil that that child suffered the sadistic pleasures of its parents in that outhouse. You cannot take evil seriously. You cannot account for the absolute intrinsic quality of that evil. Well, pagan philosophers have a way of really resisting the implications of their foolishness. You send a fool on a fool's errand, you'll find out that he'll run even further and further trying to make good on the effort. And pagan philosophers, not being able to justify good objectively, not being able to justify it subjectively, have come up with a couple of other theories of good. There is no such thing as good when I use the word good. It's just a way of trying to direct you. So I say it's good to give money to the poor. That isn't to say that there's some objective quality out there. It isn't to say that I intuit something. It isn't to say anything about me. It's just my way of telling you give money to the poor. Okay. Giving alms is good means give alms. Christians sometimes don't catch the significance of this. The theory is not because giving alms is good. Go do it. The theory is there's no such thing as goodness. When I say giving alms is good, that's the same thing as saying give alms. When you say thou shalt not commit adultery, what that means is boo for adultery. Don't do it. Okay. There's another approach to this emotivism, which is to say, when I say that giving alms is good, that's just to say, yay for giving alms. I kind of like that. Well, I'm not going to bother to spend any more time on these theories. As you can see, these are 20th century theories that are nothing more but an admission of the poverty of secular thought when it comes to ethics. Since we can't give an account of the good, we'll try to reform our language. We'll try to say, well, sentences that use the word good can be translated into directives, don't do this, or can be just expressions of emotion. Why have I taken you through this somewhat boring survey of ethical philosophy? Because we started by saying you've got to take evil seriously. And I dare say now that the unbeliever, because he has no evidence absolute standard of good and cannot in the nature of the case have an absolute standard of good, cannot say absolutely unequivocally, without relativistic quicksand under him that is evil. That is to say, there can't be evil according to the unbeliever's worldview. If there is no God as the Bible portrays him, then there can't be an absolute standard of good evil, and there can't therefore be evil. On the other hand, Christianity does have a non relativistic use of moral predicates. When we use the word good, we're not using it relativistically. The personal God of Christianity, who is the transcendent Creator, the sovereign over all of creation, is nevertheless immanent in his world. He governs the world, he, he reveals himself in the world and he shows himself as the standard of the good. The Christian, you see, can identify evil in the world because evil is defined by the revealed standards of God. Good means something reflects the character of God and the character of God. What is good is detailed in the Scriptures. Therefore we have an absolute standard and it's a relative standard. It is relevant, we know how to apply it. Good isn't some ethereal idea, like with Plato, that nobody knows what it really means. Good is absolute. It's God's character. And then God shows us what his character is like by giving us his law. Now that salvages an absolute standard of good. And thus to make the judgment this over here is positively evil. The non Christian has really got to be living on borrowed capital to really think that it's evil to torture innocent children. The non Christian has got to be recognizing that there is a moral absolute, a God who created this world and who has said to this world it is wrong to torture children. That is, the anti theist, the atheist cannot generate the problem of evil without first making a moral judgment that is objectively correct. But objective moral judgments can only be grounded in the transcendent God of Christianity. And therefore to use the problem of evil to disprove God's existence, the disputer of this world must first assume the existence of God that he's trying to disprove. Paul says, where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? You see, when the world wants to reject God and his Christ, then Paul says, then show the foolishness for what it is the world wants to say that's evil. Look at all these terrible things. There's disease, there's torment, there's war, there's suffering, there's death. And the Christian says, you're absolutely right. Absolutely right. Not relativistically right, absolutely right. But if you're going to say that that's absolutely evil, then you must have an absolute standard of good and only God can provide that. So let me say this again. To use the problem of evil to disprove God's existence, the disputer of this world must first assume implicitly the existence of the God he's trying to disprove. As Paul said, only if you start with Christ, if you start with his revelation, can you really know that's evil. So question the unbeliever's assumptions, show that he can't give an account of his assumptions without first using your starting point. As Dr. Van Til has said, the man who uses the problem of evil, you see as an attack upon God is like the child who sits in his father's lap and slaps his father's face. The child couldn't slap his father's face without first sitting on his father's lap. And the unbeliever cannot slap, if you will, the face of God insulting him because of evil in the world without first depending, sitting in the very lap, if you will, of God, the unbeliever cannot logically generate the problem of evil. Okay, in the hiding place the question was posed, is God impotent or is God sadistic? We need to come back to that now because we've shown only that the problem of evil is not a logical problem for the believer. It is in fact, ironically, a logical problem for the unbeliever because he can't make good on his statement that that is evil. But we still have to say to ourselves, what do we do about this? If God is good, why do we have all the suffering around us after all? Well, when that young girl said God must either be sadistic or God must be impotent, that sort of statement is a cue to any Christian apologist to say, now wait a minute. Who told you those were the only options? There's another option. God is all powerful, God is good and evil exists. Somebody says, now wait a minute. That's the problem we're trying to solve. You say, now wait a minute. That's what the Bible reveals. You see, there is a third option, the worldview of the Bible. The Bible gives us a world and life view, tells us about God, tells us about the world, tells us God is all good, tells us God is all powerful, tells us evil exists in the world in the Bible, because it's true, is consistent, and therefore those three things are consistent. The unbeliever says, now wait a minute, I don't think it's consistent. And that's the nub of the problem. The unbeliever doesn't think it's consistent. God thinks it's consistent. Who do you want to believe? You see, ultimately it's a question of authority. The authority of his logical powers versus the authority of God's Logical powers. Now he's using his logical powers to show that there is no God. Logically speaking, what does God tell us? We see we've got to take the larger picture into account. God tells us that sin has obscured our understanding. That is to say, if Adam chose to sin Adam and iterate a realm of darkness that even he would not understand, it would obscure his thinking. It would make his thinking foolish, it would thwart his ability to understand things properly. Now if the Bible's picture is true. Okay, I'm asking the unbeliever. Just stand on my assumptions for a minute, follow out my reasoning. Okay, so if the Bible's picture is true, God is all powerful, God is all good, there is evil. And it makes sense that you wouldn't understand that because evil obscures the understanding of men. When it comes to the ways of God, the Bible tells us we should expect that to be the case. It is the case, therefore it's perfectly consistent. Let me give you an analogy. Assume that I've moved into a house that has something wrong with a doorknob. In one of the bedrooms the door is locked and you can only open the door from the outside. Have you ever had one of those sorts of. I don't know how to fix those doorknobs and they get like that, but they're locked. And from the inside you can't turn it at all. You can't get it unlocked, but from the outside you can turn it. Strange thing. Okay, let's say that it's late at night, utterly dark, okay? No light in the room. And you tell your young child, don't go in there and shut the door. If you do, you won't be able to get out. It'll be dark, the door will be locked and no way out. Now let's assume that your child does it anyway. Okay, now here you have this child locked in this room. You can let the child out. Child can't get out. In fact, the child can't even find the doorknob now because it's utterly dark, if you will. His understanding has been obscured. Okay? Now what would you think of a child sitting in there? I realize 5 year old children don't do this, but here's this child sitting in there. It cannot be true that I have a good father. Cannot be true. If there's a way out of this room, it's got to be possible for me to know. The way out of this room doesn't follow at all, does it? There is a way out of the room, but just because it's dark. And just because the door is locked from the inside, he can't do it himself. He can't get out. You see, it is possible. I talk about this in my doctoral dissertation too, so I get a little excited about it. I guess self deception can be self covering, can't it? People can do things that are going to actually obscure what they've done so that they don't even understand what they have done. It is not somehow a priori obvious to all philosophers that we always understand everything that we get ourselves into. Children get themselves locked in dark rooms and can't get out. That's a weak analogy, but it's worthwhile to this extent that it shows that if the Bible says that by sinning men would make themselves unable to understand their plight, and if the unbeliever says I can't understand how it's possible, a good God and an evil world, be consistent. The believer can say to the unbeliever. But that's what the Bible tells us you won't be able to understand. Well, so my point here is when somebody says God's either sadistic or God is impotent, we have to say no. There's a third option. God is all powerful. God is all good. Evil exists and evil has affected your ability to understand it properly. That's what the Bible teaches. And if that is true, it is consistent. It's just a question. Now is that worldview right or is the unbeliever's worldview right? Remember, before you get tempted to follow the unbeliever's worldview, he can't even account for good and evil. But you can. At this point, the question is one of ultimate trust. Do you trust your own reasoning ability so much that you can say you're not in that locked dark room, Mr. Unbeliever? Or do you rather trust that although you can't understand it, although it's a mystery to you that you can put your hand, you can put yourself in the hands of an all good, all powerful God and say, his wisdom is above my wisdom and I trust him for the outcome, the question is one of ultimate authority. Job had the problem of evil pressed in upon him. His family was taken away, his wealth was taken away, his health was taken away. Everything seemed to be gone. And Job said, I want an answer. And what did God say to Job? Job, you first answer me. And after you read chapters 38, 39, 40, 41 and 42, the book of Job, you see how God deals with the problem of Evil. When men try pressing it upon him in his wisdom, Job laid his hand upon his mouth and said, I'm undone. I'll say no more. It's a question of ultimate authority. Do you trust the wisdom of God, or you trust the wisdom of this man who can't even account for evil in the world? What is the Christian view of evil? Very quickly now and we'll stop. We must remember that evil always takes place within the framework of God's providence. Evil is always according to the plan of God. Moreover, evil is ultimately the result of sin. By that, we do not mean to say that everything that happens, every bad thing that happens to us, can be correlated to some sin we've committed. But the point is, in a sinless world, there wouldn't be evil to be endured. Sin and providence are the window dressing, if you will, the framework in which we understand evil. Secondly, the Christians went to say that evil is useful. Jesus said, blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those who mourn. Evil doesn't defeat the plan of God. Evil is part of the plan of God. That's where Romans 8:28 comes in. All things work together for good to those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. The Book of Hebrews tells us that God uses evil to chasten his saints. And so evil within the framework of God's providence against the backdrop of human sin is nevertheless useful in the plan of God. And finally, and ultimately and most gloriously, the Bible teaches us God will overcome evil. And in allowing evil to come to begin with, and in overcoming it, he shows the wonders of his character, his redemptive, merciful character. All the more. God is overcoming evil, will ultimately judge it and balance the scales of justice one day. So the Christian view of evil can give an account of evil, can give an account of the enigma of evil, and can give us great hope in the face of evil. The unbelieving worldview cannot account for evil. The unbelieving worldview cannot account for the lack of wisdom in men. The unbelieving worldview cannot offer us any hope. And so, as Moses said, you stand before two options today, blessing and cursing. Life and death. Choose life that you might know. The blessing of God that you see is a presuppositional approach to the problem of evil. And it's one which shows that the problem is really a problem for the unbeliever. Okay, thank you for your attentiveness. I've gone much longer than I anticipated, and so what I'm going to do is just take A few questions and allow you to go about your other evening's activities. Go ahead. Well, if God has included evil as part of his plan and that indeed it's caused by sin, but he will overcome it, why has he even let it exist that he might overcome? Well, two things have to be said. One in the lecture, what I'm intimating is that the very existence of evil, how it happened and ultimately why it happened can be a mystery to the unbeliever. But it's, it's understandable that it's a mystery that isn't. To say we understand the evil, but that it's mysterious is understandable because we've darkened our understanding by our sin. What is the nature of sin? This is something else I had in my notes, but didn't bring up. The nature of sin, you see, is to question what the standards of God, the very nature of sin, got us into the problem of evil. And now that we're in the problem of evil, sinful men come along and say we want to question the wisdom of God. They're just perpetuating the problem of evil in a very ironic way. I take that very seriously. That's just not a glib cop out. That's the root of the problem, is that we first put our minds above God's mind. Eve said, well, Satan has a hypothesis, God has some hypothesis, and I'll be the judge. And we have wars and disease and all the rest is a result of it. And so today what I'm saying is we as Christians say, yeah, it's a mystery in one sense. But I'm willing to live with the mystery because without that mystery I can't make sense of anything else. But given the mysteries of the unbeliever, I can't give an account of anything. Everything's mysterious. Given an unbeliever's worldview, he can't account for good, he can't account for evil. I haven't talked about this tonight, but he can't account for logic, he can't account for science, he can't account for anything. So then the choice between life and death, now the life that I choose to follow, the one that I trust, ultimately says that trusting that submissive spirit means that you grant that you don't know everything and you never will know everything. So first of all, it's a mystery, but it's an appropriate and consistent mystery in the Christian faith. Secondly, we have to say that God allowed it because he does all things well. And it's going to be conducive to his greater glory that he allowed men to sin and redeems them, then he just allowed men to be confirmed in their righteousness from the outset. In some sense, God is bringing about a greater good because of this. It's, if you will, showing his mercy more fully and dramatically than it would have been understood if unsinful men had been confirmed in righteousness. That isn't to say that, well, we shouldn't oppose evil and all that. What it's saying is that the glory of God will be served nonetheless, but men are to blame for it because they chose the sin without God being the author of it. So those two things have to be remembered. It's a mystery in one sense, but it's an appropriate one. And secondly, because we submit to the wisdom of God, we believe he did it for his own glory, to manifest his character more fully. Go ahead. And that is that evil was caused. For example, evil was caused by sin. Well, that doesn't seem to us, because then saying that evil is due to man's free will because man's free will chose to sin. Yes. Remember, in all of those alternatives, I made a point of saying at times what is being said here is true in itself, but does not answer this problem. It's true that evil comes from the sinful choice, the free will of man. But that doesn't answer the problem of why God allowed it or how it can possibly be given the fact that in heaven, in the eternal state of glory, men are going to freely choose to do the good and only the good. My point ultimately was that the unbeliever cannot account for evil. You question his assumptions. He says, that's evil. Make good on that assumption. How can he demonstrate that that is absolutely evil if he doesn't believe in the Christian God? At the end of my lecture, what I was saying is that the Christian attitude toward evil includes these elements. That it's within the providence of God, it's a result of sin, that God is using it to his ends and will ultimately overcome it. That wasn't an answer to the philosophical problem. That was part of your spiritual nourishment to know how you, as a Christian, if you will submit to the wisdom of God, how you should look at it. You see what I'm saying? The end of the lecture was a lesson in how Christians approach evil as it is. But the earlier part of the lecture was how do you resolve the problem? And the problem cannot be resolved in unbelieving terms. And therefore it's not an apologetical problem. One More question. It kind of just goes to show that worldly philosophy is hedged in by reason and experience, in the sense that appreciative philosophy is really unreasonable and insensible. He's always a play on words. Yeah. And that leads me to my question, and that is that if evil is not tangible, that is, if you can't reify it, he learns to fly. Then is sin only tangible? Or to put another way, does evil differ from sin, as the Christian scientists would say, that sin is a state of mind? Well, evil is not a state of mind. Evil is a direction, if you will. It's a way of we either react in accordance with the mind of God or we rebel against it. My point is evil isn't like a chair, isn't like a rock. Evil is what we do with our facilities. It's the direction of the car, not the car itself. Or relational. I think that's. It's subject to misunderstanding, but I think it can be understood properly, too. It's a matter of how you stand before God and whether your relationship is one of rebellion or submission. So it relates as to one's volition, relationship with submission to the law of God. That's right. As John says that sin is lawlessness, evil is ultimately not being submissive to the law of God. Well, let's close with the word of prayer. Okay. Lord, we plead with you tonight to forgive us for our arrogance. Do you ever think that our wisdom should have originally or tonight ever been sufficient to call you into question? Lord, teach us what it is to submit to you, and teach us and give us a confidence that that submission is not blind and irrational, but it's only in that submission that we have the light and can see. Lord, we confess, as the Scriptures say, that in thy light we see light, and that apart from you, our thoughts are foolish and dark. Lord, we pray that you forgive us not only of our arrogance, but of our daily sins. We thank you that the atoning blood of Jesus Christ has been given to cover them, to take away your wrath and to reconcile you to us. We thank you that in your goodness, in your grace, in your forgiving mercy, you have supplied your Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds and to turn us to the truth so that we might submit to the Scriptures and understand them. Lord, we confess that you do all things well, that no evil thing can come from you. We thank you, Lord, that the evil that we experience in our lives is being overcome and that while it may not be true for those who experience eternal torment, that for your people, all things are working together for good. Lord, we praise your goodness and your wisdom in this we magnify your glory. We ask that you would make us effective servants, having been forgiven of our sins and empowered by the Holy Spirit, that you would give us that wisdom necessary to speak to those who will not submit or who have not submitted to your goodness and wisdom in the Scriptures. We ask that you would enable us not to be caught in the philosophical problems of the fool. We ask you, Lord, that in your grace you would keep us from being foolish. But Lord, we ask that you'd make us effective in showing the fool his foolishness, that he wouldn't be wise in his own conceits, but rather he would feel remorse for his challenging of your wisdom. That he would feel remorse for his sin, that he would take evil so seriously that he would bring it to the foot of the cross of your Son, Jesus Christ. We ask you, Lord, that you would accomplish these things only for the good of your own kingdom and its advance, for the glory of your Son, our Savior, in whose name we pray. Amen. 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