Problem Of Evil - Sarcasm Wiki

Before one can adequately dissect this ancient paradox, it’s rather crucial to define the terms at play. Humanity, ever so fond of its linguistic squabbles, has managed to inject differing definitions into these concepts, making a clear understanding all the more elusive.

Evil

Within the context of the problem of evil, the term “evil” is generally conceived in a remarkably broad sense. It encompasses “any bad state of affairs, wrongful action, or character flaw.” This expansive definition includes both natural evils (such as earthquakes or disease) and moral evils (such as murder or betrayal), ranging from minor harms or injustices to acts of profound depravity. This is in stark contrast to the common, modern colloquial use of “evil,” which tends to be reserved for particularly horrendous moral acts—a rather convenient simplification, wouldn’t you agree? More restrictive concepts of evil, of course, may emerge as relevant depending on the specific formulation of the problem or the proposed response.

Philosopher Marcus Singer posited that any truly usable definition of evil must rest on the fundamental understanding that “If something is really evil, it can’t be necessary, and if it is really necessary, it can’t be evil.” A neat little knot, that. Philosopher John Kemp, adding another layer of complexity, argued that evil cannot be accurately grasped on “a simple hedonic scale on which pleasure appears as a plus, and pain as a minus.” The human experience of suffering, it seems, is rarely so straightforward.

The very meaning of evil itself shifts and contorts when viewed through the lens of differing belief systems. While it is often framed in overtly religious terms, evil can also be understood in purely natural or secular contexts, manifesting as social vice, rampant egoism, criminality, or even sociopathology. John Kekes provided a succinct framework, suggesting that an action qualifies as evil if “(1) it causes grievous harm to (2) innocent victims, and it is (3) deliberate, (4) malevolently motivated, and (5) morally unjustifiable.” A useful checklist, if one is inclined to categorize such things.

Omniqualities

The traditional Abrahamic conception of God rests upon a trinity of perfect attributes, often referred to as the “omniqualities.” These are the very properties that make the problem of evil so… problematic.

Omniscience is typically defined as “maximal knowledge.” However, even this seemingly absolute term is subject to philosophical nuance. Edward Wierenga, a classics scholar and philosopher of religion, suggests that “maximal” does not imply unlimited knowledge, but rather knowledge “limited to God knowing what is knowable.” This interpretation, widely accepted among twenty-first-century scholars, forms the basis of what William Hasker termed “freewill-theism.” Within this framework, future events that are contingent upon the free choices of individuals are considered unknowable until those choices are made, thereby preserving human agency without diminishing God’s maximal, if not absolutely exhaustive, knowledge.
Omnipotence similarly denotes maximal power—the ability to bring about events within the inherent limits of possibility. Again, “maximal” does not equate to “unlimited” in a way that defies logic. As philosophers Hoffman and Rosenkrantz clarify, “An omnipotent agent is not required to bring about an impossible state of affairs… maximal power has logical and temporal limitations, including the limitation that an omnipotent agent cannot bring about, i.e., cause, another agent’s free decision.” So, God can do anything possible, but apparently, compelling a free choice isn’t on the menu.
Omnibenevolence portrays God as entirely good, all-loving, and acting always in accordance with what is best. If a definitive “best” is unavailable in a given situation, an omnibenevolent God would, if possible, endeavor to bring about states of affairs that are both creatable and optimal within the constraints of physical reality. This attribute implies a divine will consistently aimed at fostering well-being and preventing suffering, which, of course, brings us right back to the original problem.

Defenses and Theodicies

The various attempts to navigate the treacherous waters of the problem of evil are often categorized as either defenses or theodicies , though the precise distinction can be a source of endless philosophical wrangling.

Generally speaking, a defense aims to address the logical argument from evil. This argument, in its starkest form, asserts that “it is logically impossible – not just unlikely – that God exists” given the reality of evil. A defense, in this context, does not need to offer a full, comprehensive explanation for evil. It doesn’t even need to be demonstrably true or probable; its sole purpose is to establish that the possibility of God and evil coexisting is not logically contradictory. If such a possibility can be shown, then the logical argument for impossibility is, by definition, invalidated. Alvin Plantinga’s free-will defense is a prime example, suggesting a possible scenario where God, despite being omnipotent, could not create a world with free beings who never choose evil.

A theodicy, on the other hand, is a far more ambitious undertaking. It attempts to provide a plausible justification—a morally or philosophically sufficient reason—for the existence of evil. The goal of a theodicy is to weaken the evidential argument from evil, which leverages the empirical reality of suffering to argue that the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good God is improbable. A successful theodicy doesn’t just show that coexistence is possible; it offers a coherent narrative that explains why evil is allowed to exist within a divinely ordered universe, making God’s existence seem more probable despite it.

Secularism

While the problem of evil is most commonly framed within a theistic context, it’s worth noting that a secular equivalent exists, a kind of existential echo. As philosopher Forrest E. Baird observed, a secular problem of evil arises whenever human beings strive to comprehend the existence of evil and its intricate relationship with the world around them. Any experience that “calls into question our basic trust in the order and structure of our world” can be perceived as evil, regardless of whether a deity is involved. Peter L. Berger further elaborated on this, suggesting that humans inherently require explanations for evil “for social structures to stay themselves against chaotic forces.” Without some framework, chaos beckons.

Formulation

The problem of evil, in its most fundamental sense, is the profound challenge of reconciling the stark reality of evil and suffering with humanity’s deeply held worldviews, particularly (though not exclusively) with the belief in a God who is simultaneously all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing, and who actively intervenes in the world.

This problem can be approached from two distinct angles: experientially or theoretically. The experiential problem grapples with the sheer difficulty of maintaining belief in a loving God when directly confronted by the raw, visceral reality of evil and suffering in the world. Think of devastating epidemics, brutal wars, senseless acts of murder, or catastrophic natural disasters that claim innocent lives. How does one reconcile a benevolent deity with such palpable pain? The theoretical problem, conversely, is the more abstract, intellectual challenge, typically dissected by religion scholars in its two aforementioned varieties: the logical problem and the evidential problem.

Interestingly, one of the earliest explicit statements of this profound problem can be found in early Buddhist texts . In the Majjhima Nikāya , the Buddha (dating back to the 6th or 5th century BCE ) articulated a rather pointed observation: if a divine being were indeed the creator of all sentient beings, then given the inherent pain and suffering these beings experience, such a creator would more likely be an evil god than a benevolent one. A rather direct challenge, long before the Abrahamic traditions solidified their omni-attributes.

Logical Problem of Evil

The logical problem of evil, a rather tidy philosophical package, aims to demonstrate that the mere coexistence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God with evil is inherently contradictory. It’s a binary choice, they argue: either God exists with these attributes, or evil exists. Not both.

The earliest, most iconic statement of this problem is, as previously noted, attributed to Epicurus (341–270 BCE), though historical attribution can be a messy business, and some scholars argue it was wrongly ascribed to him by later Christian writers. Regardless of its true origin, David Hume famously summarized this Epicurean version with chilling clarity:

“Is [god] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?”

This distilled query forms the bedrock of the logical argument from evil, which can be formally presented as follows:

P1. If an omnipotent , omnibenevolent , and omniscient god exists, then evil does not. P2. There is evil in the world. C1. Therefore, an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient god does not exist.

This argument structure is a classic example of modus tollens : if the first premise (P1) holds true, then the conclusion (C1) must logically follow. The real philosophical heavy lifting, then, lies in establishing the plausibility of P1. Subsequent, more elaborate versions of the argument tend to expand upon P1, articulating the inherent tension in greater detail. Consider this modern expansion:

P1a. God exists.
P1b. God is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient.
P1c. An omnipotent being possesses the power to prevent any evil from coming into existence.
P1d. An omnibenevolent being would desire to prevent all evils.
P1e. An omniscient being is aware of every conceivable way in which evils can manifest, and knows every method by which those evils could be prevented.
P1f. Consequently, a being who possesses full knowledge of how evils can arise, the ability to prevent them, and the desire to do so, would indeed prevent the existence of that evil.
P1. If there exists an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God, then no evil exists.
P2. Evil exists (which creates a logical contradiction ).

Both of these arguments aim to expose a fundamental inconsistency, suggesting that these assumed premises cannot all be simultaneously true. Much of the philosophical debate has historically centered on the assertion that God would want to prevent all evils, and therefore, cannot coexist with any evils (specifically premises P1d and P1f). However, proponents of theism have offered various responses to every premise (for example, Alvin Plantinga’s free-will defense directly challenges P1c), with figures like Saint Augustine and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz contending that God could indeed exist and permit evil if there were compelling, morally sufficient reasons for doing so.

It’s clear that if God were to lack any one of these three perfect qualities—omniscience , omnipotence , or omnibenevolence —then the logical problem of evil would, in theory, dissolve. Modern theological positions such as process theology and open theism explicitly address this by proposing limitations on God’s omnipotence or omniscience (as traditionally defined), particularly when considering the role of free will in other beings. A rather convenient redefinition, if you ask me.

Evidential Problem of Evil

While the logical problem of evil grapples with inherent contradictions, the evidential problem of evil (also known, perhaps more accurately, as the probabilistic or inductive version) takes a different tack. It acknowledges that the existence of evil, while troubling, might not be logically impossible alongside a perfectly good, powerful, and knowing God. Instead, it argues that the sheer quantity, quality, and distribution of evil in the world strongly counts against or significantly lowers the probability of theism being true. It’s not about what can’t be, but what probably isn’t.

Consider a version articulated by William L. Rowe :

There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
(Therefore) There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being.

Rowe’s argument essentially points to seemingly “gratuitous” evils—suffering that appears to serve no higher purpose or to be preventable without undesirable side effects. If such suffering exists, then the premises lead to a rather uncomfortable conclusion for theists.

Another compelling formulation comes from Paul Draper :

Gratuitous evils exist.
The hypothesis of indifference (i.e., that if there are supernatural beings, they are indifferent to gratuitous evils) offers a better explanation for the existence of gratuitous evils than theism does.
Therefore, the available evidence favors the conclusion that no god, as commonly understood by theists, actually exists.

Draper’s argument introduces the concept of “gratuitous evil” and then pits the theistic explanation against a hypothesis of divine indifference, suggesting the latter is a more parsimonious fit for the observed reality.

In response to these evidential challenges, a notable counter-argument is skeptical theism . This position challenges the foundational premises of arguments like Rowe’s and Draper’s, suggesting that humans, with their limited cognitive capacities, are simply not in a position to definitively know whether an instance of suffering is truly “gratuitous” or whether a seemingly “pointless” evil might, in fact, contribute to some larger, divine good that remains beyond human comprehension. It’s a “you can’t know what you don’t know” argument, which, while frustratingly difficult to refute, often feels rather like moving the goalposts.

Problem of Evil and Animal Suffering

The scope of the problem of evil, once primarily focused on human anguish, has commendably broadened to encompass the pervasive suffering of non-human animals. This expansion acknowledges that creatures incapable of moral deliberation or spiritual growth nonetheless experience profound pain, raising equally thorny questions for any benevolent creator.

William L. Rowe famously illustrated this with a stark example of natural evil impacting animals: “In some distant forest lightning strikes a dead tree, resulting in a forest fire. In the fire a fawn is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering.” He also, for good measure, included the example of human evil, where an innocent child falls victim to violence. The point, of course, is the seemingly senseless nature of such intense, protracted suffering.

The problem of evil, when extended to animals, manifests in several forms. One version addresses animal suffering resulting from natural evils, such as the inherent violence and fear woven into the fabric of the wild, where predators hunt prey, or where natural disasters decimate populations over the vast sweep of evolutionary history. This particular facet is sometimes dubbed the Darwinian problem of evil, a fitting name given Charles Darwin ’s own profound discomfort with the brutal efficiencies of nature. In 1856, Darwin famously mused, “What a book a Devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works of nature!” Later, in his autobiography, he articulated the problem with even greater clarity: “A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could create the universe, is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient, and it revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of the lower animals throughout almost endless time? This very old argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent first cause seems to me a strong one.” A rather inconvenient truth, acknowledged by the very architect of natural selection.

The second version of the problem, as applied to animals, focuses on avoidable suffering caused by human beings—acts of animal cruelty , or the systemic suffering in practices like factory farming and slaughter. This aspect has been leveraged by scholars like John Hick to challenge traditional defenses of the problem of evil. If suffering is meant to perfect morals or lead to a “greater good,” how does this apply to animals who are, by human standards, innocent, helpless, amoral, yet undeniably sentient victims? Scholar Michael Almeida even declared this to be “perhaps the most serious and difficult” iteration of the problem of evil.

Almeida articulated the problem of evil in the context of animal suffering as follows:

God is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good.
The evil of extensive animal suffering exists.
Necessarily, God can actualize an evolutionary perfect world.
Necessarily, God can actualize an evolutionary perfect world only if God does actualize an evolutionary perfect world.
Necessarily, God actualized an evolutionary perfect world.
If #1 is true then either #2 or #5 is true, but not both. This is a contradiction, so #1 is not true.

This formulation highlights the perceived contradiction between a perfect God and a world where animal suffering is not only prevalent but also, arguably, avoidable by a truly omnipotent and benevolent creator. It’s a direct challenge to the idea that the current state of animal existence is somehow optimal or justified.

Secular Responses

While the problem of evil is most commonly associated with theistic beliefs, the unsettling reality of suffering and malevolence doesn’t simply vanish when the concept of God is removed. Peter Kivy astutely observed that a “secular problem of evil” persists, focusing on how humans can reconcile “the pain and suffering human beings inflict upon one another.” Most individuals, save for the most extreme moral skeptics, instinctively agree that humans bear a fundamental duty not to knowingly harm others. This inherent moral compass clashes jarringly with instances where one person injures another through “unmotivated malice,” seemingly devoid of any rational explanation or justifiable self-interest. It’s the sheer, baffling pointlessness of human cruelty that becomes the secular problem.

Kivy identified two primary explanations typically invoked to account for such evil, neither of which, he argued, proves entirely satisfactory. The first is psychological egoism —the theory that all human actions are ultimately driven by self-interest. Bishop Butler, however, offered a counter-argument, asserting “pluralism”: that human beings are motivated not only by self-interest but also by “particulars”—specific objects, goals, or desires that may or may not involve self-interest, and can, on occasion, include genuine benevolence. For the egoist, “man’s inhumanity to man” becomes “not explainable in rational terms,” because if humans can be ruthless simply for the sake of ruthlessness, then egoism cannot be the sole human motive. Yet, pluralists don’t fare much better; while recognizing multiple motives, hurting for the sake of hurting remains as irrational to them as it is to the egoist. It seems the human capacity for malevolence defies neat categorization.

Amélie Rorty further explored several secular responses to this enduring problem:

Evil as Necessary

Some perspectives, such as those articulated by Michel de Montaigne and Voltaire , propose that certain character traits—like wanton cruelty, partiality, and egoism—are not merely flaws but an innate, perhaps even functional, part of the human condition. In their view, these very vices, when suitably channeled or regulated, paradoxically serve the “common good” of the social process. Montaigne, for his part, considered the human perception of evil as relative to our limited knowledge, rather than an absolute property of the world or God. He leaned into a “neo-Stoic view of an orderly world” where everything, including perceived evil, has its designated place within a grand, coherent system.

This secularized echo of an early coherentist response—where acceptable belief must fit into a coherent system—can also be found in the writings of Bernard de Mandeville and Sigmund Freud , according to Rorty. Mandeville, for instance, famously argued that vices such as greed and envy, when properly managed within society, are precisely what “spark the energy and productivity that make progressive civilization possible.” Rorty concisely summarized the guiding principle of both religious and secular coherentists: ‘Look for the benefits gained by harm and you will find they outweigh the damage’." A rather chillingly pragmatic outlook, if you ask me, justifying almost anything for the sake of an imagined collective benefit.

Economic theorist Thomas Malthus , in his 1798 essay on population, offered a similar, starkly deterministic view. Addressing the inevitable pressures of overpopulation on food availability, and the subsequent role of famine and death in population control, Malthus declared, “Necessity, that imperious, all pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds […] and man cannot by any means of reason escape from it.” He added, with a certain fatalistic flourish, “Nature will not, indeed cannot be defeated in her purposes.” From this perspective, both nature and any “God of nature” cannot logically be deemed evil for processes that are, by definition, natural and necessary. It’s simply the way things are, devoid of moral judgment.

Evil as the Absence of Good

Another significant secular (and, as we’ll see, theological) response posits that evil isn’t a substantive force in itself, but rather a deficit or an “absence of good.” Paul Elmer More explained that, for Plato , evil stemmed from humanity’s failure to adequately focus on identifying and pursuing good; it was a void where virtue should reside. Plato, according to More, structured his entire educational philosophy around combating the “innate indolence of the will” and the neglect of seeking ethical motives, which he believed were the true wellsprings of human life. Plato asserted that this inherent laziness, ignorance, and lack of attention to goodness ultimately lead individuals down the path of “the first lie, of the soul,” often culminating in self-indulgence and, eventually, evil.

This Platonic view found adherents beyond ancient Greece. Joseph Kelly notes that Clement of Alexandria , a 2nd-century neo-Platonist, adopted this understanding of evil. Later, the influential fourth-century theologian Augustine of Hippo also embraced Plato’s perspective. In his profound work, Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love, Augustine famously maintained that evil exists purely as an “absence of the good”—a privation rather than a positive entity.

Arthur Schopenhauer , while emphasizing the pervasive existence of evil and its negation of good, could be seen as aligning with this perspective, albeit with a deeply pessimistic twist. He defined “good” as the harmonious coordination between an individual object and a definite effort of the will, and “evil” as the conspicuous absence of such coordination. This philosophical stance cemented his reputation as a pessimist, given the apparent rarity of such perfect coordination in the human condition.

Perhaps one of the most haunting modern variations on Augustine’s privation theory is Hannah Arendt ’s concept of “the banality of evil,” articulated in her seminal work Eichmann in Jerusalem . Arendt depicted the perpetrator, Adolf Eichmann, not as a demonic figure, but as a thoughtless bureaucrat, characterized by a staggering lack of empathic imagination and a conformist adherence to orders. This, too, can be interpreted as a profound absence of good, a void where moral agency and critical thought should have been.

Deny Problem Exists

A rather straightforward, if audacious, response to the problem of evil is to simply deny its existence altogether. Theophrastus , the Greek Peripatetic philosopher and author of Characters, a keen observer of human foibles, believed that the very nature of ‘being’ arises from and consists of contraries: eternal and perishable, order and chaos, good and evil. From this perspective, the role of evil is inherently limited, being merely a component of a larger, overall good. Theophrastus viewed a world driven by virtue and vice as a naturalistic social system where the universe’s inherent goodness necessarily encompassed both good and evil, thereby rendering the “problem of evil” a non-issue. It’s all just part of the grand tapestry, you see.

David Hume , ever the skeptic, meticulously traced what he considered the psychological origins of virtue, though he conspicuously avoided doing the same for vices. Rorty noted that Hume “dispels the superstitious remnants of a Manichean battle: the forces of good and evil warring in the will.” Instead, Hume concluded that human beings merely project their own subjective approvals and disapprovals onto events and actions, suggesting that the perceived “problem” is more a matter of human perception than an objective cosmic flaw.

Evil as Illusory

A more radical modern iteration of denying evil’s reality is found within Christian Science . This belief system posits that evils such as suffering and disease, while seemingly real to human perception, are in truth nothing more than illusions. According to Stephen Gottschalk, a scholar of Christian Science, its theologians assert that the Spirit possesses infinite might, and that mortal human beings, by failing to grasp this fundamental truth, mistakenly fixate on evil and suffering. These perceived ills, they argue, have no genuine existence as “a power, person or principle opposed to God.” A rather convenient way to sidestep the unpleasantness, one might observe.

Unsurprisingly, this “illusion theodicy” has faced considerable criticism. Detractors point out that it effectively denies the stark reality of crimes, wars, terror, sickness, injury, death, and pain to the actual victims. Furthermore, as Millard Erickson aptly argued, this approach merely shifts the problem, creating a new and equally perplexing question: why would an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God create such a pervasive and convincing “illusion” of suffering, and why would this God not simply cease this “illusion”? It seems some problems, like persistent glitter, are simply not that easy to make disappear.

Moral Rationalism

The 17th and 18th centuries saw a significant rise in “rationalism about morality,” a philosophical current that frequently challenged strong divine command theories of ethics. Such moral rationalism asserts that morality is fundamentally grounded in human reason rather than divine decree. Immanuel Kant stands as a quintessential example of a “pious rationalist,” as categorized by Rorty. According to Shaun Nichols, the “Kantian approach to moral philosophy is to try to show that ethics is based on practical reason.” In this framework, the problem of evil subtly transforms into a question of how “it is possible for a rational being of good will to be immoral.”

Kant himself, in an essay on theodicy , was rather critical of such attempts, arguing that they often overreached without acknowledging the inherent limitations of human reason. He did not believe he had exhausted all possible theodicies, but he asserted that any successful one would need to be rooted in nature rather than abstract philosophy. Crucially, Kant also maintained that while a successful philosophical theodicy had not been achieved in his time, there was equally no firm basis for a successful “anti-theodicy” either. The jury, it seems, remained out.

Evil God Challenge

One particularly provocative, if unsettling, “resolution” to the problem of evil is to simply invert the premise: what if God is not good? The evil God challenge is a thought experiment that explores the disquieting possibility of whether an evil God is as logically plausible, or perhaps even as likely, to exist as a good God. This line of inquiry introduces concepts such as dystheism , the belief that God is not entirely good or benevolent, and maltheism , the outright belief in an evil deity. It forces a stark re-evaluation of divine attributes.

Peter Forrest articulated this challenge with a certain chilling precision:

“The anti-God that I take seriously is the malicious omnipotent omniscient being, who, it is said, creates so that creatures will suffer, because of the joy this suffering gives It. This may be contrasted with a different idea of anti-God, that of an evil being that seeks to destroy things of value out of hatred or envy. An omnipotent, omniscient being would not be envious. Moreover, destructive hatred cannot motivate creation. For these two reasons I find that rather implausible. My case holds, however, against that sort of anti-God as well as the malicious one. The variety of anti-Gods alerts us to the problem of positing any character to God, whether benign, indifferent, or malicious. There are many such character traits we could hypothesize. Why not a God who creates as a jest? Or a God who loves drama? Or a God who, adapting Haldane’s quip, is fond of beetles? Or, more seriously, a God who just loves creating regardless of the joy or suffering of creatures?”

Forrest’s point is clear: once one abandons the assumption of a benevolent deity, the range of possible divine characters expands dramatically, making the “good God” hypothesis merely one among many equally unprovable, and potentially disturbing, alternatives. It underscores the difficulty of assigning any definitive moral character to a transcendent being based solely on the observed world.

Catholic Response

The Catholic Church , maintaining a consistent theological stance, fundamentally believes that inherently good attributes include power and knowledge. Consequently, it posits that only the misuse of power and knowledge constitutes evil. From this perspective, God, being perfectly good, could not possibly be evil or become evil, precisely because His omnipotence and omniscience are understood to spring from His omnibenevolence. The very nature of His being precludes malevolence.

As articulated in the Roman Catechism :

“For by acknowledging God to be omnipotent, we also of necessity acknowledge Him to be omniscient, and to hold all things in subjection to His supreme authority and dominion. When we do not doubt that He is omnipotent, we must be also convinced of everything else regarding Him, the absence of which would render His omnipotence altogether unintelligible. Besides, nothing tends more to confirm our faith and animate our hope than a deep conviction that all things are possible to God; for whatever may be afterwards proposed as an object of faith, however great, however wonderful, however raised above the natural order, is easily and without hesitation believed, once the mind has grasped the knowledge of the omnipotence of God. Nay more, the greater the truths which the divine oracles announce, the more willingly does the mind deem them worthy of belief. And should we expect any favour from heaven, we are not discouraged by the greatness of the desired benefit, but are cheered and confirmed by frequently considering that there is nothing which an omnipotent God cannot effect.”

This passage emphasizes the interconnectedness of God’s attributes, arguing that His power and knowledge are intrinsically linked to His goodness. To doubt one is to undermine the coherence of the others. The Church’s response, therefore, is not to explain why evil exists in relation to a good God, but rather to assert that a good God, by definition, cannot be evil or cause evil. The problem, then, must lie elsewhere—perhaps in human understanding, or in the nature of creation itself.

Disavowal of Theodicy

A rather pointed critique, often termed “anti-theodicy,” argues from various directions that the entire project of constructing a theodicy is, in fact, objectionable. Toby Betenson encapsulated the central theme of all anti-theodicies: “Theodicies mediate a praxis that sanctions evil.” In other words, while a theodicy might successfully harmonize God’s existence with evil, it often does so at the unacceptable cost of nullifying human morality.

Most theodicies, by their very nature, presuppose that any existing evil serves some greater good. However, if this is truly the case, then a troubling implication arises: humans would seemingly have no moral duty to prevent evil, for in doing so, they would inadvertently thwart the very “greater good” for which that evil is supposedly required. Worse still, this line of reasoning could rationalize virtually any action. If one succeeds in committing an evil act, and God permitted it, then it must have been for a greater good. Such conclusions, anti-theodicists argue, violate humanity’s most fundamental moral intuitions, leading either to the conclusion that no “greater good” theodicy can be true and therefore God does not exist, or, alternatively, that the notion of God’s goodness is rendered utterly meaningless if it can accommodate every conceivable state of affairs. It’s a rather elegant trap, isn’t it?

Betenson also highlighted a “rich theological tradition of anti-theodicy,” indicating that even within religious thought, the idea of a comprehensive, comforting explanation for evil is often viewed with suspicion. Many contemporary theists acknowledge that no seamless theodicy can provide all the answers, nor, they contend, should it. Felix Christen, a Fellow at Goethe University, Frankfurt, eloquently articulated this sentiment: “When one considers human lives that have been shattered to the core, and, in the face of these tragedies [ask] the question ‘Where is God?’ […] we would do well to stand with [poet and Holocaust survivor] Nelly Sachs as she says, ‘We really don’t know’.” This reflects a profound humility in the face of suffering, an admission that some questions may simply defy human comprehension.

Indeed, contemporary theodiceans like Alvin Plantinga have expressed doubts about the very enterprise of theodicy “in the sense of providing an explanation of precise reasons why there is evil in the world.” Plantinga’s ultimate response to the problem of evil is not to offer a definitive solution, but rather to suggest that it is a problem that, by its very nature, cannot be fully solved by human intellect. Christians, he stresses, simply cannot claim to know the ultimate “Why?” of evil. This is precisely why Plantinga explicitly offers a defense of the logic of theistic belief, rather than a full-fledged theodicy—a subtle but crucial distinction.

Atheistic Viewpoint

From a purely atheistic perspective, the problem of evil, in its theistic formulation, is rather neatly resolved through the application of Occam’s razor . This principle, favoring the simplest explanation that accounts for all observed phenomena, suggests that the existence of evil and suffering is best reconciled with the assumption of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God by simply assuming that no such God exists. The contradiction vanishes when one element of the equation is removed.

David Hume ’s formulation of the problem of evil, presented in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , remains a foundational statement of this viewpoint:

“[God’s] power we allow [is] infinite: Whatever he wills is executed: But neither man nor any other animal are happy: Therefore he does not will their happiness. His wisdom is infinite: He is never mistaken in choosing the means to any end: But the course of nature tends not to human or animal felicity: Therefore it is not established for that purpose. Through the whole compass of human knowledge, there are no inferences more certain and infallible than these. In what respect, then, do his benevolence and mercy resemble the benevolence and mercy of men?”

Hume’s argument, stark and unyielding, directly challenges the coherence of divine attributes when confronted with the observable reality of suffering. It implies that if God’s power and wisdom are truly infinite, yet suffering persists, then His benevolence must, by logical necessity, be severely lacking or entirely different from human understanding of the concept. It’s a rather inconvenient truth for those who insist on a perfect deity.

Theistic Arguments

The problem of evil presents a particularly acute challenge for monotheistic religions such as Christianity , Islam , and [Judaism), which are founded upon the belief in a singular God possessing omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. However, the fundamental question of evil’s existence is not exclusive to these traditions; it has also been a subject of profound study and contemplation in non-theistic or polytheistic religions like Buddhism , Hinduism , and Jainism , albeit framed differently.

John Hick , a prominent philosopher of religion, noted that, setting aside the classic, often incomplete, response of suffering as redemptive, theism has traditionally responded to the problem within three primary categories: the widely recognized freewill theodicy, the “soul-making” or Irenaean theodicy, and the more contemporary process theology. Each offers a distinct conceptual framework for grappling with the enduring paradox.

Cruciform Theodicy

The cruciform theodicy, rather than offering a comprehensive system akin to Soul-making or Process theodicy that addresses all facets of “the origin, nature, problem, reason and end of evil,” functions more as a thematic trajectory. It has historically been, and largely remains, the foundational Christian response to the problem of evil, deeply embedded in its core narrative.

At the heart of the cruciform theodicy is the radical assertion that God is not a distant, aloof deity. Instead, as James Cone argued, a suffering individual will discover that God, in the person of Jesus, actively identifies himself “with the suffering of the world.” This concept posits a divine immersion in human experience, particularly in its most painful aspects.

This theodicy views the Incarnation as the “culmination of a series of things Divine love does to unite itself with material creation.” The purpose is twofold: first, to share in that suffering and thereby demonstrate profound empathy; and second, to acknowledge its inherent value and cost by ultimately redeeming it. This perspective asserts that an ontological transformation of existence’s underlying structure occurred through the life and death of Jesus, and specifically through his profound immersion in human suffering. This act, proponents argue, intrinsically transforms suffering itself. Philosopher and Christian priest Marilyn McCord Adams framed this as a theodicy of “redemptive suffering ,” wherein personal suffering becomes a conduit for Christ’s “transformative power of redemption” in the world. In this profound sense, individual suffering gains not only personal value but also becomes an active component in the larger process of redeeming others.

For the individual believer, this perspective instigates a fundamental shift in their understanding of existence. For example, Dietrich Bonhoeffer , imprisoned by the Nazis and awaiting execution in 1944, reflected on Christ’s experience of powerlessness and pain, penning the six words that would become a clarion call for modern theological thought: “Only the suffering God can help.” This deeply personal identification with a suffering deity offers solace and meaning in the face of unimaginable horror.

A crucial aspect of this theodicy is its profound concern for the victims of the world, emphasizing the moral imperative to care for those who endure injustice. Soelle argued that Christ’s willingness to suffer on behalf of others demands that his followers, in turn, must serve as “God’s representatives on earth” by actively struggling against evil and injustice, and by being willing to suffer alongside those on the “underside of history.” It’s a call to action, not passive acceptance.

Animal Suffering (Theistic Responses)

In addressing the formidable arguments concerning natural evil and animal suffering, Christopher Southgate, a biochemist and theologian at the University of Exeter , has developed a nuanced “compound evolutionary theodicy.” Southgate employs a tripartite analytical framework for understanding the intricate relationship between good and harm, demonstrating how they are often inextricably linked and mutually generative. First, he posits that evil is, in some sense, a consequence of the very existence of good; for instance, free will , while a profound good, simultaneously creates the potential for immense harm. Second, he argues that genuine good can only fully develop through processes that inherently involve harm. And third, he contends that the existence of good is intrinsically and constitutively inseparable from the experience of harm or suffering itself. It’s a package deal, apparently.

Robert John Russell summarized Southgate’s theodicy as commencing with an unequivocal affirmation of the inherent goodness of creation and all sentient creatures within it. Southgate then proceeds to argue that Darwinian evolution was, in fact, the only conceivable mechanism through which God could have brought forth such profound goodness. He asserts that “A universe with the sort of beauty, diversity, sentience and sophistication of creatures that the biosphere now contains” could only have arisen through the natural, often brutal, processes of evolution.

Intriguingly, Michael Ruse noted that even Richard Dawkins , a staunch advocate of atheism, has made a strikingly similar claim regarding the necessity of evolution:

“Dawkins […] argues strenuously that selection and only selection can [produce adaptedness]. No one – and presumably this includes God – could have gotten adaptive complexity without going the route of natural selection […] The Christian positively welcomes Dawkins’s understanding of Darwinism. Physical evil exists, and Darwinism explains why God had no choice but to allow it to occur. He wanted to produce design like effects (including humankind) and natural selection is the only option open.”

According to Russell and Southgate, the intrinsic goodness of creation is fundamentally interwoven with the evolutionary processes that brought it into being. These processes, by their very nature, inevitably entail pain and suffering as an intrinsic, unavoidable component. In this scenario, natural evils are not accidental flaws but rather an inescapable consequence of the development of life itself. Russell further elaborated that the fundamental physical laws underpinning biological development, such as thermodynamics , contribute both to “what is tragic” and “what is glorious” about life. He cited, for instance, how “Gravity, geology, and the specific orbit of the moon lead to the tidal patterns of the Earth’s oceans and thus to both the environment in which early life evolved and in which tsunamis bring death and destruction to countless thousands of people.” It’s a rather grim reminder of the double-edged sword of natural law.

Holmes Rolston III offered a complementary perspective, suggesting that nature itself embodies “redemptive suffering,” mirroring the ultimate sacrifice exemplified by Jesus. He argued that “The capacity to suffer through to joy is a supreme emergent and an essence of Christianity… The whole evolutionary upslope is a lesser calling of this kind.” Rolston termed this the ‘cruciform creation,’ a continuous struggle through pain and suffering towards a higher state. Within this process, he contended, there is no true waste, as life and its components are “forever conserved, regenerated, redeemed.”

Bethany N. Sollereder, a research fellow specializing in theology concerning evolution, observed that as evolving life has grown increasingly complex, skilled, and interdependent, and as its intelligence and capacity for emotional connection have expanded, so too has its capacity to suffer. Southgate eloquently captured this reality by referencing Romans 8:22, which speaks of “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth” since its very inception. He concluded that God responds to this profound reality by “co-suffering” with “every sentient being in creation,” a concept that attempts to bridge the gap between divine benevolence and pervasive pain.

Crucially, Southgate’s theodicy explicitly rejects any ‘means to an end’ argument that would justify the suffering and extinction of earlier species solely for the sake of later, more advanced ones. He firmly asserts that “all creatures which have died, without their full potential having been realized, must be given fulfillment elsewhere.” Russell, in turn, argued that the only truly satisfactory understanding of this “elsewhere” lies in the eschatological hope that the current creation will be transformed by God into the New Creation, complete with its new heaven and new earth. A rather ambitious promise, to say the least.

Critique

Even the most robust of arguments face scrutiny, and Southgate’s compound evolutionary theodicy is no exception.

Heaven: Wesley Wildman launched what Russell described as a “blistering attack” on Southgate’s theodicy. Wildman contended that “if God really is to create a heavenly world of ‘growth and change and relationality, yet no suffering,’ that world and not this world would be the best of all possible worlds, and a God that would not do so would be ‘flagrantly morally inconsistent’.” The argument is simple: if a suffering-free world is possible later, why wasn’t it possible earlier, or now?

Southgate, in response, offered an extension of his original argument. He suggested “that this evolutionary environment, full as it is of both competition and decay, is the only type of creation that can give rise to creaturely selves.” This implies that “our guess must be that though heaven can eternally preserve those selves subsisting in suffering-free relationship, it could not give rise to them in the first place.” So, suffering is the crucible for selfhood, a necessary, if brutal, prerequisite for the divine banquet.

Randomness: Thomas F. Tracy offered a two-pronged critique: “The first is the problem of purpose: can evolutionary processes, in which chance plays so prominent a role, be understood as the context of God’s purposive action? The second is the problem of the pervasiveness of suffering and death in evolution.” How can a purposeful God operate within a system governed by seemingly random chance and inevitable death?

John Polkinghorne , a physicist and theologian, responded by arguing that the existence of chance does not necessarily negate the power and purposes of a Creator. He suggested that “it is entirely possible that contingent processes can, in fact, lead to determined ends.” However, Polkinghorne’s theology posits a God who is not a “Puppetmaster pulling every string,” but whose purposes are, by necessity, more general. Francisco J. Ayala concurred, stating that this implies “God is not the explicit designer of each facet of evolution.” For Polkinghorne, it is sufficient to assume, theologically, that “the emergence of some form of self-conscious, God-conscious being” was an aspect of divine purpose from the outset, regardless of whether God specifically purposed humankind or merely a type of conscious being.

Polkinghorne further linked the existence of human freedom to the inherent flexibility and unpredictability created by randomness in the quantum world. Richard W. Kropf asserted that free will itself has its origins in the “evolutionary ramifications” of chance, thereby establishing a “causal connection” between natural evil and the possibility of human freedom: one cannot exist without the other. Polkinghorne concluded that this framework allows “room for independent action in order for creatures to be themselves and ‘make themselves’ in evolution,” which, by its very nature, creates the unavoidable space for suffering and death.

He elaborated on this rather inconvenient truth: “A world in which creatures ‘make themselves’ can be held to be a greater good than a ready-made world would have been, but it has an inescapable cost. Evolutionary processes will not only yield great fruitfulness, but they will also necessarily involve ragged edges and blind alleys. Genetic mutation will not only produce new forms of life, but it will also result in malignancy. One cannot have the one without the other. The existence of cancer is an anguishing fact about creation but it is not gratuitous, something that a Creator who was a bit more competent or a bit less callous could easily have avoided. It is part of the shadow side of creative process… The more science helps us to understand the processes of the world, the more we see that the good and the bad are inextricably intertwined… It is all a package deal.”

A rather blunt assessment, suggesting that the very conditions for life and freedom are also the conditions for suffering and death.

Other responses to animal suffering and natural evil

Beyond the evolutionary theodicy, other explanations for animal suffering and natural evil have been proposed:

The Fall of Man: Some argue that natural evils are a direct consequence of the fall of man , which corrupted a perfectly created world. Theologian David Bentley Hart argues that “natural evil is the result of a world that’s fallen into death” and that “in Christian tradition, you don’t just accept ’the world as it is’” but “you take ’the world as it is’ as a broken, shadowy remnant of what it should have been.” Hart’s concept of the human fall, however, is an atemporal fall : “Obviously, wherever this departure from the divine happened, or whenever, it didn’t happen within terrestrial history,” and “this world, as we know it, from the Big Bang up until today, has been the world of death.” This suggests a cosmic catastrophe that pre-dates biological evolution as we understand it, creating a world already steeped in death and decay.
Nature’s Neutrality: Another perspective suggests that forces of nature are inherently neither “goods” nor “evils”; they simply are. Nature, in its indifferent process, produces actions vital to some forms of life and simultaneously lethal to others. Similarly, while some life forms cause diseases, for the disease-causing organisms, their hosts provide essential food, shelter, and reproductive sites—things necessary for their life, and not inherently evil.
Natural Laws: It is argued that natural evils are an unavoidable outcome of fundamental natural laws . As one perspective notes, “When stars burn, explode and die, the heavy elements are born and distributed, feeding life. When the first living organisms die, they make room for more complex ones and begin the process of natural selection. When organisms die, new life feeds on them… the sources of [natural] evil lie in attributes so valuable that we would not even consider eliminating them in order to eradicate evil.” This view suggests that the very physical laws that enable a dynamic, life-sustaining universe also inevitably lead to phenomena we perceive as evil.
Knowledge and Free Will: Some contend that natural evils provide humanity with a crucial knowledge of evil, which in turn makes their free choices more significant and valuable than they would otherwise be. Witnessing suffering, one gains the capacity to choose compassion or indifference, to prevent or to inflict.
Divine Punishment: A more traditional, though often controversial, response posits that natural evils serve as a mechanism of divine punishment for the moral evils committed by humans, thereby justifying their existence. A rather stark interpretation of cosmic justice.

Free Will Defense

The problem of evil is frequently addressed by attributing its existence, at least in part, to the exercise of free will . This defense posits that free will is a dual-edged sword, being both the wellspring of profound good and the regrettable source of evil, as it inherently grants individuals the potential for abuse. Gregory Boyd argued that people, endowed with free will, make their own choices to do wrong, and it is their choice, not God’s direct action, that brings evil into the world. Furthermore, the free will argument often asserts that it would be a logical inconsistency for God to prevent evil through coercion, for such intervention would, by definition, negate the very freedom of human will.

The core assumption underpinning the free-will defense is that a world inhabited by creatures who are genuinely free is intrinsically more valuable than a world devoid of such freedom. The virtues and values that freedom makes possible—such as trust, love, charity, sympathy, tolerance, loyalty, kindness, forgiveness, and friendship—are understood to be impossible in their current, rich form without the genuine ability to choose them, or to reject them. Augustine offered an early version of a freewill theodicy in the fourth century, but its most influential contemporary iteration is undoubtedly found in the work of Alvin Plantinga .

Plantinga developed his free will defense not as a comprehensive theodicy, but as a direct response to three specific assertions made by J. L. Mackie . First, Mackie contended that “there is no possible world” in which the “essential” theistic beliefs could all simultaneously be true, forcing believers to either embrace inconsistency or abandon core tenets. Second, Mackie questioned why an all-powerful God, when creating the world, could not have simply made “beings who would act freely, but always go right.” And third, he raised the fundamental question of what logical choices would have been genuinely available to such a God at the moment of creation.

Gottfried Leibniz and Plantinga’s Expansion

Plantinga constructed his response by building upon Gottfried Leibniz ’s assertion that an innumerable multitude of “possible worlds” existed, from which God could have chosen before creation. Leibniz, who coined the term “theodicy ” in his 1710 work Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l’homme et l’origine du mal (“Theodicic Essays on the Benevolence of God, the Free will of man, and the Origin of Evil”), famously argued that our current world is, in fact, the best of all possible worlds that God could have created. A rather bold claim, given the circumstances.

Plantinga, while accepting the concept of possible worlds, introduced a crucial nuance. He acknowledged that humanity inhabits the “actual world” (the one God chose to actualize), and that God could have chosen to create any of the myriad possibilities, including those that contained moral good but absolutely no moral evil. The critical “catch,” Plantinga argued, is the possibility that intrinsic factors within the possible worlds themselves might have prevented God from actualizing any world that contained moral goodness without also containing moral evil. He termed these limiting factors the nature of “human essences” and “transworld depravity.”

Across the vast landscape of possible worlds (hence “transworld”), there exist all conceivable variations of human beings, each defined by their unique “human essence” (their core identity). These essences comprise the fundamental, essential properties that make each person who they are and distinguish them from others. Every individual is an “instantiation” of such an essence, which, while varying in details from world to world, remains constant in its core identity. This might include variations of a person (let’s call them X) who consistently chooses rightly in some worlds. However, if, in any possible world, X ever freely chooses wrongly, then the other possible worlds containing only goodness could not be actualized and still leave X fully free. There might be countless worlds where X performs only morally good actions, but these are worlds God could not bring into being if X’s freedom, including the freedom to choose wrongly, was to be preserved.

An omniscient God, knowing all possibilities “in advance,” would be aware of instances where, “no matter what circumstances” X is placed in, as long as X retains freedom, X will inevitably make at least one bad choice. Plantinga termed this inherent inclination “transworld depravity.” Therefore, if God desired X to be part of creation and to be genuinely free, the only available option might be to create a world where X, at least once, chooses wrongly, given that such wrong is possible. In this intricate scenario, X’s free choice, or the potential for it, effectively determined the range of worlds God could actualize.

“What is important about transworld depravity is that if a person suffers from it, then it wasn’t within God’s power to actualize any world in which that person is significantly free but does no wrong.” Plantinga extended this concept to all human agents, noting that “clearly it is possible that everybody suffers from transworld depravity.” This implies that creating a world with moral good, no moral evil, and truly free persons was, in fact, not an option available to God. The only way to achieve a world entirely free of moral evil would be “by creating one without significantly free persons.” A rather unappealing trade-off, if one values freedom.

Discussion

Plantinga’s free-will defense has had a significant impact on contemporary philosophical discourse. William Alston observed that most philosophers now accept Plantinga’s defense, considering the logical problem of evil to have been adequately rebutted. However, he noted that the inductive (evidential) argument from evil remains a pertinent area of discussion. Chad Meister echoed this sentiment, stating that while the logical problem is widely considered resolved, the evidential problem persists. Danial Howard-Snyder and John O’Leary-Hawthorne, while expressing skepticism about the arguments themselves, conceded that Plantinga’s work means philosophers no longer simply assume that God and evil are logically incompatible. William L. Rowe , a key figure in the evidential problem, acknowledged that “granted incompatibilism , there is a fairly compelling argument for the view that the existence of evil is logically consistent with the existence of the theistic God.”

However, not everyone is convinced. Graham Oppy , in Arguing About Gods, offered a dissent, stating, “I am not sure this is a correct assessment of the current state of play,” despite acknowledging that “[m]any philosophers seem to suppose that [Plantinga’s free-will defense] utterly demolishes the kinds of ’logical’ arguments from evil developed by Mackie.” Thus, among contemporary philosophers, the conversation has largely shifted from the logical impossibility of God and evil to the improbability of God’s existence given the observed reality of evil.

Critics of the free will response have also raised several pertinent questions. One common objection concerns whether the justification of free will can truly account for the degree and intensity of evil witnessed in the world. While the value of free will might arguably counterbalance minor evils, it becomes far less obvious that it outweighs the horrific negative attributes of acts like rape and murder. Another point highlights that the very actions of free beings that generate evil often simultaneously diminish the freedom of those who suffer it; for instance, the murder of a young child irrevocably prevents that child from ever exercising their own free will. In such cases, the freedom of an innocent victim is directly pitted against the freedom of the evil-doer, leaving it unclear why a benevolent God would remain unresponsive and passive. Christopher Southgate, for example, asserted that a freewill defense cannot stand alone as sufficient to explain the sheer abundance of situations where human beings are deprived of their free will; it requires a secondary, complementary theory.

A further criticism questions whether the potential for evil inherent in free will could be mitigated by means that do not, in fact, impinge upon that freedom. Could God not, for example, make moral actions inherently more pleasurable, or render evil actions and suffering impossible by allowing free will while simply removing the ability to enact evil or impose suffering? Supporters of the free will explanation counter that such interventions would, by definition, cease to be free will. Critics, however, respond that this line of reasoning seems to imply that it would be equally wrong for humans to attempt to reduce suffering and evil through such means, a position that few would advocate. It’s a rather tangled web of implication.

Natural Evil and the Free Will Defense

A significant challenge to the free will defense arises from the existence of natural evil —evil that results from natural causes, such as a child suffering from a debilitating disease or mass casualties from a volcanic eruption. Critics argue that even if an all-powerful and all-benevolent God were to tolerate evil human actions to preserve free will, such a God would not logically be expected to tolerate natural evils, as they appear to have no direct connection to human free will. Patricia A. Williams, however, views the common distinction between moral and natural evil as unjustified, arguing that “Because human beings and their choices are part of nature, all evils are natural.” A rather comprehensive, if uncomforting, integration.

Advocates of the free will response have offered various explanations for natural evils. Alvin Plantinga , for instance, referencing Augustine of Hippo , explored the possibility that natural evils could be caused by supernatural beings, such as Satan . Plantinga, however, emphasized that the truth of this possibility is not required; only its compatibility with the free will argument is necessary to rebut the logical problem. Yet, some scholars, like David Griffin , contend that free will, or the assumption of a greater good derived from it, simply does not apply to animals.

In contrast, a few scholars, while accepting the human context of free will, have posited an alternative “free creatures” defense. This argument suggests that animals, too, benefit from their physical freedom, even if that freedom comes with the inherent cost of continuous dangers. However, this “free creatures” defense has also faced criticism, particularly concerning caged, domesticated, and farmed animals who are deprived of freedom and often endure immense suffering from human abuse. Furthermore, even wild animals face horrendous evils—such as burns and slow deaths from natural fires or predatory injuries—leaving Bishop and Perszyk to question why an all-loving God would create such free creatures prone to such intense suffering. The answers, it seems, remain elusive.

Process Theodicy

“Process theodicy offers a fundamentally different framework for engaging with the problem of evil,” departing from traditional notions of divine omnipotence. It begins by acknowledging that God “has no monopoly on power, creativity, and self-determination ”; consequently, God’s power and capacity to influence events are, by necessity, limited, particularly by the autonomous wills of human creatures. This inherent concept of limitation is one of the most distinctive and crucial aspects of process theodicy.

In this theological model, the God of process theology is not an all-controlling entity. Before actualizing the creation that now exists, God had all options available but voluntarily chose to create free persons, fully aware of the limitations this choice would impose. This God, therefore, must not unilaterally intervene and coerce a specific outcome, as doing so would fundamentally violate the principle of free will. God’s will, in this view, is merely one factor among many in any given situation, rendering that will “variable in effectiveness.” All God can do is attempt to persuade and influence individuals toward the best possible direction, ensuring that such possibilities remain accessible. Through an exhaustive knowledge of all possibilities, this God continually provides “ideal aims to help overcome [evil] in light of (a) the evil that has been suffered and (b) the range of good possibilities allowed by that past.” It’s a God who works with, rather than dictates, the flow of existence.

The second key element of process theology is its profound emphasis on the “here and now” presence of God. This God becomes the “Great Companion and Fellow-Sufferer,” where the future unfolds and is realized hand-in-hand with the one who suffers. The God of process theology is a benevolent Providence who genuinely feels a person’s pain and suffering. According to Wendy Farley, “God labors in every situation to mediate the power of compassion to suffering” by actively enlisting free persons as mediators of that compassion. Since freedom and power are shared, so too, it follows, must be responsibility. David Griffin quoted John Hick as noting that “the stirring summons to engage on God’s side in the never-ending struggle against the evils of an intractable world” is another defining characteristic of process theology. It’s a call to partnership, rather than passive reliance.

Critique

Despite its compelling reimagining of divine power, process theodicy has not escaped its own share of critiques.

A hallmark of process theodicy is its fundamental conception of God as persuasive rather than coercive. Nancy Frankenberry argued that this creates an artificial either-or dichotomy—either God persuades or God coerces—whereas lived human experience often presents an “irreducible ambiguity” where it seems God can, in fact, be both. The nuanced reality of divine interaction, perhaps, defies such neat categorization.

Furthermore, since the 1940s, process theodicy has been “dogged by the problem of ‘religious adequacy’ of its concept of God” and persistent doubts about the ‘goodness’ of its portrayal of the divine. While it offered fresh perspectives, it has not definitively resolved all the longstanding questions surrounding the problem of evil. Instead, it has raised new, equally complex inquiries concerning “the nature of divine power, the meaning of God’s goodness, and the realistic assessment of what we may reasonably hope for by way of creative advance.” It seems that every attempt to clarify one aspect of the divine only unveils further layers of mystery.

“Greater Good” Responses

The “greater good” defense is more frequently employed in response to the evidential version of the problem of evil, rather than the logical one, which is more often addressed by the free will defense. This approach often hinges on the philosophical insight that omnipotence does not, in fact, require the ability to actualize the logically impossible.

“Greater good” responses leverage this by arguing for the existence of certain goods of such profound value that God cannot actualize them without also permitting evil. Consequently, there are certain evils that, despite being omnipotent, God cannot reasonably be expected to prevent, because preventing them would entail sacrificing an even greater good. It’s a cosmic cost-benefit analysis, implying that some suffering is a necessary byproduct of a supremely valuable creation.

Skeptical theologians, leaning into this concept, argue that since no human being can fully grasp God’s ultimate plan, one cannot definitively assume that evil actions do not, in fact, serve some higher, overarching purpose. It’s the argument from divine inscrutability.

Skeptical Theism

“Skeptical theism ” is a philosophical position that directly challenges the evidential argument from evil. Its core tenet is that “if there were a god, it is likely that he would have reasons for acting that are beyond [human] ken, … the fact that we don’t see a good reason for X does not justify the conclusion that there is no good reason for X.” In essence, it asserts that human cognitive limitations prevent us from fully comprehending the divine rationale for permitting evil.

A key concept within this framework is “pointless evil,” defined as an evil that does not meet the standard of being allowed to prevent a greater evil or cause a greater good. The existence of such truly pointless evils would, by definition, lead to the conclusion that no benevolent God exists. However, the skeptical theist argues that humans simply cannot know whether such a thing as pointless evil truly exists. As finite beings, we are “in the dark” concerning the grand tapestry of how all things—including suffering—might ultimately work together. “The skeptical theist’s skepticism affirms certain limitations to [human] knowledge with respect to the realms of value and modality” (the method by which things come to be). Thus, skeptical theism purports to undercut most a posteriori arguments against the existence of God, by questioning humanity’s epistemic authority to make such judgments.

Skeptical theism, for instance, directly questions the first premise of William Rowe’s argument: “There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.” How, the skeptical theist asks, can mere humans definitively know this? Similarly, John Schellenberg’s argument of divine hiddenness, and the first premise of Paul Draper’s Hypothesis of Indifference (“Gratuitous evil exists”), are also susceptible to the skeptical theist’s challenge: how can these claims be genuinely known or verified by limited human understanding?

Critique

Even skepticism itself, it turns out, is not immune to critique. Richard Swinburne criticized skeptical theism on two main fronts. First, he argued that the appearance of some evils having no possible explanation is sufficient grounds to infer that none exists (though this, ironically, is itself susceptible to the skeptical theist’s own “you can’t know” response). Second, and perhaps more damningly, Swinburne argued that accepting skeptical theism leads to a broader skepticism about morality itself. If we can never truly know God’s reasons for allowing suffering, how can we be confident in our own moral judgments about what is good or evil? It undermines the very foundation of ethical deliberation.

Hidden Reasons

The “hidden reasons” defense, a close cousin of skeptical theism, posits the logical possibility that there are undisclosed or unknown reasons for the existence of evil. The argument is deceptively simple: merely not knowing the reason for something does not automatically equate to the reason not existing. It’s a plea to intellectual humility, suggesting that human ignorance is not proof of divine absence or malevolence.

However, this argument has faced its own share of challenges. Critics contend that the premise of hidden reasons is just as plausible—or implausible—as the premise that God does not exist, or that God is not truly “almighty, all-knowing, all-benevolent, all-powerful.” Furthermore, for every hidden argument that might completely or partially justify observed evils, it is equally likely that there exists a hidden argument that actually makes the observed evils worse than they initially appear, or that these hidden reasons might themselves lead to additional contradictions. As such, from an inductive viewpoint, these hidden arguments tend to neutralize one another, leaving the problem largely unresolved.

A sub-variant of this defense is rather amusingly dubbed the “PHOG” defense—for “profoundly hidden outweighing goods.” Bryan Frances pointed out that the PHOG defense not only leaves the co-existence of God and human suffering unanswered but also raises even more perplexing questions. Why, for instance, must animals and other life forms suffer from natural evil, or endure abuse (such as animal slaughter or animal cruelty ) at the hands of some human beings, in situations where “hidden moral lessons, hidden social good, and other possible hidden reasons” simply do not apply? The suffering of a fawn in a forest fire, for example, seems to defy any neat categorization as a profoundly hidden outweighing good, unless one possesses a truly alien definition of “good.”

Soul-making or Irenaean Theodicy

The “soul-making” (or Irenaean) theodicy takes its name from the 2nd-century Greek theologian Irenaeus , whose ideas profoundly influenced Eastern Christianity. In the twenty-first century, this perspective has been notably modified and championed by John Hick . The Irenaean approach stands in stark contrast to the Augustinian tradition. For Augustine of Hippo , humanity was created in a state of perfection but subsequently fell through its own free will , continuing thereafter to make poor choices. Irenaeus, conversely, posited that humans were not created perfect; rather, they were created in an immature state, with the inherent task of striving continuously to grow and mature towards a state of perfection, a process that necessitates overcoming challenges.

The key tenets of a soul-making theodicy are rooted in its metaphysical foundation:

Divine Purpose: The fundamental purpose of God in creating the world was “soul-making” for rational moral agents. This world is not a finished product, but a developmental environment.
Moral Character Development: Humans are provided with the autonomy to choose their responses to this soul-making process, thereby actively developing their moral character. It’s a school, not a paradise.
Divine Hiddenness: For genuine free will and moral development to occur, God must, to a certain extent, remain hidden. An overt, undeniable divine presence would, it is argued, compromise true freedom of choice.
Evil’s Role: This divine hiddenness is partly facilitated by the very presence of evil in the world, which prevents an overly clear and coercive manifestation of God’s power.
Freedom and Struggle: The “epistemic distance” (hiddenness) of God makes moral freedom possible, while the existence of genuine obstacles and challenges makes meaningful struggle and growth attainable.
Transcendent Value: The ultimate outcome of beings who successfully complete this soul-making process is “a good of such surpassing value” that it inherently justifies the means—the suffering and struggle endured.
Eschatological Fulfillment: Those who successfully navigate this arduous process will eventually be admitted to the kingdom of God , a realm where evil will finally cease to exist. Hick further argued that, for suffering to possess genuine soul-making value, “human effort and development must be present at every stage of existence including the afterlife.” It’s a continuous journey, apparently.

C. S. Lewis also developed a theodicy that integrated free will with a soul-making perspective, accounting for suffering caused by disease and natural disasters through this lens. Nicholas Wolterstorff has raised challenges to Lewis’s interpretation, but Erik J. Wielenberg, drawing from Lewis’s broader body of work and also from John Hick and Trent Dougherty , has attempted to demonstrate the depth and resilience of Lewis’s version of the soul-making theodicy.

Critique

The Irenaean theodicy, despite its compelling narrative of growth, is not without its significant challenges.

One prominent critique asserts that many evils do not, in fact, promote spiritual growth; instead, they prove profoundly destructive to the human spirit. Hick himself acknowledged that this process often “fails” in the actual world. Particularly egregious cases, often termed horrendous evils—those which “[constitute] prima facie reason to doubt whether the participant’s life could (given their inclusion in it) be a great good to him/her on the whole”—have become a focal point of recent discussions on the problem of evil. Such profound suffering frequently leads not to spiritual refinement but to dehumanization, fostering anger, bitterness, vindictiveness, depression, and a general spiritual degradation. It seems that not all fires temper steel; some merely consume.

However, it is also observed that life crises can indeed act as potent catalysts for change, often leading to positive transformations. Neurologists Bryan Kolb and Bruce Wexler have pointed to the inherent plasticity of the brain, noting that while highly plastic in childhood, it becomes less so in adulthood once development is largely complete, tending to resist change thereafter. Yet, neurons in the adult brain can undergo permanent changes “when the conditions are right,” with brain development being highly dependent on external stimulation. When the brain receives the powerful, often overwhelming, stimuli provided by experiences such as bereavement, life-threatening illness, the trauma of war, or other deeply painful events, it can trigger a prolonged and arduous internal struggle. This struggle, in which an individual thoroughly re-examines their self-concept and perceptions of reality, can fundamentally reshape neurological structures. This phenomenon is often referred to in literature as “turning points,” “defining moments,” “crucible moments,” or “life-changing events.” These are experiences that act as a profound catalyst, transforming individuals who often emerge with a heightened sense of learning, strength, and personal growth, empowering them to pursue entirely different paths than they might otherwise have taken.

Steve Gregg, acknowledging the grim reality, conceded that much human suffering yields no discernible good, and that the “greater good” argument does not fully address every case. Nonetheless, he argued, “the fact that sufferings are temporal, and are often justly punitive, corrective, sanctifying and ennobling stands as one of the important aspects of a biblical worldview that somewhat ameliorates the otherwise unanswerable problem of pain.” It’s a partial, rather than complete, balm.

A second critique argues that if God truly permitted evil to facilitate spiritual growth, one might reasonably expect evil to disproportionately afflict those in poor spiritual health, such as the decadent wealthy, who often appear to enjoy lives of luxury insulated from hardship. Conversely, many pious individuals are often poor and intimately acquainted with worldly evils. Using the example of Francis of Assisi , G. K. Chesterton argued that, contrary “to the modern mind,” wealth is condemned in Christian theology precisely because it insulates individuals from evil and suffering, and thus from the spiritual growth such experiences can foster. Chesterton explained that Francis actively pursued poverty “as men have dug madly for gold,” believing that its concomitant suffering offered a direct path to piety.

G. Stanley Kane, however, asserted that human character can be developed directly through constructive, nurturing, and loving means. He questioned why God would consider or allow evil and suffering to be a necessary or even preferred path to spiritual growth. Hick countered this by asserting that suffering is essential, not merely for specific virtues, but because “…one who has attained to goodness by meeting and eventually mastering temptation, and thus by rightly making [responsible] choices in concrete situations, is good in a richer and more valuable sense than would be one created ab initio in a state either of innocence or of virtue. In the former case, which is that of the actual moral achievements of mankind, the individual’s goodness has within it the strength of temptations overcome, a stability based upon an accumulation of right choices, and a positive and responsible character that comes from the investment of costly personal effort.” It’s the struggle, he argued, that imbues goodness with its true depth.

Yet, a further counter-argument points out that the very virtues identified as the result of “soul-making” may only appear valuable within a world where evil and suffering already exist. A willingness to sacrifice oneself to save others from persecution, for instance, is virtuous because persecution exists. Similarly, the act of donating one’s meal to the starving is valuable because starvation exists. If persecution and starvation did not occur, these acts would lose their specific virtuous context. If the virtues developed through soul-making are only valuable where suffering exists, then it becomes unclear what, precisely, would be lost if suffering itself ceased to exist. C. Robert Mesle responded to this by suggesting that such a discussion presupposes that virtues are only instrumentally valuable, rather than possessing intrinsic value in themselves.

Finally, the soul-making reconciliation, according to Creegan, notably “fails to explain the need or rationale for evil inflicted on animals and resultant animal suffering, because there is no evidence at all that suffering improves the character of animals, or is evidence of soul-making in them.” Hick attempted to differentiate between animal and human suffering based on “our capacity imaginatively to anticipate the future,” but this distinction does little to alleviate the suffering of animals in the present moment.

Afterlife

Thomas Aquinas proposed an “afterlife theodicy” as a means to address the problem of evil and justify its existence. The central premise of this theodicy is that while human life is finite and often brief, the afterlife is unending. God, therefore, permits evil and suffering in the present life as a crucible, a period of trial and moral action, in order to ultimately judge and grant everlasting heaven or hell based on an individual’s moral choices and the manner in which they navigated their earthly suffering. Aquinas contended that the promise of an eternal afterlife, with its ultimate justice and bliss, represents a “greater good” that sufficiently justifies the temporal evils and suffering experienced in the current life. Christian author Randy Alcorn echoed this sentiment, arguing that the boundless joys of heaven will more than compensate for any suffering endured on earth.

Stephen Maitzen, however, rather dismissively labeled this the “Heaven Swamps Everything” theodicy and argued that it is fundamentally flawed because it conflates compensation with justification. Just because suffering might be compensated in an afterlife does not logically mean that the suffering itself was justified or morally permissible in the first place. This theodical view is often predicated on the principle that, under a just God, “no innocent creature suffers misery that is not compensated by happiness at some later stage (e. g. an afterlife).” The glaring issue, of course, is that in traditional theological views, animals do not possess an afterlife, leaving their suffering uncompensated and, by this logic, unjustified.

Maitzen’s argument has, in turn, been challenged by Seyyed Jaaber Mousavirad, who defends a “strong account of the compensation theodicy.” Mousavirad posits that while a “weak interpretation” that only considers afterlife compensation might indeed be vulnerable to Maitzen’s critique, a “strong account” considers both “compensation in afterlife” and “the primary benefits of evils” (even if those benefits are not necessarily “greater”). This broader perspective, Mousavirad argues, allows the compensation theodicy to be defended more robustly.

Exemplarist Theodicy

Joshua Sijuwade has put forth an “exemplarist theodicy,” arguing that God permits evil in the world with the specific intention of cultivating certain individuals into moral exemplars. These exemplars, through their suffering and subsequent response, then contribute significantly to the overall goodness of the world.

Sijuwade elaborates: “God having allowed a certain class of individuals to suffer—namely, the exemplary sufferers—would be justified by them being presented with the opportunity to transform into exemplars, and thus make a great contribution to the world being a good world. However, God is also justified in having allowed the rest of the sentient creatures in existence—namely, the nonexemplary sufferers—that do not fall into the aforementioned class, to suffer (and thus their suffering experiences not being gratuitous), given that the fact of them having undergone these experiences provides them with the opportunity to be of use in enabling other individuals to undergo the process of transforming into exemplars—and thus they are indirectly involved in the process of making the world a good world.”

This rather utilitarian perspective suggests a tiered system of suffering: some suffer directly to become beacons of good, while others suffer to provide the opportunity for those beacons to shine. It’s a complex, if somewhat cold, calculus of divine purpose, where every instance of suffering, directly or indirectly, serves the ultimate goal of creating moral exemplars.

Denial of Evil

Beyond simply explaining evil, some theological responses attempt to resolve the problem by denying its very existence. In the second century, early Christian theologians grappled with reconciling the existence of evil with an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God by asserting that evil, in a substantive sense, does not actually exist. Among these, Clement of Alexandria offered what became known as the “privation theory of evil.” A more modern iteration of this “deny evil” approach is found in Christian Science , which posits that the perception of evil is merely a form of illusion.

Privation Theory of Evil

The early, influential version of “denying evil” is the privation theory of evil, so named because it conceptualized evil as a form of “lack, loss, or privation.” One of the earliest proponents of this theory was the 2nd-century Clement of Alexandria . According to Joseph Kelly, Clement stated that “since God is completely good, he could not have created evil; but if God did not create evil, then it cannot exist.” Therefore, evil, according to Clement, does not exist as a positive, substantive entity, but rather as a negative—a “lack of good.”

Clement’s idea, however, was quickly criticized for its apparent inability to adequately explain the pervasive suffering in the world if evil itself did not exist. He also faced pressing questions from Gnostic scholars, who asked why God would not simply create creatures that “did not lack the good.” Clement attempted to address these challenges ontologically through a form of dualism, an idea borrowed from the Platonic school, positing two realities: one of God and absolute Truth, and another of human, perceived experience, where imperfections and “privations” might arise.

The highly influential fourth-century theologian Augustine of Hippo further developed and adopted the privation theory. In his seminal work, Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love, Augustine maintained that evil exists as “absence of the good.” His theological framework posited God as a spiritual, non-corporeal Being, sovereign over all other lesser beings, having created material reality ex nihilo (out of nothing). Augustine’s understanding of evil rested on the causal principle that every cause is superior to its effects. Since God is innately superior to His creation, and “everything that God creates is good,” then every creature is inherently good, though “some are better than others.” However, created beings, precisely because they were brought into existence from nothingness, also possess inherent tendencies toward mutability and corruption. They are subject to the prejudices of personal perspective: humans tend to focus on what affects themselves, often failing to grasp how their individual privation might contribute to a larger common good. For Augustine, evil, when applied to God’s material creation, refers to a privation—an absence of goodness “where goodness might have been.” It is not a distinct substance existing independently from the nature of all Being. This absence of good, he argued, is ultimately an act of the will, “a culpable rejection of the infinite bounty God offers in favor of an infinitely inferior fare,” freely chosen by the individual.

Ben Page and Max Baker-Hytch have observed that while many philosophers explicitly advocate the privation theory , it also appears to be implicitly derived from a functional analysis of goodness, a perspective widely embraced in contemporary philosophy.

Critique

This view, while philosophically elegant, has been sharply criticized as mere semantics. Substituting a definition of evil with “loss of good,” or the “problem of evil and suffering” with the “problem of loss of good and suffering,” does little to address the core issue from either a theoretical or an experiential standpoint. Scholars who critique the privation theory argue that phenomena like murder, rape, terror, pain, and suffering are undeniably real-life events for their victims and cannot be dismissed as mere “lack of good.” Pereira noted that Augustine himself accepted the reality of suffering and was aware that the privation theory, in isolation, was not a complete solution to the problem of evil. It explains the nature of evil, perhaps, but not its presence.

Evil as Illusory

As previously touched upon, an alternative, more modern iteration of the privation theory comes from Christian Science . This belief system asserts that evils such as suffering and disease, while appearing real to human perception, are in truth merely illusions. According to Stephen Gottschalk, Christian Science theologians posit that the Spirit is of infinite might, and that mortal human beings, failing to grasp this, instead fixate on evil and suffering, which they believe have no real existence as “a power, person or principle opposed to God.”

This “illusion version” of the privation theory has, predictably, faced intense critique. Opponents argue that it fundamentally denies the harrowing reality of crimes, wars, terror, sickness, injury, death, suffering, and pain to those who experience them. Furthermore, as Millard Erickson pointed out, this argument merely shifts the problem rather than resolving it: why would an omnipotent and benevolent God create this elaborate and deeply distressing “illusion” of suffering, and why would this God not simply cease this “illusion”? It seems some problems, like persistent existential dread, are simply not that easy to make disappear with a philosophical sleight of hand.

Turning the Tables

A rather ingenious, if provocative, approach to the problem of evil involves “turning the tables”—suggesting that any argument from evil is, in fact, self-refuting, as its conclusion would logically necessitate the falsity of one of its own premises. One such response, termed the “defensive response,” highlights that the very assertion “evil exists” implicitly relies upon an underlying ethical standard against which moral value is determined. The argument then proceeds to contend that the very existence of such a universal moral standard, in itself, implies the existence of God. It’s a rather clever jujitsu move, using the opponent’s premise to bolster one’s own position.

Pandeism

Pandeism offers a more contemporary and distinct resolution to the problem of evil. This theory represents a synthesis of deism (God created the universe and then withdrew) and pantheism (God is the universe). In pandeism, God created the universe but, in the very act of creation, became the universe. This has profound implications for the problem of evil.

Within the pandeistic framework, God is no longer a superintending, heavenly power capable of hourly intervention into earthly affairs. Having merged with the cosmos, God no longer exists “above” it and therefore cannot intervene from an external position. Consequently, God cannot be blamed for failing to do so. The God of pandeism was, at the moment of creation, both omnipotent and omnibenevolent. However, in the form of the actualized universe, this God is no longer omnipotent (as the universe itself has inherent limitations and laws) nor omnibenevolent (as the universe contains suffering and malevolence, which are now part of God’s being). The problem of evil is thus reconciled by redefining God’s nature post-creation: the perfect creator sacrifices its perfect attributes to become the imperfect, evolving cosmos, thereby absolving it of direct responsibility for ongoing evil. A rather profound act of self-limitation, if you ask me.

Philip Irving Mitchell, Director of the University Honors Program at Dallas Baptist University, compiled a list of issues that, while not strictly constituting the core “problem of evil” itself, are deeply intertwined with it and often arise in related discussions:

Evil and the Demonic: Given the prevalence of belief in supernatural malevolent powers within the three major monotheistic faiths , what precisely is the relationship between these beliefs and the manifestation of evil in the world? Is evil a distinct entity, a force, or merely a human construct?
The Politics of Theodicy: This issue delves into the societal implications of explaining the causes of evil and suffering. Does a particular theodicy inadvertently serve as a justification for oppression by the powerful, or, conversely, does it provide a framework for the liberation of the powerless? The way suffering is explained can have profound political consequences.
Horrific Evil: This category encompasses atrocities such as the Holocaust, child abuse and rape, extreme schizophrenia, torture, and mass genocide. The question here is not merely philosophical but deeply moral: should one even attempt to speak of justification in the face of such unspeakable horrors? And for the survivors, what genuine hope of restoration and healing can possibly be offered?
The Judgment of God: Many theodical discussions tend to focus on “innocent” suffering and experiences of profound evil, often overlooking the common wrongs committed by individuals, or embedded within ideas, belief systems, and social structures. Can evil, in some contexts, be legitimately understood as God’s judgment upon sin and evil?
The Hiddenness of God: Often referred to as deus absconditus (the hidden God), this issue is sometimes considered a subset of theodicy. Why does God so frequently appear not to openly, visibly, or indisputably respond to either evil or good in the world? The silence of the divine in the face of suffering is, for many, a problem in itself.
Metaphysical Evil: This returns to the fundamental ontological questions: what exactly is evil? What are its ultimate origins, and what constitutes its essence? Is it a substance, a privation, an illusion, or something else entirely?

The Existential Problem of Evil

Beyond the intricate philosophical and theological debates, there lies the raw, visceral experience of suffering—the existential problem of evil. This dimension asks: in what ways does the experience of suffering inform or challenge questions of theodicy, and conversely, in what ways does theodicy either alleviate or exacerbate the personal experience of suffering? Dan Allender and Tremper Longman insightfully pointed out that suffering inevitably generates internal questions about God that transcend mere philosophical abstraction. These are often deeply personal queries, such as: “Does God, or indeed anyone, truly care about what I am suffering every day?” It’s the cry of the soul, demanding not just an explanation, but empathy and presence.

Literature and the Arts

The enduring human struggle with the problem of evil has found fertile ground in literature and the arts, offering a rich tapestry of both universal application and particular dramatization of specific instances, both fictional and non-fictional, and reflecting both religious and secular perspectives. Works such as Christopher Marlowe ’s Doctor Faustus , John Milton ’s epic Paradise Lost , Alexander Pope ’s An Essay on Man , Voltaire ’s biting satire Candide , Goethe ’s sprawling Faust , Tennyson ’s elegiac “In Memoriam A.H.H. ”, Fyodor Dostoevsky ’s profound The Brothers Karamazov (particularly the chapters “Rebellion” and “The Grand Inquisitor ”), T. S. Eliot ’s Four Quartets , Albert Camus ’s The Plague, Elie Wiesel ’s harrowing memoir Night , Annie Dillard ’s Holy the Firm and For the Time Being, and Walter Wangerin Jr. ’s The Book of Sorrows all offer invaluable insights into the multifaceted ways humanity attempts to comprehend and cope with the presence of evil. These narratives, whether epic or intimate, serve as a testament to the persistent, often agonizing, quest for meaning in a world marred by suffering.

While artist Cornelia van Voorst initially declared that “artists do not think of the world in terms of good and bad, but more in terms of: What can we make of this?”, she also offered the compelling example of Pablo Picasso ’s 1935 etching Minotauromachie. This powerful work, currently housed at the Ashmolean Museum , depicts a small girl holding up her tiny, shining light to confront and bravely face down the monstrous Minotaur of war. It’s a potent visual metaphor for the fragile, yet persistent, human spirit confronting overwhelming evil.

Franziska Reiniger noted that art depicting the overwhelming evil of the Holocaust has, quite rightly, become controversial. The painting of Lola Lieber-Schwarz, The Murder of Matilda Lieber, Her Daughters Lola and Berta, and Berta’s Children Itche (Yitzhak) and Marilka, January 1942, is a stark example. It portrays a family lying dead on the snowy ground outside a village, with a Nazi and his dog walking away from the scene, his face obscured. The scene is rendered with chilling coldness and finality, with only the perpetrator and perhaps one of his victims—a child clinging to its mother—still seemingly alive. The identity of any witness to this horrifying event, or their relationship to it, remains unknown, yet the artwork itself serves as a searing, undeniable depiction of the problem of evil made manifest. Art, it seems, does not always offer answers, but it can certainly force us to confront the questions.

Notes and references

Notes

• ^ Nicola Creegan has presented the logical and evidential versions of the problem of evil when applied to animal suffering.

• ^ “When stars burn, explode and die, the heavy elements are born and distributed, feeding life. When the first living organisms die, they make room for more complex ones and begin the process of natural selection. When organisms die, new life feeds on them… the sources of [natural] evil lie in attributes so valuable that we would not even consider eliminating them in order to eradicate evil.”

References

• ^ Tuling, Kari H. (2020). “Part 1: Is God the Creator and Source of All Being – Including Evil?”. In Tuling, Kari H. (ed.). Thinking about God: Jewish Views . JPS Essential Judaism Series. Lincoln and Philadelphia : University of Nebraska Press /Jewish Publication Society . pp. 3–64. doi :10.2307/j.ctv13796z1.5. ISBN 978-0-8276-1848-0. LCCN 2019042781. S2CID 241611417.

• ^ a b c d e f g h The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , “The Problem of Evil”, Michael Tooley

• ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , “The Evidential Problem of Evil”, Nick Trakakis

• ^ • Calian, Florin George (18 July 2024). “Editorial RES 1/2024: Religion and the Problem of Evil (I) Religion und das Problem des Bösen (I)”. Review of Ecumenical Studies . 16 (1): 5–7. doi :10.2478/ress-2024-0001.

• ^ Nicholas J. Rengger, Moral Evil and International Relations , in SAIS Review 25:1, Winter/Spring 2005, pp. 3–16

• ^ Peter Kivy, Melville’s Billy and the Secular Problem of Evil: the Worm in the Bud , in The Monist (1980), 63

• ^ • Kekes, John (1990). Facing Evil . Princeton: Princeton UP. ISBN 978-0-691-07370-5.

• ^ Timothy Anders, The Evolution of Evil (2000)

• ^ • Becker, Lawrence C.; Becker, Charlotte B. (2013). Encyclopedia of Ethics . Routledge. pp. 147–149. ISBN 978-1-135-35096-3.

• ^ a b The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , “The Logical Problem of Evil”, James R. Beebe

• ^ • Mousavirad, Seyyed Jaaber (2 July 2022). “Theory of Compensation and Problem of Evil; a New Defense”. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion . 14 (2). doi :10.24204/ejpr.2022.3357. ISSN 1689-8311.

• ^ a b c • Peter van Inwagen (2008). The Problem of Evil . Oxford University Press. pp. 120, 123–126, context: 120–133. ISBN 978-0-19-954397-7.

• ^ a b c Alston, William P. (1991). “The Inductive Argument from Evil and the Human Cognitive Condition”. Philosophical Perspectives. 5: 29–67. • doi :10.2307/2214090. • ISSN 1758-2245. JSTOR 2214090. • S2CID 16744068.

• ^ a b • Meister, Chad (2009). Introducing Philosophy of Religion . Taylor & Francis. p. 134. ISBN 9781134141791.

• ^ • Calder, Todd (26 November 2013). “The Concept of Evil”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Stanford University. Retrieved 17 January 2021.

• ^ • Trakakis, Nick . “The Evidential Problem of Evil”. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) .

• ^ • Singer, Marcus G. (April 2004). “The Concept of Evil”. Philosophy . 79 (308). Cambridge University Press: 185–214. doi :10.1017/S0031819104000233. JSTOR 3751971. S2CID 146121829.

• ^ • Kemp, John (25 February 2009). “Pain and Evil”. Philosophy . 29 (108): 13. doi :10.1017/S0031819100022105. S2CID 144540963. Retrieved 8 January 2021.

• ^ a b c d e f g h Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg . Introduction. The Many Faces of Evil: Historical Perspectives . Ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty. London: Routledge, 2001. xi–xviii.

• ^ • Kekes, John (2017). “29, The Secular Problem of Evil”. In Bar-Am, Nimrod; Gattei, Stefano (eds.). Encouraging Openness: Essays for Joseph Agassi on the Occasion of His 90th Birthday . Springer. p. 351. ISBN 9783319576695.

• ^ a b • Wierenga, Edward (2020). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). “Omniscience”. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Retrieved 22 February 2021.

• ^ • Wierenga, Edward R. (1989). The Nature of God: An Inquiry Into Divine Attributes . Cornell University Press. pp. 202–205. ISBN 9780801488504.

• ^ • Hasker, William (2004). Providence, Evil and the Openness of God . Routledge. ISBN 9780415329491.

• ^ a b • Hoffman, Joshua; Rosenkrantz, Gary. “Omnipotence”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Stanford University. Retrieved 22 February 2021.

• ^ • Haji, Ishtiyaque (2009). “A Conundrum Concerning Creation”. Sophia . 48 (1): 1–14. doi :10.1007/s11841-008-0062-7. S2CID 144025073. • ProQuest 203892905.

• ^ • Honderich, Ted (2005). “theodicy”. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy . ISBN 978-0-19-926479-7. John Hick , for example, proposes a theodicy, while Alvin Plantinga formulates a defence. The idea of human free will often appears in a both of these strategies, but in different ways.

• ^ For more explanation regarding contradictory propositions and possible worlds, see Plantinga’s “God, Freedom and Evil” (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 1974), 24–29.

• ^ a b c • Harvey, Peter (2013). An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices . Cambridge University Press. pp. 37, 141. ISBN 978-0-521-85942-4.

• ^ a b c d • Mitchell. “Theodicy: An Overview” (PDF). dbu.edu/mitchell . Dallas Baptist University. Retrieved 14 April 2021.

• ^ a b • Berger, Peter L. (1990). The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Illustrated ed.). Anchor. p. 53. ISBN 978-0385073059.

• ^ Gregory A. Boyd (2003), Is God to Blame? (InterVarsity Press), • ISBN 978-0830823949, pp. 55–58

• ^ • Peter van Inwagen (2008). The Problem of Evil . Oxford University Press. pp. 6–10, 22, 26–30. ISBN 978-0-19-954397-7.

• ^ • Edwards, Linda (2001). A Brief Guide to Beliefs: Ideas, Theologies, Mysteries, and Movements . Westminster John Knox Press. p. 59. ISBN 978-0-664-22259-8.

• ^ • Swinton, John (2007). Raging with Compassion: Pastoral Responses to the Problem of Evil . Wm. B. Eerdmans. pp. 33–35, 119, 143. ISBN 978-0-8028-2997-9.

• ^ • Neiman, Susan (2004). Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy . Princeton University Press. pp. 119–120, 318–322. ISBN 978-0691117928.

• ^ • Micha de Winter (2012). Socialization and Civil Society . Springer. pp. 69–70. ISBN 978-94-6209-092-7.

• ^ Westerhoff, Jan. “Creation in Buddhism” in Oliver, Simon. The Oxford Handbook of Creation , Oxford University Press, Oxford, forthcoming

• ^ The formulation may have been wrongly attributed to Epicurus by Lactantius, who, from his Christian perspective, regarded Epicurus as an atheist . According to Mark Joseph Larrimore, (2001), The Problem of Evil , pp. xix–xxi. Wiley-Blackwell. According to Reinhold F. Glei , it is settled that the argument of theodicy is from an academical source which is not only not epicurean, but even anti-epicurean. Reinhold F. Glei, Et invidus et inbecillus. Das angebliche Epikurfragment bei Laktanz, De ira dei 13, 20–21 , in: Vigiliae Christianae 42 (1988), pp. 47–58

• ^ • Hume, David . “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”. Project Gutenberg . Retrieved 17 June 2024.

• ^ • Hickson, Michael W. (2014). “A Brief History of Problems of

Definitions

Evil

Omniqualities

Defenses and Theodicies

Secularism

Formulation

Logical Problem of Evil

Evidential Problem of Evil

Problem of Evil and Animal Suffering

Secular Responses

Evil as Necessary

Evil as the Absence of Good

Deny Problem Exists

Evil as Illusory

Moral Rationalism

Evil God Challenge

Catholic Response

Disavowal of Theodicy

Atheistic Viewpoint

Theistic Arguments

Cruciform Theodicy

Animal Suffering (Theistic Responses)

Critique

Other responses to animal suffering and natural evil

Free Will Defense

Gottfried Leibniz and Plantinga’s Expansion

Discussion

Natural Evil and the Free Will Defense

Process Theodicy

Critique

“Greater Good” Responses

Skeptical Theism

Critique

Hidden Reasons

Soul-making or Irenaean Theodicy

Critique

Afterlife

Exemplarist Theodicy

Denial of Evil

Privation Theory of Evil

Critique

Evil as Illusory

Turning the Tables

Pandeism

Related Issues

The Existential Problem of Evil

Literature and the Arts

See also

Notes and references