The Problem of Evil

1. The Problem of Evil • God is OMNIPOTENT • God is ALL LOVING • EVIL EXISTS • What is the problem? • Be quite clear: • The problem of evil is a serious challenge to the Christian faith and its concept of God. • There are two main types of evil in the world. What are they? • An answer to the problem of evil/a justification of God in the face of evil is called a Theodicy. • You have 15 minutes to create a Theodicy. 5 minutes to prepare your presentation.

2. Based on ‘Philosophy of Religion’. By John HickWith a tiny bit of help from Mr. C The problem of evil. The Augustinian Theodicy 354-430 AD The universe is good, the creation of a good God for a good purpose: Everything that has being is good in its own way and degree, except insofar as it has been spoiled or corrupted. Therefore evil; Moral evil and natural evil, decay and disorder, has not been set there by God but represents the going wrong of something that is inherently good. I am blind, but my eye is good! The evil of blindness consists of the lack of a proper functioning of the EYE.

3. Augustine • Originally the universe was a perfect harmony expressing the Creators divine intention. • How did evil come about? From those levels of the universe that involved free will, the free will of angels and humans. Some angels turned from good, from God. They tempted the first man. The fall of angelic and human beings was the origin of Moral evil and sin. • Natural evils and disasters like earthquakes, storms etc are the consequences of sin. Man was guardian of the Earth, but his sin has set nature awry. • We did this, not God! • ‘All evil is either sin or the punishment for sin’. Augustine.

4. The Augustinian Theodicy • At the end of history there will come a judgment when Many will enter into eternal life and others into eternal torment. • This theodicy clears God of any responsibility for the existence of evil by putting the responsibility upon the creation of free will. • ‘Evil all stems from the culpable misuse of creative freedom in a tragic act of cosmic significance, in the prehistory of the human race’.

5. Criticisms: • If God is omnipotent, and the universe was wholly good, how could it go wrong? How could free creatures without trace of evil, fall into sin? How could creation go wrong spontaneously and without cause? There is a contradiction here. It amounts to the self-creation of evil out of nothing. Augustine suggests that perhaps some Angels received less grace or received less assistance from God! A flawless creation would never go wrong and if it did, then responsibility is with the creator. God it is guilty!

6. Criticism: • Can we accept: Human species as having been once morally and spiritually perfect and then falling into a state of self-centredness which we have today. Evidence suggests that humanity gradually emerged out of the lower forms of life with limited moral awareness. • Are earthquakes, floods, disease, really the result of the fall of humanity? Can we accept this? • What about the idea of eternal torment in hell? The fate of many human beings. The punishment would serve no constructive purpose. Evil and punishment would have a permanent structure in the universe.

7. The Iranaean Theodicy 130-202AD • Two stages in the creation of the human race. We were brought into existence as intelligent animals endowed with immense moral and spiritual capacity. Not the perfect Adam and Eve's of Augustine. But immature creatures at the beginning of a long process of growth. • This second stage is now taking place. We are gradually being transformed through freewill from human animals into children of God. • Why were we created immature? Iranaeus suggests the value of human freedom. Ready made goodness verses goodness derived from moral choices and freewill and situations of difficulty and temptation. Which of these is the more valuable? An imperfect humanity morally struggling moving towards complete humanization?

8. Humans are formed within and as part of an autonomous universe within which God it is not overwhelmingly evident. In which God may become known by the free response of faith. • The Human Condition involves the tension between selfishness and the call of morality/ religion to transcend self-centredness. • Moral will evil is a necessary condition of humanity in a state of genuine freedom, where humanity can freely develop in response to God's non coercive presence.

9. OK! The bulk of human pain is traceable to moral evil i e men and women acting sinfully. • But what about natural disasters? Sometimes human wickedness and folly is intermingled with disasters. Humans caused the pain. i.e. poor housing in an earthquake zone humans are to blame! But Natural disasters do exist and are part of the nature of the world. • Iranaeus: The divine purpose; to become children of God, could not be served in a paradise!

10. Can we blame God for our imperfect world, for disasters? Iranaeus: God's purpose was not to create a paradise. A maximum place of pleasure and minimum paying. The world is a place of soul making. Free beings grapple with the tasks and challenges of their existence to become children of God. Iranaeus uses a counterfactual hypotheses to support the argument: Imagine a paradise with no pain or sin. You could not murder. There would be no need to work. Everything is on a plate. You jump off a building and feathers would appear to gently stopped you. OR The real earth. Pain and suffering and love and happiness and joy and hunger and greed and achievement. Which would you choose? In Paradise to live a childish dreamlike existence. Or on Earth to live a life of challenge and become a child of God. In relation to God's purpose, Paradise would be the worst option! Free growth can only come in a world of dependable laws, real dangers, frustration, pain, obstacles etc. A good place for soul making. That is why there are natural disasters. We have got the best of possible worlds.

11. Points of interest • Good can triumph over evil through a person's reaction: their courage, character etc. But the opposite is true also: fear, selfishness, destruction. • Is the ultimate good worthwhile? To become children of God whilst some people suffer pain/ fear/ anger/ death/ upset/torture /suicide/abortion/crime/war/disease/cancer /storms. The answer must be in terms of a future good great enough to justify all that has happened on the way to it. Heaven will render worthwhile all the pain and travail of the long journey of human life. Pain/joy/upset/happiness/defeat lead to heaven. • All human beings shall in the end attain the ultimate heavenly state.

12. Some criticisms • Rejects the fall of humanity and damnation of some. • Why cannot God create a person making world without these mega evils. Evil and suffering - some statistics: An estimated 3500 people die of hunger every day. About 1 billion people or 1/6 of the human race suffer from malnutrition. 400,000 children die every year in Brazil from hunger related diseases. 1,211,285 Iraqi children died of embargo related causes between 1990 and 1997. An estimated 1645 women die of pregnancy and child birth every day. An estimated 9.3% of all children born in the southern hemisphere die before their first birthday. • Explains the need for a person making environment but it does not justify the actual extent of human suffering. Auschwitz!

13. Process Theology • Process Thought restates the problem of Evil. • God is Powerful. • God is All Loving. • Evil Exists. • Read the Statements carefully. What has Process thinking done?

14. Hick: Process Theodicy. Process thought: God cannot to be unlimited in power, but interacts with a universe which God has not created, but can influence. Process thought it is influenced by the thinking of A N Whitehead. • The Christian tradition: God is creator and Sustainer of the universe ex nihilo. His power is unlimited. Due to human freedom God withholds his unlimited power. We become autonomous creatures in a realm in which God acts non coercively. • Process Thinking: Yes, God Acts non-coercively by persuasion and lure. This is because he is limited by the structure of reality. God is subject to limitations imposed by basic laws of nature and the Universe. ‘The universe is an uncreated process which includes Deity’. Wow! Griffin States: ‘ God cannot completely control creatures’. God's power over each occasion, and in directing the stream of occasions as a whole, is necessarily limited, and the reality of evil in the world is the measure of the extent to which God's will is thwarted. Thwarted by a war, disasters, death, violence etc. ‘God continually offers the best possibility to each occasion but the successive occasions are free not to conform to the divine plan’.

15. Evil 1: Discord, the failure to attain harmony. Whitehead states: discord is the feeling of evil in the most general sense, physical pain or mental evil, such as horror, sorrow, dislike. • Evil 2: When each moment fails to retain the highest appropriate intensity and allows for triviality. The evolution of the universe and life on earth is due to the continual divine impetus to maximize harmony and intensity. The good produced i e greater and greater harmony and intensity outweighs and makes worthwhile the evil produced. God's could have left a primal chaos, but create an ordered universe evolving ever higher forms of actuality.

16. God in the dock: • Why evil? Order- complexity- evil -suffering. Or chaos Which of these would be better? • God is a limited Deity creating goodness in the face of the fact of evil. ‘God's goodness is vindicated in that the risk taking venture in the evolution of the universe was calculated to produce... a sufficient quality and quantity of good to outweigh all the evils that have in fact been involved ….’

17. You choose: Hitler/Auschwitz OR Jesus- Socrates and Gandhi- Einstein Lincoln- El Greco. Millions of marvellous human beings. Griffin: ‘... for the sake of avoiding a mans inhumanity to man... should God have avoided humanity altogether? • Only if your answer is yes, Can you indict the God of process theology on the basis of evil in the world. • God shares are human joy, and the pain etc. ‘ the whole weight of earthly sorrow and agony, wickedness and stupidity, passes into the divine consciousness, together with the glory of all earthly happiness, and ecstasy, saintliness and a genius.’ Wow! A God who suffers With us! • Only God knows the total balance between good and evil. He finds that the risk is worth taking. This should help us to accept that the good does indeed outweigh the evil

18. The appeal of process Theodicy: • Avoids the problem arising from belief in an omnipotent God. ‘ God does not need to be justified for permitting evil, since it is not within God's power to prevent it.’ • The appeal of the challenge. The call to engage on God side in the struggle against evil.

19. Mr. C’s Chess Analogy • Let us imagine that creation, as we have it, is a kind of game of chess (‘game’ is obviously too light a word but is needed for the analogy). • God is the greatest ever player, whilst Evil is very good, but not as good. • God will inevitably win the game, but at a cost; pieces will be lost in the process of winning; a knight here, a pawn there=evil! • We have three responses to the game: • Stand back and just watch • Work for Evil • Participate on God’s behalf

20. Criticisms • Can we accept?: ‘The Actual life of most of mankind has being cramped with back-breaking work, exposed to deadly or debilitating disease, prey to wars and famines... ‘ Barbara Ward. • Can we accept?: ‘... for each one such marvellous human being, perhaps tens of thousands of others have existed... their lives... spent in a desperate and often degrading struggle to survive’. Third-world poverty sickness and death and disaster verses Einstein et al • Can we accept?: Mass suffering that God might create an elite? In order and to create good, there must be the possibility of creating evil i e human evil. Suffering/evil does not occur in order that there be an elite.

21. Hick: ‘... the starving and the oppressed, the victims of Auschwitz, the human wrecks who are irreparably brain damaged…. can hardly be expected to share the process God's point of view or to regard such a God as worthy of their worship and praise. • It would help if process theodicy could affirm the eventual completion of the creative process in a future heavenly fulfilment in which all are eventually to participate. The tragedy of human life would not then be ultimate. • Griffin: ‘While not excluding life after death, we cannot draw from this possibility the hope of a limitless final good to justify all evil.’

22. A Process Thought Story from Mr. C: • Concentration camp and prisoners watch the execution/hanging of several prisoners. • They walk away into their hut and one prisoner says to another: ‘Where is God now?’ • The other looks back at the dead and says: ‘There is God.’ • A God who suffers with us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1