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.
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Based on Philosophy of Religion. By John Hick

With 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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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?

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.
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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!
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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.

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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.
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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!

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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?

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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.
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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.
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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 .

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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

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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.

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Mr. Cs Chess Analogy

1.
2.
3.

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 Gods behalf
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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.
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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.
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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
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