Existence of God and suffering in the world.

Arguably, suggestion such as those made by Irenaeus offer a more adequate answer to the question. He argued that, as an omnibenevolent God, God recognised that if he was to give us free will, we could only truly be free if we still had the capacity for evil. Moreover, he believed that through experiencing the moral and natural evil and suffering which we are surrounded by, we have the opportunity to overcome what is terrible and hence develop our souls and produce what is most divine within us; eventually developing into God’s own likeness. Hence, by given the opportunity to face this ‘terrible’ life, it is a soul developing experience, enabling us to eventually reach a place where we are in heaven, in God’s likeness, which inevitably, would be something which one would thank God for. This can be illustrated by the example of events such as Hurricane Katrina. After the hurricane many people were left homeless and had suffered severe losses. In the face of suffering, there was much that could be done to help these people - aiding one’s development into God’s likeness. For example, many people needed clean water or somewhere to stay and through being virtuous, kind, and helping the many needy, one is soul making. Without this suffering, there would be no opportunities such as this and people would not develop into a stage of God’s likeness - as Irenaeus suggests they will do in a world of pain and suffering. However this idea is also criticisable on the grounds of whether or not any form of benefit is ever worth the great extremes of suffering of innocent beings such as young babies. Indeed, it is questionable as to whether this theodicy can be seen as plausible when considering the great extremes of evil such as the holocaust in which 6 million Jews were brutally murdered.

However, one can further argue that God is not really terrible, but rather it merely appears so from our relatively limited perspective. Indeed, we cannot see the whole plan as we cannot step back from our experiences and she the universe as a whole, with the suffering and disasters that take place, or the ultimately beneficial effects that might be planned as a result.

Therefore, in conclusion, although the idea of suffering does initially pose many problems for a belief in the existance of God, it is hard for us, from such a limited perspective to argue that the two must be mutually exclusive. Indeed, whist holding some flaws from our perspective, both Augustine and Irenaeus provide plausible ideas as to why suffering may actually be of benefit to us, or at least not be God’s fault, therefore removing the blame from him.