Evil and a God of love are incompatible so there cannot be a God of love? Discuss.

Before we proceed, it must be noted that some Christian theologians refuse to accept the definition of the problem in these terms. They argue that evil is a practical reality that requires resources that enable us to deal with it and overcome it. This is the Gospel which provides to those who have faith and seek to love God and one another.

Everyone would agree that evil is a practical concern and that we need resources that enable us to cope with it. However, many theologians contend that suffering also has a theoretical dimension. Faith must seek understanding as well as victory over evil. These thinkers typically proceed to offer a number of ‘appeals’ that lessen if not eliminate the apparent contradiction. One of these ideas would be the fact that God made us free (which I have mentioned above) and that and that it is human beings that misuse the freedom to cause misery, as any good world would have to carry the possibility of evil to counter balance, and it is therefore, that if there is to be a good world at all then evil is likely to be a feature of it but this is not to be held responsible to God.

I will know discuss the classical theodicies and access whether they work, the first is the Augustinian theodicy, St Augustine believed that God created the world in a perfect form and ‘never intended there to be earthquakes, floods, disease, cruelty or, indeed, for animals to eat each other’, Augustine believed that it was Adam and Eve who brought about the evil in the world through their wilful disobedience.

He considered there to be two types of evil that existed the first being moral evil where human beings choose to act wrongly ( also known as human free will)  and the second being natural evil where disease and natural disasters cause the suffering.  He said natural evil was a consequence of the disharmony of nature brought about by the fall and that it was human action that bought it about and that God did not intervene in the suffering as it was a result of human action. ‘All evil is sin or the punishment for sin’.

Augustine’s theodicy hinged on the idea of privation and he used the analogy of blindness, ‘blindness is not an entity but an absence of sight’ He accounts for evil by ascribing it to human agency and it came about due to the misuse of free will and therefore all suffering is a consequence of this abuse of free will, Natural evil is caused by the imbalance in nature brought about by the fall, moral evil is caused due to the world becoming more estranged from God and immortality has been able to thrive. However there are problems with Augustine’s theodicy the first being that he suggested there was a state of ignorance in the Garden of Eden which was knocked off balance by the fall. If God can be held responsible for the system by which the natural world works, he should therefore, be held responsible for the suffering that his system causes. This takes me on to my second argument that being the idea of collective responsibility, that being that why should other people suffer for the misdemeanours of past generations? If God can choose who he punishes through Natural evil 9through earthquakes for example) why not just punish those responsible for making wrong choices than punishing a majority of innocent humans for the minority who did wrong? The bible even states ‘should the children’s teeth be set on edge because the fathers have eaten sour grapes?’

The next theodicy to discuss in relation to the problem of evil is Irenaeus’, unlike Augustine’s theodicy admitted that God was partly responsible for that of evil in the world, due to, God making humans imperfectly and making it their own task to develop to perfection. Irenaeus’ idea comes from the book of Genesis where it reads ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’. Irenaeus said that people were made in God’s image and it was only later through change,that they developed into his likeness and Irenaeus claimed that evil was an essential means to effect this transformation. His biggest problem was to explain why evil is necessary and why God did not simply create humans perfectly to start with, his answer to this was that accomplishing the likeness of God requires ‘willing co-operation of human individuals’. He went further to argue that if God was to intervene each time an evil act was in danger of being committed he would be taking away a persons humanity, as being human includes freedom and intervening each time would take away this freedom of choice. Irenaeus’ theodicy however has gathered criticism; he unlike Augustine, allows space for the modern notion of evolution and does not contain Augustine’s stumbling block to where evil appeared from nowhere. One pitfall in his theodicy is that although he allows for the presence of evil through individuals not developing within God’s likeness and sometimes choosing the wrong path towards evil, it does not account for the large extent of evil such as the Holocaust or the events of September 11th. The most major pitfall would be that no amount of love can ever be ever shown to exist with any amount of suffering, it was argued that ‘it would never be justifiable to hurt someone to help them’ and it is therefore that when we consider the magnitude of suffering within the world today that his theodicy is therefore hard to accept as just without trouble.

Swinburne has developed a theodicy, he argued that ‘to appreciate the argument, each of us needs to stand back… and ask generally what good things would a generous and everlasting God give?’ Swinburne develops Augustine’s theodicy of natural and moral evil and says that natural evil is that which is not deliberately done by humans and does not occur to their negligence and moral evil is deliberately caused by humans which they ought not to do. He develops the free will argument and says it is the centre to any theology which starts with the problem of moral evil and can be extended to natural evil and that ‘it is a great good that humans have a certain sort of free will…but if they do …there will be a possibility of moral evil’. The criticism of his argument is however that if the choice of free will is such a great thing then why does God allow such mass suffering like that of the Holocaust? Swinburne counter argued that ‘The less he allows…large scale suffering the less freedom… he gives them’. What Swinburne is basically saying is that if God was to intervene he would be compromising the gift of freedom and removing human responsibility. He said (using Aristotle’s quote) ‘we become just by doing just acts, prudent by doing prudent acts, brave by doing brave acts’. He is basically saying that the more use to doing a just act the easier it will be to do the next just act and therefore humans will turn away from natural desires and consequently natural evil and doing just acts will become natural to us. Swinburne also goes on to argue that death, one of the greatest forms of suffering is necessary because without mortality it would be impossible to take responsibility for our actions and if we become immortal we are able to have another chance to make amends. I believe Swinburne’s theodicy is much stronger than that of Augustine but the idea that God’s intervention into matters to prevent large scale horrors is not justified as it will take away human responsibility hard to believe, I agree it would be hard to intervene in every matter and for every good there needs to be some evil it just depends on free choice to the extent of it, but God being all powerful would save many lives if he were to intervene in events such as war and the Holocaust for example.

John Hick renewed Irenaeus.’ soul making theodicy and he based it around the idea of human free choice rather than desire, he said that humans have to be free to love God, as love cannot be forced and love of God is a quality that has to be developed through our life. Hick also believed, like Irenaeus, that in order to allow for this development, humans had to be created imperfect and work towards perfection. He argued that for this perfection to develop, three things are required, Firstly humans have to be created imperfect, Secondly humans have to be distanced from God and Thirdly, the natural world could not be a paradise. His idea was that humans had to be created imperfect so they could go against God as a human being that was already perfect would not disobey. Hick referred to this distance from God as the ‘epistemic distance’. Hick went on to say we need this distance otherwise God would be too close and influence our decisions which would then unable us to make our own free decisions. Hick’s reform of Irenaeus’ theodicy can therefore be summed up like this ‘A world without problems…would be morally static, for moral and spiritual growth comes through responses to challenge…in paradise there would be no challenge’. 

Hick’s theodicy has a positive outlook on the problem of evil and shows that it can be compatible with a loving God , although there are some criticisms to this theodicy, For example, if we need to have some suffering in the world how can such an extent of suffering like that which happened during the Holocaust be justified? Hick has concluded that ‘Our world is not designed for maximisation of human pleasure and minimisation of human pain; it may nevertheless be rather well adapted to the quite different purpose of soul making’.  In this way it is Irenaeus’ theodicy can be developed to explain why some natural evil is essential as well as that of moral evil.

Mackie turned away from the idea of free will as he believed that God could have created a race of genuinely free beings who, would never in fact have chosen to commit evil. His challenge was that ‘there is no logical impossibility in a man’s freely choosing the good on one, or on several occasions, there can not be a logical impossibility in his freely choosing the good on every occasion’. If this challenge is true then God’ gift of free will cannot excuse the existence of evil as God could have made superior beings to humans who could not make sins therefore causing evil. Mackie concludes in his argument that God cannot be (or ever has been) omnipotent and omni benevolent. Mackie’s theory is often a counter argument used by many to show why evil exists and that an all-loving and all-powerful God would take away the free will idea and only allow us to do good, but this idea is hard to believe. that however powerful God is, he can intervene in every event to prevent suffering or pain it could be argued that if He intervened in all matters He would sometimes be stopping the outcome which in the end could be the greater good taking place.

In conclusion to this essay on the problem of evil being incompatible with a loving God, I believe that through the theodicies I have mentioned above conclude it is possible that evil and a loving God are compatible. Some of the arguments to the problem of evil adjust to the nature of God and nature of evil, whilst others attempt to justify the nature of evil with the God (for example Augustine and Irenaeus). Through this essay it can be seen that each theodicy has its strengths but each also has its weaknesses. We as humans are incapable to understand the reasoning behind God’s choice for evil within this world, but this all-powerful and all-loving God will have some purpose for this existence. In the words of John Hick, the solution to this problem is that the, ‘excessive and undeserved suffering is a frank appeal to the positive power of mystery. Such suffering remains unjust and inexplicable, haphazard and cruelly excessive.’