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The Problem of Evil and the Activity of God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Ian Walker
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Abstract

The Problem of evil, from Epicurus via Philo of Alexandria to today, has usually been presented in more or less the same way. We are generally offered three, sometimes more, propositions:

  1. 1 God is omnipotent

  2. 2 God is good/loving

  3. 3 Evil/suffering exists

and the suggestion is that these three propositions, although all believed by many religious believers to be true, are mutually contradictory. These are held to be contradictory because, ‘if God exists, then being omniscient, he knows under what circumstances evil will occur, if he does not act; and being omnipotent he is able to prevent its occurrence. Hence, being perfectly good, he will prevent its occurrence and so evil will not exist’. Professor Plantinga sees the problem in much the same kind of way: .. five propositions . . . essential to traditional theism: a) that God exists, b) that God is omnipotent, c) that God is omniscient, d) that God is wholly good, and e) that evil exists . . . each of these propositions is indeed an essential feature of orthodox theism. And it is just these five propositions whose conjunction is said ... to be self-contradictory’. These writers are not unrepresentative of the vast numbers of philosophers who see, and try to solve, the problem in these terms.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 63 , Issue 739 , January 1982 , pp. 25 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 'The Problem of Evil' by R. Swinburne, p 81 in Reason and Religion, ed. S. C. Brown, Cornell Univ. Press, 1977.

2 'The Freewill Defence', pp 105-106 in The Philosophy of Religion, ed. B. Mitchell, OUP, 1971.

3 Op. cit. A. Plantinga, p 106.

4 Op. cit. p 85.

5 I have considered the notions of miracles as violations and as coincidences in two papers: 'Miracles and Violations', International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol XII, No 4, and 'Miracles and Coincidences', Sophia, (forthcoming).

6 'Theology and Falsification', pp 98-99 in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. A. Flew and A. MacIntyre, SCM, 1955.

7 'The Miraculous', in Religion and Understanding, ed. D. Z. Phillips, Blackwell, 1967 pp 155-170.

8 Op. cit. pp 156-156.

9 This part of my argument is, as is much of my thought on this subject, largely dependent on my teacher's, D. Z. Phillips's writings and personal teaching. See, especially in relation to the story of Job, The Concept of Prayer, pp 98 ff, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965, and 'The Problem of Evil', in Reason and Religion, op. cit.