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Is God Dead?
The existence of evil and suffering in the world is a complex and far-reaching reality. Consequently, understanding God’s role in the existence of evil is critically important in helping us ultimately to answer the question: is God dead? For we can safely conclude that if God is dead, or if He never existed in the first place, then the problem of evil and suffering goes away in the sense that it has no Causal Agent for us to place blame upon–evil just is. It is not that the evil and the suffering itself go away, but the logical problem of why a loving God would allow it to go away. But it really is not that easy. We have now been arguing for well over a year that not only does God indeed exist and is alive, but in recent weeks, we have argued that He has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil (both moral and natural) and suffering to exist in the world that He created. However, even though we have presented a brief Free Will Defense as an integral part of that argument, there is what seems to be inexplicable evil and suffering in the world all the same. Moreover, human or angelic free will alone does not fully explain God’s relation to that suffering.
There are, in fact, other possible reasons that God is morally justified in allowing evil and suffering to exist. Christian philosopher Elenore Stump sums up the Christian stance quite well. Stump writes, “There is no a priori reason for thinking that there should be just one morally sufficient reason for God’s allowing the whole panoply of sentient suffering or that a solution to the problem of suffering must be based on only one kind of benefit defeating suffering. And so, it need not be the case that justification for God’s al lowing suffering of mentally fully functional human adults applies to all other cases of suffering as well.” I agree with Stump here. There are, no doubt, a multitude of morally sufficient reasons why God allows evil and suffering to exist, with no blanket answer that sufficiently satisfies the question for all cases of evil.
As it turns out, there are actually two avenues down which answers to the question of God allowing evil are found. As we have seen, the first involves philosophical reasoning about the question of evil. The Free Will Defense is an excellent example of a classic philosophical approach in which the main objective is to show no contradiction in the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving God and the reality of evil and suffering. As such, the Free Will Defense does not attempt to explain why God would allow evil; instead, it is that there is no contradiction in the simultaneous existence of God and evil in the world. The second avenue is much more direct and actually does provide non-abstract reasons why God may allow evil to exist. To better understand these potential reasons, perhaps it is a good idea to establish the Christian view of why God may allow evil to exist. By “Christian view,” I mean the various theological reasons given in the Christian Bible for God’s allowance of evil. Supposing the Bible is God’s special revelation of Himself to mankind, then it is only wise to extract from God’s revelation what He has possibly revealed to man concerning the existence of evil and suffering.
At this point, the Bible skeptic raises his head again in protest; I can understand that. Even so, one finds that the principles of why God possibly allows evil to exist found in the Bible are the same general principles that have been present in secular society throughout the history of mankind. The discipline of a child by a loving parent is a perfect example. The painful consequences of an evil action becoming a future deterrent is another— it seems pain is a universal teacher of both Christians and nonbelievers alike. At any rate, within the Christian motif, there are at least five possible reasons for God allowing evil to exist, which can be extracted from the biblical text. First, the biblical text is quite clear that God allows evil to exist as a form of punishment for sin. Second, some evil comes about as a result of the consequences of other’s sin. Third, some evil comes about as a result of the consequences of the sins of spiritual beings. Fourth, the biblical text indicates that God allows evil to exist as a pathway to redemption. And fifth, the biblical text indicates that some evil is beyond our finite human ability to understand.
Join us over the next several weeks as we look deeper into each of these biblical reasons why God may allow evil to exist in the world.
Gloria in excelsis Deo!
Ty B. Kerley, DMin., is an ordained minister who teaches Christian apologetics and relief preaches in Southern Oklahoma. Dr. Kerley and his wife, Vicki, are members of the Waurika church of Christ, and live in Ardmore, OK. You can contact him at dr. kerley@ isGoddead. com.
