Part 3 - The Problem of Evil

CHRISTIAN PHILOSPHERS
Plutarch may be one of the earliest philosophers to deal with Theodicy. Philip Schaff said of Plutarch, “He enjoins first modesty and caution in view of our imperfect knowledge.”[1]
Plutarch offered five considerations when dealing with questions of Theodicy. They are listed as follows:
1. God teaches us to moderate our anger, and never to punish with passion, but to imitate his gentleness and forbearance.
2. He gives the wicked an opportunity to repent and refrain.
3. He permits them to live and prosper that he may use them as executioners of His justice on others.
4. The wicked are sometimes spared that they may bless the world by noble posterity.
5. Punishment is deferred. Death is a good thing for the good soul. [2]

These ideas are built out of a heart who believed in the God of the Bible, but I
think Plutarch leads the way in a perspective of man as lower than God. A major difference between Christian and secular philosophy is the view of God in comparison with man.
In Christian perspectives, God himself is not measured against man’s view of Him, but rather in light of His character and His revelation of Himself. Thomas Aquinas illustrates that philosophical perspective. “The analysis of evil in Thomas Aquinas may well be the most extensive undertaken.”[3] His view of Theodicy is most often referred to as “The Greatest Way” defense. Essentially this defense states that pain is necessary for perfection. “This world of evil is producing a new life in eternity apart from evil, therefore evil is the best way.”[4]
Gottfried von Leibniz is often compared against Thomas Aquinas. His defense is referred to as “The Greatest World” defense. He states, “God is the best of all possible beings. The best of all possible beings cannot do less than His best. God’s nature, as best, demands that He make the best world possible (if He wills to make one). This world is the world God made. Therefore, this is the best possible world.”[5]
These views expressed by very thoughtful men, show that even among Christian thought there are missing elements. Thomas Aquinas would need to answer whether or not God willed evil. The question of willing evil is significant in determining its essence and nature. Leibniz comes up short in light of original sin. We cannot know what the world was like before creation, but Genesis records significant changes in the earth because of the curse. This world is not the world God created; it is only what was left after the collapse.
St. Augustine viewed evil as an “ugly piece in a mosaic of beauty. All evil even ‘the flames of hell’ are part of ultimate good.”[6] Augustine viewed evil as a privation. That is, evil does not have essence, but is a result of a lack of good. In this way Augustine saw “Evil as an ontological parasite”[7]
More recently, Alvin Plantinga released his “Free Will Defense”. William Placher states, “The idea that God does some things but not others forces theologians in a secular age into defensive efforts to find some things for God still to do and negotiations between too much limit on God’s power and too much limit on human freedom.”[8] Alvin Plantinga set out his “Free Will Defense” without an acknowledgement of the issue of whether or not God wills evil. Instead he discusses God permitting evil. He said, “The Free Will Defense can be looked upon as an effort to show that there may be a very different kind of good that God can’t bring about without permitting evil. These are good state of affairs that don’t include evil; they do not entail the existence of any evil whatever, nonetheless God Himself can’t bring them about without permitting evil.”[9]
Plantinga doesn’t credit God with causing evil or willing it but does count evil as necessary. “John Hick proposes that a world without pain [a result of evil] would lack the stimuli in hunting, agriculture, building, social organizations, and the development of the sciences and technologies which have been an essential force of human civilization and culture.”[10]


[1] Philip Schaff, History Of The Christian Church.( Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Parsons
Technology, 1999).

[2] Ibid.
[3] Theodore Plantinga, Learning To Live With Evil.(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 50.

[4] Geisler, 43.

[5] Ibid, 44.

[6] Ibid, 44.

[7] Ibid, 46.

[8] William C. Placher, The Domestication of Transcendance: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong. (Lousville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 202.

[9] A. Plantinga, 29.

[10] Placher, 204