God, why is there evil?

Many Christians and non-Christians alike are troubled by evil in the world. For the former it is a testimony of God's mercy and sovereignty. But for the latter it is viewed as supposedly a disproof of God's existence.

The problem can be stated in different ways but in the end it reduces to questioning God's reasons for providentially planning and sustaining the existence of evil. The question why does God allow evil and suffering in the world, I think is a difficult question. Here are some plausible answers:

1. God has a morally sufficient reason for why he allows evil to exist. To argue he doesn't cannot be shown by limited human knowledge.
2. It is for a greater good. We do not see the big picture of all the events that occur but God is orchestrating them for ultimate good. For example, Jesus died by the hands of wicked men so those that repent and trust in Him may have everlasting life.
3. God created laws of nature. If God intervened every time evil or suffering occurred what would stop people from demanding God to intervene for everything at every time? It doesn't sound like atheists want evil and suffering to stop, it sounds like they want heaven on earth.
4. God uses evil and suffering to build our character.
5. God gave humans originally the freedom of choice. God did not force Adam and Eve to love and obey him. He gave them the ability to choose good or evil.
 6. If God removed evil from the world, like rape, God to be fair would be obligated to punish not just some but all evil and suffering. Everyone would cease to exist because all evil and suffering is the results of sin. Everyone is guilty not innocent so all would cease to exist if God chose to destroy evil now instead of deal with it through the cross of Christ.
7. God created all things, rules all things, controls all things, and owns all things. This means God has the right to do whatever he wants with his property (i.e. creation). Or as Romans 9 puts it, the potter has power over the clay to do whatever he wills with it.

 Ultimately I think it all comes down to what we put our trust in. Are we going to trust God’s infinite knowledge and wisdom or man’s limited knowledge?

 Miscellaneous Videos Dealing with Evil from various Theological Traditions:

Gregory E. Ganssle

Voddie Baucham

Tim Keller

The Free will Defense

What is Evil?

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The Problem of Suffering and Evil. William Lane Craig (Part 1, 2 and 3)

JP Moreland Q&A

Timothy Keller

 Alvin Plantinga

Greg Koukl

Richard Swinburne          

Ravi Zacharias 

Bruce Little

Resources 

William Downing. The Problem of Evil. HERE


John Byl. God, Chance and Evil. HERE 

Greg Bahnsen. The Problem of Evil. Covenant Media Foundation. HERE

Greg Koukl. The Strength of God and the Problem of Evil. Stand To Reason.HERE and HERE

Scott K. Oliphint. HERE

E. Calvin Beisner. The Potter’s Freedom. HERE

John Frame HERE

Greg Welty HERE

Cornelius Van Til HERE

Vincent Cheung HERE

Bruce Little. Evil and The God Who Knows HERE

William M. Schweitzer, Rethinking the 'Problem of Evil' in The Banner Of Truth Magazine, May 2013, Issue 596 (Banner Trust: Edinburgh, 2013)p.25.

Czapkay Suddeth, Michael. Absolute Predestination and Divine Permission.1989. p.p.66-75.

Paul Copan. "If God's Creation Was 'Very Good', How Could Evil Arise?"
http://enrichmentjournal.ag.org/201301/201301_024_good_creation.cfm

Logical Contradictions?

Divine Determinism and Human Freedom

Is God’s providence and man’s freedom incoherent? Most Christians would say no! Why, because there is a few different logically plausible models to account for Biblical teaching on the subject. Both models would affirm determinism and freedom are not incoherent ideas; however the models would disagree on the compatibility of determinism and freedom. One model, call it Arminian, argues determinism and freedom are incompatible. So the Arminian model affirms God guides human actions to accomplish His plans without violating human freedom. God knows everything including what humans will do in any situation. So God puts people in situations were He knows they will freely choose to do what is His plan. However, the Armianiam model stresses the fact that God must work with what He gets. There are many different ways God could have arranged the world but there was no logical possibility to save the most free creatures possible without the possibility of some freely choosing to sin. So there was risk on the part of God from the Arminian model.

The second model, call it the Calvinist model, argues determinism and freedom are compatible. The compatibility lies in the nature of freedom. The Calvinist model defines freedom as a creature’s ability to choose to will an act, without constraint, by his/hers desires, with a will he/she desires. Such a view of freedom is perfectly consistent with determinism so long as one can know any creature’s desires. Imagine there were two people Bill and Shawn. Suppose that Bill put a device in Shawn’s brain that enabled Bill to control Shawn’s actions with a remote.  Lets say that Bill has determined Shawn will kill the President Barack Obama by pressing a button on the remote. But suppose further that Shawn already wants to kill the President without Bill having to use the remote, and Shawn kills the President. We would say Shawn didn’t have the ability to do otherwise than kill the President and yet we would say Shawn was morally responsible for his actions. This is due to the fact that Shawn did what he desired to do with the will he wanted. Now the question arises, how can one know in advance a free creature’s desires? Well, different factors can influence one’s desires, like genetics, parents, cultures, and friends; but the one thing the person has control over is his identity with those desires. For example, a person wanting to loose weight can either identify himself with food or identify himself with loosing weight. By difficult training one can train to have a stronger desire to loose weight than eat fat producing foods. God being omniscient knows what factors would influence an agent to cause him/her to choose one thing over another. Notice, I said "cause" an agent. Thus there are necessary and sufficient conditions for any agent's actions. To summarize then, God determines all things that come to pass in such a way that man freely determines what he most wants to do.   

    

The Incarnation

JP Moreland and William Lane Craig give an interesting model of how Christians can defend the coherence of the incarnation. They argue if God intrinsically possesses all attributes that are required to be a human person then all that is needed for a genuine incarnation is a body. If the Divine Logos takes upon flesh that is sufficient for a legitimate incarnation. This view would sail smoothly away from Nestorianism. Since it does not make a "human soul" a necessary condition for being human. Or even if it does, the condition is all ready met in God's nature.

On such a model the mind of Christ being the divine Logos makes it difficult to explain the human character and experiences of Christ. The problem is solved, according to Moreland and Craig, by distinguishing Christ's consciousness and subconsciousness. If the divine thoughts are in the subconsciousness of Christ, then it can makes sense to say Jesus went through human experiences; he learned, cried, and suffered.

The Trinity

The Trinity is not contradictory since we are saying God is one in one sense and three in another sense. God is one in essence and three in personhood. God is one what and three who’s. In a more precise way, God is one incorporeal Spirit with three sets of cognitive faculties comprised of intellect, will and emotions. Another way to put it is God has three centers of self-consciousness.      

Are there any other evidences that testify to God being Triune apart from Scripture? Well one way to see the plausibility of the Trinity is to think of the attribute love. What is love? It is an action, right? It is the act of giving one’s self to another. It is “otherness” instead of self-centeredness. A thought experiment would help here. Imagine if God did not choose to create the world. Would we still say God is all-loving before creation? How so? God had no one to love prior to creation. God was always loving. Since as Scripture says God is love (1 John 4:8). This requires God to love another prior to creation. To say one can love without someone to love is meaningless. The very concept of love requires another person to love. And it is unbiblical to think God created love. Thus we are left with the plausible conclusion that God as one being exists in three persons: the Father Son and Holy Spirit; and that they love each before the creation of anything. 

Omnipotence

God can only do what is consistent with His character and nature. So can God do anything? Obviously not! He cannot stop willing His own existence. Nor can God stop being omnipotent and still be God. God cannot lie, or sin. Does this make God no longer omnipotent? No! The contradiction lies with the objector not defining omnipotence from faithful Biblical teaching.

  

Calvinism and Molinism

 Greg Koukl gives a great explanation on why Christians ought not to take up middle knowledge as articulated by William Lane Craig.

My Experience at Thrive Apologetics Conference

What happens when you get a local mega-church and some of the top ranked apologists together? You get the Thrive apologetics conference with about 3000 people attending. I went to this conference in my local area primarily to hang out with a friend and be encouraged by the conference. It was a two day conference and I could only attend the 2nd day.

The first lecture I went too was entitled, " A House Needs a Floor: Foundationalism and Postmodernity." The apologists lecturing were Dr. Scott Smith of Biola and Dr. Holly Ordway of Houston Baptist University. The lecture outline prima facie gave me the impression the lecture was going to center on Alvin Plantinga's contributions to foundationalism and its immunities to postmodernism. Instead, the lecture was like a roundtable discussion of foundationalism (of the Reidian sort), and postmodernism's backlash to modernism. The discussion was interesting until I heard Dr. Smith speak of worldviews and presuppositions.

He stated the common analogy of a worldview is the glasses one wears to see the world a certain way. The presuppositions one espouses comprises his or her worldview. Presuppositions are what one uses to interpret reality. So far so good, but then Dr. Smith says we can change our worldview.  One can choose to take his/her glasses off and put on a different pair since his/her original glasses are not cemented on. He stressed that we can judge presuppositions which use to interpret reality by facts. Thus, he says, one can have direct acquaintance with reality without requiring mediatory presuppositions to interpret reality. His proof for such a view was an appeal to human experience. It got worse, he said if what he was arguing wasn't true, then we would be left with everyone having different presuppositions comprising different worldviews with no objective standard to justify one worldview over another. All worldviews would be incommensurable. Ultimately, such a view, in Dr Smith's estimation, leaves worldviews at a mexican stand off. He thinks such a view entails fideism so he opts for his view. After I heard all this, I wanted to ask Dr. Smith one question, "If there are presuppositions (e.g. logic, induction, knowledge, and truth) that can only be justified by the Christian worldview then doesn't that give us an argument against all non-christian worldviews?" Due to time constraints I didn't get to ask Dr. Scott my question. But if I am correct then Dr. Scott has no good reason to accept his view. Yet assuming he is right, how could one rightly evaluate facts apart from presuppostions? It sounds like this view entails autonomy? What makes facts the ultimate standard that ought to judge presuppositions? Further, if one doesn't know all facts, how can one properly understand a fact apart from all facts? Dr. Smith says we can have knowledge directly by acquaintance with reality, but how? If Dr. Smith is an empiricist, knowledge is conveyed "through" the 5 senses. So how can knowledge be "directly" acquaintanced? What bridges the gap from the subject to the object in Dr. Smith's model? It seems we are left with the Ding an sich of Kant?

We all have presuppositions (or ultimate beliefs) that come about by experience. But there are certain presuppositions that all man possess. We must acknowledge God's revelation as the ultimate authority over presuppositions and it alone must be the standard our presuppositions ought to conform too. We are made in God's image and so we can know truths by our 5 senses. We all know the Triune God and His law (though men are habitually suppressing this knowledge as Rom 1:16-23, and 2:12 states).  In fact we presuppose many things, taken for granted, because we are made in the image of God living in His world ( i.e. rationality, knowledge, morality, and the regularity of nature).