Worldviews and the Problem of Evil

A Comparative Approach

Ronnie P. Campbell, Jr., Ronnie P. Campbell

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781683593065
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

CHAPTER 1

UNTANGLING THE KNOT

Knots come in many shapes and sizes and perform a variety of functions, as any Boy Scout or outdoors enthusiast knows. Understanding how to tie a knot may mean the difference between life and death. Some knots unravel easily, while others need persistent focus and attention in order to untangle. Working through the problem of evil1 is much like untangling a knot that’s both challenging and delicate. It’s not merely an intellectual exercise, whereby one seeks to solve a problem, as one might do when working through a complicated math theorem or scientific theory, but a problem that affects each of us deeply and existentially.

We all experience evil in some way or another, and how one understands and responds to evil is deeply connected to one’s worldview commitments, especially those worldviews that hold to the existence of God. As John Feinberg reminds us in The Many Faces of Evil, one’s conception of God plays a significant role in how one answers the question of evil.2 For not all concepts of God are equal. Even among people within the same general worldview, there are substantial differences between their ideas of God. Take, for example, the difference among theists. Unlike Jews or Muslims, who hold to God as one person, Christians believe that God is tri-personal. But what ultimate difference does it make if God is mono-personal or tri-personal?

The problem of evil not only affects theists of every stripe, but all people who have been confronted by the tragedies and horrors of evil in the world. Each worldview3 must confront the reality and problems brought about by evil—problems that touch every tangent of our finite earthly existence. While each worldview provides an answer to such questions, not all worldview responses are on par with one another. Some worldviews provide a thicker response to the question of evil than others.4 The problem of evil raises questions related to the meaning and purpose of life. Is there any meaning to our finite existence and the suffering we experience in the world, or is this life all there is? Should we have as our motto: “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”?5 As theologian Paul Tillich reminds us, each one of us stands in between being and nonbeing. We all teeter on the edge of life and death.6 But even if this life is all that there is, can a person find meaning and purpose in the face of suffering? For a serious seeker, she must contend with the question of what constitutes a thick worldview response to evil and how such a response differs from a thin worldview response. What criteria should one use when analyzing worldview responses to evil in the world? Which worldviews are even live options in the face of evil?

Any adequate response to the problem of evil, then, must answer such questions as the ones raised above. How does Christian theism fare with such questions in comparison to other worldviews or metaphysical systems?7 Does Christianity have within it, not only the resources to present a rational explanation for why evil exists and an answer to what God is doing about evil (or, at least, why he allows it), but also the capacity to provide a response to the existential dimension of evil in the world? This book is an attempt at providing a robust response to the problem of evil from a Christian perspective. In this book I argue that, in comparison to four other broad metaphysical systems—naturalism, pantheism, process panentheism, and theism—Christianity provides a thick response, not only to the intellectual problem of evil, but also to the existential/religious problem. In addition, I argue that Christian theism provides a thicker response than other theistic worldviews. Particularly, within the central teachings of Christian theism, especially the doctrine of the Trinity, Christians have the tools for providing a robust response to the problem of evil.

This chapter is the first of eight that seek to unravel the knot we call “the problem of evil.” In this chapter I aim to do three things. First, I set my sights on clarifying key terms related to the problem of evil, especially as they bear on this book’s overarching purpose. It is common for books, such as this one, to distinguish between the various types and kinds of evil (e.g., moral, natural, and gratuitous); however, few books make the important distinction between pain and suffering.8 A key contribution of this chapter is to disambiguate the two. Other key terms considered include: the problem of evil, theodicy, and defense. Second, I aim to build a positive case for the classic Christian view that evil is the privation of the good. In recent years, the privation view of evil has fallen on hard times. Despite this, I seek to make some carefully nuanced clarifications on what Christians mean by privation in order to resuscitate this important Christian teaching. As will be discussed below, I do not expect other worldviews to adopt the privationist view of evil, though it is important to discuss in the chapter for a number of reasons. That evil is a privation of the good has been the primary Christian understanding since the early church. Yet, it is also the view most often criticized by non-theists. In their critiques, the privationist view is often misunderstood, taking privation to be primarily a metaphysical issue. In part, this chapter seeks to correct such a misunderstanding, showing that evil as privation has a moral dimension to it. Third, and finally, this chapter lays out the overall methodology and approach to this book.

EVIL, KINDS OF EVIL, AND THE GOOD

When asked to define evil, our response might be like Augustine’s about time: “If no one asks me, I know; but if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I know not.”9 Some have concluded that evil is indefinable, much like the word “person.” We know a person when we see one, even if we cannot arrive at a clear or concise definition of what constitutes personhood. Perhaps the same is true of evil? Perhaps we don’t have sufficient conditions for classifying something as evil? That doesn’t mean we have no parameters or boundaries for considering just what it means to call something evil.

Before moving on to a discussion on the nature of evil, it would be helpful to make some preliminary distinctions between different kinds of evil. Philosophers and theologians recognize that evil comes in two forms: moral evil and natural evil. Moral evils are such that the evil produced is the result of a moral agent. Murder, rape, genocide, and bio-chemical warfare are all examples of evil produced by a moral agent. Natural evils, on the other hand, refer to those evils that come about through nonhuman means. When human (or animal) life has been devastated by such natural events as hurricanes, tornadoes, or tsunamis, such is classified as natural evil. Natural evils may also come about through disease. Some philosophers even classify certain unintentional actions brought by human agents as belonging to natural evil. An example might include a child injured due to dashing out in front of an oncoming vehicle. In such a case the driver would not be held morally culpable since the action was not intentional on the part of the driver.10 It may also be helpful to consider that some evils, which appear to be a result of natural processes, are, rather, the result of moral agency. Examples of this variety include the evils of pollution or forest fires caused by humans. One final category is the notion of horrendous evils (or gratuitous evils). Horrendous evils are, as Marilyn Adams defines, “evils the participation in which (that is, the doing or suffering of which) constitutes prima facie reason to doubt whether the participant’s life could (given their inclusion in it) be a great good to him/her on the whole.”11 Such evils are “worse than others,” and include things like

the rape of a woman and axing off of her arms, psycho-physical torture whose ultimate goal is the disintegration of personality, betrayal of one’s deepest loyalties, child abuse of the sort described by Ivan Karamazov, child pornography, parental incest, slow death by starvation, the explosion of nuclear bombs over populated areas.12

Horrendous evils go beyond the physical or mental pain they cause, to the point where the individual becomes devalued and degraded, engulfing any positive value in the person’s life, to which they are organically tied.13

Classifying evils as “moral,” “natural,” or “horrendous” sheds light on thinking about evil, but such a classification does nothing by way of telling us just what evil is. How should we understand the nature of evil? Christians have generally sided with Augustine’s view that evil is privatio boni—the “absence” or “privation” of good.14 In the Enchiridion, Augustine described privatio boni as follows:

In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were present—namely, the diseases and wounds—go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance but a defect in the fleshly substance—the flesh itself being a substance, and therefore something good, of which those evils—that is, privations of the good which we call health—are accidents. Just in the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations of natural good. And when they are cured, they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else.15

As Augustine worked out his views on evil, he kept one eye on Neo-Platonic thought and the other on the narrative of Genesis. From Genesis, Augustine understood that God created all things good and that the whole, taken together, was “very good.” Evil exists in reality; however, it does not have being of its own. Much like a parasite needs its host in order to remain alive, evil, for Augustine, could not exist apart from the good.16 Working from within a Neo-Platonic framework, Augustine equated being with goodness. A thing that is a good without any evil is a “perfect good.”17 An example of such a good would be God, who is “supremely and unchangeably good.”18 Yet, because God is supremely or unchangeably good, he, unlike all created goods, is incapable of corruption. Goods that have been corrupted are “faulty” or “imperfect” goods.19 But because God created all things good, as seen in the Genesis narrative, no particular thing can exist and be completely corrupt at the same time; otherwise, it would cease to be.20

Philosopher of religion John Hick, who also stands broadly within the Christian tradition, finds Augustine’s view wanting. Hick, in Evil and the God of Love, seems to affirm the biblical teaching that God is supremely good, and that creation itself, too, is good, in a derivative way. Yet, he questions whether Augustine (and Aquinas) too readily accepts the Neo-Platonic equation of being with goodness, going beyond the simple affirmation of Scripture.21 Augustine’s defense of holding to the Neo-Platonic equation of good with being rests in his acceptance of the greater chain of being:

the claim that certain characteristics, which are necessarily present in different degrees in every existent thing—principally “measure, form, and order”—are intrinsically good. To possess these characteristics is to be a part of the continuum of entities constituting the created universe, so that to exist is, as such, to be good.22

However, says Hick, Augustine provides no philosophical arguments for accepting this principle; rather, it is a holdover from the Neo-Platonic view of reality. Further, claims Hick, “there appears to be no basis within Christian theology for affirming the intrinsic goodness of existence in any other than the biblical sense that God wills and values the world that he has created.”23 For Hick, to affirm creation’s goodness is only to affirm that it “is willed and valued by God.”24 But such an affirmation, says Hick, “does not entail any metaphysical doctrine of the identity of being and goodness; nor does there appear to be any adequate reason to adopt such a doctrine.”25

So how ought we to think of evil? Hick believes that one must distinguish between the theological insight that “evil is the going wrong of something good,” which he thinks follows from the Christian teaching on God and creation, and evil as “nothingness or nonbeing.”26 Augustine’s approach inadequately captures evil’s true nature in light of human experience. Hick doesn’t doubt evil’s reality. It is both a “positive” and “powerful” element of human experience. “Empirically,” says Hick, “it is not merely the absence of something else but a reality with its own distinctive and often terrifying quality of power.”27 It takes little reflection to see the limitations and inadequacy of the privation understanding of evil as an empirical description. Hick argues,

What we call evil in nature can, it is true, often be regarded as consisting in the corruption or perversion or disintegration of something which, apart from such disruption, is good.… Volcanic eruptions, droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, and planetary collisions can perhaps likewise be regarded as breakdowns in some imagined ideal ordering of nature. In all such cases the evil state of affairs can plausibly be seen as the collapse of a good state of affairs, and as tending toward non-existence, at least in the relative sense of the dissolution...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Untangling the Knot
• Chapter 2: Naturalism—Evil in a World without God
• Chapter 3: Pantheism—Evil in a World Identical to God
• Chapter 4: Panentheism—Evil in a World Experienced by God
• Chapter 5: Theism—Evil in a World Created by God
• Chapter 6: A God Who Loves
• Chapter 7: A God Who Acts
• Chapter 8: A God Who Defeats Evil
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Subject Index