Positions
Several different belief systems have attempted to solve the problem of evil. Christian-Scientists, Buddhists, and Christians have all weighed in and given answer to this problem. Christian-Scientists deny the reality of evil, while Buddhists have completely removed God from the equation.[i] Several Christians from different denominations and time periods have submitted very different answers, including the privation theory, the greater good position, and the free will defense.[ii]
In order to dismiss the apparent contradiction, Christian-Scientists and Buddhists challenge the validity of different pieces of the question. Christian-Scientists, such as their founder Mary Baker Eddy, claim that evil does not exist.[iii] She claims that what God created was good, and thus He did not create evil. Therefore, evil is an illusion and is reduced to only erroneous ideas.[iv]
Buddhists challenge God’s omnipotence, claiming that evil in the world is directly related to our karma or deeds.[v] In their view, God is not involved and He is not able to change the circumstances in which a person might find themselves. This very closely resembles the thinking of the disciples in John 9 when they ask, “Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” Their assumption was that blindness had to be a result of someone’s deeds. One way, therefore, to solve the problem of evil is to simply deny the soundness of one of the four truths stated in the problem and thereby reject the existence of the God of the Bible and the reality in which humans exist.
Similarly, some Christians argue that evil exists, but only as privation. While supporters of this position such as Etienne Gilson and Augustine will defend the existence of evil, they will also reduce evil to a mere defect or lack of goodness.[vi] According to Gilson, humans and angels have the ability to fight against this tendency to return to their original lack-of-goodness state and refrain from evil since it exists only through the will.[vii] God is not responsible for evil in this view because He passively permits and does not actively cause it.[viii] Gilson claims that God cannot keep people from regressing back into nothingness because evil is the result of the will of the created sentient, not the will of God.[ix] Similar to Christian-Science, this view describes evil as an almost non-being and casts the burden on human defect.
Others, however, have sought to answer the problem of evil as it is, without dismissing the reality of evil, and also affirming the other three attributes of God. One of these views is known as the greater good defense. In this perspective, “the presence or at least the possibility of evil in the world is good, when seen from a broader perspective.”[x] The greater good defense claims that God brings good out of evil, and so He permits it that He might bring out a greater good. This view varies somewhat in its specifics, but the most commonly held position is that of the free will defense. Proponents of this position, such as Richard Swinburne and S. Paul Schilling, claim that God has granted humans the power to choose to do good or evil, and that God has taken a calculated risk in order to gain satisfaction when good is done freely.[xi] God, they argue, “thinks the higher goods so worthwhile that he is prepared to ask a lot of man in the way of enduring evil.”[xii] In view of the incarnation, the free will defense claims that God joined humanity in the struggle, that He might share the “burden of suffering.”[xiii] God cannot cause nor can He prompt humans to transgress the laws which He has established in order to accomplish His will.[xiv]
In another perspective, John Frame refines the greater good defense and concludes differently. He claims that the greater good should be viewed “not as greater pleasure or comfort for us, but as greater glory for God.”[xv] The broader perspective with which we must view circumstances must include all of human history, from the beginning of time to Christ’s return. Human perspective from only the current time period may not be sufficient to understand the greater good of God’s purposes. Frame also notes that God may not always accomplish His purposes in the way humans think He ought, and the attempts to understand His ways must be surrounded with and preceded by faith in His power, wisdom, and goodness.[xvi]
[iii]Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, (Boston, MA: The First church of Christ, Scientist, 1994), 470.
[v]Buddhism in Translation, Vol. III of Harvard Oriental Series. Edited by Charles Rockwell Lanman. Translated by Henry Clarke Warren (Cambridgeg, MA: Harvard University Press, 1896), 209.
[xi]Richard Swinburne, “The Problem of Evil,” in Contemorary Phiosophy of Religion, ed. Steven M. Cahn and David Shatz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 6.
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