Video Transcript: Lesson 22

Dr. Clouser - The first thing we need to understand is that evil as it's used. Here  is an old timey use of the word evil that we don't use anymore. So it does this  does not mean the problem of why people do wicked things. It means the  problem of why is there undeserved suffering in the world, if God's in charge.  The argument was given its classic form in a book that was published around  250 ad by a man whose pen name was Porphyry. We don't know his real name,  and it's a book called against the Christians, and it contains this following  argument. First of all, God, by definition, Porphyry says, is the being with all  perfections and only perfections that being true. He says, If God is all good but  perfectly good, do that perfectly, then God would not want there To be any  undeserved suffering in his world. If God is all powerful, or perfectly powerful, he could stop or prevent, let's see. Say he could prevent all undeserved suffering,  but undeserved Suffering exists, therefore God is either not perfectly Good, or  not all powerful, therefore, God As defined in line one doesn't exist. I hope that  those premises to the argument are fairly clear, but let's just reflect on them a  little bit make sure that they are clear to you. The first premise probably doesn't  need any explanation. God has all the perfections, including the greatest  possible power, the greatest possible goodness he holds, all His attributes in the infinite mode. This is fairly old stuff in theology. I'm not saying it's all correct. I'm  going to have some things to say about that and why that's not quite right. But  anyway, that's the definition that Porphyry heard Christians using, I mean other  prominent writers, Christian writers and and so it's what inspired the argument.  Premise two, if God is perfectly good, God would not want there to be any  undeserved suffering. That seems to me as part of what we normally mean by a  good person. And I can illustrate this in a way I used to do with my own  students. Suppose I'm at a resort. I'm on vacation. I'm sitting by the pool. I have  a nice crossword puzzle I'm working on. I have a good cigar and a nice scotch,  and I'm enjoying my afternoon, and I hear a splash at the other end of the pool  where a two year old has fallen in. Is drowning, but I don't bother to get up and  help. I ring for the pool boy to scoop his body out with a net and go right on with  my crossword puzzle. Would you call me good? And my students, I have to  remind them not to tell me what they would call me just would you call me good? And they say no. And I so then I ask, Well, suppose I'm not there, and the two  year old wanders out and falls in the pool. God could pull him out, but God does  and he doesn't. So why do you call God good if I wouldn't be good if I didn't  rescue the kid? How could God be good if he doesn't rescue the kid. It's easier  for God to rescue him than it is for me. I mean, it takes me effort. I might slip and fall on the way over, but no, there's no sweat on  

Bob Zomermaand - it's kind of like when, when in an earlier session, you were  holding up that Bible with your hand, and you said, now if I take my hand away  in the Bible, and Bible stays floating there, that's God holding it up, yeah, 

because God can do that. He could, if you want. Yes, is that what you're saying? If I remember, right?  

Dr. Clouser - Yeah, I did. I was making a different point, but that's right. So he  could hold up that toddler, if he if easily, yeah, and look, Scripture gives us  records incidents where God did stuff like that. The prophet Daniel gets thrown  to the lions, and God sends an angel and stops their mouths, and the lions don't  eat it. But then a lot of other times it's it's quite the reverse. The prophet Isaiah is arrested, and God doesn't rescue him and he gets sawed up. That's how they  killed him. That's pretty gruesome. So, yeah, but God would, shouldn't we think,  if he's really good, he wouldn't want any undeserved suffering? No, of course,  we're not talking about deserved suffer, right? Okay, just undeserved. And if you  think there isn't any ask yourself, have you ever suffered undeservedly? And I'll  bet every one of you has to say, Yes, we all know what it's like to be accused of  doing something we didn't do, and whatever results from that is undeserved  suffering. Three, if God is all powerful, he could prevent any undeserved  suffering that doesn't seem to need any explanation, either. If you've got the  power to look if you buy an automatic rifle and go to a mall or shoot as many  people as possible and I tackle you and take the gun away, I've prevented the  undeserved suffering. I haven't taken away your free will or anything like that. I  prevented those people from suffering. So we God could do the same thing,  right? And he doesn't. So number four, undeserved suffering exists, all right?  Yeah. And therefore it follows that if, if God is, that God is either not perfectly  good or not all powerful, in which case God is defined in line one does not exist.  For those of you who have had a course in logic, let me tell you that if you  formulate these in logical symbols, the conclusions do follow. This is a valid  argument. That means, if the premises are true, the conclusion must also be  true. That's what a valid argument is. So what I did, what do you do with this?  

Bob Zomermaand - Yeah, can I just ask you to give us a little bit of a definition of undeserved suffering?  

Dr. Clouser - Okay, well, I gave one example. Yeah, I think any suffering that  results from you being held responsible for something you didn't do is  undeserved suffering, and there are a lot of other kinds of it. And I'm not getting  too fine with this, because it's true that we're all sinful, and there are things that  we maybe we deserve more of the suffering we we wreak upon ourselves then  we admit to ourselves. But I don't want to have to sort all that out for this course. All there has to be is any instance, yeah, where somebody suffered, God could  have prevented it. It means you realize this. What this argument means, though, is that if one kid ever tripped and skinned her knee, God doesn't exist. It's pretty  wild. There isn't any Jew, any Christian, any Muslim, will ever believe that. Okay,

so something's wrong here. The question is, what's wrong? And my point just  now was it's not the logic of the argument. It's not an invalid argument. In an  invalid argument, the premises don't require the conclusion, and there's a way to construct a proof of that. Sorry, the conclusion doesn't follow, but here it does  both of them, 5 follows from 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 follows from 5. Okay, yeah. Now we have a really good start is as an answer to this, the fact that one book of the  Bible is devoted to this subject, it's the book of Job. And we're going to come to  that. We're going to see what Job has to say about this and how it how it treats  the argument and whether it really defeats it. Before we do that, I want to go  through the three ways that people, at least in the Western Church, have tried to answer this. The first reply is that God allows undeserved suffering because it  makes people better if they deal with it and overcome it, and it makes them,  therefore more fit for the kingdom of God. This is called the soul making  defense. It makes us enriches our soul. It makes us better believers in some  ways, it's hard to know where to start with that one. When you when you  confront genocide and people are being slaughtered by the millions, how does  that make you better? It makes it they seriously stand there and tell you that it  makes somebody better to be put in a concentration camp and watch children  hanged and your and your fellow inmates starved to death. How does that make you better? It seems to me, for most people, it makes them worse because it  makes them filled with vengeance and hate for the people that are unspeakably  wicked in doing this stuff. The second defense is called the greater good  defense God allows undeserved suffering in the world because, as a  consequence, it produces more good in the world than would otherwise be  there. And of course, the implication is the good outweighs the undeserved  suffering. Once again, you take a case of a little child being raped and killed.  How does that create more good in the world? I'm lost. I'm at a loss for words or  an instance like Sophie's Choice, a terrible choice of one of your kids is going to  die, you pick which one, good lord, yeah, and I don't see that that makes  anybody's soul better for having to go through it. And I don't see that it creates  more good in the world than there would otherwise be. Okay, the Free Will  defense is the one of the oldest. It was advanced by St Augustine. Augustine  lived in the next century. He was born in the three hundreds and died in 430 and he says that because God gave people free will, because people are not robots, they really have freedom. They can freely choose evil, to do something evil as  well as to do something good that means morally evil. In this way we use the  word evil. It doesn't mean undeserved suffering. Now, so what he's saying is that people have the freedom to do wicked things that cause others to suffer. Two  different meanings to the same word, okay, okay, so, and that's the that's the  explanation. It's better for God to have made us with free will, but then that  carries with it the risks that people will do evil and they do and others suffer  because people do evil. Of course, that doesn't explain the suffering that people 

endure because there's an epidemic or a hurricane or a volcanic  

Bob Zomermaand - there's so many things that don't necessarily fit into them  because it's not a person, a human being, causing okay, but is that what they  are?  

Dr. Clouser - That's one comeback. But the philosopher of religion, Alvin  Plantinga has a reply to that. He says that the so called natural evils, like the  hurricanes and the epidemics are caused by Satan, so they still are the result of  an evil free will choice. Okay, okay, so that's how he did for spiritual it's a spirit  that that moves among us, yeah, and that's, and that's his way of covering that  second kind, okay, of undeserved suffering. So we usually talk about  undeserved suffering resulting from others doing wicked things, and natural  evils, natural disasters caused, and he wants to say, caused by Satan, and then  that makes them all caused by evil, Free Will choices. I have my reservations  about that one too. I don't think that any of these work, and I can tell you why  very briefly, even if the soul making defense is correct and it makes some  people better go through undeserved suffering and makes them more  empathetic to others and so on. God could have made them more empathetic.  He could have made that soul. Better without having suffer undeservedly. 

Bob Zomermaand - Well, yeah, what I was thinking in terms of that is, well, if  God is is perfectly good, then he would be able to fix you, fix you in terms of  your sure you're needing to be made more perfect.  

Dr. Clouser - Whatever it is that my soul lacks, yeah, could have been given to  me as a gift of the Spirit. It could have been given to Me in conjunction with the  study of Scripture and prayer or something like that. It doesn't have to come  from undeserved suffering. And so how does it excuse it? See, that's what's  really what this really says is God's responsible for this stuff, and there's no way  to excuse him for it. So he's not really all good, or he can't, or he wants to stop  it, but he can't,  

Bob Zomermaand - yeah, therefore God is divine, defined in line, one can exist.  Can't exist. That's really, that's right. That's right, he can't. Now, one of the things that I, I see regularly on my Facebook page, yeah, is I'm a better person for this. Yes, many people say but, and now I'm a better person.  

Dr. Clouser - Yeah, I just granted that. I said there are times when that does  happen. There are cases in which people go through the undeserved suffering  and they are better for having them, but, but there's a lot of undeserved suffering that doesn't make people better, it makes them worse, and whatever the better 

is could have been accomplished by God without making him suffer. Yeah? So if God can make improve your soul as a gift of the Spirit, and decides to make you suffer instead, that doesn't sound good. It sounds like somebody enjoys torturing somebody else.  

Bob Zomermaand - Yeah, you know, if, if one of the fruits of the Spirit is  patience, maybe it would be nicer if the Spirit gave me that fruit rather than  going through five years of really terrible struggle. Yeah, right, yeah. Okay, that's how you're  

Dr. Clouser - Yes, that's my objection. Okay, the same objection holds for the  greater good they God allows this or that undeserved suffering because  eventually it produces more good in the world than it would would otherwise be  the case. Well, I think that sometimes that does happen, sometimes and other  times it horrendously does not. Yeah, as in cases of horrific crimes committed  against children and genocide. And I mean, think of the Holocaust, terrible stuff.  How does that produce more good in the world? Well, if somebody can convince themselves That's true, that's one thing, but that my point against the first  defense also applies to this. Whatever is the greater good produced by  undeserved suffering. God could have produced some other way. He's all  powerful. So it this does not excuse it. Okay, so we bring 

Bob Zomermaand - so you're talking about excusing the Yes, undeserved  suffering. Yeah, yes, okay,  

Dr. Clouser - removing the accusation from God