Video Transcript: The Traditional AAA Replies

We're now going to look at some replies that Christian thinkers have made to  the argument from called the problem of evil. The argument that says if  undeserved suffering exists in the world, there can't be a good God and charge  in the world. Their argument is, even you and I could prevent undeserved  suffering. If we knew what was going to happen if we knew that somebody had  loaded up an automatic rifle and was gonna go to a shopping mall or shoot as  many people as possible, we could tackle the guy take the gun away, we, if we  can stop him, God could, God could just have the guy faint, instead of pull the  trigger. So here are the three replies. And there are more than just these three,  these are the three most frequently made in the tradition of Augustine and of  Aquinas. The first is called the soul making reply. This says, in effect, that God  permits undeserved suffering at times, because it makes people better than  they'd otherwise be. They have to cope with it, they deal with it. It makes them  more empathetic and helping others when they deal with it. In short, it's one of  the ways that God prepares a person for life in His everlasting kingdom. It  makes us better to go through this than not. There are times when that's  certainly true. There are times when, as Scripture tells us, if we live godly in  Christ Jesus, we will suffer. There are things that are going to go wrong. God  has not promised that if you love him, and you serve Him, nothing bad will ever  happen. You can't find that anywhere in Scripture. And once again, any ancient  Jews, the kingdom of Israel will just fall on the floor laughing if you told them  that. So while so making does happen, New Testament says that at times, your  tried, your faith is tried. And it will generate patience, and hope in God's  promises. That is sometimes true. But I hardly think that it's always true. It  doesn't explain all the undeserved suffering. It doesn't explain people who are  rounded up. And then mass murder is committed on them because their captors  have a program of genocide, it doesn't include making people better to see their  little children slaughtered. I think it makes people worse. In fact, it makes them  filled with anger and hate and vengeance. So while this is sometimes true, it  hardly covers all the ground. Not only that, some undeserved suffering occurs  when people are afflicted by a plague, or an epidemic, or a famine, or they're  struck by a hurricane and their house is wrecked. These we call natural evils.  natural causes naturally cause undeserved suffering. This says nothing about  that either. Those too are going to have to be treated if you're going to have a  full reply to this argument. So I don't find that the soul making argument, I don't  find it convincing at all. Let's move on a bit to the argument that says that God  allows undeserved suffering in the world in order to produce more good in the  world than would otherwise be the case. We have hurricane strikes, people's  homes are wrecked. And other people take them in. It's a chance for God's  people to show service and love toward others, by helping them out, supplying  food, donating money, going in work, work on wrecked, buildings, that kind of  thing. That it maximizes good. And the theory here is that if you took the sum 

total of all the suffering in the world, and then added that up somehow, and you  took the sum total of all the good that was created by that the good would  outweigh the suffering. But some some versions of this have that in them. Again, I have to tell you, I don't see that as convincing. Let me tell you why. Both the  soul making argument and the argument that undeserved suffering maximizes  goodness, increases the amount of goodness in the world. Both have this  objections to deal with. Why couldn't God improve your soul or increase the  goodness in the world without having people suffer? Why couldn't it just be one  of the gifts of the Holy Spirit? As you read the Word and study and pray and try  to serve God, these, your soul does improve. And you can help maximize good  in the world, whether there's undeserved suffering or not. I suppose there's  some sufferings, which are such that they'd have to occur for a certain kind of  goodness, in meeting the needs of that suffering to occur. That's true. But  largely speaking, we, it's hard to think of any reason why maximizing goodness  in the world would have to be preceded by undeserved suffering. God could,  again, create those goods use us to create those goods. Whether or not we had  to face grievous, undeserved suffering. So I don't find that these to go very far.  It's the third argument. That has arisen in the AAA tradition, that is the most  persuasive. And that's the argument from freewill. It's the argument that says,  God made us free creatures we have wills to choose, we have reasons to think  things through, we can decide our course of life, we can decide what we're  going to pursue, we also can decide, in many cases, not every case. But in  many cases, we can decide which agenda we think is the best, and we make  our judgments and we can we have the freedom to pursue them. We are  significantly free. We're not robots, but if God is going to make us with free will,  which is better than if he didn't, then there's the risk that we will use our freedom to do evil things, wicked things that will cause others undeserved suffering. And  it's hard to think how that can be otherwise. That the argument adds, if we really  had freedom than it has to be the freedom to do evil as well as good. Augustine  himself one of the Oh, it's gone, I've erased his name. Okay. Augustine himself  held, held this view, he worked out a version of the Free Will defense. And he  offered that in reply to Porphyry Porphyry. Remember, he wrote Porphyry wrote  this in 250 ad, and Augustine lived until 430. So Augustine is a century later.  Now, the freewill argument, more recently has had a version that even tried to  deal with the natural evils. If you say to some, someone well, what about the  evils that are caused by volcanic eruptions and tidal waves and all that kind of  thing? Then one prominent spokesman for the free defender of the of the freewill argument said well, why couldn't those be the result of freewill, wicked choices  of Satan? Satan is the cause of those natural disasters. When Mount St. Helens erupts there's a terrible storm that hits someplace and kills many people. So that Free Will argument has been around for quite a while. And it has a number of  defenders, some of them very able, sharp philosophers. But still I don't find that 

it works. When we return our next segment, I'm going to tell you why I think it  doesn't work and contrast to those, the Cappadocian and reformational reply.  The reply I find to be based and grounded in the book of Job in the Bible.