Video Transcript: The Problem of Evil Stated and Introduced
We continue now with the contrast between what I call the CR, theology and the AAA, the A A A theology. And these lead to a number of other differences. The chief one of us for us is that one of them supports the idea of a Christian philosophy and the other puts a roadblock in its way and makes it impossible. Before we get to that, however, there's another problem that I think we need to deal with, in order to set it aside, and that's the argument called the problem of evil. Now, the first thing to understand is that this is an old timey use of the word evil. It means evil in a sense, we don't use it anymore. The problem of evil is not the question. Why are people wicked? Sometimes? That's not a problem is more precisely stated this way? Why is there undeserved suffering in the world? If God can stop it? And the argument is going to be that if God is really all good, he'd want to stop the evil. That is the undeserved suffering. And if he was all powerful, or anything close to that he could stop undeserved suffering. And yet undeserved suffering is everywhere. And it's tragic, and it's severe. So how can you stand there and tell me, a good and powerful God created this world? And now stands by and lets undeserved suffering run rampant through it? That's the problem. That's the subject of a book, that appeared around the year 250. 250 years after Christ. And in that book called against the Christians, a pagan writer named Porphyry, his pen name, we don't know his real name, stated this argument in just this way. And needless to say, the Cappadocean and reformational reply to this is not the same as the AAA theologies reply. So what I intend to do now is state the, the argument that Porphyry gave rephrase it.State it as a logical argument, and I hope that you'll be able to see that is a valid argument if the premises are true, that conclusion must also be true. And then we will review the different replies that have been offered to this great challenge. This is, I think, the best argument against the existence of God. It's the best argument that an atheist can produce. And so it's important to show I think, why and how it fails. First of all, you'll notice that it starts, God is by definition, it starts with a piece of AAA theology, God is by definition, the being with all and only perfections, it begins right out, begins from the outset, with a central claim of the AAA theology. Premise two, if God is perfectly good, then God would want to prevent undeserved suffering. Three, premise three if God is all powerful, perfectly powerful, make sure this is a perfection perfectly powerful he could prevent undeserved suffering however, undeserved suffering exists therefore, God is either not perfectly good or not perfectly powerful therefore, God as defined in line one does not exist that's the argument has been given many different statements over the years, because it's been around for a long time since the year 250. But it is when stated this way. A valid argument that means that if his premises are all true his conclusion is true. So it really is incumbent on Christians to have a reply to this. And they have whether in the triple A theological tradition or the CR, theological tradition, they both have their replies. So I want to go through this and make sure you understand each of the
premises and the force of the conclusion. And then we'll look at how, in the next section how the AAA theologians reply to this, after which we'll look at the Cappadocian Reformation, reply to this. Let's go through these, again, just to make sure it's clear as possible, I hope, premise one by now is clear that God is defined as the being with all perfections and only perfection. This is Plato's idea that for every characteristic we see in the world, there's a maximal there's an infinite, perfect instance of that in another world. And whatever it is, in this world that is like that copies that. The imperfect instances of green and blue or square, or red, or horse, or house or human. Gotta be in the other world is the perfect instance, the other world, and the what we find in our realm where we live and move, and have our being are all imperfect copies of the perfections, which includes the necessary truths, right, includes the laws of logic, the laws of mathematics, and any other laws of necessity that someone might come up with premise two. If God's perfectly good, then God would want to prevent undeserved suffering. Seems reasonable, doesn't it seems plausible. Suppose I'm on vacation. I'm sitting by a pool. Relaxing, I've got a nice crossword puzzle, workout and something really nice to sit by sit there. And as I'm there, I hear a splash at the other end of the pool. The one and a half year old, has totaled out falling in the pool and is drowning. And so I call for the pool boy to come scoop out the dead body. I don't go try to give the kid any help. Would you call me good? You don't have to tell me what you would call me. But whatever it is, it isn't good. If I'm so calloused, that I can't even get up out of my chair in order to save a child from drowning. Anything but good. But now suppose I'm not there. Nobodys there. No human. And the child wanders out, falls into the pool in is drowning. God could pull him out, right? God has more a lot more power than I do. IfI can get the kid out God can So why do you call God good when he lets the kid drown? I hope you get the force of this. It's not trivial. It almost makes matters worse to read in Scripture that there are many times when God does intervene and save somebody. The prophet Daniel is thrown to the lions. And God closes the lions mouth is what Scripture says they don't eat him. And yet, the prophet Isaiah was arrested. And he was executed by being sawed into pieces. pretty grim. Why didn't God step in and save Isaiah? I think the Scripture does indicate an answer to this. And that it's much more in line with what the Cappadocian reformational Viewer going to have to say about it than the AAA tradition. But that's just understand the real force of this if God's perfectly good. If you wouldn't call me good for letting the kid drown, and how can you go on calling God good if he lets tragedy and undeserved suffering strike all over the world and in terrible ways. Premise three says if God's perfectly powerful, he could prevent undeserved suffering. So whether you think God is God's infinite power is limited by what's possible or not. It's still the case that God could rescue the drowning child. There's nothing self contradictory about that. There's nothing about rescue a child. It's sort of par with saying two plus two equals
seven and a half. So that's not that it's not impossible. It's nothing like that. And yet undeserved suffering does exist. There are religious traditions that deny premise four in Buddhism and Hinduism, they will tell you that undeserved suffering, that suffering, deserved or undeserved, is part of the illusory world and isn't real. And therefore, there is no nothing to this argument for that. They would deny it exists. But I want to ask every one of you watching Have you ever suffered undeservedly? I don't think there's a human being that hasn't. Even if it's just for being blamed for something you didn't do. That's a kind of undeserved suffering. I also want to point out one other features of this argument, the argument, the argument looks tight, and it's impressive. But you realize that if it's correct, then, if so much as one child ever fell and skinned her knee, God would not exist because God could have prevented it. Something really fishy going on here.That isn't right. No ancient Jew would have given that a second thought. You think that if we're your God, we're God's people, that God's going to prevent all suffering. I have news for you. No. Okay. So we need to deal with this in that way. But the, the real existence of undeserved suffering which you know, to be true, if you ever suffered undeservedly is that God's either not perfectly good or not all perfectly powerful, and therefore, God, as defined in premise one does not exist. Now in our next segment, we are going to look at three arguments that try to counterman this three, AAA replies, each of which tries to show that this conclusion doesn't really follow that there's something wrong with one of the premises. And then in our last segment, today, we're looking at how the Cappadocian reformational point of view in theology would answer this. And that answer is going to be come straight out of the book of Job in the Bible.