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.