Concept

Lesson 4.1, The Problem of Evil

Intro

"If your God is all-powerful and all-loving, why is there cancer? Why do children starve? Why did my mom die?" This is the heaviest objection an apologist will ever face, and it is heavy for a reason. The pain behind it is usually not hypothetical.

The Christian answer cannot start with cleverness. It has to start with the same instinct the Bible itself has: evil is real, suffering is real, neither one is being dismissed. The book of Job sits in the middle of the Old Testament precisely because God's people refused to pretend that the question of why-do-the-righteous-suffer was solved. Jesus himself wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus before raising him. Don't make evil look smaller in order to make God look bigger. That is bad apologetics and worse pastoral care.

What you can do, with care, is show two things. First, evil and an all-good, all-powerful God can coexist (this addresses the logical problem). Second, on the evidential version of the problem, you can give thoughtful reasons for why God might allow suffering, even if you cannot list a specific reason for each event.

The lesson distinguishes four versions of the problem because each one needs a different reply. The logical problem (J.L. Mackie, 1955) says the existence of any evil contradicts the existence of an all-powerful, all-good God. Alvin Plantinga's Free Will Defense is widely considered to have settled this version: it is at least possible that God's bringing about free creatures came with the possibility of evil choices, and that possibility is enough to break the alleged contradiction. The evidential problem (William Rowe, 1979) is the harder version: even if some evil is compatible with God, the amount and type of evil we see makes God's existence improbable. Skeptical theism is the main reply, along with soul-making theodicy and the bigger story of the cross. The emotional version is not really an argument; it is grief or anger needing first to be heard, not answered. The concrete version names a specific evil (the Holocaust, child abuse, a specific death) and presses on it directly.

The strongest single move is to point at the cross. Christianity does not claim God stays at a distance from suffering and explains it from outside. Christianity claims God himself entered the suffering, took the worst of it, and used it to defeat death itself. No other worldview has that move. Your job in this lesson is to learn to make all of those moves with care, and to learn when not to make any of them, because sometimes the right answer in the moment is silence and presence.

In full

The problem of evil is the heaviest objection atheists raise. It is the one people feel most, the one they bring up most, and the one Christians get caught flat-footed by most. If you have not done the work here, you will eventually be in a hospital room, a funeral, or a hard conversation, and you will wish you had thought it through.

The Christian instinct here is right. Evil is real. Suffering is real. The Bible itself treats both as real problems that need real answers, not as things to deny or wave away. Your job is not to make evil look smaller. Your job is to show that evil can exist alongside God, and, on the harder versions, to give some account of why God allows it.

Required reading

Read these in order before working through the lesson:

Problem of Evil, the master hub. It covers both the logical and evidential versions; this lesson builds on it.
Free Will Defense, Plantinga's answer to the logical problem. The most important apologetic move of the 1900s.
Soul-Making Theodicy, Hick's positive theodicy. The second main framework.
Skeptical Theism, the humility-based response to the evidential problem.

The four versions of the argument

The "problem of evil" is really four arguments in a trench coat. You need to tell them apart, because the answers are different.

1. The logical problem (Mackie, 1955)

Mackie argued that three claims cannot all be true at once: (a) God is all-powerful, (b) God is all-good, and (c) evil exists. If he was right, this would be the strongest possible argument against God. It would make belief in God impossible.

Steel-manned version: An all-powerful being could stop all evil. An all-good being would want to stop all evil. So if such a being existed, evil would not exist. Evil does exist. So such a being does not exist.

Standard answer, Plantinga's Free Will Defense. It is at least possible that God could not create a world with real moral good without also allowing the possibility of real moral evil. Free people who can love must also be able to refuse to love. Free people who can do good must also be able to do evil. If that is even possible, the three claims are no longer contradictory once you add a fourth claim (free creatures who really get to choose). Mackie himself basically gave this up. By the 1980s most philosophers of religion treated the logical problem as settled. See Free Will Defense.

2. The evidential problem (Rowe, 1979; Draper, 1989)

Rowe agreed that evil could in theory coexist with God, but argued that the amount and type of evil we see, especially suffering that seems pointless (Rowe's famous example: a fawn dying alone in a forest fire), counts as evidence against God. Draper's version reframes it as a likelihood argument: the pattern of suffering we see is more expected on atheism than on theism.

Steel-manned version: Even if some evil is needed for some greater good, this much evil, Auschwitz, childhood cancer, the fawn, does not seem to serve any greater good that a perfect God could not have reached another way. Stack it all up, and theism gets less likely.

Standard answers, working together:

Skeptical theism. We are not in a good position to tell whether an evil that looks pointless really is pointless. Going from I cannot see a reason for this to there is no reason for this only works if you would be able to see the reason if it existed. We would not. See Skeptical Theism.
The soul-making theodicy. The world is built to grow mature moral people, and that takes the kind of resistance and struggle that builds courage, compassion, and perseverance. A world without real evil is also a world without real virtue. See Soul-Making Theodicy.
The cumulative case flips the burden. The evidential problem is one line of evidence. The cosmological, design, moral, ontological, and historical arguments are others. The right question is not does this one line count against God by itself? but does the total evidence point toward God or away from him? A grown-up theist can grant the weight of evil and still say the total case favors God.

3. The pointless-evil challenge

This is a kind of subset of the evidential problem. Some evil looks like it serves no possible greater good, a fawn dying alone, an infant suffering, an evil no one ever even hears about. The challenge: what greater good could possibly come from this?

Standard response (a mix of skeptical-theism and free-will moves): You do not have to name the specific greater good. The skeptical theist holds that we should not expect to be able to identify it, given the gap between our view and God's. The free-will defender adds that natural laws that allow disasters are also part of what makes a world with real freedom possible. Together: you do not deny the evil, and you do not pretend to have a tidy explanation; you simply deny that looks pointless proves is pointless.

4. The personal problem

This is the hardest version, because it is not an argument at all. It is a believer's own crisis: I lost my mother, my child, my health, my marriage. My faith was not enough to hold me up. The God I believed in did not answer. This is the version that breaks people.

Standard response. The Bible itself treats this as real and recurring, Job, Lamentations, Psalm 88 (the only psalm with no happy ending), the Garden of Gethsemane. Christianity does not say suffering is fake or that the person hurting is wrong to feel abandoned. It says God himself entered the suffering. The cross is not a philosophy answer. It is the answer to the personal problem: God is not absent from your pain; God has been in it. This is the move the philosophical defeaters cannot make, and you have to learn to use it gently, not as a debate-stopper but as a person-receiver.

Key takeaways

The logical problem is basically retired. Plantinga's Free Will Defense is the agreed answer. Do not let an objector smuggle it back in as if it were still live.
The evidential problem is the live form. Steel-man it before responding. Most popular versions of "the problem of evil" are actually the evidential form being argued as if it were the logical form.
A defense is not a theodicy. A defense shows that God could coexist with evil. A theodicy gives a positive account of why God allows evil. Both have a use; do not confuse them.
The cumulative case matters. The evidential problem is one line among many. Do not give up the rest of the case to win this round.
The personal problem is not the philosophy problem. Pastoral care, not philosophy, is the right move when a person is living the question.
Christianity has a unique answer at the cross. No other worldview has a God who entered suffering. Hold this in reserve for the moment the conversation shifts from argument to person.

Worked example, the evidential problem in action

Objection (steel-manned):

Look at the world. Children get cancer. Animals burn alive in forest fires no one ever sees. The Holocaust happened. Tsunamis kill hundreds of thousands. You can give me free-will defenses for human evil all day, but a fawn dying alone in a fire is not a case of human freedom. Either God can prevent this and will not, in which case he is not loving; or he wants to but cannot, in which case he is not all-powerful. The sheer amount of pointless suffering is evidence, not proof, but evidence, that no such God exists.

Response, in the apologist's voice:

You are right that the free-will defense does not by itself answer natural evil. The fawn in the fire is not a case of human choice. So let me give you the response that does fit.

The first move is about what we can know. You are arguing from I cannot see a reason for this evil to there is no reason. That only works if you would be able to see the reason if it existed. I do not think you would. The good things that come out of one year of a human life will not fit inside a chess engine's calculation. The good things that come out of a century of history will not fit inside a year. The good things that come out of a created universe will not fit inside a century. We are inside the picture. We cannot see the whole canvas.

The second move is positive. A world with no natural disasters is a world with no plate tectonics, which is a world with no carbon cycle, which is a world with no life. The laws that make earthquakes also make mountains. The systems that produce predators also produce ecosystems. There is no cheap way to get a world with creaturely freedom, moral agency, soul-formation, and beauty. Christianity has never claimed there was.

The third move is the comparison. Take all the evidence. Yes, suffering counts against theism. There is also fine-tuning, the contingency of the universe, the existence of moral facts, the resurrection of Jesus, and the personal experience of millions of believers across cultures and centuries. Which way does the total evidence point? I think it points toward God. You may weight it differently, but the real disagreement is not where you started. It is the cumulative question, which is the conversation we should actually be having.

And the fourth move, the one I cannot leave out. I do not think the answer to a person who has lost a child is a philosophy lecture. I think the answer is that the God I worship lost his own son at the cross, and that the suffering of the world is not strange to him. If you are arguing this because you have just lost something, let me know, and let me not give you the wrong answer.

Reflection questions

Which version of the problem of evil have you actually been asked? Most of the time it is the evidential or the personal version, not the logical. Be specific about which one your friend is raising.
Have you personally felt the personal problem? If so, what answer did you find satisfying, philosophical, pastoral, or theological? If you did not find one, that is worth working on, both for your own walk and for the people you will eventually walk with.
Can you state Plantinga's Free Will Defense in two sentences without notes? If not, drill until you can.
What is the difference between a defense and a theodicy? State it cleanly. The distinction matters.
When does the philosophical response to evil stop being the right move? Build the sense to recognize when the person in front of you is living the question, not arguing it.

Practice exercise

Find a podcast or YouTube clip of an atheist (Hitchens, Rowe, Draper, or a popular voice) arguing the evidential problem of evil. Listen to the strongest version, not the weakest. In your notes, write the argument back in a form the speaker would accept as fair. Then write your three-paragraph response: the epistemic move, the positive theodicy move, the cumulative-case move. Walk through the response out loud, twice. Do not skip the personal pivot at the end. Practice naming it.

Next lesson

→ Lesson 4.2, Divine Hiddenness, the second-rank philosophical objection: if God exists and loves everyone, why is he not obvious?