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How do you respond when an atheist brings up the problem of evil?

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What are the prerequisites for the problem of evil to even exist? What must there be for evil to be a problem? The good. And there's no ultimate problem of evil unless there is first ultimate goodness. And so the problem of the existence of evil is one of the overwhelming testimonies to the existence of God.

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So the problem of evil isn't the problem the unbeliever believes it to be. This is Renewing youg Mind on this Wednesday. I'm Nathan W. Bingham and I'm glad you're joining us this week as we explore various topics with RC Sproul to help us better defend the faith. What you're hearing this week is an early series from Dr. Sproule, recorded in the early days of the ministry at the Ligonier Valley Study Centre. You can request lifetime digital access to these messages when you call us at 800-435-4343 or when you visit renewingyourmind.org with a donation in support of this outreach. To thank you for your support, we'll also send you RC Sproul's 32 message series, defending youg Faith, and a copy of our field guide on false teaching. But this offer ends tomorrow, so respond while there's still time. Well, here's R.C. sproul to explain the argument of the problem of evil, whether there is a Christian response to the problem, and if it's really the problem, the unbeliever claims that it is.

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A theologian by the name of Strauss in the 19th century made the statement that the problem of evil is the Achilles heel of the Christian faith, because he argued at that time that no satisfactory explanation can be given to the existence of evil. And it's been repeated many times from the lips of skeptics and atheists the following paradox that if God could not have stopped the entrance of evil into the universe, then he is not omnipotent. If he could have stopped it, but chose not to stop it, then he is not benevolent. And so either way you look at the problem of evil, somehow a shadow is cast upon the nature of God. Now, historically, all kinds of attempts have been made to answer the question of the origin of evil from a Christian perspective. And those attempts have come to us by means of what is called the theodicy. T H E O D I C Y the theodicy. A theodicy is an attempt to justify God for the existence of evil in the world. The word the, of course, comes from theos the word for God, and dikaios is the word for justice or righteousness in Greek. And so it's an attempt to justify God for the problem of evil. Now, in my opinion, no one as yet has been able to adequately answer this question from a Christian perspective. So the first thing, for all practical purposes that I think a Christian must do or when he's confronted with this question, is to immediately respond by saying, I don't know the answer to this question and acknowledge the seriousness of the question. Don't try to play games, don't try to hide, don't try to evade it, but deal with it head on. It's very important, psychologically and practically, that people will recognize that we recognize that there's a serious problem here and that we're not oblivious to it. So first of all, let's take a look at a couple of these theodicies to see how some have dealt with it. Of course, some have approached this question by denying the reality of evil altogether and arguing that evil is an illusion. In my opinion, that's a cop out. I don't think I need to labor that point, do I, with you? The second approach is that evil is actually a necessary prerequisite for the appreciation of the good. And so in the final analysis, evil is good. Let's state it in concrete terms that for man to really experience goodness in freedom, he had to experience the problem of evil. He had to experience the reality of evil so. So that he might appreciate his redemption, he might appreciate his restoration and his goodness. In this kind of a schema which has been offered many times in the history of the Church. Really, the fall is a leap forward. It's a fall upwards rather than downwards that fails to deal adequately and seriously with the negative judgment that God himself places upon the entrance into the world of human sin. One of the most historically important and fascinating theodicies that have come to pass is the philosophical theodicy offered by Leibniz. Leibniz begins his theodicy by making a threefold distinction with respect to evil. He distinguishes between what he calls moral evil, physical evil, and metaphysical evil. Moral evil is a lack of moral good. It's a deficiency. Physical evil is a deficiency of physical good. Metaphysical evil is a deficiency of metaphysical goodness. Moral evil has to do with the actions of mortal creatures, the volitional behavioral patterns of moral agents. Physical evil would be those things that we describe in terms of calamity or tragedy. Earthquakes, tornadoes, the fire, the wind, the storm, the pestilence, the disease, that sort of thing. Physically Metaphysical evil has to do with ontological imperfection. Now, here I am trying to give you a nice, easy, practical way to handle objections to the Christian faith, and I have to resort to such languages. Ontological imperfections. That's one technical word you really ought to know. What are we talking about when we're talking about ontology? Being the essence of things, okay? And an ontological matter is what something is. It's being its essence. It's stuff. All right? Now, metaphysical imperfection would be to be less than an eternal self, existent being, to be less than ultimate. An imperfect thing would be that which is created, that which is dependent, that which undergoes change, generation and decay. In a word, that which is metaphysically lacking is that which is finite. Okay? Now, the basic thesis of Leibniz is this, that physical evil, and the key word here is, flows out of metaphysical evil and moral evil flows out of physical evil. So in the final analysis, the reason why we have moral evil in the world is because we have metaphysically imperfect beings running around. I sin because I'm weak. I'm weak because I'm finite. And the only way I could be without sin would be if I could transcend the intrinsic metaphysical weakness that associates itself with finite creatures. To err is human because we're finite by definition. We're not all powerful, we're not all wise. We are not all the things that God are. So there's a sense in which it's inevitable out of my simple human weakness, the limitations of finitude, that I would indeed sin. Okay, we can see that. But then the question remains. Why would God create such a limited, weak, finite creature? Well, here's where we get to the crux of Leibniz argument. He looks at it this way. First of all, he understands the fact that God creates at all as a benevolent act on the part of God, that he brings other beings into existence and allows them to participate in some measure in the greatness that is the glory of God. So we can't fault God for wanting to create. But the question is, if God is going to give this gift of life, this gift of being to other creatures, how can he best do it? Why doesn't he create man morally perfect? This is the judgment, you see, that the skeptics have raised. Well, if God's going to create man, why doesn't he create him perfectly good? Leibniz answers by saying, because he can't. Even God cannot create a perfectly good creature because in order to create him perfectly good morally, he would also have to create him perfectly good physically. And in order to create him perfectly good physically, he would have to create him perfectly good metaphysically. And that is impossible. Why is it impossible for God to create something that is metaphysically perfect? You'd have to create another God who is infinite, eternal, self existent, you know, complete in his being. But is it possible for God to create another God? Why not? Because whatever God creates would be dependent upon the first God for its existence. It would not be eternal. It would not have self existence. It would be inferior ontologically to the creator being who brought it into being in the first place. The very fact that it had a temporal beginning would differentiate itself from the original God. So God cannot create another God, But God could create practically an infinite number of possible different kinds of being. We see the wide variety of things that he has created in this world, ants and trees and men, etc. The issue morally with God is not must God create a perfect world? You can't demand that he creates a perfect world. But if God is moral, if he is righteous, we can make the demand that God create the best of all possible worlds. The world that philosophers use to raise as a hypothetical situation that God should have created is an impossible situation. The issue then is not why is there evil? But the question that should be raised by the philosopher is, isn't it nice that God has not created the world with more evil in it than it is? He's done the best he can. He's created the best of all possible world. Well, there are several problems with this. There's an intellectual problem with his argument. There is also a biblical problem with his argument. The intellectual problem, the philosophical problem, is that he has committed one of the most basic errors of reasoning and yet one of the most difficult to discern kinds of errors of reasoning that happens in philosophical inquiry. He's committed the fallacy of equivocation. In each one of these distinctions, the meaning of the term evil changes. Moral evil carries with it the notion of that which is deserving of punitive measures. Moral evil by definition, is the kind of evil that comes out of volitional creatures. But metaphysical evil, I mean, it's a misnomer to call finitude evil in any kind of moral sense. And to link these things together, you see, is in the final analysis, to excuse man from being morally evil. This offers man and God an excuse. This not only justifies God for the existence of evil, it also justifies man for the existence of evil. Man cannot really be held responsible because it's necessary for him to sin because of his Metaphysical imperfection. And if it's necessary for men to sin, how can we stand in judgment over man doing what he must do by nature? Biblically, we have other problems. If this schema is correct, then it would be utterly incapable for us to be free of moral evil in heaven unless God does more than glorify us. He must deify us in order to make us free of evil. Second, it means that Adam never falls. He's created evil, at least metaphysically evil and physically, which excuses his moral evil. This cannot function as a Christian theodicy for the problem of evil. Other attempts have been made to answer this question that have been somewhat naive. The standard reply of Christians to the origin of evil is that it originates in man's freedom. And in order for man to be free, man had to have the capacity to do right or wrong. And so God gave man the right to choose. He gave him freedom. And to give a creature freedom to choose evil is not to make him evil or to be responsible for that evil. And so obviously we locate the origin of evil in the sinful choices of man, in his freedom. Now, the Bible certainly does talk about that, and we certainly acknowledge the fact that man was free and that man is held accountable and responsible for his sin, etc. But the real question of the origin of evil has not been solved by merely pointing to human freedom. Why not? You still have to ask the question, why does that man choose to do evil? And that traces us back to the point of analyzing and considering the implications of the fall of Adam and Eve. What prompted Adam and Eve to choose evil rather than good? And all kinds of solutions have been offered to that question. Some would say, well, the devil made them do it. They were deceived by the deceiver. Well, the question that immediately comes to mind is that if they sinned out of deception, was it really a sin? Would they not have sinned in excusable ignorance if they really did not know? The other problem with that argument is that the biblical record tells us they did. Now, God explicitly told them what they were allowed to do and what they were not allowed to do. But we can't understand the entrance of sin into the world by deception. How about by coercion? Suppose the devil forced them to do it. The same thing. If it was an act of coercion, then God's not going to hold him responsible. But the fact of the matter is, God does hold them responsible. And also the narrative gives us no hint that they were coerced into sin. Every time we read the Narrative, we see them sinning out of an act of choosing, out of a free, voluntary act. So here's the question. In what state were Adam and Eve before they sinned? From a moral perspective, what was the inclination of their will? Was the inclination of their will only towards the good? What was it only towards the bad or was it neutral? If the inclination of Adam and Eve's heart is evil before they make the evil choice, what's the problem with that? Yeah, that means they're fallen before they fell, that they sinned because they were sinners, and that original sin is not the result of Adam's fall, but it's the result of creation. And God has created someone with an evil inclination. And judging from biblical categories, even the inclination towards evil, even the desire for evil, is considered sin by God. So if we say that they sinned because they had an evil inclination, then what? They were acting according to their evil nature, which they were created with, which makes God the author of sin and that bad, you know, and that's not good. All right, then we say, suppose their inclination was only to the good. Then how could they possibly have chosen evil? Beats me. That will not explain their sin. Okay, how about if it's neutral, they have an inclination neither to the good or to the. If you made a choice, it would just have to be an arbitrary right. If you had no reason for your choice, you just did it with no moral disposition one way or the other, it wouldn't even be a moral act. But there's even a bigger philosophical problem. If a person has no disposition towards choosing, can they choose? No. The neutral status of the will leaves a person in paralysis. There's no way to choose. So that can't explain it. There's no satisfactory logical explanation for the sin of Adam. I think we have to make a choice out of one of these three, and it has to be a reasoned choice. This one perplexes the greatest minds of history, but it's the one that the Church has always taken, that man's disposition was only to the good, yet he chose evil. Somebody looks at me and say, hey, man, you know, I just can't buy that. I say, that's where I have to locate the mystery. Just as we don't know things about light and gravity and stuff like that. But it's a mystery how man sinned. Well, to say that it's a mystery how man sins is to say that it presently is a mystery. The answer may come tomorrow. But I can still say to you, I doubt if it will because I really do doubt, because it's such a thorny, thorny question. All right. So is all we can do then, to the pagan, to the unbeliever, to the critic of the Christian faith who comes to me with the problem of evil, is to surrender? Is that all we can do? Since we can't offer an answer to the problem of the origin of evil, do we have to abandon the Christian faith? Why not? The one thing is, we're faced with the reality of evil. Now. What are the prerequisites for the problem of evil to even exist? What must there be for evil to be a problem? Huh? The good. And there's no ultimate problem of evil unless there is first ultimate goodness. And so there's a certain sense in which, though we lose the battle in the front door, in the back door, the problem of the existence of evil is one of the overwhelming testimonies to the existence of God. That's the irony of this argument, because there can't be a problem of evil unless there's first a problem of the good. And the reason for this thing is that we always define evil in negative, dependent, derived categories. That's why the medieval distinction that I mentioned earlier came to be that evil was pravatio or negatio. That is, it's a privation or a negation of the good. It's a lack, it's a deficiency, and that the evil is dependent upon good as a standard for its definition. How does the Bible treat the problem of evil? How does the Bible describe evil? Negatively? Unrighteousness? Lawlessness? Disobedience? Immorality? Antichrist? Immorality can only be defined in terms of what morality is. Disobedience can only be judged against the background of what obedience is. The Antichrist is dependent upon his existence and definition on the Christ. The negative needs the positive as a reference point to even exist. So only if we assume ultimate goodness can evil become a problem. But the philosopher turns around and says, hold it with that sophistry. That's what we're saying here, and that you are assuming the good. But if there is a good, the good's not really good because we have the problem of evil. And so we have to eliminate the notion of ultimate goodness and fly back to the notion of illusion. There is no such thing as good or evil. And that's a weighty response. That's the basic case for nihilism, which we have to deal with on other ground. But you can't have your cake and eat it too. And most people who are arguing against the existence of God from a reference point of the problem of evil assume the reality of good. And what I do with those people is I turn the tables around. I say, look, I grant that I have a problem of evil. My problem's half as big as yours. You know, if you really think that evil exists, then you have a problem of explaining how evil can exist apart from the good. Ultimately, the only way you can account for ultimate goodness is in God.