Why does God allow evil? If He is all powerful, then He should be able to prevent it. If He is omnipotent and does nothing about evil, then we suspect that there are limits to His goodness, that there is something wrong with Him, that He is not all good. Perhaps He has an evil streak, or is truly malicious and we are merely His toys—expendable and counting for nothing. On the other hand, if we know the Creator is all good and we still see evil in the world, then there must be something wrong with His power. Perhaps He is not really all powerful. Perhaps there is some independent source of evil that He cannot control but struggles against. Or could a lack of knowledge possibly give rise to a weakness that limits his power? How can evil exist in a world created by a God who is both all powerful and all good? Must we say that the omnipotent good God does not exist? This problem is the greatest challenge to the reasonable person who believes in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. If He is truly the Creator, then why did He make such a world?

The goal of this book is to inquire into and possibly shed light upon, some of the most interesting and at times most difficult issues in the problem of God and evil. These are: the nature and meaning of good—how subjectivity or objectivity and the idea of the good person function in the problem; the meaning of omnipotence; the idea of supererogation in the context of the goodness of God and the best possible world; the possibility of pointless evil and its relation to animal pain; the possibility of diminished human freedom and of war. I will try to consider such issues in a direct and concrete manner in an effort to appeal both to the advanced scholar and to the philosophically and theologically inclined reader. The bright, thinking person struggling with his or her existence cannot avoid this problem whose solution challenges the most sophisticated scholar.

There are various ways to come up with some kind of solution to the problem, however unsatisfactory. One way is to prove conclusively that humans are not free, that all our actions are determined by antecedent conditions and causes. If humans are not free and God is all powerful, then the great evils of unkindness, insensitivity, infidelity, injustice, war and the like, the infliction of terrible harm on our neighbor—evils for which we ordinarily blame man—would rightfully be attributed to God. We would then have a strong reason for seeing God as an all powerful, but evil Supreme Being. The omnipotent good God of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition would not exist.

This was Herman Melville’s problem. He was profoundly affected by the evil that man does to his fellowman, the wicked things that the "depraved" impose on the rest of us. His "depraved," however, are predestined by God to their life of evil. So, it is not surprising that one of them, Captain Ahab of Moby Dick, strikes out against the God who has made him so.

One way (if not the only way) to avoid the conclusion that the all powerful Creator is an evil God would be to see a reason why He would bring about such suffering. Simone Weil, a French philosophic mystic of World War II days, would say that we exist to suffer, for suffering is the means whereby we become united to the Creator and attain infinite bliss. This is a hard doctrine, for it is too open to the interpretation that when I am cheated, when this man is murdered, when this girl is raped, then God is directly responsible for the cheating, the killing, the raping. The answer cannot be so simple. Ordinarily we try to avoid such unfortunate happenings, but why should we if their occurrence implies that God intends to affect us so?

Another way to solve the problem of God and evil is to see omnipotence as so absolute that God has power over contradictions. This would do away with the problem, for there would be no impossibility or inconsistency that the Divinity cannot transcend; the tension between God and evil, of course, is one of those. God would be expected to be able to make a square circle and make someone who lost virginity to once again be a virgin. This is very troubling to a serious thinker.

Another answer is to hold fast to the goodness of God and to downgrade His power. If there were an independent Supreme Evil with which God struggled, then God could be seen as good but not all powerful, and evil could be blamed as an independent source. Likewise, if at creation God had to fashion the world out of some pre-existent matter, then His (or Her) power would be fundamentally limited by what He had to work with. A variation of this latter view is offered by process philosophy.

Another approach to the problem is to reject a deterministic view of man which has God directly intending to burden us with evils. This makes the defense of the good God easier. If man is truly free, then he and not God is really responsible for the cheating, the killing, the raping that goes on. At least, man is responsible for much of it. He does not have to be selfish, uncaring, and niggardly toward his fellowman. Such a defense takes something away from God’s power and leads us to ask whether God could have brought about a better world.

Faith affords us another possible solution. For those who see the reasoned evidence for God as less than compelling, faith can take up where reason leaves off and can lead a person to accept the Creator as good and powerful. In this view, God as the source of all perfection is likewise the source of all good and the epitome of power. Mindful of one’s limited knowledge and of the way something that appears evil can turn out to be the source of good later on, a person holding such a view gives the benefit of the doubt to the Creator. A person concludes that God must have allowed the evil for a reason, or perhaps, that one’s own goal should be to find meaning in whatever happens, be it good or evil. In this way one can become convinced that everything works together for good. This would allow one by faith to accept the evil of the world.

For some the existence of a good and all-powerful God can be attained by reason alone, for example, by means of the ontological argument. If one accepts God as the source of all perfections, as all good and all powerful, then by faith, again, one is inclined to accept evil as having some meaning in one’s life, however mysterious.

The meaning of good and evil is obviously central to our problem. The rebel, Nietzsche, with a radical approach to this issue, goes so far as to link ‘good’ and ‘evil’ to power. Those in power decide what is good in the light of what is good for them, and those out of power see the powerful and their characteristics as evil. Nietzsche’s rejection of objective morality threatens to throw into confusion the whole question. If what is good and what is evil is so subjective, then how can the problem of God and evil make any sense as a worthwhile project? Surprisingly, however, this intellectual provocateur who wanted to turn values upside down can be classed alongside the believers like C. S. Lewis and Simone Weil, who urged us to endure suffering courageously.

Another difficulty stems from the possibility that evil is not real in any sense, that it is a mere illusion of the human mind. If so, then the problem of evil becomes more a matter of the clarification of language, and the argument for or against God slides into mystery.

A variation of this difficulty is to understand the privation view of evil as downplaying the importance of evil. C.G. Jung complained that taking evil as a privation, a lack of being, was dangerous because it led people to downgrade the reality of evil. The traditional position, however, sees privation as a reality. It is the absence of something that should be present, a disorder, a mistake. It is a reality that is known by the mind rather than the senses, but a reality all the same; it is "something" of which we must take account in our day-to-day dealings. Failure to achieve a desired goal, the absence of someone who should be at your side, the mistake that results in a waste of resources—these are recognized as part of reality which we must acknowledge. They might be negative, but they are real and must be dealt with. The easy way out of the problem of evil is not available to us.

Another solution is that God is not good or all powerful because there is just too much evil in the world. It is here that objectors claim that God should have made a better world, and that it is not fitting to speak of supererogatory actions in regard to God. Chapters Six through Thirteen of this work attempt to answer such objections.

The answer of Albert Camus to the problem of evil is that all evil in the world occurs because God is punishing man for his sins. This view is supported to a great extent by a common biblical interpretation of the Fall. Opposed to Camus is the Christian philosopher-theologian, John Hick, who, following St. Irenaeus, proposes an explanation other than punishment. For Irenaeus, man was created immature, inferior to God and, as an infant, was to grow and develop into the likeness of God. God’s punishment is possibly not the only answer to why evil exists in the world. We consider the role of punishment in Chapter Fourteen.

The plan of this book is constructed around the objections to the good and all powerful God. Toward this end, it is necessary to say something about the idea of evil, subjectivity and reality in Chapter One, and then about the problem itself in Chapter Two. In order to speak of the goodness of God, the notion of "good" and the good person is taken up (Chapter Three), and then the difficulty and adjustments necessary in applying those ideas to the Creator (Chapter Four). Since the God of whom we speak is not only good but all powerful, the omnipotence of God is treated in Chapter Five.

The difficulty of determining the best possible world and the role of supererogatory actions in the demand that God bring about a better world is considered in Chapter Six. Chapter Seven considers the possible objection that there is too much evil in the world, gratuitous or pointless evil, especially in the case of animal pain. Chapter Eight studies the demand that God intervene to prevent evil.

Chapter Nine is an attempt to answer the objection that God should have given humans a greater knowledge. Chapter Ten attempts to point out the weaknesses of a demand that God should have seen to it that human freedom is more restricted. This continues in Chapter Eleven which rejects as unrealistic the objection that God should have made war impossible. Chapter Twelve treats of the destructiveness of overwhelming suffering and possible ways to handle it. Chapter Thirteen examines developing virtue in a relatively perfect world, and freely chosen suffering as a personal decision. Chapter Fourteen explores how punishment functions in the problematic, why children suffer. Chapter Fifteen reviews the consequences: a summary.

The work points to a better understanding of good and omnipotence in the theist tradition. Many of the objector’s proposed alternative worlds fail as worlds that a good and omnipotent God should have created. This may give us a more sophisticated insight into the divine Creator.

Of course, this work of answering objections to the possibility of a good and omnipotent God which derive from the reality of evil in the world still leaves one on the outside as it were. It counters the objections, but does not resolve the issue. Hence, there is a further and essential step, namely, a metaphysical study of being and its character as good, of the human will and its potentiality for failing in its tendency to that good. Intensive work on this issue of the cause of moral evil is to be found in the Thomistic synthesis. The very heart of this challenge has been studied in this series by Edward Cook, The Deficient Cause of Moral Evil, according to Thomas Aquinas (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1996), to which the reader is strongly referred.

There the reader will find a most careful and incisive treatment of the key concepts of the mystery of moral evil: good, evil, will, freedom, morality, privation, deficient cause and moral evil, which are central as well to the corresponding issues of liberation from evil and redemption.

These two books are then inseparable and must be read together.