Is God more honored or dishonored in the world?

The question is a variation of the issue of whether there's more good than evil in life, and it's a good variation that doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. John Piper addressed it and made some good points in the process on a recent edition of "Ask Pastor John".

Was ever grief like mine?

If you haven't read George Herbert's poem The Sacrifice, I recommend reading it. There are more than 60 verses addressing different aspects of Jesus' suffering. Here are several of the verses, but I recommend reading the whole poem:

Do all theodicies fail?

I'll comment on part of a thread by atheist Jeff Lowder:

@SecularOutpost

Likewise, when atheists argue that facts about evil, pain, suffering, imperfection are evidence against God's existence, it's a complete nonstarter to talk about how God is logically compatible with those facts. 

i) That depends. Mere logical compatibility might be a makeshift explanation. That's not sufficient. If, however, logical compatibility means evil, pain, and suffering are not surprising given the overall tenets of Christian theism, then that's a legitimate explanation. If that fails to satisfy the evidential argument from evil, the failure is not in the explanation but in the way the evidential argument is formulated. 

ii) It's unclear what Jeff means by "imperfections". For instance, it's not a design flaw that I don't have fireproof fingers. If I accidentally burn my fingers, that's not an imperfection. Fingers need to be sensitive to perform many functions. Fireproof fingers would be numb. 

For parallel reasons, all known theodicies for the arguments from evil fail. They provide a possible explanation for which we have no independent reason to believe is true and/or the explanation is not probable on the assumption theism is true.

i) That's ambiguous. We often resort to explanations that are reasonable even though we lack independent evidence that they are true. Why is someone late for work? Maybe they had a flat tire, accident, or family emergency. We don't require corroboration for that conjecture to make it a legitimate conjecture. We know that those kinds of things happen. We know he's a responsible employee. 

ii) It's often rational to provide a possible explanation when we have no independent evidence that it's true, because it's not necessarily about having direct evidence for the explanation, but indirect evidence given the character of the agent, as a competent and benevolent agent who has good reasons for what he does.

iii) On the assumption that Christianity is true, it's not merely probable but inevitable that some of God's actions will be inscrutable given the complexities of historical causation. Normally it's wrong to inflict pain on a young child. The child doesn't understand why the doctor is performing a painful procedure. He doesn't understand why his dad is standing by, allowing that to happen. 

(Aside: I also forgot to mention another requirement: the theodicy or atheodicy has to make the fact to be explained probable. Many theodicies and atheodicies also fail this requirement.) 

Probable in relation to whom or what frame of reference? An atheist? 

Once again, an explanation needn't be probable to be legitimate. To recur to my previous example, an employee may be late for work because they had a flat tire, accident, or family emergency. Since I don't know for a fact why they are late for work, I can't say which explanation is probably the correct explanation. And it may be an explanation I didn't consider. 

But we could put this in reverse: it's improbable that he decided to play hooky, given his track-record as a responsible employee. 

For example, the pain a terminally ill patient feels in the hours or days before death does not aid in survival or reproduction. Now, if theism is true, then God must have a morally sufficient reason for allowing all pain, including pain which does not aid in survival or reproduction. 

i) Because the human nervous system is fairly coarse-grained. It wasn't designed to be that discriminating. But that cuts both ways. It wasn't designed for us to enjoy chocolate gelato. That doesn't aid in survival or reproduction. But why is that the only justification? 

ii) Because Jeff is locked into attacking generic theism, he overlooks distinctive assumptions, resources, and explanations provided by Christian theism. He acts like all pain must be a design flaw, as created. But in Christian theology, the natural world always contained dangers and potential sources of pain. The difference is that in an unfallen world, humans might expect special providential protection from certain kinds of harms. 

The basic idea of UPD is that God exists, and God may have a morally sufficient reason for allowing pain, suffering, imperfection, or evil, and that reason is unknown to (or unknowable by) humans. 

That reply is good as far it goes, but it doesn't go far enough to defeat the atheistic arguments from pain, suffering, imperfection, and evil. Yes, God may have unknown reasons for allowing such things, but he might also have unknown reasons for preventing such things. 

There is no antecedent reason why God-permitting reasons are more likely than God-preventing reasons, and so both of those reasons cancel out. What we're left with is what we do know. 

i) Those aren't mutually exclusive explanations. It's not a choice between God permitting every evil and God preventing every evil. Some evils are necessary sources of second-order goods, but too much evil swamps the good. There is no general principle that God-permitting reasons are more likely that God-preventing reasons, or vice versa. God-permitting reasons ought to be more likely that God-preventing reasons. That assessment involves striking a balance between competing goods that humans lack the information and intelligence to appreciate.  

ii) In addition, the preemption of evil is invisible. A nonevent leaves no trace evidence. So we can't do a comparative assessment of how often God permits evil in relation to how often God prevents evil. We only have one side of the comparison.

iii) However, both divine permission and divine prevention of evil have a disruptive impact on the future. So these represent alternate world histories. A world where God prevents more evil will have a different history than a world in which God permits more evil. 

iv) That, however, doesn't mean a world with less evil is a world with more good. Some evils are necessary evils insofar as some evils provide the necessary conditions for certain kinds of goods. 

Spinning in the dark

I'm going to comment on this exposition of the evidential problem of evil:

https://www.iep.utm.edu/evil-evi/

The entry was written by a philosopher who specializes in the problem of evil (Nick Trakakis).

The evidential problem of evil is the problem of determining whether and, if so, to what extent the existence of evil (or certain instances, kinds, quantities, or distributions of evil) constitutes evidence against the existence of God, that is to say, a being perfect in power, knowledge and goodness. Evidential arguments from evil attempt to show that, once we put aside any evidence there might be in support of the existence of God, it becomes unlikely, if not highly unlikely, that the world was created and is governed by an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good being. Such arguments are not to be confused with logical arguments from evil, which have the more ambitious aim of showing that, in a world in which there is evil, it is logically impossible—and not just unlikely—that God exists.

i) If that's a requirement for the evidential problem of evil, then I reject how the issue is framed. How is it reasonable set aside evidence in support of God's existence when considering whether the world was made and governed by an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent God? For instance, what if the evidence for God's existence includes evidence of divine benevolence? Surely evidence of divine benevolence is directly germane to whether the existence of evil counts as evidence against the existence of God? At the very least, those have to be weighed against each other. 

ii) Moreover, it's unreasonable to consider the likelihood or not of God's existence in insolation to all the available evidence. Perhaps, though, Trakakis has in mind a kind of cumulative case against God's existence, where you assess each type of evidence individually, then combine them. Even so, that has to be counterbalanced by considering the positive evidence, if any, for God's existence. 

iii) Likewise, if there's evidence for God's omniscience and omnipotence, then that's directly germane to whether God might have a good reason not to prevent evil, even if the reason is inscrutable to humans. 

iv) I agree that more than sheer consistently is demanded, since an ad hoc explanation might be logically consistent. Rather, it should be consistent with the nature of God and his modus operandi. Not out of character. Not detached from theology. 

A theodicy may be thought of as a story told by the theist explaining why God permits evil. Such a story, however, must be plausible or reasonable in the sense that it conforms to all of the following:

a. commonsensical views about the world (for example, that there exist other people, that there exists a mind-independent world, that much evil exists);

b. widely accepted scientific and historical views (for example, evolutionary theory), and

c. intuitively plausible moral principles (for example, generally, punishment should not be significantly disproportional to the offence committed).

Judged by these criteria, the story of the Fall (understood in a literalist fashion) could not be offered as a theodicy. For given the doubtful historicity of Adam and Eve, and given the problem of harmonizing the Fall with evolutionary theory, such an account of the origin of evil cannot reasonably held to be plausible. 

i) From a secular standpoint, it's not a given that evil exists. If that reflects the viewpoint of the atheist, then he needs to justify moral realism on secular grounds. In principle, it's possible for him to address the problem of evil for the sake of argument, by attempting to show that Christian theism is self-contradictory in the regard. But those two approaches need to be disambiguated. 

ii) Ironically, metaphysical idealism is becoming an academic fad.

iii) A Christian may well disagree with the moral intuitions of an atheist. 

iv) Unless we're dealing with the evolutionary argument from animal suffering, or the Fall, I don't see that the status of evolution is generally relevant to the evidential argument from evil. 

v) The Fall, whether human or angelic, can't be an ultimate explanation for evil since that only pushes the question back a step to the origin of their moral defection. 

A similar point could be made about stories that attempt to explain evil as the work of Satan and his cohorts.

i) But demonic and diabolical evil are fixtures of Christian supernaturalism. So that can't be eliminated from a Christian theodicy. Although that falls short of an ultimate explanation for the origin of evil, yet given the existence of fallen angels, many particular evils are the result of demoniacal and diabolical agency. 

ii) Admittedly, Christian theism isn't the explicit target of the argument as formulated by Trakakis, but for a Christian, the evidential argument from evil must engage Christian theism. In that context, you can't just strip away angelic evil, as if that's piece of tape to peel off. That's part of the deep structure of Christian theology. 

iii) And besides the witness of biblical revelation, there's a lot of empirical evidence for demonic agency. It's just anti-intellectual prejudice and ignorance that brushes that aside. 

That may not plausible or reasonable to the atheist, but it begs the question to make his plausibility structure the benchmark. Here we may rapidly reach an impasse because both sides don't share the same plausibility structure. That doesn't mean no further progress is possible–inasmuch as each side can attempt to defend its own plausibility structure and critique the plausibility structure of the opposing side, but that will require a digression from the immediate bone of contention since both sides will have to take step back several paces and hash out some preliminary issues. And that, too, may lead to stalemate–so that they never return to the immediate bone of contention. An atheist is not entitled to simulate his plausibility structure as the privileged frame of reference. 

An important distinction is often made between a defence and a theodicy. A theodicy is intended to be a plausible or reasonable explanation as to why God permits evil. A defence, by contrast, is only intended as a possible explanation as to why God permits evil. A theodicy, moreover, is offered as a solution to the evidential problem of evil, whereas a defence is offered as a solution to the logical problem of evil. 

The basic problem I have with this approach is that once we bracket God , I no longer have a framework for what's plausible or reasonable. I'm at sea. I have no compass points. I'm intellectually lost. 

So I find the argument from evil tp be quite artificial and self-defeating. It's atheism, not Christianity, that must resort to ad hoc postulates. Without God I have nothing to work with. I can't get the argument started. Nothing is a given. There are no criteria. Nothing to lend the argument from evil any traction or foothold. You can't evaluate anything if you have no norms. The argument from evil has what little plausibility it enjoys by taking for granted many key assumptions that fade away once God removed from consideration. We left spinning in the dark. 

Welty on evil

"The Problem of Evil" (Greg Welty)

Disguise and recognition

There's an interesting and neglected parallel between theodicy and certain kinds of Bible stories. The basic idea of theodicy is that God has good reasons for not preventing certain kinds of evils, but his reasons may not be evident. They don't lie on the face of events. Rather, it takes imagination, a long-range view, or retrospective view, to appreciate the instrumental value of evil. 

By analogy, the Bible contains stories about characters in disguise as well as recognition scenes. They go together.

In the OT, some theophanies or angelophanies are God or angels in disguise. They have a human appearance (e.g. Gen 18-19; Josh 5:13-15). Their true identity might initially be revealed to the reader (e.g. Gen 18:1), but concealed to characters in the narrative until they say or do something that discloses their supernatural identity (divine or angelic), like when the angels blind the Sodomites (Gen 19:11).

So initial disguise leads to a recognition scene, when it dawns on characters that these apparently human visitors are supernatural beings. There's more to it than meets the eye.

We see the same pattern in the NT. For instance, both Mark and John introduce Jesus to the reader as the coming of Yahweh or Yahweh Incarnate. But outwardly, Jesus just seems to be a man. It's only as he begins to say and do certain things that a dawning awareness occurs that there's more to Jesus than meets the eye. They discover things about him that don't lie on the surface. 

Recognition can operate at two levels. At one level they learn what he claims to be, but some of them reject it.

At a deeper level, some of them realize that what he claims to be is in fact his true identity. They have an epiphany. 

This is a general pattern in the Gospels, although there are some dramatic disguise/recognition scenes (e.g. Lk 24:13-34; Jn 20:11-18).

This is analogous to the problem of evil, where there's a sense in which evil is disguised good. It's genuinely evil, but with the benefit of hindsight or a long-range view, the instrumental value of evil becomes increasingly recognizable. So initial appearances are misleading. There's more to it than meets the eye. You can't properly assess it at the time it happens. Rather, it has a larger significance that's initially obscure, confounding, or hidden. 

Finessing the problem of evil

From a Facebook exchange:

That's a simplistic caricature of reprobation. The fact that the reprobate end up in hell doesn't mean that's the purpose of God creating them. If a soldier throws himself on a grenade to shield is comrades, that's the last thing he does, but it's not as if he was born for that sole purpose.

You repeat the same oversimplification. According to reprobation, the reprobate are hellbound in part because they were predestined to hell. But that doesn't mean they were born with that sole end in mind. To the contrary, the reprobate have an important role to play in world history and sacred history. In addition, they are damned because they are wicked. Culpability is a necessity (albeit insufficient) condition for reprobation.

To begin with, it's no different from Augustinianism or classical Thomism, both of which are highly predestinarian. If you're posing a philosophical question about whether libertarian freedom is necessary to be blameworthy, that's a hotly contested issue in the philosophical literature. Are you going say God is worse than the devil based on disputed philosophical conjectures?

You're raising a philosophical objection, but you're not prepared to defend your position philosophically. And you're prepared to blaspheme God based on a philosophical objection which, by your own admission, you lack the competence to defend. Reprobation doesn't make eternal suffering the "foundation of creation and salvation." Why not say unconditional election makes eternal bliss the foundation of creation and salvation? The point, though, is that evil is not an unplanned evil. God has a good reason for the foreordination of the fall, otherwise it was within his power to preempt it. There are certain kinds of good, second-order goods, that are made possible by evil. You and I wouldn't exist in an unfallen world. You and I are the product of chains of events leading up to us that include many intervening evil variables. So there are tradeoffs.

i) I'm saying you want to have to both ways. You want to have the benefit of a philosophical objection without the hard work of philosophical argument to justify your objection. You raise a philosophical objection, but then play the "I'm a simple man card". 

ii) The deny that God planned evil means that evil caught God off-guard. If God foresaw evil as a result of his creative fiat, then he intended the consequences of his own actions. That's logically unavoidable. 

iii) Yes, God is responsible for whatever happens. But there's a difference between responsibility and culpability. Responsibility is a necessary but insufficient condition of culpability. The former doesn't entail the latter. And to say God is responsible for whatever happens doesn't make him solely responsible. He's not the only agent. 

iv) The comparison with slaves and murdered children fails to take guilt into account. So your comparison is amoral. 

v) So you deny that God will the long-term consequences of his own actions? 

God doesn't will evil for evil's sake, but he wills evil for the compensatory goods. Do you think God willed the crucifixion of Christ?

vi) Certain kinds of goods require evil. If a child dies of leukemia, and the parents make a replacement child, the new child wouldn't exist apart from the tragedy of the first child's death. 

vii) You've presented no argument for the claim that double predestination is arbitrary.

"it's possible for God to foresee evil without intending either it or its consequences, and to act and plan in a manner that provides for it."

i) It's not just a case of God foreseeing the consequences of an action, but the consequences of his own actions. Does God not intend the consequences of his own creative/providential actions? Is it an divine accident that those actions have those end-results? Like an uncoordinated house guest who breaks an antique flower vase by inadvertently bumping into it and knocking it over?

ii) Perhaps you're using "intend" in the specialized sense of double effect theory, where the evil is a necessary but indirect side-effect of the action. If so, Calvinism can draw the same distinction.

Mind you, it's disputable in the double effect literature whether the dichotomy between intended and foreseen outcomes is stable. 

"I'm using 'responsibility' and 'culpability' interchangeably."

You can do that if you wish, but there's an important conceptual distinction inasmuch as responsibility for an action may be either praiseworthy or blameworthy. 

"I'm actually kind of concerned now by what you mean by those cases being 'amoral'."

It's amoral for you to compare cases of innocent suffering with just punishment.

"God wills only good, otherwise He is not God."

But God can will good indirectly.

"Of course He didn't will the Crucifixion"

Was the crucifixion an unplanned event? If God planned it, how can God not intend or will his own plans? 

How is your denial consistent with Acts 2:23 & 4:27-28? (Not to mention that the Greek is probably using proginosko in the idiomatic sense of prior choice.)

"That the 'replacement' child is a good in no way makes the earlier child dying of leukemia not an evil."

Unresponsive to the argument inasmuch as I never said the death of the first child was not an evil. To the contrary, it was a necessary evil for the second-order good of the replacement child to transpire.

If we were living in an unfallen world, we could discuss what God is prepared to plan with respect to evil with greater speculative freedom because evil would just be an abstraction and the debate would be hypothetical. But in a situation where God and evil actually coexist, that takes certain explanations off the table. At this stage we must play the hand we were dealt, which curtails the range of available theodical options. Lots of Christians act like they can artificially buffer God from complicity in evil, but given the fact of evil along with divine creation and providence, that logically commits us to certain positions, like it or not, and forecloses certain escape routes.

And yet, and yet...

Greg Koukl:

I was reading the L.A. Times today in the letters to the editor section and there was a letter written by a gentleman in Newport Beach that was a response to a tragic story that the Times had carried a few days ago. Maybe some of you had seen that story or have read about it in the local papers about not just the rank and file tragedy in Bosnia-Hertzegovena, not about the general tragedy of war. The article was about the problems of the refugees and also a women being victimized by soldiers.

This respondent writes, "Glancing at your April 10 paper my eyes fell upon the tragic story 'Ordeals Put Off Bosnia Rape Victim's Healing.' My heart ached for Amira, the 35 year old Muslim woman, mother of two children, suffering the loss of her husband, wandering about the countryside begging to survive. Placed in a detention camp, raped repeatedly by Serb soldiers acting as animal pigs rather than humans, the woman became another tragic victim of human wickedness. Where is mankind headed? My thoughts turn to God and ask, 'Why, God? Why did you create such monsters? God, are you for real?' If this is God's way of teaching or testing my faith", he continues, " then my beliefs and faith are being shattered with contempt instead. Having just lost my wife to cancer, maybe my feelings are more prone and fragile to be torn apart and my feelings turn more intensely to those who are suffering also." It's signed Victor Jashinski in Newport Beach.

Why I'm still a Christian

I mentioned a while back that there's an overemphasis on Christian conversion testimonies. Why these can be edifying to read, what's more useful is to read follow-up testimonies of why someone is still a Christian after 50 years, give or take. Recently I ran that question by some Christian thinkers who are approaching the end of their pilgrimage. The answers for interesting but off-the-record. Then one of them asked me how I'd answer my own question. So, for what it's worth, here's the question and my own answer:

Q. Have you written anything about why you're a Christian at this stage of life? As you know, there's a testimonial genre about how people became Christian in their teens/twenties or how they personally embraced the faith they were raised in at that time of life, but that's frozen in the past. At that age their reasons will be thinner. Over a lifetime, the reasons may evolve or change or be augmented or replaced with deeper reasons. Approaching the end of life, a Christian thinker has thicker reasons for his faith, due to all the life-experience under his belt, study, reflection, and interaction with others. 

A. There's why I became a Christian and then there's why I'm still a Christian. I've been a Christian for 44 years. I became a Christian at 16.

I grew up in a moderately Christian home. My father was intellectual, but agnostic and aloof. My mother was a P.K., pious, but religiously rootless when I was growing up. My grandmother, who lived in town until I started junior high, was the most devout. I adored her, but she wasn't intellectual, so her faith wasn't a reason for me to believe . My Aunt Grace was the best educated Christian I knew at that time, but she was more scholarly than analytical. And we didn't see her that often. My uncle Fred, who was Dean of Education at Anderson U, was a closet apostate. 

I never attended a fundamentalist church. We attended mainline denominations. No doctrinal preaching.

When I came of age around 13, I began to think about death. Not because I expected to die anytime soon, but I was beginning to think about what I'd do with the rest of my life as an adult. And since I was mortal, it made sense to mentally begin at the end and work back from there. At the time I was an atheist. However, it seemed to me that if we pass into oblivion when we die, then life is unimportant. It made me feel alienated from the world.

At that age I didn't have a philosophically astute argument for my intuition, but over the years I've definitely firmed up my view that atheism is a euphemism for moral and existential nihilism. Indeed, one of my pastimes is to collect atheists who admit that.

That didn't make me a Christian, but it did mean I've never been able to consider atheism as a viable fallback option. At one end, my Christianity begins with atheism. That's the backstop. That's just not a tenable alternative. 

I became a Christian at 16 simply by reading the Bible, beginning with Matthew. That was it. Apologetics came later. I backed into apologetics, not to answer my own questions, but to advise others.

As a new Christian it became quickly apparent that I could ask questions the people I knew couldn't answer, so I'd have to find my own answers.

Although I'm cerebral, I'm naturally an intellectual drifter. I coasted through public school on raw talent. I was never studious. 

Partly because I found public school boring. For instance, I was probably mathematically gifted, but they didn't know what to do with gifted students. They just taught techniques for solving problems, whereas I ignored the textbook and toyed with equations until they balanced out in my head. The teacher didn't approve.

Some guys excel academically because they have a competitive streak. I don't. I always thought living to beat the competition was a stupid goal in life. Until I became a Christian, I was an intellectually lazy, indifferent student. It took a sense of Christian duty to galvanize my abilities.

Theologically, I'm primarily interested in exegetical and philosophical theology. Intellectual challenges to Christianity have never been the chink in my armor. I've read all the best atheists. 

In addition, I've invested a great amount of  time in evidence for Christianity as well as evidence refuting naturalism, including neglected lines of evidence. 

As you know, Christian faith has several components. One is belief or conviction, grounded in evidence. My faith is pretty invulnerable in that respect, although I'm only human, so I don't claim to be indestructible.

Where I'm vulnerable is the emotional problem of evil. The way to harm me is through harming those I care about. My three closest, most devout relatives suffered the most. 

I think some Christians lose their faith, not because they cease to believe in God's existence, but God's benevolence. They feel God betrayed them or betrayed those they loved. If you doubt God's goodness, then his existence is secondary. 

However, I'm a presuppositional Christian and an existential Christian. I think God is the source of meaning, math, modality, morality, and logic, as well as creation. On that front alone, naturalism is not an option.

In addition, I've never been a truth for truth's sake, follow the evidence wherever it leads thinker. That bifurcates the good and the true. But both are necessary. Without truth, goodness is illusory; without goodness, truth is worthless. 

Watching what happened to my closest relatives was emotionally damaging to my faith, but damaged faith is worth clinging to. We can't live without hope.

So between the positive evidence for Christianity, as well as the evidence for the falsity of naturalism, I remain a Christian. Atheism is repellent, and the other religious offerings aren't serious rivals. 

I should add that I've had a number of uncanny experiences over the years (as well as witnessing like phenomena with some of my relatives), so it's not confined to abstract public evidence. 

Artificially isolating the problem of evil

In order to have a specific example before us, consider the case of Dominick Calhoun, a four-year-old boy from Michigan who died after days of being beaten and burned by his mother's boyfriend. "I've been doing this a long time, and this is the worst case of child abuse I've ever seen," said the local police chief about Dominick's case: "in all respects, he was tortured." Dominick's body was found covered with bruises and with all of his teeth knocked out. His grandmother reported that "burns covered his body" and that his brain was "bashed out of his skull." A neighbor told police he heard Dominick screaming over and over again, "Mommy, make him stop." The allegation is that God, being perfect, would have prevented Dominick's torture. Stephen Maitzen, "Normative Objections to Theism," G. Oppy, ed. A Companion to Atheism and Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell 2019), 205.  

This is a standard strategy in framing the argument from evil. Illustrate the problem with a paradigm example of horrific evil. It can be quantitative or qualitative. The amount of evil or kind of evil. And this is a well-chosen case to illustrate the point Maitzen is laboring to make. 

Consider, though, how much Maitzen takes for granted. He jumps right into the problem of evil. But think about how he's isolated this particular example from other preliminary considerations:

• He presumes that the universe can exist without a Creator and designer

• He presumes that mathematical structures can  exist apart from God (inasmuch as the universe exemplifies mathematical structures)

• He presumes that human beings can exist without a Creator and designer

• He presumes that human beings are the kind of organisms that can be wronged–unlike, say, prey animals that are naturally temporary and replaceable. 

• He presumes that moral realism is true apart from God's existence. He seems to regard the ordeal of Dominick as objectively evil, and not an example for the sake of argument to illustrate that Christian theism is internally inconsistent. 

From the standpoint of Christian ethics, sin was a factor. The mother had a live-in boyfriend who didn't have the natural bond with her son that a biological father normally has. And where was the biological father? Does Maitzen disapprove of domestic arrangements that violate Christian ethics?

The paradoxical problem of evil

The problem of evil can generate some paradoxes. Ironically, the problem of evil may appear worse when the situation is actually improving. For instance, there's been a drastic reduction in infant mortality in the west, thanks to modern medical science. In the past, parents expected most of their kids to die before reaching adulthood. Now that's very rare and shocking. That makes the death of a child stick out in a way that wasn't the case in the past. So the fact that the world has gotten better in that respect–far better–can oddly enough make the residual evil in kind seem far worse. 

The emotional problem of suffering

The Christian (Calvinist) philosopher and ethicist John Feinberg discusses the emotional problem of suffering. He offers his own experiences with suffering after his wife was diagnosed with Huntington's Disease as well as advice on how to help those suffering. The following excerpt is taken from his book The Many Faces of Evil (revised edition).

Life under the sun

Maybe one way of looking at Ecclesiastes is that Solomon is painting a picture of fallen life in a fallen world, that is, life "under the sun".

Not only are human beings fallen, but the whole of creation is fallen. For example, Eccl 3:20 seems to reflect Gen 3:19. We're but dust returning to dust. We live fallen lives in a fallen world. Like nuclear radiation from Chernobyl, the fallout from the fall contaminates the whole world.

Likewise hebel could mean several different things among which is, of course, breath. The brevity of breath. God breathed life into us. We who are earthen vessels. Animated clay. But this "breath" of life - our lives - will expire as quickly as it's inspired. Breathe in, breathe out, and it's all over.

Ecclesiastes is a picture of humans "groaning" (as Paul would put it) along with the whole of creation. Groaning over how fleeting everything is. Groaning over how toilsome our labors are. Groaning over our cryptic, Sphinx-like world. Groaning over the futility of life. And so on and so forth.

This groaning arguably points to a longing in the human heart. A longing for eternity, which God himself has placed in our hearts (Eccl 3:11). A longing for life "under the sun" to end. A longing for something better that doesn't wear down or wear out but lasts forever. Something which this world can't fulfill. Only the world to come (eternity) can satisfy.

As an aside, I've always appreciated Ecclesiastes for its realism. It doesn't pull punches. It tells it like it is. It's the antidote to Hallmark card Christianity.

"The infernalists"

This is at the heart of Hart’s unforgiving rhetoric in his book towards the “infernalists”. We no longer live in Tertullian’s or Dante’s world where we can look gleefully upon our enemies writhing in unquenchable flames and think that they are receiving their just comeuppance. It’s simply “not done”, no lady or gentleman (or their contemporary “woke” counterpart) would deign to sink so low. I can’t help but think that Hart’s Episcopalian upbringing enters into all of this. Had he been raised in, for instance, a Catholic barrio having to fight off three separate bullies just to get home (no idea why that example came to mind), maybe he would be far more hesitant to condemn the ideas of Christians through the centuries who concluded that, yes, there are people who are indeed that bad.

https://arturovasquez.wordpress.com/2019/10/11/david-bentley-harts-end-of-history/

Near miss

A stock objection to Christianity is that if God existed, he'd intervene to prevent evil. But as I've remarked on more than one occasion, that's circular in the sense that there's no trace evidence for nonevents. If something never happened, it leaves no record. 

To take a concrete example, during summer break I used to go for walks at the football field of my old junior high. One time two adolescent boys, friends or brothers, were there when I arrived. They brought their Rottweiler with them. They were fooling around inside the field, I was walking around the track, while the dog was lying in the shadows beyond the track. At one point I came between the boys and the dog. It suddenly rose up and began to snarl. The boys were too foolish to anticipate the danger of taking a dog like that into the public arena. They were able to verbally retrain it, but it was clearly untrained, with a hair-trigger reaction. They had no real control over what it did. That dog was a mauling just waiting to happen.

For me, that was a near miss. If it attacked me, I would have been hospitalized...or worse. That's a concrete illustration of a tragedy that didn't happen. And it's forgettable in a way that the alternative is not. We don't generally remember a close call because it didn't come to a head. It's the tragedies that make an impression. 

Tooley on evil

Philosopher Michael Tooley has published a new monograph: The Problem of Evil (Cambridge 2019). He's arguably the most sophisticated atheist on this particular issue, so it's useful to scrutinize his position. I'll focus on what I take to be his best arguments.  

2.6 Allowing Undeserved Suffering Cannot Be Justified by Appealing to the Great Good of the Existence of Laws of Nature

First, it is generally held that an omnipotent deity could miraculously intervene at any time and place to alter what happens in the natural world, and this is surely right, since if God is the creator of everything, all that is needed for God to be able to intervene in the natural world at any time is to create laws...of the ‘God willing’ variety. Moreover, they need to be of that variety if, as most theists believe, God sometimes intervenes miraculously in the natural world.

Let us turn, then, to a second argument, which is that many evils depend upon precisely what laws the world contains. An omnipotent being could, for example, easily create a world with the same laws of physics as our world, but with slightly different laws linking neurophysiological states to qualities of experiences, so that extremely intense pains either never occur, or else could be turned off by the sufferer when they served no purpose. Alternatively, God could create additional physical laws of a rather specialized sort that could, for example, either cause very harmful viruses to self-destruct, or prevent viruses such as the avian flu virus from evolving into an airborne form that would have the capacity to kill hundreds of million people.

Dodging a bullet

Atheists make breezy claims about how God could make the world a better place by changing a variable here and there. During this interview, Jonny Somerville illustrates the hairbreadth difference one variable can make to the future:

My great-grandfather was a soldier. He fought in WWI in the Battle of Somme. One of the worst battles of our time. You know...like…if a bullet had gone slightly to the left or right I may not even be here–which is a sobering thought. 

https://www.solas-cpc.org/shortanswers57/

Tweaking variables to improve the future has humanly incalculable consequences. Glib pronouncements to the contrary notwithstanding, we're in no position to judge what changes would be the world a better, worse, or both better and worse in different ways. 

Two views of suffering

Doug Groothuis: "Two Views of Suffering: Atheist Existentialism and Christianity".

By the way, Groothuis recently wrote "Loving God and Others in the Midst of Suffering", but it doesn't seem accessible to non-subscribers of the Christian Research Journal.

What's the point?

1. I'll begin with some examples:

• In How Long, O Lord, Don Carson recounts how, as a young pastor, he witnessed a neighbor accidentally run over his young son as the father backed the car out of the garage.

• Somewhere, Robert Louis Dabney writes about a young woman he knew. He was clearly smitten by her. Regarded her as the full flower of Southern Christian womanhood. But she died of cancer. Not only did she die young, but because there were no painkillers back then, she died screaming. Screaming for weeks before she died. 

• Due to brain atrophy, some people, including some elderly Christians, become senile. 

• The 2-year-old boy killed by an alligator at Disney World. 

2. An atheist might ask, what's the point? What possible purpose is served by these kinds of evils? For that matter, Christians might scratch their heads.

In some cases we can roll out a soul-building theodicy. Caring for an elderly parent who's becoming senile can foster virtues in the grown child. And it may prove to the parent that he or she is truly loved, even after they become a "burden". 

But that doesn't work in all cases. In the case of the women who had cancer, it was so shattering to watch her suffer and die in that way that it might be religiously alienating to the survivors. 

Why does God allow Christians to become senile due to brain atrophy instead of ending their life before that cruel eventuality? 

At that stage, not only are the pain receptors useless to the cancer patient, but worse than useless. Worse than the disease itself. 

I don't know what happened to the boy who was run over. Did he die? Did it leave him physically disabled? Did it leave him mentally disabled? And imagine the guilt the father suffered. Likewise, the young boy killed by the alligator, right before the eyes of his father, who was helpless to save him. 

3. But this may be the wrong way of looking at the issue. At one level, many tragedies caused by natural evils are pointless. That is to say, they may serve no purpose with regard to the victim. In no sense was the victim a beneficiary of the calamity. 

But while, at that end, a particular outcome may be pointless, the conditions that made it possible are not pointless. We live in a cause/effect world. In terms of general utility, there's value to living in a cause/effect world, but an incidental consequence of that is that some events, individually considered, may be pointless. It wasn't good for the cancer patient to suffer unbearable pain in her final weeks of life. But that doesn't mean pain receptors are worthless. In general, they are quite useful–indeed, indispensable.  

Natural forces, processes, and mechanisms, as well as predators and pathogens, play a necessary role in a world governed by second causes and ordinary providence. The natural order, consisting of blind physical factors, doesn't have the wellbeing of individuals in mind. If I get soaking wet walking home from school in driving rain, that's "gratuitous" as far as I've concerned, but it hardly follows that rain is gratuitous. If I'm stung by a honeybee, that's pointless at my end, but it doesn't make honeybees pointless. 

A lawnmower is useful for cutting grass. If you run over your bare foot with the lawnmower, while the injury serves no purpose, it doesn't follow that the lawnmower serves no purpose. Rather, that's a side-effect of mowing the lawn. A wood chipper is useful for pulverizing branches. If you fall into a wood chipper, that's a pointless way to die, but it doesn't make the wood chipper a pointless device.

Many antecedent conditions have general utility, which justifies their existence, even if they sometimes produce pointless results. Their value or justification doesn't lie in every particular outcome, but by providing a field of action which is the source of many goods. Nevertheless, it can be aggravating, agonizing, or maddening to be on the wrong end of these conditions.

4. It might be objected that even if this is true, God can intervene to prevent the tragic side-effects. Indeed, but we need to make allowance for two other considerations:

i) Just about every event triggers a chain-reaction. And if it didn't happen, there'd be a different chain-reaction. Some other precipitating event would take its place. While God can and sometimes does intervene, that must be counterbalanced by the long-range impact of divine intervention. When God intervenes, it doesn't merely change one variable, but changes successive variables. 

ii) In a fallen world, God withdraws certain providential protections which humans would otherwise enjoy. That's a cost of living in a fallen world. The world to come will restore a degree of special providence missing in a fallen world. 

iii) A clockwork universe is the default setting of the physical universe. Prayer can break through that, but many prayers go unanswered. 

The natural evil of evolution

This is indeed a challenge for theistic evolutionists (e.g. BioLogos, Catholic intellectuals):

When you look at the full picture of evolution and you consider the 3.5 billion years during which this unfolding drama played out, when there were millions and millions of species that evolved only to be snuffed out and pushed into evolutionary dead ends, and during which time there was at least 5 mass extinctions in which some 70-95 percent of all the living species on earth at that time went extinct, I'm being asked by theists to believe that this was all part of a divine creator's plan who was sitting back and taking pleasure in watching millions of species (whose evolution he allegedly guided) get wiped out one after the other, and then starting all over again, and then wiped them out again and repeated this process over and over, until finally getting around to evolving human beings – which I'm told was the whole purpose of this cruel and clumsy process. 

http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2017/10/why-im-atheist-13-reasons-arguments-for.html