Is God the Author of Evil? Molinism has no better answer than Calvinism

In the book, Divine Foreknowledge: Four views (ed. James K. Beilby and Paul R. Eddy, 2001), four evangelical Christians present different views on the meaning of Divine Foreknowledge. Greg Boyd presents the Open-Theism View, David Hunt, the Simple-Foreknowledge View, William Craig, The Middle-Foreknowledge View (aka, Molinism), and Paul Helm, the Augustinian-Calvinist (A-C) View. One of the criticisms often raised by those who oppose the latter view is that it makes God the author of sin. That is because it essentially makes no distinction between foreknowledge and foreordination. God foreknows what he does because he has foreordained it.

Craig expresses this criticism of  the A-C view:

The Augustinian-Calvinist perspective interprets the above passages to mean that foreknowledge is based upon foreordination. God knows what will happen because he makes it happen. Aware of the intentions of his will and his almighty power, God knows that all his purpose shall be accomplished. But his interpretation inevitably makes God the author of sin, since it is he who moved Judas, for example, to betray Christ, a sin that merits the hapless Judas everlasting perdition. But how can a holy God move people to ocmmit moral evil and, moreover, how can these people then be held morally responisble for acts over which they had no control. The Augustinian-Calvinist view seems, in effect, to turn God into the devil (p. 135).

Paul Helm, on the other hand, maintains that the Middle-Knowledge View (Molinism) of Bill Craig has the same problem:

On the question of the authoriship of evil, there's not a hairsbreadth bewteen the Augustinian-Calvinist perspective and Craig's Molinism. According to Craig's description of Molinism, "God decreed to create just those circumstances and just those people who would freely do what God willed to happen" (p. 134). While this description does not ential that God is the author of sin (any more than the A-C perspective does), it does entail that God decreed all sinful acts to happen and decreed them precisely as they have happened. If this is so, the God of Molina and Arminius seems to be as implicated in the fact of evil as much (or as little) as the God of the A-C perspective (p. 159).

I agree with Craig that the A-C view does make God the author of sin. Since everything that happens in the word was foreordained by God, then sin was foreordained by him as well. I also agree with Helm that Molinism does not solve this problem. It inserts "middle-knowledge" between foreknowledge and foreordination but the result is the same. If God chooses to actualize a word in which there will be evil and he knows there will be evil due to his middle-knowledge, then he is no less the author of sin than the Calvinist God is.

Furthermore, as John Feinberg points out, Molinism's attempt to safeguard "libertarian free will" also fails. He writes:

[M]iddle knowledge talks about what would happen, so once God chooses the possible world he wants to actualize, he knows in every situation what his creatures would freely do. Divine foreknoweldge is upheld. However, if incompatiblism is correct, how can he know what would happen if any given "x" occurred? That is, if "y" is an incompatibilistically free human action, it must be indeterminate, but if so, it is impossible for God to know in advance of our free choice which "y" would actually occur in any given "x" situation. In virtue of what would he know the particular "y" that would follow? In virtue of causal conditions that confront the agent at the time of decision making and move him to choose as he does? If so, that is determinism, not libertarian free will (The Many Faces of Evil, 2004, p. 113).

Another author, David Hunt, maintains that the Molinist view does not resolve the "soteriological problem of evil" either. He writes:

The Bible appears to teach that some (many? most?) human beings will spend eternity in hell. Whatever "eternity in hell" amounts to, it is certainly not the purpose for which God created the world--God does not desire this for anyone (2 Pet 3:9). but if he is equipped with middle knowledge, he knew exactly who would reject him prior to creating anyone; knowing this, he could easily have refrained from creating these people. Why didn't he do so? This is a more difficult question to answer for the Molinist than it is for the open theist (whose God lacks this knowledge) or the defender of simple foreknowledge (whose God knows the actual future but cannot use that knowledge to change the very thing he foreknows). This does not show that there are no reasons why God might create people he "middle-knows" would reject him, but the need to posit and defend such reasons is a cost not borne by the non-Molinst (Divine Foreknowledge, p. 152)

So, despite the poplularity among a number of Christian philosophers and apologists regarding middle-knowledge (many seem to think its a panacea for all the sticky issues facing Christianity), it doesn't seem to me that it offers any better solution to the problems than does pure Calvinism.

How Did Adam and Eve Sin if they were created "Good"?

In a prior post, I argued that not even Adam and Eve had a truly free will. If this is true, then the so-called Free Will Defense for the Problem of Evil fails, for they were created with a predisposition towards evil.

R. L. Dabney, the 19th century Calvinist theologian, attempts to explain how beings created as "very good" (Gen. 1:31)could sin. He writes:

How a holy will could come to have an unholy volition at first, is a most difficult inquiry. And it is much harder as to the first sin of Satan, than of Adam, because the angel, created perfect, had no tempter to mislead him and had not even the bodily appetites for natural good which in Adam were so easily perverted into concupiscence. Concupiscence cannot be supposed to have been the cause, pre-existing before sin; because concupiscence is sin, and needs itself to be accounted for in a holy heart. Man's, or Satan's, mutability cannot be the efficient cause, being only a condition sine qua non. Nor is it any solution to say with Turrettin, the proper cause was a free will perverted voluntarily. Truly; but how came a right will to pervert itself while yet right?

... The most probable account of the way sin entered a holy breast first, is this: An object was apprehended as in its mere nature desirable; not yet as unlawful. So far there is no sin. But as the soul, finite and fallible in its attention, permitted an overweening apprehension and desire of its natural adaptation to confer pleasure, to override the feeling of its unlawfulness, concupiscence was developed. And the element which first caused the mere innocent sense of the natural goodness of the object to pass into evil concupiscence, was privative, viz., the failure to consider and prefer God's will as the superior good to mere natural good. Thus natural desire passed into sinful selfishness, which is the root of all evil. ...

When we assert the mutability of a holy will in a finite creature, we only say that the positive element of righteousness of disposition may, in the shape of defect, admit the negative, not being infinite (Systematic Theology, ch. 29).

So, if I understand Dabney correctly, Adam and Eve fell because they were created as finite beings. Even as a candle will eventually burn out due to its finiteness, the first human beings eventually sinned due to their finiteness. Thus, it was inevitable that they sin.

Shedd (vol. 2, p. 149)Adam was holy by creation, but not indefectibly and immutably so. The inclination of his will, though conformed to the moral law, was mutable, because his will was not omnipotent. When voluntary self-determination is an infinite and self-subsistent power, as it is in God, the fall of the will is impossible. But when voluntary self-determination is a finite and dependent power, as it is in man or angel, the fall of the will is possible. ... The power to the contrary; the possibilitas peccandi, or power to originate sin ; belonged to Adam's will because of its finiteness.



If it was inevitable that the first couple sin, then how can they be held culpable?

see discussion at Tribalogue

Unfortunately, since we are not in the position of Adam and since the Bible is silent on the issue, we can only answer with speculation. Granted, it is speculation that is informed by the rest of Scripture, but this isn't an issue that the Bible addresses specifically.

We do know that Adam's sin did not catch God off-guard. It was foreordained, yet in such a way that Adam freely sinned. These concepts are all clear from Scripture. While I do not have a perfect answer for the question, I will give you my speculation with the caveats that 1) I haven't really worked through this in its entirety and 2) I do not hold this position dogmatically and can easily be influenced away from it.

My current belief is that barring active influence from God in the form of common grace, it is impossible for anything to remain in a perfect state. That is, the natural state of everything is entropy, and this is true of man and his spirituality. Thus, it is impossible for God to create a man who of his own power (that is, apart from God's continual upholding via His grace and mercy) will remain steadfast and not turn toward sin.

The advantage to this argument is that it would explain why Adam sinned (i.e. God removed His grace and let Adam be as Adam would be, which invariably means Adam would "break" and sin) and it explains why we will not sin in heaven (i.e. God will not ever remove His grace from us, and therefore we will continually rely on His power to keep us in communion with Him for all time).

The drawback is that it relies on saying that it is impossible for God to create a man who would not sin if God ever let the man exist of the man's own power. However, I wouldn't have a problem with this in theory since I do not believe God can make a round square or any other contradiction, and if it is logically impossible for God to create a person who cannot sin without His continual grace then we don't have a problem there.

So the question would be, is it logically possible for God to create a person who is able of his own power to remain faithful to God? And I haven't worked through that one yet.

But at least it gives me something to think about.
12/16/2007 9:58 PM


see discussion Puritanboard

http://www.puritanboard.com/f15/how-did-adam-sin-27525/

You are also going to have to avoid the Roman error: that Adam's human nature was naturally deficient, that it tended toward concupiscence without the donum superadditum, special grace needed to remain sinless

Rome says concupiscence (inclination to wrongdoing) is natural. Dabney says, "concupiscence was developed." At least Dabney admits the result is mysterious, and not a natural occurrence

Did Adam and Eve have a Free Will?

The Free Will Defense for the problem of evil really relates only to Adam and Eve; because the Bible teaches that after the fall of the original couple, men's hearts incline towards evil. Man's nature post-fall is corrupt and is bent in the direction of doing evil. Man is totally depraved, meaning that left to himself, he will choose against God. So, according to historic Christianity, the only persons who were truly free were Adam and Eve. That means that the so-called Free Will Defense employed by Christian apologists really only applies to the original couple.

But were they even truly free? What precisely does it mean to have a truly free will? Does it mean that nothing is causing you to choose one option over another or does it mean that nothing is influencing you to choose one option over another? It seems that it must be the former, since it seems impossible for one to make any choice without being influenced by something.  But is a will that is influenced, truly free?

I guess the question becomes how much influence is required before one is no longer culpable for his choice? In the criminal justice system, the defense of entrapment can be used by someone who believes that he was "improperly induced" into committing a crime. While this area of the law is complex and somewhat subjective (see Criminal Law , Thomas J. Gardner and Terry M. Anderson, [10th ed., 2009], 146-49 and Criminal Law,  David C. Brody, James R. Acker, and Wayne A. Logan [2001],  313-14), it is agreed that the defendant must have had a predisposition to commit the crime before he encountered the undercover officer in order to avoid the charge of entrapment. In other words, to prove the entrapment defense, you have to show that the crime is one that you would not have committed and that you had no predisposition to commit without the inducement of an undercover agent. Police cannot select random citizens to participate in organized sting operations in hopes of generating an arrest. There must be some compelling evidence that a specific individual has a propensity for committing such a crime.

So, in a sting operation, a person is put in circumstances which allows him to reveal his true nature or character, and predispositions. Thus, unless Adam was entrapped, he already had a predisposition to disobey God and eat the fruit. That would mean his nature was already corrupt before he fell (Jesus says that the desire to do something wrong is just as evil as the act itself, see Matt. 5:27-28). It seems therefore that God must have created Adam this way. God created him with a predisposition to commit evil. If Adam had no predispostion to commit the crime of eating the fruit and the snake convinced him to do so, that would be entrapment according to western jurisprudence.

Since one's will (i.e., what one chooses) is based on one's nature (i.e., what one is), it doesn't seem plausible to me that Adam had a truly free will. He was predisposed to disobey God from the moment he was created because he was created with such a nature (see next post).

So much for the Free Will Defense, as the fact is no one, not even the first couple (assuming they really existed) had a genuinely free will.

Must There be Evil if there is Good?

Christians sometimes offer a defense for the problem of evil by claiming that "there must be evil if there is good. " In other words, you can't have one without the other.

John Leslie Mackie (1917-1981), an Australian philosopher, taught at Oxford University from 1967 till his death in 1981. In 1955, he wrote an important article on the  Problem of Evil entitled: "Evil and Omnipotence" (Mind, vol. 64, no. 254, 200-212). In his essay, he offered three responses to this particular claim.

1. Good and evil are not logical opposites.

[U]nless evil is merely the privation of good, they are not logical opposites, and some further argument would be needed to show that they are counterparts in the same way as genuine logical opposites ("Evil and Omnipotence," 204-05).

2. It is not necessary that a particular quality always have a real opposite.

There is still doubt of the correctness of the metaphysical principle that a quality must have a real opposite: I suggest that it is not really impossible that everything should be, say, red, that the truth is merely that if everything were red we should not notice redness, and so we should have no word 'red'; we observe and give names,to qualities only if they have real opposites. If so, the principle that a term must have an opposite would belong only to our language or to our thought,and would not be an ontological principle, and, correspondingly, the rule that good cannot exist without evil would not state a logical necessity of a sort that God would just have to put up with. God might have made everything good, though we should not have noticed it if he had (Ibid., 205).

3. It would require only a miniscule amount of evil to provide the opposite.

But, finally, even if we concede that this is an ontological principle, it will provide a solution for the problem of evil only if one is prepared to say, "Evil exists, but only just enough evil to serve as the counterpart of good." I doubt whether any theist will accept this. After all, the ontological requirement that non-redness should occur would be satisfied even if all the universe, except for a minute speck, were red, and, if there were a corresponding requirement for evil as a counterpart to good, a minute dose of evil would presumably do. But theists are not usually willing to say, in all contexts, that all the evil that occurs is a minute and necessary dose (Ibid., 205).

J. L. Mackie on the Problem of Evil--The Free Will Defense

John Leslie Mackie (1917-1981), an Australian philosopher, taught at Oxford University from 1967 till his death in 1981. He was also elected a fellow of the British Academy. In 1955, he wrote an important article on the Problem of Evil entitled: "Evil and Omnipotence" (Mind, vol. 64, no. 254, 200-212).

Mackie's argument against the Free Will Defense is twofold. The first is essentially based on his rejection of incompatiblism, i.e., the notion that genuine free will is incompatible with determinism. He argues:

[I]f God has made men such that in their free choices they sometimes prefer what is good and sometimes what is evil, why could he not have made men such that they always freely choose the good ? If there is no logical impossibility in a man's freely choosing the good on one, or on several, occasions, there cannot be a logical impossibility in his freely choosing the good on every occasion. God was not, then, faced with a choice between making innocent automata and making beings who, in acting freely, would sometimes go wrong: there was open to him the obviously better possibility of making beings who would act freely but always go right. Clearly, his failure to avail himself of this possibility is inconsistent with his being both omnipotent and wholly good.

If it is replied that this objection is absurd, that the making of some wrong choices is logically necessary for freedom, it would seem that 'freedom' must here mean complete randomness or indeterminacy, including randomness with regard to the alternatives good and evil, in other words that men's choices and consequent actions can be "free" only if they are not determined by their characters. Only on this assumption can God escape the responsibility for men's actions; for if he made them as they are, but did not determine their wrong choices, this can only be because the wrong choices are not determined by men as they are. But then if freedom is randomness, how can it be a characteristic of will? And, still more, how can it be the most important good'? What value or merit would there be in free choices if these were random actions which were not determined by the nature of the agent? ("Evil and Omnipotence," 209).

Mackie's second response to the Free Will Defense is what he calls "the Paradox of Omnipotence." He writes:

But besides this there is a fundamental difficulty in the notion of an omnipotent God creating men with free will, for if men's wills are really free this must mean that even God cannot control them, that is, that God is no longer omnipotent. It may be objected that God's gift of freedom to men does not mean that he cannot control their wills, but that he always refrains from controlling their wills. But why, we may ask, should God refrain from controlling evil wills? Whv should he not leave men free to will rightly, but intervene when he sees them beginning to will wrongly? If God could do this, but does not, and if he is wholly good, the only explanation could be that even a wrong free act of will is not really evil, that its freedom is a value which outweighs its wrongness, so that there would be a loss of value if God took away the wrongness and the freedom together. But this is utterly opposed to what theists say about sin in other contexts. The present solution of the problem of evil, then, can be maintained only in the form that God has made men so free that he cannot control their wills.

This leads us to what I call the Paradox of Omnipotence: can an omnipotent being make things which he cannit subsequently control? Or, what is practically equivalent to this,can an omnipotent being make rules which then bind himself? ...

It is clear that this is a paradox: the questions cannot be answered satisfactorily either in the affirmative or in the negative. If we answer "Yes ", it follows that if God actually makes things which he cannot control, or makes rules which bind himself, he is not omnipotent once he has made them: there are then things which ce cannot do. But if we answer "No", we are immediately asserting that there are things which he cannot do, that is to say that he is already not omnipotent (Ibid., 209-10).

Alvin Plantinga's Free Will Defense

Alvin Plantinga is perhaps the foremost Christian philosopher of our generation. He has been, until his recent retirement, the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. His fame is due primarily to two things: 1) His development of the idea that the belief in God is properly basic and is warranted without any external evidence (Reformed Epistemology). 2) His Free Will Defense which is viewed by many as having demolished the logical problem of evil. I have, in a prior post,  discussed the essence of his Reformed Epistemology. In this post, I would like to point out a few problems with his Free Will Defense as a solution for the logical problem of evil.

The logical problem of evil, as opposed to the evidential problem of evil, is the contention that to posit the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good god in an evil world constitutes a logical contradiction. In other words, an all-powerful god, all-knowing god, and a perfectly good god could not permit evil. (The evidential problem of evil says it is unlikely, not necessarily impossible, for such a god to exist given the amount of  evil in the world).

Plantinga explains the essence of his argument:

[W]e can make a preliminary statement of the Free Will Defense as follows. A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so (God, Freedom, and Evil [1977], 30).

1. A world with significantly free creatures is more valuable than one with creatures who are not significantly free.

I would like to know on what basis Plantinga makes this claim. How can one say that a world with significantly free creatures is really more valuable than one without such free will? He is making "significant free will" more important than the permission of evil and the subsequent suffering it entails. I would like to see an argument for this assertion.

2. An act can only be considered morally significant or praiseworthy if the individual could have made a different choice.

In other words, if one is not capable of making an evil choice, then his choice to do right is not morally praiseworthy. Plantinga explains:

What is relevant to the Free Will Defense is the idea of being free with respect to an action. If a person is free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing it; no antecedent conditions and/or causal laws determine that he will perform the action, or that he won't. It is within his power, at the time in question, to take or perform the action and within his power to refrain from it.

...[I] shall say that an action is morally significant, for a given person, if it would be wrong for him to perform the action but right to refrain or vice versa (Ibid., pp. 29-30).

This would mean that none of God's actions are morally praiseworthy and that in reality the term morality does not apply to God. As James R. Beebe puts it:

God, it seems, is incapable of doing anything wrong. Thus, it does not appear that, with respect to any choice of morally good and morally bad options, God is free to choose a bad option. He seems constitutionally incapable of choosing (or even wanting) to do what is wrong. According to Plantinga’s description of morally significant free will, it does not seem that God would be significantly free. Plantinga suggests that morally significant freedom is necessary in order for one’s actions to be assessed as being morally good or bad. But then it seems that God’s actions could not carry any moral significance. They could never be praiseworthy. That certainly runs contrary to central doctrines of theism ("Logical Problem of Evil").

3. To accomplish the greater good, God is justified in permitting evil.

Plantinga writes:

The Free Will Defense can be looked upon as an effort to show that there may be a very different kind of good that God can't bring about without permitting evil (God, Freedom, and Evil, p. 29).

My problem with this is twofold. First, it contradicts the concept of absolute morality which Christians claim to hold. However, in the Free Will Defense, it is okay to allow some evil so that a greater good will come from it. This is "the end justifying the means" which Christians usually attribute to moral relativism. Such a view takes a teleological or consequential view of ethics as opposed to what Christians normally insist upon, a deontological view. In other words, actions are not intrinsically right or wrong but are judged to be right or wrong depending upon the results of the actions.

Second, to permit an evil to occur when one could have prevented it makes one culpable. Christians often make the distinction between God permitting evil and God causing evil. They argue that God cannot cause evil because that would violate his holy character. Why does it not violate his holy character for him to permit evil? If I permit my child to do evil, how can I hold him responsible for what I permitted; and, furthermore, how can I escape culpability in the evil he committed? Permitting something is a form of condoning it.

The Calvinist God and the Chilean Miners

I found an interesting post on a site called TheArminian.net. The author asks:

For the benefit of this post, I want to ask why fallen human beings, with regard to the 33 miners, sought every means possible to secure their rescue, but God does not do the same in the Calvinistic system? What is it within human beings, generally speaking, that seeks to rescue those in peril? Granted, the analogy will only carry so far, because Arminianism rejects the heresy of Universalism (cf. Matt. 7:21-23; Rev. 20:11-15) — all 33 miners were rescued. In spite of the Calvinist’s best efforts at explaining how God could in any genuine sense desire the salvation of all people (as Scripture explicitly teaches at 1 Timothy 2:4 et al.), since He has from eternity past, allegedly, already unconditionally selected to save only some (by bringing them to faith through regeneration), they pale in comparison to the words of Christ Jesus: “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matt. 23:37 NRSV)

The Chilean president stated that, whatever it takes, all miners would be rescued. His confident assertion and enthusiasm was inspiring. He and everyone else recognized that those men were in need, so they did what they could to secure their freedom. ...

As Calvinism has it, however, God is not interested in irresistibly saving every individual, nor does He genuinely love the world, contra Scripture (John 3:16). We are left wondering why human beings, in an effort to rescue all 33 miners, for example, retain more genuine love in their breast for other human beings than does the God of Calvinism?

The author makes an important observation. Human beings, seemingly, have more love and compassion than does the Calvinist God. Of course, the Calvinist would say that all men deserve nothing but wrath and judgment and the fact that God saves any is pure grace. Furthermore, God is wise and sovereign, who are we, the mere creature, to question the all-knowing Creator? Anticipating such a reply, a commenter who calls himself DrWayman remarks:

Imagine the outcry if the Prez of Chile, for his own good reasons, decided that only three of the miners would be saved and the rest were to perish. Of course, we would be upset with him but he decided that he did not need to share with us his reasoning for doing so. He told us to trust him, that his salvation of the three miners shows just how terrific he is. Everyone should be glad because he could have left them all to perish…

What would be the response of humanity to such a decree by the President of Chile? Would he be praised for his love and grace? Or would he be condemned as a heartless tyrant?

The Arminian is not off the hook, though, either. As the blogger said above, Arminianism does not hold to universalism. It teaches that some will be eternally lost. To follow the analogy, under Arminianism, some of the miners because of their stubborness would have refused to come out of the mine. The rescuers, respecting the free will of the miners, would have left them to perish.

Does that really make sense? If some of the miners had refused to come out of the mine, it would have been because they were not "thinking right." The trauma of being in the mine for such a long time would have caused some kind of psychological damage resulting in their refusal to come out of the mine. Similarly, in Arminian theology, sinners are not "thinking right." Their minds and their wills have been damaged by sin. They may refuse to cooperate with the grace of God and be saved. What should be done with such people?

In the case of the miners, if some had refused to come out, I tend to think they would have been rescued against their will. The argument would have been that these poor people have been traumatized to the point that they can no longer think rationally and it is the responiblity of the rescuers to override their will and bring them to safety.

How do you think the world would respond to such a scenario? I submit that the rescuers would have been praised for doing the right thing, the loving thing, the humane thing. But what about the fact that these stubborn miners had their free will violated? Isn't free will the ultimate good in the universe, even more than love? It seems so according to Arminianism.

Thus, neither Arminianism nor Calvinism really presents a truly loving God. They both put free will over love. In Calvinism, it is God's free choice that is supreme and in Arminianism it is man's free choice that is supreme.

A Calvinist Response to the Problem of Evil

Voddie Baucham provides the Calvinist answer to the problem of evil.




HT: Wes Widner

Natural Evil--What a Wonderful World!

My friend John Loftus has a short video on his site Debunking Christianity, about the Problem of Evil. While some of the video relates to moral evil (what man does to man or animals), much of it relates to natural evil (what God or nature does to man or animals). Christians typically use the argument that man's free will is responsible for all the evils we see in the world and God is not responsible. However, man's free will has nothing to do with the presence of natural evil.

I think this is a powerful video:

More on Animal Suffering

In a prior post, I discussed chapter nine in The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails which dealt with the probem of animal suffering. (By the way, there is a bonus chapter from The Christian Delusion, entitled, The Bible and the Treatment of Animals by John Loftus which is available here.). Andre commented on that post and directed me to the website of Professor John Stackhouse. Stackhouse (Ph.D., Univ. of Chicago) is an Evangelical and the Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is the author of a book on the problem of evil entitled, Can God Be Trusted?: Faith and the Challenge of Evil (1998).

In a recent post on his blog, he discussed the particular problem of animal suffering. He writes:

What are we Christians to make of the evidence of animal suffering (e.g., predation and horrible death) before the Fall?. . . In my research, however, I found precious little explanation of natural evil. I found a few clues, to be sure, and I pass them on in the book, but nothing like the much more extensive discussion of human/moral evil in the theological and philosophical literatures. So I’m still on the hunt for answers and I would be glad for any help you can give. I think it is the most difficult issue remaining in the whole problematic of “evil and an all-good, almighty God” (emphasis mine).

After 38 comments on his blog Stackhouse writes:

Thanks for the pushback, friends–as well as for dopderbeck’s creative suggestion about our squandering via the Fall the resources by which we could have dealt effectively with natural evils (an idea with which I have considerable sympathy). I have no scientific reason to doubt that animal (including hominid) suffering and death preceded the Fall. I agree that the current consensus is strong on those counts, so far as I (a scientific layman) can tell. In the face of this evidence, the very variety of theological hypotheses advanced for the origins of natural evil shows that there is no consensus on our side of the problem (emphasis mine). Did God create the natural world pretty much the way we see it today? Did God create a world without suffering and death but Satan subsequently interfered with it–yet under God’s providential control? Did human evil somehow retroactively affect the natural world (which I understand to be Wm. Dembski’s thesis)? And what do the eschatological visions of the Peaceable Kingdom have to say about the way the world was originally created, if anything? Y’all keep working on it, and I will, too. I look forward to this blog community sorting this out once for all

Natural evil, including animal suffering, is a vexing problem for evangelical Christians (the ones who think about it). Many will take the easy way out and say that God created the world in six days and that initially everything was perfect, there was no natural evil and no death, not even animal death, until the fall of Adam. R. C. Sproul, recently shifted his position from Old Earth Creationist (OEC) to Young Earth Creationist (YEC) because of his inability to reconcile natural evil with his belief in an omni-benevolent God.

However, many evangelicals recognize that YEC is not scientifically respectable, and thus, they are forced to deal with the issue of God creating the world with natural evil as part of it. In an article by John C. Munday, Jr. entitled, "Creature Mortality: From Creaton Or The Fall?" (Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 35/1 [March 1992] 51-68), the argument is made from Scripture and Science that animal death preceded the Fall of Adam. Munday writes:

Since animals do not have the moral capacity to sin, their death cannot have arisen because they sinned, as in the above prescription. Therefore either animal death came with creation or it arose indirectly through the Edenic curse. Calvin apparently thought the former, because in commenting on creation he said that "all things were liable to corruption" and that some populations (of animals) were bestowed with "a power of continuing their race, so preventing it from perishing at their own death ." Ramm believed likewise: "Ideal conditions existed only in the Garden. There was disease and death and bloodshed in Nature long before man sinned. "

If Adam was not immortal by nature (see earlier discussion), there is no reason to expect that the first animals were immortal by nature either. Moreover the animals, like Adam, were created with physical sensitivity to pain and suffering as well as susceptibility to death. Unlike Adam, however, the animals were not offered access to the tree of life. This is especially so for beasts outside the Garden. Therefore they had no possible way to achieve immortality. On such considerations one may conclude that animals were created mortal by nature.

The consequences of deciding in favor of original animal immortality are enormous. The main one is the view that the fossil deposits of the geologic record, which preserve a history of animal death, must have occurred in their entirety after the fall of man. Only one post-fall Scriptural passage can encompass such an immense record, and that is the account of Noah's flood. Pre-fall animal immortality is coupled by its advocates with the fossil death record and a Scripturally argued young-earth position to produce the view known as flood geology. In this view, all or nearly all the world's present-day fossil and stratigraphic sequences were deposited during and soon after Noah's flood.

By contrast, those who reject original animal immortality will usually be found also rejecting young-earth age and consequently rejecting flood geology. In addition to reasoning from Scripture in favor of original animal immortality and flood geology, Morris rationalizes that evolution, described by Tennyson as "Nature, red in tooth and claw," is a "heartless process" inconsistent with a loving God. He "could never be guilty of such a cruel and pointless charade as this!" For Morris, millions of years of animal death constitute "tortuous aeons."

In response: Eons of death may be offensive, but that is hardly grounds for contrary belief. After all, human death itself is extremely offensive, described in Scripture as an enemy, but it still is a fact. We cannot protest; God, after all, pronounced the death sentence. But he also sent his Son as our Redeemer.

Rev. Lee Irons, in an article on apologist Hugh Ross' website, entitled, Animal Death Before The Fall: What Does The Bible Say? also argues that the biblical position favors animal death before the fall. He examines a number of passages commonly thought to teach that death, including animal death, came as a result of Adam's fall (Rom. 5:12-14; 8:18-21; Gen. 1:29-30; 9:1-4; Isa. 11:6-9; 65:25; Psa. 104:19-28; 1 Tim. 4:1-5) and concludes that they do not in fact teach that position.

So, if the Bible and science teach that natural evils, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, disease, parasites, and animal death and suffering, have been present on the earth since its beginning, how can one still believe in a perfectly good God? When it is all said and done, the only conclusion an honest evangelical can draw is, as Stackhouse says, "I don't know."
My conclusion? There is no omnibenevolent deity.

The Christian Delusion: Chapter Nine--The Darwinian Problem of Evil

Today, I continue working my way through The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, edited by John W. Loftus. Loftus is the author of chapter nine, "The Darwinian Problem of Evil." What Loftus is referring to is the amount of animal suffering throughout the long history of evolution on this planet continuing to the present day. He quotes from Richard Dawkins:

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear; others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites; thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease . . . . The universe, we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference (River Out of Eden, pp. 131-32 cited by Loftus, p. 239).

Man's moral sensibilities related to animal suffering seem to have evolved as well. Whereas in the past, there seemed to be little concern because animals were thought to be soul-less creatures who could not really feel pain and emotion; modern understanding of animal neurology indicates that they have many of the same feelings that we humans have. For those of us who have pets and love animals, we cannot stand the thought of our beloved animal friends suffering. Yet, if there is a God, he created the world in such a way that animals must prey on one another to survive. Is that demonstrative of an all-loving, perfectly good God? Loftus doesn't think so and he evaluates eight different answers that Christians have offered to explain this problem.

1. Animal suffering is due to the fall of Adam.

There are two variations:

a.The first way is the traditional solution that a historical fall in the Garden subsequently caused human and animal suffering from that time forward. (p. 243)

This is the classic Christian answer to the problem. It is held today by many conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists. It is falling more and more out of favor because it is dependent upon a literal reading of Genesis 1-3 and therefore an earth created in six 24 hour days less than 10,000 years ago.

b. The second way is that God retroactively created these painful effects into creation from the very start, antecedently, because he foreknew a later fall would occur (p. 243).

This view is held by those who believe in theistic evolution and recognize that animal suffering had been going on for millions of years before man appeared on the scene. Some of the proponents of this position include: Michael Murray, A. H. Strong, and William Dembski.

The problem with both of these variations is why should animals be punished for what man did? It seems grossly unfair and unkind to subject them to such terrible suffering for something that was totally beyond their control.

2. Animal suffering is due to the evil influence of demons and Satan.

This view was held by no less than C. S. Lewis. He wrote:

some mighty created power had already been at work for ill on the material universe, or the solar system, or, at least, the planet Earth, before ever man came on the scene . . . If there is such a power, as I myself believe, it may well have corrupted the animal creation before man appeared . . . The Satanic corruption of the beasts would therefore be analogous, in one respect, to the Satanic corruption of man (The Problem of Pain, p. 135 cited by Loftus, p. 250).

Other notables holding this view or one very similar to it are Richard Swinburne and Greg Boyd.

The problem with this view is well expressed by Richard Kingston:

If God entrusted to fallible angelic beings such absolute control over creation that it was within their power to "brutalize" the animal kingdom for all time, then he cannot be exonerated from all culpability for what allegedly happened. Must we not go further and say that such action would indicate either incompetence or the fact that the sufferings of the lower creatures are unimportant in eyes of the Creator? (Animals and Christianity, p. 74 cited by Loftus, p. 251).

So, this view really does not answer the problem of how an omnipotent and perfectly good being could allow Satan and the demons to "brutalize" his creation. Either, as Kingston says, God doesn't care about the suffering of the animals (in which case he has less virtue than man does) or he couldn't stop Satan from corrupting his creation (in which case he is not all-powerful). The only other alternative is to say that God must have a good reason for doing this, although we don't know what it is--but that is answer #8 (see below).

3. Animals really do NOT suffer.

A third option is to say that animals have no souls, cannot think, and therefore, feel little or no pain (p. 252). This position was put forth by the philosopher Rene Descartes. He saw animals as little more than machines. Those who followed his teaching

administered beatings to dogs with perfect indifference, and made fun of those who pitied the creatures as if they felt pain. They said the animals were clocks; that the cries they emitted when struck were only the noise of a little spring that had been touched, but that the whole body was without feeling (Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, pp. 201-02 cited by Loftus, p. 253).

While I am not aware of any theologian or philosopher today (and Loftus doesn't mention one) that would argue that animals cannot feel pain, the general notion seems to be prevalent in the way that many moderns treat animals (both in hunting, trapping, and slaughterhouses).

Science has conclusively shown that animals do in fact feel pain and experience the emotions of fear and anxiety as well. An omniscient God would have known this when he created the animal kingdom so the only conclusion one can draw is that he simply doesn't care about their suffering. Maybe, if there is a Creator, his attitude is the same as ours when we step on an ant or a spider? That brings us to explanation #4.

4. and 5.  God is indifferent to animal suffering.

(While Loftus has two different views under 4 and 5,  I see them as essentially the same.)

This view holds that God is using animals as a means to an end. They only have instrumental value and no intrinsic value (p. 257). This view grows out of the idea that only man is created in the "image of God" and animals are present on the planet in order to meet man's needs.

The problem with this view is that it is repugnant to man's moral sensibilities. It would make God no different from those, like Michael Vick, who run dog-fighting rings. If what Vick did was morally disgusting, then what the Creator has done on a much larger scale is even more disgusting.

6. God will reward those animals who suffer by resurrecting them to eternal bliss.

This view has been put forward by Irenaeus, Athanasius, C.S. Lewis, Jurgen Moltmann and Keith Ward among others.

While this view seems somewhat absurd to many people, it doesn't answer the problem anyway. Just because someone is rewarded in the future for the suffering he endures in the present does not excuse the one who is responsible for the suffering. The suffering is still a wrong no matter how much reward is later given.

7. Animal suffering is a necessary consequence of the way God created the world.

This view basically holds that while there may have been some other way for God to create the world, we don't know how that would be, so it could be that this is the only way that the world could be created in order to accomplish the evolution of man and bring about God's desire to have creatures that could fellowship with him. This position is advocated by Michael Murray and Dinesh D'Souza. Murray writes:

In order to have organisms which, like us, are capable of intellectual reflection, deliberation, agency, morally significant action, etc. there must first be less-complex organisms which have only primitive capabilities such as the ability to experience pleasure and pain, or sentience (Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, p. 284 cited by Loftus, p. 260).

First, the biblical literalists would certainly disagree with Murray as they believe God created all things in six days. Second, if finite man can imagine other ways that God could have created in order to eliminate the pain and suffering of the animal world, why couldn't an omniscient being? We could imagine all animals being created as herbivores. Surely, an omnipotent being could accomplish that. We could even imagine God creating animals and humans without the need to eat at all. To say that this is the only way that God could have created is a cop-out and actually undermines the omnipotence of God.

8. Animal suffering is a mystery but God must have a good reason.

This is always the answer of last resort for the Christian with no answer. When everything else fails, they will say: God must have a reason and we must trust him because we know he is all-good and all-loving . Stewart Goetz takes this tact:

It is reasonable for the theist to be a defender and answer these questions with "I do not know," because the matter is one that lies outside our cognitive purview. One thing that is important to understand is why it is beyond our ken. The explanation for this ignorance has to do with our lack of knowledge of both a beast's nature and the purpose for which a beast exists ("The Argument from Evil," in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, p. 492 cited by Loftus, p. 264).

C. S. Lewis also argues this way: From the doctrine that God is good we may confidently deduce that the appearance of reckless divine cruelty in the animal kingdom is an illusion (The Problem of Pain, p. 130 cited by Loftus, p. 264).

First, this answer is no answer at all. It says we don't know and thus we don't have an answer.

Second, it says that God must have a good reason because we know that he is good. But how do we know that he is good? From the Bible? In the Bible, we have God ordering genocides in which infants are killed, demanding multitudes of animal sacrifices, killing all living things in a global flood and to top it off, sending a very large number of human beings to eternal torment. What can we discern from nature? We see animals killing each other, hurricanes, tsunamis and other natural disasters killing and maiming millions of people, and horrible diseases such as childhood cancers and birth-defects. None of these "natural evils" can be attributed to the "free-will" of man. They are simply the way God created the planet (unless you hold to a literal six day creation). Thus, I would say that based on the evidence from the Bible and from nature, God is not good. Yes, he is good to "his people," but not to the rest of his creation.

This chapter in The Christian Delusion is my personal favorite. I think that people are more sensitive to unnecessary animal suffering today than they have ever been. If God created the world the way it presently is, there is no way to hold that he is a good God.

Pray for the people of Haiti?

Recently, I heard some Christians say to pray for the people of Haiti. I wonder why?If God did not care enough about the people of Haiti to prevent the earthquake from happening, then why would he care now to help them? As a matter of fact, if it was God's will for the earthquake to happen (and all evangelicals would say it was), it seems that it would be acting against God's will to try to alleviate the suffering of the people of Haiti. Apparently, he wanted them to suffer.

If God has a divine plan, then why should Christian's pray anyway? I like George Carlin's take on this:

Trillions and trillions of prayers every day asking and begging and pleading for favors. Do this. Gimme that. I want a new car. I want a better job. . . . And I say fine, pray for anything you want. Pray for anything. But...what about the divine plan? Remember that? The divine plan. Long time ago god made a divine plan. Gave it a lot of thought. Decided it was a good plan. Put it into practice. And for billion and billions of years the divine plan has been doing just fine. Now you come along and pray for something. Well, suppose the thing you want isn't in god's divine plan. What do you want him to do? Change his plan? Just for you? Doesn't it seem a little arrogant? It's a divine plan. What's the use of being god if every run-down bum with a two dollar prayer book can come along and (mess) up your plan? And here's something else, another problem you might have. Suppose your prayers aren't answered. What do you say? 'Well it's god's will. God's will be done.' Fine, but if it gods will and he's going to do whatever he wants to anyway; why bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me. Couldn't you just skip the praying part and get right to his will?

I never realized that Carlin was such a good theologian. If God is in control (sovereign) as every Christian professes to believe, then why bother praying?

Many Christians look at prayer as some kind of magical formula whereby you can convince God to answer your wish list. Why does God have to be begged to do something? Most Christians believe that the "harder" you pray for something, the more likely you are to get it. And if you really want to impress God, then pray and fast. This will certainly cause him to give in and give you what you want.

Christians are told that God always answers prayers. He might say, "Yes." He might say, "No." He might say, "Wait." Well, that pretty much has all the bases covered, doesn't it? There is no way God can be blamed. If the prayer wish comes true, then he gets the credit. If it doesn't, then it either wasn't his will or the person praying did not have enough faith or had some unconfessed sin in his life, etc. Either way, God is off the hook.

This video humorously illustrates what I am saying.