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(Please note
that these are rough notes for a lecture given in December 2003, based on the
relevant portions of the text of Philosophy and Ethics, and should not be
quoted or otherwise used verbatim)
Imagine that you
are taken prisoner – you are totally at the mercy of the person who has captured
you, you see all around you other prisoners being tortured and killed. Some
behave badly and obviously deserve punishment. Others appear to be kind and
honest – and yet they too end up suffering in various ways. You realise that
everyone ends up dead. You also know that there is no means of escape – no way
of organising your life in a way that is free from the person who has put you in
this prison.
This view is
likely to make you cynical about any claim that the person who has put you here
is loving and personally concerned for your welfare. It may also make you
cynical about the value of the life you lead – you may see kind and loving
things happening around you; you may have temporary pleasure; but in the end you
sense that it is all mockery – for you are never going to be able to escape.
This feeling of
being in a closed world, where everything is controlled, and where you know your
future is limited and controlled by a force outside yourself – whatever happens
you are helpless to influence it – is a nightmare.
But is that
nightmare also true of the world in general. Is our personal happiness or
unhappiness, our suffering and our death, controlled by a universal force called
‘God’?
The philosopher David Hume can
generally be relied upon to state a problem directly. Here is what he says in
Book XI of his Dialogues... It is the point at which he turns the
argument from design on its head, and presents a world that is far from a
comfortable, reassuringly designed machine:
Look round this
universe. What an immense profusion of beings animated and organized, sensible
and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a
little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding.
How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for
their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole
presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great
vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or
parental care, her maimed and abortive children!
Human beings are fragile and
short-lived. They are liable to accidents and diseases, and those who escape
these still have to face the inevitable prospect of old age and death. The world
is not a safe place in which to live, but it is the only place in which to live.
If you claim that
God is the creator and designer of the universe, you need to square that with an
account of what the universe is actually like.
Bertrand
Russell, in examining the claim that ‘the universe has been shaped and is
governed by an intelligent purpose’, turns a sharp eye over the iniquities
of humankind and comments:
‘The world in
which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if
it is the outcome of deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of
a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible
hypothesis.’
[from
Why I am not a
Christian and Other Essays on Religion and
Related Subjects, Allen
& Unwin, 1957]
The main
point to consider here is whether such an evolving God is true to the
Western theistic tradition, where God is seen as the omnipotent creator.
The more
literal and definite your idea of God; the more difficult become the problem
posed by the fact of evil and suffering.
THEREFORE, the
fact of evil and suffering in the world creates a problem for those who believe
in God. In its simplest form, it may be set out like this:
-
God
is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving and the creator of everything
-
Suffering exists in the world
Therefore
But
Therefore
This argument is
a strong one both from a logical and a psychological point of view. Logically,
it seems impossible to reconcile a literal understanding of an all-loving and
all-powerful God with the continuing existence of evil.
Psychologically,
it is natural to ask for God’s help in time of trouble, and his failure to
intervene to overcome suffering and evil may therefore be a disincentive to
continue to believe in him.
There are two
particularly well-known approaches to this problem, the Irenaean and the
Augustinian. These were outlines by John Hick in his book Evil and the God of
Love. The first, from Irenaeus, argues that God permits evil for a good
purpose. The second, from Augustine, claims that evil and suffering are not
God’s responsibility, and that he is therefore perfectly justified in allowing
them to continue. Neither argument attempts to take the other two ways out of
the problem – namely that either suffering is not real, or that God does not
exist.
If we stay with the idea of a
loving, omnipotent God, then suffering and evil need to be explained as part of
his intention for the world. In other words, suffering and evil have to find
a place within in an overall scheme which can still be seen as the intention of
an all-powerful and loving God.
The attempt to find this is
called a theodicy - an attempt to show that God is right and just.
Today
we are examining just one such theodicy – that of St Augustine, Augustine
354 - 430
Augustine came to
the problem from two different perspectives, one philosophical, the other based
on the Bible.
And this is
important for answering essay questions – include both approaches, not just one.
Based on the
ideas of Plato.
[Reminder of
Plato and the forms… that there is a level of reality higher than that which we
experience in our everyday life. We now see only passing shadows.
Now it is
possible to argue that we see shadows because life is limited, and therefore
fragile, and therefore incapable of completely satisfying someone who has had a
taste for something higher. Things in this world always fall short of
perfection – that’s Plato, and it’s taken up by Augustine.
He argued that
evil was not a separate force over and above goodness. Rather, to call something
evil was simply a way of saying that it lacked goodness (evil as a ‘privation of
good’ is the usual way of expressing this). The world was full of finite,
limited things. Their limitations prevented them from the perfect expression of
their own natures. Therefore they ‘fall short’ of what they were designed to be,
and hence participate in evil.
The fourth
of Aquinas’ Five Ways, concerns the way in which we understand goodness and
perfection - and moves from them to the idea of a source of goodness. In
Summa Theologiae (Bk 1 Ch 1, 5:1) describes goodness as achieved
actuality. In other words, to be good is to express your own nature. This is
seen most clearly in the idea of tools used by humans: a good knife is one that
cuts well – it completes its nature by cutting well. (This idea was first put
forward by Aristotle.)
A
version of this argument had also been presented by Anselm in his
Monologion
Making
connections:
This argument
about falling short of perfection, and of being judged according to one’s
potential, can be related to the ‘Natural Law’ approach to ethics, where –
essentially – moral choices are judged according to the degree to which the
action being considered does or does not confirm to something’s ‘essence’
or ‘real self.’
But this part of Augustine’s
argument does not let God off the hook. A central question to ask of the
Augustinian approach is this:
* Evil may be a lack of
goodness, but why is there a lack of goodness? If God were all-powerful, could
he not have organised the world such that there were no fall from perfection?
Based on the
Bible (Augustine’s explanation for why the world is the way it is)
His second
approach was to put the blame for evil on humankind, rather than on God.
Augustine pointed
to the ‘fall’ of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Evil, and to the idea that all
subsequent humanity are descended from them and therefore share in their sin and
fall (through what is termed ‘original sin’).
Thus, moral evil
(evil done through human choice) could be blamed on humankind, rather than God.
[reminder that
there are two kinds of evil – moral and natural…
we need to distinguish between
two things:
1. Suffering that results from
the nature of the universe in which we live and the effect this has upon fragile
human life. This would include diseases, earthquakes and all other forms of
'natural evil'. This is sometimes called 'metaphysical evil', since it is a form
of evil that is built into our whole understanding of the world.
2. Moral evil, which results
from the free choice of individuals to inflict suffering. Warfare, torture,
inequalities that lead to suffering, emotional pain - all these can come under
the general heading of moral evil, since, if people were all perfect, they would
not come about.
But we need to keep in mind
that these two forms of evil and not equally balanced, for the following
reasons:
IF
everyone behaved perfectly, there would still be natural evil. Disease and death
do not depend upon moral wickedness, but are the result of the way the world is
made. (It has been argued that it was as a result of the sin of Adam, the first
man, that suffering and death came into the world, but this is not presented as
a logical argument and is not widely taken into account in the consideration of
the problem of evil.)
BUT IF
there were no natural evil - that is, if everything were created perfect - then
it could be argued that there would be no moral evil either, since moral evil
results from an inadequate or defective understanding of self and world. The
murderer is not a perfect being who just happens to choose to kill an innocent
person, but a human being who, because of his or her imperfections and/or the
imperfections of at least one other person, chooses to kill.
Therefore
'natural' or 'metaphysical' evil is the greater problem for theism.
If suffering results from an act of deliberate wickedness by a human individual,
it is logical to blame that individual for the suffering, but there is a more
fundamental question to be asked: Why is the world such
that people can choose to perform deliberate acts of wickedness?
But what of
natural suffering, unrelated to moral evil?
Augustine
followed the traditional story that some of the angels, led by Satan, rebelled
against God. They too ‘fell’ and took all the created order with them. Therefore
creation itself became a place of suffering.
For Augustine, evil first came
into the world through the 'fall' of the angels. In books XI and XII of his
City of God, he argues that all angels were created perfect, but that some
received less grace than others, and were able to 'fall'. This fall is then
repeated in human terms in the Garden of Eden, following the temptations of
satan (himself the chief of the fallen angels) which meant that humankind would,
from that point on, be imperfect.
According to
Augustine, God will finally come to judge people, and will administer justice in
accordance with how they have behaved, sending some to hell and others to
heaven. Meanwhile, natural suffering is either sin or a punishment for sin (in
the sense that is comes about in a world that is fallen, and therefore full of
suffering).
Debate:
Be ready
to argue whether or not you think that Augustine’s view of natural evil as a
punishment for sin is compatible with belief in a loving God.
Of course, there
were other ways of describing the the dilemma:
The best know, and earliest is
that or Irenaeus:
That the world is an
environment in which we are presented with challenges, it is a place where we
may grow – and in the end we will all reach heaven (a bit of a caricature of
Irenaeus, but you get the point). In other words, suffering is God’s
responsibility, but it is retained in the world for a good purpose.
A greater good? (generally
known as the ‘free will defence’
The implication of the 'free
will defence' (and, indeed, the Irenaean approach that lies behind it) is that
it is better to have a world in which people are free to choose evil, rather
than a world in which they are not free at all. Human freedom is the greater
good, for the sake of which we have to cope with mass murder, abuse of children,
torture and the like.
Aquinas (in Summa
Theologiae) presents the issue in another rather stark way. His argument
starts with the fact that God and evil are incompatible:
- God is believed to be both
good and without limit, so there is nowhere that God is not present.
- In that case, evil cannot
exist; there is no room for it, since it cannot arise where God is present, if
God is good.
- But we know that evil
exists.
- Therefore there cannot be an
infinite and good God.
Of you can try to
make the God you believe in less of a universal feature, and more of a personal
or limited thing. Hence he may be seen within the changing and suffering of the
world (a God who evolves), or he may be identified with the suffering of humnity
(identified, for example, with Jesus on the cross) – but neither of those
approaches, although they may satisfy some aspects of the religious response to
suffering and evil, actually gets round the fundamental problem.
Revealing the
nature of God or good?
Notice that the
problem of evil, as it has been explored so far, assumes that we have a
knowledge of good and evil that is independent of any knowledge of God. If that
were not the case, then we would have no reason to challenge the goodness of
God.
Let us put this
in philosophical terms. As we saw earlier (see p00) an analytic statement is one
in which its truth can be known simply by defining the terms. 'A triangle has
three sides.' is analytic; you don't have to examine triangles to show that it
is true. A synthetic statement is one that can be shown to be true or false on
the basis of evidence. 'The cat is sitting on the mat,' can be affirmed or
denied only by looking.
Now the question
to be considered is this: is the statement 'God is good' analytic or synthetic?
If it is
analytic, anything God does is good by definition (that is what 'good' means).
If he allows the torture of children, then - within the whole scheme of things -
that must be good.
In other words:
What would it take to make you stop believing in the existence of God? What
amount of suffering and evil is compatible with a loving God? If the answer is
that no amount of suffering will shake your faith, then the idea of saying that
God is loving, in any literal sense of the word, is nonsense. Because, unless
you can specify what would prove your statement wrong, then it is meaningless.
(that was the implication of the world of the Logical Positivists and others –
but it is clearly linked here to the problem of suffering and evil. The
contention of that approach is that suffering and evil makes a loving God
meaningless.
In the end, if
you take Augustine’s position you have to accept that:
This world is a
limited and finite place – what we call suffering and evil is simply the natural
result of that limited nature. In other words, to expect that a limited, finite
creature can live for ever and never suffer is simply to misunderstand what it
is to be a limited creature. The world does not belong to us, we cannot
determine what shall happen, but are always limited by factors ourside ourselves
over which we have no control.
That is the
import of Augustine’s argument that evil is only a limitation of good, rather
than a force in itself. And there is backing for that position from unexpected
quarters – for it is in like with the teaching of the Buddha – that
unsatisfactoriness is not something imposed on us for punishment, or somehow
unfair, it is just the way the world is.
But Augustine has
a very different conclusion, because – alongside that ‘privatio boni’ argument
is the other one about punishment. Evil and suffering are either sin (if they
are moral) or the punishment for sin (the world is the way it is because of our
fall from grace, and that of the angels).
In other words,
Augustine is saying, in effect, that suffering and evil are a punishment from
God, in that they are the result of human and non-human disobedience. Only God
will judge how we have responded to that suffering, and will reward or punish us
after this life on the basis of how we respond to it.
In other words,
there is no escape from the control of God – for he is not only justified in
allowing present suffering, but will also choose to punish some people in an
afterlife for the way in which they have responded to this limited life.
And that is the
heart of the Problem of Evil, and it is why many thinkers have come to the
conclusion that such a god, if he were to exist, would be unworthy of worship –
exactly the sort of view taken by Russell. Those who continue to believe in the
existence of God in the face of evil, do so in spite of Augustine’s argument.
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