Some Reflections On Evil and the Existence of God

Introduction

I am teaching a course on the Anglican Way of Theology, and one of the writers we read was Joseph Butler, selections from his Analogy of Religion Natural and Revealed To the Constitution and Course of Nature. In this essay he assumes two forms of God's governance -- God's natural government of the world and his moral government of human affairs. The former we discern scientifically as we discern how material objects affect one another. The second order we see in human affairs. This second order becomes problematic in that good and evil seem to have no certain relation to suffering or blessings. Butler argues that our observations of nature lead us to conclude that we do not know the ultimate causes and consequences of natural events, and therefore, if God's moral governance is similar to his government of nature, we cannot say for sure that God is nor morally directing human affairs toward the highest good. This argument was a negative argument against those who claimed that if God was good, then evil should not hold sway as it does. Butler is simply saying that if natural processes are any hint of God's moral governance, then we cannot know for sure that God hasn't directed the moral affairs of human life in the best possible way. This, Butler recognizes, is not an argument that God indeed does direct human affairs for the best, but only an argument against certainty for the claim that he has not.

I not only assigned readings in Butler, but I also assigned the essay, Knowing the Christian God.

One feature of our class is an online discussion, and to that end, each week I assign a discussion question. For the readings in Butler, that discussion question was as follows,

You are a campus minister in a large university. The religion and ethics department is planning a conference and inviting several speakers to serve on a panel. The conference leaders ask the chaplains of the university to choose one of their members to present a Christian perspective. Naturally, you are chosen. The debate is entitled “Evil and the Existence of God.” Other panel members include a Jewish rabbi, an atheist from the philosophy department, a professor of world religions, and a local pastor who espouses intelligent design. Each panelist will give a ten minute introductory talk. Choose four or five important points you wish to present in your introductory talk and bring to bear the readings for this class. Make sure you utilize Butler in some form. Summarize your points together with supporting ideas you have gained from the readings. Butler can be referenced by paragraph, my comments on Butler by comment number, and any references to “Knowing the Christian God” by section heading. Reference other readings as you see fit.

The students made a number of helpful and interesting comments, and to encourage them and to set forth my own ideas, I wrote the following essay and gave it to them to read as part of their homework for next week. That essay follows.

Evil and the Existence of God

In discussing the existence of God, it would be good to discuss what God or gods we are talking about. This came out in some of the comments referring to religious encounters with beings other than the Christian God. Those comments were important. In light of Scripture and the tradition of the church for virtually 1800 years, it was understood that there are many spiritual powers of different kinds and people experience them. Among those powers is the biblical God, the Father of Jesus Christ, along with angels, demons, and powers of various kinds.

In the West, prior to the scientific revolution, by and large, the existence of God was not an issue. People experienced many sorts of spiritual powers, including the Christian God, and therefore, they knew that these powers existed. Certain Greek philosophers, the materialists, and others influenced by Greek philosophy, may not have believed in the existence of the gods or spirits, but by and large, most people everywhere did. In the East, certain forms of Buddhism are atheistic, but even there, from what I can tell, the great mass of the Buddhist population believe in spiritual beings of various kinds. All over the world, people believed and still believe in spiritual powers because they have experienced them.

The reason the existence of God became an issue in the West was that many westerners adopted an epistemology that eliminated all realities except those that could be verified scientifically – objects that could be observed and quantified. This scientific approach to reality begins with sense impressions as does the Christian knowledge of God, the Incarnation being the prime example (1 John 1:1). Unlike scientific knowledge which sees only matter, knowing God entails not only sense impressions, but with them, an awareness of God as active and present in the things seen and heard. If, however, one limits knowledge gained in conjunction with sense impressions to scientific knowledge alone, then the knowledge of God is lost. This is what happened at the time of the scientific revolution and this supplied the context for Butler’s writings. A significant number of people, especially among the intelligentsia, lost living contact with the Christian God.

Others, however, like Wesley, did not lose living contact with God as seen in the first sermon we read by him. The tone of that sermon was very different from the discourse by Butler. Wesley was expecting God to do something in the lives of his listeners, and as that happened, they would know that God was acting in their lives and therefore that God existed. This gave his sermon a living quality, and this living quality reflected the fact that Wesley himself had experienced God in his life. In short, the primary way most people have known of the existence of spiritual beings, such powers as angels, demons, spirits, gods, and God, is that they experienced them. In the case of the Christian God, this was described in the essay, “Knowing the Christian God,” as well as the essay by Mary Ford.

In Scripture, since God was experienced, there is little or no effort to prove the existence of God. They knew God because he spoke to them and acted in their history. Even so, the biblical peoples often preferred to trust other deities which they also experienced as they worshipped idols. Unlike these gods, however, the biblical God was all-powerful and loving, but even so, it was difficult, and still is difficult, to trust him. It is difficult because the evidence of God’s love and power will not be conclusive until the last day when all humanity will stand before him. Then we, like everyone else, will know God face to face as Paul states in First Corinthians 13. In the meantime, he gives evidence of his goodness and love, above all the cross and resurrection, but this evidence is not so overwhelming that it cannot be doubted. Sometimes, in periods of difficulty, devoid of any sense of God’s presence, it can seem that God is remote and really doesn’t care. Then, as was Jesus in the desert tempted by the devil, we are called to trust his Word, his many statements that he is a God worthy of our trust and confidence.

In light of the foregoing, the first point, to my mind, that needs to be said on the question of God’s existence is that the Christian God can be known, and therefore, he can be known to exist. How God comes to be known varies tremendously in individual persons, from intense encounters to very subtle developments as occurred in the case of C.S. Lewis. The result, however, is the same, knowledge of God, and therefore, belief in his existence.

One of the important questions that came up in the discussion of knowing the Christian God is how one can know that it is the Christian God that is known by miraculous, personal encounter. This is an important question. Since God reveals himself by words and deeds that can be seen and heard, reflected upon and discussed, there are criteria by which true revelation is known. Revelations that do not reflect the visible words and deeds of Jesus, known in the context of the entire biblical revelation, are not the Christian God. A number of you discussed the fruits of the Spirit as valid criteria and they are. There are essentially two criteria, the written Word and the witness of the Spirit. The triune God is known by his Word (God the Son) and the Spirit as described in the essay “Trinity and Incarnation.”

Once it is affirmed that the Christian God can be known to exist, difficulties immediately follow. Among them is the problem of evil. As far as I know, Christianity, rooted in Judaism, is the only religion that affirms that God is all-powerful, creating from nothing, and all loving, offering up his Son for our redemption. The problem rests on the fact that if God were all powerful and all loving, he would have the ability and the willingness to prevent the horrific evils that afflict our world. If I were in a debate, I would probably not insist that Christianity and Judaism are the only religions in which God is all-powerful and all-loving. That is a whole other debate, and there are those who challenge the idea that a God who judges sinners with death is a loving God. Be that as it may, from my perspective, I have never read of a religion in which God creates from nothing and gives his only Son in love. Pagan religions do not have the problem of evil since their gods do evil as well as good. They are not surprised when evil occurs. Among the 100 attributes of Allah, none of them is love. They have no savior who loved them even unto death. The Vedanta schools of Hinduism reject creation ex nihilo. The Mormons believe the god that populated earth was once a human like us, a finite god, and not one that created the world out of nothing. For the Christian, however, the existence of evil poses a problem.

In responding to the problem of evil in the context of the Christian God, it is important that the response reflect the nature of God. The Christian God is three-in-one, known above all in Christ Jesus. Since God is three-in-one, our response needs to take the same form, focusing on God the Son, God the Father, and God the Spirit, the one God.

In reference to God the Son, the gospels make clear that the crucifixion followed by resurrection is a revelation of human evil, as well as the work of the devil, and that God himself is working to overcome this evil in the person of his Son. One of the discussion comments was to the effect that the fundamental issue is not so much why does evil exist, but whether or not we want to join God as he works to conquer evil. I thought this insight helpful. By the revelation in the Son, it can be seen that God recognizes the existence of evil, has identified its source, the devil and sinful human beings, and is working to overcome it. God would not do this if evil were an attribute of God. Further, by the communicatio idiomatum, it is appropriate to say that God himself suffers, and when we suffer, he is there with us in the person of Christ working to overcome the suffering as seen, for example, in Isaiah 53. For those who are suffering, this does not answer the question, “Why me?” or “Why my child?” It does give hope to those who suffer, and further, it affirms that suffering given over to the cause of Christ is not in vain, but in some mysterious way works to the glory of God and the establishment of his Kingdom. Christ himself is the revelation of this truth.

This needs to be clearly stated because many do not believe in God, or are even resentful of him, because of the suffering they have experienced. The gospel must be proclaimed, even in the context of an academic debate, although, in that context, it is good to set forth Christian truth in a style appropriate to a debate.

In reference to God the Father, several Christian affirmations need to be given and in a certain order. First, God the Father, the creator of heaven and earth, is above all, the Father of Jesus Christ, and then, in that context, the creator of the world. St. Athanasius, the great defender of the faith against the Arians, gives the illustration of a man who builds a great and beautiful house. By looking at the house, we can know the builder is intelligent and possessing great resources. We do not know him personally, however, until we know his Son who reflects the character of his Father. For Athanasius, the knowledge of God given in the Son is prior to that found by observing creation. I quote Athanasius as an authority at this point because he is one of the great fathers of the Church and a profound theologian. Here are his words,

A man, for instance, builds a house by exercising counsel and deliberation, but he begets a son by nature. Whatever is built comes to pass gradually, and there is no identity of substance between the materials and the person of the builder. But the son is the proper offspring of the father's substance, and is not external to him; wherefore, neither does he exercise counsel about him, lest he should appear to counsel and deliberate about his own being. Wherefore, as a natural product us much more excellent than a mere voluntary one, so the nature and the generation of the Son is far superior to the nature and formation of the creature.(1)

Therefore it seems more in accordance with religious feeling and truth to call God the Father from His relationship to the Son, than to name Him only from His works, and to call Him the "Unmade."(2)

Therefore, when thinking of God the Father, it is important, first and foremost, to think of him as expressed in John 3:16. That is, as one who loves us and orders our lives, including our suffering, to his glory and our benefit.

Secondly, God the Father is also God the Creator. Here the comments of Plantinga and Hick, the classical arguments on human freedom and the possibility of evil, have some relevance. In short, this argument states that God created us as free agents, not robots, and freedom entails the possibility of its abuse leading to evil. Augustine also weighs in at this point with his claim that evil has no real substance, but is the privation of the good. These arguments have, in my view, a limited validity. For example, God could have created us free, and at the same time, created the devil so that our choices between good and evil, God and the devil, would be real choices, the devil being given the power to allure with some weight over against the goodness of God. More importantly, the fact of freedom and its consequence that evil be a real possibility, tells us nothing about whether or not the evil we create and suffer will ever be redeemed. Observations of the natural world and universal death do not show us that evil is being overcome. That requires the revelation of the Son.

Having said this, however, God has created us free, and freedom does carry with it consequences that can lead to evil. But this raises a further question, “What is the purpose of this freedom?” The classical answer has been that this freedom is for the sake of love, that love cannot be coerced but freely given. That the purpose of freedom is love is not, however, a belief given by creation. In creation we can see that God is immensely powerful and wise, but not that he is loving. Nature, in and of itself, is “red in tooth and claw.” The best we can conclude on the basis of creation alone is that we do not really understand its purposes, an argument that Butler made. Rather than by creation, the purpose of our created freedom is given in the Son who revealed that love is freely given, not coerced. In his words,

For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father (John 10:17-18).

Finally, in reference to the Spirit, the Spirit enlivens the revelation given in the Son by which we know the Father, as well as enlivens the glorious reality of God known in creation, and makes them living realities so that we can know God. Generally speaking, it is understood that the Spirit enlivens the revelation given in the Son, but it is less recognized that the Spirit enables us to look at the creation, made through the Son, and see the glory of God in creation.

For example, Psalm 19 is a classic psalm reflecting the glory of God in creation. This glory is not seen, however, as a simple deduction from the greatness of the world. Nor does this psalm view the world as proof of an Intelligent Designer as do those who affirm Intelligent Design. It is possible to deduce God’s power and wisdom from creation without ever experiencing the glory of God. Rather, the Psalm operates with the same epistemology that allowed some of those who heard and saw Jesus to see God at work. That is, the psalmist sees creation by means of sense impressions, and as he surveys the glorious world, he experiences at the same time the reality of God’s glory in conjunction with his awareness of the world. Artur Weiser, in his masterful commentary on the psalms, comments as follows,

The author of the hymn in praise of Nature (vv. 1-6) was inspired by an attitude of mind similar to the one which inspired the author of Psalm 8, to which our present Psalm is a kind of supplement. Both these poets contemplate with awe the majesty of God revealed in creation, and the composition of their songs is the fruit of the rapture which was aroused in them by their moving experience of God in Nature.(3)

What do the authors of Psalms 8 and 19 experience when they see the natural world? They experience the beauty of nature, and further, the “majesty of God” which, as an “experience of God” that moves them, creates rapture in their souls. They do not experience God as love as known in Christ, but they do experience God as might and wisdom.(4) This perspective is further strengthened by the recognition that the psalms were used in worship, and a key component of worship is the theophany, God present and active as the worshippers hear the Word of God and sing his praises. According to Weiser, Psalm 19 was a hymn sung in worship,(5) praising God for his creation of the natural world as well as his giving of the law (vs. 7-14).

In contemporary thought, the giving of the law and the action of God in creation may seem two different things. The giving of the law was special revelation, God spoke the law on Mount Sinai. For some contemporary thinkers, knowledge of God given in creation can be obtained by deduction as claimed by intelligent design theorists. But for the Hebrews, knowledge of God was personal, given in a personal encounter, including the knowledge of God in creation. Psalm 19 describes this personal knowledge. Further, these two realms, God known by creation and by special revelation, are related. They are related in Psalm 19. God is praised for his creation in verses 1-6 and for his giving the law, verses 7-14. According to Paul, Romans 1, the knowledge of God given in creation, not connected to special revelation as was the case with the Gentiles, leads to idolatry and loss of the knowledge of God in creation. Paul saw the glory of God in creation, but only because he knew the God of special revelation, so that the two realms of knowledge are coordinate, that of creation requiring special revelation as its enabling power. Later, in Romans, Paul will present Jesus Christ as the one by whom we know God through the work of the Spirit. Once known, Christ enables believers to see the glory of God in creation since creation was made through Jesus Christ (John 1:13 and Hebrews 1:2-3).

In light of the Nicene Creed, the work of the Father who creates is related to the work of the Son who redeems creation, and therefore, the ways of knowing God in these two realms are related. If knowledge of God given in creation is separated from that of special revelation, we have, in effect, denied the relationship of the Son to the Father, as if the Son were a separate God with his saving knowledge having little relationship to God the Father as known in creation. In a similar vein, if the work of the Spirit is not recognized as required for knowledge of God the Son, and by him, knowledge of God the Father, then the Spirit would not possess his full status as God.

Since special revelation is required to fully understand the general revelation given in nature, and since special revelation requires the Spirit, general revelation requires the work of the Spirit as well. The Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, working in both their respective related realms as distinguished by appropriation. Not all who consider nature come to know the glory of God, just as not all who saw and heard Jesus saw God at work in him. One of you pointed out, First Corinthians 2:14, that without the Spirit one cannot understand the things of God, and this would include God’s existence in all its manifestations.

By the Spirit, however, one can know God, know that he exists, know that he is not the cause of evil, know that suffering will be redeemed, know that we have a future hope, and know that, some day, God will “wipe away every tear from their [our] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:1).

Summary

1. The Christian God can be known to exist because, in response to the gospel, he can be known.

2. This knowledge is partial (1 Corinthains 13:12), held in faith, but it is sure knowledge.

3. By this knowledge, by faith, one can know that God is all-powerful and all-loving.

4. This, however, poses a problem for Christian believers since the world is full of evil and suffering. It is not a problem for many others, including those who do not believe in God.

5. Through the revelation in the Son, one can see that God is not the cause of evil, that humans and the devil play a part, and most importantly, God is working to overcome all evil and suffering. This requires faith in the promises of God since God’s conquest of evil and death is not apparent in general conditions, nor can we fully understand why some suffer and others do not.

6. In the context of the revelation in the Son, God created us with free will and this free will can and has led to evil consequences.

7. By the Spirit, one can know God, first and foremost in his Son, and second by his great work of creation, and thereby know that God exists.

8. The epistemology for this knowledge of God is Trinitarian and incarnational and not scientific, although like science, it does involve the use of our senses.

Endnotes

1. Athanasius. Against the Arians, III, 62.
2. Athanasius, op. cit., I, 34.
3. Artur Weiser, The Psalms, A Commentary, translated from the German by Herbert Hartwell (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), p. 197.
4. Weiser, op. cit., p. 199.
5. Weiser, op. cit., p. 201.

The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.