HOLY SPIRIT

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THE PROBLEM OF PAIN
The Scream, E. Munch, http//www.ibiblio.org/wm/pa
int/auth/munch/
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THEODICIES-Stephen T. DavisRedeeming it all
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THEODICIES Davis

• A Theodicy of Trust, Encountering Evil, 73-89
• I am both an analytic philosopher and an
  evangelical Christian. . . . My controlling
  presuppositions are that people ought to believe
  what is rational for them to believe and that
  human reason is a normative guide to all belief
  and action. As an evangelical Christian . . . . I
  believe that all truth is from God and is
  consistent with the existence, goodness, and
  omnipotence of God. EE, 73

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THEODICIES Davis

• Indeed, I do not believe the problem of evil can
  be solved with the resources provided by bare
  theism it can only be solved, in my opinion,
  from a perspective that makes use of Christian
  doctrine, especially Christian soteriology and
  eschatology. EE, 73

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THEODICIES Davis

• Davis distinguishes the LPE, logical problem of
  evil, from the EPE, the emotive problem of evil.
  EE, 74
• As for the logical problem of evil, Davis argues
  that the following are logically consistent,
  using the classical Free-Will Defense (FWD). EE,
  74
• God is omnipotent
• God is perfectly good
• Evil exists

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THEODICIES Davis

• According to free-will defenders, God had two
  main aims. First, God wanted to create the best
  universe God could, i.e., a universe with the
  best possible balance of moral and natural good
  over moral and natural evil. Second, God wanted
  to create a world in which created rational
  agents (e.g., human beings) would decide freely
  to love and obey God. Accordingly, God created
  what was originally an evil-free world, and God
  created humans with the facility of free moral
  choice, with what philosophers call libertarian
  freedom. EE, 74

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THEODICIES Davis

• The possibility of evil is one of the risks that
  accompanies human freedom- but God is not to be
  blamed for the existence of moral evil. We are.
  EE, 75
• But- this is better than a world in which there
  is no real freedom. Gods policy decision to
  make us free was wise, for it will turn out
  better in the long run that we act freely, even
  if we sometimes err, than it would have turned
  out had we been created as innocent automata,
  programmed always to do the good. EE, 75

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THEODICIES Davis

• Davis does not embrace the argument that this is
  the best of all possible worlds.
• Must free-will defenders make this claim? I
  believe not. In the first place, it is not clear
  that the notion of the best of all possible
  worlds is coherent. . . . For any possible world,
  no matter how much pleasure and happiness it
  contains, we can always think of a better one,
  i.e., a world with slightly more pleasure and
  happiness. EE, 75

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THEODICIES Davis

• The burden of the FWD What the free-will
  defender must insist upon is, first, that the
  amount of evil that in the end will exist will be
  outweighed by the good that will exist, and,
  second, that this favorable balance of good over
  evil was obtainable by God in no other way. EE,
  76
• Moreover, there are good reasons why God does not
  constantly intervene- human free will and moral
  responsibility would be undermined if he did. EE,
  77

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THEODICIES Davis

• Three major objections to resolving LPE
• The first asks why an omnipotent creator could
  not create free beings who always freely chose
  the good. EE, 77
• The second objection . . . If the whole
  creation was originally perfectly morally good .
  . . then how do we explain the fact that people
  sin?
• The third objection concerns natural evil. The
  FWD defense- so it is said- may well be able to
  account for the presence of moral evil but not
  the presence of natural evil. EE, 78

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THEODICIES Davis

• Davis does not believe that the EPE is a
  philosophical problem.
• What does remain is what we might all an
  evangelistic difficulty.. . . If philosophers
  have successfully defended theism against the
  charge that (8) God is omnipotent and God is good
  and evil exists is inconsistent or improbable, it
  is not easy to see what else they can or must
  do. EE, 81

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THEODICIES Davis

• FWD still seems open to the objection that it
  flounders against the huge amount of suffering
  that exists. The question can still be raised
  whether the moral freedom that the FWD says God
  gave us was worth the cost. This is an especially
  riveting question when viewed in relation to
  moral monsters like Hitler and Stalin. To put the
  question in economic terms Is human freedom
  cost-effective? Why didnt God create a world of
  less freedom and thus less murder? EE, 82

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THEODICIES Davis

• FWD makes two preliminary points about our
  present suffering neither of them alone is
  sufficient to solve the theodicy problem, but
  both are important nonetheless. First, suffering
  and the waiting it almost always includes, can be
  spiritually uplifting. . . . Second, God is with
  us in our suffering, loving and caring for us.
  EE, 83

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THEODICIES Davis

• The basic claim of my theodicy is that God will
  redeem all evil. There are two ways in which this
  will be done First, some evil will be used
  causally by God to help produce the great good of
  the kingdom of God. Second, in the kingdom of God
  all evil will be overcome, transcended, made to
  pale into insignificance. EE, 83-84

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THEODICIES Davis

• The biblical vision is that despite the pain
  that all people have endured, and despite the
  horrible pain that some people have endured, the
  vision of the face of God that we will then
  experience will make all previous suffering such
  that the pain will no longer matter. We may not
  at present be able fully to realize or even
  conceptualize the infinite goodness of the
  kingdom of God and the way that it will overwhelm
  all previous evil. But given that we are dealing
  with infinite goods produced by a transcendent
  God, our inability to understand this point is
  just what we should expect. EE, 85

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THEODICIES Davis

• Ultimately it comes down to trust. Some folk
  trust in God and some do not the ones who do
  trust in God choose not to question God
  inordinately (Isa. 459-11). They believe God has
  the answers to many questions that now appear
  unanswerable. Christians believe that God has
  good reasons for allowing particularly evil
  people to exist and particularly evil events to
  occur. Christians do not always claim to know
  what those reasons are, but they trust in God
  nonetheless. EE, 87-88

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THEODICIES Davis

• If Christianity is true, then given what it says
  about Gods transcendence and our cognitive
  limits, we would expect that there will be evils
  that we cannot explain (but God can) and goods so
  great that we cannot comprehend them (although
  God can). So the fact that there are mysteries in
  theodicy and that many of the relevant truths are
  quite beyond our ken is not a last-ditch attempt
  to save a theology from criticism but rather
  exactly what that theology should lead us to
  expect. EE, 88

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CRITIQUE OFStephen T. Davis
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THE PROBLEM OF PAIN
The Scream, E. Munch, http//www.ibiblio.org/wm/pa
int/auth/munch/