Why Would a Loving God Just Stand By and Watch This Happen?

Such heart-wrenching questions have confronted pastors, priests, and rabbis throughout history.  The question may be asked at the graveside of a child, in the aftermath of war, while sifting through the wreckage of floods, fires, or earthquakes, or in doctors’ offices. Whatever the circumstance, few questions test faith more severely.

Classically and formally, the “problem of evil” was first expressed as a syllogism by Epicurious: 

  1. If an all-good and all-loving God exists, He would want to remove evil from the world. 

  2. If an all-powerful God exists, He would be able to remove evil from the world. 

  3. Evil exists. 

  4. Therefore, it seems that an all-good, all-powerful God does not exist. 

Philosophers like J.L. Mackie (“Evil and Omnipotence,” Mind, New Series, Vol. 64, No. 254. (Apr., 1955), pp. 200-212.) have carried the Epicurian argument into the modern age.  He argues that it is logically incoherent to hold simultaneously that God is omnipotent, God is omnibenevolent, and that evil exists.  While modern theologians and Christian philosophers have provided a suite of rebuttals--which we will survey here--the heart of the problem is not principally an intellectual one. One might play the armchair philosopher and intellectually conceive of an omnibenevolent omnipotent God having a reason to allow suffering.  The problem is most strongly expressed not in syllogisms, but in sobs. The intellect is insufficient when the heart is broken. We’ll first address the mind, then the heart

A one-page summary of the Glory of God Theodicy is available below. 

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