Section 16
God in the suffering, not above it
The strongest objection to Christianity is the problem of evil. The Cross is the participatory answer.
Plantinga’s free will defense (1974) is widely accepted as defeating the logical problem of evil. The harder version is the evidential problem (Rowe 1979): the amount of suffering.
The Christian responses include skeptical theism, the greater good response, and the Cross.
The Cross is the distinctively Christian move. God does not stand outside suffering. He enters it. Not as a sympathetic spectator. As a participant. The Creator of the universe was tortured and killed by his own creatures.
The Cross is God’s only self justification in a world of suffering.
Implicit logic of Christian theodicy, paraphrased by John Stott, The Cross of Christ, 1986.
By the numbers
- Atheist formulations
- Mackie 1955, Rowe 1979, Schellenberg 1993
- Christian responses
- free will, skeptical theism, greater good, the Cross
- Plantinga’s status
- widely accepted as defeating the logical problem
Strongest counter position
A participating God is still inadequate if he could have prevented suffering in the first place. The Christian rejoinder: free will, redemption through participation, and eschatological hope are one structural answer.
What this does not prove
The problem of evil remains the strongest single objection to Christianity. The site does not claim a clean resolution.
Citations
- Mackie, "Evil and Omnipotence," Mind, 1955.
- Rowe, American Philosophical Quarterly, 1979.
- Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil, 1974.
- C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 1940.
- N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 2006.
Goes deeper