Throughout the millennia, philosophers and laypersons alike have struggled with the existence of evil. Augustine passed on a dualistic vision of morality reminiscent of his former Manichaeism, wherein the body is essentially evil while the mind good. This elevation of the mind, intellect, and reason proved pervasive – bleeding into the Catholicism via Aquinas and defining European society by popular literary artists such as Dante. Evil and suffering have thus historically been viewed in the post-Greco world as a product of man’s inability to transcend the physical.
Given our modern setting, new challenges have arisen where atheism has been offered as an acceptable and complete worldview and naturalism permeates a society inclined toward monistic thought. In this climate, philosophers like Nietzsche are welcome to categorically deny distinctions between “good and evil”, at least as they exist in traditional thought. Moreover, Judeo-Christian values and duties are mocked as simplistic and illogical, due to the still pervasive influence of Aristotelian asceticism, Calvinistic determinism, Descartes’s extension of divine omnipotence, and so forth. Common association of these philosophies with theism in general have caused many to back away from, or unapologetically ridicule, Christianity. It is thus crucial for the Christian to develop a fuller theodicy, expounding upon both proper theology, philosophy, and logic.
In modern times, the derision and rejection of religion continues. The issue is not so simply dismissed by the Christian as through an appeal to wrongheaded yet pervasive philosophies. Rather, these enduring issues involve complex emotional struggles with tangible evil and personal suffering. Within our world exists not only moral evils, explained by some fault in humanity, but also the seemingly gratuitous natural evils devastating the masses. At the base of this problem lies the question, why would God allow evil? Or more personally, why has God allowed me to suffer thus? To properly formulate a theodicy, one must address not only the logical problem of evil, but also the evidential or probabilistic. In upcoming posts, this author will differentiate between these facets of this quandary and explicate their validity from a Christian worldview, all the while utilizing logic and philosophy.