amazon.co.ukThe Problem of Evil
Logical and evidential problems of evil, Mackie's inconsistent triad, Plantinga's free will defence, Augustine's privation and Hick's soul-making theodicy - critiques and A* essay technique for AQA 7062 and OCR H573.
🎯 Learning Objectives
- State the logical problem of evil (Mackie's inconsistent triad) and the free will defence response, and evaluate both (AO1/AO2)
- Explain the evidential problem, including Rowe's fawn and pointless suffering (AO1)
- Set out Augustine's theodicy: privatio boni, the Fall, original sin - and its standard critiques (AO1/AO2)
- Set out Irenaeus' theodicy as developed by Hick: epistemic distance, soul-making, eschatological justification - and its critiques (AO1/AO2)
- Distinguish moral from natural evil and explain why the distinction matters for each theodicy (AO1)
- Apply D.Z. Phillips' protest that theodicies can be morally obscene and weigh it in a verdict (AO2)
- Write an evaluative essay with a sustained argument and justified conclusion (AO2/AO3)
📋 Key Definitions and Core Concepts
problem of evil: The apparent incompatibility between the existence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God and the existence of evil and suffering.
logical problem of evil: Mackie's claim that God's omnipotence, complete goodness and the existence of evil are mutually inconsistent - it is logically impossible for all three to be true.
evidential problem of evil: Even if logically possible, the sheer amount and distribution of pointless evil makes God's existence improbable (Rowe, Hume).
inconsistent triad: Mackie's triangle of three claims: God is omnipotent, God is wholly good, evil exists - any two can be held but not all three.
free will defence: Plantinga's response: genuine freedom requires the possibility of evil; God cannot guarantee free creatures always choose good without removing their freedom, so evil is not evidence against God.
theodicy: A defence of God's goodness and power in the face of evil that also explains why God permits it (Augustine, Irenaeus, Hick).
privatio boni: Augustine's doctrine that evil is a privation - an absence or corruption of good, not a created substance; God therefore created no evil.
original sin: The inherited sinful nature and guilt all humans share since the Fall, which explains (for Augustine) why natural evil and punishment are deserved.
The logical problem of evil and the free will defence
Mackie (Evil and Omnipotence, 1955): the inconsistent triad - (1) God is omnipotent, (2) God is wholly good, (3) evil exists. A good being eliminates evil as far as it can; an omnipotent being can eliminate all evil; therefore a good omnipotent God would eliminate all evil - but evil exists, so at least one claim fails. Mackie adds the paradoxes: why did God not create a world without evil, and why does he not remove at least some evil (the most extreme) if he can remove any?
Epicurus' formulation: 'Is he willing but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?' Hume reproduces this in the Dialogues.
Plantinga's free will defence: God values genuine freedom; a world containing free agents who sometimes do wrong is more valuable than a world of programmed goodness. God cannot guarantee that free creatures never sin while remaining free - so the existence of evil is logically possible alongside God, and the triad is broken. Plantinga adds the possibility that natural evil stems from fallen angels (the free will defence extends to demonic freedom).
Standard critique: Mackie's rejoinder - an omnipotent God could create beings who freely always choose good (as the blessed in heaven are often said to do); Plantinga replies that we cannot know this is feasible and it may be logically impossible. The debate turns on what omnipotence can do with freedom - A* essays weigh this carefully.
Plantinga's refinement - transworld depravity: it is possible that every essence suffers from transworld depravity - in any feasible world it would do at least some wrong; so it may not be feasible for God to create free creatures who always do good. This is the technical core of Plantinga's defence of the possibility of God and evil co-existing. Defence vs theodicy: the free will defence claims only logical compatibility, not that we know God's reasons - a theodicy (Augustine, Hick) goes further and explains why God permits evil. Keep the distinction explicit in essays.
The evidential problem of evil
Rowe (The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism, 1979): even if God and evil are logically compatible, the existence of pointless evil makes God improbable. The fawn: a fawn suffers and dies in a forest fire with no witness, no moral lesson and no redeeming outcome - there appears to be no greater good that justified its suffering. Rowe's inference: an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God would prevent pointless evil; pointless evil exists; therefore probably no such God exists.
Hume (Dialogues): the quantity and intensity of suffering, its distribution (the innocent suffer alongside the guilty) and the waste of animal suffering all count as evidence against a perfectly good designer. Is-ought aside, Hume's evidential case is cumulative.
- Skeptical theism (Wykstra): we are not in a position to know that any given evil is pointless - cognitive limitation means 'we can't see a reason' does not imply 'there is no reason'; the 'noseeum' inference is weak because the gap between our minds and God's is vast.
- Reply: if reasons are always beyond our ken, moral action itself becomes problematic, and the theodicy position collapses into inscrutability.
Distinction - moral vs natural evil: moral evil (suffering caused by free human choices: war, murder, cruelty) is handled by the free will defence; natural evil (earthquakes, disease, animal suffering) is not caused by human choice, so the free will defence alone cannot cover it - Augustine blames fallen angels, Hick uses it as soul-making stimulus, Rowe uses it as his strongest case.
Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov, 'Rebellion'): Ivan refuses all theodicy - the suffering of one innocent child cannot be justified by any future harmony: 'if the sufferings of children go to make up the sum of sufferings needed to buy truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price'. Ivan's protest is the literary form of the evidential and moral problem and pairs naturally with Phillips.
Swinburne (Providence and the Problem of Evil, 1998): a defence extending free will - God gives humans responsibility through epistemic limitations: if we always knew the consequences, our choices would not be free or responsible; a world with ignorance and risk is necessary for genuine agency. Critique: like Hick, Swinburne must still explain why responsibility requires this much suffering.
Augustine's theodicy: privation, the Fall and its critiques
Augustine (Confessions; City of God): God is perfect and created a world 'all good'; evil is privatio boni - a privation or corruption of good, not a substance God made (so God created no evil); evil arises from the misuse of free will by angels and humans (the Fall); the resultant disharmony of nature is natural evil; since all humanity was seminally present in Adam (in Adamo), all share the guilt and deserved punishment of original sin; God's goodness is shown in the redemption through Christ. Theodicy structure: creation good - fall - redemption.
- Schleiermacher's objections: a perfect creation cannot go wrong - if evil emerged from a perfectly good world, either evil existed already or perfection was an illusion; and it is incoherent to say free creatures in a perfect environment freely fell.
- Heaven problem: if the blessed in heaven freely never sin, free will without sin is possible - so why did the original creation not secure it?
- In Adamo: the claim that all were seminally present in Adam is biologically untenable (Augustine assumed traducianism) and morally objectionable - guilt for a pre-existent act is unjust.
- Natural evil: blaming fallen angels for earthquakes and disease is ad hoc and unsupported by evidence.
Strengths: preserves God's omnipotence (evil is not a created thing) and takes original sin seriously; biblical roots; explains why moral evil and punishment are universal. It is a theodicy for a Christian framework rather than a secular proof.
Modern Catholic restatement: the Catechism of the Catholic Church maintains the creation-fall-redemption structure: evil is permitted by God who brings good from it (the felix culpa tradition - 'O happy fault'); original sin is transmitted, not by imitation, by propagation. Weighing: Augustine preserves God's omnipotence better than any alternative (evil is not a thing God made) but at the cost of the Schleiermacher objections; A* essays should grant its coherence within a Christian framework while pressing its biologically and morally problematic claims.
Irenaeus and Hick: soul-making theodicy
Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses): humans are created in the image of God but immature; they must grow into the likeness of God through free response to challenge and suffering; evil is the necessary environment for moral and spiritual development; the world is a 'vale of soul-making'.
Hick (Evil and the God of Love, 1966; Philosophy of Religion): develops Irenaeus into a modern theodicy. Epistemic distance: God created humanity at a distance from himself, in an imperfect world, so that faith and moral choice are genuinely free - a world of unmediated divine presence would coerce belief and obedience. Soul-making: virtues (courage, compassion, forgiveness) are formed through responding to evil; hardship and natural laws provide the challenge; a paradise without evil would produce no moral growth. Eschatological justification: universal salvation - eventually all will be perfected, and God will justify the suffering by the end-state; the process is incomplete now, so evil appears unjustified from within history.
- Disproportionate evil: the theodicy may explain some challenge, but not the excessive, degrading suffering of children, the Holocaust or animal pain - no moral growth plausibly requires this much evil (Mackie's rejoinder; D.Z. Phillips' protest).
- D.Z. Phillips (The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God, 2004): it is morally obscene to treat the torture of a child as a 'means to an end' of soul-making - theodicies rationalise suffering in ways victims could not accept; suffering has no divine purpose, it is simply evil.
- Universalism: eschatological justification undermines human moral responsibility (everyone is saved regardless) and sits uneasily with traditions holding real judgement and hell.
- Strengths: avoids Augustine's incoherent perfect-creation problem; fits evolutionary biology (immaturity precedes maturity); epistemic distance is philosophically robust; preserves free will; treats evil as part of a developing world rather than a punishment.
Weighing point: Hick's theodicy is the more philosophically coherent of the two, but Phillips' protest is the sharpest objection to both - A* essays stage Augustine vs Hick on coherence, then Phillips against both on morality.
Hick's epistemic distance in full: a world of unmediated divine presence would be a 'divine theme park' - awe and obedience would be coerced, not free; imperfection, doubt and the possibility of atheism are the conditions of genuine faith. Weighing: the epistemic distance argument is the most philosophically robust element of the Irenaean tradition - it survives Mackie's quantitative objections better than the soul-making claim itself, and A* essays should separate the two strands: distance answers the challenge of a coercive paradise; soul-making answers the challenge of gratuitous evil - and only the first succeeds fully.
Evaluation and exam technique
Spec coverage: AQA 7062/1A section 3.1.2 (Evil and suffering) - the challenge of evil and suffering for belief in God, the logical and evidential problems, free will defence, Augustine and Irenaeus/Hick. OCR H573/01 (problem of evil) - logical, evidential, Augustinian, Irenaean, Hick, plus the relation to God's omnipotence and goodness. WJEC/Eduqas Component 1 and CCEA include similar theodicy content.
Comparative judgement: the strongest A* essays argue - e.g. Hick's soul-making is more coherent than Augustine's fall-based account (Schleiermacher's objection disposes of Augustine), but both fail before Phillips' protest and Rowe's fawn; or the free will defence handles moral evil but cannot extend to natural evil without ad hoc moves; or skeptical theism insulates God but at the cost of moral inscrutability.
Command words and structure: AQA Paper 1 Section A: 10-mark AO1 'Explain...' then 15-mark AO2 'Critically discuss...'. OCR: extended essays with a justified line of argument. Plan: (1) define evil, moral vs natural; (2) set out the problem (logical, evidential); (3) theodicy 1 with critique; (4) theodicy 2 with critique; (5) weigh and conclude.
- Pitfalls: conflating the logical and evidential problems (they are distinct challenges); presenting the free will defence as a theodicy (it is a defence - it explains compatibility, not God's reasons); ignoring natural evil when using the free will defence; asserting 'evil is a test from God' without naming a scholar (unexamined assertion); summarising Augustine and Hick without comparative evaluation.
- Examiner tips: quote Mackie's triad in full; name the fawn (Rowe) and the Holocaust (Phillips) as concrete anchors; distinguish 'defence' from 'theodicy' explicitly; use Schleiermacher's objection as the hinge between Augustine and Hick; finish with a justified verdict, not 'both sides have points'.
💡 Worked Example
Exam-style: 'Hick's soul-making theodicy successfully answers the problem of evil.' Critically discuss this claim. [AQA 7062 15-mark AO2 essay / OCR H573 extended essay]
Mark-scheme logic: AO1 required: Irenaeus' image/likeness distinction and vale of soul-making; Hick's epistemic distance, soul-making environment, eschatological justification and universalism; contrast with Augustine (privation, Fall) and Schleiermacher's objection to it. AO2 required: (1) strength - epistemic distance is philosophically robust and the account fits evolutionary immaturity, avoiding Augustine's incoherent perfect creation; (2) critique - disproportionate evil (child suffering, Holocaust, animal pain) exceeds any plausible soul-making need (Mackie); (3) D.Z. Phillips' protest - treating suffering as a means to an end is morally obscene; (4) universalism undermines responsibility and judgement; (5) weigh - the theodicy explains some evil but not the worst; conclude with a justified verdict, e.g. it answers the logical problem's spirit but fails the evidential and moral challenges.
❓ Practice Questions & Mark Schemes
Explain the logical problem of evil. [10 marks AO1]
Answer: AO1 answer: Mackie (Evil and Omnipotence, 1955) - the inconsistent triad: (1) God is omnipotent, (2) God is wholly good, (3) evil exists. A good being eliminates evil as far as it can; an omnipotent being can eliminate all evil; therefore a good omnipotent God would eliminate all evil - but evil exists, so at least one claim fails. Epicurus' formulation: 'Is he willing but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?' Distinguish moral evil (from free choices) from natural evil (disease, disasters). Marks awarded for: the triad stated accurately, the elimination logic, Epicurus/Hume context, and the moral/natural distinction.
'Evil and suffering disprove the existence of God.' Critically discuss. [15 marks AO2]
Answer: AO1 anchor: logical problem (Mackie's triad) and evidential problem (Rowe's fawn, Hume). AO2 required: (1) logical challenge - Mackie: the triad is inconsistent; (2) free will defence (Plantinga) - genuine freedom requires the possibility of evil, so the claims are compatible; (3) Mackie's rejoinder - an omnipotent God could create beings who freely always choose good; (4) evidential challenge - Rowe's fawn: pointless suffering makes God improbable even if logically possible; skeptical theism (Wykstra) - we cannot know any evil is pointless; (5) weigh - the free will defence handles moral evil but not natural evil without ad hoc moves; conclude with a justified verdict, e.g. evil makes classical theism improbable but does not disprove it - 'disprove' overstates what the evidential argument achieves.
Explain Augustine's theodicy. [10 marks AO1]
Answer: AO1 answer: Augustine (Confessions; City of God) - God created a world 'all good'; evil is privatio boni - a privation or corruption of good, not a created substance, so God created no evil; evil arises from the misuse of free will by angels and humans (the Fall); natural evil is the resultant disharmony of nature; all humanity was seminally present in Adam (in Adamo) and shares the guilt of original sin; God's goodness is shown in redemption through Christ. Marks awarded for: privatio boni, the Fall as the origin of evil, natural evil as disharmony, original sin (in Adamo), and the creation-fall-redemption structure.
'Hick's soul-making theodicy is more convincing than Augustine's.' Critically discuss. [15 marks AO2]
Answer: AO1 anchor: Augustine (privation, Fall, original sin) vs Irenaeus/Hick (epistemic distance, soul-making, eschatological justification). AO2 required: (1) Augustine's weakness - Schleiermacher: a perfect creation cannot go wrong, so evil either pre-existed or perfection was an illusion; the heaven problem (free will without sin is possible); in Adamo is biologically untenable; (2) Hick's strengths - epistemic distance is philosophically robust; fits evolutionary immaturity; avoids Augustine's incoherent perfect creation; (3) Hick's weaknesses - disproportionate evil (child suffering, Holocaust, animal pain) exceeds any plausible soul-making need; D.Z. Phillips' protest - treating suffering as a means to an end is morally obscene; universalism undermines responsibility; (4) weigh - Hick is the more coherent but Phillips' protest bites against both; conclude with a justified verdict, e.g. Hick is more convincing as philosophy but both fail the moral challenge.
Explain the free will defence and its main criticism. [10 marks AO1]
Answer: AO1 answer: Plantinga - God values genuine freedom; a world containing free agents who sometimes do wrong is more valuable than a world of programmed goodness; God cannot guarantee that free creatures never sin while remaining free, so evil is logically possible alongside God and the inconsistent triad is broken. The defence extends to natural evil via fallen angels. Main criticism: Mackie's rejoinder - an omnipotent God could create beings who freely always choose good (as the blessed in heaven are said to do); Plantinga replies that we cannot know this is feasible, and it may be logically impossible. Marks awarded for: the freedom-value premise, the cannot-guarantee point, the defence-vs-theodicy distinction, and Mackie's rejoinder.
'Theodicies are morally obscene.' Critically assess D.Z. Phillips' protest. [15 marks AO2]
Answer: AO1 anchor: Phillips (The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God, 2004) - it is morally obscene to treat the torture of a child as a means to an end of soul-making; theodicies rationalise suffering in ways victims could not accept. AO2 required: (1) strength - Phillips' protest exposes the deepest problem in Hick and Irenaeus: no moral growth plausibly requires the Holocaust or child suffering; treating evil as 'necessary environment' insults victims; (2) limitation - the protest applies to theodicies that use evil instrumentally, not to the Augustinian account (evil as privation and punishment) or to free will defences that locate evil in creaturely choice, not divine purpose; (3) skeptical theism - if we cannot know God's reasons, the charge of obscenity may overreach into inscrutability; (4) weigh - the protest is decisive against instrumental theodicies but not against all theistic responses; conclude with a justified verdict, e.g. Phillips is right that 'means to an end' accounts are obscene, but free will defences survive the protest.