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Theodicies & Messy Desks
Hugh Hunter on the Infinite Problem of Goods & Evil
When I teach the philosophy of theodicies, I always make sure to introduce Hunter's rule of theodicies: Don't open with 'em. Like a slowly building joke, a theodicy is all about the journey. Skip the intricate architecture of assumptions, and the whole thing collapses into un-persuasive glibness. That's because a theodicy is an answer to a problem, specifically to some version of the Problem of Evil, and if you don't define the problem, your answer won't make any sense.
The Problem of Evil can be captured, I think, in three assumptions. It is a problem because the assumptions seem inconsistent, and yet we Christians believe all three.
1. God loves everything (in the neologism of the philosophy of religion, he is "omnibenevolent").
2. God is omnipotent.
3. Evil continues to exist.
You can restate the problem in lots of ways. For example, you can narrow the scope of the third assumption. Maybe some particular evil is stuck in your craw. That's fine, because all that matters is the tension between the three assumptions, and since we're talking about a perfect, all-powerful creator, even the most trivial evil will do. I wish it were possible to pour my morning coffee very fast without it splashing: why didn't God tweak the laws of fluid dynamics to relieve me of this very slight annoyance? And if you are inclined to dismiss my trivial gripe about coffee, you're illustrating another point about the importance of framing a theodicy: it's psychologically difficult to do so in purely logical terms.
Alongside the logical Problem of Evil there is another problem, which is not logical and does not admit of an answer. Sometimes the question, "How could God let X happen?" is a cry that demands comfort rather than explanation. Philosophers are not in the comfort-giving business. It is for the purely logical question that my splashy coffee is as relevant a data point as the Holodomor.
Some Plausible Theodicies
The aim is not to comfort; it is only to show the consistency of our three assumptions. There are many ways to do so, and the more plausible the story that ties them together, the better the theodicy. For example, you might say that all the evil is the work of the devil. That solves the problem, but it leaves you with the new problem of how to explain why a perfect God made the devil. A better theodicy would leave you with no further explaining to do. To see how this would work, consider an analogue to the Problem of Evil that I just made up: the problem of extension-evil. Here are three assumptions that I hope my students and I share:
1. I want the best for my students.
Hugh Hunter (Ph.D.) is a philosopher living in Ottawa.
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