The Problem of Evil: Selected Readings, Second Edition

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

Western culture continues to witness serious and sustained inquiry into the problem of evil as it relates to theistic belief. Since the first edition of this anthology appeared in 1992, the philosophical literature has virtually exploded. This second edition is designed to present the main positions and strategies in a way that represents the development and structure of the ongoing debate. My hope is that this new edition will continue to be a resource for serious, thoughtful readers who are interested in the issues surrounding God and evil, as well as for scholars working in this area.

I am grateful to a number of people who have contributed in one way or another to the success of this work. The great team at the University of Notre Dame Press was amazing. I owe a debt of gratitude to Stephen Little, Rebecca DeBoer, and Elizabeth Sain for the care and attention they provided throughout the process of bringing this book to print.

Thomas Morris, general editor of the Library of Religious Philosophy series, originally encouraged me to produce a major anthology on the problem of evil. Words cannot adequately express my appreciation for my teacher and friend, Edward Madden, who is no longer with us. While I was doing a doctorate with Ed in philosophy of science, he and I shared countless hours off the clock discussing issues related to God and evil. Little did I suspect then that he would take early retirement and relocate geographically to be near me, making it possible to continue our discussions of the problem of evil for almost two decades. I owe a debt to Peter Hare, also deceased, for his many insights into the issues surrounding the problem.

As always, my wife, Rebecca—my lifelong partner, lover, and best friend—was supportive during yet another publishing project. This project took longer than usual for a number of reasons, five of which are my grandchildren. Spending time thinking about evil became more difficult as I realized that I could be having fun with these guileless little people who are so good and pure: Mason, Daisy, Brody, Ruby, and James Peterson. I am not looking forward to the day when they realize that the condition of this world is far less than ideal—indeed, that it is deeply wounded and damaged. Yet I have confidence that, as their lives unfold, they will understand that this is fundamentally a very good world and that they will love the good, resist evil, and work for the betterment of all they touch. To these five budding world changers I dedicate this book.

Introduction

The Problem of Evil

The philosophical problem of evil is the challenge of reconciling belief in God with evil in the world. The theistic concept of God as supremely powerful, intelligent, and good makes the problem very difficult because such a being, it would seem, would make a much better world than this one. All three great theistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—face the challenge of addressing this issue. In contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, the problem of evil has undergone much technical refinement, leading to greater clarity about different formulations of the problem as well as strategies for response. Although most discussions of the problem officially focus on basic theism, many draw implicitly from elements of Christian understanding, and some explicitly invoke Christian claims beyond those of basic theism. The aim of this anthology is to present important material related to the problem of evil in a manner that reveals the structure of the ongoing discussion and gives organization to some of the major positions and arguments involved.

PART ONE: STATEMENTS OF THE PROBLEM

Part One contains various statements of the problem, three from great world literature and three from classical philosophy. The selections from world literature are an excerpt from the ancient book of Job, Voltaire’s poem on the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, and a famous passage from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov on the encounter between Ivan and Alyosha.

The Old Testament book of Job is a dramatic treatment of the issue of God and suffering. In his personal suffering and anguish, the ancient patriarch Job develops new insights into God’s ways. The prevailing view in Job’s day was that righteous people prosper by deserving divine favor and wicked people suffer as divine punishment. One insight that emerges in the book of Job is that both human life and God are too complex for such simplistic formulas and that good people can indeed suffer. This insight is linked to the higher insight that a relationship with God is to be valued above all, regardless of one’s circumstances.

The poem by François-Marie Arouet, pen name Voltaire, was inspired by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, one of the great natural disasters in human history. The quake killed sixty thousand people in Lisbon alone, triggered seismic shocks felt throughout Europe, and created a tsunami, with giant waves hitting Spain and large waves even reaching Caribbean islands. When the quake occurred on November 1, All Saints’ Day, much of the population was attending church services, and thousands were killed or injured as churches collapsed. This event was a turning point in intellectual history because rationalist religious systems supporting unqualified optimism were seen by many in a different light. Voltaire’s subtitle—an inquiry into the maxim, whatever is, is right—signals that the poem targets Gottfried Leibniz’s view that this is the best of all possible worlds.

In the passage from Dostoevsky, the fictional character Ivan Karamazov, a university professor, denies that there is any rationally or morally acceptable reason for God to allow the suffering of innocent children. His brother Alyosha, a novice clergy, reluctantly agrees that he would not, if he were God, consent to the suffering of a single child, even if that one child’s suffering was necessary to the higher harmony of all things. These writings are a sample of the poignant treatments of evil outside technical philosophy, where a vivid sense of the reality and perplexity of evil can be expressed in emotionally gripping ways. Readers might also consider the writings of John Milton, Emily Dickinson, Albert Camus, and Elie Wiesel, which contain deep reflections on good and evil.

From classical philosophy, selections from Thomas Aquinas, Gottfried Leibniz, and David Hume are included for their historical and intellectual importance. The great Christian philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas argues that a supremely good God created all things good and cannot create evil. Evil in the creaturely world, then, is a defect in or corruption of what is originally good. Furthermore, since a supremely good being is the cause of other beings, there cannot be a supremely evil being as the cause of evil, as pagan dualisms suppose. Leibniz maintains that an absolutely perfect being must create the best of all possible worlds. So, evil in the world must be part of its being the best possible world among alternative worlds that God could have chosen to instantiate. In his famous philosophical dialogue, David Hume speaks through Philo to catalog terrible evils in order to pose the question of what sort of being would have created this world. Hume (via Philo speaking to Cleanthes and Demea) claims that it is not possible to infer the existence of a good God from the facts of evil but that the concomitant presence of good also blocks an inference to a completely malicious being. Since the world contains a perplexing mix of good and evil, the most reasonable inference is to a creator that is completely indifferent to his sentient creatures—a point later carefully developed by Paul Draper.

PART TWO: VERSIONS OF THE PROBLEM

In Part Two, key readings are featured on three different versions of the problem of evil: the logical, evidential, and existential versions. Beginning with this part, readings are paired so that the positions they take and the implications they generate may be seen more clearly in a dialectical context. In the first half of the twentieth century, there was not a lot of philosophical material on the problem of evil. Most philosophers simply assumed that logical positivism had shown religion to be intellectually substandard: that the concept of God was meaningless, that arguments for the existence of God were ineffective, and that the problem of evil had dealt a definitive blow to belief in God. In that climate of opinion, in 1955, J. L. Mackie published his argument that was designed to expose a logical contradiction between the existence of God and the existence of evil—an argument which, if valid, is a direct disproof of theism. As an essential part of his argument, Mackie relies on specific definitions of attributes of God, such as omnipotence, which are themselves not uncontroversial. In the period of renewal in philosophy of religion that began in the late 1970s, theistic responses to the problem of evil proliferated. Alvin Plantinga’s response, known as the free will defense, became classic. Plantinga points out that Mackie’s definitions—particularly of omnipotence—need not be accepted by theists. If God grants a kind of free will to creatures that is incompatible with any form of determinism, Plantinga argues, then it is not within God’s power to control the outcome of their choices, thus allowing the possibility for evil. Note that the point of this defense or any defense against the problem of evil is not to argue for the truth or plausibility of God or free will or any other aspect of theism but to show that the attack on theism fails.

Given that many theists and nontheists came to agree that the free will defense shows that the logical argument against theism, as exemplified in Mackie, fails, many nontheistic professional philosophers developed a different type of argument to show why evil is still a problem for theism. What became known as the evidential argument claims that some fact or facts about evil count against the credibility or probability of theistic belief. William Rowe articulated his own rendition of the evidential argument in 1979 and in subsequent decades revised it several times in response to criticisms. Rowe claims that it is reasonable to think that at least some of the intense suffering in our world could have been prevented without losing a greater good or without allowing an equally bad or worse evil. Since Rowe assumes that theism entails that God is justified in permitting evils only if they are necessary to a greater good, he believes he has good grounds for atheism. The lead selection provided here is a dialogue of Rowe with Daniel Howard-Snyder and Michael Bergmann, who are prominent representatives of the response known as the skeptical theist defense. Howard-Snyder and Bergmann’s basic point is that the human inability to discern God’s reasons for some evils does not constitute evidence that there are no such reasons. Their argument for this point is that we have no reason to think that our finite minds are able to grasp either all of the connections between goods and evils or all of the goods that there are to which evils may be connected. Yet such matters may well be known by infinite divine wisdom.

My own essay that follows is a critical discussion of the general types of standard responses that are offered against the evidential argument. Whether a theodicy is Augustinian or Irenaean or Plantingian in approach, it assumes both that God would prevent or eliminate any evil that does not lead to a greater good (what I call gratuitous evil) and also, therefore, that a greater good for every evil or type of evil must be specified in order for the theodicy to be adequate. On the other hand, the skeptical theist defense tries to block the evidential argument from going through by discounting our rational and moral evaluations regarding whether a given evil or some category of evils is gratuitous. By contrast, I argue that traditional greater good theodicies have a view of meticulous providence that is not essential to theism and that the skeptical theist defense relies on a view of our ability to make reasonable judgments about gratuity that is also not essential to theism. I argue for a view of divine providence that is general and not meticulous such that the world contains genuine contingencies, including contingencies of evil free choice and contingencies in the way natural order intersects human interests.

In addition to philosophical work on the logical and evidential versions of the problem of evil, some work has also been done on what we might call the existential version. This label calls attention to the real-life dimension of the problem in addition to the more abstract and general lines of reasoning that are typically pursued. William Hasker, in the selection here, argues that happy people who do not regret their own individual existence cannot meaningfully raise a problem of evil, since their existence and unique identity are causally dependent upon a great many past events, some of which are evil events. Marilyn Adams explores the redemptive or salvific nature of human suffering, providing what we might consider to be a forthrightly spiritual solution to the existential problem of evil. Although not speaking of all suffering categorically, Adams argues that suffering may, in the right context, provide a special personal sense of intimacy with God—who identifies powerfully with those who suffer—and also a glimpse into the inner life of God, whose nature is essentially self-giving, self-sacrificing love. The explorations by Hasker and Adams are fascinating forays into the human existential response to evil, but the admirable analytical rigor displayed in both treatments obviates any attempt to write off the existential dimension of the problem as merely subjective, somehow nonrational, or not worthy of philosophical investigation.

PART THREE: PERSPECTIVES IN THEODICY

Part Three highlights theodicy as the traditional way of responding to the problem of evil. Deriving from two classical Greek words, Theós (meaning God) and dikē (meaning justice), theodicy is the attempt to square God’s justice with the existence of evil. Although theodicy has been used to address both the logical and evidential versions of the problem, it is now standard to consider a defense per se—and particularly the free will defense—as the appropriate kind of answer to the logical version and theodicy as the conventional type of answer to the evidential version. However, deploying a skeptical theist defense against the evidential argument is a notable exception to developing a theodicy. A defense simply aims to block the claim that it is likely that there are no morally sufficient reasons for certain evils, whereas a theodicy seeks to offer a plausible account of God’s possible or actual reasons. Some theodicies revolve around a particular theme, such as free will or natural law or character development. However, the theodicies featured here are more global, systematically weaving together various themes into a comprehensive narrative about God’s nature and his purposes in the world.

St. Augustine’s complex theodicy focuses on the causal genesis of evil in the world in order to accomplish two objectives: to exonerate God and to maintain the guilt of creatures. Augustine treats topics such as the origin of sin in the free choices of originally good creatures, God’s intent to bring good out of evil, God’s timeless perception of the goodness of the whole creation in spite of its negative aspects, and the creature’s inability to perceive all aspects of the divine plan. Clearly, some Augustinian ideas recur in the works of later Christian thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, subsequent Thomistic philosophers, John Calvin, Leibniz, Alvin Plantinga, and others. David Ray Griffin, a process philosopher, critiques Augustine’s theology, which is based on a view of God as immutable, perfectly good, omniscient, and omnipotent. According to Griffin, this strong view of the deity entails that there is no genuine evil in the universe—a position that is faithful neither to human experience nor to the Christian faith. Griffin observes that Augustine comes closest to acknowledging the problem of evil for theism in his discussion of sin, or evil willing, on the part of creatures, but he then contextualizes all evil by declaring that the universe is better for containing it than not containing it. The aesthetic theme in Augustine’s theodicy makes the negatives that occur in the creation—such as sin—serve the beauty of the whole, and the fortunate fault theme, which is common to various Christian orientations, affirms that sin is essentially linked to God’s great redemptive activity toward fallen creatures.

John Hick’s soul-making theodicy purports to draw from St. Irenaeus of the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. Instead of focusing on the causal genesis of evil, the Iranaean tradition in theodicy emphasizes the evolving resolution of evil. Instead of interpreting evil in the world as a fall from a once perfect state, it treats evil as a necessary stage in the development of a spiritually mature creature from a relatively immature state. According to Hick, God’s process of soul-making is not completed in temporal existence but continues into the afterlife. He theorizes that the conditions required for soul-making include both epistemic distance (which means that the world appears to finite minds as if there is no God) and the presence of genuine challenges, risks, and temptations (which provide opportunities for free creatures to grow in virtue). In his critique of Hick’s argument, William Rowe points out that epistemic distance from God is not necessary for moral and spiritual freedom, since it is possible for creatures to fully know that God exists and yet make their own choices to move toward or away from God. As for Hick’s claim that evil which seems far in excess of what is needed for soul-making is actually necessary for soul-making, Rowe maintains that this is paradoxical, bordering on incoherent. Pursuing further the difficult problem of excess evil, Rowe argues that Hick fails to explain either particular instances of horrendous evil or the great amount and severity of evil generally.

David Ray Griffin represents the tradition of process theodicy in arguing, on metaphysical grounds, that the freedom of finite beings is not donated to them by God but is rather inherent in the nature of being actual. Therefore, the traditional understanding of omnipotence must be modified: God has all the power it is possible for him to have but not all the power that there is. Since finite freedom is not the result of divine self-limitation but a metaphysical feature of particular existence, beings in the world have the intrinsic power to resist the divine aims. So, rather than coercion, God employs maximum persuasive power as he continually attempts to draw free finite actualities into agreement with his ideal aims for them. Against Griffin, Bruce Reichenbach defends a more nuanced theistic view of God’s power. He also points out difficulties regarding how the concept of power plays out at two distinct levels of existence as understood in process metaphysics: the level of individuals and the level of the aggregates into which individuals are conjoined. Aggregates with no central self or soul to synthesize the experiences of the whole lack the power of self-determination, whereas aggregates with a self do possess this power. Furthermore, since God is an individual and not an aggregate, he lacks coercive power with respect to aggregates. In the end, says Reichenbach, the process deity is not even a personal being and therefore does not resemble the God of the Bible as understood by the community of faith.

A position called open theism has attracted a great deal of interest since it arose in the early 1990s. Its explanation of evil draws heavily from two of its most basic themes: that God limits his own power by creating personal beings with genuine freedom and that God’s knowledge is contingent upon creaturely choices rather than timeless and fixed. In brief, the openness vision is that God and his creation are deeply relational in nature, which means that God’s overarching goal is for personal beings freely to seek relationship both with him and with their fellows. Genuine human-divine relationship, according to openness thinkers, requires both that God is open to creaturely choices that he does not meticulously control and that the human future is open as persons interact with God’s overtures toward them. So, this kind of genuinely relational universe involves the real possibility of evils that serve no greater good. Paul Helm argues, on the contrary, that God takes no risks in creating and guiding the universe. Elaborating on what he considers a biblical view, Helm takes the position that divine providence as it applies to personal evil is indeed meticulous. Attaching very strong views of power and knowledge to God, Helm argues that God always chooses whether to prohibit or allow evil, thus guaranteeing that his creation is free from the risk of an action being chosen or an event occurring outside of his control.

Departing from his usual defensive stance with respect to the problem of evil, Alvin Plantinga’s essay included in Part Three articulates a felix culpa theodicy based on an ancient theme of the Christian church: that the human fall into sin is an exceedingly fortunate event because, in addressing sin, God enacts a plan of redemption that involves the incomparable good of the Incarnation and Atonement. So, if God’s intention is to create a highly valuable world that includes not only the good of his own existence but the good of Incarnation and Atonement, then, logically, he must will that the world contain sin, suffering, and evil. Kevin Diller responds by questioning Plantinga’s strategy of interpreting evil as a means to God’s far greater ends. Diller argues that this makes evil a functional good, somehow rational and fitting in God’s economy, thus distorting its true theological significance as needless and harmful but permitted rebellion and damage. Moreover, for Diller, only on a highly contestable scale of values can a world containing sin and evil be considered better than other imaginable worlds, since there are possible worlds with no sin and evil that still contain the wonderful good of God’s self-revelation and invitation to relational intimacy.

PART FOUR: ISSUES IN THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

Part Four consists of exchanges between philosophers regarding particular aspects of the ongoing discussion of God and evil. Robert Adams challenges the Leibnizian idea that God’s perfection requires that he create the best possible world because moral obligations do not apply to creatures who are merely possible beings. Adams also reasons that divine grace means that God does not choose to create finite beings because of their desirable characteristics and thus that God might select less excellent creatures than he could have selected. Philip Quinn disagrees with Adams, arguing that theism implies that God must do his best in creation. Although it is not wrong for God to actualize a less morally good world than he could have actualized, his doing so would simply show that he is not a superlatively good moral agent.

Another controversy in the overall discussion of evil regards the role of natural laws in accounting for natural evils. The familiar line of argument is that a world run by natural laws is necessary for the sake of a stable environment for the conduct of our lives, although the regular operation of natural laws also creates pain, suffering, disaster, and other evils. In providing a theodicy for natural evils, Richard Swinburne ventures beyond this approach, arguing that the existence of natural evils is actually necessary to humans having meaningful freedom to commit morally good or evil actions. According to Swinburne, in order to acquire knowledge of what actions have good or evil consequences, persons may observe either other human actions or natural processes. He argues, however, that ultimately our knowledge of how to commit moral evil must be anchored in observation of naturally occurring evils. Eleonore Stump rejects Swinburne’s argument that natural evils are necessary for the knowledge that is connected to moral freedom because the relevant knowledge of how to bring about moral evil is available by other avenues (such as divine revelation or scientific study) rather than by induction from actual natural evils. She further argues that, even if Swinburne were correct that natural evils are necessary for producing knowledge to inform morally meaningful actions, he has yet to show why the value of this knowledge is sufficient to justify God in permitting such evils. For example, it is reasonable to believe that even the value of learning from natural evils how to avoid or escape them in the future is not adequate to justify God in permitting them in the first place.

One critical issue in the ongoing discussion concerns the concept of gratuitous evil—that is, evil that is not necessary to achieve some greater good or to prevent another evil that is equally bad or worse. The controversy pertains to two key questions: whether it is rational to believe that gratuitous evils exist and whether standard theism requires God to prevent them. William Hasker argues that it is generally reasonable to believe that evils are gratuitous which do not seem to us to be necessary for a greater good. Hasker rejects the skeptical theist’s attempt to deny rational standing to judgments of gratuity because such denials impugn the general reliability of our human capacities for making rational and moral assessments. Approaching the discussion from the other direction, Hasker looks at the typical assumptions made by theists and nontheists alike that God must arrange the world or intervene in the world to make all evils serve a greater good—in effect, God must not allow gratuitous evil. Hasker develops a theistic understanding of why God can allow harmful and pointless evils without which the world would genuinely have been better. Such a view, he argues, preserves the kind of universe in which human actions and their consequences must be taken with utter seriousness. David O’Connor counters by arguing in detail that Hasker has presented no good reason to think that theism and gratuitous evil are compatible. O’Connor classifies Hasker’s arguments for the possibility of gratuitous evil in a theistic universe into two categories: those based on God’s essential nature and those based on God’s goals in world making. Much of the discussion centers around what conditions are required vis-à-vis human beliefs about the relation of God and gratuitous evil for the human moral and spiritual venture to be meaningful.

Skeptical theism is now a well-known line of response to the evidential argument from evil. Rowe’s evidential argument, as found in Part One, gets traction by claiming that it is likely that there are evils which are not necessary for any greater goods. To make this claim, Rowe must provide a reason to think that it is likely that the goods we know of are in fact representative of the goods there are. However, as skeptical theists argue, for all we know, God perceives and pursues goods beyond our comprehension. This means that human beings are not in an epistemic position to make a judgment about many of the relations of goods and evils. The many exchanges between Rowe and skeptical theists on this and related points have led to the refinement of both positions. In his essay in Part Four, Michael Bergmann constructs a detailed case for why Rowe’s different ways of supporting his factual claim—that it is probable that there are evils which are not necessary for greater goods—all fail. The dual themes undergirding Bergmann’s perspective are, of course, that a strong emphasis on our cognitive limitations, on the one hand, and a recognition of the vastness and complexity of reality, on the other, are debilitating to the evidential argument. Nick Trakakis, in turn, defends Rowe against such skeptical theist arguments, largely by arguing from the plausibility of Rowe’s analogies, such as the analogy between God and a good parent. A young child may not understand the reasons why a loving, relationally healthy parent allows some form of temporary suffering (for instance, due to a medical procedure). However, the loving parent would at least assure that child that there were such reasons. For Rowe and others who advance the evidential argument from evil, God reveals to human beings neither the specific reasons nor the fact that he has reasons. On the good-parent analogy, it is reasonable to think that the goods for the sake of which a loving, self-revealing God allows evils would not be totally beyond our ken.

The version of the evidential argument from evil offered here by Paul Draper frames the matter as follows: although theism may offer an explanation for evil that has some degree of plausibility on its own, there may be a competing hypothesis that explains evil better by comparison. Draper argues that the hypothesis of indifference explains the facts of pain and pleasure, including their perplexing distribution and the evolutionary functions they serve, better than theism does. Linking the concepts of antecedent probability and epistemic surprise, he claims that the facts of pain and pleasure as we know them are much more antecedently probable (that is, less epistemically surprising) given a universe that is indifferent to human goals and values than given a theistic universe. This, he maintains, accents a serious problem for the theist and provides a reason to think atheism is true. Peter van Inwagen in his essay does not directly reply to Draper’s argument, but he addresses a similar one that rests on the amount, intensity, and distribution of pain in the actual world. Van Inwagen points out that highly valuable rational creatures evolved over a long period of time, that pain (including its chance nature) is necessary to the evolutionary process, and that rational creatures are worth the pain involved in producing them. For God to bring about higher-level rational creatures apart from the laws of evolutionary development (for instance, by eliminating countless instances of animal suffering in evolutionary history) would be for God to create a massively irregular world, which is a defective world that cannot be preferred. The great value of rational creatures emerging in a regular world outweighs the cost in suffering. So, the patterns of suffering in this world are not evidence against theism—and neither are they evidence for the hypothesis of indifference. Van Inwagen further claims that any interesting and important hypothesis will need auxiliary hypotheses to help it account for difficult cases but that this does not mean that the difficult cases count as negative evidence.

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT

In both quality and quantity, the philosophical literature on the problem of evil witnesses to the importance of the problem itself. The problem of evil arguably commands more attention than any other issue in the philosophy of religion and will very likely continue to do so, not only because of its intellectual complexity but also because of its grounding in real life. The present anthology allows the reader—whether professional philosopher, student, or interested layperson—to work through a number of issues related to how evil in the world affects belief in God. Future progress will be made as thoughtful persons—theists, nontheists, agnostics, and others—engage in honest discussion and debate. My hope is that this collection of readings will contribute to that end.

PART I

Statements of the Problem

Explorations in Great Literature

Treatments in Traditional Philosophy

CHAPTER 1

Job’s Complaint and the Whirlwind’s Answer

FROM THE BOOK OF JOB

An assumption underlying the Old Testament is that we live in a divinely governed, just universe. The prevailing orthodoxy was that God has structured the world so that the righteous and the wicked are rewarded or punished according to what they deserve—a simple principle of moral cause and effect. Even the book of Proverbs, despite its occasional flashes of cynicism, essentially reflects this view. The book of Job, on the other hand, is unorthodox with respect to the accepted orthodoxy, for it frankly treats the difficult fact that the justice of God is not confirmed by human experience. One’s circumstances are not an accurate indicator of one’s standing with God. Thus, the book calls into question the Old Testament idea of what it means to live in a divinely governed, just universe.

In a sense, the book of Job is a philosophical debate, set in the format of an old folk tale. It addresses the most perplexing of human problems: why do the innocent suffer? According to the story, Job was a morally virtuous and religiously devout ancient patriarch. Nevertheless, all sorts of evils befell Job, devastating his once prosperous and flourishing life. His seven sons and three daughters were killed, his many flocks destroyed, his slaves slaughtered, and he himself smitten with a terrible skin disease. So, Job’s own situation becomes a telling counterexample to the simple moral cause-effect principle. The exquisite intermingling of lofty theological ideas with profound psychological anguish characterizes this classic story of the Old Testament. The result is a vision of the value of a relationship with God in a complex world that cannot be explained in simplistic categories or reduced to extrinsic rewards.

The story begins with a description of Job and his relationship to God:

There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

1:1

Terrible things began to happen to Job: his seven sons and three daughters are killed, his many flocks destroyed, his slaves slaughtered, and he himself smitten with a terrible skin disease. Job’s first reaction to the calamities in his life is to suffer in silence. Unable to restrain herself, Job’s wife urges him to curse God and die. But Job answers:

You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?

2:10

Eventually, three of Job’s friends come to comfort him as he sits in misery and scrapes his sores. The friends—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite (2:11)—are unable to find words to express their sympathy and sit silently with him without speaking for seven days and seven nights. Job knows that they embrace the conventional orthodoxy which holds that prosperity is a reward for right living and misfortune is a punishment for sin—a conviction that he also held. However, Job’s physical suffering and psychological confusion prevent him from being silent any longer, causing him to burst forth bitterly:

"Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire?

Why were there knees to receive me, or breasts for me to suck? …

Why is light given to one in misery, and life to the bitter in soul,

who long for death, but it does not come, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures;

who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad when they find the grave?"

3:11–12, 20–22

Job’s outburst shocks the comforters, and they begin to argue with him. The first comforter, Eliphaz, insists that God is probably disciplining Job for his own good:

"How happy is the one whom God reproves; therefore do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.

For he wounds, but he binds up; he strikes, but his hands heal."

5:17–18

After listening to many such sanctimonious pronouncements, Job answers that he does not need any disciplining. Beginning to despair of any resolution with his human comforters, he cries out directly to God:

If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity? Why have you made me your target? Why have I become a burden to you?

7:20

Soon Bildad, the second comforter, rebukes Job, saying that God would certainly respond if Job were innocent:

"How long will you say these things, and the words of your mouth be a great wind?

Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert the right? …

if you are pure and upright, surely then he will rouse himself for you and restore to you your rightful place."

8:2–3, 6

It seems to Job that God is treating him as if he has sinned and will not give him a fair hearing. Furthermore, Job persists in acknowledging God’s omniscience and omnipotence but sharpens his questions about God’s justice and goodness. Job declares:

"Though I am innocent, I cannot answer him; I must appeal for mercy to my accuser.

If I summoned him and he answered me, I do not believe that he would listen to my voice.

For he crushes me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds without cause;

He will not let me get my breath, but fills me with bitterness.

If it is a contest of strength, he is the strong one! If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him?

Though I am innocent, my own mouth would condemn me; though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse.

I am blameless; I do not know myself; I loathe my life.

It is all one; therefore I say, he destroys both the blameless and the wicked.

When disaster brings sudden death, he mocks at the calamity of the innocent.

The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; he covers the eyes of its judges—if it is not he, who then is it?"

9:15–24

As Job’s worst fears unfold, he feels like a condemned person who can do nothing to clear himself with a judge who is like no one else:

"I become afraid of all my suffering, for I know you will not hold me innocent.

I shall be condemned; why then do I labor in vain?

If I wash myself with soap and cleanse my hands with lye,

yet you will plunge me into filth, and my own clothes will abhor me.

For he is not a mortal, as I am, that I might answer him, that we should come to trial together.

There is no umpire between us, who might lay his hand on us both.

If he would take his rod away from me, and not let dread of him terrify me,

then I would speak without fear of him, for I know I am not what I am thought to be."

9:28–35

The suffering Job gradually realizes that he cannot persuade his comforters of his own righteousness. So he turns his attention to God and the question of why righteous people suffer:

"I loathe my life; I will give free utterance to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

I will say to God, Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me.

Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favor the schemes of the wicked?

Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as humans see?

Are your days like the days of mortals, or your years like human years,

that you seek out my iniquity and search for my sin,

although you know that I am not guilty, and there is no one to deliver out of your hand?"

10:1–7

The third comforter, Zophar, is so outraged at this utterance that he indignantly insists not only that Job is guilty but also that he must be receiving a less painful correction than he deserves:

"Should your babble put others to silence, and when you mock, shall no one shame you?

For you say, ‘My conduct is pure, and I am clean in God’s sight.’

But O that God would speak, and open his lips to you,

and that he would tell you the secrets of wisdom! For wisdom is many-sided.

Know then that God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves."

11:3–6

In spite of his friends’ insistence that divine justice guarantees prosperity to the righteous and suffering to the wicked, Job states that it appears that God deals unfairly with human beings. Job claims that even in death—the place of Sheol—the wicked still reject God:

"When I think of it I am dismayed, and shuddering seizes my flesh.

Why do the wicked live on, reach old age, and grow mighty in power?

Their children are established in their presence, and their offspring before their eyes.

Their houses are safe from fear, and no rod of God is upon them.

Their bull breeds without fail; their cow calves and never miscarries.

They send out their little ones like a flock, and their children dance around.

They sing to the tambourine and the lyre, and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.

They spend their days in prosperity, and in peace they go down to Sheol.

They say to God, ‘Leave us alone! We do not desire to know your ways.

What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit do we get if we pray to him?"

21:6–15

So the debate continues, point and counterpoint, Job against his three friends. As the discussion draws to a close, the young Elihu, a fourth comforter who did not enter the earlier dialogue, comes forward to try to refute both Job, for his self-justification, and the other three friends, for lacking an argument that is forceful enough:

"God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things that we cannot comprehend.…

The Almighty—we cannot find him; he is great in power and justice, and abundant righteousness he will not violate."

37:5, 23

For all its pretense of knowing God’s ways, however, Elihu’s message turns out to be essentially the same as that of his cohorts. Job is psychologically and physically exhausted with his own problems and with the onslaught of accusations. In this situation, God enters the story through a storm that has been brewing. Speaking out of a mighty whirlwind, God harshly rebukes the three comforters for their lack of wisdom, ignores the young comforter entirely, and then confronts Job with a cascade of questions:

"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.

Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?

On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone

when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?—

when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band,

and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors,

and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?

Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place,

so that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it?

It is changed like clay under the seal, and it is dyed like a garment.

Light is withheld from the wicked, and their uplifted arm is broken.

Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?

Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?

Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare, if you know all this.

Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness,

that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths to its home?"

38:2–20

Job is overwhelmed by his encounter with God. His earlier insistence on a strict and measurable justice in the world gives way to his emerging perception of God as still in sovereign control but governing the world by a wisdom that resists formulaic description. So, Job answers:

"See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth.

I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but will proceed no further."

40:4–5

Then God begins another barrage of questions:

"Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you declare to me.

Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be justified?

Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his?

Deck yourself with majesty and dignity; clothe yourself with glory and splendor.

Pour out the overflowings of your anger, and look on all who are proud, and abase them.

Look on all who are proud, and bring them low; tread down the wicked where they stand.

Hide them all in the dust together; bind their faces in the world below.

Then I will also acknowledge to you that your own right hand can give you victory."

40:7–14

Job is further humbled by God’s second speech and, in response, utters these words:

"I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.…

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;

therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

42:2–3, 5–6

Many scholars as well as general readers often interpret the end of the story as depicting a puny human finally succumbing to divine power or a rebellious sinner admitting wrongdoing. However, the word repent in the context of this Hebrew text clearly means to change one’s mind, perhaps with some regret for having held an incorrect opinion in the first place, but it does not mean to admit moral wrongdoing or spiritual rebellion. Seen in this light, Job is a faithful believer, an honest questioner, a righteous sufferer, and a religious pioneer.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 2

The Lisbon Earthquake

VOLTAIRE

Oh wretched man, earth-fated to be cursed;

Abyss of plagues, and miseries the worst!

Horrors on horrors, griefs on griefs must show,

That man’s the victim of unceasing woe,

And lamentations which inspire my strain,

Prove that philosophy is false and vain.

Approach in crowds, and meditate awhile

Yon shattered walls, and view each ruined pile,

Women and children heaped up mountain high,

Limbs crushed which under ponderous marble lie;

Wretches unnumbered in the pangs of death,

Who mangled, torn, and panting for their breath,

Buried beneath their sinking roofs expire,

And end their wretched lives in torments dire.

Say, when you hear their piteous, half-formed cries,

Or from their ashes see the smoke arise,

Say, will you then eternal laws maintain,

Which God to cruelties like these constrain?

Whilst you these facts replete with horror view,

Will you maintain death to their crimes was due?

And can you then impute a sinful deed

To babes who on their mothers’ bosoms bleed?

Was then more vice in fallen Lisbon found,

Than Paris, where voluptuous joys abound?

Was less debauchery to London known,

Where opulence luxurious holds her throne?

Earth Lisbon swallows; the light sons of France

Protract the feast, or lead the sprightly dance.

Spectators who undaunted courage show,

While you behold your dying brethren’s woe;

With stoical tranquility of mind

You seek the causes of these ills to find;

But when like us Fate’s rigors you have felt,

Become humane, like us you’ll learn to melt.

When the earth gapes my body to entomb,

I justly may complain of such a doom.

Hemmed round on every side by cruel fate,

The snares of death, the wicked’s furious hate,

Preyed on by pain and by corroding grief

Suffer me from complaint to find relief.

’Tis pride, you cry, seditious pride that still

Asserts mankind should be exempt from ill.

The awful truth on Tagus’ banks explore,

Rummage the ruins on that bloody shore,

Wretches interred alive in direful grave

Ask if pride cries, Good Heaven, thy creatures save.

If ‘tis presumption that makes mortals cry,

Heav’n, on our sufferings cast a pitying eye.

All’s right, you answer, the eternal cause

Rules not by partial, but by general laws.

Say what advantage can result to all,

From wretched Lisbon’s lamentable fall?

Are you then sure, the power which could create

The universe and fix the laws of fate,

Could not have found for man a proper place,

But earthquakes must destroy the human race?

Will you thus limit the eternal mind?

Should not our God to mercy be inclined?

Cannot then God direct all nature’s course?

Can power almighty be without resource?

Humbly the great Creator I entreat,

This gulf with sulphur and with fire replete,

Might on the deserts spend its raging flame,

God my respect, my love weak mortals claim;

When man groans under such a load of woe,

He is not proud, he only feels the blow.

Would words like these to peace of mind restore

The natives sad of that disastrous shore?

Grieve not, that others’ bliss may overflow,

Your sumptuous palaces are laid thus low;

Your toppled towers shall other hands rebuild;

With multitudes your walls one day be filled;

Your ruin on the North shall wealth bestow,

For general good from partial ills must flow;

You seem as abject to the sovereign power,

As worms which shall your carcasses devour.

No comfort could such shocking words impart,

But deeper wound the sad, afflicted heart.

When I lament my present wretched state,

Allege not the unchanging laws of fate;

Urge not the links of the eternal chain,

’Tis false philosophy and wisdom vain …

This is the fatal knot you should untie,

Our evils do you cure when you deny?

Men ever strove into the source to pry,

Of evil, whose existence you deny.

If he whose hand the elements can wield,

To the winds’ force makes rocky mountains yield;

If thunder lays oaks level with the plain,

From the bolts’ strokes they never suffer pain.

But I can feel, my heart oppressed demands

Aid of that God who formed me with His hands.

Sons of the God supreme to suffer all

Fated alike; we on our Father call.

No vessel of the potter asks, we know,

Why it was made so brittle, vile, and low?

Vessels of speech as well as thought are void;

The urn this moment formed and that destroyed,

The potter never could with sense inspire,

Devoid of thought it nothing can desire.

The moralist still obstinate replies,

Others’ enjoyments from your woes arise,

To numerous insects shall my corpse give birth,

When once it mixes with its mother earth:

Small comfort ’tis that when Death’s ruthless power

Closes my life, worms shall my flesh devour …

Yet in this direful chaos you’d compose

A general bliss from individuals’ woes?

Oh worthless bliss! in injured reason’s sight,

With faltering voice you cry, What is, is right?

The universe confutes your boasting vain,

Your heart retracts the error you maintain.

Men, beasts, and elements know no repose

From dire contention; earth’s the seat of woes:

We strive in vain its secret source to find.

Is ill the gift of our Creator kind?

Do then fell Typhon’s cursed laws ordain

Our ill, or Arimanius doom to pain?

Shocked at such dire chimeras, I reject

Monsters which fear could into gods erect.

But how conceive a God, the source of love,

Who on man lavished blessings from above,

Then would the race with various plagues confound

Can mortals penetrate His views profound?

Ill could not from a perfect being spring,

Nor from another, since God’s sovereign king;

And yet, sad truth! in this our world ’tis found,

What contradictions here my soul confound!

A God once dwelt on earth amongst mankind,

Yet vices still lay waste the human mind;

He could not do it, this proud sophist cries,

He could, but he declined it, that replies;

He surely will, ere these disputes have end,

Lisbon’s foundations hidden thunders rend,

And thirty cities’ shattered remnants fly,

With ruin and combustion through the sky,

From dismal Tagus’ ensanguined shore,

To where of Cadiz’ sea the billows roar.

Or man’s a sinful creature from his birth,

And God to woe condemns the sons of earth;

Or else the God who being rules and space,

Untouched with pity for the human race,

Indifferent, both from love and anger free,

Still acts consistent to His first decree:

Or matter has defects which still oppose

God’s will, and thence all human evil flows;

Or else this transient world by mortals trod,

Is but a passage that conducts to God.

Our transient sufferings here shall soon be o’er,

And death will land us on a happier shore.

But when we rise from this accursed abyss,

Who by his merit can lay claim to bliss?

Dangers and difficulties man surround,

Doubts and perplexities his mind confound.

To nature we apply for truth in vain,

God should His will to human kind explain.

He only can illume the human soul,

Instruct the wise man, and the weak console.

Without Him man of error still the sport,

Thinks from each broken reed to find support.

Leibnitz can’t tell me from what secret cause

In a world governed by the wisest laws,

Lasting disorders, woes that never end

With our vain pleasures real sufferings blend;

Why ill the virtuous with the vicious shares?

Why neither good nor bad misfortunes spares?

I can’t conceive that what is, ought to be,

In this each doctor knows as much as me …

If in a life midst sorrows past and fears,

With pleasure’s hand we wipe away our tears,

Pleasure his light wings spreads, and quickly flies,

Losses on losses, griefs on griefs arise.

The mind from sad remembrance of the past

Is with black melancholy overcast;

Sad is the present if no future state,

No blissful retribution mortals wait,

If fate’s decrees the thinking being doom

To lose existence in the silent tomb.

All may be well; that hope can man sustain,

All now is well; ’tis an illusion vain.

The sages held me forth delusive light,

Divine instructions only can be right.

Humbly I sigh, submissive suffer pain,

Nor more the ways of Providence arraign.

In youthful prime I sung in strains more gay,

Soft pleasure’s laws which lead mankind astray.

But times change manners; taught by age and care

Whilst I mistaken mortals’ weakness share,

The light of truth I seek in this dark state,

And without murmuring submit to fate.

A caliph once when his last hour drew nigh,

Prayed in such terms as these to the most high:

"Being supreme, whose greatness knows no bound,

I bring thee all that can’t in Thee be found;

Defects and sorrows, ignorance and woe."

Hope he omitted, man’s sole bliss below.

Voltaire, The Lisbon Earthquake: An Inquiry into the Maxim, ‘Whatever Is, Is Right.’ Reprinted from The Works of Voltaire, A Contemporary Version, translated by William F. Fleming (New York: E. R. DuMont, 1901). Public domain.

CHAPTER 3

Rebellion

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

I must admit one thing to you, Ivan began. I could never understand how one can love one’s neighbors. It’s just one’s neighbors, to my mind, that one can’t love, though one might love those at a distance. I once read somewhere of John the Merciful, a saint, that when a hungry, frozen beggar came to him, and asked him to warm him up, he took him into his bed, held him in his arms, and began breathing into his mouth, which was putrid and loathsome from some awful disease. I am convinced that he did that from the laceration of falsity, for the sake of the love imposed by duty, as a penance laid on him. For anyone to love a man, he must be hidden, for as soon as he shows his face, love is gone.

Father Zosima has talked of that more than once, observed Alyosha; he, too, said that the face of a man often hinders many people not practised in love, from loving him. But yet there’s a great deal of love in mankind, and almost Christ-like love. I know that myself, Ivan.

"Well, I know nothing of it so far, and can’t understand it, and the innumerable mass of mankind are with me there. The question is, whether that’s due to men’s bad qualities or whether it’s inherent in their nature. To my thinking, Christ-like love for men is a miracle impossible on earth. He was God. But we are not gods. Suppose I, for instance, suffer intensely. Another can never know how much I suffer, because he is another and not I. And what’s more, a man is rarely ready to admit another’s suffering (as though it were a distinction). Why won’t he admit it, do you think? Because I smell unpleasant, because I have a stupid face, because I once trod on his foot. Besides there is suffering and suffering; degrading, humiliating suffering such as humbles me—hunger, for instance—my benefactor will perhaps allow me; but when you come to higher suffering—for an idea, for instance—he will very rarely admit that, perhaps because my face strikes him not at all as what he fancies a man should have who suffers for an idea. And so he deprives me instantly of his favor, and not at all from badness of heart. Beggars, especially genteel beggars, ought never to show themselves, but to ask for charity through the newspapers. One can love one’s neighbors in the abstract, or even at a distance, but at close quarters it’s almost impossible. If it were as on the stage, in the ballet, where if beggars come in, they wear silken rags and tattered lace and beg for alms dancing gracefully, then one might like looking at them. But even then we would not love them. But enough of that. I simply wanted to show you my point of view. I meant to speak of the suffering of mankind generally, but we had better confine ourselves to the sufferings of the children. That reduces the scope of my argument to a tenth of what it would be. Still we’d better keep to the children, though it does weaken my case. But, in the first place, children can be loved even at close quarters, even when they are dirty, even when they are ugly (I fancy, though, children never are ugly). The second reason why I won’t speak of grown-up people is that, besides being disgusting and unworthy of love, they have retribution—they’ve eaten the apple and know good and evil, and they have become ‘like God.’ They go on eating it still. But the children haven’t eaten anything, and are so far innocent. Are you fond of children, Alyosha? I know you are, and you will understand why I prefer to speak of them. If they, too, suffer horribly on earth, they must suffer for their fathers, they must be punished for their fathers, who have eaten the apple; but that reasoning is of the other world and is incomprehensible for the heart of man here on earth. The innocent must not suffer for another’s sins, and especially such innocents! You may be surprised at me, Alyosha, but I am awfully fond of children, too. And observe, cruel people, the violent, the rapacious, the Karamazovs are sometimes very fond of children. Children while they are quite little—up to seven, for instance—are so remote from grown-up people; they are different creatures, as it were, of a different species. I knew a criminal in prison who had, in the course of his career as a burglar, murdered whole families, including several children. But when he was in prison, he had a strange affection for them. He spent all his time at his window, watching the children playing in the prison yard. He trained one little boy