There is clearly more than one problem of evil. One is medical and faced by physicians daily: ‘Why is so and so displaying the distressing symptoms that s/he currently manifests?’. Then there is a problem of evil expressed in questions like ‘What can we do to reduce the incidence of certain kinds of suffering?’. Again, there a problem of evil of the kind presented in the book of Job. Here we find Job, who is ‘blameless and upright’, but also afflicted by woes which lead him to ask why God is allowing him to suffer. The question at stake is ‘Why is God dealing with Job as he does?’. And, finally, there is the so-called ‘philosophical’ problem of evil, which current analytical philosophers take to come in two forms. The first is the ‘logical’ problem: ‘Is it not contradictory to assert both that God exists and that evil exists?’. The second is the ‘evidentialist’ problem: ‘Does not evil in its various forms count as evidence against God's existence?’. The first problem here was famously raised by J.L. Mackie in ‘Evil and Omnipotence’ (Mind, 1955). The second was developed by William Rowe in ‘The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism’ (American Philosophical Quarterly, 1979).
In their Introduction to the present volume (henceforth CCPE), the editors assert that their book ‘focuses on the problem of evil for theism’. They then add that ‘the problem of evil has two major theoretical versions: the logical problem and the evidential problem’ (p. 3). Yet not all the essays in CCPE focus on logical and evidential versions of the problem of evil as the editors seem to understand them in their Introduction. This is especially the case when it comes to Part II of the book, titled ‘Interdisciplinary Issues’, in which we find five chapters.
The first of these, by Michael Southgate, favours the notion of a ‘new creation’ (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:17), while developing the idea that God has a good purpose in making the world to be as it is now. Southgate concludes that Christian theology needs to part company with explanations of suffering referring to ‘a fall event’, and that attention should be payed to the ‘eschatological redemption of creatures and on God's compassionate relating to them in their suffering’ (p. 163). Southgate's chapter is followed by a survey by Margo Kitts of Near Eastern perspectives on evil and terror, and an account by Lenn Goodman of some ways in which Judaism has given rise to thoughts about God and evil. Then we have essays by Paul Fiddes, Timothy Winter, and Michael Ruse. Fiddes defends a notion of God's action of atonement through Christ as dealing with evil, considered as ‘fallenness’ in all creatures. Fiddes supports what he calls a ‘practical theodicy’, which highlights the idea that ‘God suffers in God's own self’ (p. 218). In ‘Islam and the Problem of Evil’, Winter, with great clarity, explains how the Quran and later Islamic literature deal with physical suffering and injustice. And, finally, we find Michael Ruse offering an essay which those familiar with his many writings will recognize as ‘vintage Ruse’. In crystal clear prose, Ruse distinguishes between different senses of ‘naturalism’ (pp. 249–251). Then he roundly rejects Christianity as an impossible amalgam of Hebrew and Greek thinking (p. 251) while going on to assert that he does not even ‘want to be argued out of’ the atheism that he embraces in the light of certain evils (pp. 251-252). The rest of Ruse's chapter is devoted to the claim that Darwinian evolutionary theory provides a true version of naturalism that should lead us to think that the God of Christianity, should he exist, is something of a moral monster. Among other things, Ruse claims that ‘Darwinian evolution totally undermines the Augustinian line on original sin’ (p. 262), though he speaks favourably in defence of us having genuine freedom of choice, and he suggests that worries about religious beliefs might often be more theological and philosophical than scientific.
With all of that said, however, CCPE contains much concerning the logical and evidential arguments mentioned by the editors. For the chapters in Part I, unlike much that we find in Part II, are all resolutely philosophical and, for the most part, written by self- identifying analytical philosophers. Yet they vary significantly in their conclusions.
Hence, for example, in ‘Logical Arguments from Evil and Free-Will Defences’, Graham Oppy skillfully counters a current consensus among Christian analytic philosophers, according to which logically conclusive arguments for the non-existence of God are dead in the water because of what Alvin Plantinga says in God, Freedom, and Evil (1975) and other works. According to Oppy, that consensus can be successfully challenged. Again, in ‘God, Evil, and the Nature of Light’, Paul Draper lucidly explains why we might think that ‘source physicalism’ (the view that ‘the physical world existed before the mental world and caused the mental world to come into existence’ [p. 68]) is much more probable than Theism’ (p. 84). And, in ‘Evil, Hiddenness, and Atheism’, J.L. Schellenberg maintains that what he refers to as the ‘hiddenness argument’ (roughly, the claim that, if God exists, there would not be well meaning and thoughtful people who do not believe in God) is evidence against God's existence. Schellenberg insists that the hiddenness argument can be distinguished from arguments based on evil. But he thinks that it might be linked with them to strengthen the case for atheism. On the other hand, though, in ‘Skeptical Theism’, we find Timothy Perrine and Stephen J. Wykstra defending the skeptical theistic approach to evil (roughly, that we are not in a position to declare for atheism since we lack a God's eye view of God and his reasons). We also find Charles Taliaferro (‘Beauty and the Problem of Evil’) waxing eloquently about the beauty of God. And, in ‘Evil and the Meaning of Life’, there is John Cottingham, sensitively and with much literary allusion, suggesting how ‘redemptive meaning’ can be found in spite of suffering.
It should be clear from the above that both Parts of CCPE contain chapters whose authors are at odds with each other in various ways. Is that a reason for complaining about CCPE as a whole? Maybe not. One can see why the editors of the volume provide readers with authors who have different voices. But then one might wonder why they bother to do so in a volume called a Companion. Any Reader on the problem of evil can be looked to for samples of divergent views on God and evil so that those who use it can get a sense of what all sorts of people have said. But to call something a Companion suggests that it comes with some kind of didactic authority, which I do not think that CCPE does. It contains many fine essays, all of which could have been delivered as papers at a single academic conference on God and Evil. But, without wishing to denigrate its scholarly quality, that seems to be all that it does.
Still, the volume contains interesting essays. At any rate, all of them interested me. Potential readers of CCPE should, however, note that not all of its contributors seem to be aiming at the same audience. Some of them (Cottingham, Taliaferro, Southgate, Fiddes, and Ruse) write in a way that undergraduate and graduate students of theology should readily be able to follow. But some of them (Oppy, Draper, Perrine and Wykstra, and Schellenberg) write in a way that seems only to target fairly advanced students of recent analytical philosophy of religion. And some of CCPE's chapters will be largely of interest only to historians of ideas (Kitts, Goodman, and Winter).
In conclusion, I should note that possible or actual readers of CCPE should also be aware of what I take to be a glaring omission in it. For how are we to construe ‘God is good’? A number of contributors to CCPE take it for granted that ‘God is good’ has to mean that God is good by ethical standards according to which people should be evaluated. On this assumption, God's goodness is moral goodness. But should we think about God and evil as if that were so?
Many theologians have not. That God is good by human standards of goodness is not a biblical view. Compare, for example, what we find St. Paul writing in Romans 9. Again, consider all that St. Thomas Aquinas has to say when he speaks about God and evil. Aquinas wrote a number of commentaries on biblical texts, and was ever anxious to interpret them in what he called a ‘literal sense’. But it never seems to occur to him that God is a morally good agent, someone who knows what his moral obligations are, or how he should strive to display his possession of what Aristotle had in mind when he wrote about human virtue. Aquinas certainly insists that God is good (cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, 6). But, and even though he is clear that God made us in his image and likeness, he does not think of God as possessing human virtues, or as abiding by duties or obligations that people have. So, he does not engage in presenting or criticising theodicies (attempts to justify God on moral grounds) which assume at the outset that, if God exists, then God is well behaved, that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting suffering and sin. Yet this non-theodicist approach of Aquinas (surely one of the most distinguished of Christian theologians writing about God and evil), receives zero attention in CCPE. In his informative chapter titled ‘Anti-Theodicy’, N.N. Trakakis alludes to it (p. 129), but does not develop his reference. And Aquinas's name appears only three times in the book (once in a footnote to Trakakis's chapter, and twice in the body of Ruse's text).
All of this suggests to me that a significant approach to God and evil is unfortunately just ignored in CCPE. In this volume we find a number of comparisons made between God and good human parents. Yet why should one presume that a proper approach to God and evil ought to proceed on the supposition that God is a member of a moral community, as you and I are? As far as I can see, that question is never directly addressed by any author in CCPE.
