Ehrman’s Problem 12: Our Answer too “Finely Reasoned”

Next we come to one of the weirdest aspects of Ehrman’s problem project.

Ehrman grouses (121-122):

I don’t know if you’ve read any of the writings of the modern theodicists, but they are something to behold: precise, philosophically nuanced, deeply thought out, filled with esoteric terminology and finely reasoned explanations for why suffering does not preclude the existence of a divine being of power and love. Frankly, most of these writings are not just obtuse, they are disconnected from real life, life as lived in the trenches—the trenches of the First World War, for example, or the concentration camps of the Second World War, or the killing fields of Cambodia.

Ehrman calls these attempts “morally repugnant” because suffering “should not lead merely to an intellectual explanation. It should also lead to a personal response.” He says there’s “something wrong with wrestling with problems of suffering as a purely intellectual exercise” (122).

But let’s be clear. When skeptics use the logical problem of evil, they are trying to show that there is actually a logical contradiction internal to the Christian’s belief about God. Namely, the skeptic is arguing that the Christian’s conception of God’s goodness and God’s omnipotence contradicts at least some of the evil that we find in the world. If indeed the skeptic were to succeed at this endeavor, then he would be able to show that the Christian’s conception of God is logically impossible.

This boils down to a syllogism:

If God is all good, He would desire to prevent evil
If God is all powerful, He would be able to prevent evil
But evil exists so God is either not all good or not all powerful or doesn’t exist.

Notice that this isn’t an emotional argument, and I suspect that you, dear reader, shed no tears while reading it. It is a logical argument. To answer a syllogism, you need “finely reasoned explanations.” If the syllogism is shown to be false—and it has indeed been shown to be false by Alvin Plantinga and others¹ —then the logical problem of evil fails. The careful reader will notice that Ehrman never at any place in his book says that the arguments against the logical problem of evil don’t succeed.

But perhaps Ehrman realizes that the logical problem of evil is just bantha poodoo. If so, there is another attack skeptics use. John Feinberg explains:

In spite of the success of Plantinga’s free will defense, atheists aren’t yet ready to give up the fight. Rather, they have launched the attack from another direction. They have argued that even if it is possible for theists to tell a logically consistent story about God and evil, evil in our world still offers strong evidence against the probability that there is a God. This is the evidential problem of evil.²

But even if Ehrman were to only be appealing to the evidential problem of evil, that changes nothing. Logic is still required, right? We still need “precise, philosophically nuanced, deeply thought out” explanations? Don’t we? Would Ehrman be happier if our answers were imprecise and poorly conceived?

Hardly.

But what’s a skeptic to do when the logic isn’t on his side?

Well, apparently Ehrman has nothing left but to whine that logical solutions to the problems of evil just seem too… well… logical. In fact, Ehrman actually goes on to write, “I can even sympathize with theologians like Terrence Tilley, who argues that a believer’s response to theodicy should be to renounce it as an intellectual project” (122).

Say, what? “Renounce it as an intellectual project”?! Now, of course, Ehrman doesn’t leave it there but writes that it shouldn’t just be an “intellectual explanation” but “should also lead to a personal response.”

I have four things to say about this. First, I can’t remember another time in my 40 years of studying apologetics that I have ever heard a skeptic complain that Christians act too logically. Don’t you think that’s odd?

Second, what kind of a “personal response,” exactly, is Ehrman looking for? After all, in response to suffering Christians developed the modern hospital,³ founded the Red Cross, and throughout the world are at the forefront of trying to alleviate suffering (consider how many orphanages, homeless shelters, and rescue missions in the US weren’t founded by Christians?). Ehrman never really says what kind of emotional response he’s looking for. Would tear stained pages help? Sure the responses sometimes seem cerebral but the problem of evil is deployed as a logical weapon and so we should expect logical answers to disarm it.

Third, Ehrman writes, “At the same time, while the so-called free will defense can sometimes come across as a sterile philosophical defense, it can also be a powerfully practical one. Human beings hurt, oppress, torment, torture, violate, rape, dismember and murder others” (122). Well, duh! Humans do Auschwitz and humans will be held responsible for their torments at the Judgment! Does my writing this sound like just a purely intellectual response? Would more exclamation marks help Ehrman feel the depth of my sincerity?

Fourth, every genocide researcher and victim that I have ever read (and I’ve read a lot) has concluded that genocide is precisely what ordinary humans do.⁴ And when people really understand how easily humans’ rape and torture each other to death they will stop asking why God allows evil and start asking why God allows humans.

The bottom line is that the free will defense dissolves the logical problem of evil and explains, not all, but much of the horrors of human existence. Unless Ehrman would prefer that we were all marionettes, then it was a “greater good” for God to give us free will, and so allow all kinds of hideous horrors, than for Him to make us Stepford stooges and remove the possibility of all evil (should I have written that more emotionally?).

Ehrman’s next chapter is entitled “The Mystery of the Greater Good: Redemptive Suffering,” and we will examine that shortly.

1. For example see Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974) [↩]
2. John S. Feinberg, The Many Faces of Evil: Theological Systems and the Problem of Evil (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004), 24. [↩]
3. Andrew Crislip wrote that the hospital with its “dedication to free, professional, impatient medical care; and an insistence on the dignity of and compassionate care for the sick had its origins in fourth-century monasticism.” Andrew T. Crislip, From Monastery to Hospital : Christian Monasticism & the Transformation of Health Care in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). x. [↩]
4. For more on the sinfulness of ordinary humans see my article in the resources section on human evil [↩]