Prolegomena to a Dissolution to the Problem of Suffering

Few criticisms of Christianity are so emotionally charged or so inexorable in their logic as the argument against the almightiness and goodness of God based on the fact of human suffering. “Either God cannot abolish evil or he will not; if he cannot, then he is not all-powerful; if he will not, then he is not all-good.” Numerous solutions to this dilemma have been offered by theologians, philosophers and poets which have pointed to the educational value of suffering, the realization of such second-order goods as compassion from the existence of first-order suffering, the promised compensations for earthly suffering in another existence, and so forth. Even the best of these solutions leave great dark areas. Suffering, in fact, is not always ennobling. Must God have created so much and such devastating first-order evils to produce compassion? Can we possibly comprehend what could count as a “compensation” for the brutal, pointless agonies to which human beings are subject? We seem constantly faced with the necessity of saying in extremis that it is, after all, “a mystery.” I happen to agree that it is a mystery, but in Christianity “mystery” means not merely a problem that we cannot see through but something that is revealed. The problem is of such importance that we simply cannot be satisfied with a few rhetorically convincing forays signed off with the reminder that God's will is inscrutable. I agree with Fr. Daniélou, “The question is fraught with anguish for too many sorrowful hearts to be lightly put off: we must get to the bottom of it.”

Anguish · Argument (complex analysis) · Christianity · Compassion · Dilemma · Epistemology · Immortality · Metaphysics · Order (exchange) · Subject (documents) · Theology · Value (mathematics) · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Theology and Philosophy of Evil

• New essays in philosophical theology

  Antony Flew•New essays in philosophical…•1955

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