Rethinking the problem of evil

It's pretty obvious that the problem of evil has occasioned more discussion, controversy and painstaking analysis than perhaps any other issue in philosophy of religion. Most people seem to agree that it is the single most formidable obstacle to the credibility of theism. How can this world, full of apparently needless suffering and monstrous evil, be the creation of a loving, all-powerful God? An enormous variety of theodicies has been developed in response, with some of the most famous being the free-will defense of Alvin Plantinga, the 'Irenean' or 'vale of soul-making' theodicy of John Hick and the 'inscrutable purposes' argument of Peter Van Inwagen and others. The work produced by these scholars is subtle and profound, but the problem itself refuses to go away. The problem of evil remains an intractable conundrum in the Western classical philosophical tradition.

But what if this tradition has obscured the resources of a very powerful response to the problem of evil which the biblical writers recognized but we have forgotten? Gregory Boyd in his book God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict, argues that the world often looks like a war zone because that's exactly what it is: the locus of a cosmic conflict between God the Creator and a host of spiritual beings who are violently opposed to His will. In contrast with the standard view of God's omnipotence as 'meticulous control' over Creation, Boyd suggests that God has created a 'semi-democratic' Universe in which not only human beings, but also a variety of nonphysical beings, have a degree of autonomy and influence which God has chosen not to override. He argues that the 'cosmic blueprint' model of God's sovereignty renders the problem of evil unsolvable, because there does not seem to be an ethically conscionable way to account for the intense suffering that pervades the human and natural worlds. The 'warfare' theodicy, however, can relieve us of the pointless search for explanations for each and every instance of evil (because in final analysis they are due to the freely-willed actions of creatures, whether human or spiritual) and can instead empower us to confront evil in the world and overcome it. Instead of being puzzled by evil, we should be struggling against it. The book is devoted to arguing the case for a pervasive 'cosmic warfare' motif in Scripture as well as the traditional worldviews of societies all around the world.

This is the most exciting, refreshing book on the problem of evil that I've read in a long time and literally sent me back to the drawing board theologically. I've always harbored the intuition that much of the evil I see in the world can only be described as demonic in some sense. People who dismiss events like the Holocaust as due to psychological or sociological factors alone I always suspect of not having fully come to terms with the reality of concrete evil. As Peter Berger argues in A Rumor of Angels, some deeds simply cry out to heaven for retribution, and we feel that only 'damnation' is a strong enough word to evaluate such a deed. Boyd helped me put this intuition on a philosophical and scriptural footing which I did not believe possible. It also helps me make sense of the idea that God is just as angry and frustrated with injustice and evil as we are, but has chosen to work through us and His creation to resolve it. A very interesting element of Boyd's warfare theodicy is his interpretation of Genesis 1. He translates the first verse not as "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" but as "When God began to create..." and sees God as moulding Creation in the aftermath of a cosmic struggle which turned the cosmos into a wasteland. The Universe was structurally flawed to begin with, which can also explain various natural evils such as the apparent cruelty and waste of the evolutionary process.

I think that this view has real potential in accounting for senseless suffering in a theistic universe. There are, however, a number of issues which I feel need to worked out (which may be dealt with in the sequel to God at War, Satan and the Problem of Evil, which I have not read yet):

1) Boyd explains the reluctance of modern people to accept the existence of spirits as due to an overriding naturalistic mindset. While this is undoubtedly true, another issue for many Westerners is that they have not seen good evidence for their existence. Boyd does cite some anthropological and missional literature which document cases of exorcisms, etc. but more work needs to be done to show that such creatures can feature in the ontology of rational persons (see as another example Philip H. Wiebe, God and other spirits).

2) Related to the first question, there is the issue of when we should attribute illness for example to 'natural causes' and when to actual demonic influence, among other questions. Boyd is aware of this difficulty and insists that exorcism is not a cure-all for all the problems we have. Some standard of discernment must be developed for dealing with concrete instances of evil and how we should respond.

3) As Boyd himself acknowledges, the question of theodicy does not go away in this view, but simply takes another form: why would God create a 'democratic' Universe in which creatures can defy his will and cause great suffering to others? Especially when these creatures have great spiritual power compared to frail, puny human beings.

There are other challenges that could be raised, but I remain convinced that this view is worthy of serious consideration by everyone who is troubled by evil and suffering in the world and wants to know how to confront it.

P.S. Be on the lookout also for a new book on the problem of evil by William Hasker which may take a similar position to Boyd, based on the title: The Triumph of God over Evil.