Kindle Notes & Highlights
This explanation, now known as the Greater-Good (G-G) Theodicy,2 is the working model most Christians use to answer questions about evil and suffering. Formally, it states that God allows only the evil from which He can bring about a greater good or prevent a worse evil.
The second difficulty with this position is that it is meaningless. It is impossible to know whether such a claim is true or not because it deals with a hypothetical.
A hypothetical is impossible to prove,
Remember, I am not suggesting good never comes from evil; I am saying that this response is unsustainable as explaining God’s moral justification for the evil. Please
A. God is all-good; He would destroy all evil B. God is all-powerful; He could destroy all evil C. Evil exists Therefore, God does not exist.
It is falsely assumed that he never will.
Millard Erickson
The problem of evil, of course, is a major and, indeed, perhaps the largest, problem for any theism.”31
the problem of evil, as discussed by contemporary scholars, is both tacitly and explicitly bound up in the renewed discussion of the nature of God as Trinity.
Presently, issues such as the impassibility of God, the eternality of God, the omniscience of God, and the omnipotence of God are often being reviewed in light of the problem of evil.
The law of non-contradiction does not stand above or apart from God, but rather issues from the essence of God.
Leibniz teaches “(i)t would in fact be logically impossible to have a world without evil: Anything created by God would have to be less than God just by virtue of being dependent on him, and this means immediately that it must be less than perfect, and this means immediately the presence of various sorts of imperfections.
evil as a necessary part of God’s plan in order to perfect man, a position that raises, what I would suggest, some serious theological questions.
I suggest that many see God’s sovereignty in such a way that His will is always accomplished on this earth in all the details of life.
As I will argue in this chapter, that means when the logic is followed, God is responsible for the evil in this world. I find that conclusion unacceptable in light of the claim of the apostle John when he explains “God is light and in him is no darkness at all” (1 Jn 1:5).
evil is the consequent (not necessary consequent) of God giving man libertarian freedom.
In the end, the logic of the greater-good position makes the good necessary which in turn makes the evil necessary. If the evil is necessary to this world and it is God’s creation, this makes evil necessary to the plan and purpose of God. At this point, it is difficult if not impossible to escape the conclusion that God is not only responsible for evil, He actually planned the evil—it is His will. If God wills evil while at the same time condemning evil, God acts contrary to Himself, and at that point, all of Christianity collapses.
An extreme view of the sovereignty of God seems to necessitate that God is the origin of evil.
For example, say a person commits adultery: is it gratuitous evil or is it an evil that God in His sovereignty planned? The plan would have had to be from before creation or at the moment of creation. The end is that God planned for a person to commit adultery, the very thing that God says is sin. God becomes the author of sin.
I would argue that everything that happens on this planet has a reason and therefore is not chaotic, although not everything necessarily has a purpose.
I think it is reasonable to ask that, if good comes from evil and the good is necessary, then why stop the evil? In fact, to stop the evil would be to prevent the good.
Others argue that the good is God’s glory, as suggested by John Piper.16 However, how is this assessed? It is great to say, but it seems like words uttered without any reference to reality.
the claim the greater good is for God’s glory is a stretch at best and problematic at worst.
main point of this book, namely that gratuitous evil is real but does not count against the moral perfection of God.
God, the Person (whether God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit), might limit the expression of His essence under certain circumstances in His dealing with humanity within the space/time context.
This can be seen in the Incarnation, in which the second member of the Trinity limits the expression of His attributes (Phil 2:5–8) that He might successfully live among men.
the atheist must use the Bible to get his idea of God; likewise, it seems legitimate to use the Bible in defending God
The atheist cannot use the Bible to construct the objection and then deny the theist the same right to consult the Bible.
Creation order determines the parameters within which man exercises the legitimate use of his libertarian freedom.
In addition to the moral and physical ordering of creation, God has also limited Himself by certain covenants, which form part of the creation order.
God has worked into His creation order the principle of prayer by which God will, under certain circumstances, respond to the requests of the righteous man (Ja 5:16).
I think middle knowledge is a way to understand how God’s sovereignty and the integrity of man’s libertarian freedom work together without denying either.
God’s natural knowledge encompasses all possibilities. His middle knowledge knows all that would happen under different circumstances and his free knowledge is that He knows all things that will happen.
If this world is not the best of all possible worlds, then one of the following must be true: (1) God chose not to do His best, which seems to question His goodness; (2) God did not know which world would be best, which questions His omniscience; (3) God knew which world would be the best and wanted to actualize it, but lacked the power to do so. This, of course, would question His power.
uniqueness
I would suggest that this truth has been belittled by both Darwinian evolution and the present-day theological excesses of the doctrine of total depravity.
I believe that the power of choice given to mankind is one aspect of humanness that makes man so unique that to deny the wonder and greatness of this aspect is to denigrate God’s creation.
Creation order does not require intervention in every case, but it does make allowances for such.
The Righteous Suffer From the Brokenness of This Age
It would be difficult to argue that hundreds of deaths in a collapsed building were worth it so that stricter inspections would be imposed.
A Greater-good theology works well in a postmillennial framework.
In the end, we know that this world is the best of all possible worlds because God pronounced it “very good” (Gen 1:31).
The most the atheist can argue is that he does not like the structure of the creation order.
Second, God can providentially intervene as He did in Noah’s day or as He did at the Tower of Babel.
God intervenes in the escalation of evil sometimes.
