If God is good, then he would intervene to stop gratuitous suffering (after all, we would).
God does not act to stop gratuitous suffering.
Therefore, God is not good (or does not exist).
Hence, the problem of evil. It should be understood that the real sting of the problem, in my estimation, is in the matter of the origin of evil and the analogy to human decisions when faced with evil.
How did evil come into existence if God created the world perfect in its original design? Assuming there can be no evil in God, then evil has no meaningful source. On the origin question we face two issues: one is a matter of definition and the other a matter of causation.
The first issue to consider is the definition of evil. As Augustine noted, God is the creator of all things--that is, things that have "being" or "substance." But evil is not a "thing in itself." It does not possess substance as good possesses substance. Evil cannot stand on its own, so to speak. For example, a flower is good, and it is good in itself. What we might term a "bad" flower is one that has lost its original glory or design somehow, perhaps a diseased flower. Thus Augustine's definition of evil is a "privation of the good." Just as cold is a privation, or loss, of heat, so evil is a loss of original goodness, purpose and proper relatedness to other goods. This must be understood on a grand scale. Imagine for a moment a symphony with its numerous parts played together in harmonious intricacy. Are there any bad notes in a symphony? Of course not, but there may be a player who decides he does not like the conductor's notes and will not bother about them. He decides to remove his notes from the whole sound, or worse still, decides to add his own blaring contribution at whatever juncture he feels is most artful. He in fact will destroy the whole symphony. He will break harmony. The total glory of the symphony has been diminished because he used his goodness in a manner for which it was not designed.
Another way of looking at evil is a misuse of the good. Evil comes into existence in our lives when we choose to elevate our derived goodness to the position of an original good. When we therefore act on the assumption that we can independently determine the use of our goodness, we become evil. This is why so many Christian writers have spoken of evil as a "parasite" or a "corruption of the good," etc. There can be no pure evil. Even Lucifer was originally good and chose to use the goodness God established in Him to assert his own glory rather than that of His creator.
Christians will occasionally speak of evil as the "opposite of good," or as "necessary to know the good." The idea is something like Hegel's thesis, antithesis, synthesis model. Without good there would be no evil and without evil there would be no good. These are pantheistic notions and not Christian ones. Adam and Eve knew that their experience in the garden before the fall was good. They may not have named the experience "good," in the way we now understand a contrast between good and evil, but that does not mean their experience was any less good ontologically. They were experiencing good before the fall. As such, evil is not an equal opposite counterpart to good. If evil and good are simply equal opposites, then a serious logical problem emerges. If there is not something higher up and further back than what we call evil and good; if in fact they alone exist as merely contrasting forces, or equal powers, then why call one good and the other evil? Why not just refer to them as opposing powers rather than protagonist and antagonist? There can be no value judgment claiming that one set of behaviors or inclinations is evil and another set is good when there is nothing outside of the two forces to determine which is good and which is evil. Lewis makes this very point in Mere Christianity. If there are only two equal powers behind everything in the universe, and they both believe they are good, then something must arbitrate between them to determine which of the two powers conforms to the moral ideal, etc.
Now when speaking about redemption and the good of redemption, it does appear to be the case that such a good is dependent for its existence on the nature of evil. Without human sinfulness, God's great glory in redemption could not be displayed. Thus the argument is that good in this case is dependent on evil for its existence. Christians will sometimes speak of the "best of all possible worlds" argument, in which the world is fallen, evil, but God uses this evil to bring about a greater good. It is important to note, however, that Christians do not argue that good and evil have no relationship; we argue that they do not posses an interdependent eternal relationship, and thus evil is not "original." Certainly God's active work of redemption is related to the problem of human sin, and, in theory, if there had been no human sin, the act of redemption would be an unknown good. But then there is no infinite regress here: redemption is dependent on sin, but sin is dependent on God's originally established goodness. God's original good design stands as a singularity at the beginning. Sin takes from this good and corrupts it.
On the matter of causation, perhaps Aristotle would be of some help. Aristotle noted that not all causes are equal. He denotes four different kinds of causation, but two in particular are of interest--material causes and efficient causes. If it is true that God created the world from Himself, then surely it can be no other than good, since He is good. But what if God could create other efficient causal agents--that is, other beings that can cause things, at least within the limitations of their capacity for efficient causation? Then God could set a creation into motion that was indeed complex, involving his primary causation, but then admitting the possibility of a billion subsequent causal contributions.
Such is the case with the origin of evil. God provides the material cause of all things, including free will. God is the cause of the causes of evil. One could say that Boeing is the material cause of the 9/11 tragedy, but of course no one is going to blame Boeing for that event. The reason is that the efficient cause is the blameworthy cause, because in an efficient cause there is an active will interacting with both subjects and objects and influencing them causally.
Of course this does not quite get us out of the difficulty here. The difference between God and my Boeing illustration is that God knew perfectly what would happen when he created beings with wills. He knew they would misuse them, bringing ruin upon themselves, and yet he chose to go through with it.
This raises the final and perhaps most disturbing aspect of this problem. God knew that people would misuse the gift of freedom, damning themselves to an eternity in Hell. And he has been active in history to stop evil at certain points. Thus one must conclude that evil is "in" God's design. Perhaps we can logically say that God is not the causal agent, but He certainly could have scrapped the idea at the beginning. This forms the core of one objection to this answer to the issue of evil--namely, that God should not have created at all.
The argument is something like this: A good God, with perfect prescience to all human choices, would not proceed with a creation that would involve the damnation of the majority of beings he created. Non-existence is better than existence with the probability of damnation.
Surely you can see the logical fallacy of such an emotionally appealing argument. To make such an argument one must compare two realities: non-existence and existence as we now know it. But of course, "non-existence" is not something with which anything can be compared. One can never have the experience of non-existence and then claim that it is better than existence. Not only that, but non-existence is by definition the absence of any experiences for any being other than God. But surely it is meaningless to compare such a state to our present state and suggest that the former would be "better" for us.
The world certainly could have been made differently than it is. God could have made beings without free will, without the capacity of rebelling against The Good. But then doing so would, presumably, be to make a world that is less than perfect.
Very well then, free will, evil and the goodness of God are not incompatible realities.
Plantinga's Defense:
The philosopher Alvin Plantinga developed a powerful argument that many philosophers have referred to simply as "Plantinga's successful free will defense."
Here are the basic points:
1. Adam and Eve were given true "creaturely freedom," meaning they really could have done right by God or could have rebelled against God. We know how that turned out, but it was at least possible for them to live sinless lives.
2. God knew that Adam and Even would sin. In fact, He knew that in "all possible worlds" they would misuse the true creaturely freedom He gifted to them.
3. This means that some worlds are impossible for God to "actualize." In the same vein, God cannot create a world in which He is not creator. He can't make square circles or free creatures that are not free. He can't do the rationally absurd, because He is the source of rationality Himself.
4. God cannot actualize a world of free creatures never misusing freedom without their help, so to speak. But God knows this help is not going to be forthcoming, and so His choices are reduced to two: don't create or create under these conditions. We have already logically eliminated the first option, so the second option is the only one left.
Now Plantinga's argument raises another disturbing question: If God can make beings that are free and never misuse their freedom in heaven, why could he not have done this initially? In heaven, we will surely be free creatures, and yet we will also never sin. If this is possible ultimately, why not originally?
One answer comes from Augustine's views on creation. He believed that creation was seeded with potentiality. In other words, it was good but not perfect, in the sense that its whole potential was not yet in full bloom. It was something like a perfectly planted garden that required creative tending to unlock its full synergy and beauty. Thus human beings had some options available to them. They could trust God and cooperate with Him in cultivating creation to actualize its potential, including their own potential. Or they could resist God and "deprive" creation of its optimal glory. They could so practice good that it would become impossible to do evil, as is surely the experience of the unfallen angels. Unfallen angels have become impervious to the "external" allure of sin.
But the other option for Adam and Eve is that they could fail to practice good, strive against design and potential, and even therefore corrupt the use of God's good creation. In short, Augustine uses two Latin phrases that capture his teaching on this point well. If Adam and Eve had not fallen, and had they cooperated with God in actualizing creation's potentiality, then non passe pecarre et mori would be the case. In other words, it would be impossible to sin and die, because, like the unfallen angels, they would have become so practiced in the good that they would be impervious to the allure of evil. But because they fell, it is now non passe non pecarre et mori (it is impossible not to sin and die).
All of this leads to the conditions now necessary to bring us to the point that we are free and yet choose only the good. True freedom is the freedom to choose the good at every moment. We will do this in heaven, but how? Surely this is only possible through the glories and mysteries associated with the Redemption. Christ is our source of new humanity, which enables us to desire and then choose the good. As such, it is only through the redemption that we can be brought to the condition required to choose good alone for all eternity. And God willed that His creation would demonstrate his glory in redemption.
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