Abstract
In this paper, Robert Audi’s thoughts on the ineffaceable problem of evil are critically discussed. Audi develops his thought on God and evil within a broader framework that seeks to defend the possibility of rational religious commitment. He proposes a theocentric solution to the problem, which is focused on the divine experience with creation and which asks for the conditions a world has to fulfill in order to be good enough for being created by an omnicompetent God. Following this line of thought, the problem of evil can be solved if the enormous value of divine experience made in the world and with all creatures that live on earth is included in the overall comparison of good and evil. The paper provides a detailed reconstruction of Audi’s argumentation and locates it within its broader philosophical contexts. Furthermore, it considers three difficulties Audi’s theocentric solution has to resolve: Firstly, a theocentric theodicy cannot fully explain the existence of natural evil, especially horrendous natural evil. Secondly, such a position seemingly has to accept fairly burdensome metaphysical assumptions regarding the character of divine experience. Finally, an alternative theocentric conception that allows for divine regret seems to be in line with Audi’s philosophy of religion and might eventually be more responsive to human experience with great moral evil.
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- 1.
See, e.g., Audi (2011, 67f.): “Roughly, to say that a faith is rational is to say that, at the time in question (normally the time of the attribution), there are grounds available such that someone holding the tenets of the faith on those grounds would hold them rationally […]. There are, however, different ways to hold the tenets of a religious faith. If a kind of ardent hope that the tenets are true is minimally sufficient for holding (being ‘of’) a faith, then holding a faith can surely be shown to be rational, provided the creedal content is not, say, readily seen to be inconsistent or clearly false. For […] rationality of hopes is achievable with considerably less in the way of grounding than is needed for beliefs with the same content, and it can be rational to hope even for something one has no evidence will occur and at least some good reason to think will not occur.”
- 2.
Consider the contributions of Ford and Hare/Madden to Peterson (1992), who explore the possibilities of process theology to circumvent the problem of evil.
- 3.
See also Audi (2011, 212), where he explicitly mentions the importance of his axiological assumptions for understanding his conception of evil.
- 4.
Peter van Inwagen frames a somehow similar distinction by separating the “global” from the “local” problem of evil. See van Inwagen (2006, lectures 4–6).
- 5.
Originally put forward by Rowe: “In some distant forest lightning strikes a dead tree, resulting in a forest fire. In the fire a fawn is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering” (Rowe 1979, 337).
- 6.
Otherwise it would be incomprehensible why believers devout such a fair amount of time and effort to prayers.
- 7.
In fact, it would be a solution to the problem of evil if the suffering of innocent beings was rewarded in the hereafter. Then one could even argue that young children who died would be especially benefitted since they were spared a lifetime of having to prove themselves and were rewarded for the pain they suffered without having to answer for their sins on Judgment Day.
- 8.
For a definition of horrendous evil see McCord Adams (1999, 26–29).
- 9.
Even if horrendous evil was needed for some reason, without natural horrendous evil there would still be horrendous moral evil, which, under the free will hypothesis, only humans are responsible for.
- 10.
The theistic scriptures occasionally try to describe the differentness of divine temporal perception. See, e.g., Ps. 90:4: “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.”
- 11.
Pope Francis, Yad Vashem, 26 May 2014: https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2014/may/documents/papa-francesco_20140526_terra-santa-memoriale-yad-vashem.html, accessed 1 October 2016.
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Kontny, Y.M., Müller-Salo, J. (2018). Critical Remarks on a Theocentric Solution to the Problem of Evil. In: Müller-Salo, J. (eds) Robert Audi: Critical Engagements. Münster Lectures in Philosophy, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00482-8_4
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