The Strengths of Two Solutions to the Problem of Suffering

‘Examine and show the strengths of two solutions to the problem of suffering’

Evil and suffering can be seen throughout the world, sometimes in the form of natural evil such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions which often kill large numbers of people however are totally out of human control. However some evil is in the form of human evil. This is suffering brought upon us by other humans. For example, the recent massacre of 20 children and 8 adults at a school in Connecticut at the hands of Adam Lanza. The evil visible in the world poses a major issue for religious followers, especially those who believe in the God of Classical Theism. The God of Classical Theism is described by His followers as omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient however in the light of evil how can this be? If God is omnibenevolent then he must want to remove evil from the world, if he is omnipotent he should be able to remove evil if he so wishes and if he is omniscient then he should have foreseen evil from the very beginning and created the world and the beings on it differently. Because of this many, such as Hume, have conclude that God must not exist or at least the God of Classical Theism for given that evil exists God must either be impotent or malicious. Others, for example Thomas Aquinas, believe the existence of evil does not necessarily negate God’s existence. Evil may be part of His greater plan that we as mere human’s beings cannot see nor comprehend. For this reason many religious thinkers have devised theodicies in order to defend God’s existence as well as his benevolent, omnipotent nature in the face of evil.

After is conversion and baptism in 387 at the age of 33, he went on to become, arguably, one of the greatest Christian thinkers of all time. His theodicy (the Augustinian Theodicy) his heavily founded upon the Bibles especially passages found in Genesis on the Creation and the Fall. It rests heavily upon two assumptions: evil did not come from or was not created by God as he is perfect; the origin of evil being something or someone other than God, He is justified in allowing it to stay. Augustine’s argued that God is perfect and defectless therefore he made a world that reflected his perfection. Genesis 1:31 says ‘God saw what he had made, and it was good’, Augustine believed this strongly and this believed that the world God had created along with the people on it were, because they were created in God’s imagine, were also perfect and faultless. Augustine defined evil as a ‘privatio boni’, in English a lack of goodness. He did not believe evil to be a thing or a substance that exists rather an absence of good, a deprivation of perfection therefore it makes no sense to blame God for the existence of evil as why would he create a deprivation? God did however create angels and humans, both with free will. This is where evil