David O’Connor, God, Evil, and Design (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), viii + 226 Pps., $24.95; Bruce Langtry, God, the Best, and Evil (Oxford: Oxford University, 2008), ix + 237 Pps., $70.00; Paul W. Kahn, Out of Eden: Adam and Eve and the Problem of Evil (Princeton: Princeton University, 2007), vii + 232 Pps., $30.95.
The problem of evil within the world has been a vexing topic for theism in general and Christianity in particular for virtual millennia. How can one reconcile the loving God of Judeo-Christian theology with the reality of the pervasive evil within the natural and moral world? These questions arise for many people, not just religious believers, and are examined in the three titles currently under review. Each of the following titles seek to address this issue, in their own distinct manners, and what follows will be a concise review of the positions they take.
David O’Connor is Professor of Philosophy at Seton Hall University. O’Connor starts out his exploration with no pre-disposition to theism, atheism, or agnosticism; instead, God, Evil, and Design explores these questions in order to see where an impartial investigation leads. To achieve impartiality, the reader is invited to simulate ignorance insofar as possible. O’Connor addresses two main questions within his text: first, does the idea of a perfect creator align with the vast amount of pointless suffering and death in the world; and secondly, in review of this data, does the world nevertheless testify to a divine source? The entirety of this book can be seen as an elongated explication of these two questions. O’Connor lays the groundwork for the title in chapter two by giving concrete definition to the various terms that he will employ in his analysis. In chapter three, he begins his exploration of the logic of God and evil, his first main question, inquiring whether the existence of God is impossible in view of the presence of evil; he contends that it is not, and that arguments to that effect are errant. He argues in chapter four that the free-will defense is successful in defending the possible co-existence of God and evil. Chapter five of O’Connor’s text transitions to the second question concerning the possible relation of design to the presence of evil. He considers three rival explanations of natural order and of the initial conditions of the Big Bang herein (i.e. that the universe derives by chance, that the universe is one of many, and that the universe exists by divine design), but opts for a fourth hypothesis, one that is essentially agnostic in positing our explanations beyond the laws of physics are futile (88); chapter six continues this discussion. Chapter seven explores whether the existence of God in view of evil is improbable, and concedes that philosophers who argue this point have formidable positions. The remaining four chapters examine the defenses against Rowe’s and Draper’s arguments regarding the existence of God and evil.
Bruce Langtry teaches at University of Melbourne. In God, the Best, and Evil, Langtry has three main aims: 1) exploring some implications of divine omnipotence, omniscience, and perfect goodness for God’s providence; 2) assessing the strength of objections to existence of God, based upon the apparent fact that God could have created a better world than this one; and 3) to assess the strengths of the objection to the existence of God based upon the problem of evil. In view of the later two aims, Langtry does not assume that God exists. Chapter one outlines the entirety of the project, whereas chapter two investigates whether any possible world has infinite value. Langtry considers, in chapter three, the proposition that there are hierarchies of worlds such that for every member of it which God could create there is a better one which God can create; Langtry asserts that we cannot whether this proposition is correct. The fourth chapter contends that God creates the best world possible if God creates a world at all. Langtry addresses the strength of objections to existence of God based upon the notion that God could have created a better world than this one in chapter five, whereas chapters six through eight address the strengths of the objection to the existence of God based upon the problem of evil. More pointedly, chapter six discusses the ‘logical’ arguments from evil against the existence of God, and chapter seven offers theodicies for two general truths about evil: 1) that humans undergo much suffering, and 2) that there is a preponderance of wrong moral choosing within humanity. Chapter eight concludes the text by noting that recent non-logical (evidential) arguments from evil against the existence of God are unsuccessful.
Paul W. Kahn is Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and the Humanities at Yale Law School and Director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr., Center for Human Rights at Yale University. In Out of Eden, he offers a philosophical – and quasi biblical – meditation on the problem of evil. He uses the Genesis story of the Fall as the starting point for the articulation of the human condition. He contends that evil is what makes humans human. Additionally, evil is not something that comes to us from the outside, but is something that is present in the core of our being (9). He avers, moreover, that ‘evil’ arises out of the way free subjects respond to the awareness of their own deaths. Thus, evil is not a sin, as per se, but a response to the condition of sin in which humanity finds itself (17). In chapter one, he argues that the Greeks did not have a concept of evil, but that the early Christians centralized evil as the category of human existence. In chapter two, he traces the development of the conception of evil in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The remaining four chapters assert that the religious conception of evil is critical for understanding the secular world of family, group, and polity within which we live our lives. In fact, the problem of evil begins with the flight from death, and the cotemporary products of this flight are hatred, murder, slavery, torture, and genocide. Kahn urges us to see that the opposite of evil is not ‘good’, but love instead; while evil attempts mastery over death, love transcends it.
O’Connor’s book is written as an introduction to the topic, and is therefore highly readable. Langtry’s book, however, is more philosophical in its treatment, a little more difficult to read, and thus is probably more suitable for graduate and post-graduate studies. Kahn’s book is, of the three, probably the most apologetic for traditional Christianity. All three texts conclude, in the final analysis, that the problem of evil does not provide a very strong objection to the existence of God. Viewed together, these three texts display that the current debate on this age-old issue is vibrant, and that consensus regarding the resolution of the problem of evil with the existence of God is far from being attained. May the debate continue.
Bradford McCall
Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA