The logical version — Plantinga's free will defense
The classical logical problem of evil (Mackie, Hume) runs: the propositions God is omnipotent, God is wholly good, and evil exists are logically incompatible. Alvin Plantinga's free will defense (1974) is now widely conceded — even by atheist philosophers like J. L. Mackie — to have defeated the logical version. The argument: it is possible that even an omnipotent God could not create a world in which significantly free creatures always freely choose the good (because their freedom would no longer be free). It is then logically possible that God permits evil for the sake of greater goods (genuine love, genuine moral character) that require the possibility of evil. The logical problem requires strict incompatibility; the free will defense shows there is no such incompatibility. This does not yet explain particular evils; it only shows the logical objection fails. The conversation must move to the evidential version.
The evidential version — skeptical theism and soul-making
The harder version (William Rowe, Paul Draper) is evidential: even if evil is logically possible alongside God, the amount and gratuitousness of evil makes God's existence improbable. Two strong Christian responses. (1) Skeptical theism (Stephen Wykstra) argues that we are not in an epistemic position to judge whether any particular evil is gratuitous — God's reasons are typically beyond our cognitive horizon. The expectation that we should be able to see the goods that justify particular evils is itself the assumption that human reason exhausts divine reason — an assumption no theist (and no humble person) should accept. (2) Soul-making theodicy (John Hick, drawing on Irenaeus) argues that a world without significant suffering would not produce significant moral character — courage, compassion, perseverance, sacrificial love require the possibility (and frequently the actuality) of real evil. Neither response explains every evil; both argue that the existence of much evil is consistent with the existence of a good God who has reasons we cannot always see.
The pastoral and Christian-specific answer — the cross
The philosophical responses are real and worth knowing. The Christian response — the one no other religion can give — is the cross. God does not stand at a distance from human suffering and explain it. He enters it. The eternal Son becomes flesh (John 1:14), is despised and rejected, suffers betrayal, scourging, and execution, and cries out my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mark 15:34). Whatever else the cross is, it is God's refusal to be a distant explainer of human pain. The German theologian Jürgen Moltmann (a Wehrmacht prisoner of the Allies who survived a war that killed his family) wrote: the only credible theology after Auschwitz is one whose God is on the cross. The pastoral move when a friend is suffering is not the philosophical defense; it is the cross. I do not know why this is happening to you. I know that the God Christians worship has himself been broken, and that he is with you in this. May I sit with you?
Worked example
The moment
A friend whose mother just died of cancer says, if there is a God, why did he let this happen?
What you might say
"I do not have a clever answer to that, and I would not insult you with one. I know two things. First, that the God Christians worship has himself been broken — Jesus was beaten, betrayed, and killed, and he cried out to his Father from the cross. He is not a God who watches suffering from far away. Second, I am here. May I sit with you, or get you a meal this week, or just be quiet next to you?"
Why this works
The answer refuses to give a philosophical defense in the wake of grief, names the cross as God's own entry into suffering, and offers presence rather than explanation.
Watch out for
- Giving the philosophical defense to someone in raw grief. The free will defense is not a pastoral tool; it is for intellectual objections, not bedside ones.
- Treating the problem of evil as if it had a complete answer. The Christian response is not a complete explanation; it is the cross plus pastoral presence.
- Saying everything happens for a reason glibly. It is not biblical (Job is the counterexample), and it wounds people who are suffering more than it helps.