We’re using the “Handbook of Apologetics” by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli to go over the arguments for the existence of God. Today, we will be covering the above subject in relation to the existence of God. Dr. Kreeft teaches logic in two major universities, so his arguments tend to be clear, concise and very helpful.
The problem of evil may arise on three levels of consciousness.
First, there is the immediate, emotional, “gut” level. When the doctor tells you that your child is dying, you learn by experience where the problem of evil is; then evil is not a concept, like a cloud in your head, but an immediate reality, like an iron ball in your gut.
Then there is the intellectual level. This is first intuitive before it is calculative or argumentative. You seem to see, intuitively, a glaring incompatibility between evil and an all-good God. You see it, and then you work it out in an argument. This is the level on which philosophers and theologians especially work: argument. Though this is not the deepest level, it is crucial because it seems that evil disproves God; and if God is disproved, then he is unreal; and if God is gone, everything is gone.
The deepest level, however, is the level that appears in Scripture and in life: the level of actual events, of story, of drama. Evil does not just “exist,” it happens. Its solution, then, must also happen in the same world in which evil happens. It is not enough that it be true in a timeless sense; it also must be true in a timely sense.