Philosophy of Religion • Difficult Questions • Advanced
Problem of Suffering
Primary question: If God is all-powerful and perfectly good, why does the world contain so much intense and often apparently pointless suffering?
Argument map
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Common mistakes
Don't say
Treating the free will defense alone as a complete answer to natural evil like disease and disaster.
Instead
Recognize Christian responses typically combine several distinct considerations (freedom, natural law, soul-making, eschatology) rather than a single master theodicy.
Don't say
Assuming skeptical theism means 'we can never judge anything is wrong.'
Instead
Note it is a narrow claim about our access to God's total reasons for specific events, not a denial of basic moral knowledge.
Don't say
Presenting soul-making as if it explains or justifies horrendous evils like genocide or child torture.
Instead
Acknowledge, following Marilyn McCord Adams, that horrendous evils require additional resources beyond generic soul-making, such as divine solidarity and eschatological redemption.
What would change my mind? — Christian position
A rigorous demonstration that some specific evil could not conceivably serve any greater good, freedom, or redemptive purpose accessible even to an omniscient being would seriously challenge the case, though this is difficult to establish given our epistemic limits.
What would change my mind? — Skeptical position
A compelling account showing that the scale, distribution, and apparent randomness of suffering is nonetheless statistically what an indifferent universe, rather than a providential one, would predict would strengthen the atheistic case considerably.
Why does this matter?
The problem of suffering is widely regarded as the single strongest objection to theism, and it is also a pastoral crisis, not merely an academic puzzle; how one answers it shapes whether faith survives real loss. Christian responses do not claim to remove the mystery or the pain, but they aim to show that belief in a good, powerful God remains rationally defensible even amid horror, while insisting that the deepest Christian response to suffering is not an argument at all but the person of a God who entered into suffering himself.
For further study
Primary and secondary sources on both sides of this question. Reading the strongest opposing case is part of the work, not a concession.
Evil and the God of Love — John Hick
The classic statement of the Irenaean soul-making theodicy.
Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God — Marilyn McCord Adams
The most serious philosophical engagement with the worst cases of suffering.
The Nature of Necessity, ch. 9 — Alvin Plantinga
Formal presentation of the free will defense against the logical problem of evil.
Providence and the Problem of Evil — Richard Swinburne
A cumulative theodicy emphasizing natural law and significant freedom.
Wandering in Darkness — Eleonore Stump
A narrative approach to suffering through close readings of biblical figures like Job.
The Crucified God — Jürgen Moltmann
Grounds hope for sufferers in God's own suffering in Christ.