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| Richard F. Speece Pastor Bob Moore Director of Music |
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PAGE 3
Page 3
Calvary Baptist
Church
Church
Bradenton, Florida
It has long been argued that those who believe in God cannot simultaneously
affirm these three propositions:
(1) that God is good,
(2) that God is all-powerful, and
(3) that evil exists.
The argument goes like this. If one acknowledges the presence of evil in this
world (suffering and hurt caused by disease, natural disasters and careless
people), then to believe that there is a good and all-powerful God is
inconsistent. The reason is because God would prevent evil from happening, if
he were good and all-powerful. Therefore, if God exists, he is either not good or
not all-powerful because it is fully evident that evil does exist.
The Bible teaches that all three propositions are true:
(1) God is good.
1 JOHN 1:5 “God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.”
(2) God is all-powerful.
GEN 18:14 “Is anything too difficult for the Lord? At that appointed time I will
return to you, at this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”
JER 32:27 “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is anything too
difficult for Me?”
MARK 10:27 “Looking at them, Jesus said, "With people it is
impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.”
(3) Evil exists.
JOB 3:20 “Why is light given to him who suffers, and life to the bitter of soul?”
JOHN 9:1-2 “And as He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And his
disciples asked Him, saying, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,
that he should be born blind?’”
LUKE 13:2-4 “And Jesus said to them, ‘Do you suppose that these
Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they
suffered this fate? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise
perish. Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in
Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in
Jerusalem?’”
Alvin Plantinga has offered a plausible answer to this age-old philosophical
argument against Christianity. It is an answer which philosophers have
generally acknowledged as showing that the three propositions can in fact be
harmonized sufficiently so that they are not necessarily exclusive. All three may
be maintained together in a coherent understanding of the world.
Plantinga’s answer is developed in this manner:
(1) God desired to love and be loved by other beings.
(2) God created human beings with this end in view, that he might love them
and they might love him.
(3) In order to make human beings capable of loving, God had to give them the
capacity to choose, since true love cannot be either automatic or coerced. It
requires the capacity to choose.
(4) Giving human beings the capacity to choose, however, entailed a risk----
that they might choose not to love but rather defy God and go their own way.
(5) By granting human beings free will he was granting them the lofty dignity of
being able to make real choices with real consequences.
If God had programmed human beings only to obey and prevented them from
rebelling, he would have negated their having truly free choice, and they could
not have loved him. (We may love our cars, but our cars don’t love us. If we
want to be loved, then we have to look to something that has the capacity to
choose to love, something cars do not have.)
If God had constantly overlooked or instantly fixed their acts of rebellion, then
there would have been no real consequences and they never would have come
to see that they needed a redeemer----Him.
(6) So God created human beings with the capacity to choose, with all the
danger and risk of rebellion free will necessarily entails, and he did so because
he deemed the cost of evil in the world to be worth the benefit of loving and
enjoying the love of these human beings.
(7) Therefore, it is not necessarily illogical to say that God is good and all-
powerful and evil does exist in the world. It is tenable to believe that God is
good and all-powerful and that evil does exist in the world.
QUESTION: Does the point that God deemed the cost of evil in the world to be
worth the benefit of loving and enjoying the love of human beings have any
parallels in our world?
Yes! For example, why do parents allow and even require their children to
undergo the pain of being inoculated for small pox? It is because the parents
have the goal of a higher benefit in mind, and the benefit overrides the cost of
the pain the child must undergo. Enduring the pain is worthwhile because the
benefit is so substantial.
affirm these three propositions:
(1) that God is good,
(2) that God is all-powerful, and
(3) that evil exists.
The argument goes like this. If one acknowledges the presence of evil in this
world (suffering and hurt caused by disease, natural disasters and careless
people), then to believe that there is a good and all-powerful God is
inconsistent. The reason is because God would prevent evil from happening, if
he were good and all-powerful. Therefore, if God exists, he is either not good or
not all-powerful because it is fully evident that evil does exist.
The Bible teaches that all three propositions are true:
(1) God is good.
1 JOHN 1:5 “God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.”
(2) God is all-powerful.
GEN 18:14 “Is anything too difficult for the Lord? At that appointed time I will
return to you, at this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”
JER 32:27 “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is anything too
difficult for Me?”
MARK 10:27 “Looking at them, Jesus said, "With people it is
impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.”
(3) Evil exists.
JOB 3:20 “Why is light given to him who suffers, and life to the bitter of soul?”
JOHN 9:1-2 “And as He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And his
disciples asked Him, saying, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,
that he should be born blind?’”
LUKE 13:2-4 “And Jesus said to them, ‘Do you suppose that these
Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they
suffered this fate? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise
perish. Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in
Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in
Jerusalem?’”
Alvin Plantinga has offered a plausible answer to this age-old philosophical
argument against Christianity. It is an answer which philosophers have
generally acknowledged as showing that the three propositions can in fact be
harmonized sufficiently so that they are not necessarily exclusive. All three may
be maintained together in a coherent understanding of the world.
Plantinga’s answer is developed in this manner:
(1) God desired to love and be loved by other beings.
(2) God created human beings with this end in view, that he might love them
and they might love him.
(3) In order to make human beings capable of loving, God had to give them the
capacity to choose, since true love cannot be either automatic or coerced. It
requires the capacity to choose.
(4) Giving human beings the capacity to choose, however, entailed a risk----
that they might choose not to love but rather defy God and go their own way.
(5) By granting human beings free will he was granting them the lofty dignity of
being able to make real choices with real consequences.
If God had programmed human beings only to obey and prevented them from
rebelling, he would have negated their having truly free choice, and they could
not have loved him. (We may love our cars, but our cars don’t love us. If we
want to be loved, then we have to look to something that has the capacity to
choose to love, something cars do not have.)
If God had constantly overlooked or instantly fixed their acts of rebellion, then
there would have been no real consequences and they never would have come
to see that they needed a redeemer----Him.
(6) So God created human beings with the capacity to choose, with all the
danger and risk of rebellion free will necessarily entails, and he did so because
he deemed the cost of evil in the world to be worth the benefit of loving and
enjoying the love of these human beings.
(7) Therefore, it is not necessarily illogical to say that God is good and all-
powerful and evil does exist in the world. It is tenable to believe that God is
good and all-powerful and that evil does exist in the world.
QUESTION: Does the point that God deemed the cost of evil in the world to be
worth the benefit of loving and enjoying the love of human beings have any
parallels in our world?
Yes! For example, why do parents allow and even require their children to
undergo the pain of being inoculated for small pox? It is because the parents
have the goal of a higher benefit in mind, and the benefit overrides the cost of
the pain the child must undergo. Enduring the pain is worthwhile because the
benefit is so substantial.
THE THREE PROPOSITIONS
| Pr Rick Speece December 2005 |
| at Calvary Baptist Church, Bradenton-FL. |