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 A few hundred years before Christ, a Greek philosopher named Epicurus argued that God cannot exist if evil exists. His argument, sometimes called Epicurus’ Trilemma, goes like this:

  • If God is unable to prevent evil, then he is not all-powerful.
  • If God is unwilling to prevent evil, then he is not all-good.
  • If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?  

One response to Epicurus is to add in another attribute of God to the formula. Yes, He is all-powerful. Yes, He is all-good. But He is also all-wise. Even though He is all-powerful and can end evil, even though He is all-good and wants to end evil, He is all-wise and chooses to do so in His own time and in His own way.  

Another response to this trilemma is to ask the question, “how do we know something is evil?” What standard will we use to measure right and wrong? Without an absolute standard, without the Divine behind that standard, how can we say that anything is right and anything is wrong?  

C.S. Lewis helpfully put it this way when explaining his struggles to believe in God:  

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it?"[1]    

 

[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 38.