The problem of evil and the closely related problem of divine hiding provide reasons for the unbeliever to deny God’s existence. They also raise important questions for the believer in God and can be a chief source of doubt regarding the goodness of God. In this chapter we shall explore these problems as well as the resources theists can employ in responding to the problems in all of their forms. Two prominent versions of the problem of evil are the logical and the evidential problem of evil. We begin with an exploration of the logical problem of evil.
The Logical Problem of Evil
In his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, David Hume nicely summarizes the logical problem regarding God and evil: “Epicurus’ old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?”1 A rough sketch of the challenge can be formalized as follows:2
But,
4. There is evil.
5. Therefore, God (an all-powerful and perfectly good being) does not exist.
What the argument, if sound, shows is that God’s existence is incompatible with the reality of evil. In the same way that it is impossible for there to be married bachelors or round squares, it is impossible that God and evil coexist. The argument, as stated, is formally valid. If the premises are true, the conclusion inescapably follows. What can then be said for each premise of the argument?
Premise 4 is obviously true. Pain and suffering is in itself a bad thing, an evil. It is, as the philosopher Richard Gale puts it, “an ought-not-to-be, an ‘Oh no!’”3 The Christian tradition as well as human experience affirms the truth of premise 4. If there is a way out of the challenge posed by the logical problem of evil, it will have to be found elsewhere.
Alvin Plantinga famously argues that premise 1 is not necessarily true by offering what is called the Free Will Defense: if premise 1 is not necessarily true, then it is logically possible that God and evil coexist. The Free Will Defense doesn’t need to show that premise 1 is false, just that it is not necessarily true in order to solve the logical problem of evil. The basic idea of the Free Will Defense is this:
God cannot do the logically impossible (and this fact does not count against God’s omnipotence). No being (God or otherwise) can actualize logically impossible states of affairs such as being a married bachelor or being a square circle; no being (God or otherwise) can make it true that 2 + 2 = 5 or that God exists and simultaneously God doesn’t exist. In fact, if God could do such things, he would not be perfectly rational and hence not worthy of worship. God wants (at least some of) his creatures to be self-determiners of their actions and character. In other words, God has created (libertarianly) free creatures, creatures that, for at least some actions, are free to perform the action or refrain from the action. Given the fact that God has created free creatures, he cannot guarantee that in every instance they will always perform morally right actions. God could remove their freedom, thereby guaranteeing that creatures never do wrong, but what God cannot do is cause free creatures to never do wrong. Causing free creatures to act in a particular way is a logically impossible state of affairs. Hence, when free creatures misuse their creaturely freedom and do wrong, evil results. God permits the possibility of evil, but free creatures actualize evil by doing wrong.
If the above scenario is possible, then premise 1 is not necessarily true and Plantinga has successfully shown that there is no logical incompatibility between God and evil. As Plantinga summarizes, “The heart of the Free Will Defense is the claim that it is possible that God could not have created a universe containing moral good (or as much moral good as this world contains) without creating one that also contained moral evil. And if so, then it is possible that God has a good reason for creating a world containing evil.”4
A prominent reply to the Free Will Defense is called the Free but Perfect objection. Isn’t it possible, it is suggested, for God to create (libertarianly) free creatures who never do wrong?5 Perhaps whenever a free creature intends wrong, God intervenes to stop the action or the intended effect. In reply, Plantinga provocatively argues that, for all we know, there are no “free but perfect” creatures; every free creature suffers from what Plantinga calls “transworld depravity”: in every possible world, free creatures do at least one wrong action, an action that is morally evil.6 If so, then God, though omnipotent, could not have created a world containing just “free but perfect” creatures. If Plantinga is correct, then there is reason to think the Free Will Defense successful.
Suppose, however, the Free Will Defense fails and premise 1 is a necessary truth. What about premise 2? Again, it seems that premise 2 is not necessarily true. In everyday life there are many instances where, for example, a parent allows a child to undergo pain and suffering because of some morally sufficient reason. So too, it is possible that God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing pain and suffering. We shall explore some of those possible reasons in the next section, when considering the evidential argument from evil. The point here is that premise 2 is not necessarily true, and thus we find another reason to think the logical problem of evil fails. Yet premise 3, it could be argued, is clearly false. Just because I am able to buy a new computer (I have the money) and I want to buy a new computer (my current one is annoyingly slow), it does not follow that I will purchase a new computer. I am willing and able to purchase the new computer, but I do not because I also want to pay my mortgage. The paying of my mortgage (and my desire to stay in my home) is an overriding value for me. I want to stay in my home more than I want a new computer. In the same way, God could have an overriding reason—for example, the high value of (libertarianly) free moral creatures—that justifies his allowing evil.
The result is that the hope of finding some kind of logical incompatibility between God and evil is significantly diminished. Many theist and atheist philosophers agree that there is no actual logical problem of evil. Many philosophers think that Plantinga’s Free Will Defense solved the logical problem of evil. As we have seen, even if that is not the case, there are other reasons to think that the logical problem of evil fails. As a result, the discussion regarding the problem of evil has shifted to the evidential problem of evil. It is that formulation of the problem to which we shall now turn.
The Evidential Problem of Evil
Struck by lightning, a baby deer suffers in agony for a week before finding death. On New Year’s Eve, as the family celebrates in another room, a child is kidnapped, tortured, raped, and murdered.7 An earthquake devastates a nation, killing many and leaving the rest destitute. Daily we are confronted with evil both in the world and within the human heart. If God exists, he must have a good reason for permitting evil. But much evil appears pointless. Why did the deer have to suffer in agony for a week before death instead of instantaneously dying or (better) not being struck by lightning at all? What possible reason is there for allowing a child to be kidnapped, tortured, raped, and then murdered? How could God be morally justified in allowing an earthquake that brings pain and suffering to the righteous and the unrighteous without distinction? Given the intensity, distribution, and amount of pain and suffering in the world, much of which appears pointless, it is likely, the argument goes, that God does not exist. This is the evidential problem of evil.
The evidential problem of evil can be formulated as follows:
The evidential problem of evil concedes that God and evil are logically compatible. Still, given the intensity, distribution, and amount of evil in the world, it is argued that God probably doesn’t exist. While some theists deny premise 1, most accept it as true and therefore focus their attention on premise 2, arguing that there is (contrary to appearances) no pointless evil.8 God has a morally justified reason for allowing evil in all cases. There are two main strategies employed by theists in arguing against the truth of premise 2.
The first strategy is to give a theodicy. A “theodicy” is a God-justifying reason for evil. When providing a theodicy, a theist is saying, “Here is the reason why God allows evil. This is it.” While there are many theodicies on offer, two historically prominent theodicies are the Free Will Theodicy, argued notably by Augustine of Hippo (354–430), and the Soul-Making Theodicy, suggested in the writings of the early church father Irenaeus (130–202) and rigorously formulated more recently by John Hick (1922–2012).9
The basic outline of the Free Will Theodicy has already been provided (above) with Plantinga’s Free Will Defense. To better understand how theodicies work, it is important to understand the difference between a theodicy and a defense. A theodicy is different from a defense in that the former provides God’s actual justification for evil, whereas a defense provides a possible justification for evil. In offering a Free Will Defense, Plantinga gives a possible justification for evil; in offering a Free Will Theodicy, Augustine (and those who follow him) is saying, in effect, that such possible justification for evil is God’s actual justification for evil. God really did create free creatures. Free creatures really did, through the misuse of their creaturely freedom, bring about evil.10
Although the Free Will Theodicy is an effective response to the problem of evil, it obviously is not a complete response; thus, on its own, it is not clear that the Free Will Theodicy provides the resources to deny premise 2 of the evidential problem. The Free Will Theodicy does a nice job of explaining much (perhaps all) of the moral evil of this world, but what about natural evil: earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, disease, and the like? One reply, suggested by Plantinga and defended by many early Christian apologists, is to argue that natural evil, like moral evil, is also the result of a misuse of creaturely freedom. The creatures in view with respect to natural evil, however, are not human creatures, but angelic creatures: Satan and his cohorts are responsible for the deep-seated disorder found in nature and the resultant natural evil.11 If this suggestion is correct—and it is a genuine possibility given a theistic worldview—then perhaps the Free Will Theodicy on its own is enough to show the falsity of premise 2. Suppose, however, that it is not correct. In other words, suppose there are instances of evil left unexplained and therefore unjustified, given the Free Will Theodicy. Does this mean that premise 2 is true and the evidential problem of evil cogent? Not at all. The theodicist at this point may simply offer up additional theodicies in order to provide the actual God-justifying reason for the remaining evils in question.
Historically, while the Soul-Making Theodicy has been seen as the chief alternative to the Free Will Theodicy, it can also be thought of as playing a complementary role to the Free Will Theodicy.12 The intuition behind the Soul-Making Theodicy is that pain and suffering produce character. As John Hick puts it, God did not initially create humans as wholly good free beings because “virtues which have been formed within the agent as a hard-won deposit of his own right decisions in situations of challenge and temptation are intrinsically more valuable than virtues created within him ready made and without any effort on his own part.”13 The moral, intellectual, and spiritual development of humans requires a challenging environment and a dangerous world. Thus natural evil is explained as part of the required environment for character development. It is a necessary aspect “of the present stage of the process through which God is gradually creating perfected finite persons.”14
While this theodicy seems to explain much of the natural evil in the world, it is not obvious that it explains all instances of natural evil. What about those whose life is cut short by a natural disaster or disease and so don’t have any real chance of growth from the experience? How is the Soul-Making Theodicy supposed to help them? There are a number of plausible replies available. First, it could be argued that, for all we know, these natural evils might bring about character growth in those associated with the person suffering. Second, perhaps the apparent pointlessness of natural evil is a necessary feature of a soul-making world. As Hick observes, “The very fact that disasters afflict human beings in contingent, undirected and haphazard ways is itself a necessary feature of a world that calls forth mutual aid and builds up mutual caring and love.”15 If so, then the fact that much of the natural evil appears pointless does not count in favor of its actually being pointless. Third, for those who suffer and die without an opportunity for growth in this life, the possibility remains that such growth will continue in the afterlife. While this eschatological dimension of the Soul-Making Theodicy is helpful, it also reveals a weakness of the theodicy. As James Spiegel notes, there are two categories of sufferers for whom moral growth in the afterlife is not an option: animals, such as the fawn discussed earlier, and humans who go to hell.16 Perhaps it could be argued that animal suffering is for human benefit, a means to building our moral character as we respond with compassion and kindness to animal suffering. This reply, while initially plausible, seems weak given the amount of animal suffering in this world brought about by humans (consider, e.g., intensive animal farming and the deplorable conditions of animal lives as they are prepared for slaughter). Regarding humans in hell, in the traditional account hell is a place of eternal conscious torment. Since the damned are beyond redemption, it is not clear that their suffering serves the higher good of character formation. This has led some philosophers, such as Hick and Marilyn Adams, to endorse universalism and the idea that all will eventually be united with God.17 For those not willing to embrace universalism, it seems that the Soul-Making Theodicy, while helpful, cannot (obviously) account for all instances of evil.
At this point the defender of theodicies can continue to offer additional theodicies, attempting to explain the remaining apparently pointless evils. Many theodicies have been and continue to be offered by philosophers and theologians.18 Many people find various theodicies helpful, even comforting, when experiencing pain and suffering. Still, as a response to the evidential problem of evil, it is not obvious that a theodicy strategy is ultimately successful. Even if the full panoply of theodicies has been employed in order to defeat premise 2, doubts remain. Why the tremendous amount of evil instead of a lot less? Why six million Jews killed in the Holocaust instead of five million? Why these types—rape, genocide, cancer—of evil? Why does God allow those? Couldn’t humans be genuinely free, for example, without the ability to commit rape? Why this instance of evil?19 Is it really necessary to maintain human freedom or moral growth or whatever by allowing this murder or this rape? Moreover, Christian Scripture provides reason to think we will not be able to understand God’s justifying reason for evil in all cases. As the apostle Paul proclaims of God, “How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Rom. 11:33 NIV). Considerations like these suggest that perhaps, as a response to the evidential problem of evil, another strategy might be more promising.
The second prominent strategy employed by the theist to refute premise 2 is to argue that while God has a morally justified reason for allowing evil, we humans are just not in a position to know what that reason is. This response to the evidential problem of evil is called skeptical theism. The theist is not skeptical that God exists. Rather, the theist is skeptical that we are in a position to know God’s reasons for evil. While this strategy might appear at first to be a cop-out, an illicit punt to mystery, on further reflection it can be shown that the theist is rational in endorsing a skeptical stance with respect to God’s reasons for evil.
Consider how the atheist presses the evidential problem. Particular instances of evil—the baby deer suffering and dying; the torture, rape, and murder of a young child—are pointed out, and it is argued that for all the goods that we know, there is no good that would justify God’s permitting the evil. The atheist offers a “No-see-um Argument”: “As far as we can tell, there is no reason that justifies God in allowing so much or any particular instance of evil. Therefore, it is very likely that there is no such reason.”20 The inference at the heart of the No-see-um Argument is: “So far as we can tell, there is no x; so, probably there is no x.”21 Is the no-see-um inference a good inference, capable of providing a reason to think premise 2 is true? Sometimes the no-see-um inference is a good inference. If I open up my fridge and exclaim, “As far as I can tell, there is no milk in the fridge. So probably there is no milk in the fridge,” I properly infer the absence of milk. However, if when sitting on my back porch I proclaim, “As far as I can tell, there are no fire ants on the hill over there [over a thousand yards away]; so probably there are no fire ants on the hill over there,” I have made a bad no-see-um inference. The salient difference is that, in the case of the milk, I was in a position to see the milk if it was in the fridge, whereas in the case of the fire ants on the far-off hill, I was not in a position to likely see them if they were there. My perceptual abilities are such that I can perceive medium-sized objects a couple yards away but not very small objects (like fire ants) over a thousand yards away.
Applied to the problem of evil, the question becomes: Are we humans in a position to see, or apprehend, God’s morally justified reason for every instance of evil if there is one? As we have seen, we are able to discern some of God’s reasons for evil. But there are reasons to think that we are not in a position to understand all of God’s reasons for evil. Humans are finite, limited in time, space, and knowledge in a way that God is not. God knows the beginning from the end and has providentially ordered human history, taking into account the free actions of humans (and angelic beings) in order to accomplish his purpose. It seems unreasonable to think that we should be able to discern God’s reasons for evil in every case. Our perceptual and intellectual capacities are just not powerful enough to discern the overall story that God is weaving throughout human history. Thus, in the case of evil, the no-see-um inference is a bad inference. Therefore premise 2 of the evidential argument is false, and there is no reason to think, given the reality of apparently pointless evil, that there is pointless evil.
What this brief survey has shown is that the problem of evil does not render belief in God irrational. There is no logical inconsistency involved in postulating the existence of God and evil. Moreover, the reality of evil does not render God’s existence unlikely. When we move from considerations regarding mere theism to considering Christianity in particular, we find, as Peter Kreeft puts it, God’s solution to the problem of evil.22 God’s solution is Christ on the cross. On the cross Jesus took all pain and suffering on himself, providing a way for those who believe to find hope instead of despair in the face of evil.
Divine Hiddenness
The problem of divine hiddenness is a source of unbelief and, for the believer, a source of doubt about the goodness of God. Consider the question of divine hiding from the atheist’s point of view. Both theists and atheists agree that God’s existence is not obvious to everyone. However, the atheist presses, if as Christians claim (a) God is perfectly loving and (b) humankind’s greatest need is to know and love God, it seems that God’s existence ought to be obvious to everyone. God should make himself maximally obvious so that there would be no reasonable unbelief. If God were maximally obvious, all unbelief would be unreasonable and thus all unbelievers would be morally culpable in their unbelief. As it stands, the fact that there is (or seems to be) reasonable unbelief—sincere seekers who don’t see plausible evidence for God—provides a reason to doubt that a perfectly loving God exists.
The argument from hiddenness for atheism can be formalized as follows:
The above argument is formally valid. If the premises are true, the conclusions 4 and 5 logically follow. A central tenet of Christian theism is that God is perfectly loving (cf. 1 John 4:8), so premise 1 is secure. If the argument from hiddenness is to be shown as unsound, either premise 2 or premise 3 will need to be rejected. As it turns out, Christian theism offers good reasons for thinking both (2 and 3) are false.
Consider premise 3. Given the doctrine of original sin, it is plausible to think there is no such thing as reasonable nonbelief. As the apostle Paul states in Romans 1:20, God’s existence and nature have been revealed to all through that which he has made “so that people are without excuse” (NIV). All unbelief is unreasonable, a case of self-deception: moral rebellion and the desire to reject God prevent an accurate assessment of the evidence. Such widespread self-deception is a genuine possibility. Many people simply do not want there to be a God and are morally culpable in their unbelief and rebellion against God.24 Still, it could be argued that in Romans 1 Paul is not referring to all humanity. Rather, Paul is referring to the godless and wicked people “who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Rom. 1:18 NIV).25 Perhaps there are those (e.g., from a non-Western context) who have never considered whether God exists. Or perhaps, through no fault of their own, some people do not know that God exists because of some deeply rooted emotional, social, or intellectual barrier that prevents them from believing.
Assume that there is reasonable nonbelief (and that, for now, premise 3 is secure). What about premise 2? Are there good reasons to think that a perfectly loving God might allow reasonable nonbelief? Philosophers have offered a number of plausible reasons why God hides.26 Paul Moser, for example, has argued that for many, if God were too obvious, it would elicit an improper response.27 If God were to rearrange the stars each night to read “Made by God” or to imprint on each DNA strand “Made lovingly by Yahweh,” it is possible that it would produce mere belief that God exists without resulting in genuine belief and trust in God. Or perhaps, as Michael Rea argues, divine silence is just God’s preferred mode of interacting with us humans. Maybe God’s silence speaks louder of his love and care for us than verbiage, and, therefore, “we need not experience his silence as absence—especially if we see Biblical narratives and liturgies as things that in some sense mediate the presence of God to us.”28 The general point is that a greater good is secured by God in hiding, and therefore God is morally justified even if there is reasonable nonbelief. If these replies or those like it are plausible, then there is no reason to think that premise 2 is true. In conclusion, it is open to the theist to reject either premise 2 or 3 of the argument from hiddenness. The reality of divine hiding does not provide a reason to think that God does not exist.
The problem of divine hiddenness, as we’ve noted, is also a problem for those who believe in God. Often our prayers seem to go no higher than the ceiling. In times of deep anguish, God remains silent, distant, and uninvolved. This problem is not just for “normal” believers. Exemplars of the faith, such as Mother Teresa, regularly experience divine silence.29
In closing, we offer some thoughts from J. P. Moreland for those who struggle with divine hiding as a source of doubt.30 First, don’t be overly anxious in times of divine hiding. A look at the lives of saints both past and present reveals moments of God’s manifest presence as well as times of divine absence. This is normal for the Christian life. Second, God uses times of divine hiding to mature and deepen our trust and reliance on him. In these times we learn to trust in God and God alone, not in our experience of God or our expectations for God. Finally, God hides to give us an opportunity to seek him with all of our heart. As God proclaims through the prophet Jeremiah, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13 NIV).
Conclusion
In this chapter we’ve considered the problems of evil and divine hiddenness. We’ve argued that neither provides reason to think that a perfectly loving God doesn’t exist. This doesn’t mean that the lived experience of suffering, tragedy, divine silence, and loss are easy. Just the opposite is the case. But—and this is good news—it does mean there is always hope. In the Christian story, tragedy doesn’t get the last word. Death is not the end. One day our pain and grief will be no more. In those moments when it seems like all is lost, there is Jesus. As Christians, we can find comfort in God’s pursuing and passionate love. And we look forward to a time when all will be made right again and we will experience the unmediated presence of God forever.
1. The character that expresses these questions in the dialogue is Philo, widely assumed to represent the voice of Hume. See David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (London: Penguin, 1990), 63.
2. I (Paul) first came across this way of formalizing the logical problem of evil as a graduate assistant for Michael Bergmann’s undergraduate philosophy of religion class at Purdue University. This is not the only way to formalize the logical problem of evil, but I have found it to be an accessible way to introduce the topic to those unfamiliar with it. For other formulations of the logical problem of evil, see J. L. Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence,” Mind 64, no. 254 (1955): 200–212; and Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977).
3. Richard Gale, “Evil as Evidence against God,” in Debating Christian Theism, ed. J. P. Moreland, Chad V. Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 197.
4. Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil, 31 (emphasis in original).
5. This objection was raised forcefully by Mackie in his 1955 article “Evil and Omnipotence.”
6. Plantinga calls the idea that God can create any world he wants “Leibniz’s Lapse.” While there are many worlds that God could create that contain moral good but no moral evil, there are, for all we know, no possible worlds that contain free creatures and no moral evil. This was, according to Plantinga, the mistake Leibniz made. For more on transworld depravity, see Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil, 34–55.
7. Both of these examples of horrendous evils are prominent in the literature. See, e.g., Daniel Howard-Snyder, Michael Bergmann, and William L. Rowe, “An Exchange on the Problem of Evil,” in God and the Problem of Evil, ed. William L. Rowe (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), 126.
8. For an example of a Christian who thinks there is pointless evil, see Kirk R. MacGregor, “The Existence and Irrelevance of Gratuitous Evil,” Philosophia Christi 14 (2012): 165–82. In reply, see Ross Inman, “Gratuitous Evil Unmotivated: A Reply to Kirk R. MacGregor,” Philosophia Christi 15 (2013): 435–45.
9. See Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, trans. Thomas Williams (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993); Irenaeus, “Against Heresies,” in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994); and John Hick, “Soul-Making Theodicy,” in Rowe, God and the Problem of Evil, 265–81.
10. For an excellent discussion of Augustine’s Free Will Theodicy, see R. Douglas Geivett, “Augustine and the Problem of Evil,” in God and Evil: The Case for God in a World Filled with Pain, ed. Chad Meister and James K. Dew Jr. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2013), chap. 5.
11. See, e.g., Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil, 58; and Plantinga, “Supralapsarianism, or ‘O Felix Culpa,’” in Christian Faith and the Problem of Evil, ed. Peter van Inwagen (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 16–17.
12. James Spiegel, “The Irenaean Soul-Making Theodicy,” in Meister and Dew, God and Evil, 81. Spiegel argues that the Free Will Theodicy addresses the question of the origin of evil; the Soul-Making Theodicy addresses the question of God’s purpose for evil.
13. John Hick, “Soul-Making Theodicy,” in Rowe, God and the Problem of Evil, 271.
14. Hick, “Soul-Making Theodicy,” 276.
15. Hick, “Soul-Making Theodicy,” 278–79.
16. Spiegel, “The Irenaean Soul-Making Theodicy,” 92.
17. In addition to the Hick article already cited, see Marilyn McCord Adams, “The Problem of Hell: A Problem of Evil for Christians,” in Reasoned Faith: Essays in Philosophical Theology in Honor of Norman Kretzmann, ed. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 301–27; included in Rowe, God and the Problem of Evil, 282–309.
18. For a nice book-length introduction to seven historically prominent theodicies, see Richard Rice, Suffering and the Search for Meaning: Contemporary Responses to the Problem of Pain (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2014). For an excellent discussion of theodicies, including their shortcomings, see Daniel Howard-Snyder’s essay “God, Evil, and Suffering,” in Reason for the Hope Within, ed. Michael Murray (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 86–101.
19. Some theists argue that while there are God-justifying reasons for types of evils, there are not, in many cases, God-justifying reasons for tokens of evils. See, e.g., Peter van Inwagen, “The Place of Chance in a World Sustained by God,” in Divine and Human Action, ed. Thomas V. Morris (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 211–35. However, even if there is no reason for a particular token of evil, it does not follow that it is all-things-considered pointless. That is, it does not follow that, just because an evil is token-gratuitous, it is all-things-considered gratuitous. See Inman, “Gratuitous Evil Unmotivated,” 436–38.
20. Howard-Snyder, “God, Evil, and Suffering,” 105.
21. Howard-Snyder, “God, Evil, and Suffering,” 103.
22. Peter Kreeft, Making Sense out of Suffering (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Books, 1986), chap. 7.
23. This version of the hiddenness argument is from Chad Meister, “Evil and the Hiddenness of God,” in Meister and Dew, God and Evil, 142. For more fine-grained versions of the argument, see John L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).
24. Consider the oft-quoted admission of Thomas Nagel: “I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.” The Last Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 130.
25. Meister argues this way in “Evil and the Hiddenness of God,” 144.
26. See, e.g., the collection of essays in Divine Hiddenness: New Essays, ed. Daniel Howard-Snyder and Paul K. Moser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
27. Moser calls this the “Divine Purposes Reply” to hiddenness. See his “Cognitive Idolatry and Divine Hiding,” in Howard-Snyder and Moser, Divine Hiddenness, chap. 6.
28. Michael Rea, “Divine Hiddenness, Divine Silence,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, ed. Louis Pojman and Michael Rea, 6th ed. (Boston: Wadsworth/Cengage, 2012), 273.
29. See Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta, ed. Brian Kolodiejchuck (New York: Doubleday, 2007).
30. See J. P. Moreland’s sermon on divine hiding at http://www.jpmoreland.com/media/the-god-who-hides/.