How would Christians answer the Riddle of Epicurus?

Answer 1

The Riddle of Epicurus
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?


This riddle attempts to put "God into a box". As such, it falls short in many respects.

First, if one accepts the Gospel, scripture and Near-death Experience (NDE) that affirm life after death in a spiritual realm, we have to re-access. If the sting of death is removed despite God permitting death, tragedy and loss, is he really "evil" for permitting it or can it be we are jumping to conclusions about spiritual preparation and training without all of the facts? Our mission here is simple: to teach us to love under depraved conditions for spiritual growth according to God's plan, not our own. When we question how it interferes with our plan, such logical problems develop. Epicurus' riddle assumes certain parameters based on the logical constraints of believing that only what we see is true. The God of love would never permit such things on a permanent basis. That is the message of the Christ upon the cross. For atheists death is a termination point that inverts the moral reality of the universes. For those that believe, death is a transition inverting what appears to be a cruel morality.

Second, if God intervened it would compromise our free will. If he created a world in which we never experienced evil or suffering, we would not be able to train spiritually to learn how to love. Could we learn to love truly in a world devoid in suffering and evil? Of course not...we would never be able to identify it. The present universe reflects the best conditions for spiritual training (love) and free will that could exist without intervention.

Third, God is larger than the riddle allows. Since good can come of evil, is this not a defeat in of itself? Is not the persistence of good depite evil's destruction prove its resilience and overarching strength?

Lastly, the riddle if confined to this realm of course paints God as a supernatural fairy that has a cruel streak. Multiple realms exist that make this dichotomous argument moot. The atheist says "prove it". Some things are unknowable scientifically about the spirit realm, and science is just starting to grapple with NDEs. However, all that one needs to do is open the heart and use The Bible as an anagram decipher-er of human personality through the prism of what God expects from us, and why we are here. Atheists are not tuned to his word, and simply use the concrete errancy of interpretation as some sort of proof that God is mythological. Certainly any being that can create a universe in which quantum mechanics permits being two places at once, is not subject to the outcome of Epicurus' riddle.

Answer 2

The Epicurean Paradox, or Riddle of Epicurus (c. 300 BCE) states:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence comes evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

Wikipedia tells us "The existence of evil creates not only a problem for existence, but also for belief in an all-good and all-powerful God, because if God were all-good and all-powerful then in theory such a God would be able to prohibit such evils from happening."

Saint Augustine, one of the greatest early Christian thinkers, stated that natural evil (naturally occurring evils like earthquakes and floods) are caused by fallen angels, whereas moral evil (evil caused by humans) is as a result of man having become estranged from God and choosing to deviate from his chosen path.

Today, Augustine's answers would appear naive, and modern Christian theologists generally answer in one of two ways. The greater good response says that God allows evil acts in the world because they are part of God's plan and he does so to prevent a greater evil or for a greater good. The free will response says that if God prohibited evil, he would be interfering with free will and the natural laws of the world.