#890 Does God Experience Unnecessary Pain?
June 02, 2024Dear Dr. Craig,
I am an atheist who is moved by your arguments. However, a key objection to your work in me is what I have "Christened" (pun intended) as a "second-order problem of evil". This second-order problem of evil was put forward by Lucretius. It essentially says that:
1. The gods avoid unnecessary pain
2. To know the ways of man is unnecessary pain
3. Therefore, the gods cannot know the ways of man
Now this seems a big problem with Christianity. As the Gospel of John says (paraphrased): "The word (Christ) was in the world, and the world knew him not." But, if God is in the world of mankind, then he would surely involve himself in the unnecessary pain of knowing of human beings' daily lives. Would that not mean he had an acquaintance with unnecessary pain? Would that not detract from his Goodness?
I hope that this message finds you well.
Martin
United Kingdom
Dr. craig’s response
A
Thank you for your interesting question, Martin!
Historically speaking, many Christian theologians would deny premiss (2) of Lucretius’ argument. They hold that God is impassible, that is to say, incapable of being affected by the world. In particular, God cannot suffer. In response to your question about the incarnation, they would (and did) respond that the incarnate Christ had two distinct natures, one human and one divine. Accordingly, they maintained that while Christ did suffer in his human nature, he did not suffer in his divine nature, but remained impassible. This response to the argument takes one deep into discussions about the incarnation (see, e.g., Timothy J. Pawl, The Incarnation, Elements in the Philosophy of Religion [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020], for such a view).
Like most contemporary theologians, I do not find the doctrine of divine impassibility to be credible. In particular, I find it irreconcilable with biblical teaching about the nature of God. In the Bible, God is a compassionate being, long-suffering, outraged at evil and pained with the innocent suffering of victims of evil. The idea of an impassible God does not stem from the biblical tradition, but from Greek philosophy, in particular neo-Platonism. So even wholly apart from considerations of the incarnation, it seems to me that we should reject the claim that God is impassible.
Moreover, it is clear that any suffering that God endures is ultimately unnecessary. True, Christ’s suffering for our sins may well have been necessary for our redemption. But there was no need for God to create any physical world to begin with. Creation is a freely willed act of God. God could have simply existed alone sans creation. So anything that he suffers is freely undertaken by his choosing to create a world of free creatures like us who would fall into sin. Suffering is not thrust upon him but is freely embraced.
So I would instead reject premiss (1). I cannot speak for the pagan gods, who pursued hedonistic lives and had no compassion for human beings, but I can say confidently that the God of the Bible freely embraces suffering for our sake and for our salvation. God knew that the world would fall into sin and that he would send Christ as a self-giving, atoning sacrifice for our sins to redeem us and restore us to fellowship with himself. Love does not inevitably seek to avoid unnecessary pain, but, as we know from countless human examples of voluntary suffering, may choose to embrace suffering in order to achieve some overriding good. Far from detracting from God’s goodness, then, God’s embrace of unnecessary suffering is testimony to his love and thus to his perfect goodness.
- William Lane Craig