Evil & Suffering & The Nature of God (Edexcel GCSE Religious Studies B)

The Nature of God vs Evil & Suffering

The Nature of God

• Christians believe that God has certain characteristics that allow them to understand God better

  • Christians believe that God is one but exists in three different 'persons', God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that these three Persons form a unity

    • This is the Christian belief in the Trinity which comes from the word 'tri' meaning 'three' and 'unity' meaning 'one'

  • Christians believe that God is Omnipotent 

    • He created the world and was responsible for the resurrection of Jesus

  • Christians believe that God is omnibenevolent 

    •  God sacrificed his own son for humanity, which shows how much he loves all human beings without exception

• Christians believe that God is just 

  • God is fair to all and he forgives those who say sorry for their actions

  • The Psalms say, ‘God is fair and just’ (Psalm 25:8)

• Christians believe that God is omniscient

  • Christians believe that God knows every person's inner thoughts as well as knowing all that has happened and all that will happen in the future

• Christians believe that God is transcendent

  • For example God does not live and die as we do, he is eternal, and complete understanding of God is beyond the human intellect

• Christians believe that God is also immanent

  • God has interacted with the world throughout history for example, Jesus being sent to earth

  • Nowadays, people believe that God is immanent, working miracles and answering people's prayers

• Because Christians believe that these things represent God’s nature, it means that the existence of evil and suffering in the world is problematic

Questions about the Existence of God

The Problem of Evil

• Christians believe that God would not want anything within his Creation to suffer and that God is fair and just

• However, evil and suffering do exist in the world leading to many Christians asking the questions

  • How can a loving and righteous God allow people to do evil things?

  • Why do good people need to suffer?

  • If God does exist and he is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then why does he allow evil and suffering to exist?

The Inconsistent Triad

• The problem of evil can be regarded as an ‘inconsistent triad’ or in other words, three ideas but only two of them can be true

• As there is clear evidence and experience of evil, either God is not all-powerful (he cannot stop evil) or God is not all-loving (he does not love us or care enough to stop evil) or he does not exist at all

• For some people, this is evidence that the God of Christianity does not exist but there are some Christian responses to this philosophical problem

Natural & Moral Suffering

Natural and Moral Evil

• There are two types of evil and suffering in the world and they are moral evil and natural evil

The Types of Evil & Suffering

• These two types of evil can relate to each other

  • For example, moral evil can make natural evil worse

  • A drought brought on by lack of rainfall which causes crops to fail, could be the result of government policies which affect the weather

The Cause of Natural and Moral Evil

• Religions differ in what they teach about the origins of evil

  • Some consider it to have been present in the world from the beginning as the work of evil forces

  • Some believe it is part of God's creation which may have a purpose that humans cannot understand

  • Some consider it to be the outcome of ignorance and to have no beginning

  • Most religions teach that moral evil should be opposed and that attempts should be made to minimise the impact of natural evil

  • Most people experience suffering at some time in their life

    • Religions attempt to explain suffering, help people to cope with it and learn from it

    • For some religious people, the fact that people suffer can raise difficult questions about why God allows this to happen

  • Some people say that God allows humans to make decisions for themselves (free will) and that suffering is caused by the choices that people make