Epicurus

Been seeing a bit of Epicurus popping up, so I thought I'd post an old analysis of his classic argument and take on the problem of evil.

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent."

No problem, logically speaking, with this part.

"Is he able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent."

This, however, is a logical fallacy. Epicurus assumes that if God does not will to prevent Evil, that God is evil. What Epicurus fails to understand is that there may well be a reason that God allows Evil, and in fact, there are several.

First is that we exist to Love and to be Loved. But Love can only be given freely, it must be chosen by the persons who love. Which means that we must have choice to love God. Evil is merely the other option of that choice. We can choose to be with God, or we can choose to reject God. That is evil, evil is the absence of God. God allows Evil for the greater purpose of allowing us to truly Love, for the purpose of allowing us to be free to follow Him. Malevolent? No.

Second, God does not merely let evil sit and fester on the Earth, He does not leave us to rot in it. God is able to prevent it, and this is part of His omnipotence, as Epicurus pointed out in the first part. But God being omnipotent, He can not only prevent it, but He can in fact create Good from Evil. He can take our sins, and He can bring about such Good from them, that we, who are the source of it, can still be united with Him. In short, God can be Christ, God IS Christ. The Lamb of the World, who even while being tortured, mocked and murdered, still managed to forgive the world, to forgive all of our sins, and to take them upon Himself. So yes, there is evil, and God can prevent it, at the cost of destroying our ability to love Him. Or God can let us have that Love, and God can Himself take up the burden of sin for our sakes, that we might know even MORE Good, that we might know the Good of Christ.

And that, I would argue, is not only NOT malevolent, but is the greatest act of Good imaginable.

"Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?"

Epicurus here engages in another fallacious argument, this time he assumes that evil comes from God. This is false. Evil comes from us, specifically, it comes from our ability to choose something OTHER than God. What God made is the potential for us to Love, and thus the potential for us to not Love, the potential for us to do Good, but with that came the potential for us to do Evil. WE are the ones who choose to do evil, not God, and God is the one who choose to forgive us, redeem us, bring good from evil and right from our wrongs, and even to help us to sin no more.

Remember that, fundamentally, we are Good. We are not evil creatures, even if we do evil, and we should never despair of God's Love for us, He has already shown it, He has already promised it.

"Is He neither able or willing? Then why call Him God?"

Indeed, we'd be wiser to call such a being Epicurus...