The document discusses several objections to and explanations for the problem of evil. It presents arguments that evil exists due to free will and human sin, and that God allows evil for purposes like soul-making and spiritual growth. It also suggests evil is the absence of good and moral evils result from human actions. Overall, the document explores theological responses to the question of why an omnipotent and good God permits the existence of evil.

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5. “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance:
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he
was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to
the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to
the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred
of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are
still living, though some have fallen asleep.”
- 1 Corinthians 15:3-6 (ESV)
“And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and
so is your faith.”
- 1 Corinthians 15:14 (NIV)

6. Objections
• Stolen body theory (Matthew 28:12-15).
• The wrong tomb theory.
• The reburial theory.
• The hallucination theory (D. William McNeil).
• Jesus never died (Swoon theory).
• The substitution theory (Islam, Sura 4:157).
• Jesus body was eaten by dogs (John Dominic
Crossan).
• Jesus had a twin.
• Jesus was an alien theory.

7. Medical Information
• Hematidrosis: blood and sweat (Luke 22:44).
• Flogging with flagrum that cut deep into the
subcutaneous tissues.
• Abandoned & Betrayed.
• Crown of thorns.
• Carry the cross.
• Nailed to the cross.

8. Slow Suffocation
• Shallowness of breathing causes small areas
of lung collapse.
• Decreased oxygen and increased carbon
dioxide causes acidic conditions in the tissues.
• Fluid builds up in the lungs. Makes situation in
step 2 worse.
• Heart is stressed and eventually fails.

9. The stated order of "blood and water" may not
necessarily indicate the order of appearance, but
rather the relative prominence of each fluid. In this
case, a spear through the right side of the heart
would allow the pleural fluid (fluid built up in the
lungs) to escape first, followed by a flow of blood
from the wall of the right ventricle.
Edwards, W.D., Gabel, W.J and Hosmer, F.E. "On the
Physical Death of Jesus Christ." JAMA. 255 (11), pp.
1455-1463, 1986.

10. Resurrection
• Jesus' resurrection was an early belief in
Christianity.
• 1 Corinthians 15:3-6
– Contains creedal form statement of the
resurrection of Jesus.
– Most likely taken directly from Aramaic oral
tradition.
– Creed was widespread within 2-3 years of Christ
death. (Jerusalem & Damascus)
http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2008/12/jesus-resurrection-an-early-belief.html

11. Hankronym: F E A T
• The F-E-A-T that Demonstrates the FACT of
Resurrection.
– Fatal torment
– Empty tomb
– Appearances
– Transformation
http://www.equip.org/articles/the-f-e-a-t-that-demonstrates-the-fact-of-resurrection/

12. Lee Strobel
• The Case for the Resurrection
– Lee Strobel
• Written at a popular level.

13. Habermas/Licona
• The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus
– Gary R. Habermas
– Michael Licona
• Tough-Minded Christianity
– The Core Resurrection Data: The Minimal Facts
Approach
• Gary R. Habermas

14. The Minimal Facts Approach
1. Jesus death by crucifixion.
2. The earliest disciples’ experience of
appearances of the risen Jesus
3. Their subsequent transformations to the point
of even being willing to die for their faith.
4. The resurrection as the very center of early
apostolic preaching.
5. The conversion and resulting transformation of
Paul and James.

15. N. T. Wright
• The Resurrection of the Son of God
– N. T. Wright
• Six Essential Details

16. Six Essential Details
1. Jews and Greeks understood that resurrection entailed physical
embodiment.
2. Paul believed in a physical embodied resurrection both in the case
of Jesus and eschatologically for believers.
3. Jesus was executed and did not lapse into unconsciousness. After
burial Jesus’s corpse subsequently came back to life and exited
the tomb that was guarded by soldiers.
4. The earliest Christians believed in Jesus’s bodily resurrection and
an empty tomb.
5. The resurrection narratives are credible early sources deriving
from witnesses who narrate events and claim tactile contact with
the risen Jesus.
6. The Gospel narratives do not support hallucinations or
reductionist reinterpretations of the witnesses’ experiences of the
risen Jesus as mere spiritual visions.

18. The Problem
• “Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot;
or he can, but does not want to. If he wants
to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but
does not want to, he is wicked. If God can
abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why
is there evil in the world?”
– Epicurus (341-270 BC), as quoted in 2000 Years of
Disbelief

19. “Many philosophers believe that the existence of evil
constitutes a difficulty for the theist, and many believe that
the existence of evil (or at least the amount and kinds of evil
we actually find) makes belief in God unreasonable or
rationally unacceptable.”
“The fact that the theist doesn't know why God permits evil
is, perhaps, an interesting fact about the theist, but by itself
it shows little or nothing relevant to the rationality of belief
in God.”
- Alvin Plantinga. God, Freedom, and Evil

20. The Argument
1. God exists.
2. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good.
3. A perfectly good being would want to prevent all evils.
4. An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into
existence.
5. An omnipotent being, who knows every way in which an evil can come
into existence, has the power to prevent that evil from coming into
existence.
6. A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence,
who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who
wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil.
7. If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being,
then no evil exists.
8. Evil exists (logical contradiction).

21. Definition of Evil
• Augustine, in Confessions, defined evil as “a
privation of good, even to the point of
complete non-entity.”
– Dark is the absence of light.
– Cold is the absence of heat.
– Evil is the absence of good.
• With this definition evil is not a created thing

22. Definition of Evil
• Another definition of evil, given by Doug
Geivett, is that it is “a departure from the way
things ought to be.”
• Kreeft & Tacelli maintain that “evil does not
just exist, it happens” and that “evil is real, but
not a real thing.”

23. Types of Evil
• Moral Evil
– Moral evil stems from human action (or inaction
in some cases).
– Evil committed by free moral agents and includes
crime, cruelty, class struggles, discrimination,
slavery, genocide, and other injustices.
• Natural Evil
– Natural evil occurs as a consequence of nature—
earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, diseases, etc…

24. Free Will
• God in His sovereign will created us with
choice.
• In order to have love for God we must have
the choice to not love God. Love cannot be
forced.
• We “choose poorly.”
• Sin (evil) then entered the world.

25. “We can, perhaps, conceive of a world in which God
corrected the results of this abuse of free will by His
creatures at every moment: so that a wooden beam became
soft as grass when it was used as a weapon, and the air
refused to obey me if I attempted to set up in it the sound
waves that carry lies or insults. But such a world would be
one in which wrong actions were impossible, and in which,
therefore, freedom of the will would be void; nay, if the
principle were carried out to its logical conclusion, evil
thoughts would be impossible, for the cerebral matter which
we use in thinking would refuse its task when we attempted
to frame them.”
- C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

26. Determinism
• Some forms of determinism deny free will.
• Devine determinism is in some but not all
forms of Calvinism.
• Calvin explained evil as a consequence of the
fall of man and the original sin.
• Due to the belief in predestination and
omnipotence, the fall is part of God's plan.
• Ultimately humans may not be able to
understand and explain this plan.

27. Soul-making (Theodicy)
• Evil and suffering are necessary for spiritual
growth.
– Irenaeus of Lyons (d. 202 AD)
• We cannot learn forgiveness if we have not
been wronged.
• This life is not all there is. This life is
preparation for the life to come.

28. “Without this eternal perspective, we assume that people
who die young, who have handicaps, who suffer poor
health, who don't get married or have children, or who don't
do this or that will miss out on the best life has to offer. But
the theology underlying these assumptions have a fatal flaw.
It presumes that our present Earth, bodies, culture,
relationships and lives are all there is.”
- Randy Alcorn (If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of
Suffering and Evil, published by Random House of Canada,
2009, page 294)

29. For example, there are people who display a sort
of creative moral heroism in the face of suffering
and adversity-a heroism that inspires others and
creates a good situation out of a bad one.
Alvin Plantinga. God, Freedom, and Evil

30. Evil Suggests Objective Morals
• To be evil there must be something that is
good.
– Like hot/cold or light/dark
• Evil seems to be universal.
• Where did we all get the idea of evil?
• If evil, then there must be good or a standard.
• This standard must be transcendent.
• Law comes from a law giver.

31. “My argument against God was that the universe seemed
so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and
unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has
some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this
universe with when I called it unjust?... Of course I could
have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing
but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my
argument against God collapsed too—for the argument
depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply
that it did not happen to please my fancies.”
- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

32. Euthyphro’s Dilemma
• The dilemma Euthyphro faced is this:
• Is a thing good simply because the gods say it
is?
• Or do the gods say a thing is good because of
some other quality it has?
• If so, what is that quality? The problem
stumped Euthyphro.

33. Bertrand Russell's version
• Bertrand Russell's version is an attempt to show
an internal flaw in the Christian's notion of God
and goodness.
• Is a thing right simply because God declares it so,
or does God say it is good because He recognizes
a moral code superior even to Him?
• On the one hand, God reigns and His Law is
supreme. As the ultimate Sovereign, He
establishes the moral rules of the universe. His
commands are absolute. We must obey.

34. Gregory Koukl’s solution
• The Christian rejects the first option, that morality is an
arbitrary function of God's power. And he rejects the
second option, that God is responsible to a higher law.
There is no Law over God.
• The third option is that an objective standard exists
(this avoids the first horn of the dilemma). However,
the standard is not external to God, but internal
(avoiding the second horn). Morality is grounded in the
immutable character of God, who is perfectly good. His
commands are not whims, but rooted in His holiness.