Faith and Philosophy

Volume 38, Issue 2, April 2021

Evaluating a New Logical Argument From Evil

J. L. Schellenberg, in “A New Logical Problem of Evil,” argues that (if God exists) God has, of necessity, a disappreciation of evil, operating at a metalevel in such a way as to give God a non-defeasible reason to rule out actualizing a world containing evil. He also argues that since God’s motive in creating the world is to share with finite beings the good that God experiences prior to creation, which is good without evil, it follows that God will create a world that contains no evil. I investigate in detail the foregoing lines of argument and provide grounds for rejecting them.