Thought I would put up a little status report as I’m nearing the end of the semester. Now that I got a few tests and quizzes out of the way, as well as the “harder” chapters for Hebrew, I have been tackling my paper for Systematic Theology I. The paper is on the Problem of Evil- but considering it’s only a 9 page position paper, it’s really hard to say all that I want to say. Basically, I’m looking at the two main types of arguments atheologians bring against theism. The first argument is the deductive argument that Christian theism is logically inconsistent with the existence of evil, and therefore necessarily false. If the argument is valid, then Christianity is proven to be false, and is irrational.

The deductive argument has been (essentially) universally dropped by philosophers, thanks to the work of people such as Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga basically asks the question “where is the contradiction?” Showing that there is no explicit contradiction, he then begins to deconstruct the argument that the contradiction is implicit. Adding propositions to the argument in an attempt to make the implicit contradiction explicit, he then shows that none of the new propositions adequately prove an actual contradiction. Because the deductive argument has fallen on its face, many have moved to the more difficult inductive argument.

The inductive argument basically says that the existence of evil, and the quantity of that evil, make it highly probably that God doesn’t exist. Already the atheologian has a few problems. The first is that because the atheologian is issuing the challenge, it is he who bears the burden of proof. Why does evil make it probable that God doesn’t exist? It’s already been shown that the existence of both God and evil are not logically inconsistent. Yet, the atheologian rarely gives us evidence for why this is so. Theists have unwittingly taken the burden of proof themselves. Second, by what standard can the atheologian determine what is evil? By declaring something to be evil, they are pointing to an assumed general knowledge of what is and is not evil, i.e. a transcendent standard. Yet atheism cannot account for such a standard- it seemingly defies the idea of atheistic evolution, and certainly cannot hold the weight of post modernism’s idea that the community determines the standards. What happens when communities interact? Who’s standard is then assumed? And all of this before we try and answer the argument in itself.

After I finish writing this paper, I have two others to do. The first will be a book review of Christopher Wright’s Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament for Old Testament I. This shouldn’t be too hard to write, but I need to reread the book through to really get a feel for it. The second paper will be a Greek exegesis paper on the text of 2 Corinthians 3:1-18. This one has a bit more meat to it, with a minimum of 15 pages. The problem with this paper is that by the time I’m finished with the others, my time to work on it will be severely diminished. By the time I get to it, I’ll be more focused on making sure I hit the minimum requirements than I will getting an A. Of course, I’ll put the best work I can into it and hope to get an A, but I’ll certainly be happy to be able to just finish it.