Abstract
This paper critically examines what I call the ‘testing theodicy,’ the widely held idea that natural evil exists in order to test our faith in God. This theodicy appears numerous times in the scriptures of all three Abrahamic faiths. After examining some of these scriptural passages, we will argue that in light of these texts, the notion of faith is best understood as some type of commitment such as trust, loyalty or piety, rather than as merely a belief in God’s existence. After carefully showing the form this theodicy must take, I argue that the testing theodicy suffers from serious difficulties and fails to adequately account for the existence of natural evil.
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Notes
This line of thought was suggested by an anonymous referee for Sophia.
Job 1:1. All quotations are from the New Oxford Annotated Bible, NRSV.
Terrien (1991), p. 625. Terrien does not seem to regard Job as offering an answer to the question of why the innocent suffer, as he also writes, ‘The Book of Job does not explain the mystery of suffering or ‘justify the ways of God’ with human beings, but it does probe the depths of faith in the midst of suffering.’
This point was emphasized by an anonymous referee.
I owe this and some of the related points in this paragraph to an anonymous referee.
I owe this point to Mark Nelson, who also directed me to the passage from James.
The theist should not say at this point that God interferes with our free will sometimes, when it serves a greater good; for this invites the question of why God doesn’t interfere with the free will of people who are about to perform an evil act such as harming the innocent. An admission that such interference is permissible would prove damaging to the free will theodicy.
I owe this reply to Nelly Dib.
Technically, I suppose, the person has committed a crime—namely, conspiring to commit a murder. But given that we are already conceding that the person may be punished for forming the intention to commit the crime, this technical point does not affect the flow of the argument.
This was pointed out by an anonymous referee for Sophia.
The case is scarcely improved if I allow another child to fall in order to test my child’s faith in me (that is, if God inflicts evil on person A to test person B’s faith).
References
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to an audience at the American University of Beirut for helpful feedback on an early draft of this paper, and to Mark Nelson for reading and commenting on a later version. Also, anonymous referees for Sophia provided a good deal of helpful and constructive criticism.