Book Review: God, Freedom, and Evil by Alvin C. Plantinga

God, Freedom, and Evil by Alvin C. Plantinga

A popular problem in theology and philosophy is how an all-powerful and all-loving God could allow evil in the universe. Atheists use the Problem of Evil as a proof that God does not exist. In confronting the problem, Alvin Plantinga takes an unusual route--hard-core logical analysis. 

The first part of the book looks at the problem from the atheists' angle, assessing whether an omnipotent and omni-beneficent God could make a world with evil in it. Plantinga's prose is clear and precise, whittling down various possibilities and interpretations, including concepts like "the best of all possible worlds" and whether a world that has evil could have more good in it than a world only with good in it. He reaches the conclusion that the actual world does allow for a God who desires good in that world while allowing evil to take place in it. The second part of the book reviews three main arguments for God's existence: the Cosmological Argument, the Teleological Argument, and the Ontological Argument. He dismisses the first two arguments rather quickly and then focuses on the Ontological Argument, proceeding from Anselm's first formulation of it, going through the historical reactions to it (especially Immanuel Kant's), concluding with his personal analysis. Plantinga finds it a creditable argument.

The book is written with a lay audience in mind, so the logical analyses are not overwrought or full of technical language that requires prerequisite knowledge. The thinking is disciplined, so readers have to focus to follow the arguments. Plantinga has a lot of references that point to more thorough discussions in other books (many of which are his own). The writing is clear and the book is short, not more than 120 pages.

The book is not entirely satisfying. While the disciplined, logical analysis of the arguments is interesting and convincing, they don't make the final step into certitude. Plantinga admits as much--he's showing that there's no logical or systemic contradiction in an all-loving and all-knowing God creating a world in which evil is allowed to exist. It's not an incoherent concept like a square circle. But coherence (a system of truths that does not contradict itself) is not the same thing as correspondence (a system of truths that represents the world the way it is). When it comes to proving God's existence, he naturally prefers the Ontological Argument which is based in theory to arguments that are based on the contingency of the world (cosmological) or orderliness of the world (teleological). The challenge that Plantinga does not acknowledge is that logic is only as good as the premises it is based on. Logical arguments need a prior metaphysical base in order to be more than a word puzzle that works out they way you want. 

Recommended, though it is a bit challenging and not fully persuasive.