What Paradox?

As a reference for Epictetus, Discourses 1.6.6:

I do my best to be very careful around questions of God, knowing that there could be nothing more ultimate, while at the same being so profoundly personal. It is too easy to become smugly dismissive or to seethe with resentment in the matter, whether as a believer or as a non-believer, and so I must tread lightly. 

My own path has led me to an ever-increasing sense of awe and reverence for the role of Providence, and yet I remain acutely aware that the answers will not come easily, and that I need look no further than into my own thoughts to find conflict and doubt. 

Of all the objections to either the existence of the Divine or the efficacy of Providence, none will trouble me as much as the problem of evil. Beyond the various academic exercises or ideological posturings in discussions about God, there remains the nagging worry that none of it can be all that significant if life doesn't turn out to be fair. 

The problem is timeless, and it doesn't require a fluency in formal philosophy or theology to confront it: If God is all-powerful and all-loving, why does He allow bad things to happen to good people? 

I think I first came across what is called the Epicurean Paradox on God and evil while reading David Hume:

Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?

Later, I found what is most likely the earliest surviving account, from Lactantius:

God, he says, either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? Or why does He not remove them?

In the simplest of terms, I find that the dilemma addresses the two obstacles I face in my daily estimations about the greater order behind things: I struggle with thinking of God too narrowly, and I have difficulty with the reality of suffering. 

As soon as I say that God lacks either the power or the goodness to overcome evil, I am no longer thinking about God at all. I am confusing a Creator with another creature, something absolute and infinite with something relative and finite. I am assuming limitations to Being where there can be no limitations, and I am failing to move beyond the imperfections of my own existence. 

Tied closely to that weakness of perception is then also my uncertainty about what I even mean by "evil". If I define evil as something that causes pain and loss, and automatically assume this to be an unbearable hardship, then I can only conclude that God is being unjust when he forces me to endure it. 

And here is where a Stoic Turn can make all the difference, and can allow for a completely different interpretation. If there is indeed a God, lacking in nothing, and He orders the world through Providence, the way out of the seeming paradox is to recognize that I have misplaced my sense of where benefit and harm truly lie. 

Once I work from a Stoic model, where the human good is to be found not in what happens to us but in what we decide to do, it becomes clear that no circumstance is in and of itself an evil for me. My happiness is in the fulfillment of my nature, which is measured by my own thoughts and actions. When anything has occurred, it is my attitude that determines what I will make of it, whether it will become a blessing or a curse. 

In this Providence never fails me, because it always offers opportunities to live with wisdom and with virtue, to do what is right in the face of any situation. Yes, things will come and things will go, and yes, I will feel both pleasure and pain, and that provides the very context for the possibility of my choices. 

Both Epicurus and Hume define happiness by the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain, and so it is quite understandable that they see a contradiction here. In a world so enamored of gratification, status, and possessions, it is easy to fall into that trap. 

It doesn't need to be that way. If I look to a deeper sense of human dignity, and discover meaning and purpose in character instead of convenience, the Epicurean Paradox falls away. That a good life asks for conviction and commitment, and seeks no further reward, can be a true expression of justice. 

Written in 3/1996

IMAGES: Epicurus, Lactantius, David Hume