Here are some rambling thoughts. Comments are welcome.
A traditional formulation of the problem of evil is to ask: "Why do bad things happen to good people and good things to bad people?" An interesting feature of our discourse--both academic and popular--about the problem of evil is that the second part is not much talked about these days.
There are, of course, good reasons for me not to be too deeply worried about the second part. Sinner that I am, I had better hope that good things happen to bad people. God's mercy is sovereign, and he has the right to refrain from, or at least delay, punishing the sinner. And, anyway, in the end, vengeance is his, and he will repay the unrepentant (may his grace give us the gift of final perseverance).
Still, the second part of the question does seem to embody a genuine concern for justice. Whether or not there is something bad about someone bad flourishing, there is something prima facie bad about someone bad flourishing because of her bad deeds, and yet we do observe apparent cases of this.
One interesting thing is that this bipartite formulation of the problem of evil makes it clear that this problem is one of divine justice. But considered as a problem of justice, we can see that some of what we say about the second part of the question can also be applied to the first. It is not contrary to justice to delay punishment. Likewise, it is not contrary to justice to delay reward--in fact, it might not be contrary to justice to omit reward completely (if there were a duty to reward good people, altruism would be harder).
Of course, one might hold that besides the question of divine justice, there is the question of divine benevolence. My feeling is that traditionally when religious people have worried about the problem of evil, they have worried not so much about divine infinite benevolence but about divine justice. I wonder if there is a good reason for this. Perhaps the idea is that divine infinite benevolence is sufficiently covered by God's giving us being ex nihilo, or maybe even by the infinite benevolence involved in the Father's generating the Son and the Father and Son producing the Holy Spirit. Maybe there is something right about seeing the problem of evil as a problem about justice.
Whether or not there is something bad about someone bad flourishing, there is something prima facie bad about someone bad flourishing because of her bad deeds, and yet we do observe apparent cases of this.
Yes, although whether these apparent cases are genuine cases depends, in large part, on your view of human flourishing. If you take more the sort of view on this that e.g., Aristotle takes, then flourishing is largely constituted by living well as a human being, not by piling up external goods and bodily pleasures. And if so, then bad people, in performing bad deeds, are ipso facto corrupting themselves and living stunted, non-flourishing lives, even they appear to be flourishing.
Alex,
There is certainly a sense in which bad people flourish. But I would want to insist that there is a more important sense in which bad people do not flourish. Good things happen to them, to be sure, but they are not living how God intends for them to live and thus are not flourishing. All that to say, I'm suspicious about stating your worry in terms of flourishing. But perhaps I'm just caviling.
Good point, and one can make the same point about the other half of the problem--the just are always rewarded, simply by being just.
Good point, and one can make the same point about the other half of the problem--the just are always rewarded, simply by being just.
To some extent, yes, but to have it go through completely, you'd have to accept the Stoic view that virtue and flourishing/happiness are identical. For Aristotle, the suffering of a virtuous person on the rack is a genuine evil that can prevent him from achieving happiness, and external impediments (e.g., being stranded on a desert isle) can prevent the virtuous person from engaging in virtuous action.
One doesn't need the full Stoic view, but only the weaker claim that virtue outweighs any other harms. So maybe the person having virtue on the rack is less happy than the person having virtue not on the rack, but nonetheless both are happy.
One could also take the Aristotelian view that it is the exercise of virtue that makes one happy, but add to it that the exercise of virtue is always possible (e.g., in prayer).
Divine irony is a feature throughout the Scriptures. Pharaoh's decree to have the Hebrew firstborn put to the death was ironic in at least three ways: 1) Moses, one who escaped Pharaoh's decree, liberated the Hebrews from Egypt; 2) Moses was brought up in the palace, trained in the royal court; and 3) God later efficaciously (whereas Pharaoh was not efficacious in stopping the prophesied "liberator" from being born through his decree) judged Egypt by killing their firstborn.
David cries out against the success of the unjust and wicked. Indeed, this is a regular question the Psalmist poses to God. Yet isn't this what we'd expect to happen? Shortcuts in life are precisely shortcuts because they're immoral. They undercut the integrity of a rule or method or process by offering an easier way to do something which is not necessarily moral. It's "cutting corners," is it not?
Yet the ultimate irony will be that those who have enjoyed success because of their evil in this age will suffer a greater punishment in the age to come. It will reveal God's glory as the Supreme Judge to say to them, "You left life without being punished for your wrongs, but you cannot escape your wrongs now."
Although I wonder if it really would be a problem, were good things to happen to bad people... In this finite, inter-connected world there are always good people paying for such good things happening unjustly to bad people cutting corners; isn't it that which we find so wrong? After all, it is a good thing that salvation happens to sinners, utterly undeserved as it is (except in the sense that creatures do really deserve whatever their Creator wills for them), as you say.
(maybe religious people are wary of Envy masquerading as Justice, whilst the godless are usually arguing that a Creator could not be Good)
If evil acts are those that go against the divine Will, then why do they happen? Because it is the divine Will that they can - so how evil could evil acts be? Not very (they might be very unpleasant, for us or our loved ones, but then so might good acts!), presumably; so why should they be punished (any further, beyond the act itself being poor)? Maybe to lead the sinner to repent and be saved, but that is the gift of grace, which is a good thing; and Justice demands only that wrongs be righted, and whereas two wrongs don't make a right, saving grace does. So maybe Justice demands that good things should happen to bad people. That would be counter-intuitive, but is it unChristian? (When evil is uncleanliness, a question is, Why do clean things get dirty? and the intuitive answer to that is Duh!)
...and as you say, those are actually bad things happening to bad people, those so-called "good things" obtained through bad deeds (it not even being a profit to gain the whole world that way etc.)
Anyway, if a man slaps your face for no good reason, then Justice seems to require that you slap him back (an eye for an eye); but the Word said to turn the other cheek (vengence is the Lord's), so it is the divine Will that you do not slap him back. So Justice seems to be a Vice, not a Virtue after all; or rather, does Justice require that the evil-doer be punished, rather than, say, reformed?
My thoughts about Justice seem to be increasingly inchoate; but still, I wonder about it not being contrary to Justice to delay punishment: Maybe Justice is all about ending the injustice that obtains as the punishment (or reward) is postponed, so that the longer Justice is postponed, the greater the injustice; maybe Justice demands the swiftest possible righting of wrongs, but are those wrongs unpunished evils and unrewarded goods, or unsaved sinners? If the latter then maybe punishment might also (as you suggested for reward) be omitted completely after all.
Furthermore (sorry :-) if the common view of Justice, that punishment rights wrongs, is right, then instead of the Fall et al, a perfectly good God could have created demons, purely in order to punish them endlessly for being essentially evil, and yet that sounds like the god of Eth!
From the desert fathers:
The same Abba Antonios, pondering the ways of God, once asked: “Lord, how does it happen that many live very few years and yet others reach a ripe old age? And how is it that some live in poverty while others are rich? And how is it that the unjust continue to grow richer and the just are poor?” Then he heard a voice say to him: “Antonios, watch yourself, for those things which you ask about belong to the inscrutable ways of God’s wisdom and it is not to your benefit to learn of them.”
This seems also to be the lesson of Job, to a greater or lesser extent. Of course, being a philosophy blog, to a greater or lesser extent, such things are to be pondered here. But, I wonder if, also being a religion blog, the importance is not only on our response to Evil, but in true identification of what IS Evil?
Most Christians (to use an example) are or have become incapable of distinguishing between Good and Evil, and so call Evil that which is not, and Good, that which is not, and in doing so, pervert the Good justice that should be a Christian's proper response.
--Jonathan