Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
9
But let us see exactly what is being done here. Let us c all pain and misery ‘first
order evil’ or ‘evil (1)’. What c ontrasts with this, namely pleasure and happiness,
will be called ‘first order good’ or ‘good (1)’. Dist inc t from t his is ‘sec ond order
good’ or ‘good (2)’ whic h somehow emerges in a c omplex sit uat ion in whic h evil (1)
is a nec essary c omponent – logic ally, not merely c ausally, nec essary. (Exac t ly how
it emerges does not matter: in the c rudest version of this solution good (2) is
simply the heightening of happiness by the c ontrast with misery, in other versions
it inc ludes sympathy with suffering, heroism in fac ing danger, and the gradual
dec rease of first order evil and inc rease of first order good.) It is also being
assumed that second order good is more important than first order good or evil, in
particular that it more t han out weighs t he first order evil it involves.
Now t his is a part ic ularly subt le at t empt t o solve t he problem of evil. It
defends God’s goodness and omnipotenc e on the ground that (on a suffic iently long
view) t his is t he best of all logic ally possible worlds, bec ause it inc ludes t he
import ant sec ond order goods, and yet it admit s t hat real evils, namely first order
evils, exist. But does it still hold that good and evil are opposed? Not , c learly, in t he
sense that we set out originally: good does not tend t o eliminat e evil in general.
Instead, we have a modified, a more complex pattern. First order good (e.g.
happiness) contrasts wit h first order evil (e.g. misery): these two are opposed in a
fairly mechanical way; some second order goods (e.g. benevolence) try to
maximize first order good and minimize first order evil; but God’s goodness is not
t his, it is rat her t he will t o maximize sec ond order good. We might, therefore, call
God’s goodness an example of a third order goodness, or good (3). While t his
ac c ount is different from our original one, it might well be held t o be an
improve ment on it , t o give a more ac c urat e desc ript ion of t he way in whic h good is
opposed to evil, and to be consistent with the essential theist position.
There might, however, be several objec t ions t o t his solut ion.
First, some might argue that suc h qualities as benevolenc e – and a fortiori the
third order goodness which promotes benevolence – ha ve a merely derivative
value, that they are not higher sorts of good, but merely means to good (1), that
is, t o happiness, so t hat it would be absurd for God t o keep misery in exist enc e in
order to make possible the virtues of benevolence, heroism, etc. The theist who
adopts the present solution must, of c ourse, deny this, but he c an do so w it h s o me
plausibilit y, so I should not press t his objec t ion.
Sec ondly, it follows from this solution that God is not in our sense benevolent
or sympathetic : he is not c onc erned to minimize evil (1), but only to promote
good (2), and this might be a disturbing c onc lusion for some theists.
But t hirdly, t he fat al objec t ion is t his. Our analysis shows c learly t he possibilit y
of the existence of a sec ond order evil, an evil (2) c ont rast ing wit h good (2) as evil
(1) contrasts with good (1). T his would inc lude malevolenc e, c ruelt y, c allousness,
c owardic e, and st at es in whic h good (1) is dec reasing and evil (1) inc reasing. And
just as good (2) is held to be the important kind of good, the kind that God is
concerned to promote, so evil (2) will, by analogy, be t he import ant kind of evil,
the kind whic h God, if he were wholly good and omnipotent would eliminate. And
yet evil (2) plainly exists, and indeed most theists (in other contexts) stress its
existence more than that of evil (1). We should, therefore, state the problem of evil
in terms of second order evil, and against this form of the problem the present
solution is useless.