Why these two arrive together

Your specification puts two things in one place that most courses keep apart: the biblical accounts of Creation, and the problem of evil. It looks like an odd pairing until you notice what the required reading is. ⚠️ YOU ARE ASKED TO STUDY GENESIS 1-3. NOT GENESIS 1 AND SEPARATELY GENESIS 3. A SPAN. And read as a span it is one continuous piece of writing. Chapters 1 and 2 describe a world being made and repeatedly called good. Chapter 3 describes how, on this account, it stopped being so. ⚠️ WHICH GIVES YOU THE IDEA THIS WHOLE MODULE RUNS ON. THE PROBLEM OF EVIL IS ONLY A PROBLEM BECAUSE OF WHAT THE CREATION ACCOUNTS CLAIM. Think about what the argument actually needs in order to work. It needs someone to be claiming that the world was made by a God who is both able to prevent suffering and unwilling to allow it. Take that claim away and there is no difficulty left - a world with suffering in it would just be a world, requiring no explanation at all. So the problem is not an attack from outside on Christian belief. It arises from inside it, out of what Genesis 1 says about the goodness of both the creation and its creator. ⚠️ AND HERE IS THE PART WORTH CARRYING INTO THE EXAM: THE TRADITIONAL CHRISTIAN ANSWER COMES FROM THE SAME TEXT THAT CREATES THE DIFFICULTY. The Fall, in chapter 3, is the hinge. It is named in both of the things your specification asks you to study, and it is the reason they are set together rather than apart. One thing to be clear about before going on. This is a live disagreement among serious people, not a puzzle with a printed answer. ⚠️ YOUR EXAM ASKS YOU TO WEIGH IT, NOT TO BE TOLD HOW IT COMES OUT, and this module will not tell you.

Five words this topic runs on

Five terms, defined by what they are. What each one does in the argument comes next.

Match each case to its part in the argument

Harm one person deliberately does to another
Harm caused by an earthquake, where nobody decided anything
The claim that the world was made good, by a God able and willing to prevent harm
The account of a first disobedience, and of consequences following from it
The teaching that the effects of that disobedience reach everyone since

MORAL EVIL, and it is the kind the free-will response addresses most directly
NATURAL EVIL, and it is the kind that response has most difficulty with
THE PREMISE THE PROBLEM NEEDS, without which there would be nothing to explain
THE FALL, which is where the traditional answer is drawn from
ORIGINAL SIN, which extends that answer from the first humans to everyone

Where the difficulty comes from

Someone who holds no religious belief at all sees the same suffering in the world. Why is the problem of evil not a difficulty for them in the same way?

Because the difficulty depends on the claim that the world was made good by a God able and willing to prevent harm, and they are not making that claim
Because they encounter less suffering than believers do
Because they are not troubled by suffering
Because they think suffering is not real

One text, three jobs

Read the columns in order. The first sets up the difficulty, the second answers a large part of it, and the third is what a strong answer has to be honest about.

True about this argument

Select the TWO statements that are true.

The problem of evil arises from inside Christian belief rather than being an objection from outside it
The free-will response deals with moral evil more comfortably than with natural evil
Christians agree that Genesis 1 to 3 should be read literally
The problem of evil has been settled, and the exam expects you to say which side won

How to write about a disagreement you are not asked to settle

Questions on this topic are evaluative, and there is a way of writing them that collects marks and a way that quietly loses them. ⚠️ ATTRIBUTE EVERYTHING. Not "the world was made good", which states a belief as a fact. "Many Christians hold that the world was made good" reports it accurately, and an examiner can see you know the difference between describing a belief and sharing it. The same applies to the objection: "critics argue", not "the truth is". ⚠️ AND USE THE HEDGES, BECAUSE THEY ARE PRECISE RATHER THAN TIMID. "Many", "some", "traditionally", "the official teaching of one denomination is". Christians disagree with each other here, and a sentence beginning "Christians believe" almost always overstates. ⭐ NOW THE HABIT THAT SEPARATES THE TOP BAND, AND IT IS A MARKS ISSUE BEFORE IT IS A FAIR ONE. ⚠️ GIVE BOTH SIDES THEIR STRONGEST FORM. It is easy to state the problem of evil so crudely that any response knocks it over, and just as easy to state a Christian response so weakly that it collapses at a touch. An answer that defeats a weak version of either has argued against nothing, and examiners see it immediately. The strong version of the objection is about natural evil, not cruelty. The strong version of the response is that freedom which could not be misused would not be freedom at all. Meet those, not their shadows. One more thing specific to this topic, and it is often missed. ⚠️ WHETHER SOMEONE READS THE CREATION ACCOUNTS LITERALLY OR METAPHORICALLY CHANGES WHAT WORK THOSE ACCOUNTS CAN DO IN THE ARGUMENT. Read as history, the Fall describes an event with consequences. Read as story, it describes something true about human beings without locating it at a moment. Both are held; saying which reading a response depends on is a genuine analytical move, and much better than learning the two labels and stopping.

The response, and the place it gets harder

Take the traditional response at its strongest, because a weak version is not worth examining. It runs roughly like this. A creation containing beings who can genuinely choose is better than one containing beings who cannot. ⚠️ BUT A CHOICE THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY GO WRONG WOULD NOT BE A CHOICE AT ALL. So the same freedom that makes love and courage possible is what makes cruelty possible, and a God who removed the second would have removed the first with it. That is a serious argument and it does real work. Applied to harm people deliberately do to one another, it explains not only how such harm is possible but why a good creator might permit the conditions that allow it. ⚠️ NOW APPLY THE SAME RESPONSE TO AN EARTHQUAKE, AND WATCH WHERE IT STRAINS. Nobody chose the earthquake. No freedom is being protected by allowing it. The account that explained cruelty so well has, on the face of it, nothing to say here, and this is the strongest form of the objection rather than a technicality. Christians have answered in several ways, and they are not interchangeable. Some hold that the Fall damaged the whole of creation and not only human beings, so that a disordered natural world is part of the same consequence. Others hold that a world running on regular natural laws is a precondition for any meaningful choice at all, and that such laws cannot be suspended case by case without making the world unintelligible. Others again point to the Book of Job, which your specification names, and take from it that the demand for an explanation may itself be the thing being questioned. ⚠️ CRITICS REPLY TO EACH. That the first stretches the text further than it will go; that the second buys order at a price it never justifies; that the third declines to answer rather than answering. ⚠️ NOTICE WHAT AN EXAM ANSWER CAN DO WITH THIS AND WHAT IT CANNOT. IT CANNOT SETTLE THE ARGUMENT. It can say precisely where each response is strong, where it strains, and which of them is doing the most work for the case being made. That is what weighing means here.

Order the span you are asked to study

Put the stages of the required reading in order, from the opening of the account to the state of the world it describes.

A world is brought into being deliberately, and each stage is described as good
Human beings are placed in it, with a genuine choice open to them
The choice is made, and the account turns on that moment
Consequences follow, for the people involved and for their relationship with God
The world described from this point on is one in which suffering is present

The creation and suffering run

Five questions on the argument and the text it comes from. Three lives.

Spot the true creation and suffering facts

Tap the TWO statements that are true.

The problem of evil arises from claims made within Christian belief rather than from outside it
The free-will response addresses moral evil more directly than natural evil
Christians agree on whether the creation accounts should be read literally
The argument has been settled, and an exam answer should say which side is correct

Complete the suffering and creation facts

Suffering brought about by deliberate human action is _____, while suffering brought about by the workings of the natural world, with no human decision behind it, is _____. The account in Genesis 3 of the first disobedience and what followed is _____. The teaching that its effects are inherited by every human being rather than confined to the first is _____.

moral evil natural evil the Fall original sin the problem of evil omnipotence benevolence creation

Assemble an accurately stated response

Build a sentence that states a Christian response the way both an examiner and a believer would recognise.

Three answers to strengthen

Three pieces of student writing. Each answer has to carry the reasoning, not just the verdict.

A student states the problem of evil as: "If God existed there would be no bad things, and there are, so he does not." How should it be strengthened?
Another student summarises the Christian response as: "Christians just say it is all part of God's plan and we should not ask." What is wrong with that?
An answer opens: "Christians believe Genesis is a literal historical account, so the Fall really happened." What needs changing?

Explain why the two arrive together

A classmate has learned the creation accounts and the problem of evil as two separate topics and cannot see what connects them. Write them an explanation.

Explain why the problem of evil depends on claims made in the creation accounts, so that it arises from inside Christian belief rather than outside it
Explain the difference between moral and natural evil, with a brief and general example of each
Explain how many Christians draw a response from the account of the Fall, stating that response at its strongest
Explain why that response deals less comfortably with natural evil, and give one way Christians have answered that difficulty
Finish by explaining how reading the accounts literally or metaphorically changes what work they can do in the argument, attributing every view you report

Creation and the Problem of Evil

Use it, the way the marks are given

What you'll cover