Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Several different problems may be called “the problem of evil,” only one of which interests Hobbes, namely, the question, “On the supposition that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, why do good people suffer (or why do they suffer disproportionately to their sins)?” Hobbes never questions the supposition, which is the easiest way to solve or dissolve the problem. Given the conception of God in the supposition, it seems to follow that a person prospers if and only if she is good, and suffers if and only if she is bad. This is the principle taught in the book of Deuteronomy and the moral of the history of Israel, taught in the Deuteronomic history narrated in the Old Testament. Hobbes upholds the tradition: “even in this life the good fare better than the bad, and there is no art of outstripping others in gaining of wealth or honours (or anything else in this life which may be more delightful than these) more effective than honesty” (AW, pp. 460–1).People who doubt this out of the pain of their own suffering nonetheless think that they are being treated unjustly by God. Hobbes has two basic replies, an unsympathetic one and a logical one. The unsympathetic reply is that people for the most part exaggerate their own innocence: “Anyone you care to point to supposes he is good … Undeniably the complaint [that the evil prosper] is a universal one; but its cause is that ... log in or subscribe to read full text