"If God is all-powerful and all-good, why is there evil? Either God is not all-powerful or not all-good." This is the second most important philosophical question, right behind "Does God exist?" In my humble opinion, Plantinga answers the problem of evil extremely well and, until the evidence presents itself, answers it sufficiently for me.
I have felt that Christian scholars and apologists have either not tried to answer this question or have provided poor arguments for it. This book, even though it is short, is extremely dense; I would say graduate or even doctoral level dense. Advice: you need to go very slowly through it and take notes. One of the positives of this book is that it is not for the "laymen." I often am annoyed by apologists for how they try and dumb things down, which leaves those of us who can understand complex philosophical concepts yearning for more. Plantinga does not do this. Everything in this book is complex and you need to be slow reading it.
2/3rds of the book (1-75) addresses the problem of evil and successfully makes the defense that there can be an all-powerful and all-good God with evil in the world. It is absolutely brilliant. Some of the best philosophy I have ever read. I will not share his arguments, as I do not want to spoil them for you. If you are by some chance not convinced by the arguments you must at least acknowledge that it is an outstanding argument. I have seen some pretty junior philosophical reviews that attempt to show that his argument isn't sound. This is simply untrue. Let me remind all of you that you can acknowledge an excellent argument while still not being totally convinced.
The last 1/3rd of the book (77-111) is his argument for the existence of God. This is the part of the book that I am somewhat less impressed with. While I still find his philosophical reasoning sound and on an expert level, it doesn't quite hit home the same way the first 2/3rds did. I also question why he felt the need to add this last 1/3rd. Plantinga takes on his reformed version of the ontological argument, and has a few objections that he refutes. I personally do not think that the ontological argument is the strongest argument for the existence of God, but he does a good job presenting it. Once again, I think he could have ended the book with simply the first 75 pages and it would have been sufficient. But I suppose perhaps he felt that it would be too short of a book, or maybe his publisher had some say in it (these are not facts, these are simply my thoughts. I could and more than likely am wrong).
To my atheist, agnostic and deistic friends, I would ask you to do a few things. Become Descartes and empty your mind of all biases before reading. Then, go slowly through it. Truly ponder what Plantinga is saying. Take notes. While I am a Christian (a former deist), I can acknowledge that accepting that an all-powerful and all-good God can exist with evil in the world does not necessarily mean that God himself exists. These are two different arguments in themselves; one of them acknowledges to a degree that God does exist, but argues that he is either not all-powerful or not all-good. The other question in itself does not begin with God even existing, but asking "Does God exist?" Please go into reading this book with this in mind.
Overall it is fantastic. I highly recommend.
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Top reviews from other countries
Michael Künnemann
A Milestone re. The Ontological Argument
Reviewed in Germany on June 20, 2023
JGomez
Logical and very interesting
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 5, 2013pasturederelict
well-thought-thru but not readily-accessible to all
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