Romans 8:28, Genesis 50:20, Acts 2:23
The Most Powerful Objection
No objection to the existence of God carries more emotional force than the problem of evil. In its bluntest form: if God is all-powerful, He could prevent suffering; if He is all-good, He would want to prevent it; but suffering clearly exists. Therefore God either lacks the power, lacks the goodness, or does not exist.
This objection has been felt by believers as well as unbelievers. The Psalms of lament, the book of Job, Jeremiah's confessions — the Bible does not pretend the problem away. It faces it honestly.
The Logical Problem
The logical problem of evil argues that the existence of God and the existence of evil are logically contradictory — they cannot both be true. This is the strongest form of the argument.
The Christian response: The logical problem requires showing that God could have no morally sufficient reason for permitting evil. But this cannot be established. Once we admit that God might have morally sufficient reasons we cannot fully see — and given that we are finite, fallen creatures with limited perspective, this is entirely reasonable — the logical contradiction dissolves.
Alvin Plantinga's Free Will Defence is the most celebrated response: it is logically possible that a world containing free creatures who genuinely choose good is better than a world of puppets who cannot do otherwise. Creating free beings capable of love also creates beings capable of evil. God's creating free beings and permitting the evil they do may be the necessary condition for the highest goods.
The Evidential Problem
The evidential problem is weaker but more persistent: even if evil does not logically disprove God, the sheer quantity and distribution of suffering in the world makes God's existence improbable.
The Christian response: We are not well-placed to assess what God's purposes in suffering might be. The cross — the greatest evil ever committed — was simultaneously the greatest act of redemption in history (Acts 2:23). If the worst event in history served the greatest purpose, the inference that any given suffering serves no good purpose is undermined.
Additionally: the problem of evil presupposes objective moral standards — the fact that suffering is genuinely bad, that injustice is genuinely wrong. But objective moral standards require God as their foundation. The argument that evil disproves God uses moral categories that only make sense if God exists.