Lesson Plan 2.8: The Problem of Evil

Course: Biblical Perspectives Grade Level: 12th Grade Date: Tuesday, September 22, 2026 Day of Unit: Day 9 of 14 Opener Type: BD — Brain Dump Duration: 47 minutes

Rescoped 2026-09-18. The problem of evil moves here from Monday, September 21. The Reliability of Scripture, Part 2 lesson that held this date is dropped — that material was covered in 2.5. Built from bp-2-8-presentation.key, which is last year's Lesson 2.10 deck.

Warm-up added 2026-09-22. A 3-minute syllogism warm-up now runs between ENGAGE and GENERATION ATTEMPT — simple, non-theological three-premise arguments so the class can see the if/then/therefore shape, including two that look valid but aren't, before meeting the logical problem of evil's three premises.

Structure

• The three GENERATION ATTEMPT questions and the three EXPLAIN sub-headers are the same three items in the same order.
• Students attempt each one from the worksheet sources on the front of the sheet.
• The worksheet footer is the exit ticket.

Today is the source period for debate topic 5, the all-loving and all-powerful God who permits childhood cancer and school shootings. Papers due Friday, September 25.

See You At the Pole is tomorrow. First slide of the deck.

Learning Objectives

• Students will state the logical form of the problem of evil and distinguish it from the personal form.
• Students will explain why arguing from possibility is a weaker response than arguing from the standard.
• Students will state the presuppositional response and why the objection presupposes what it denies.
• Students will explain how the cross and the resurrection answer the personal form of the problem.

Materials

• bp-2-8-slide-plan — class presentation slides
• Bibles for each student
• bp-2-8-worksheet-problem-of-evil — the two arguments, the three possibility responses, and three of the four statements are printed on the sheet; the de Bres letters are on the slides; all Scripture is looked up

Lesson Sequence

OPENER — BD: Brain Dump (4 minutes)

• Prompt: No notes. Write everything you remember about the presuppositional approach from earlier in this unit — what it asks, and why it is different from the classical arguments.
• Take two or three and type them onto the slide.
• Today's third section runs on this. Anyone who cannot produce "by what standard" should write it at the top of the sheet now.

ENGAGE (5 minutes)

The Greatest Enigma.

• Read the Bavinck quote off the slide:
  • "The question of the origin of evil, second to that of existence itself, is the greatest enigma of life and the heaviest cross for the intellect to bear... Insofar as philosophy has taught us anything significant in this matter, it is, broadly speaking, a strong proof for the scriptural truth that this world is inexplicable without a fall." (Herman Bavinck)
• Fast questions, hands only:
  • Bavinck calls this the heaviest cross for the intellect to bear. Why would a Christian say that rather than claim to have it solved?
    • Looking for: because it is a real problem, not a debating point, and because pretending to have solved it is dishonest.
  • Has anyone ever had this raised at them as an argument, and did it sound like a debate or like something that had happened to the person?
    • Deliberately open. The answer sets up the logical-versus-personal distinction in section one.
• This is the objection most likely to be aimed at you by someone who is not arguing.

WARM-UP — Syllogism Basics (3 minutes)

• Oral only, no worksheet space. Fast, before the pairs hit the three-premise argument on the sheet.
• Walk these five aloud, one at a time:
  1. All dogs are mammals. Rex is a dog. Therefore, Rex is a mammal.
  2. If it rains, the ground gets wet. It is raining. Therefore, the ground is wet.
  3. All squares have four sides. This shape has four sides. Therefore, it's a square.
  4. If you're a bachelor, you're unmarried. John is a bachelor. Therefore, John is unmarried.
  5. If someone is a good doctor, they cure sick patients. Dr. Smith cures sick patients. Therefore, Dr. Smith is a good doctor.
• Ask which ones are actually valid. #3 and #5 fail — both look tidy but the conclusion sneaks in something the premises never established.
• Land the point: a syllogism can look airtight and still smuggle in an assumption. That's the flaw to hunt for in premise 1 of the logical problem of evil, coming up next.

GENERATION ATTEMPT (12 minutes)

Pairs, worksheet front.

I. Summary of the Basic Argument (4 min)

• Two versions of the objection are printed on the sheet, one set out as three premises and one as a personal statement. What is the difference between them?
  • Looking for: the first is a formal claim that the premises contradict each other, and the second is an experience. The first is answered with an argument; the second usually is not.
  • Expect pairs to call them the same argument in different words. Push once: which one would you respond to with a syllogism, and which one would you respond to by sitting down?
• In the three-premise version, which premise would a Christian actually deny?
  • Looking for: premise 1. Nobody disputes that evil exists. The hidden assumption is that an all-good, all-powerful God could have no sufficient reason to permit evil.
  • Expect pairs to attack premise 2. Push once: do you want to be the person arguing that evil does not exist?

II. Classical/Evidentialist Approach (4 min)

• Three standard responses are printed on the sheet — soul-making, free will, and Plantinga's noseeum analogy. What is each one claiming?
  • Looking for: that it is possible God permits evil for soul development; that genuine love requires genuine freedom, which can be abused; that we are not in a position to see whether suffering is pointless, so we cannot claim it is.
  • Expect the free-will answer to be the popular one and to be stated as settled fact rather than possibility.
• All three argue that something is possible. What does that win you, and what does it not win you?
  • Looking for: it defeats the claim that the premises are strictly contradictory, and it wins nothing else. It does not show the reason, and it does not comfort anyone.

III. Presuppositional Approach (4 min)

• Four statements are printed on the sheet, from an anonymous young woman, Dostoyevsky, Lewis, and Plantinga. What do the last three have in common?
  • Looking for: each one argues that calling something genuinely evil requires a standard outside yourself, and that a secular account cannot supply one.
  • Expect pairs to summarize them individually rather than find the common move.
• Read the first statement again. What has she given up in order to keep her position?
  • Looking for: the ability to say that murdering large numbers of people is actually wrong. She is consistent, and the consistency is the cost.

Share-out: take two or three, type them onto the slide, correct nothing.

EXPLAIN (12 minutes)

1. Summary of the Basic Argument (4 min)

• The logical form, as it is usually set out:
  • Premise 1: If God is omnipotent, omni-benevolent, and omniscient, then evil does not exist.
  • Premise 2: Evil exists.
  • Premise 3: Therefore God does not exist.
• Premise 1 is the one carrying the weight, and it is asserted rather than argued. It assumes an all-good, all-powerful God could have no sufficient reason to permit any evil.
• The personal form is the one you will actually meet: "I can't believe in a God who would allow ___ to happen."
  • It is not usually an argument. It is a wound stated as an argument, and answering it with a syllogism is a pastoral failure.

2. Classical/Evidentialist Approach (4 min)

• Why I do not use these:
  • I do not like working in the realm of possibility when I can work in the realm of reality.
  • I do not like playing with concepts about God that I believe are unbiblical just to prove an argument wrong. I may lead people astray.
  • They are too ethereal for street-level apologetics and confuse people more than they help.
• Soul-making. It is possible to envision a world in which overcoming challenge and suffering develops the soul, and God permits evil for that.
• Free will. An all-loving God would need to permit free will for love to be real, and free will can be abused. Popular now, and Greg Boyd's open theism builds on it. I believe open theism is heresy; the argument still shows the flaw in the logic.
• Plantinga's noseeum. You can report whether there is a Saint Bernard in the tent. You cannot report whether there is a no-see-um in the tent. The objection assumes a reason for suffering would be Saint Bernard-shaped, and that is assumed rather than argued.
• All three establish possibility. That is enough to break the claim of strict contradiction and no more.

3. Presuppositional Approach (4 min)

• The presuppositional response is one question: if there is no God, how can you call anything evil at all?
  • "Without God and the future life... everything is permitted, one can do anything." (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
  • "My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of 'just' and 'unjust'?... What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?... Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple." (C.S. Lewis)
  • "Can there really be any such thing as horrifying wickedness...? I don't see how. There can be such a thing only if there is a way that rational creatures are supposed to live, obliged to live." (Alvin Plantinga)
• The objection borrows the standard it denies. To be outraged at evil is to appeal to something above your own preference.
• Why are they bothered at all?
  • There is a God.
  • He has revealed himself through creation.
  • He has written the law on their hearts.
  • If they think it is good to be angry and bothered by these atrocities, they must believe in this God. There is no other way.

ELABORATE (8 minutes)

Rest and Trust God (5 min)

• Scripture does not minimize any of this. It portrays suffering in all its concreteness and evil in all its complexity — Judges, Job, Lamentations.
• It never attributes the cause of sin to God, and never isolates it from his counsel.
  • "God cannot be tempted with evil... But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire." (James 1:13-14, ESV)
  • "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today." (Genesis 50:20, ESV)
• We are not given airtight explanations.
  • "Our job is not to try to 'be God' and rethink how God could have run the universe... We enter as characters in the middle of the story, not as authors of the story who know all of the reasons God allowed the fall or this evil event." (Todd Billings)
• The cross is what we are given instead of an explanation.
  • Was Jesus' suffering and death a good thing or a bad thing? If one event can be both supremely evil and supremely good at once, other events can be too.
  • "If we ask the question: 'Why does God allow evil and suffering to continue?' and we look at the cross of Jesus, we still do not know what the answer is. However, we now know what the answer isn't. It can't be that he doesn't love us." (Tim Keller)
• And the resurrection is what the answer finally is.
  • "'Is everything sad going to come untrue?' The answer of Christianity to that question is — yes. Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost." (Tim Keller)
  • "They say of some temporal suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory." (C.S. Lewis)
• Guido de Bres wrote the Belgic Confession, and wrote to his wife Catherine from prison knowing he would die for it. The letter excerpts are on the slides. This is what the doctrine looks like when it is load-bearing.

Project Checkpoint (3 min)

• If your topic is number 5, the all-loving and all-powerful God who permits childhood cancer and school shootings, today was your paper.
• Papers due Friday, September 25, by 11:59pm in Google Classroom.

EXIT TICKET — Worksheet Footer (3 minutes)

• The footer at the bottom of the sheet is the exit ticket: clearest thing, muddiest thing, one question for Q&A Day (tomorrow, Wednesday), and the confidence row.
• Sheets collected on the way out.

Homework

• Read the Epilogue of Making Sense of God, posted in Google Classroom.
• Write your paper.