Divine Morality or Divine Love? On Sterba’s New Logical Problem of Evil

Abstract

In his recent version of the logical problem of evil, James Sterba articulates several moral principles that, on the assumption that God is morally perfect, seem to entail God’s non-existence. Such moral principles, however, only apply to God on the assumption that he is a moral agent. I first argue against this assumption by appealing to recent work by Mark Murphy before, secondly, suggesting an alternative way to frame Sterba’s argument in terms of divine love. One can distinguish God’s motivation to promote creaturely welfare on the basis of love from a motivation grounded in morality, and I claim that doing so results in a stronger form of the logical argument.

Keywords

• problem of evil
• rationality
• value theory
• divine agency