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Chapter 4 On the Problem of Evil and the Problem of Divine Hiddenness Unlike many Christians over the years, Campbell took seriously the philosophical challenges posed by atheists and religious skeptics; he did not think a Christian could simply dismiss or ignore them. Neither did he think that they are easily addressed . It did not surprise him when in 1826, for example, he received a letter from a young skeptic. The letter’s author (“Mr. D” in the published version) wanted to become a Christian to fulfill his mother’s deathbed wish, but he could not bring himself to believe in the Christian God, given the evil in the world and the biblical doctrine of eternal damnation.1 In the first of six replies, Campbell empathized with Mr. D, writing at one point, “I know there are many ‘seeking religion,’ who find [only] a sort of religion that does not wear well; a whole suit of it will become thread-bare in a few months.”2 The suit starts to wither and unravel, so he ventured , when formidable arguments are brought against it. For Campbell, though, the problem was not Christianity itself but the Christians who misrepresented it. They were often ill equipped to defend it properly and hence made it look flimsy. “Weak minds, like gun powder, are easily blown up,” Campbell told Mr. D,3 and some of the weakest religious minds were “like phosphorous” in that they “take fire without a single spark.”4 Throughout his career, Campbell tried to offer the help that was needed. He addressed, directly and indirectly, several of the most difficult problems posed to Christian belief, problems that generate arguments for atheism. The most salient of these problems is the problem of evil, as it is called, so Campbell’s response to it deserves a particularly close look. Oddly, though, it has not received much attention from the scholars who have discussed his philosophical work in any detail.5 What is more, the most notable runner-up to the problem of evil is the so-called problem of divine hiddenness, and no one to my knowledge has considered Campbell’s remarks on it. This shortage of discussion is understandable enough, in part because 90 On the Problem of Evil and the Problem of Divine Hiddenness Campbell’s responses to these problems are often buried in and scattered throughout his writings on other topics (such as hell, providence, universalism, and the role of the will in forming beliefs), and some work is required to piece together what his responses were. But the work needs to be done, especially given how important Campbell must have thought it was to address these two problems. This chapter is devoted to reconstructing his responses to them. At the least, the responses I present here are properly Campbellite, even if Campbell did not fully or consciously formulate them. Within his body of written work are the resources with which to develop these responses. I begin with an explanation of what one of the relevant arguments for atheism is, the so-called logical argument from evil, and then discuss how Campbell defends theism against it (§4.1). Then I examine the so-called evidential argument from evil and Campbell’s response to it (§4.2). The chapter concludes with a reconstruction of Campbell’s response to the problem of divine hiddenness (§4.3). I contend that Campbell offers a version of the free will defense against the logical version of the argument from evil and that he offers the resources for something akin to a skeptical theist response to the evidential version of the argument from evil. When it comes to the worries about the apparent hiddenness of God—and hence the argument from divine hiddenness—Campbell suggests that the real problem at hand is (among other things) the epistemic orientation of the nonbeliever, not the available evidence for God’s existence. 4.1. The Logical Problem of Evil and Campbell’s Free Will Defense It is standard practice these days for philosophers to begin their discussions of the atheological argument from evil by first noting that there are at least two distinct versions of it.6 The logical version of the argument from evil holds that God’s existence is logically incompatible with the existence of any amount of evil in the world. The more modest, evidential formulation of the argument from evil claims only that the existence of gratuitous or pointless evil provides strong evidence that God...

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