Response To Eleonore Stump's Paper

Eleonore Stumps starts her paper by explaining what the problem of evil is. The problem of evil is that the claim God is omnipotent and omniscient is contradicting to what is evident in the world, that evil exist. Many philosophers who are agreeing in this claim believes that if God is all powerful and all knowing he would have diminished the evil that exist in the world. For this to be true there must be evidence that God is morally incapable to do what is right. However, Stumps takes a different turn to prove that there is another reason why evil exists in the world, by looking at different Christian beliefs in details. First, she talks about the fall of Adam and how the ability to do evil is inheritable. She used Anselm’s perception of free will to describe

Because of Adam’s weakness to use his given strength to resist evil, this same weakness is inheritable to mankind because the factor of weakness was exposed as another alternative to doing good. Adam opened the door for evil to enter the world. However, many disagrees with this claim because they are claiming that if God is all powerful then he could have easily taken out or prevented the inheritable defective freewill. Stump debunks this objection by saying that if God intervenes and prevents the consequences of individual’s evil choices, then it would no longer be “free” will because God had tampered it. If God cannot directly fix the defect of free will, many believe that it is us humans who must take matters into our own hands and fix it. But, Stumps claims that we cannot do this because if we are born with the defective will to do what is not right in the first place, then we cannot fix our own will where it all stems from. So, Stump believes that humans must realize that they need God to change their evil ways, in this way it is still free will and God is able to fix it directly as it comes from the individual’s own