I have previously explored two limits which can be placed on the argument from suffering: the problems of counterfactuals and of coercion. In keeping with the ‘C’ theme, I would like to explore a third, which I term the ‘comprehension problem’. I have alluded to this problem in my writing on the other two, but here I will explore it in more depth. The problem itself is quite straightforward: the argument from suffering, in order to function as a disproof of God, must require human comprehension to be equal to divine comprehension. I do not think that this is a reasonable supposition in any form, and I will now elaborate on why.

The argument from suffering is, by nature, and internal critique: it adopts the assumptions of the worldview in question, and seeks to demonstrate some kind of internal inconsistency. In this case, it allows for the possibility of ‘God’ in the theistic sense most commonly used- an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving creator- and asserts that at least one of the divine properties is incompatible with the self-evident reality of suffering. Often there is no argument beyond “it is unthinkable that God would allow X”; the appeal is not to any particular chain of logical reasoning, but just to the felt, intuitive sense that the two things cannot coexist.

Here, I believe, we encounter another of the argument’s fatal limits, which often goes overlooked. As an internal critique, the argument must take into account the full theistic conception of God; if its aim deviates from this, the argument becomes irrelevant. It must really be God who is under attack, with the nature and qualities which theists throughout the ages have understood as proper to God. Crucially, this God must be understood as a being whose cognitive faculties far outstrip those of any mere mortal. Surely, if we are supposing that God exists, we must not imagine him to be only a bigger, more powerful version of ourselves; we cannot even begin to fathom how vast and deep His mind must be. The greatest intellects our species has ever produced must seem like nothing in comparison. Picture a raindrop against the waters of the Pacific, or a single pebble at the foot of Everest, or a match-flame against a nuclear fireball. That is the magnitude with which we reckon when we talk about God; I think it would be prudent for us to have a little humility in saying what we can and cannot understand of Him.

With this in mind: considering the terms of the internal critique, does it not seem reasonable to believe that God may have reasons which are entirely opaque to the human mind? If we are entertaining the God of classical theism, then it is an inescapable fact that God can think in terms and concepts incomprehensible to the human mind. We meet this phenomenon even among other people; I think of those rare individuals who spend their lives pursuing proofs of esoteric mathematical conjectures which only a handful of people will ever understand. It is the same with God, only magnified to the nth.

It will help to consider two separate but related examples. In the first case: imagine a father taking his son, three years old, to be vaccinated. The son has no comprehension of why this is necessary; he is aware only of the pain and the terror of the strange person menacing him with a needle. The presence of his father (as many fathers, I am sure, can attest) makes no difference to either malus. As far as he is concerned, this is all awful, incomprehensible, and unfair- yet it would be ludicrous to suggest that because the son cannot understand what is happening, the father is unjust for allowing (even causing) his son’s pain. It is the reasons which the father understands, but the son does not, which inform the justice of the situation.

In the second case: imagine that, at the end of a tour of Buckingham Palace, you discover that something has fallen out of your pocket. You do not know when or where it fell out. Limiting your search to a three-by-three-foot square of carpet, and finding nothing, you conclude that your lost item cannot be anywhere in the building. This would not be a reasonable conclusion in any world; yet this is precisely the position in which we find ourselves whenever we say, on the basis of a ‘why’ question, that God does not exist.

But, the response may come, we would expect God to make things clear to us. The problem is not that God cannot have a reason, but that God has not communicated that reason. It hardly seems fair for God to leave us to wonder- surely He would explain Himself? This response, I think, falls into the same error. When we argue along these lines, we are assuming a version of God who looks strikingly like ourselves, only with super-powers. Because we know (or think we know) what we would do if we were in charge, and because we can see that God has not deigned to do similar, we think this counts as a strike against God. As I have pointed out, if we are honest in maintaining an internal critique, then this is the very thing we cannot assume. God is not to be constrained by the limits of the human mind: as the prophet Isaiah so eloquently put it, “for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”¹