Why do good people suffer? Fire tests gold

Seneca c. 4 BC · c. 65It is not that we have little time, but that we waste much.

What it claims

The misfortunes of good people do not prove the absence of Providence: they are hardships willed for their good (and for the example they give others).

Why

Hardships are not real evils: like a demanding father, God sends them to good people to make them stronger.

In short

"Why do good people suffer? Fire tests gold" is an argument by Seneca (On Providence, 2; 5; 6) on the question "Does God exist?" (answer: pantheism). Its claim: The misfortunes of good people do not prove the absence of Providence: they are hardships willed for their good (and for the example they give others). According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 2 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

On Providence, 2; 5; 6

Valid with an implicit premise

His friend Lucilius asks him: if a Providence governs the world, why do so many misfortunes befall good people? Seneca "pleads the cause of the gods". His answer: misfortunes are not real evils for a good person, and God sends them as a demanding father trains his child. Note: Seneca's god is the Stoics' god, a reason present throughout the universe and bound to fate. For him, "this great whole is one, and it is god": we therefore file it under pantheism, like Cicero's Balbus, even though his "fatherly" Providence brings it closer to theism.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a God who loves good people and wants to make them better, facing hardships that are useful and do no real harm, but who does not will them: he could have strengthened them another way. The misfortunes are then no longer "willed for their good".

Valid with P4. P1 removes misfortune's status as a real evil, P2 gives it a use, P3 says God wants the good of good people. But the three still need linking: a God who loves in this way chooses exactly these hardships (P4). This is the image of the stern father, which Seneca develops at length without stating it as a rule. The argument answers only part of the problem of evil: it speaks of good people, not of children, animals, or people whom suffering breaks rather than strengthens. Compare with Leibniz (the best of worlds) and Augustine (evil comes from freedom).

Analogy. A coach makes his best athlete run in the rain and leaves the others under shelter. It is not that he loves him less: it is the one he counts on most. A spectator who sees only the rain thinks it unfair.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Objection anticipated by Seneca attacks premise 3

It is unjust that good people are wounded, maimed, chained, while the wicked live healthy, free and in luxury. A father who loves his children would not treat them worse than others.

Sénèque replies

Sénèque

Is it unjust that brave men take up arms, spend the night in camp and stand guard with their wounds bandaged, while in the city the debauched live at ease? And is it unjust that maidens of the highest birth are woken at night for sacred rites, while fallen women sleep soundly?

The debate goes on (our summary) Seneca goes on: "labour calls for the best", and good people toil "of their own free will" (5, 4). So the soldier image assumes one has enlisted. But a sick child or a war victim enlisted for nothing. The answer holds for the wise person who accepts the hardship, less for those who undergo it without having chosen it.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Seneca answers with the soldier image: the best are called to the hardest tasks. Our summary notes that this image assumes the hardship was chosen. The core disagreement: the Stoics count only vice as a real evil, while those who define evil by suffering reject that definition. An open point.

Hume (Philo, in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion) 1779 · attacks premise 2

Look at nature: living beings destroy one another, and none is sufficient for its own happiness. The sight is that of a blind nature producing, "without discernment or parental care", maimed and abortive children. Suffering strikes at random, good and wicked, humans and beasts: it does not look like a father's education.

Sénèque replies

Sénèque Anticipated answer (On Providence, 5, 9)

Why did God distribute fate so unjustly, giving good people poverty, wounds, bereavement? Because the craftsman cannot change his material. Some qualities cannot be separated from others. Sluggish minds are made of inert elements; to form a man worthy of the name, a harsher fate is needed. Fire tests gold, misfortune tests brave men.

The debate goes on (our summary) This answer limits God's power: he does not choose his material, and he himself obeys the fate he wrote (5, 8). This is consistent with Stoicism, but it is no longer the all-powerful God of classical theism. And it still speaks only of good people: Hume also has in view animals and the innocent, whom nothing strengthens. Hume died in 1776; his Dialogues appeared in 1779.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Seneca answers in advance that the craftsman cannot change his material: God does his best with what fate imposes. This answer limits God's power, which a Stoic accepts, and speaks only of good people, whereas Hume also has animals and the innocent in view. The core disagreement: must Providence be that of an all-powerful God, and watch over each being or over the whole? An open point.

In the same family · The problem of evil

Evil is not a thing: privation and free willAugustine of Hippo