C.S. Lewis offers a striking image in Reflections on the Psalms: “But of course these conjectures as to why God does what He does are probably of no more value than my dog’s ideas of what I am up to when I sit and read.” Put simply, Lewis suggests that God’s ways may be so far above ours that our attempts to explain them are as futile as a dog guessing why its owner reads.
Lewis was not directly addressing the problem of evil in that chapter, yet his image provides a powerful response to that problem in both its logical and evidential forms. The logical problem of evil claims that God and evil are logically incompatible. The evidential problem of evil claims that the existence of evil makes God unlikely. If God could have reasons for allowing evil that are wholly beyond our comprehension, both objections lose their force.
Biblical resonance
Scripture itself points to the gap between divine and human understanding. Isaiah declares, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.” The book of Job dramatizes the same point: when God finally answers Job, the thrust of the response is not a catalog of reasons but a reminder that God’s perspective and purposes transcend human judgment. If God’s reasons can lie outside our ken, we are not in the position to conclude that God is logically inconsistent with goodness or that His existence is rendered improbable by the presence of evil.
Why this undermines the logical problem of evil
The logical problem of evil argues for a strict contradiction: an all-good, all-powerful God cannot coexist with evil. But the mere possibility that God has morally sufficient reasons beyond our understanding breaks that alleged contradiction. If it is possible that God’s reasons exist and are adequate, then the claim of logical incompatibility fails. No advocate of the logical problem can demonstrate that we humans could know whether God has such reasons; only God would know the fullness of those reasons. Once that epistemic humility is accounted for, the logical argument collapses.
Why this weakens the evidential problem of evil
The evidential problem sets a probabilistic challenge: the existence and scale of evil make God’s existence unlikely. Yet assessing that probability would require knowledge about all possible goods and ultimate purposes that a supremely wise being might see—knowledge we do not possess. Without omniscience, we cannot reliably calculate whether it is more probable that God lacks reasons for permitting evil or that He permits some evils for inscrutably greater goods. The epistemic gap leaves the evidential argument on unstable ground.
Practical illustration and conclusion
J.M.L. Monsabre once said “If God would concede me His omnipotence for 24 hours, you would see how many changes I would make in the world. But if He gave me His wisdom, too, I would leave things as they are,”
Can any thoughtful person, with any degree of confidence, say that if they were granted God’s power and wisdom, they wouldn’t see why the world is the way it is and say, “Oh, so that’s why God doesn’t stop this and that evil”?
When my wife and I leave the house sometimes, our dogs will cry as if they’re being abandoned and we are never coming back. But surely if they gained our level of understanding, they would say, “Oh, they’re going to the store to get my food, or they’re going to work to make money. They will be back, and they need to do this to take care of themselves and us.”
By the same token, our limited perspective may make our moral inferences about God similarly naive. We cannot disprove, nor with any justified confidence call improbable, the proposition that God has morally sufficient reasons beyond our comprehension for permitting evil. That epistemic possibility neutralizes the logical problem of evil and substantially undermines the evidential problem.
There are many theodicies and defenses worth engaging—soul-making accounts, free will defenses, and others—but even if they stall, Lewis’s reminder and the witness of the biblical poets remain: we are not in a position to judge God’s ways with certainty, and our guesses may be no better than a dog’s.
Expositing Reality 