Will he consider evil as part of a greater good? Or is it something beyond our reason? What answer would be most consistent with his beliefs?
1 Answer
It seems that Kierkegaard was less concerned with evaluating the sorts of concerns for which the "problem of evil" was designed to present and more interested in considering the human response to experiences in life, such as evil and suffering.
For Kierkegaard, "evil" could be a good thing, because it is what spurs us on toward passion, which in turn grows us. Ultimately, this growth can lead the religious person through the necessary "leap of faith". Abraham wouldn't be the hero he is without facing the binding of Isaac. Without suffering, we would live in perpetual ignorance of our state in the world, lulled into that ignorance by comfort.
Because of this, I would suspect that Kierkegaard would not see evil as a problem, and therefore would demand that one would have to offer proof that the God in question would not want there to be evil in the world. This would lean into a common refutation of the "problem of evil", that God has a purpose for evil, and if so, this invalidates the alleged problem.
The "problem of evil" is most often presented as a primarily emotional argument. Many common religions don't actually state outright that their god prefers a world without suffering, and so the argument relies on the listener presuming that the good and kind nature of their god would somehow intuitively contradict that god using suffering for good. So, if one takes Kierkegaard's view and does not hold the intuition that suffering is inherently useless, then the problem would cease to exist.
