James P. Sterba

James P. Sterba is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, working primarily in ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. Trained in the analytic tradition, he has published extensively on justice, peace studies, environmental ethics, and the rationality of morality, before turning sustained attention to the problem of evil.

In his book Is a Good God Logically Possible? (2019), Sterba advances a renewed logical argument from evil, contending that an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect God could not permit the horrendous evils we observe—particularly the suffering inflicted on innocents—because doing so would violate moral requirements that are themselves binding on any morally perfect agent. He draws explicitly on principles from just-war theory and the Pauline Principle (that one may not do evil that good may come) to argue that standard free-will defenses and skeptical theist responses fail. The work has provoked vigorous engagement from theist philosophers including Richard Swinburne, Peter van Inwagen, and Trent Dougherty.

Sterba's debate volume with Richard Swinburne, Could a Good God Permit So Much Suffering?, stages this controversy directly. Critics have challenged his appeal to moral analogies between human agents and God, and questioned whether his Pauline Principle is properly applicable to the divine case. Sterba's contribution has reinvigorated the logical problem of evil after decades dominated by evidential formulations following Plantinga's free-will defense.