As we may have already established from the first two chapters, Plantinga is all about shalom, the harmonious peace which was meant to occur with creation, and which is now much harder to see, much less achieve, after the fall. And it is the fall which Plantinga addresses in the third chapter of his book.
"Evil is what's wrong with the world," Plantinga states very plainly, then moving on to describe evil. "We might define evil as any spoiling of shalom, any deviation from the way God wants things to be." He describes sin as a sort of subset of evil.
The way I see it, evil is the distortion of good. I was very much impressed by Professor Paulo's use of electrical engineering in order to describe the way evil works. First, the source, which creates perfect waves. Then, as evil and sin have distorted God's good world, the waves are distorted. The only thing that fixes it is Jesus Christ, our filter. He takes away those distortions, making the wave good again. We have to keep going back to the filter, though, because our waves are easily distorted.
Something else that came up in class was the topic of Common Grace. To me, personally, it is very clear that God loves all and wants all to be saved through Christ. He also makes it very clear that not everyone will be saved. While grace is offered to all, not all will receive it. Perhaps some might find the idea strict, and others not strict enough. I don't know about any specific number of people who will be saved or have been saved, but I think the idea of limiting God's grace in and of itself is a little presumptuous.
Also, with the idea of the unsaved doctor doing good, I held my opinion in class because I was unsure of how to best explain my views. Now seems like an excellent opportunity to attempt to. While the doctor is gifted by God, and he is performing actions we consider to be "good," the doctor is not using his gifts to glorify God. Therefore, he is glorifying himself, in which case he is sinning. Now, this may sound harsh, but let me explain. God has the capability of using anyone's actions for His glorification. There is no question of that (and if there is, I recommend looking around every once in a while. There's proof of it everywhere). The question lies in the heart of the doctor. This makes it very difficult for us to judge whether or not what he does is good in God's eyes or not, since, as we all know, we cannot see into the heart of man. And I'm quite sure God made it that way purposefully, so that we might not judge, and in judging think too highly of ourselves, leading us once again to humility.
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