If God, Why Evil?
Few problems have faced man since the fall as inescapable as evil. Moral, natural, or both. Even the most antireligious skeptic will still speak passionately about the reality of evil in this world, from the transatlantic slave trade to the newly revealed Epstein Island; the world is clearly full of severe instances of evil. This paper will deal with how God can be vindicated as all good and powerful in light of evil. Along with the inescapability of facing evil in the world, man also inescapably faces God’s presence everywhere he turns (Psalm 139). This is what causes the conversation to shift constantly to God’s relationship to evil. The ancient man Job, in the midst of suffering, said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1:21 ESV). His wife then counsels him (aware of God’s presence in the situation), saying, “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). This paper will defend the position that God purposes evil for His glory and our good.
The Problem of Evil: Ancient and Modern Voices
Richard Norton recounts that the earliest presentation of the problem of evil is found in the famous trilemma of the philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE), which states that if God is willing but unable to prevent evil, he lacks omnipotence; if able but unwilling, he is malevolent; if both able and willing, why does evil exist?[1] Later in the Enlightenment period, David Hume (1711-1776 AD) claims that Epicurus’s old questions have still not been answered.[2] A point to understand preliminarily is that there is actually not only one problem of evil. John Feinberg notes how the topic of God and evil applies to varying theological systems one brings to the table as well as the many facets of it: moral evil, natural evil, the intensity of evil, and the debate on whether or not there is gratuitous evil, which means evils without a reason.[3]
Significant Cases of Evil
To highlight a couple of case examples, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s work called The Brothers Karamazov captures some of the worst cruelties committed by the Turks and Circassians in Bulgaria against the Slavs. The most striking include what was done to children: ripping babies out of the wombs of the mothers, throwing infants in the air and catching them with the spear type heads of their guns, and most pause worthy is when a soldier would deceive an infant with its mother by making it laugh and holding its hand out trustingly to the soldiers gun, and then the trigger being pulled, blowing the babies’ brains out while laughing.[4]
Another scene in history to note is captured in Viktor Frankl’s work Man’s Search for Meaning, where he recounts his experience in the Nazi concentration camps. He narrates how groups of people were put into trucks and, thinking they were leaving the camps for freedom, were rather taken to huts, locked up, and burned to death.[5] He says that conditions were so miserable that the opportunity to commit suicide was desirable, yet a rule was made that no one could cut the rope of someone making the attempt to hang themselves.[6] It is not hard for one to feel the intensity of these evils.
It is in light of such intense suffering that some have thought it best to depart from theism entirely. Liberal Scholar and religious skeptic Bart D. Ehrman explains in his book God’s Problem that it was the problem of suffering that haunted him for years and ultimately was the reason he says he “lost his faith”.[7] Before the topic of theodicy (the part of theology devoted to coping with the problem of evil)[8] is engaged, it first must be shown why it is that no matter how unsatisfying an anti-Christian may claim to be with what is such a theodicy, it is the alternative worldviews that suffer the most from this problem. In this way, evil is strong evidence for Christian Theism, not against it.
Why Evil Can’t Defeat Christian Theism
Atheism
Famous Atheist Richard Dawkins, after spending serval pages narrating through various horrific instances of evil and suffering concerning animals getting eaten and busloads of people dying in a crash says in his book River Out of Eden, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”[9] He affirms the metaphysical claim that the universe is “just electrons”.[10] Of course, given the scientist he is, he does not mean strictly speaking that only electrons exist; however, he is conceding the point of metaphysical materialism as capturing all of reality. He makes a consistent conclusion that, given this metaphysic, there is no evil. It should be called into question, given this concession, how it is that one with this atheistic/ naturalistic worldview can have adequate grounds to identify evil in the world so as to formulate a meaningful objection to Christian Theism. Relevant to this point is the naturalistic fallacy, which is made when an ethical concept is identified with a natural concept.[11] Put simply, is does not equal ought.
Another famous atheist, Christopher Hitchens, spends an entire book narrating the evils of religion from alleged absurdities in dietary laws, genocide, child abuse, and lies promulgated. He claims that these amount to religion poisoning the world.[12] However, it must be pointed out that, given the metaphysical framework of atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins, there are no moral grounds to complain about the world being poisoned. Nature does not care about morality, on their view. Thus, there can be no problem of evil for them since there is no basis to identify evil in the first place. Unfortunately, as the Bible teaches as well as John Calvin, their sensus divinitatis (internal knowledge of God and moral consciousness) leaves them in an existential tension with what they say they believe about the world (the lie) versus what they know within about it (the truth). (Rom. 1:19-32).[13] It is clear then, that as long as atheists are consistent with their ontology, they have no place in the conversation about the problem of evil.
Pantheism
The religions and philosophies of the East have no more of a place in the discussion, much less objection to Christian Theism, since, according to them, all of reality is essentially one. The Bhagavat Gita states in 13.30 that “When one sees the. Multiplicity of the states of being abiding in one, and spreading out from that one alone, one then arrives at Brahman.”[14] If this metaphysic is followed consistently, there can be no identification of evil, since there is no absolute knowable standard by which to distinguish good from bad. For the pantheist, the behavior of the Nazi who burnt the Jews alive is no more or less sacred than the humanitarian who feeds hungry children in poverty. All events are equally divine.
False Religion
As it pertains to the place anti-Christian religions have in the conversation about the problem of evil, a couple of things can be noted. For one, many false religions have built upon the foundation of the Christian Scriptures (Islam, Mormonism, cults) and thus, when their erroneous deviations have been exposed, they point back to the Christian position on this issue. However, when it comes to polytheistic religions, Jason Lisle points out how good and evil, in their ultimate sense, become arbitrary since there is no absolute personal being whose character and commands can ground them. The anti-biblical transcendence of the Islamic God taught in Surah 42:11 (the doctrine of tanzih) also precludes it as a possible platform on which to consistently engage this topic.[15] As it stands, false religions have no place in the conversation of the problem of evil because of their absence of an adequate foundation for identifying evil. In summary, evil can never defeat Christian Theism because there is no alternative worldview that provides an intelligible platform from which to successfully make an objection.
The Christian Answer
Various attempts have been made in the history of Christian philosophy to answer the problem of evil. A popular attempt today, when one is asked “If God is all good and all powerful, why is there evil in the world?” is to respond with “Because of free will.” Effort is made to get God off the hook, so to speak, as it pertains to evil. Yet, the next question quickly creeps in, which is “Why did God allow humans to have free will?” This shows that appeal to creaturely free will does not adequately answer the question. It is better to affirm God’s sovereignty over all of the affairs of reality while making proper distinctions between God’s agency and creaturely agency. The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith is helpful when it explains in chapter five, point two on Divine Providence that though all events come about due to the decree of God and occur under His providence “. . . He orders events to occur according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.”[16] This is the biblical way of keeping God morally pure from sin without denying His sovereignty over all things. This shows that a God-centered answer to this is fitting. God did not have to allow creatures to sin. After all, the Bible teaches that there will one day be a heavenly state of existence where no creatures in heaven will sin nor want to. Why did God not create this state of affairs initially?
The Logical Problem Answered
Christian Philosopher Greg Bahnsen, in his book Always Ready, laid out a way for the alleged logical contradiction of the problem of evil to be resolved. The syllogism again states that if God is all good and all powerful, why does evil exist? Bahnsen says that there only needs to be a fourth premise added, which is that God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil which exists.[17] This, in fact, may not satisfy the longing to know the specific reason for evil; however, it does show the logical coherence of the situation concerning God and evil.
A Morally Sufficient Reason for Evil
Now that the logical problem has been resolved, progress has been made for the coherence of the Christian position regarding God and evil. Here, an attempt will be made to answer what the morally sufficient reason for evil is. The clearest place for the best answer is to turn to God’s special revelation. In one of the most famous stories in the Bible, the Exodus of Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, there is a place where God tells Moses to tell Pharaoh why he raised him up. Keep in mind that in this story, Pharaoh is the evil one who oppressed God’s people and hardened his heart continually against the Lord. If there was ever a clear case of evil spoken of in Scripture, this is surely one of them. God says that His reason for raising up Pharaoh was to “show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” (Ex. 9:16). In the New Testament, Paul quotes this passage in his explanation for God’s sovereign working in the world. Paul teaches that God moves history along according to His plan, which rests upon His choice. He shows that God chose what individuals’ lives would entail before they were born. Who He would show mercy to and who He wouldn’t. Every argument one could possibly make against the man-centered view of historical causation is brought to light. Finally, Paul makes the summary point that the world and history are owned by God. God is the molder and humanity is the clay; God can rightly do whatever He chooses with His world.
The explanation in Exodus 9:16 and Romans 9:17 provides some clarity into the answer for the morally sufficient reason for evil, namely, it is to show God’s power and bring knowledge of His name throughout the earth. Another explanation for evil can be found in Romans 3:5, which states, “If our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say?” Pastor/ Theologian John MacArthur says, “Unrighteousness therefore puts God’s righteousness on display.”[18] He cites another text to this effect, namely, Isaiah 9:2, which states, “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them.” MacArthur says, “The presence of evil provided the perfect opportunity to display His wrath and justice along with His redeeming grace and infinite mercy. . .”[19] Now, the answer is becoming clearer. So far, the explanation given by Scripture for the morally sufficient reason for evil is: to show God’s power, proclaim His name, and to display His wrath, justice, grace, and mercy. Yet, there is still more to the answer.
Romans 5:3-5 states that believers are to rejoice even in suffering since they know that suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which then produces hope. James says something similar in chapter one, verses two through four, when he encourages the believers to count it a joy when they face trials of various kinds, knowing that trials produce steadfastness. Peter echoes this concept as well in 1 Peter 1:6-7, which teaches that tested faith produces a stronger faith, like gold when it is refined through fire. Part of the answer to morally sufficient reason for evil seems to be for the establishment of second-order goods as it relates to man. John Frame explains that second-order goods are those that depend on the existence of first-order evils. Goods such as compassion exist only when there is a need to meet, patience when there is a trial, courage when there is an obstacle, justice when there is crime, and redemptive love when there is something or someone to redeem.[20] To use only one personal anecdote, I know that as my wife and I enter our 15th year of marriage, our love and confidence in one another is far richer than it was on day one. To be clear, as nice as it was on day one when there was only good and no problems, no trials, no angry arguments, no lies, and no forgiveness. Our love was virtually free of evil, but it was not as rich as it is now. This is what John Frame and the biblical writers seem to be speaking of when they point out the greater goods creatures experience when they undergo evil. It has been said that wielded metal is stronger than the original. One day, when saints are in heaven, worship God in light of personal sin committed, and the grace extended from God to them will be even richer than if the fall in the garden had never happened. Now the answer has evolved for the morally sufficient reason for evil to include: the display of God’s attributes and for creatures to know richer goods. Next, focus will be given to one of the most significant points in this whole topic.
The Decrier is also the Greatest Sufferer
As stated above, citing the London Baptist Confession of Faith, which teaches that God is the decrier of all things, including evil, this point needs to be surveyed biblically. The clearest passages are as follows. The prophet Isaiah in 46:9b-10 says, “. . . I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.’” Lamentations 3:38 states, “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?” In Ephesians 1:11, Paul writes “. . . according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will. . .” These verses entail that God decrees all evils that obtain in the world. Some may want to object at the goodness of such a God. “What kind of good God sits up in heaven and plans for His creatures to suffer for His glory while He watches?” Some may even claim this is sadistic. However, there is an important verse in Scripture that must be looked at now.
In Acts 4:27-28, Peter says, “for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” According to these verses, the crucifixion of Jesus was predestined by God. A couple of things must be highlighted about this. One is the fact that the crucifixion of Jesus was the most intense evil that has ever occurred. It is worse than the baby shot by the soldier mentioned above, worse than the Jews burned in Germany about one hundred years ago, worse than an animal suffering its whole life, worse than anything. One may ask why? It is because of the nature of the one who suffered. Jesus is the only innocent human to ever walk this earth. A large part of what makes an event evil is the degree of innocence of the sufferer. This is why a baby's suffering is usually seen as more severe than a grown man’s. Not that the baby is completely innocent from a Christian perspective, but that a baby has less corruption than a grown adult. The other part of what makes a situation so evil is the measure of goodness spurned by the receiver. If someone goes out of their way simply to be altruistic to help a homeless person, and then the homeless person spits on the aid when it is handed to them and curses the giver, this resonates as a great evil. The point here, then at the incarnation and crucifixion of Jesus there are both of these moral metrics working to the maximum. On the one hand, Jesus is more innocent than the baby, since He is completely pure and did not even have a nature that would ever do wrong to anyone. Yet He was beaten, spit upon, betrayed, and nailed to a cross in open shame before the world. On the other hand, those who did this to Him were the recipients of the most light. Jesus was the embodiment of truth and grace. He came to His own, but His own did not receive Him (Jn. 1:11). The rejection of the Messiah by those in first-century Palestine is the act of spurning a gift par excellence!
The next point is who Jesus was, or rather who He is. Zachariah 12:10 says, “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they pierced, they will mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.” This verse affirms that the Jesus whom Peter says was crucified and suffered in the worst way under the predestined plan of God is God Himself. This means that rather than seeing God as sitting back in the sky watching creatures suffer, He Himself decreed that He, as the God-man, would suffer the most. This highlights that God is immanent in suffering and sympathetic. If a father has his kid grow up doing hard work, suffering, losing sleep, in sickness, in the cold, in the heat, muscles bleeding and healing back stronger, etc. It may seem immoral of the father, but when it is known that the father himself has experienced the same suffering already and even to a greater degree, even though the child may not understand and think of that father as good in the moment, the father is good and can be justified in a place of love toward the child. This could be analogous to God’s relationship to man’s suffering.
Conclusion
It has been argued that the world is full of various kinds and amounts of evil, and everyone faces this phenomenon. Anti-Christian worldviews cannot have an intellectually justified place in the conversation nor object that evil destroys Christian theism, since they offer no foundation upon which to identify evil in the first place. The logical problem was answered simply by adding a premise to the syllogism, namely, that God has a morally sufficient reason for evil. Then, the morally sufficient reason was shown to include God’s glory in displaying His attributes and man’s greater good of experiencing second-order goods like refined faith, steadfastness, and grace. Lastly, it was shown that no matter how difficult it is for man to wrestle with the relationship of God and evil, one can know that God is always the most sympathetic to suffering since He planned to suffer the most. The reader is admonished in the face of evil to see God’s glory and to trust in God’s good purpose.
Author: Troy Goldsmith, founder of Aletheia Ministries, husband to Elisha and father to four children. M.A., Liberty University, and current PhD Student.
References:
[1] Richard Norton, Julian of Norwich and the Problem of Evil (The Lutterworth Press, 2023), 9–10.
[2] David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, in the version by Jonathan Bennett, presented at Early Modern Texts, 10.
[3] John S. Feinberg, No One Like Him: The Doctrine of God, The Foundations of Evangelical Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2001), 779–780.
[4] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Random House, 1933), pp. 245–246.
[5] Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), 62.
[6] Ibid., 79.
[7] Bart D. Ehrman, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 1.
[8] Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 165.
[9] Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 133.
[10] Ibid., 132.
[11] Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 322.
[12] Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve Books, 2007).
[13] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), 1.3.1.
[14] The Bhagavad Gita, trans. Laurie L. Patton (London: Penguin Classics, 2008), 13. 30.
[15] Jason Lisle, The Ultimate Proof of Creation: Resolving the Origins Debate (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2009), 60-61.
[16] The Baptist Confession of Faith 1689: Or the Second London Confession with Scripture Proofs (London: Wakeman Trust, 1989), 15.
[17] Greg L. Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith (Atlanta, GA: Covenant Media Press, 1996), 172.
[18] John MacArthur, None Other: Discovering the God of the Bible (Orlando, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 2017), 62.
[19] Ibid., 63.
[20] John M. Frame, “The Problem of Evil,” in Suffering and the Goodness of God, ed. Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, Theology in Community (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 1:153.
