This is a question that has vexed philosophers and continues to use up gallons of ink. Pagans answer that good and evil always go together; some even argue that good and evil are merely perspectives, so that nothing is truly good or truly evil, but only good or evil to certain points of view. Evolution teaches that evil is part of our growth process; nature is “red in tooth and claw” and evil is simply a way of rooting out inferior traits so that species can progress.
For these non-Christian views, the presence of evil is not a real problem. Evil fits into their worldview as something that just is; since they neither look back nor forward to anything pure and wholly good, there is no reason to explain where evil came from. It is only Christians who have a problem with evil. God is, according to Scripture, holy and good, and also omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. The question for Christians, then, is “How can an almighty and good God permit evil?” “If God really is the way the Bible says he is, how could evil have come into the world?”
Christians do not have the obligation to know everything, but are called to understand things are far as God’s Word takes us. Therefore, the place to start is with Biblical affirmations and denials. In this case, we can affirm that God is not the direct, or efficient, cause of evil. 1 John 1:5 says, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” Furthermore, Scripture explicitly says that God made everything good (Gen. 1:31). The Bible’s first brushes with evil stem from the actions of the devil, who was an angelic creature who was made good but voluntarily chose evil. In Isaiah 14:12-15’s describe his fall into evil, the verbs are all active and not passive; evil is something that he did and not something that happened to him: “You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high.'” Satan was created by God good but mutable (that is, changeable). He turned to evil by his own choice.
St. Augustine’s approach to the origin of evil was first to define evil. He noted that evil has no true existence but is a perversion of good, or a defect from good, just as blindness has no reality apart from seeing and is a defect in sight (City of God, X11.1). While there are absolutely good things – God and the unfallen angels come to mind – there is nothing absolutely evil. Even the evil in Satan is a corruption of good things God gave him, such as his intelligence and power. Nothing is therefore evil by nature, Augustine argues, but only by choice. An evil choice is the willing of a lower good over a higher good. In Satan’s case, this was the choice of his own glory – a good thing – over the glory of God – a higher good thing (X11.6). Evil, then, is made possible by our faculty of choosing, and by our mutable nature, for in making choices we are capable of choosing sinfully and entering into evil. That is as far as Augustine could go; he compared the question to trying to see darkness or hear silence: our faculties were created to perceive the good, not its perversion.
What about the problem of God’s omni’s – omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent – so that nothing can happen without at least his permission? This is a good point, but instead of a problem it is a comfort. We can be sure that since the holy and good God permitted evil, he had holy and good purposes for doing so and therefore in the end even evil will result in things that are holy and good. This is what we see in the Bible. Whenever God permits Satan to work evil, it always ends up producing a God-glorifying good. The most evil thing ever to happen on this planet – the unjust condemnation and murder of the holy Son of God – was made by God to be the best thing that ever happened on this planet, even the instrument for defeating all evil in the end.
In this matter as in others, the cross of Christ may not remove all questions, but it is the place where we may lay our questions to rest. When we compare God’s perfectly good creation with God’s perfect redemption from evil at the cross, we see in redemption a greater glory to God and a greater blessing to us than if evil had never been. In this respect, Augustine was right, that in God’s work there is only good – in the ultimate outworking of God’s perfect plan, even evil is not permitted to be evil, but all things work for the good of those who love God (Rom. 8:28).
Rev. Richard Phillips is the chair of the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology and senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church Coral Springs, Margate, Florida
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