We look upon evil as a “problem.” Evil would not appear to be a “problem” to God – it is not something that keeps Him up at night. Therefore, it shouldn’t be a “problem” to us, either. Cheung will expound on this in four parts. When reading Cheung, always come to the table knowing you may not consider him as “nice enough.” Part 1 follows.
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THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
Vincent Cheung
Taken from The Light of Our Minds. 
Copyright © 2004 by Vincent Cheung
PO Box 15662, Boston, MA 02215, USA
http://www.vincentcheung.com
INTRODUCTION
One of the most popular but overrated objections against Christianity is the so-called “problem of evil.” The objection claims that what Christianity affirms about God is logically irreconcilable with the existence of evil. Those who make this objection claim they know for certain that evil exists, and since this is incompatible with the Christian God, then it follows that there is no God, or it at least shows that what Christianity affirms about God is false.
Using the problem of evil, unbelievers have managed to confound more than a few professing Christians, and it seems that many of those who claim to be Christians are themselves disturbed by the existence of evil, or the amount of evil in this world. Some believers manage to provide plausible answers that are not altogether compelling, whereas many others simply call the existence of evil a mystery. However, to the extent that Scripture addresses the topic, so that it is something that has been revealed, Christians have no right to call it a mystery in the sense of something that is hidden. Just because we may not understand everything about the existence of evil does not mean that we must ignore what the Scripture plainly reveals about it.
On the other hand, merely plausible answers are insufficient when the Bible provides an infallible answer and an invincible defense. In what follows, we will see that the existence of evil poses no challenge to the Christian concept of God, or to any aspect of Christianity. Instead, it is the non-Christian worldviews that cannot make sense of the existence of evil, if they can have a concept of evil at all.
THE PROBLEM
Christians affirm that God is omnipotent (all-powerful) and omnibenevolent (all-loving).
Our opponents reason that if God is all-powerful, then he possesses the ability to terminate evil, and if he is all-loving, then he wishes to terminate evil;1 however, since evil still exists, this means that God does not exist, or at least it means that the things that Christians affirm about him are false. That is, even if God exists, since evil also exists, he cannot be both all-powerful and all-loving, but Christians insist that he is both all-powerful and all-loving; therefore, Christianity must be false.
Those who use this argument against Christianity may formulate it in different ways, but regardless of the precise form that the argument takes, the point is that Christians cannot affirm all the biblical divine attributes, because to do so would be logically incompatible with the existence of evil. And if this is the case, then Christianity is false.
Although Christians have agonized over this so-called “problem of evil” for centuries, the argument is extremely easy to refute; it is one of the most stupid objections that I have ever seen, and even as a child I thought it was a foolish argument. Many people have trouble with the existence of evil not because it poses any logical challenge to Christianity, but because they are overwhelmed by the emotions that the topic generates, and these strong emotions effectively disable the minimal level of judgment and intelligence that they normally exhibit.
Now, since the opponents of Christianity claim that the problem of evil is a logical argument against Christianity, in response we only need to show that the existence of evil does not logically contradict what Christianity teaches about God. Although Scripture also sufficiently answers the emotional aspects of this topic, it is not our responsibility to present and defend these answers within the context of logical debate. In fact, the emotional problems that people have with the existence of evil and their lack of answers to these problems are thoroughly consistent with what Scripture teaches. Thus we will focus on responding to the existence of evil as a logical challenge.
FREE WILL
Many professing Christians favor the “free will defense” in answering the problem of evil. In the context of biblical narratives, this approach states that when God created man, he wanted to grant him free will – a power to make independent decisions, even to rebel against his maker. Of course, God was aware that man would sin, but this is the price of granting man free will. By creating man with free will, God also created the potential for evil, but as the free will defense goes, since man is truly free, the actualization of this potential for evil can be blamed only on man himself. Those who use the free will defense would add that the potential or even the actualization of evil is not too high a price for granting man genuine free will.
Although many professing Christians use the free will defense, and to some people the explanation may sound reasonable, it is an irrational and unbiblical theodicy – it fails to answer the problem of evil, and it contradicts Scripture. First, this approach only postpones addressing the problem, in that it transforms the debate from why evil exists in God’s universe to why God created a universe with the potential for such great evil.
Second, Christians affirm that God is omniscient, so that he did not create the universe and humankind realizing only that they had the potential to become evil; rather, he knew for certain that there would be evil. Thus either directly or indirectly, God created evil.2
We may distinguish between natural evil and moral evil – natural evil includes natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods, whereas moral evil refers to the wicked actions that rational creatures commit. Now, even if the free will defense provides a satisfactory explanation for moral evil, it fails to adequately address natural evil. Some Christians may claim that it is moral evil that leads to natural evil; however, only God has the power to create a relationship between the two, so that earthquakes and floods do not have any necessary connections with murder and theft unless God makes it so – that is, unless God decides to cause earthquakes and floods because of murder and theft committed by his creatures. Thus God again appears to be the ultimate cause of evil, whether natural or moral.
Even if Adam’s sin had brought death and decay, not only to mankind but also to the animals, Scripture insists that not one sparrow can die apart from God’s will (Matthew 10:29). That is, if there is any connection between moral evil and natural evil, the connection is not inherent (as if anything is inherent apart from God’s will), but rather sovereignly imposed by God. Even the seemingly insignificant cannot occur without, not merely the permission, but the active will and decree of God. Christians are not deists – we do not believe that this universe operates by a set of natural laws that are independent from God. The Bible shows us that God is now actively running the universe, so that nothing can happen or continue apart from God’s active power and decree (Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3). If we should use the term at all, what we call “natural laws” are only descriptions about how God regularly acts, although he is by no means bound to act in those ways.
Christians must reject the free will defense simply because Scripture rejects free will; rather, Scripture teaches that God is the only one who possesses free will. He says in Isaiah 46:10, “My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.” On the other hand, man’s will is always enslaved either to sin or to righteousness: “But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness” (Romans 6:17-18). Free will does not exist – it is a concept assumed by many professing Christians without biblical warrant.
Another popular assumption is that moral ability is the prerequisite of moral responsibility. In other words, the assumption is that if a person is unable to obey God’s laws, then he should not be morally responsible for obeying these laws, and thus God should not and would not punish him for disobeying these laws. However, like the assumption that man has free will, this assumption that moral responsibility presupposes moral ability is also unbiblical and unjustified.
In reference to unbelievers, Paul writes, “The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so” (Romans 8:7). If it is true that moral responsibility presupposes moral ability, and Paul states that the sinner lacks this ability, then it follows that no sinner is responsible for his sins. That is, if a sinner is only a sinner if he has the ability to obey but refuses to obey, since Paul says that the sinner indeed lacks the ability to obey, then it follows that a sinner is not a sinner. However, this is a contradiction, and it is a contradiction that the Bible never teaches.
The Bible teaches that the non-Christian is a sinner, and at the same time teaches that he lacks the ability to obey God. This means that man is morally responsible even if he lacks moral ability; that is, man must obey God even if he cannot obey God. It is sinful for a person to disobey God whether or not he has the ability to do otherwise. Thus moral responsibility is not grounded on moral ability or on free will; rather, moral responsibility is grounded on God’s sovereignty – man must obey God’s commands because God says that man must obey, and whether or not he has the ability to obey is irrelevant.
In the first place, free will is logically impossible. If we picture the exercise of the will as a movement of the mind toward a certain direction, the question arises as to what moves the mind, and why it moves toward where it moves. To answer that the “self” moves the mind begs the question, since the mind is the self, and thus the same question remains.
Why does the mind move toward one direction instead of another? If we can trace the cause of its movement and direction to factors external to the mind itself, factors that impress themselves upon the consciousness from the outside and thus influencing or determining the decision, then how is this movement of the mind free? If we can trace the cause to the person’s innate dispositions, then this movement of the will is still not free, since although these innate dispositions decisively influence the decision, the person himself has not freely chosen these innate dispositions in the first place. The same problem remains if we say that a person’s decisions are determined by a mixture of his innate dispositions and external influences.
If the mind makes decisions based on factors not chosen by the mind, then these choices are never free in the sense that they are not made apart from God’s sovereign control – they are not made free from God. Scripture teaches that God not only exercises immediate control over man’s mind, but God also sovereignly determines all the innate dispositions and external factors related to man’s will. It is God who forms a person in the womb, and it is he who arranges outward circumstances by his providence.
Therefore, although we may affirm that man has a will as a function of the mind, so that the mind indeed makes choices, these are never free choices, because everything that has to do with every decision is determined by God. Since the will is never free, we should never use the free will theodicy when addressing the problem of evil.
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1 Sometimes the argument includes the fact that Christians affirm that God is also omniscient (all-knowing) – if God knows everything, then he knows how to destroy evil.
2 The doctrine of “free will” is unbiblical and heretical, and some have even followed the doctrine to its next logical step in saying that if man were to be truly free, then God cannot really know for certain what man would do, thus denying the omniscience of God. But even then, God knew that it was possible for free will to produce extreme and horrendous evil, so that the same problem remains.
