The Problem of “Evil”: What Is It? (Part 1)
Let me begin by eliminating what this post is not about. It is not about “the problem of evil”—why bad things happen in a world created by a good God. Moreover, I am not using evil as a mere synonym for sin, though sin and evil are clearly and closely related.
The query I’m proposing concerns not the problem of evil, but the problem of evil. The quotation marks in the title are not a typo. It’s an attempt to isolate and investigate a very specific question: not only “the question of the origin of evil,” which, “second to that of existence itself, is the greatest enigma of life and the heaviest cross for the intellect to bear” (Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:53), but the very definition of evil itself.
Where did evil come from? And when? Why does it exist? How did it originate? Was it created by God? Such questions are not new. But sometimes we get bad answers because we ask bad questions. Such questions seem to assume that “evil” is an entity, some kind of thing that is always inherently evil. The devil is not only in the details but also in the assumptions that lurk behind our questions.
Sin is reasonably simple to define. “Sin is the transgression of the law” (1 Jn. 3:4); it is any thought, act, or disposition of disobedience to God’s revealed will. But what, exactly, is evil? In perusing a number of theological dictionaries and encyclopedias, one finds extended discussions of the problem of evil, the origin of evil, and the nature of evil. But rarely if ever does one come across anything approaching an actual definition of evil. An outright definition of “evil” is devilish hard to come by.
It seems obvious that if we’re going to talk about the nature, origin, and problem of something called “evil,” we jolly well ought to be able to define exactly what “evil” is. Let me try to demonstrate the significance of this definitional lacuna.
The Origin of Evil
One of the continental divides between potential solutions to the question of evil’s origin is the definition or extent of divine sovereignty. Those who insist that the sovereignty of God is the ultimate, absolute, and defining quality of deity see no problem with making God the originator and author of evil. Not long ago I received an email in response to one of my blogposts which took this view. “Errant fool,” it began. “What you lack is humility. Do you really presume to know God’s Nature? God can’t sin? God can do anything, blubbering ignoramus, he is all powerful.” (I am neither fabricating, exaggerating, nor paraphrasing; this is an exact quotation. Such emails are an occupational hazard of blogging.)
Others would argue that our understanding and application of God’s sovereignty must be consistent with everything else he himself has revealed about his own character and actions. Apart from express revelational fiat, we have neither the wit nor the authority to isolate and exalt one divine attribute over the others. As I have written elsewhere,
Scripture specifies several things that God cannot do. He cannot do evil (Jer. 9:24; James 1:13). He cannot tempt man to do evil (James 1:13). He cannot deny Himself (2 Tim. 2:13). He cannot lie (Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29; Titus 1:2; Heb. 6:18). And He cannot fail to do what He says (Isa. 55:11). The things God cannot do have nothing to do with God’s ability and everything to do with God’s character. God can do anything consistent with His character. God’s character prohibits Him from doing certain things and, likewise, compels Him to other actions. (The Trustworthiness of God’s Words: Why Every Word from God Matters, 149)
If we are to understand God’s inherent sovereignty in conjunction with (not in contradiction to) his inherent righteousness, then to assert that God created evil is problematic. What’s more, even that statement still evades the central quarry we’re pursuing in this essay. What does it even mean to “create evil”? What is evil?
One theory of the origin of evil explains that God is absolutely perfect and created only perfect creatures; one of the capacities God gave his perfect creatures was volition, and those creatures chose evil. Therefore, an originally perfect creature caused evil. The value of this line of reasoning is debated since differences exist over the definition and nature of that volition.
I want to raise a different objection, however, because there seems to me to be a missing step in the argument. If we’re talking about the origin of evil, how can the first mention of evil be that it was chosen? When the creature first chose evil, what was it and how did it come to be a possible choice? Most discussions of evil, it seems, just assume (a) that we already know what it is, and (b) that it existed as an option or choice from the beginning, a sort of “Door Number 2.”
The first choice of evil (whether angelic or human) was not a choice to murder, or to commit adultery, or to enact genocide. The first choice of evil (both angelic and human) was the choice of something much more fundamental. It was the mother of all other sins.
Evil was an option only from the beginning of creation, but what was it? I’ll try to answer that question in the next post.
