Vox Day on the Problem of Evil

The answer of evil
Posted: April 13, 2009
1:00 am Eastern

© 2009

For more than 2,000 years, men have wrestled with the so-called problem of evil. Presumed to have first been formulated by the Greek philosopher Epicurus and also known as the Epicurean Paradox, the problem concerns balancing the obvious existence of evil with belief in the existence of God. How, Epicurus wondered, could evil and an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God exist simultaneously? Centuries later, the problem was addressed by the Scottish historian and philosopher David Hume, who considered the matter in his "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion." Hume wrote:

Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?

The most obvious flaws in these proposed problems lies not so much with their logic, as with their improper definitions and misapplications to specific religions. For example, it is clear that the omnibenevolence queried by Epicurus does not fit the description of the biblical God, due to the way the biblical God's curse on various individuals and nations is chronicled throughout the Bible. It's worth noting, however, that Epicurus is not believed to have ever applied his paradox to the biblical God for the very good reason that he died in 270 B.C. Hume, on the other hand, does not have the benefit of the same excuse, and indeed, the error in his formulation verges on intellectual dishonesty. For no competent philosopher could possibly describe an unwillingness to prevent evil as requiring malevolence. While it would be reasonable to describe one who causes evil as malevolent, the worst accusation that can be reasonably hurled at one who merely fails to prevent evil is one of indifference. This may explain why Epicurus formulated his paradox as a justification for a philosophy of indifferent stoicism, not as a logical argument against the existence of God.

However, the main reason that the problem of evil has no reasonable application to Christianity is that the entire basis of the Christian religion is predicated on the existence of evil. Without evil, Christianity makes no sense. It has no purpose, its Savior has accomplished nothing, and Christians are, in the words of the Apostle Paul, "of all people most to be pitied." Christianity absolutely requires the observable existence of evil, for both logical and documentary reasons.

The Bible is very clear on the existence of evil. It even goes so far as to explain, in part, the immutable evil of human nature. The Old Testament is full of one party or another doing "evil in the eyes of the Lord"; the phrase resounds like an ominous drumbeat leading toward the ultimate fall of the kingdom of Israel. The New Testament, for its part, repeatedly describes the world as an evil place ruled by an evil spirit, the customs of which the believer is to avoid. In fact, there is no science more readily falsifiable than Christianity, as finding a single individual, just one single man or woman, entirely free from sin will suffice to dismiss Christian theology once and for all time.

If evil did not exist, then man would not be condemned by God. If man were not condemned by God, there would have been no reason for Jesus Christ to incarnate, to die and to rise again to pay the price of man's redemption. Therefore, while one may use the problem of evil to argue against the existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God, only an irrational fool would attempt to use the problem of evil as the basis of an argument against the existence of the Christian God or the tenets of the Christian faith.

The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil.

– John 7:7

Yesterday, today and tomorrow, Christians celebrate a risen Lord Jesus Christ. We celebrate him because we know the evil of the world, we know the evil of our hearts and we know he has defeated them. Christus resurrexit! Resurrexit vere!