Introduction
Perhaps one of the more difficult objections to the
existence of God is the problem of evil? We’ve all experienced suffering and
pain at times, and for many of us we’ve wondered why there’s so much evil in
the world? For those of you going through suffering, you might be wondering: Why
is this happening to me? For others, the following kinds of questions might be
going through your mind. Where is God in the midst of all this pain and
suffering in the world? Why isn’t He doing more about evil? After all, if
God were all loving and good it would seem that He would want to stop evil, in
so far as He could. If God were all-powerful, then surely He would stop it, if
He wanted to. Yet, evil persists. How are we to make sense of such questions.
In the next series of posts I’m going to be looking at the
concept of God and the problem(s) of evil? I’ll be discussing such questions
as: What is evil? What are the kinds and types of evil? What is the problem of
evil? How have Christians typically responded to objections raised against
God’s existence based on the reality of evil? What is God doing about evil in the
world?
I’m going to use this first post to introduce the topic and
to set the background for our discussion. I’ll begin by considering various
ways people have defined evil, followed by a look at the two major kinds of
evil.
Defining Evil
What is evil? Theologians and philosophers have pondered the
concept of evil for millennia. On the one hand, we easily recognize evil when
it occurs; yet, explaining what evil is becomes the hard part. To borrow a line
from Augustine: “If no one asks me, I know; but if I wish to explain it to one
who asks, I know not.” [1] Whether one can define evil or not, in what follows
I will examine several conceptions of evil, followed by a Christian theistic
exposition of the concept of evil—the view on evil that I advocate.
Some ancient religions, such as Manichaeism and
Zoroastrianism, teach a form of metaphysical dualism, by which good and evil
are co-eternal and independent opposing forces. Good and evil take on certain
personifications. The world is the cosmic theatre whereby good and evil battle
it out. Certain forms of metaphysical dualism are Gnostic in nature, teaching
that the world, along with our human physical bodies, is evil. The goal, then, is to
free the soul from our bodily prisons. Such dualisms tend toward an ascetic lifestyle which denies all physical pleasures. [2]
Pantheistic and atheistic worldviews often deny the
existence of evil altogether. Pantheism teaches that god is an impersonal and
infinite force encompassing the entirety of the universe. In other words, god
is identical with the universe. Often pantheistic religions, especially certain
forms of Hinduism, hold to monism—the view that all of reality is composed of
one substance. According to certain monistic forms of Hinduism, Brahman, the
underlying principle behind all of life, is the ground of being and supreme
reality. The Bhagavad Gita describes Brahman as the “supreme, the highest abode,
the supreme purifier, the divine eternal spirit, first among the gods, unborn
and infinite.” [3] Because all of reality is one, ultimately there is no good
or evil. What we call “good” and “evil” are false categories and illusory. Take
the following passage from the Gita:
“One man believes he is the slayer, another believes he is the slain. Both are
ignorant; there is neither slayer nor slain. You were never born; you will
never die. You have never changed; you can never change. Unborn, eternal,
immutable, immemorial, you do not die when the body dies. Realizing that which
is indestructible, eternal, unborn, and unchanging, how can you slay or cause
another to slay.” [4]
Atheistic worldviews, too, often deny the existence of evil.
Metaphysical naturalists—those who hold that the spacio-temporal universe is
all that there is—see evil as nothing more than the product of natural processes.
For metaphysical naturalists, things on earth could have developed differently.
There’s no guarantee that the species known as homo sapien would have existed.
Things like disease, death, plague, and mutation are all part of our genes
going amuck. So too do followers of Hinayana Buddhism deny evil. Evil for Hinayana
Buddhists is just a natural part of existence. The goal, then, is to free
one’s self from it by reaching Nirvana—a state whereby one extinguishes all
worldly desires and receives liberation from the cycle of rebirth. [5]
Theists and theistic religions, such as Judaism, Islam, and
Christianity, recognize that evil is real and not illusory. Even religious
pluralists, like John Hick, recognize that evil is, to some extent or another,
a reality of our world. The question remains: how should we understand the
reality of evil? Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas who followed him, held that evil
(and goodness too) is a metaphysical quality. In the Enchiridion Augustine suggests that evil is the “absence of good”
or “privatio boni.” With respect to
the nature of evil he explains:
In the bodies of animals, disease and
wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a cure is effected,
that does not mean that the evils which were present—namely, the diseases and
wounds—go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they altogether cease to
exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance but a defect in the fleshly
substance—the flesh itself being a substance, and therefore something good, of
which those evils—that is, privations of the good which we call health—are
accidents. Just in the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing
but privations of natural good. And when they are cured, they are not
transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they
cannot exist anywhere else. [6]
For Augustine good = being. Evil cannot exist apart from the
good; it is parasitic. A thing that is good without evil is a “perfect good.” Prime
example of such a good is God, who is “supremely and equally and unchangeably
good.” On the other hand, a good that has been corrupted by evil is “faulty or
imperfect.” All things, because they have not been fully corrupted by
evil, are said to be good. For something to be fully corrupted would mean that
it would cease to be. Ultimately, evil, then, is nothingness or nonbeing. [7]
Philosopher of Religion, John Hick, criticizes the
Augustinian concept of evil. According to Hick, there is a difference between
the theological insight that evil is the “going wrong of something good” and
the Augustinian neo-Platonic view that evil is privatio boni. [8] Hick recognizes the reality of our experiences
of evil. They are “equally real, equally positive, equally insistent upon recognition
as forces to be reckoned with.” [9] Evil results from moral wickedness, pain,
and mental suffering; it has nothing to do with a metaphysical quality of
existence. [10]
Despite Hick’s (and others’) rejection of the Augustinian view,
there is, nevertheless, a theological reason to agree with Augustine that evil
is, to some extent or another, a privation of the good. Augustine believed that
it was impossible for God to create evil because God is the supreme good. All
things that God creates directly are good; therefore what God creates cannot be
evil. It follows, then, that evil must not be a creation of God, nor is it a
created substance. In the words of R. Douglas Geivett,
Of course, the Augustinian theist does
not adopt this definition of evil as a kind of sufficient reason for thinking
that God is not responsible for the existence of evil. It is just that, since
evil is a reality and not an illusion, and yet it cannot be a substance because
all substances are created by God and are therefore inherently good, evil must
be a privation of some kind. The notion of privation is not a tour de force of
definition, nor is it a veil for the theist to hide behind to say that God
cannot cause evil. It is more like a product of transcendental reasoning. [11]
If all that God creates is inherently good, then it would
seem that something like privatio boni
is how one ought to think of evil. Thus for our purposes I’ll define evil as
some sort of absence of the good; however, I cannot say to what extent that’s
the case. It may be that evil is just simply indefinable, in many ways, like
the word person. We know what a person is when we see one, but trying to nail
down an exact definition is of difficult. We can only give a general idea of
what a person is. In the same way, we know evil when we see it. Unfortunately
we cannot give a full description of evil; we can only give some general
preliminary features of it.
- Evil is part of reality, not merely an illusion
- Evil is not a created thing, nor is it an individual substance, person, or force.
- Evil cannot exist apart from the good (however, the reverse is not true, since we know of a good that must exist, by necessity, in every possible world—God, who is a necessary being and the supreme good); rather, it is parasitic on the good.
- Since God created all things good and is neither the creator of nor cause of evil, we may speak of evil, then, to some extent, as the absence of the good. (Perhaps we might think of evil as in some way depriving the good.) [12]
Kinds of Evil
Philosophers and
theologians have come to recognize two basic types of evil: moral evil and
natural evil. Moral evil refers to
any kind of evil that arises from the actions of free, morally responsible agents.
Examples of moral evil include, but are not limited to: rape, murder, abuse of
power, and genocide. Natural evil, on
the other hand, refers to those evils brought about by natural factors apart
from any kind of human or creaturely agency. Examples of natural evil include:
earthquakes, tsunamis, and mud slides.
Sometimes it is
not clear whether some evil is a moral evil or a natural evil. Other times,
some evils appear to be a natural evil, when, in fact, they are moral evils.
Take, for example, the following evils: animal death caused by pollution, certain
diseases and medical conditions brought about through biochemical warfare, and forest
fires which reap human and animal destruction.
This concludes our preliminary discussion on the topic of
evil. In this first post I did not consider the origin of evil. I hope to
consider this more fully in later posts, in which I look at the biblical
understanding of evil. In our next post we will consider the various problems
from evil.
Notes
[1] Augustine, Confessions,
11.14. Augustine’s comment was not in reference to evil, but time; yet, the
difficulty of defining evil remains.
[2] For further discussion see H. B. Kuhn. “Dualism,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed.
Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 357; W. A.
Hoffecker. “Manicheism,” in Evangelical
Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker
Academic, 2001), 729-730; W. S. LaSor. “Zoroastrianism,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter
A. Elwell (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 1310.; Anthony C.
Thiselton. “Zoorastranism,” in A Concise
Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,
2002), 327-328.; K. E. Y. “Manichaeanism,” in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Robert Audi (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1999), 532.
[3] Eknath Easwaran, trans., “Glossary,” in The Bhagavad Gita (Tomales, CA: Nilgiri
Press, 2005), 228; The Bhagavad Gita
10.12.
[4] The Bhagavad Gita
19-21
[5] Thiselton, “Buddhist Philosophy,” 41; id. “Evil,” 89.
[6] Augustine, Enchiridion,
11.
[7] Ibid., 10-13.
[8] John Hick, Evil
and the God of Love, second edition (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007),
180.
[9] Ibid., 181.
[10] Ibid., 262ff.
[11] R. Douglas Geivett, Evil
and the Evidence for God: The Challenge of John Hicks Theodicy
(Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1993)176.
[12] At this point I’m not completely convinced of Augustine’s
view that evil is the privation of the good, but find it more plausible than
other options.
