Christian attempts to explain the problem of evil have traditionally (but not exclusively) relied on an argument centered around human free will. The basic sketch of this argument can be seen in the second and third chapters of the book of Genesis: Adam and Eve chose to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which had been expressly forbidden by God. Therefore, the argument goes, they were punished with banishment from the Garden and, ultimately, suffering and death as well. This explanation of the existence of evil has certain merits: it is relatively straightforward and simple, and it also fits common patterns of human reasoning. Human leaders demand obedience, and human leaders punish transgression. It’s easy to assume that God acts like a very powerful and authoritative human.
But this general argument also leaves many questions unanswered, and it seems in conflict with the full breadth of Abrahamic doctrine. First, the text of Genesis itself seems to provide a serious obstacle to this common account of evil’s rise: the serpent, here a sign of Satan (“the Accuser”) is already in the Garden. If evil only arose due to human disobedience, why is the deceiver already present? Second, this traditional argument seems to run directly counter to another central claim of the Abrahamic traditions: namely, that God is all-powerful and is therefore able to determine creation as God sees fit. If God is in full control, can humans really have free will? Notice that John Calvin took exactly this line of thought when he argued for God’s total sovereignty (and against any real conception of human free will). Third, whatever position we take on God’s power and sovereignty, the Abrahamic tradition has also insisted that God is loving. How can God’s love be reconciled with the image of divine punishment for the errors of a finite creature? Fourth and finally, some might argue that the doctrine of human free will runs counter to our direct experience: my “choices” are often more or less compelled by circumstances, and, in any event, even if I can choose to seek what I want, I generally can’t decide what to want (Paul himself recognized this, as Romans 7:15-20 suggests). Having choice over means but not ends does not seem to be a full and robust freedom.
The alternative to free will, as hinted at above, is a theology that argues for God’s utter and total sovereignty, along the lines of John Calvin’s position, often called predestination. Such an argument claims that, since God is all-powerful and utterly sovereign, all things–including sin itself–must be according to the will of God, and goes on to insist that humans are simply unable (and unworthy) to understand how and why a good God would will for sin to exist. As an approach to explaining sin and evil, however, predestination has even more problems than the traditional one addressed above: not only does it rest on an authoritarian fideism that cuts short critical thought, and limit the fullness of God’s love, but it also seems to demand a contradiction in terms: since one robust definition of sin is “that which opposes God’s will”, it seems logically impossible to claim that God willed for sin to occur. Whatever problems the free-will doctrine runs into, the divine-sovereignty model seems even less cogent.
Now, any one of these concerns could be (and has been!) the subject of entire books. What I would like to do here is propose one possible way of addressing these concerns while maintaining an orthodox (at least in a broader sense) theological stance. I hesitate to call this an “answer” or “solution” to the problem of evil, because I do not think humans capable of providing such. But as a provisional and practical response, I think and hope it has merit.
Firstly, let’s step back a moment and consider the problem of evil from its broader philosophical perspective. The problem of evil posits that God cannot be both good and all-powerful, since evil exists in the world. If God were good and all-powerful, presumably evil would not and could not exist. Since evil undeniably exists (or happens), the all-power benevolent God seems an impossibility.
Philosophical and theological efforts to “solve” this problem are often called theodicy, a term meaning to defend, apologize for, or explain God. Theodicy seeks to explain how God can indeed be both good and all-powerful, considering that the world is far from always good. As suggested above, the two most common approaches have been to argue either that a) God gave humans real free will, and evil resulted from human choice or that b) God is utterly sovereign, and so whatever happens must be God’s will and must be “good” in some final sense.
The former approach (option “a”) emphasizes a more or less humanist approach, arguing that the center of Abrahmic thought is the elevation of human agency. This option above stresses that what is most important about faith is that it should encourage us to take our decisions responsibly, and places the weight of sin, evil, suffering, and death at the hands of free will improperly exercised by creatures.
The latter approach (option “b”) has taken a variety of forms, from (as mentioned above) John Calvin’s Reformed theology as expressed in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, to G.W.F. Hegel’s more or less monist approach in texts like The Phenomenology of Spirit. Many people will also be familiar with option “b” above when they have heard friends or family members say things like “God works all things to the good”. Such an argument ultimately relies on the idea that, however bad it may seem, this reality is the best of all possible worlds (v. G.W. Leibniz), and so the believer’s duty is to trust God’s sovereign activity.
Both approaches, as outlined in the opening above, leave many questions unanswered and many serious philosophical and theological problems unresolved. But as long as these two approaches have been seen as the only options, Christians, and perhaps other Abrahamic believers, often feel that they have to agree with one or the other. But I think there is more freedom of maneuver here, and I hope that with some further attention to Scripture and some sound creative thinking, a clearer (provisional) theodicy can be offered that builds on the strengths of each of the above approaches while limiting their failings.
Firstly, it seems clear to me that option “b” above–arguing that evil is somehow in accord with God’s will–is a non-starter. Such an argument seems to “resolve” the problem of evil by basically redefining the word evil in such a way that the sort of things we would generally understand as evil–suffering, ignorance, hatred, etc. are not really evil, or not ultimately evil. I think this is merely dodging the issue, and I also think it fails to take Scripture seriously enough. If sin means anything, it means something serious. If sin really is the opposition of human (and sometimes non-human? see below!) action to God’s will, then simply claiming that, somehow, God wills for God’s will to be opposed is both intellectually lazy and doctrinally insufficient. No: the problem of evil is a real problem, and somehow Christian theology must at least provide the sketch of a response to it.
Yet, as outlined above, option “a” is rife with problems as well. Not only does human life not feel truly “free” much of the time, but even if it were, this theodicy seems to assume that human freedom itself is an ultimate good. Yet it’s hard to argue that individual human freedom is somehow so good that it could counter-balance the eternal damnation of even one conscious being. Would such a trade-off be truly loving? If option “a” is meant to justify not only the existence of evil in this world, but also the eternity of damnation (and it has often been employed to do just this), then it seems to fall short; again, God does not seem to be portrayed as truly loving in this formulation.
Furthermore, as discussed above, this position does not even seem to grapple with the Scriptural witness: the serpent was already there, tempting humankind. Isn’t this tempting presence itself already evil in the world? One possible resolution to this issue, of course, is to argue that Satan is actually an agent of God, that Satan’s work is an important element of God’s work in the world. And it’s true that such a relationship seems at least hinted at by, say, the opening of the book of Job. Yet Satan is also portrayed as the opponent of God, the father of deceit, and an angelic being utterly opposed to God’s will; Jesus certainly speaks of Satan as one who will be defeated by God. If Satan is an agent of God’s will, then such a defeat seems a contradiction in terms.
So we find that the byzantine contradictions and opposed priorities surrounding traditional theodicies lie deep within not only traditional doctrine, but Scripture itself. The problem of evil really is a serious problem. So what theological and philosophical options do we have as Christians today?
First, let’s get one final option on the table: some, following John Caputo and the tradition of process theology more broadly, have tried to resolve the problem by inverting the Calvinist “option b” above. Instead of absolutizing God’s sovereignty, they have forfeited it. Proponents of such a “weak theology” argue that God is indeed all-loving, but not exactly all-powerful. Although this option “c” solves one problem, it does so by raising another at least as serious. My concern with weak theology is that it seems to succeed in defending God’s goodness only by problematizing the doctrine of creation: if God is truly a “claim without power”, then what is God’s relationship to creation more generally? If God created the whole world, and the world exists only by God’s sustaining will for it to exist–as Abrahamic tradition insists–then it seems impossible to claim that God is truly “weak”. Caputo’s approach therefore shares a very serious philosophical and theological liability with process theology: regarding God as a process or event completely confuses the doctrine of creation.
Now, one resolution, of course, would be to claim that God is not the creator at all. But now we have only kicked the can down the metaphorical (and metaphysical!) road: if that which created the world is powerful but not good, and there is a separate good-but-powerless force that is somehow trying to interact with and help the world, monotheism itself seems to be fractured, and it’s hard to know why humans should be concerned with this second benevolent interloper. Indeed, we find ourselves with a theology not much different from that of some of the so-called Gnostics. Such a position does not, however, solve the problem of evil, it just complicates it.
I’ve spent many paragraphs outlining the problems, complications, and difficulties of various theodicies, but it’s time to start proposing some kind of alternative. In short, I hope to take what I think is best about options “a” and “c” above and combine them with a serious treatment of Satan as presented in Scripture to arrive at a provisional semi-theodicy that I think may be our best option moving forward–though it by no means solves all the problems or answers all the questions.
The advantage of option “a” above is that it does seem to offer an intellectually robust reason why an all-powerful and truly benevolent God might allow for (but not will or cause) sin: if at least some part of creation is free relative to God–that is, if at least some part of creation can act in a way which God does not determine–then the possibility of sin in creation is at least non-contradictory. However, as we saw above, according this kind of freedom to individual humans runs into both philosophical and empirical problems: would individual human agency actually be worthwhile as to make the risk of sin morally justifiable? And, in any event, does this account of radical human freedom really accord with our experience of the world?
Part of the difficulty here for us is that post-Enlightenment culture in the West does in fact embrace a strong sense of human agency; we live in a political culture that assumes that humans are indeed inherently free and that maximizing this human freedom is a great (perhaps the greatest?) good. The trouble is, if we move beyond the realm of Enlightenment political ideology, human life often seems profoundly un-free. Many people are forced to work in deplorable conditions for poor pay–and their only other option is to risk starvation. Being offered a “free” choice between these two horrible options seems to be “free” only in the least meaningful sense possible. Furthermore, many people feel deep compulsions within their own emotional life that they do not want: addiction seems to muddy the waters of human agency. If it is possible to want something while not wanting to want it, what does satiating human free choice even mean?
So we not only have to challenge the Christian tradition here, we also have to challenge our own contemporary political and cultural ideology; it is convenient to consider human agency a self-evident truth and a foundation for our political culture. Yet upon examination, it seems less like a fact and more like a mythological promise.
So–if freedom seems essential to resolve the problem of evil, but human freedom seems neither philosophically sufficient nor empirically probable, where can we go? It seems that we need to identify an existent freedom not tied to individual human agency. Strange as it may seem, this is where I think Satan must enter our picture.
Many today may hear the name “Satan” as nothing more than a mythological illusion, but in fact this word carries a deep but often over-looked theological significance in Abrahamic thought. Satan is there in the garden; Satan is there at the opening of Job; Satan is there tempting Jesus in the opening of the synoptic Gospels. Modern efforts to articulate a Christian theology without Satan are both theologically and scripturally deficient.
Yet this does not mean we should embrace belief in a horned beast living underground. Such a picture was only meant to convey moral, philosophical, and theological truths through evocative imagery. We deceive ourselves if we believe in the existence of such a thing, but we also deceive ourselves if we reject the concept of Satan outright because we find such imagery fantastic. No, the idea of Satan is a crucial theological insight: Satan marks the freedom of creation which has turned against God.
Thus, creation as a whole really is free relative to God: that is, God empties and limits Godself in giving the gift of creation in such a way that creation is free to either respond to God’s love or turn away from it. Such a kenotic move is necessary because of what God’s goal in creating is: to be in real loving relationship with creatures. Love, by definition, cannot be determined or forced. It must be freely offered. Therefore, in creating, God must take the risk of sin–it must be possible for creation to turn away from God (towards death, hatred, suffering, meaninglessness, etc.) if creation is going to be fre enough to truly have the capacity to love God.
Yet note that we are saying that creation as a whole must be free relative to God–we are not insisting that each individual creature is fully free, nor or we arguing that creatures necessarily have freedom relative to each other. Indeed, we know that creatures often compel other creatures in all kinds of ways–this is, after all, one of the consequences of the sinful turn away from God.
It is not individuals, but creation as a whole, that has freedom relative to God. And Satan is the word we use to mark the fact that creation turns away from God; creation turned in on itself, denying its dependence on anything other than itself, and in cutting itself off from its own source, began to collapse from being to non-being. This–not moralistic platitudes–is what the theology of sin is really all about. To name “Satan” is to recognize that the entirety of creation–the whole cosmos–is in relationship with God, but that creation as a whole has turned away from this relationship, and is therefore sliding into nothingness. (It might be convenient to think of this “turning” in anthropomorphic terms, but it is important to note that such a reading is not necessary. Such an issue is too complex to discuss further here, however.)
This theodicy, then, might be option “d”: a combination of the theology of freedom from option “a” (though shifting that freedom from individual humans to the whole creation), and the indeterminacy of option “c” (though without insisting on God being “weak” in any final metaphysical sense), and the re-introduction of the prominence of Satan in Christian thought (though with rigorous philosophical attention).
In option “d”, humans participate in and contribute to sin, but are not the original causes of it. Sin is nonetheless a free turning away from God, but a turning that happened with the very beginning of creation itself, not in the act of a single human or human couple (it should be noted that this in no way challenges the truthfulness of Genesis chapters 2 and 3–it only challenges a brittle literalistic reading of these passages). Satan marks this fundamental having-turned-away-from-God that we call sin.
I believe that this theodicy resolves many of the contradictions of the other options while also being grounded on a careful consideration of the Scriptural witness. I do not pretend that it is a total or irrefutable solution to the problem of evil, but I do hope that it provides a better way forward on this question, and that it may prove fruitful as Christians–and others–consider the seriousness of evil and suffering. In the future, I hope to write more on specifically how the doctrine of the Incarnation helps us to understand how God is reaching out to a world that has turned in on itself. But that discussion will have to wait for its own post.
Early in our lives, our sensory and mental life is all we can imagine; it fills not only our immediacy but also the boundaries of what we think possible. However things appear, whatever thoughts come to us, that’s reality, as far as we can know or imagine. It doesn’t seem like there could be anything else. As we get older, things start to change a bit. We have new experiences, new ideas, new conceptual relations. We begin to realize that there is more to reality than what appears to our consciousness at any given moment. We come to realize that other people’s experiences could be different–perhaps radically different–from our own, and yet also reflect reality just as truly as our own.
Wrestling with the Angel 