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The question of evil is one that had absorbed the energies of countless Christian theologians as well as other religious theologians. It is a fundamental theological question in the Christian West, with our secular society. Christians of course would provide essentially the same arguments that our Pakjistani reader employs. In fact Christian theologians have puzzeled over this for centuries. Christian theologians contend that God created all things, but they do not accept that God created evil. St John the Apostlke writes, for example, "God is light; in him there is no darkness at all" (1 John 1,5). When God finished his creation, he appreciated that "all that he had made was very good" (Genesis 1,31). God is declared to be all-powerful. St. John writes, "And I heard as it were te voiceof a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voive of mighty thinderings, saying Alleluja: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." (Revelation 19,6). To HBC and many other secular observers this makes no sence. There is obviously evil in the world. It is obviously illogical to say that if Gold is all powerful, all knowing, and the creator of the universe that he is not therefore the creator of all that exists in that universe. Christian theologians have devoted such energy addressing this question precisely because it is so illogical. The work of their weighty tomes, however, does not reverse the basic logic. It strikes us that Christian theologians like many men do not want to accept responsibility for what they have created. And Christian thelogians persue an even more illogicall position by saying God is all good, since as the creator of everything that he created evil. Christan theologians have devoted edless tomes struggling with these issues. One author summarizes, "From here arises a major puzzle: If God is all-good, he should want to stop evil; if he is omnipotent, he could stop it; but evil exists in the world, so God lacks either all-goodness (if he can stop evil but does not want to) or omnipotence (if he wants to stop evil, but cannot), or both." [Valea] A HBC reader has provided an informed review of the Christian concept of evil and the doctrine of free will.
The question of evil is one that had absorbed the energies of countless Christian theologians. It is a fundamental theological question in the Christian West, with our secular society. Christians of course would provide essentially the same arguments that Islamic scholars provide. That while Good is all powerful and the creator of all, God did not create evil. Christian theologians have addressed this topic from the earliest period of Christian learning as it is a question also addressed by Jewish theologians. The great Scolastic scholars dealt with this question in depth.
Christian theologians contend that God created all things, but they do not accept that God created evil. St John the Apostlke writes, for example, "God is light; in him there is no darkness at all" (1 John 1,5). When God finished his creation, he appreciated that "all that he had made was very good" (Genesis 1,31). God is declared to be all-powerful. St. John writes, "And I heard as it were te voiceof a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voive of mighty thinderings, saying Alleluja: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." (Revelation 19,6).
To HBC and many other secular observers this makes no sence. There is obviously evil in the world. It is obviously illogical to say that if Gold is all powerful, all knowing, and the creator of the universe that he is not therefore the creator of all that exists in that universe. Christian theologians have devoted such energy addressing this question precisely because it is so illogical. The work of their weighty tomes, however, does not reverse the basic logic. It strikes us that Christian theologians like many men do not want to accept responsibility for what they have created. And Christian thelogians persue an even more illogicall position by saying God is all good, since as the creator of everything that he created evil. Christan theologians have devoted edless tomes struggling with these issues. One author summarizes, "From here arises a major puzzle: If God is all-good, he should want to stop evil; if he is omnipotent, he could stop it; but evil exists in the world, so God lacks either all-goodness (if he can stop evil b-ut does not want to) or omnipotence (if he wants to stop evil, but cannot), or both." [Valea]
Christian, Judeic, and Islamic scholars essentially avoid God's resonsibility for evil through the doctrine of Free Will. Will all the rancor and violence over time between these religions, it is remarkable how much all three have in common. A HBC writer tells us, "What both you and your
Muslim correspondent are raising here is the age-old issue, confronted in all religions and by all philosophers who deal with the reality of human wickedness, that is generally referred to as "the problem of evil." As you know, the crucial factor here, at least for Jews and Christians, is the belief that God created Man with free will--that is, the ability to choose right from wrong.
According to Christian and Jewish theology, God does not intervene to prevent the terrible evils
for which humans are responsible because God's basic law is the law of love. Love cannot be forced or commanded. It must be freely chosen. So God gave human beings the power to choose to love or not to love, and so the history of mankind has been a very mixed affair. History gives us the examples of many saints as well as of many great criminals. Many men choose to love God and their neighbors to the best of their ability, but many others choose to love themselves more than God or others and therefore create evil in the world. The myth of the Fall in Genesis is the basic story that illustrates how Man disobeyed God's rule by eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, and
therefore brought into the world what the great Ebglish poet Milton describes as "death and all our woe". [Milton] Only Manicheans (a well-known Christian heresy), believe in the equality of good and evil. Orthodox Chistianity teaches that evil is not an independent power but only the perversion
of good. Satan, the embodiment of evil, was once an angel and servant of God, but he rebelled and was thrown into Hell. But Hell is not the equal opposite of Heaven. It is inferior to Heaven.
Satan could do nothing without divine permission. Theoretically God, as an all-powerful being, has the power to prevent man from doing evil, but if He did that, he would be removing the crucial human quality to choose right from wrong and the freedom to love without coercion would
be denied--in other words, man would then have to forfeit his fundamental human trait, the capacity to choose and to love freely.
Christian theologians contend that man is created in the image of God. Reason is usually considered a divine attribute--a quality that man shares with God and that is denied to creatures lower down in the scale such as animals. Fee will is strongly connected to the ability to reason--i.e. to think about the complexities in deciding whether a particular action is right or wrong. Take for instance Truman's decision to shorten WWII by dropping the atomic bomb. Truman had to decide between difficult alternatives: (1) dropping the bomb and thus saving many American lives but at the cost of many innocent Japanese lives, or (2) refusing to use such a weapon
and thus prolonging the war with many other innocent lives being lost on both sides (mostly the Japanese side). Not an easy decision, but a choice that obviously involved the unique gift of human reason. In making moral choices, the alternatives are rarely a simple good versus a simple evil. That kind
of decision is easy. But the tough decisions require us to weigh a mixture or good and evil on both sides of a question--of choosing the lesser evil or the greater good. Moral decisions also frequently involve the weighing of means in relation to ends. Abolutists would say that a good end doesn't justify an evil means--i.e., that the good of preventing a terrorist disaster can't be used to justify the evil of torture. Others would say that it is better to do wrong to one man than
to allow many men to be slaughtered. Not easy questions, but without reason such distinctions would be impossible.
According to Christian theology, the Judaeo-Christian God does not want his human creatures to be atomatons, creatures who obey His laws not because they wish to obey but because they can't do otherwise. In Christianity, man is made in the image of God and must try to live up
to the divine image of which his soul is a part. But because of weakness, man constantly fails in this task. The doctrines of the Incarnation and the Atonement, taught by the Christian Church since its foundation (described in the Book of Acts), tells us that our moral failures (which are ongoing in the fallen world) have already been paid for by the coming of God in human flesh (Jesus Christ) and by His sacrifice on the cross to pay for all the sins of humanity, past and present. But we can only be good by willing to be good. If God forced us to be good, the good would not be like the Divine Love of God Himself. It would just be a mechanical effect and fundamentally non-human.
Great historical evils such as genocides, wars, mass slaughters, and the like are not God's fault. Man has chosen to behave badly because of his free will and has perverted the divine aspect of his nature as a creature of God. God doesn't intervene to stop these evils because, if He did, he would be denying the aspect of Himself
(free will) in those he has created to be free.
But what of great evils such as earthquakes, floods, epidemics and the like for which man
cannot be held responsible? Why does God allow the innocent to suffer? This is of course a great mystery in Judaism and Christianity, and there is no easy answer. The usual answer given by theologians is that man, although made in the image of God, is not God and is not
all-knowing (omiscient) or all-powerful (omnipotent). If we could understand why the innocent suffer, we would also lose our humanity by becoming gods ourselves. Children cannot always understand why their parents discipline them, but that is the nature of being a child. A
child who could fully share the perspective and knowledge of his parent would not be a child at all. So, according to Christian theology, we must accept some things that we cannot understand and have faith that God must have some reason for events that seem to us unbearably cruel. But the mind of God is greater than the mind of Man, and we, as his creatures, have to accept this. Such answers, of course, will not satisfy many people.
Men make their own laws according to what they believe will be best for their societies. Some societies believe that individual freedom is too high a price for the disorders (such as rape, murder, and theft) that we see in so-called democratic countries. Other countries value freedom so highly that they are willing to risk the great disorders that come with freedom. But repressive societies (and those that practice Shariah law seem to me to be very repressive) govern more by fear than by love. There are trade-offs here, but again, as human beings, we have the power to choose whether we value order more highly than freedom. Some sort of balance has to be achieved. Facism, dictatorships, and religiously intolerant governments may have less crime, but they also dehumanize their people by forcing them into behavior that they decide is good. More anarchic societies
err in the other direction--by giving so much freedom to people that there is simply savagery and disorder and chaos. Deomcratic societies try to take the middle course between these extremes--sometimes more and sometimes less successfully.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. The quote comes from the opening lines of Milton's "Paradise Lost": "Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit / Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste / Brought death into the world and all our woe ..." It's a wonderful passage.!
Valea, Ernest. "The problem of evil in world religions" (1999). This is quite an interesting discussion of the topic, but for some reason the author does not include Islam in the discussion.
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