The problem of evil is the difficulty of reconciling belief in the existence of an all-powerful, perfectly good God with the reality of the existence of evil in the world. Previously on this blog, I have done a four part series on the problem of evil, addressing the problem with reference to the biblical story of creation, Fall, the cross of Jesus Christ, and the future new creation. This post will be a supplement to this previous series, addressing some additional questions and issues not addressed there.
The Problem of Satan
A key part of Christian theodicy (a defense of the goodness of God in spite of the existence of evil) is the free will defense: evil is not something God created, but is a result of people (humans and/or angels) freely choosing to do evil. Skeptics have raised two major objections to the idea that the existence of evil can be traced back to the fall of Satan and his angels. First, how could someone who has unmediated access to God’s presence still choose to rebel against Him? No one could be that stupid, could they? Secondly, even if Satan did freely choose to rebel against God, why does God allow him to run loose and harm His creation, rather than imprisoning or destroying him?
In response, every free-willed personal agent created by God has the capacity to rebel against God, rather than lovingly submitting to Him. Simply by virtue of the fact that they exist as a distinct entity separate from God, there is a possibility that they will choose self-love over love for God and His creation. This is a fundamental choice that each person in God’s creation must make. We see people make evil and self-destructive choices all the time, not because they do not know what is good, but simply because they do not want to do what is good. It may seem “stupid” for people to choose evil rather than good with full knowledge of what they are doing, but that does not mean it is impossible.
As for why God allows Satan and his angels to sometimes harm other parts of His creation, the answer, admittedly, is that we don’t know. We know that God restrains Satan from doing as much harm as he would like, and there are references in Scripture to invisible spiritual conflict between angels and demons which can have positive or negative consequences in our world (e.g. Dan 10:12-14). There are many other aspects and facets of reality other than our space-time universe, and within this broader reality there very well may be good reasons why God allows Satan to work the harm he does. God has not fully disclosed these reasons, either simply because we do not need to know them, or because we are not even capable of understanding them.
The Problem of Free Will and the Afterlife
Turning to the human side of the free will defense, there seems to be a contradiction between saying that God had to allow for the possibility of evil in order to create people with free will and saying that there will be no sin in God’s new creation. If resurrected and redeemed human beings have free will and are able to sin, then God’s new creation would not be perfect and eternal because humans could choose to sin again at some point and ruin it. But if they have free will and are unable to sin, then it seems this would prove that the possibility of sinning is not a necessary part of having free will. On the other hand, if resurrected and redeemed human beings are unable to sin because they have no free will, then it seems that it must have been possible for God to create a perfect world for human beings in the first place without giving them free will.
Is there a way of resolving this dilemma? I believe there is, if we have a more theologically nuanced understanding of what it means for human beings to have free will.
To say that human beings have free will is not to say that they are able to choose to do anything at all at any time. Rather, it is to say that they are able to make a fundamental choice of whether to choose God, which leads to eternal life, or to choose self-love, which leads to eternal death. Once a person makes a fundamental and ultimate decision to choose God and to put faith in Christ as their Savior, they experience mystical union with God through Christ. Through this mystical union, their being becomes radically transformed, such that they become unable to choose to sin. Freed from enslavement to sin, they become free to choose only God.
Thus, in God’s new creation, human beings will have a modified free will in which they will never choose to sin because their wills will be shaped by the mystical relationship of love between them and God. But the establishment of this relationship of love requires an initial free decision for or against it. Love cannot be coerced, and God could not create people already in this relationship of love. In order to create people who could love Him, He had to create people with a genuine free will that allowed for the possibility of choosing evil. The earliest humans’ choice to rebel against God resulted in humanity being corrupted by original sin. God then offers humanity salvation from sin through Christ. Once an ultimate, free decision to accept that salvation is made, though, there is no longer freedom to rebel against God again. This is why it makes sense to say that God had to allow for the possibility of evil in order to create people with free will and that in God’s new creation no one will be able to choose to sin.
Why Did God Create This World?
It is sometimes argued that a perfect Creator must create the best of all possible worlds. And, since this world is clearly not the best of all possible worlds, this seems to call into question the idea that it is the creation of a perfect Creator. The problem with this, however, is that the very idea of a “best of all possible worlds” is incoherent. Since God is infinite Goodness, there would always be an infinite gap between the goodness of any world God might create and the Goodness of God Himself. Thus, no matter what world God might create, there would always be a better possible world. There are infinite possible worlds God might have created. But this is the world He did create.
But why, antitheists have asked, would God create the world if He foresaw that it would end up containing so much evil? Even granted that God had to create people with the possibility of choosing sin, why did God make a world so fragile, in which the consequences of sin would be so catastrophic? Couldn’t God at least have created people with much more resilient bodies, so that we would not suffer quite so much as a result of sin?
The answer is that God creates and sustains this world, in spite of the evil it contains, out of love. He will not abandon or annihilate us and the rest of His creation, because He loves it. God has created and sustained this world even though He knew that He Himself would have to suffer and die as one of us in order to rescue this world from sin and evil. This is how great God’s love for and faithfulness to His creation is.
Yes, God could have created a world and people who were less fragile. Why He created the world and us exactly like this we do not know for sure. But perhaps He created us this fragile so that He could demonstrate the depths of His love for His creation by entering into the deepest depths of human suffering for us on the cross. If people were less fragile, and had less capacity for suffering, then perhaps God would not have been able to demonstrate His love for them quite as deeply and fully as He has in the cross of Jesus Christ.
Great post. Keep going God Bless