The Problem of Evil: The Fall

The Problem

According to monotheism, God is both omnipotent (having unlimited power) and perfectly good.  But when we look around at the world we live in, we can see much evil. This creates a problem regarding the reasonableness of monotheism, a problem typically referred to as “the problem of evil.”  

The problem of evil can be summarized as follows.  If God is perfectly good, then He would not want evil to exist, and so He would not create evil.  But if God is the omnipotent Creator of everything that exists, then how could evil come to exist at all?  Even if evil did somehow begin to exist within God’s good creation, it seems that God would not allow it to continue to exist.  For if God is perfectly good, then He would not want evil to exist. And if God is omnipotent, then He would have the power to eliminate evil.  Thus, it seems that if a perfectly good, omnipotent God exists, then there would be no evil. But there is in fact evil in the world. Thus, it seems that a perfectly good, omnipotent God must not exist.

The problem of evil raises serious difficulties for an abstract monotheistic worldview.^[1]This is not the same thing as saying it disproves an abstract monotheistic worldview.  Many atheist philosophers acknowledge that the problem of evil does not necessarily logically disprove the … Continue reading But Christians do not believe in an abstract monotheism; they believe in the God of the Bible. The particular teachings of Christian Scripture and Christian theology provide resources for making sense of the existence of evil in a world created and governed by a good and loving God (even if they do not answer all of our questions about why God allows certain evils).  In this post I will address the initial question: if a good God created the universe, then how could evil come to exist at all?

The Fall and the Origin of Evil

Christians believe that God’s creation is fundamentally good.  God did not create evil. He created human beings with free will, and human beings, abusing their free will, chose to disobey God and to live contrary to His created order.  God intended for human beings to live in communion with Him. He created them in His image, as His representatives in His creation, with a central role to play as those who were to bring order to God’s creation.  God knew that human beings might use their free will to reject their vocation and to do evil instead of good, but that was a risk God was willing to take for the sake of creating a world populated with free personal agents who could freely serve Him in a relationship of mutual love.  Without free will, love is impossible. Free will is intrinsic to what human beings are, and free will necessarily includes the possibility of choosing what is right or what is wrong. Unfortunately, the first human beings chose to do what is wrong. This moral evil, or sin, has brought disorder to God’s good creation, such that natural evils (i.e., suffering and death) are now experienced by all human beings.  This ancient event of rebellion against God is what Christian theologians term “the Fall.”  

All of humanity, from the time of Adam and Eve down to the present day, is affected by the Fall.  Because of it, humanity has lost access to God’s presence and is now separated from God. Every human being is thus in a state of “original sin.”  The natural consequences of this for human beings are disorder, suffering, and death. And because of the central and pivotal role human beings have in God’s creation, the Fall has affected the rest of creation as well, bringing about disorder and decay.  Thus, evil has arisen within the good creation of an omnipotent, loving God, as a result of humanity’s abuse of their God-given free will.

Objections to the Doctrine of the Fall

This traditional Christian doctrine of the Fall has received a number of objections and challenges.  1) The theory of evolution has shown that animal pain and death existed for millions of years before human beings came on the scene, so it seems unreasonable to say that suffering and death are the result of the sin of humanity.  2) Genetic evidence suggests that the human race did not descend from a single pair, but from an initial population of thousands, which seems to call into question the narrative of the book of Genesis, in which Adam and Eve are the only initial human beings mentioned.  3) Geology and archaeology seems to show that human beings have always suffered and died, and so there was no ideal state of Paradise which they Fell from. 4) Study of human genetics seems to suggest that what Christians call sinful inclinations are just biological instincts inherited from pre-human ancestors, which must have been always present in humanity, not brought about by the Fall.   5) It seems unjust that God would punish all of Adam and Eve’s descendants for a sin of which only Adam and Eve were guilty. I will respond to each of these objections in turn.

1) It seems clear that animal pain and death did in fact exist for millions of years before the human race existed.  Many Christians speculate that this was caused by demons interfering in and corrupting God’s creation. Demons are angels (intelligent, personal, spiritual beings) who chose to rebel against God and turn to evil.  On this account, then, animal pain and death would still be caused by the freely chosen evil actions of originally good persons. Some other Christians have speculated that the Fall was a cosmic event of such significance that it retroactively brought disorder and death even to the pre-human past.  

In any case, I would argue that it is wrong to label animal pain and death as inherently “evil.”^[2]Of course, I believe that human beings deliberately and needlessly inflicting pain and death on animals is morally evil; this is because one of the primary responsibilities of human beings is to care … Continue reading  Animals lack a consciousness or personhood that is able to experience suffering, and so their pain and death cannot rightly be identified as evil.  Animal pain and death are instances of disorder and imperfection, but that is not the same thing as evil. The creation story of Genesis declares that everything God made was “very good,” but that does not mean that God created everything initially perfect.  God gave Adam a task and a responsibility: to work and take care of the sacred space of the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:15). God created an initially imperfect creation, and placed human beings in it to be agents of order, who were to eventually bring God’s creation to perfection.  The imperfections of animal pain and death existed before the Fall, but not the evils of human suffering and death.  

2) Current scientific theories do indeed claim that the human race did not descend from a single pair.  However, this is not a problem for the Christian doctrine of the Fall, since the Bible never claims that all human beings are descended from Adam and Eve, nor does the doctrine of the Fall necessarily rely on such an assumption.  Adam and Eve are the only human individuals mentioned in Genesis 2-3, but this does not necessarily mean that they were the only human beings in existence (The statement that “the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the earth” (Gen 2:7) should not be understood as a literal description of Adam’s physical origins, but as an affirmation that all human beings are formed from dust (See Psalm 103: 14).).  It could be that Adam and Eve were just the only human beings chosen to be placed in the sacred space of the Garden of Eden, as priestly representatives of humanity.  When they rebelled against God, access to God’s presence was then lost for all of humanity. Genesis 2-3 is primarily interested in Adam and Eve as archetypes, not as individuals per se; they are simply referred to as “the man” and “the woman” until 3:20, after the Fall.  So it is also possible that more human beings were involved in the event of the Fall than just these two.^[3]For these thoughts, I am much indebted to The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate by John H. Walton (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015).  

Subsequent genealogies in Genesis should not be understood to be exhaustive accounts of the history of the human race; obviously, there are many nations and people groups which they leave out.  While some English translations have the apostle Paul saying, “From one man He made all the nations” in the book of Acts (17:26), this in an interpretive insertion on the part of the translator; what the Greek text actually says is, “From one He made all the nations,” which could easily mean, “From one nation He made all the nations.”^[4]Interestingly, some textual variants read, “From one blood He made all the nations,” which would mean basically the same thing.  Thus, there is no claim in the Bible that all human beings descended from Adam and Eve.  The doctrine of the Fall affirms that, because of Adam and Eve’s rebellion, all of humanity is now separated from God; it does not require the idea that Original Sin is passed down “genetically” to all of humanity because they are Adam and Eve’s biological descendants.  So, if current scientific theories about human origins are true, this does nothing to disprove the doctrines of the Fall and of Original Sin.  

3) Does geology and archaeology prove that human beings always suffered and died, and that therefore there was no ideal Paradise which humanity Fell from?  It is difficult to determine from fossil evidence alone exactly when pre-human ancestors crossed the threshold into being human (in the theological sense). And the text of Genesis does not provide us with an age for the earth or the human race, so it is difficult to say when exactly the historical event of the Fall occurred.  It seems consistent with both scientific and Biblical evidence to theorize that, whenever human beings (spiritual beings with conscious, rational thought) emerged, they were protected from suffering by God’s grace; this special protection was lost when humanity became separated from God because of their sin. The Bible never claims that human beings were originally immortal.  When Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden of Eden, they lose access to the Tree of Life which would have given them immortality (Gen 3:21-24); it was a loss of the opportunity to obtain a supernatural gift, not the loss of a natural status. If it was the first generation of human beings who Fell from God’s grace, then we would not expect to find any geologic or archaeological traces from the very brief period of time when humanity was unFallen.  Thus, it does not at all seem clear that geology or archaeology has disproven the reality of the historical Fall of humanity.  

4) It is true that many sinful inclinations can be identified with biological instincts inherited from pre-human ancestors.  Does this mean that human beings must have always sinned? Not necessarily. One can theorize that human beings may have had these same biological instincts prior to the Fall, but that they never acted on them.  This is because, prior to the Fall and humanity’s separation from God, the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of human beings, which in us are constantly divided and in conflict, would have been in harmony, and so human beings would not have acted in an irrational or destructive manner, even if their genetics gave them some biological inclination to do so.  Just because human beings prior to the Fall had the same genetic code as us, that does not necessarily mean that they acted in the same manner as Fallen human beings.^[5]An alternative view would say that, prior to the Fall, human beings may have been morally imperfect, but they were still morally innocent, because “sin is not charged to anyone’s account where … Continue reading  

5) Adam and Eve sinned, and this brought negative consequences to all of humanity.  But this does not mean that God unjustly holds every human individual being guilty of someone else’s sin and punishes them for it.  It means that all human beings are organically interconnected, and the consequences of one generation’s actions are passed on to the next generation.  For example, a child whose mother does drugs while they are in her womb will be born already addicted to that drug. A generation that makes poor political, environmental, or economic choices will leave the next generation in poor political, environmental, or economic circumstances.  Once the human race rebelled against God and became separated from God, their descendants were necessarily born into that same state of separation from God. If we think of Original Sin in a relational sense, rather than in the sense of imputed guilt and punishment, then the objection that God is unjust to punish people for Adam and Eve’s sin disappears.  

Conclusion

So, despite the numerous objections that have been raised against it, the Christian doctrine of the Fall remains a reasonable explanation for how evil could come to exist in a world created by a perfectly good, omnipotent God.  God did not create evil. It is the result of a free human choice to rebel against God. But why does God allow evil to continue to exist? And how can we believe that God is loving, in spite of the existence of so much evil? Further entries in this series will address these questions.  

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