‘Behold, the Lamb
of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
57th teaching
12.9.2013
“God’s Sovereignty:
Solving the Ancient Puzzles”
Review:
What was
our topic together last week? Is it a divisive issue? Need it be a divisive
issue? What are the two extreme views involved with God’s Sovereignty? God is
sovereign in two ways (hint: they both start with a P). God is Sovereign by
position; what is a Name for God and a title for God which points this out? God
is also Sovereign by power; referred to as His omnipotence. What Old Testament
book really illustrates the power of the Sovereign God? What could make the
doctrine of God’s Sovereignty frightening and terrifying? So then, God’s
Sovereignty is balanced by His other attributes and His moral character: He is
not just the King but He is also our loving Father.
End
of Review
So then, last week we ended with two great issues before
us. If God is indeed Sovereign, in control of the universe and in authority
over it as the Bible teaches, then we’re left with the Problem of Evil and the
Dilemma of Free Will.
These two concerns will form the bulk of our study tonight
and next week. We’ll first address Evil and then go on to Free Will. Both of
these subjects each have four points, for you note-takers.
The title of our session tonight is: “God’s Sovereignty:
Solving the Ancient Puzzles”. Tonight we shall first address the Problem of Evil.
Is it a Problem? Oh yes.
Turn to Isaiah
65:1-7.
Evil is a problem, an irritation even to God. Throughout
Scripture you see Him striving against it, pleading with man to come out of it,
and judging it at its worst.
Now it may need to be said from the beginning that while
tonight’s study is largely informative, this does not exclude it being
practical. We are studying two philosophical and rational topics tonight, but
the goal is not purely academic. As rational Christians, making use of the
mental faculties that God has given us to address the philosophies and the
concerns of the world, we must not become the sort-of mystical wizards in our
ivory towers.
Christianity and God and the Bible and theology itself are not
here largely to satisfy our logical riddles (although they encompass that), nor
do we study these things for the sake of our own curiosity and accumulation of
knowledge (although these things involve that). Rather, Christianity and
theology are at their roots practical. And so while we are studying tonight the
intricacies of how all this theology works and accounts for the world we see
around us, we cannot separate that from the practical use we might gain from
such knowledge in answering the questions of the lost, in equipping and
encouraging the Church and in defending the faith.
We could talk to someone about how washing machines work
all day long, pouring over the manuals and the engineering blueprints for the
design of washing machines, talking about the historical development of the
washing machine, talking about its energy consumption, its composition, its
efficiency and on and on and on, but eventually someone might say to us: “But
look, all I want to do is wash some of my dirty laundry”.
Point being, while its necessary that we study and study
hard, and get a grip on these topics, not everyone is going to be interested in
the logical arguments, in the reasoning, in the parsing of the Greek words, in
the grammatical construction of this or that verse, or in the philosophies and
answers to philosophies. The average American simply wants to know what to do
with their dirty laundry. So while we need to know this material, we recognize
that we must tether it to a real-life practicality. Always think in those
terms: what can all of this mean to someone else, and how can I share it with
them?
For while the logic and philosophy and theology might be
uninteresting and indeed not understandable by the average person we engage in
conversation with, these two subjects we confront tonight (and really all of
the subjects we study in regards to God and His Word) are subjects which form
some of the most central concerns and anxieties that people can have.
Let me share an example from my own life. When I was in England
studying at the York Bible College, I learned about things like this, about the
reasonableness of Scripture, about the immensity of God to account for the
human experience, about the arguments of the world and about answering those
arguments.
But eventually the semester was over. I had packed up and
was ready to return to the States to see my family. A taxi was coming around 5
or 6 in the morning, can’t remember when. All of the students were so sad to
leave that we stayed up all night together and hung out for one last time all
of us as classmates.
Then my taxi came and I get in to head for my train and
from there to the airport. I watched the site of my learning for the past four
months drop away behind me as the vehicle took off. And with resignation I
breathed a sigh. There was the end of my semester in England.
But then the taxi-driver, perceiving by my accent that I
was American, asked me what I was doing in England. I told him that I’d been
attending a Bible college and was now headed home to America to see my family.
But then, the driver goes: “Oh, I don’t believe in God”. I said “Oh? Why not?”
And he says “How can there be a God, with all the suffering in the world?” His
problem, his atheism, was based on the problem of evil. He perceived evil in
the world and rationalized that there could not be an all-good, all-powerful
Sovereign God.
Companions, let that cause you to remember, as it did me,
that you must be ready to “…in season and
out” (II Timothy 4:2). I didn’t
know or suspect that at that horribly early morning hour, the very hour of my
sadness in leaving the York Bible College, that I would have to put my learning
to a practical use! But I did. You never know when.
And so I explained as best I could that moral evil comes
about because of the immoral acts we do, that evil is a result of our making
bad choices. I took him back to Adam’s first bad choice that led to evil, and
before I knew it we were suddenly at the train-station and he was handing me my
bags and I was trying to wrap it up as best I could. And then he was gone. I
never found out, of course, whether I helped to change his mind and heart, but
I prayed that someone else could pick up where I left off.
But I share that story to show that people don’t have much
to do with the terminology and the logical premises and the arguments involved
in theology and philosophy and all the “ologies”, but that the issues which
biblical theology addresses remains in their very hearts nonetheless. No
average person cares two cents about the Epicurean Problem of Evil by name, yet
that problem remains the same heart-felt problem which many claim in order to
rationalize the non-existence of the Christian God.
So then: practicality in study. These things are some of
the oldest problems in theology.
1. The Problem of Evil
2. The Existence of Evil
3. The Nature of God
4. Solving the Puzzle
(Next week)
5. The Dilemma of Free Will
6. The Existence of Free Will
7. The Creation of Free Will
8. Resolving to Obedience
1.
The Problem of Evil
First of all, what is this thing we call the Problem of
Evil? Simply put, the Problem of Evil goes like this: Evil exists, clearly. How
can a God who is loving, knowledgeable and powerful, create a universe, sustain
a universe and control a universe that contains evil? Doesn’t the existence of
evil disprove the God of the Bible? How can you reconcile the God of the Bible,
who says “I do everything that I please”, with the existence of the moral evils
of the human experience?
Now when I said that the Problem of Evil is one of the
oldest problems in known history, I meant it. Some of the oldest philosophers
and most ancient thinkers were puzzling over these things.
The Problem of Evil was first articulated, so far as we
know in recorded history, by a Greek philosopher named Epicurus. He is credited
as being the originator of the logical problem of evil.
He stated the problem this way, assuming that evil exists.
This is known as the Epicurean paradox or the riddle of Epicurus:
I.
Is
God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent.
II.
Is
He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent.
III.
Is
He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
IV.
Is
He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God?
Now the Problem of Evil is often stated as a logical
argument, which is logically valid if its premises are true:
A. If an omnipotent, omniscient,
and omnibenevolent God exists, then evil does not.
B. There is evil in the world.
C. Therefore, an omnipotent,
omniscient, and omnibenevolent God does not exist.
What are we left with? It’s either or. The clear evidence
from our own experience as human beings shows that evil definitely exists, but we’re
left then to doubt about whether God does, or if He does, to doubt about what kind of a God He is. We seem to be
left with a God who is either “indifferent, impotent, immoral, or unreal”. And
each of those statements undermines either the character or the existence of
the Christian God.
And this argument, this Problem of Evil, has been the
refuge of many an atheist throughout the centuries. One such atheist wrote the
following. Permit me an extensive quote: (Read opening statement from the Problem of Pain).
Those words were penned by C.S. Lewis, the Christian author
responsible for such literary triumphs as the
Chronicles of Narnia and Mere
Christianity. But apparently, before he was a convert to Christ, he too was
a devout atheist and notice that the refuge and defense of his atheism was the
Problem of Evil. He could not reconcile all the injustice, all the
meaninglessness, all the random cruelty and pain and isolation in the universe
with the idea of the Christian God, this loving, all-powerful Kingly Deity.
Lewis’ great problem with God was the Problem of the existence of Evil.
Many, many people get hung up over the Problem of Evil:
C.S. Lewis did, Epicurus did, atheists do, hey even my English taxi-driver did.
So this is a big problem that needs addressing.
Let’s next consider the premises of the problem. If both
the premises are true than the conclusion should follow of necessity. So are
they?
2.
The Existence of Evil
Simple question: Does evil even exist? Because if there’s
no such thing as evil, then let’s pack our bags and go home! If there’s no such
thing as evil, then there’s no basis for the argument, no foundation for the
Problem of Evil. It’s no longer a problem at all! And all these atheists are
going on about nothing whatever!
But first question’s first: what is evil? It’s all well and good to discuss whether evil exists
at all, but what are we talking about in the first place. What is evil, anyway?
Note, we’re not asking “what is evil?” so far as which acts are evil and which
aren’t. The study of morals and ethics are for another day. Read your Bibles
for what is good and what is bad.
What we’re asking is “what is evil?” so far as a concept,
just as we would ask not what is truthful
but what is truth? Not what is evil
as actions, but what is evil, as an idea? How can we describe what evil is?
Evil we commonly think of as simply the opposite of good.
Evil we associate with darkness since darkness is the opposite of light, light
displaces darkness, and so on.
Evil can refer to the immorality with which we’re familiar
as human beings, whether in ourselves or outside of ourselves, referring to the
ignorance, selfishness, arrogance, neglect, violence or spite of human society.
We might call this kind of evil moral
evils.
But there are also natural
evils, things like destructive acts of nature, pestilence and disease,
fires, hurricanes, even possibly old age could be considered. All the natural
suffering that occurs simply through being alive and conscious is sometimes
called natural evil, the suffering
and pains and sickness involved with existence.
Another way we might understand or classify evil is that of
criminal evil. This would be evil
which is technically trespassing, the breaking of the law: stealing, murder,
treason or rape. In our society, there are things which we still understand by
law to be illegal, and breaking the law can be considered criminal evil.
To come at it another way, we must realize that evil is
unsubstantial. What does that mean? It means that there’s no embodiment out
there, no entity that represents pure
evil, from which all evil stems. We
already understand that evil in part comes from our own immorality. And though
Satan is an evil being, he is not the
embodiment of all evil. There isn’t a place in the universe where the abstract
concepts of lust and covetousness and murder all dwell in some bodily form.
St. Augustine wrote that evil is the absence or lack of
good, the privation of good: “For what is that which we call evil but the
absence of good? 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.”
Consider the cultural symbols of light and darkness. Light
is a substance. Darkness is not. Darkness is merely the absence of light.
There’s no such thing as dark-particles or dark-photons, just as there are real
light-particles and real photons. And just as light displaces darkness when it
comes, so too evil is a lack of good, goodness is the substance that displaces
the defect, the lack, the absence which we call evil.
So what is evil? Whether you choose to call it moral evil,
natural evil or criminal evil, we can identify the concept of evil as a lack of
good, just as darkness comes about as a lack of light.
Now we understand what evil is, but our question remains:
does it exist? The answer is a resounding: yes.
I once met an interesting man at my job (you always meet
the interesting people at work), who liked to engage people in conversation
based on his anxieties and complaints about the government and mind control and
conspiracies and drugs and whatever else pleased him.
And one morning, during our… discussion… he had the
audacity to say that there’s no such thing as evil. And I stopped him, “how
could you possibly say that?” I mean the man had just finished telling me about
how all the rich people are using poor people to build fortresses and machines
so the rich can burn all the world and rid it of poor people and then live in a
better society! And I said “do you condemn that course of action you’re saying
the rich are taking!” He says “Of course!” And I said, “Then what’s evil? Isn’t
that evil?” He says “You’re oversimplifying it. Evil is just survival of the
fittest from the loser’s perspective”, not exactly what he said but what he
meant: that evil is when a bigger animal scares away a smaller animal from the
waterhole, that what we call evil is really just a made-up societal term when
in actuality there are helpful actions and there are not-helpful actions. Yet,
he could not bring himself to say that a global genocide of the poor by the rich
is simply not-helpful, that it’s not actually evil.
You know that evil exists if you’ve ever been slighted or
snubbed, ridiculed or bullied, slandered or attacked. You know that evil exists
if you’ve ever read the newspaper, ever read a news article online, ever heard
about the grandmother who while babysitting stabbed her own grandchild to
death, ever heard about this or that sexual abuse, this or that war breaking
out over nothing, this or that drunken brawl that led to murder. I recently
heard about a person on black Friday who killed 3 people so they could get an Xbox One.
Is all of this merely unhelpful to society? Or is it
actually evil, a lack of good? As Lewis said, the very history of humankind is
a testament to the existence of evil.
What’s more, God Himself indicates that evil exists.
Scripture takes that as a given. All the language of Scripture indicating not
only sin, trespass, transgression, iniquity but also forgiveness, redemption
and salvation all presuppose the existence of something called evil.
If evil did not exist, Joseph in Genesis 50:20 could not say: “But
as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to
bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.”
If evil did not exist, I
Kings 11:6 would meaninglessly say: “Solomon
did evil in the sight of the LORD, and did not fully follow the LORD…”
Neither could the Christ say of the rejecting generation He
came to: “This is an evil generation…”
unless evil exists.
So our experience shows it and Scripture presupposes it:
evil certainly exists. So that part of the Problem of Evil is true. Therefore,
the logic seems to stand. Phrased the other way round we might say: Since evil exists, an omnipotent,
omniscient, omnibenevolent God does not… unless God is not all-powerful, not
all-knowing, not all-loving or not in control?
3.
The Nature of God
This is precisely what we’ve been studying: the attributes
of God. The Problem of Evil calls into question several attributes of God’s
nature.
Firstly, it casts
doubt on God’s omnipotence. Maybe evil exists simply because God is not
powerful enough or not able enough, not capable of stopping it.
Secondly, it
casts doubt on God’s omniscience. Maybe evil exists simply because an
all-powerful God doesn’t know how to stop it, or didn’t know how to keep it
from being created in the first place.
Thirdly, it casts
doubt on God’s omnibenevolence. Maybe evil exists simply because an
all-powerful God is actually evil Himself, and wants evil to exist.
Fourthly, it casts
doubt on God’s sovereignty. Maybe evil exists simply because evil cannot be
controlled by the Sovereign God, maybe because evil is stronger than God.
Fifthly, finally,
it casts doubt on God’s existence. Maybe evil exists simply because there is no
Christian God to stop it at all.
Let’s examine these a little more closely.
Firstly, God’s
omnipotence. The Bible declares that the Lord is God Almighty. “Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!”
shout the heavenly voices in Revelation
19:6. Presupposing that the Bible is the truthful Word of God, then we
cannot deny that God is all-powerful.
Now what does that mean? What does it mean to say God is
all-powerful? Is God so powerful that He can make another God exactly like
Himself? Well, no. You cannot created an uncreated Being. By definition, the
uncreated is the uncreated, and God is uncreated and beginning-less.
Again, the quote by C.S. Lewis which we heard last week: “Omnipotence
means ‘power to do all, or everything’. And we are told in Scripture that ‘with
God all things are possible’. It is common enough, in argument with an
unbeliever, to be told that God, if He existed and were good, would do this or
that; and then, if we point out that the proposed action is impossible, to be
met with the retort ‘But I thought God was supposed to be able to do anything’.
This raises the whole question of impossibility... His Omnipotence means power
to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically
impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no
limit to His power. It remains true that all ‘things’ are possible with God:
the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more
possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two
mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but
because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”
So God can truly do all things,
things being actions that are not self-contradictory and nonsensical. God
cannot make a rock bigger than Himself, because by definition God Most High is the “biggest and best”
thing there is. God cannot lie because His own character is perfectly moral.
God cannot cease to exist, because His very nature is purely actual, immortal
and everlasting.
These do not lessen the power of God but define the power
of God. God can do all things that are reasonably possible to do, not things
which contradict either Himself or His reality.
So God’s Omnipotence stands.
Secondly, His
omniscience. If evil exists, well maybe God just doesn’t know enough, just
doesn’t know how to stop it.
But again, Scripture rings clearly that knows a great many
things, indeed that He has all-knowledge, even of thoughts and intentions, even
of future free actions, even of events that have not occurred yet, of all
things.
Scripture says “His
understanding is infinite” (Psalm
147:5). Recently we discovered in Proverbs
3:19, “The LORD by wisdom founded the
earth; by understanding He established the heavens.”
So, God’s Omniscience, we’re holding on to that one.
Thirdly, there’s
His Omnibenevolence. But if there’s one thing that Scripture makes clear it’s
that God is perfect and good and just and holy and loving. I John 4:8 clearly says “He
who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” The Bible says that
God is “compassionate and gracious, slow
to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6). How loving is God? Loving enough to send His only
begotten Son to suffer the excruciating agony of crucifixion that He might
provide the Way of salvation to all the human race that rejected Him and
disobeyed Him.
God cannot produce sin, being holy, nor can He promote sin,
being good. Although He can allow sin and evil, He even turns those into good.
So God Himself cannot be the source of evil. If anything, the Problem of Evil
cannot show that God is a malevolent spirit.
Did you know that God did not create evil? He couldn’t
have. The world that He made was good (Genesis
1). And God being good could not make something evil. God has life to give
life. God has love to create love. God has free will to create free will. But
He has no evil in Himself to give to evil or create it. God cannot be the
source of evil.
But Aha! says the enemy of God, “What about Isaiah 45:7?” What about it? We’d
better take a look. There, God says “I
form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD
do all these things” (KJV).
And so they say that the Bible itself says that God Himself
is the source of evil, calling into question every biblical claim upon His
moral character with the stroke of one verse. And make no mistake, this is a
tremendous and popular claim. Don’t you find it interesting that it is those
who so fervently claim they don’t believe in God who so often slam His moral
character? Why should atheists be concerned about God being a moral monster, if
primarily they say that He doesn’t exist at all?
But what is Isaiah
45 really saying. Well, peruse a few other translations. Instead of the
word evil, you find words like woe, troubles, doom, calamity and disasters. The word itself used here for
evil in the original Hebrew can mean a variety of other
things, too: adversity, affliction,
distress, displeasure, grief, harm, hurt, mischief, misery, sorrow, wrong
and indeed wickedness.
The question is then, which of those things does it mean?
It is one thing to say God creates affliction and sorrow (such as when He
judges righteously), but it’s a whole other thing to claim that God creates
wickedness and evil itself.
When you look at the context of the chapter, it’s clear
that God is talking about taking up a human king as a tool and subduing nations
before him. God is not talking about the creation of the concept of evil but of
the calamity of war between nations, which He sovereignly ordains and uses as
judgment against the wicked.
So, you’ve got to keep God’s omnibenevolence. God is the
source of love, not evil.
Fourthly, there’s
God’s sovereignty. Now we just studied this last week and examined multiple
Scripture references to substantiate it, so I won’t harp on it here. But the
doctrine of God’s sovereignty clearly shows that God does as He wills, decrees
as He decrees and is in control of the universe. Though to what extent free
will throws a wrench into the whole thing, we’ll soon discover, yet it must be
said that God Himself sovereignly created free will.
Fifthly, finally,
God’s existence. This is the point where atheists attempt to get you through
this argument. If evil exists, then how could the Christian God exist? After
all, the Bible shows that He is powerful, knowledgeable, loving and sovereign.
So either is isn’t one of those things or He isn’t a thing at all!
Yet we’ve addressed several arguments for God’s existence
in the past. Can you name a few?
There’s the Cosmological argument. There’s the Teleological
argument. There’s the Moral argument. And more recently, we learned of the
Ontological argument.
So now what are we left with? A God who is there, who
exists, who is all-powerful, who is all-knowing, who is all-loving, who is
sovereign and with the existence of evil. And still Epicurus says: “Whence
cometh evil, if God is all of these things?”
We can’t just wish it away. We can’t just say “Oh, well,
leave it to faith”.
Thomas Aquinas, medieval monk and priest, said “It is
philosophically impossible for divine faith to profess what the reason must
regard as false…” Faith isn’t magic. God is a reasonable Being who operates in
a reasonable way. Doesn’t mean we can understand everything to a T. But it does
mean that you can’t just wish away things that seem to be reasonably false,
even if they’re said of God.
You can’t just have faith in order to answer and solve the
arguments leveled against God. That’s no solution. That’s making faith out to
be cowardice and ignorance, when it is neither of those things.
4.
Solving the Puzzle
The answer is free will. Evil exists as a natural
consequence of our own free choices. The immorality of the world is just the
total sum of the individual acts of immorality you and I commit each and every
day. And as for natural evils, we can equate those to the fact that our sins
place us in a fallen creation with natural defects that are dangerous to life,
as well as the choices made by fallen angels (Jesus rebuked a storm much like
He rebuked demons in Mark 4, and Job
was inflicted with disease by Satan in Job
2), though these are claims deserving of their own study.
Outside of free will, there is no answer for the existence
and creation of evil.
John Piper, Calvinist theologian, when harping on the total
sovereignty of God to exclusion of free will said of how evil came into being
“I don’t know”. That’s because aside from free choices, there’s no possibility
and no explanation for evil. God couldn’t have done it, because He is perfect
and has freedom to act purely moral all the time.
We know that God exists, so evil can’t just be a random
product of some random universal system, just survival of the fittest in our
society, but that there’s really moral evil. What’s more, we know that God is
good, so evil can’t be a direct creation of God; He had no evil in Himself and
therefore could make no evil.
There’s no other solution but free will, that millennia ago
a man and a woman chose to disobey God and that we, descended from them, have
followed in their footsteps in our own disobedience and error, the result of
which is the suffering world we see around us. And thereby we solve the Problem
of Evil, but we’re left to address free will. It’s tied in: if free will does
not exist, then you’re left with a Sovereign God who, acting contradictory to
His own character, created evil. But the One who cannot be corrupted also
cannot create corruption: evil.
Next week, we shall have to consider the Dilemma of Free
Will. But a few final words on the Problem of Evil.
Remember the quote earlier by C.S. Lewis which described
how he viewed the universe as such a cruel and unjust place, and that he
attributed it to the non-existence of God? He follows up that description by saying
this: “There was one question which I never dreamed of raising. I never noticed
the very strength and facility of the pessimists’ case at one poses us a
problem. If the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, how on earth did human
beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator?
Men are fools, perhaps; but hardly so foolish as that.”
Lewis picks up on the same idea in another book, Mere Christianity, where he talks about
his very opinion of the universe being unjust and cruel being exactly what
turned him to God in the end! Lewis writes: “My argument against God was that
the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just
and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a
straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it
unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why
did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent
reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is
not a water animal: A fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up
my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But
if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument
depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not
happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove
that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I
found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of
justice—was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If
the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has
no meaning: Just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no
creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without
meaning.”
In other words, the fact that evil exists and that we call
it evil and react against it as evil, points to the fact that we’re comparing
it to something good. But where is good? Certainly not around here! And
certainly not in a pure form. Rather, goodness exists as an attribute of God
and it turns out that Lewis’ complaint of evil, and the Problem of Evil itself,
all hinge upon the existence of ultimate goodness as a standard to which one
can compare the evil we see.
One final thought and we’re through. Norman Geisler takes
the Problem of Evil and turns it into something vastly interesting. Do you ever
worry over the state of the world? Do you ever feel depressed over how bad
things seem to be turning? Do you ever feel anxiety and sorrow over the
millions of sufferers in our world?
Look how Geisler turns the Problem of Evil into the Promise
of Evil’s Defeat. The Problem of Evil says:
I.
An
all-powerful God can defeat evil.
II.
An
all-good God would defeat evil.
III.
Evil
is not defeated.
IV.
Hence,
there can be no such God.
But Geisler rephrases it to read:
I.
An
all-powerful God can defeat evil.
II.
An
all-good God would defeat evil.
III.
Evil
is not yet defeated.
IV.
Hence,
evil will someday be defeated.
Catch that subtle difference? Rather than being a Problem,
it turns into a Promise. That evil exists now neither denies the existence of
God nor does it mean that evil will always exist forever. But because an all-good and all-powerful God
exists, because God is able and willing to stop evil, than someday evil will be
stopped. Is that what the Bible says, already anticipating every atheist who
would ever try to turn the Problem of Evil against it? Yes.
Turn to Isaiah
11:6-9, in closing.
Evil does exist, but so does the God of the Bible, loving,
just, righteous, holy, powerful who has decreed that one day He will stop the
suffering, that one day there shall be no more tears. Someday, the Light will
flash through the universe and displace the Darkness, and it will no longer be.
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