Topic:  The nature of evil

Source of this posting: Moderator response

Date originally posted: April 22, 2003

Moderator who originally posted this source: Father Phillip

Question:   I read on the website that God didn't create evil, but that evil comes from sin. And sin comes from us. Then how do we explain natural disasters and such. Do they happen because people sin, like Sodom and Gamora? Is there no evil in the world that doesn't come from man sinning. And if even if we don't call natural disasters evil, I still want to know why such phenomena occur, given that God loves us and wants the best for us.3) How do we understand the Book of Job in light of my question (2)? I don't think this book is meant to be taken literally, but I don't know how I should read it. As poetry, allegory, etc? I mean God never really explains to Job why all this bad stuff is happening to him, He just says stuff like who are you to question the ways of the Lord, etc. And why does God even initiate the challenge to the Devil by boasting about the piety of his servant Job? I am completely at a loss for how to read and hear the Word of God in the Book of Job.4) I don't understand how the concepts of predestination and free will are compatible. How can some people reject Christ, Christianity, God, etc if everything they do is a part of God's plan for them? Why would God ever predestine non-believers to be non-believers?5) In answering another question about sin on this site, the moderator cited several saints who said basically (I think) that human sin exists as a part of God's greater plan of Redemption through Christ. Does that mean that we, once redeemed, are better than the angels? Please don't ignore this question because I used the clearly incorrect word better. I really mean something like more exalted or more glorious or something to that effect. Wouldn't that have to be the case if the plan of Redemption is better than remaining eternally in the Garden of Eden?6) I read here that evil is the absence of God. How can God be absent? Isn't all that is, a part of God's creation? Isn't God anywhere and everywhere?7) When we read mythology or folklore of past civilizations we think, oh this is clearly wrong. I am in a mythology class right now and it is really scary how there are so many themes, symbols, and rituals that are shared by Catholicism (and to a lesser extent Christianity in general) and the various different world mythologies. For example, the virgin birth, transfiguration, resurrection, world redeemer, etc. How do we account for the occurance of those symbols in our faith and tell others that our religion isn't mythology, but that it's real.Hmmm...maybe that's it for now, but I'm sure I'll come up with some more questions which weigh down on my heart. Thank you for your time and have a great week!!

Answer: 

“I read on the website that God didn't create evil, but that evil comes from sin. And sin comes from us. Then how do we explain natural disasters and such. Do they happen because people sin, like Sodom and Gomorrah? Is there no evil in the world that doesn't come from man sinning. And even if we don't call natural disasters evil, I still want to know why such phenomena occur, given that God loves us and wants the best for us.”

Wow! You’re touching on some of the most profound questions that humanity ever confronts. And certainly we won’t resolve it on CatholicQandA.org! Nevertheless, let me share some reflections with you.

First, I would recommend an old but really good book by John Hick, “Evil and the God of Love.” In it Professor Hick reviews quite well many of the greatest Christian thinkers’ works on this topic. I suggest you read it when you have time.

In somewhat technical language you are raising issues related to “theodicy” or “the problem of evil.” “Theodicy” is an English form of a Greek compound word which means something like “the righteousness of God.” That is to say, the “problem of evil” or “theodicy” asks how we can assert that God is all-loving and all-powerful and yet at the same time recognize the existence of evil for which God is not responsible. Or, “how can we say that God is righteous when God allows evil to be present in the world?”

Nobody has ever completely and fully answered the question. This issue is one of the greatest conundrums which humankind – especially believing humankind – faces.

In western Christianity two general strands of thought have largely dominated responses – not complete, not full, not totally adequate answers – but responses to the questions posed by “the problem of evil” or the problem of suffering as it also sometimes called.

Following John Hick, one of these lines of discussion is sometimes called the position of Saint Irenaeus. While I am WAY over-simplifying it, it might go something like the following: God is the Creator of the world; part of God’s gift to the created order is free will; some creatures chose to mis-use that divine gift of free will; through their choice to mis-use the gift of free will sin came into the world. Actually, this so-called “Irenaean” position has been largely dominant among Christian thinkers in the West. It affirms the sovereignty of God; it allows for the presence of sin and evil in the world; it posits a devil, who is a creature and who has mis-used the gift of free will, as the originator of sin. Of course, the problem with this position is that if God is ultimately the Creator, then why didn’t God create the world and human beings in such a way that they both had free will AND were not susceptible to sin. Nobody has ever been able to explain that problem via the rational faculty exclusively. Faith is essential in this aspect – as in ALL aspects – of living and knowing.

The other “solution,” according to John Hick (and the one which I have personally always found a bit more attractive though not ultimately so), is often referred to as the “Augustinian approach.” Saint Augustine suggests that evil is the “absence of good.” Again I am being far too simplistic in my explanation, but essentially Augustine tends to think of “goodness” as God’s greatest gift to creation. Evil, then, is the negation of that goodness; evil predominates, as it were, where goodness is absent and to the degree that goodness is absent. As evil taints the reality of the good, that goodness falls more and more into non-being. This Augustinian ‘solution’ to the problem of evil postulates that evil is “no-thing” – that is to say, everything that “is” is good while that which is evil lacks essential being. Does this make any sense? Read John Hick’s book; he does a much better job of explaining it than I do.

You mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah in your question. Most Scripture scholars today identify “the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah” as a profound lack of hospitality. These ancient cities did not welcome the divine messengers (or angels) whom God sent. The inhospitality of the cities’ citizens was such a brazen breach of the ancient near east’s etiquette of welcoming strangers, especially sojourners and travelers, that the cities were destroyed. Thus, we might say that a “sodomite” is a person who does not welcome strangers – not the usual “definition” of sodomite!

Natural disasters are particularly vexing from a theological point-of-view. We can’t say that a river “sins” and that’s why it becomes polluted and kills millions of fish. In a somewhat derivative way, we might say that human sinfulness is responsible for much of the evil in the world and even many of the so-called “natural” disasters. E.g., because human beings sin by polluting the river, it cannot sustain life and the fish die.

But an earthquake can’t really be attributed to human sinfulness in anything like a direct or even indirect way. Some theologians might argue that human sinfulness has so tainted the natural order of creation that disasters are, so to speak, “nature’s” reaction to sin – though I personally find that line of argument not too convincing. That is a long way around to say that I really don’t know how – in faith – to respond to the fact of natural disasters in the context of a Christian understanding of sin.

Toward the end of your question, you assert – correctly! – that God wants to the best for us. That is – thankfully! – so very true. God DOES want the best for us. And so God time and again allows good to be brought out of our sin. From the most profoundly evil deed ever perpetrated by humanity – the Crucifixion of the utterly sinless Jesus – God brought Redemption and Salvation for the world. God is constantly “writing straight with the crooked lines” of our lives.

Saint Paul says in Corinthians that “power is made perfect in weakness.” This mystical truth hints at – not a solution to the problem of evil – but rather, at a way through the problem of evil: God’s power is most perfectly manifested in the weakness of our humanity. When we are strong and together, we all too often think that we don’t “need” God, that we can handle “stuff” on our own. But when we are weak, we know that we desperately need God. And very often our weaknesses are the result of sin – ours or somebody else’s. So, I would say that Saint Paul is nudging us toward a modus vivendi, a way of living with the evil in the world. We will never fully understand it or explain its origins. But if we allow God’s power to touch and to transform our weakness, the evil which is surely part of the world cannot overwhelm us.

Thanks for a great question!

Blessings,
Father Phillip