This document discusses different Christian perspectives on the problem of evil. It is divided into 5 camps: 1) God is not all-knowing or evil came from free will. 2) God is not all-powerful or evil resulted from sin. 3) God allows evil for morally sufficient reasons like justice, free will, or soul-making. 4) Evil does not truly exist but is the absence of good. 5) Evil exists in the human mind due to concepts like pride, fear, and dehumanization. The document examines views from thinkers like Augustine, Calvin, Aquinas and explores how beliefs about evil can influence perceptions of danger and punishment. In the end, the author

1. THE PROBLEM WITH EVIL
This rabbit trail happened because someone posted this question to a group I belong to online.
“Is there a place where the devil and his followers gather?”
which bunny trailed into the bigger question of evil itself.
I responded but then started thinking more about why I think what I think now
and how different Christian thinkers think about evil and its origins.

2. Premise Inference
God is omniscient (all knowing)
God is omnipotent (all powerful)
God is perfectly good and loving
God is the source of all things
God knows about evil
God could stop evil
God does not desire evil
God is the source of evil
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

3. Camp 1 : God is not all knowing
Augustine - “Evil is the absence of good. God does not participate in
evil.”
Open theology – insomuch as God gives free agency the future is
comprised of possibilities known to God (this puts God in time).
Thomas Torrance – necessity of a fallen God“…the eternal Son takes
upon himself our fallen nature and returns it to us, purified and
rectified through his life of perfect obedience.”

4. Camp 2 : God is not all powerful
Most Christians - Evil came as a result of sin.
Calvin – “man corrupted the pure nature he had received from the Lord; and
by his fall drew all his posterity with him into destruction.”
Arminian Christians - God limited his power by giving man free will. Sin
happened because of free will.
Rabbi Harold Kushner When Bad Things Happen to Good People, (1981)
“He is limited in what He can do by laws of nature and by the evolution of
human nature and human moral freedom.”

5. Satan and Fallen Angels Adam and Eve
Book of Enoch
Early Church Fathers
Athenagoras
Tertullian
Clement
Origen
Justin Martyr
70% of Americans believe Satan exists
Roman Catholics
Protestants
Evangelicals
Pentecostals

6. Camp 3 : Morally sufficient reason to allow evil
- Evil is punishment for sin caused by the fall.
Aquinas & Maimonodes – God allows evil in order to maintain justice in
the universe.
Calvin – “All events are governed by God’s secret plan.”
Evangelical Christians (John Piper) – “God governs all events in the universe
without sinning and without removing the responsibility from man.”
Plantinga’s Free will defense – “maybe there is some kind of good that God
is only capable of bring into existence if He permits evil to also exist.”
John Hick’s Soul making defense – “God allows suffering so that human
souls might grow or develop towards maturation.”

7. 2 types of evil
MORAL EVIL NATURAL EVIL

8. Camp 4 : Evil does not exist
Athanasius – “All things which are [exist because] they are good and from Good, in
so far as they are deprived of good they do not exist.
Augustine’s Privation theory – evil is the absence of good
Clement of Alexandria - "since God is completely good, he could not have created
evil; but if God did not create evil, then it cannot exist.” rather Christ as the logos
causes the soul to regain the internal harmony it lost due to the influence of the
passions of the irrational part of the mind.
Origen “God will be ‘all’, for there will no longer be any distinction of good and evil,
seeing evil nowhere exists” in God
Karl Barth – “evil (nothingness) is “that which God does not will,” but on the other
hand Jesus Christ overcame evil as something that truly needed to be undone.”

9. Camp 5 – Evil is in the mind
Kierkegaard - evil is negativity which is a consequence of pride and fear
that result in humans wanting to be more or less free than they are
Zimbardo - Under certain conditions good people do evil things
“seduced into evil by dehumanizing and labeling others”
Baxter Kruger - Satan has found a way to deceive us so that we
unwittingly, yet willingly, bring his poison into our ‘observations’ of
ourselves, others, and life.

10. Consequences of Belief in the power of Evil
Perceive the world as dangerous and vile.
View anti-social behavior as a product of enduring malice.
Justify increased military action against aggression.
Support harsher punishment and death penalty.
Reject restorative justice practices.
“The longer we cling to strong beliefs about the existence of
pure evil, the more aggressive and antisocial we become.”
– Scientific American The Psychological Power of Satan

11. There are forces that are not God, not love, not kind, selfish, grasping, violent, hateful,
destructive forces.
If God is purely good and humanity bears God's image then it seems reasonable that whatever
is inconsistent with the nature of God is not God.
Humans discovered how to hurt each other and ourselves and developed destructive habits
from a source other than God (I get that some people are comfortable with the notion that
God is the origin of evil for inexplicable purposes beyond our pay grade, I'm not, so I'm
exploring other possibilities).
This destructive-evil-that -is-not-God might be something that's mutated in the human mind-
body-spirit, a psychic phenomenon, or an actual presence with personality. Certainly nearly
every culture personifies evil in its mythology. An explanation makes the horror more
manageable. Maybe evil manifests in all these ways but I don't think evil is any kind of
organized or deliberate force. I don't think there is a specific place evil hangs out.
Evil just seems to develop like storms or black holes form, under a combination of conditions. I
don't think evil is like a bad neighborhood you can drive around.
I do think that responding by embracing love, kindness, generousity, and healing repels evil's
most damaging effects. i do think God is way more powerful than evil, but I can't reconcile the
idea that evil originated with God or that evil is among the "all things" held together in Christ.
It's kind of like old sci-fi versions of anti-matter and black holes. Not a thing but a void, a tear,
a portal into diminished existence from which God ultimately rescues those temporarily
sucked in.