The Origin of Evil
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We have to start by framing the biblical goal posts.
1: God exists.
14 And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “This is what you shall say to the sons of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”
2: God is good and holy.
3 And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of armies. The whole earth is full of His glory.”
3: Evil also exists.
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
4: There was ionce a reality in which nothing existed but God alone.
2 Before the mountains were born Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
This is were we must use logic in examining these 4 truths.
God exists. Evil exists. There was a time when only God existed. Everything that exists apart from God comes from God. Thus evil comes from God.
Now of course, te logic of this auyrgument falls short of the biblical truth.
A Holy God cannot create evil.
3 And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of armies. The whole earth is full of His glory.”
God does not take pleasure in wickedness and it is impossible for evil to dwell in God.
4 For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; No evil can dwell with You.
God does not tempt people with evil.
13 No one is to say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.
Somehow te logical conclusion of biblical truts does not mac the scriptual truth of God.
So someting must be wrong with our initual aurgument.
Perhaps we should make sure we know what we mean when we speak of evil.
Te bible says in te KJV
7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
Of course the “evil” that verse speaks about it not evil is the moral sense of the word.
Its the Hebrew “Ra” wich is not moral evil but rather calamity.
Some refer to this as “natural evil” but giving the serious nature of this discussion semantics matter and we must leave no room for ambiguity, so i reject the term “natural evil” in favor of calamity or even disaster.
The translators of many bible translations agree and thus it is better wored as:
7 The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating disaster; I am the Lord who does all these things.
Calamity and disaster are indeed terrible and absolutly tradgic - but they are not evil.
Think of Jesus responding to the croud speculation of the tower of Siloam:
4 Or do you think that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse offenders than all the other people who live in Jerusalem?
5 No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
So the questions again: Where did evil come from?
Let us imagine history:
At a point evil comes into existance.
From where?
Now we can look to te 2 dominant christians worldviews to see what orthadoxy has said:
1:The Calvanist view.
The Calvanist view is both the most logical and the least helpful.
The calvanist teraces evil back as far as it can and concludes that Evil must somehow comes from God.
“God willed evil into existance” John Mcaurther.
However when asked how this can possible be, we are left with “The mystry of eniquity” as a soliution.
Logical yes, helpful no.
2: The Arminium View.
The Arminuim view is almost the opposite. It is not very logical, yet at least it actually ioffers a solution.
Evil, according to Arminiusm, is a result of human freedom.
Adam and Eve’s free choice to disobey God is when sin, and thus, evil entered into the world.
Now some may say, how is that not logical?
Well it falls prey to the same aurgument as “who created God?”
Adam, Eve wewre NOT fallen people. They had no sinful desire, there was no emnity between the fallen nature and the spirit.
There was no sinful weakness in them.
So If we say that their free choice is the cause of sin, we have to ask then: Why did they choose disobedience then?
Why would pure and innocent being without any sinful desire or inclination CHOOSE to disobery their loving creator?
Now we may rightly say:
Satan decieved them. And that would be right. But, that does also not answer the question because we can then ask: Where did the evil one himself come from?
Also it is not obvious as to why morally perfect beings would even fall for such evil deception in the first place.
No, while we can say with scriptual confidence that Satan had a neccesery role in the fall, he was not the author of it.
There was something about both Satan and Adam and Eve which made the manifestation of evil possible - yes of itself was NOT evil at all.
There is no evidence that a Good and Holy Giod created beings in his image in the case of man and for his glory in the case of Satan, that has any form of evil inclination within them.
So let us then move to a study of creation itself.
All of creation is created by God.
Thus all of createion is good.
But what exacally does it mean that it is “good”?
The Hebrew word Tobal means pleasing or suitible, but what it does mean is “perfect”.
God alone is perfect. Because God has no beging and no end he is perfect in his self existance.
Creation is not self existing nor is creation self sustaining.
Creation is not perfect because it, by its sheer nature, needs God for both its beging and its contunued existance.
It is Good, but it is not perfect. And it cannot be perfect because then creation would be God.
God could not have done it better either, the “imperfection” of creation is not a design flaw on God’s part - it is a fact of the neccesery nature of creation.
God needs nothing. But creation needs a creator.
Thus creation, though absoltly good, experiences something that the creator does not: Limits.
God is perfect in that he is unlimited.
Omni....
But creation has limits - limits set by God himself.
11 And I said, ‘As far as this point you shall come, but no farther; And here your proud waves shall stop’?
These limit6s are NOT evil nor are they weakness or flaws. They are intrinsic to creation itself.
From a phyics point of view we see this easily.
An object falling is limited in its speed by the value of gravity.
Light cannot move faster.
Sound cannot travel faster than its pitch.
Any scientific discovery is in essence the discovery based on the limit ofn creation.
For inanimate systems this is simple.
However, what happens to this “limited” creation when sentien beings are introduced?
Spiritual beings such as angerls or physical beings such as mankind?
In the case of simple physical forves like the forces between electrons and protons these limts are vital but non personal.
However in the case of inteligent sential beings these limitations are seen as something else alltogether. They are seen and understood as vulnrabilities.
For example: The limitations of my physical body to withstand the force of falling off a cliff makes me vunerible to a fall.
The limitations of my human mind to comprehend infinate thoughts makes me vunerible to misunderstandings.
Vunerilbility is NOT evil nor sinful, and again nor is it a design flaw - it is intrinsic to creation being less than God.
I also am convinced that these intrinsic vuneriabilities are the essence of creations dependance of God.
Creation without any limits or any vunerbilities has no need for God. It would be self existing and self sustaining.
But since it is not: Creation is, not by design, but my intrinsic neccecity, dependant on God.
I wish to propose that is it this vunerability and dependance on God that is the key to the origen of evil.
When Satan approached Eve he told her an odd lie, yet a lie that had an attraction to the creature:
4 The serpent said to the woman, “You certainly will not die!
5 For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil.”
Satan told Eve that the fruit of the tree would make her like God.
And:
6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband with her, and he ate.
So the offer to be like God was a desirible option to Eve. Why? In a world of peace and innocence, a beautiful world - why would ever desire to be like God?
Was not life in the garden perfect?
Well, yes…and no.
Life in the garden was peerfect from a moral point of view, but it was not perfect in the same sense as God is perfect.
Eve, as a created being, knew that life was subject to limitation and thus vunerabilities.
Satan’s offer to be like God was an offer to, like God, be unlimited and thus free from all vunerabilities.
If she indeed believed this we also understand why she eagerly gave to Adam and why he ate as eagerly too.
And this would also account for the rebellion oif Satan as resentment towards God with reagrds to his dependance on God.
Evil can thus be understood as: The creatures resentment towards their creator.