Questioning Assumptions

The classic Epicurean syllogism makes assumptions about God in statements 1 and 2 that it then uses to hang classical theism. It asserts that, if God is all-good and all-loving, He would want to remove evil from the world.  We are meant to read this quickly and uncritically, but there are at least several qualifications to this statement that can and should be made. 

Does God desire to remove evil from the world? If so, how does He desire to remove it? When does He desire to remove it? Why does He desire to remove it? Is it at all possible that evil, at least in the present, serves some purpose to this all-good and all-loving God?  These questions ought to at least be considered. 

Christianity definitely believes that God desires to remove evil from the world. In fact, a favorite summary of all of the Bible is  as a story of “Creation, Fall, and Redemption.” Genesis 1 and 2 provide the first act of cosmic history--a perfect, sinless, painless universe in which God and man are in perfect communion.  Genesis 3 represents act 2--it is all ruined by the freewill act of God’s greatest creation, humankind.  From that moment on, God has been about the redemption of His good creation.  Act 3, then, begins at Genesis 3:15 and represents 99.75% of the written revelation of God to us.  God is about setting right the evil that we brought upon Him and His handiwork.  Does God want to remove this evil?  He most certainly does! 

It is important, however, to understand the nuance of this divine intention.  Given that God wants to annihilate evil, He has an infinite number of methods He might undertake to do so. He is omnipotent, after all (but more on that later).  In the seconds after the fall of humanity, He might have simply judiciously undone the choice of Adam. He could have willed Adam and Eve to cease existing and replaced them with  Ralph and Margaret, humanity block 2, and wired them slightly differently. He might have been more like the god of Islam and simply chosen to forgive out of His mercy and moved on with time and eternity without needing justice. He might have done any number of things, and we must believe that multiple options lay before his omniscient mind. In the end, He chose the history of the world that our race has experienced. We ought to at least wonder why. 

He chose not to immediately remove evil, although this was certainly an option before Him.  What purpose could there be to give evil a season of existence in the initially (and ultimately) good creation of God before He redeems it, eons later?  Many philosophers and theologians have posited answers that have convinced different segments of inquirers throughout history, but ultimately, it is the position of this article that the best answer lies in God’s desire to reveal Himself fully to His creation. To help illustrate this, please allow a brief analogy.

Imagine an all-white rabbit. It has beautiful, soft white fur. Its skin is white.  Its nails are white, and even (impossibly) its eyes are white. There is no non-white pigment whatsoever anywhere on it. If this white rabbit were to step out onto freshly fallen snow in bright sunlight, it would be utterly invisible to the observer.  That would be fantastic if it wanted to be unobserved by predators, but what if it wanted to be known? The unspotted appearance of this creature and the pristine setting in which it finds itself would utterly frustrate its desire to be found, handled, and in a relationship. 

Now imagine that this same perfectly white rabbit were to hop out of pristine snow and into a patch of dirt, where the soil shows through.  It would immediately be able to be discovered and seen for what it is. 

In the same way, Adam and Eve knew some of the attributes of God in the garden, but much more of His nature has been perceptible as a contrast against the sinful background of the world that Adam’s evil introduced.  Given the reality of sin, God has chosen to reveal His nature most fully through contrast, though neither His attributes nor His self-revelation depend upon evil.

God’s holiness is best shown as a contrast to our depravity.  God’s mercy can only be shown when we, undeserving sinners, are its object. God’s grace can only be expressed when it gives us time to repent.  God’s long-suffering patience is only revealed in a relationship with stubborn rebellion.  God’s love is most clearly proclaimed when it loves the unregenerate toward repentance.  Even God’s justice and wrath are only able to be shown when they are unleashed rightly against the wickedness of fallen mankind.  How would we have known these attributes in their fullness if not for the stain that Adam’s sin cast upon the perfection of God’s original design?  

It is at least possible, then, that an all-good and all-loving God desires to remove evil but permits its existence for a season out of His goodness and love--or at least so that His goodness and love might be more fully known. This will be developed more fully below. 

Second, is it true that an all-powerful God would be able to remove evil? Certainly, it seems like the answer has to be “yes,” otherwise, He would not be all-powerful.  However, there are some limitations, even on an all-powerful being.  Some potential actions are impossible not because God is unable but because they are self-excluded by God’s nature or by logic. For example, it is “impossible for God to lie” (Heb 6:18), not because God is unable to form untrue words but because His nature will not allow it. He doesn’t lack the ability.  He simply won’t do it because it would violate who He is. Is removing evil by a fiat action something like God lying? Perhaps. 

In the lying example, an attribute of who God is limits His free will choices, not a lack of ability. Similarly, God’s goodness would seem to compel Him to remove evil, but this action might be restrained not by his ability but by some other one of His attributes. Which of those attributes might that be? Certainly, holiness and justice would urge Him to annihilate evil. What might modify His plan? 

Perfection. Glory. Love. Mercy.

When Adam and Eve were created, they were made in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26-27; 5:1; 9:6). Just as pagan religions put an idol, an image of a false god in a temple to reflect and represent their idea of god, the true and living God set mankind as His image and reflection in the created world, all of which was meant as a temple to Himself. We are designed to point one another and all of creation to worship God, reflected in ourselves.  In that original sense, we were meant to reflect the goodness and glory of God to one another. 

When Adam rebelled against his Maker and brought ruin upon us all, he marred that image.  We are all now distorted images of our God, but the image has not ceased to be carried within us.  It is only dimmed.  Adam did not cease to be the image of God completely.  He simply became a dirty and broken one. 

If God had done away with Adam and Eve and replaced them with Ralph and Margaret, which He could have theoretically done, He would have failed in His declared purpose of making an image-bearer. He declared, in Genesis 1:26-27, that He would make mankind in His image to have dominion. If he had folded up that project and gone with block 2, He would have failed to accomplish his declaration.  God cannot fail. Having freely decreed to create and endow humanity with His image, God bound Himself by His own faithful nature to redeem rather than replace Adam. 

He had set His glory upon mankind.  He could not destroy it. He had to preserve it. 

He had set his love upon mankind.  He could not violate it.  He had to maintain it.

While mankind willfully became an object of divine wrath, God chose not to destroy the archetype (Adam and Eve).  Rather, He chose to endure for generations of sinful men the evil of their actions so that He might show His compassion, grace, and mercy to some who turned to Him in faith while allowing others to suffer the consequences of their sinfulness in judgment (Rom 9:22-24). 

God’s holiness, justice, and moral perfection demand that He punish sin. His love, compassion, mercy, and glory compel Him to do it a particular way.  That particular way involved millennia of patience, revelation, guidance, and ultimately self-sacrificial love. 

So, can an all-powerful God remove evil? Yes, but in keeping with His other attributes, and that requires time, process, and Calvary.  He could not leave sin unpunished.  He could not obliterate His image bearers, so He did what only God could do--He stood in the way of His own wrath as Philippians 2:5-9 so beautifully describes: 

“5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. “

This solution is what only an all-powerful and all-loving God could do. 

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