Evil

Evil, that which is morally bad or wrong, or that which causes harm, pain, or misery. In theology, the problem of evil arises if it is accepted that evil exists in a universe governed by a supreme being who is both good and omnipotent. In a formulation of the problem attributed to the Greek philosopher Epicurus, either God can prevent evil and chooses not to (and therefore is not good) or chooses to prevent it and cannot (and therefore is not all-powerful).

Traditional Religious Solutions

The problem of evil has been a central concern of philosophers and of all the major religions. Some of the solutions proposed have rested on a denial either of the existence of evil or of the omnipotence of God. In Hindu teaching, for instance, evil has no real existence, being part of the illusory world of phenomena.

In the ancient Persian religion Zoroastrianism and the related ancient Middle Eastern sect known as Manichaeism, evil is attributed to the existence of an evil deity, against whom the good deity must struggle. In the Book of Job, on the other hand, after Job's comforters offer dubious explanations of Job's undeserved suffering, the demand for an explanation is ultimately made to seem presumptuous, and the scriptural writer suggests that God's ways are mysterious and beyond human understanding.

St Augustine

As Christian theology began to emerge in the 3rd and 4th centuries, the problem of evil became particularly challenging because Christianity was committed to the existence of an all-powerful, benevolent God but at the same time acknowledged the real existence of evil. At the end of the 4th century, St Augustine formulated the solution that has had the greatest influence on subsequent Christian thinkers. As a young man, Augustine had accepted the dualistic theology of Manichaeism.

The later influence of Neoplatonism prepared him for his conversion to Christianity and his theological reconciliation of the Christian belief in a benevolent God, the creator of everything that exists, with the pervasive presence of evil in the world.

According to Augustine, evil was not created by God, whose creation is entirely good. Evil is the privation, or absence, of good, in the same way that darkness is the absence of light. It is possible, however, for something created good to diminish in goodness, to become corrupted, and evil has crept in when creatures endowed with free will-angels, such lesser spirits as demons, and human beings-turn away from higher, or more complete, goods and choose lesser, partial ones. Furthermore, according to Augustine, what at first appears to be evil may be understood to be good in the context of eternity. From God's eternal perspective, everything is good.

Later Arguments

Augustine's ideas strongly influenced later Roman Catholic theologians, such as St Thomas Aquinas, and Reformation Protestant theologians, particularly John Calvin, In the 17th century, the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz argued that God's power of creation was limited to logically possible worlds, and evil is a logically necessary part of the best of all possible worlds".

During the Age of Enlightenment, these arguments came under attack by sceptics. Both the French philosopher Voltaire and the British philosopher David Hume rejected the idea that the immense amount of pain and suffering in human life can be justified because it forms part of a benevolent divine plan.

The 20th Century

The unprecedented scale of the wars and persecutions of the 20th century undermined the secular belief in inevitable progress and confronted philosophers and theologians once again with the problem of evil. In particular, the question of whether extreme suffering can ever be theologically justified was raised with regard to the Holocaust.

Some have speculated about the absence of God; others have recalled the idea in the Book of Job of the mysteriousness of God's ways. The problem of evil has thus returned as a major concern of contemporary theology.