There were six theological ideas put forward:

• Evil originates in God and is misunderstood.
• Evil occurs when God ‘withdraws’ from a place.
• Evil is entropy/chaos seeking to reassert itself in a world that has been placed in order by God.
• Evil is the ‘no’ inherent in the ‘yes’ of God’s creative act. It is the ‘nothingness’ that exists apart from God.
• ‘Evil’ is down to natural probability.
• ‘Evil’ is a force in the world that springs from our collective psychic experience – interiority.

Much of the following is based on the excellent book A Theology of the Dark Side by Nigel G Wright (Paternoster Press 2003). However, any errors in the following summaries are the responsibility of Jon the freelance theologian.

Some preliminary notes to the discussion

Some evil is subjective
So, if, for example, my friend Ian opens his wallet and finds the £20 note he put in there is missing, he may curse his luck and think he’s the victim of misfortune and that the world is evil as a result. But if I’m walking down the street 100 yards behind Ian and suddenly a £20 note blows towards me I may praise the situation. Free money! And I may think the universe is a beneficial place for me.

For Ian, losing the money disadvantages him and therefore he feels wronged. For me, finding the money advantages me and therefore I feel happy.

But is that all evil is? Well, no, there are other things that seem more tangible and life-threatening than the movement of a £20 note. My point is that some “evil” is subjective, depending on whether we are hurt or damaged by it.

Events are compounded by moral choices
The recent earthquake in Haiti registered at 7 on the Richter Scale. They are still pulling bodies out of the rubble. In the early 1990s an earthquake hit Los Angeles, registering 7 on the Richter scale and only 68 people died.

Was the earthquake that hit Haiti any more or less evil than the one that hit LA? Was it the effects of the earthquake that were more evil? Should we really blame the earthquake at all, given that its devastating effects were the result of it hitting one of the world’s poorest countries not one of the world’s richest? What really caused that ‘evil’ event?

This is where we start to blur the lines between ‘natural’ and ‘moral’ evil. Often natural evil is magnified in its destructive intensity by moral evil. In the case of Haiti, the oppression of ‘poor’ countries by rich ones contributed towards it. But earthquakes are a case in point – we call their effects evil because they impinge on our freedom. But does that make it evil?

But where does moral evil come from?
Much has been written about the notion of free will, the ‘Fall of Man’, and supernatural intervention by a malignant force. But why would we (or any being) choose for evil to happen? What is the origin of evil in a universe created by God – who we would say is the ultimate good?

The origin of evil is the purpose of this article. Ultimately the big question we need to ask before we start seeing evil as a ‘problem’ is ‘does evil exist, and, if so, from whence did evil come from?’ Here are six possible philosophical/theological possibilities.

Option 1: Evil originates in God and is misunderstood.
But one important aspect of the idea of ‘satan’ is interesting to bring in here. There are some theological viewpoints that state that God uses satan/evil for God’s purposes. God is therefore the author of both good and evil.

Another way of looking at this is that evil is God’s ‘dark side’ – what philosopher Carl Jung called the ‘shadow’.

This presupposes that God is capable of any acts, including evil, and – because evil is subjective – sometimes God’s act appear evil. So, for example, God’s grace and God’s wrath are like opposite sides of a weighing scale. If you’re on the wrath side, then you may experience ‘evil’ that is authored in God.

Strangely this view has some Biblical authority – Exodus 32:14 (King James Version): “And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.” (New International Version) “Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.” (See this article on freelance theology for more on this.)

Some ideas in “Process theology” suggest that God is ‘working out’ his dark side in the drama of human history. Through interaction with the world, God is becoming more good. The Biblical story does seem to show a developing understanding of God from a bloodthirsty tyrant in the Old Testament to an incarnate God willing to enter his creation and die to reconcile human beings to himself in the New.

Option 2: Evil occurs when God ‘withdraws’ from a place.
There is a problem with ‘free will’. If God is the author and sustainer of the universe, that means that all potentiality finds its origin in God. Free will is an illusion if all actions are pre-known and/or pre-planned by God. The great criticism of Calvinism is that when predestination is asserted too strongly, it means that everything is ultimately God’s responsibility which makes the whole idea of sin, judgement and justice ultimately an illusion.

If God withdraws to allow free-willed beings to exist and make genuinely free choices, then his sustenance of that creation is withdrawn, allowing for a collapse into chaos and the emergence of ‘evil’ events and actions that are not aligned with God’s plans.

This has some Biblical backing, namely the use of the term ‘kenosis’ in Philippians chapter 2. The idea that in the incarnation, God the Son ‘emptied himself’ (kenosis) to become human, seems to illustrate a way that God could ‘deny his very nature’ and become less-than-God. Kenosis is a fairly popular topic within theology as it allows for God to experience mortality (death) as a reality in the person of Christ. (See this freelance theology article for more on kenosis.)

If God withdraws from the cosmos and allows it, and the creatures that dwell in it, to run along self-determinating lines, then those creatures and the very cosmos itself could deviate from God’s original plans. ‘Evil’ is deviation from the original plans.

A version of this was put forward as an explanation for evil by Augustine. (It wasn’t particularly original, but he summed it up well.) He talked about the ‘Privatio Boni’, the Privation of Good. So evil is only seen as evil because it is a falling away from perfection.

So, if a man blind it’s a privation of the good – being sighted – and therefore blindness is evil. But for a cave fish with no eyes anyway, being blind is not evil because it is not a falling away from perfection.

The idea of a ‘falling away’ from a state of perfection obviously has a Biblical basis in Genesis chapter 3, where sin enters the world and begins to distort it. But it doesn’t really explain where sin/evil originates; it just explains the form that evil takes.

Option 3: Evil is entropy/chaos seeking to reassert itself in a world that has been placed in order by God.

The two terms to be aware of are Creativity versus Discreativity. This is seen in dualistic religions such as Zoroastrianism, and has some Biblical basis – ‘the deep’ in Genesis chapter 1 is often thought of as the ‘primordial chaos’ as seen in, for example, Babylonian creation myths (more on freelance theology here). The creative act of God brings order in the midst of chaos, but chaos fights back

So, the natural state of things is non-order – and this seems to be evidenced by physics with the idea that due to entropy all matter will lapse into a uniform state.

As entropy seeks to discreate, ‘evil’ is the result. God’s role as sustainer becomes even more important, because it is only through God’s continual input into creation that entropy can be held at bay.

But occasionally it can’t be kept out, for whatever reason (probably the free will of autonomous beings again), and so ‘evil’/discreativity occurs.

However, a problem for this point of view is that chaos is pre-existent, and Christian theology traditionally asserts creatio ex nihilo, i.e. that there was nothing pre-existing God and God’s creative acts.

And yet there must have been something other than God for God to be defined against. This leads us onto a new option: evil as ‘nothingness’

Option 4: Evil is the ‘no’ inherent in the ‘yes’ of God’s creative act. It is the ‘nothingness’ that exists apart from God.

Ways to think about this: You cannot create light without creating dark. You cannot create matter without it having vacuum to move frictionlessly in. God cannot exist without something to define God against, otherwise in what sense does God exist?

The ‘nothingness’ is a key element of Karl Barth’s explanation for the origin of evil. Barth coined the term ‘Das nichtinge’ – and defined ‘the nothingness’ as a negative force that exists ‘improperly’ because it is not planned or purposed by God

Barth said that evil is the ‘no’ of God that is inherent in the ‘yes’ of the creative act. God said ‘let there be light’ and as a result created darkness. When God sets out creation and says ‘let it be like this’, he also in a strange way creates an alternative mode of being at the same time for it to be defined against. There is something profoundly poetic and therefore compelling in the way Barth describes this.

“Let it be good” means you create the potentiality for it to be bad at the same time. Evil becomes the potential by-product of creating ‘good’. When it takes form, as all potentialities can, evil affects a discreative influence upon the universe. That can be in the moral relationships and behaviour of autonomous agents operating in a space that God has withdrawn from to allow free autonomy, or just the workings of said world deviating from it’s original ‘good’ plan.

This definition of evil is similar to privatio boni and discreativity in that evil feeds parastically on existence as a failing of existence, in all three ideas.

But there is a problem with this view, when it states that God’s ‘yes’ was within God’s will, but that God’s ‘no’ was outside his will. Actually both may be within God’s will, in that God may actively choose the good and reject the bad at the same time. God may choose to create and therefore choose not to discreate in the same action, much as you or I often have a choice between two eventualities.

Option 5: ‘Evil’ is down to natural probability.
This isn’t a particularly Christian idea, but it’s found in modern pandeism, notably in God’s Debris by Scott Adams (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2001). And yet, it does resonate with some of the process theologies, as probability is one way for God to work out his creative processes.

It also seems to chime with a lot of the ‘wisdom literature’ you find in the Old Testament, like the books of Job and Ecclesiastes that try to explain why bad things happen to good people. Jesus’ comments about how God ‘sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous‘ (Matthew chapter 5, verse 45) also seem to indicate that bad things are as likely as not to happen to good people.

So, what is meant by probability?

We live in a universe that is mathematically ordered along strong lines of probability. Many things happen every day – some favour us and some don’t. We all attract a certain amount of things to us and how favourable those things are could be plotted on a probability graph – very favourable things towards the top, and very unfavourable things towards the bottom.

Most of us bumble along the middle of the graph, very occasionally attracting one or two very good things – we meet our life partner; we win the lottery – or very bad things – we are made redundant; we get cancer.

But some people get all good things – they are born in privilege and everything they touch turns to gold. And others get all bad things – they are born in a third world hellhole, scrape a meagre living, catch a horrible disease and die a horrible death.

Well, that’s the way probability works.

But there are ways of shading probability. You can exercise to avoid heart disease. Or apply yourself to your job to make sure you don’t get laid off. And as a race, we can spread the wealth and raise people up out of grinding poverty, thereby shading their probability towards the top end of the graph.

Probability isn’t a particularly good way of comforting people, you’d think, but personally I like to think that we live in a world where favourable and unfavourable events happen, and when unfavourable events happen to me it’s not because God is angry, or doesn’t love me, or doesn’t care. It’s just that in life some unfavourable events are going to happen.

And when those things happen to other people, I have a choice whether I turn to help them or not. I think there’s a call on us to react to ‘evil’.

I’m aware that this approach does lead onto more questions – why would God create a world where probability is a driving force. My guess is that it’s because only such a world would work if God withdrew from it to allow beings within the universe to have free will.

Option 6: ‘Evil’ is a force in the world that springs from our collective psychic experience – interiority.

Let’s start by talking about institutionalised evil: The institutions end up controlling us. They become their own ‘thing’ that we give the power to and then become enslaved by. Think of how people can get caught up in church traditions. At one point they created those traditions to serve a purpose, but soon they became enslaved by them.

How does this happen? Well, some thinkers point to the notion of ‘interiority’. This is the idea that somehow humans create structures and institutions which take on ‘a life of their own’. The power that we give them gets turned back on us and ends up ruling us. Think of a democracy – we effectively control the democracy because we give law-making powers to people we elect. Does it feel that way?

At a simpler level – the ‘spirit of the mob’ occurs when we abdicate responsibility for our own actions and become part of a larger whole which is capable of doing terrible things. I have shouted things at soccer matches I would never shout if I was an individual on my own. Being part of ‘the mob’ meant I was part of a collective and the mob was shouting those things so I shouted along with it. But by shouting along with it I helped create it.

The theologian who talks most about interiority is Walter Wink. He points out that most of the Biblical references to ‘evil’ references structures of control and power – in fact evil is defined as “principalities and powers”. Wink sees these powers as the crystallisation of the ‘innermost essence’ of human beings made manifest through word and action.

Evil thus manifests itself in human thought and action, but is based ultimately in human idolatry – trusting in something other than God and gifting that thing with power that should in reality belong to God. That power then comes back to haunt us by overpowering us and making us its slave. We effectively enslave ourselves.

Is this an adequate understanding of evil? Well, it doesn’t really answer the question on the origin of evil – we have to posit a withdrawing/self-limiting/autonomy-gifting scenario in order for human beings to develop the collective psychic consciousness and vest it with power.

But the strength of this point of view is that it does allow Christians to talk about negative spiritual forces arraigned in opposition to God – ‘devils’ and ‘demons’. The irony is that these negative spiritual forces have come into existence and are powerful because human beings have helped make them real and gifted them with power.

Conclusion
These six points of view are fairly esoteric, but they each have ideas worth exploring. Ultimately, no one option is an entirely satisfactory solution to questions about the origin of evil and maybe a more compelling answer will include elements of all of them.

There are definite similarities between some (not all) of the Babylonian creation stories found by archaeologists and the stories found in the first chapters of Genesis. However, there are also significant differences, and many of the ‘similarities’ claimed are theoretical at best.

Nearly every ancient civilisation had some kind of creation myths. By the law of averages some of those creation myths would share characteristics with the ones in Genesis. That Babylonia is in close proximity to where the Hebrew writers of Genesis lived, and also the ‘setting’ for Eden and so on, gives weight to the idea that the writers of Genesis borrowed from Babylonian legends.

But similarities do not necessarily imply that one story relies on another. Insisting that the Babylonian myths are the source of Genesis requires some creative work. Put simply, the differences between the stories are often so great, that a new problem arises for the Biblical scholar – why did the writers of Genesis change so many details? Is Genesis a story written in Babylonian terms to explain Hebrew beliefs about origins, in much the same way as John’s gospel purloins Gnostic language and terminology, but isn’t Gnostic?

Similarities and differences
There are actually several versions of the Babylonian creation myths, but two stand out: The ‘Babylonian Genesis’ and the ‘Atra-Hasus Epic’. Reliably they can be dated to about 2,000BC and 1,600BC respectively. The main story-line tells that, during an epic battle between various gods, Marduk slays Tiamat, the water goddess, and from her dead body fashions the world. Later Marduk creates human beings for good measure.

Tiamat is a sea goddess, and probably represents ‘primordial chaos’. There may be a parallel with Genesis 1, where the ‘spirit of God’ hovers over ‘the deep’ (‘tehom’ in Hebrew), at the start of the creation story (chapter 1, verse 2). Marduk divides Tiamat’s body in two, to create the ‘heavens’ and the ‘earth’ – again this is the kind of division made in Genesis (chapter 1, verses 6-8).

Human beings are then created to work the land so that the gods can take it easy. Marduk kills another god, Kinga, and from his blood creates humans to serve the gods. This is similar to the imparting of the divine ‘breath’ in the creation of human beings (chapter 2, verse 7), and perhaps even the ‘taking flesh’ account of woman’s creation in Genesis chapter 2, verses 20-23.

The differences are fairly obvious and substantial. There is no other god mentioned in the Genesis stories. The earth is ‘formless, dark and empty’ – seemingly basic matter, not the dead body of a vanquished god. Humans are not created from a slaughtered divinity, nor are they created as servants or slaves. In Genesis, humans are tasked with tending the garden of Eden, but the implication is that they need to do so because that’s where they are living. ‘Hard labour’ in Genesis is a result of ‘the Fall of Man’ and disobeying God (chapter 3, verses 17-19), but even then the work is for human benefit (food), not God.

The Flood in Babylonian literature
Another Babylonian story is the ‘Atra-Hasis Epic’, which includes a tale about a cataclysmic flood that wipes out most of humanity. There are also two other Babylonian stories that include a great flood, but they seem to borrow from Atra-Hasis.

Interestingly in the Babylonian stories ‘noise’ is a cause for most of the violence. Marduk slays Tiamat after Tiamat got fed up with her noisy children and decided to kill them. In the story of Atra-Hasis, human beings, who were working as slaves to the gods, were considered too noisy and were drowned.

There are some interesting parallels to Genesis. The reason for the flood is rooted in divine anger. One family survives (Atra-Hasis or Noah, or Utnapishtim in another Babylonian story ‘the Epic of Gilgamesh’). The ‘noisy men’ sound like the people building the tower at Babel (Babylon), although this occurs after the flood in the Genesis story. There are also several ‘kings’ of Babylonia listed with incredibly long lifespans, exceeding even the longlived ancestors of Noah in Genesis chapter 5.

Conclusions
Some creationists argue that the similarities between the accounts in Genesis and other ancient myths corroborates Genesis as ‘remembered events’ or ‘folk memories’. (This is particularly true regarding arguments for a global flood, with stories from South America often dragged into the mix.) However, this argument may be a step too far. Similarities are bound to occur when stories with a similar theme are told. The differences between them – especially the mythological elements like warring gods – actually make it less likely that there is a common factual basis for such myths.

However, it is likely there are some links between the Old Testament and Babylonian literature. It seems that parts of the Bible were rewritten or redacted during or after the ‘Exile’ in Babylon. During this time Genesis could well have been rewritten to either take into account, or refute, stories that were told in Babylon.

On a final note, it may not be that important where the material comes from. There is a view that unless Genesis is accepted as literally true, then it casts doubt on the truth of the whole Bible. However, a great many Christians do not ascribe to a literal interpretation of Genesis. Instead Genesis can be seen as a ‘theological’ rather than ‘historical’ book, which make the divergence from the Babylonian myths even more important. The God of Genesis is very different in both character and purpose to Marduk or other Babylonian deities. That is perhaps the point that the writers of Genesis were trying to get across.

According to Romans chapter 1, verse 20 what specifically has God “Made” that leaves us without excuse?

This verse in Romans is referring to an argument for the existence of God, deduced from the existence of the world around us. Sometimes this is referred to as ‘natural theology’, or in philosophical terms as the ‘cosmological argument’ (from the Greek word ‘kosmos’ meaning ‘world’). What the writer, usually thought to be the apostle Paul, is saying, is that the existence of the world is evidence of God’s existence and because this is so obvious, anyone who does not worship God has no excuse for their impiety.

In the Epistle to the Romans Paul advances several ‘apologetic’ arguments, that is, he states reasons why he thinks people should accept Jesus Christ as their saviour (see chapter 1, verse 16). Paul begins his argument by explaining why every human needs a saviour. Pointing to the universality of human sinfulness, he cites the rejection of God, despite the ‘evidence’ of God’s existence, as proof that humans are sinful.

Although Paul uses the existence of the world as evidence for God, he also denies that any human being can achieve perfect knowledge of God from just looking at the world. This is quite important given the cultural prevalence of gnosticism at the time. Some gnostic sects taught that God could be understood through study and contemplation, which may explain why Paul dismisses those who claim to be wise as “fools” in verse 22.

In recent years natural theology has declined in favour. Evangelicals point to the ‘fallen nature’ of the world, which limits any understanding of God from nature. The growth in empirical scientific understanding of the world has also undermined the cosmological argument for the existence of God, with many other hypotheses put forward. However, the longstanding belief in God as the creator means many Christians would probably claim the existence of the world/universe was evidence, even if only limited evidence, for the existence of God.

God says in the Bible “It’s not good for the man to be alone, I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis chapter 2, verse18).
I have three questions about this passage
a) “It’s not good” Was God capable of creating a situation that was not good?
b) “Man to be alone” I thought God walked in the garden with him, can you be alone while in the presence of God?
c) “A helper suitable for him” What did Adam need help with? Tending the garden? Or naming the animals? He wasn’t under a time constraint was he? As far as companionship, remember we were created for Jesus’ good pleasure, and purpose, there is no marriage in heaven or eternity, if there is something more that we need than Jesus, there is a problem.

This is actually a refined version of a question DW asked previously, and some points are worth reiterating. It would seem that the creation story found in the first few chapters of Genesis is a merging of two accounts. The first describes, in general terms, the creation process that brought the world into being in seven days. There is then an abrupt shift in emphasis in Genesis chapter 2, verse 4, which introduces “the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.” This second version deals with the specific creation of named human beings, Adam and Eve, their subsequent Fall and loss of a Golden Age.

Some people go to great lengths to prove the scientific accuracy of the Genesis account. There has been some speculation recently whether the story of Eden is an ancient folk memory concerning the fall of civilisations in ancient Africa and the Near East due to sudden climate change approximately six thousand years ago, which coincides roughly with the Biblical chronology (see ‘Why Deserts will Inherit the Earth’, The Independent, 5 June 2006). Or it may be a myth, in the technical sense of the word, i.e. a true story that has been explained supernaturally because the writers lacked the scientific language necessary to objectively describe it.

Whatever the case, these early chapters of Genesis do present some seeming contradictions. Taking the accounts at face value, it is probably best to approach these three questions individually.

a) If two different stories were merged into one (as seems to be the case from textual evidence) it would explain why God terms everything as “good” in Genesis chapter 1, verse 31, but then later on there can be an aspect of this ‘completely good’ creation, which is ‘not good’. Additionally, from later chapters, it seems that God has allowed creatures an element of independent free will, meaning that even if God’s initial creation was perfectly good, it contained within it the possibility of falling away from that initial state and become less than perfect.

Adam’s loneliness is the only thing described as ‘not good’ before the account of the Fall. One explanation for this is that: “Humanity is created as a social being, and is meant to exist in relation with others.” [Alister McGrath, Christian Theology, 1994, p.235]. Being made in the image of the God (Trinity) naturally presupposes this. It could be assumed that Adam would want to relate to others like him, in the same way that God, within the Godhead, exists in interpersonal relationship. Adam need not have wanted this, but once he did, this unmet need would have made the situation ‘not good’.

Alternatively, it may just be the phrasing. There is an old joke that God made Adam first and then got started on an upgrade – Eve. In a sense this may have a grain of truth in it. God’s ongoing interaction with the world is shown by the attempt to improve creation that is already good, as God seeks to bring about the best world possible. While this image of God giving creation a ‘tweak’ is over-anthropomorphic, the creation of both Adam and Eve as individuals has already occurred after God’s ‘sabbath rest’ from creation (chapter 2, verse 2), implying that creation did continue after the six days of Genesis chapter 1.

b) In the account, God put Adam into Eden, but did not necessarily live there with him. In chapter 3, verse 8 (after Adam and Eve disobeyed God by taking the forbidden fruit), God is said to be ‘walking in the garden in the cool of the day’. The use of a specific time of day implies that God was not always walking in the garden with Adam. The story itself implies God is absent when the serpent has its fateful conversation with Eve in chapter 3, verses 1-6.

This is an interesting phrase though, with God depicted almost like a country landowner, inspecting his estate in the early evening when strolling around it is cool and enjoyable experience. The anthropomorphism of God at this point is another reason why many people regard this story as an allegory and not literal truth.

c) If these creation accounts are read as allegory, then they seek to explain, in non-scientific terms, why humanity takes the form of two genders. ‘Helper’ is a very interesting choice of word here, and possibly reflects later religious thought being ‘read back’ into the account of origins. Most primitive religions of the Middle East revolved around fertility practices and reverence of the ‘life-bearing mother’. As Israelite religion sought to establish worship of the ‘male’ Yahweh, it would be natural to promote this creation account where the female is subordinate to the male, a ‘weaker’ gender introduced as a ‘helper’ to the ‘stronger’.

The idea that human beings exist solely for God’s pleasure has entered into popular theology in many churches. This idea has been particularly highlighted by the book The Purpose Driven Life, written by American pastor Rick Warren, where it is explicitly spelled out as the first of five purposes for every human being (op. cit., published by Zondervan 2002, pp 63ff). There is a good Biblical basis to this point of view, but it does not necessarily mean that God is selfish about creation.

To put it another way, being made for God’s pleasure does not limit the actions and activities of human beings, as long as those activities bring pleasure to God. Again the phrase ‘created in the image of God’ crops up. Human beings, as image-bearing creatures are designed to be relational and as such need other creatures that they can relate to, so that they do not feel ‘alone’.

God could have created every human being the same way Genesis records him creating Adam. Asking why God introduced sex into the equation by creating a new gender leads to pure speculation. Perhaps it was to introduce a random ‘chance’ element into things. Maybe it was a necessary part of allowing free will. It is impossible to know, but Adam’s relational need for a helper does not contradict the idea that all human beings exist because of God’s creative actions and for God’s pleasure.

Thanks for your questions DW.

After reading your reply to MF’s question about God being unpredictable, I feel compelled to point out that God’s Being is Perfect and that the only reason we cannot know or predict His Perfect Doings is because we are all imperfect. beings, given to imperfect understandings and doings. Thus, God uses His Freewill Perfectly and we, being imperfect, are perplexed and mostly ignorant of His Perfect Doings.

Finally, God, our Infinite and Eternal Heavenly Father, has given us free will despite our imperfections and finite lack of life experiences, because it is His Will that we become perfect “even as He is Perfect,” by making our own decisions, both good and bad, and learning from them, on our path to perfection. Indeed, it is clear that if He made us perfect by fiat, we would have no choice, no credit, no dignity for us as perfect robots. We must come to know right from wrong and consistently choose right according to our own free will. This, of course, explains why there is evil and sin in the short run, but in the long run the opportunity for us to grow and progress spiritually and become increasingly more perfect children in our Heavenly Father’s Awesome Divine Family…

A reply from Jon the freelance theologian

There are two problems with this approach. Firstly, in the face of a difficult question for the believer, namely ‘why does God appear unpredictable’, RS seems to advocate a retreat into mystery, in this case ‘God’s perfect ways are over our imperfect heads’. But Christian theology has always contended that, while human beings were created physically finite, in other terms humans have a grasp of the infinite. This is echoed poetically in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 11, where God is described as ‘setting eternity in the hearts of men’.

It is fairly reasonable to assume that as humans are the only creatures created in the image of God (Genesis chapter 1, verses 26-27, and repeated in chapter 9, verse 6), that part of bearing that image would include mental or spiritual alignment. Very few people would argue that it meant physical similarity, especially given that “God is Spirit” (John chapter 4, verse 24). Of course, the doctrine of the Fall of Man means that sin has marred the image of God, but that image can still be restored through belief in Jesus Christ. At some point in the process of salvation, it is believed that Christians will attain perfection, but to say that “we, being imperfect, are perplexed and mostly ignorant” seems to be a pious, yet unpersuasive, cop-out.

The second problem stems from the definition of free will. At a deeper level, free will that is forced on an agent is not free will. There is no choice in the matter. There is, of course, a danger of drifting into a philosophical debate about power and freedom at this point. However, to keep the discussion on course, it is worth pointing out that most of what RS states in his comment is bordering on philosophical speculation about the necessity of free will. Relying on human free will to justify the existence of problematic things like evil, has huge ramifications.

The dilemma is that, in allowing free will, God allows the possibility of sin. But if God is omniscient, then God should know what the outcome of giving free will to human beings would be. Therefore if God knew what the outcome of any action was going to be, it would be very simple for God to prevent that outcome or act in a way to influence it. Deciding not to change the outcome is as much of an action as changing it completely (a ‘sin of omission’). So, this argument relying on human free will is weak. Whatever happens, God has the final decision over whether an action happens or not (unless the believer is willing to accept the idea that there are some actions that God does not know the outcome to).

The Biblical picture of humanity’s choices does not dwell on the concept of free will. Human sin is the result of human rebellion and whether in Eden, or in any other place, the Biblical picture tends to be one of rebellion, not ‘misused free will’. Saying that God ‘had’ to give his creation free will in order for those created beings to mature, puts limits on God’s power. RS says that “it is clear that if He made us perfect by fiat, we would have no choice, no credit, no dignity for us as perfect robots. We must come to know right from wrong and consistently choose right according to our own free will.” But must we? Doesn’t this imply that God is limited in some way? If God is truly omnipotent, as believers tend to proclaim, then surely it would have been possible for God to create beings that knew right from wrong without sinning in the process.

Equally, saying “it is His Will that we become perfect “even as He is Perfect,” by making our own decisions, both good and bad”, is tantamount to saying that humans had to have the opportunity to misuse free will by rebelling against God in order to mature. This seems to imply that the Fall of Man was allowed or tolerated by God. If this is the case then God becomes a morally ambiguous being, who not only allows sin to happen, but also sets the situation up for it to happen, and is therefore the indirect cause of sin, evil and suffering.

Ultimately, of course, calling God ‘faithful’, like any other attribute ascribed to him, is a matter of personal faith on the part of the believer. However, when it appears that God is not faithful, then human beings, imperfect though they are, should be able to ask why that is. If faithfulness is part of God’s nature, then the appearance of unfaithfulness makes it difficult to emulate God as believers seek to we “become perfect even as He is Perfect.”

Thanks for your comment, RS – freelance theology welcomes comments on anything posted on this site, with a view to constructive debate or further discussion.

The first is from GT, United Kingdom:

What does it mean for God to be all-knowing?

The second, more specific, but covering the same area is from NP, United Kingdom:

Does human free will override divine purpose? If God knew Adam and Eve were going to fall, why didn’t he prevent sin in the first place?

The Christian description of God owes much to ‘classical theism’ developed by the ancient Greek philosophers, which states that God is eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing and everywhere (omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent). The ‘unmoved mover’ and similar ideas of a primal God that is the source of everything (including the pantheon of Graeco-Roman gods) can be found in the works of Aristotle and Plato. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, many leading Christian theologians had been extensively educated in the works of these philosophers, and so the classical conception of God was absorbed into Christian theology.

This view of God does however clash with the Christian assertion that “God is Love” (1 John chapter 4, verse 16), giving rise to the philosophical conundrum known as the ‘Problem of Evil’. This runs as follows: ‘God is omnipotent, omniscient and loving and therefore can prevent evil and would want to prevent evil. Yet evil exists.’ The reason evil exists has been the subject of much debate in Christian theology, with various justifications (‘theodicies’) being made.

If God is all-knowing, then he would presumably have known the results of giving Adam and Eve (or any human being) free will. The Biblical ‘Fall of Mankind’ (in Genesis chapter 3) is a direct result of God’s gift of free will. Under the classical model, God therefore allowed it to happen and so, through giving free will and not preventing the Fall, God becomes indirectly responsible for the state of the world. That is not to say that God is to blame for sin, but it does explain the extraordinary sacrifice of the Incarnation and death of Jesus Christ, who ‘bore the sins of the world’. The death of Christ took the experience of death, which is the punishment for sin, into the eternal Godhead, removing it from creation.

However, another way of viewing God’s gift of ‘free will’ is found in ‘kenotic theology’. This comes from a phrase in Philippians where Christ is described as ‘emptying himself’ during the Incarnation (Philippians chapter 2, verse 6-11, sometimes the Greek word ekenosen is translated as ‘humbled’, but its literal meaning is ‘emptied’). It could be hypothesised that in order for free will to be genuine, the outcome of any action cannot be known. Therefore, in a similar fashion to Christ’s humbling ‘emptying of himself’, God may have accepted a self-imposed limitation on his omniscience. This could be why later in the Genesis narrative of the Fall, God searches for Adam and Eve and does not know where they are (Genesis chapter 3, verse 9).

There are many competing arguments over why God felt it necessary to give human beings free will. By far the most persuasive is the idea that God seeks reciprocal love from created beings, but for such love to be genuine, it has to be the product of independent decision-making creatures. However, the insistence on adhering to the classical view of God being all-knowing, does impact on the belief in human free will. In short, knowing the outcome gives God the option of influencing any decision and it could be argued that as a result human free will is a total illusion because all consequences are dependent on God.

Thanks for your questions GT and NP.

As a believer I have some difficulty understanding how people say the earth is about 10,000 years old but we see evidence that it’s millions of years old. When did God create the earth and everything that is here, including mankind? Was it millions of years ago or it was just some thousand years ago? And, what to say about Latin American natives? Who were they descended from?

The origins of Earth and humanity provide fertile ground for questions here on freelance theology and this kind of question has been answered before. A good starting point is to realize that the Biblical account of creation found in Genesis is not to be read as a scientific document. However, the existence of scientific evidence that appears to contradict the basic story of Genesis, results in three main ways in which Christians respond.

The first is to firmly separate the arenas of science and faith. Put simply, this is a denial of the validity of human observation and experience if it contradicts truths that are taken ‘on faith’. Because the Biblical record must be true, the scientific evidence to the contrary is ignored. Very few Christians would actively advocate such a view, but it does still linger on in dogmatic circles, whether Roman Catholic, or protestant fundamentalist.

The second option is to try and interpret Genesis as a scientific document and fit the ‘scientific evidence’ to the Genesis account. ‘Creation science’, as it’s often termed, argues for the rapid laying down of rocks during the great flood of Noah’s time, which also provides a handy ‘extinction event’ as seen in the fossil record and possibly explains the anomaly of carbon-14 dating. As for the native Latin Americans, the reference in Genesis chapter 10, verse 25 to the earth being “divided” during Peleg’s lifetime (after the flood) is interpreted to mean the separation of the continents. This means that, like everybody else, the Latin Americans are descended from Noah.

Notwithstanding recent legal attempts to have creationism taught as a legitimate scientific alternative in North American schools, it should be noted that this interpretation of the scientific evidence is hotly disputed and dismissed by many scientists. While wanting to present ‘scientific’ proof for creation, creation scientists do of course operate in an unscientific manner, wanting to fit the evidence to the theory, not the other way around. In many ways, this is very similar to the first option, where something is believed by ‘faith’ and then the believer seeks to prove its truthfulness.

A third alternative is to accept that Genesis is a ‘myth’, in the technical sense of the word. ‘Myth’ does not mean ‘fairy tale’; a myth is an attempt to explain the existence of something or a set of circumstances in non-scientific terms. The reason behind the myth becomes the important thing, not the actual mechanics of the narrative. In this case, it is clear that the Genesis author wants to relate God’s involvement with the world from the beginning, God’s involvement with human beings, and the rejection of God by those self-same humans. It is perfectly reasonable to accept these mythologised truths, regardless of the scientific evidence.

Thanks for your question, AC – the first one on freelance theology from Brazil!

There is much debate about how literally true Genesis is, but presuming that the author of Genesis wanted to present a seamless account of the creation of the world, these two things do cause a problem. In fact, it would seem that the creation story is a conflation of two accounts, one that describes the world being created in seven days, and the other the specific creation of named human beings.

If two different stories were merged into one it would explain why God “sees” everything as “good” in Genesis chapter 1, verse 31, but then later on there can be an aspect of this ‘completely good’ creation, which is ‘not good’. There is an abrupt shift in emphasis in Genesis chapter 2, verse 4, which is introduced as being “the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.” In this second version of creation the characters of Adam and Eve, the archetypes of humanity, are introduced.

These creation accounts seek to explain not only the origins of humanity, but why humanity takes the form it does. In non-scientific terms, it is impressive that the conundrum of why a creature should exist in two distinct genders should be addressed at all. In Genesis chapter 2, the ‘weaker’ gender is introduced as a ‘helper’ to the ‘stronger’. There is possibly a strong element of later religious thought influencing this account. Most primitive religions of the Middle East revolved around fertility practices and reverence of the female gender as a life-bearer. As Israelite religion sought to establish worship of Yahweh as different from the Baal and Asherah worship, it would be a natural tendency to promote this creation account where the female is subordinate to the male, created merely to ‘help’. In this sense, the idea that ‘man’ was ‘alone’ before ‘woman’ was created implies an equality of intellectual status between women and men. There are no other animals like men, except women, and the author is presumably trying to explain why that should be so and why two genders would exist at all, but without affirming the feminine gender as greater than the male.

There is a school of thought that takes both the first chapters of Genesis entirely at face value and within this literal interpretation two conflicting arguments arise. One regards the current status of women as permanently subservient to men as a result of this secondary creation (thus echoing the apostle Paul’s use of this passage in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verses 3-10). Others see this as a tremendous affirmation of women, translating ‘helper’ as ‘partner’, and claiming that this special creation account affirms the status of women as equal to men. It is, however, relatively unlikely that this statement of equality was the purpose of the author when these accounts were melded together.

Thanks for your question DW.

God created the universe of atoms and time 13.7 billion years ago. Each atom was embedded with gravity with a nucleus & electrons spinning a relatively vast distance from it. Some designated to provide light and heat, while others combined with like atoms, still others joined with dissimilar atoms. God, in time, then created life by diverging these atoms in millions of forms including you and I today. We are a bundle of atoms that can think and act independent, oblivious of the spinning earth, and the television, radio, cosmic waves passing through us unchecked. God hasn’t created any new atoms in 13.7 billion years and it should be religiously significant. Are you and I 13.7 billion years old?

Any religious significance from the scenario laid out above would point to a God who knew what he was doing when he first created matter. There would of course be some Christians who would disagree with the scientific summary in this question, but in theological terms there are a couple of points to make.

Firstly, in the book of Genesis, which is not meant to be read as a scientific treatise, it states that God rested when his creative work was done (chapter 1 verse 31 – chapter 2 verse 2). At this point in the story everything was ‘good’. It would therefore be odd for any new matter to be created and inserted into the completed ‘world’ (the Hebrew word for ‘world’ is perhaps better understood as ‘cosmos/universe’, rather than ‘planet’).

Secondly, although creation stopped on ‘day six’, God’s interaction with the world did not. Through various covenants, the Incarnation and the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit, creation, although now marred by human sin, is still affected by the activities of God. As age-old atoms form into new human beings the process of fall and redemption begins again, God’s compassion being renewed every morning, to paraphrase the Hebrew poet (Lamentations chapter 3 verses 22-23)

I was reading Genesis the other day and realised that in the creation God does not given man beasts to eat but only plants (Genesis chapter 1, verses 29-30). Does this mean that God intended us to eat a vegetarian diet and if so when did it all change and did Jesus eat meat during his life?

There are some Christians who would argue that meat was not eaten in Eden and therefore Christians should not eat meat. However, in terms of your question, if we follow the Genesis account, Abel sacrifices some of his flock in chapter 4 (and presumably if he “kept flocks”, then he did so because he ate meat). God formally gives Noah and his descendents the right to eat meat in Genesis chapter 9, verses 1–3.

Jesus would probably have eaten meat as it played an integral part in first century Jewish life, including the religious festivals. If the Last Supper was a Passover meal (hinted at in Luke chapter 22 verse 15 & 16), then Jesus would have eaten roasted lamb with his disciples. It would also seem that Jesus ate bread and fish with his disciples after his resurrection (John chapter 21 verse 13-15).

Thanks for your question SM.