Augustine & The Problem of Evil

After the death of my dearly beloved grandfather, I had to revisit a lot of the questions that do not throb as violently at other times. One of these issues I had to restruggle with was the problem of evil, which briefly, is that the existence of evil and the existence of the Bible's God completely contradict each other.

Simply stated, the problem of evil goes something like this: If God were all-loving, He'd want to stop evil. If God were all-powerful, He'd stop evil. Evil exists. Therefore, God is either not all-loving or not all-powerful. Thus, disproving the Christian view of God.

This is nothing new. The problem of evil was one of the issues that confronted Augustine in the 5th century, and even kept him from real repentance and faith.

About this very real problem, which revolved in his "wretched breast" and overwhelmed him with "gnawing cares" lest he die before discovering the truth, Augustine wrote in his Confessions (ch. 7, para. 5):

"Where, then, is evil, and whence does it come and how has it crept in? What is its root and what its seed? Has it no being at all? Why, then, do we fear and shun what has no being? ... But, then, whence does it come, since God who is good has made all these things good? Indeed, he is the greatest and chiefest Good, and hath created these lesser goods; but both Creator and created are all good. Whence, then, is evil? Or, again, was there some evil matter out of which he made and formed and ordered it, but left something in his creation that he did not convert into good? But why should this be? Was he powerless to change the whole lump so that no evil would remain in it, if he is the Omnipotent? Finally, why would he make anything at all out of such stuff? Why did he not, rather, annihilate it by his same almighty power? Could evil exist contrary to his will? ... Or, if he wished now all of a sudden to create something, would not an almighty being have chosen to annihilate this evil matter and live by himself—the perfect, true, sovereign, and infinite Good? Or, if it were not good that he who was good should not also be the framer and creator of what was good, then why was that evil matter not removed and brought to nothing, so that he might form good matter, out of which he might then create all things? For he would not be omnipotent if he were not able to create something good without being assisted by that matter which had not been created by himself."

Now, while Augustine only asked questions, you must have clear, solid, persuasive and biblical answers for the problem of evil not only when you're confronted with it in evangelism, but also when you're confronted with evil personally.

The resource I've found most helpful is the ministry of Greg Koukl called Stand To Reason. His many papers on The Problem of Evil have been helpful, but his teaching on this is excellent. Also, John MacArthur gave a message on this issue about three weeks ago, which you can find here. That should help get you started.