1. EvilEvil

3. If God were all powerful, He could destroy evil If God were all good, He would want to destroy evil But evil is not destroyed Therefore, an all-powerful and all-good God does not exist - J. S. Mill

4. “Is He willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is impotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?” – David Hume

5. “But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases. ” (Psalm 115:3) “‘Ah Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for You, ” (Jeremiah 32:17) “The Lord our God is righteous with respect to all His deeds which He has done” (Daniel 9:14) “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ” (Romans 8:38–39)

6. the·od·i·cy A vindication of the divine attributes, particularly holiness and justice, in establishing or allowing the existence of physical and moral evil. The Problem of Evil and God

7. Ev il ?

9. Evil is a privation or corruption that exists in something that was originally good and perfect. - Augustine

10. Evil is signified by the absence of good. - Thomas Aquinas

11. Darkness is the absence of light Sickness is the absence of health Hate is the absence of love

12. “This doesn’t mean it’s in any way nebulous or vague or not to be worried about. If there is a hole in the road where I expected solid stone, the fact that there is ‘nothing there’ is very dangerous whether I’m walking, cycling, or driving a car. The fact that a rung is missing halfway down the ladder into the basement is neither nebulous nor vague when I’m feeling my way around in the dark. Evil is then the moral and spiritual equivalent of a black hole.” - N. T. Wright

13. www.confidentchristians.org pon ē ros Word Study - Evil ① Morally or socially worthless ② wicked, evil, bad, base, worthless, vicious, degenerate ③ deficient in quality in a physical sense; being in an unhealthy condition physically Arndt, W., Danker, F. W., & Bauer, W. (2000). A Greek- English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature. Greek Meaning Interpretation & Application All definitions of the term point to something that has lost is value; there appears to be nothing of worth; nothing to redeem. Part of the word meaning implies a sickness, much like a malignancy that has attached itself to something of worth and is destroying it. Scripture warns many times for a person not to be overtaken and overrun by evil, else it will destroy what goodness is there and leave the person in a state of total destitution.

14. www.confidentchristians.org Evil cannot exist on its own Just as rust on a car cannot exist without the car or rot on a tree cannot exist without the tree, evil cannot exist by itself. Like a wound, it can only exist in something else.

15. www.confidentchristians.org Ev il ?

16. www.confidentchristians.org Two broad types of evil 1.Moral evil - manifests itself in the way humans choose or choose not to do something 2.Natural evil - realized through natural disasters and human disease and sickness

17. www.confidentchristians.org Moral Evil

18. www.confidentchristians.org the privation that causes moral evil “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. ” (Galatians 5:22–23)

19. www.confidentchristians.org Natural Evil

20. www.confidentchristians.org Ev il ?

21. www.confidentchristians.org “A good tree cannot produce bad fruit” (Matthew 7:18)

22. www.confidentchristians.org God created every substance. Evil is not a substance (but a privation in a substance). Therefore, God did not create evil.

23. www.confidentchristians.org God is perfect. An effect must resemble its cause. Evil is an imperfection Therefore, God could not have caused evil.

24. www.confidentchristians.org The Problem of Pantheism & Evil Pantheism says all is God (‘pan’=all, ‘theism’=God). But if all is God, that ‘all’ must include evil. This equates to the conclusion of God having evil in His being.

25. www.confidentchristians.org God Creating Evil…?

26. www.confidentchristians.org God Creating Evil…?

27. www.confidentchristians.org Another Problem…

28. www.confidentchristians.org Aquinas Tries to Help… “Not every absence of good is evil. For absence of good can be taken (1) in a privative and (2) negative sense. Absence of good, taken negatively, is not evil; otherwise it would follow that what does not exist is evil, and also that everything would be evil, through not having the good belonging to something else; for instance, a man would be evil who had not the swiftness of the roe, or the strength of a lion. But the absence of good, taken in a privative sense, is an evil; as, for instance, the privation of sight is called blindness…” -Thomas Aquinas But … let’s look at these next examples

29. www.confidentchristians.org But we Still Have a Problem…

30. www.confidentchristians.org … which leads to more insight

31. www.confidentchristians.org Darkness can have a purpose

32. www.confidentchristians.org Evil is a violation of God’s purpose. - Ravi Zacharias

33. www.confidentchristians.org A More complete definition of Evil

34. www.confidentchristians.org An Omnibenevolent God has a good purpose for everything There is some evil for which we see no good purpose Therefore, there is a good purpose for all evil, even if we do not see it - Norman Geisler

35. www.confidentchristians.org “The Lord has made everything for its own purpose, Even the wicked for the day of evil. ” (Proverbs 16:4)

36. www.confidentchristians.org No Good or Evil in Atheism?

37. www.confidentchristians.org No Good or Evil in Atheism? If there’s such a thing as evil, you assume there’s such a thing as good. If you assume there’s such a thing as good, you assume there’s such a thing as an absolute and unchanging moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. If you assume there’s such a thing as an absolute moral law, you must posit an absolute moral law giver, but that would be God – the one whom the atheist is trying to disprove. So now rewind: if there’s not a moral law giver, there’s no moral law. If there’s no moral law, there’s no good. If there’s no good, there’s no evil.

38. www.confidentchristians.org “The problem of evil, for instance, can hardly be separated from the problem of goodness. Were there no goodness in the world, we would not even be considering the problem of evil. It is a strange thing. Dozens of times I have been asked by patients or acquaintances: ‘Dr. Peck, why is there evil in the world?’ Yet no one has ever asked me in all these years: ‘Why is there good in the world?’ It is as if we automatically assume this is a naturally good world that has somehow been contaminated by evil.” -M. Scott Peck People of the Lie

39. www.confidentchristians.org No ‘Good’ or ‘Purpose’ in Atheism You cannot define good without defining ‘purpose’ You cannot define purpose without defining ‘cause’ The atheist’s /philosophical naturalist’s worldview has no ultimate purpose or cause behind anything, therefore they have no way of determining good.

40. www.confidentchristians.org kalos Word Study - Good ① pert. to being in accordance at a high level w. the purpose of someth. or someone, good, useful. ② free from defects Arndt, W., Danker, F. W., & Bauer, W. (2000). A Greek- English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature. Greek Meaning Interpretation & Application

41. www.confidentchristians.org Ev il ?

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43. The first Acts of Evil “And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven ” (Revelation 12:4) “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 from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. ” (Genesis 3:6)

44. www.confidentchristians.org The Root Cause of Evil Every drop of evil – both moral and natural – can be traced back to one thing: the misuse of freedom. God Himself is free, and He created free creatures. Freedom is a very good thing, however freedom allows the ability to act contrary to the good purpose of God. This is what Satan and Adam/Eve did.

45. www.confidentchristians.org Defining ‘Cause’

46. www.confidentchristians.org Ev il ?

47. www.confidentchristians.org Conclusions The attempt to reconcile an all-good and all-powerful God with the reality of evil is called a theodicy Evil is an absence of good, resulting in a violation of God’s good purpose The two major types of evil are moral evil and natural evil God did not create evil but created the possibility for it The root cause of evil can be traced back to the misuse of a very good thing – free will Evil came about from the self-determined actions of creatures created with free will

48. www.confidentchristians.org EvilEvil