The Greek philosopher Epicurus may have been the first to articulate it, but he was most definitely not the last. For the past 2400 years, believers have been haunted by his trilemma: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” Epicurus is putting forth the “Problem of Evil” which remains the most repeated argument against the existence of God. Dressed in various forms, the conditions are always the same—the incompatibility of omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and the existence of evil. Because of its longstanding quality, believers of every age, our own included, must be prepared to answer this challenge.
Navigating the gauntlet begins by defining our terms, the first of which is evil. In our time there is a tendency to see evil as some positive force in the universe locked in a cosmic battle with good. Viewed as something, it seems to have a power all its own. But evil is no more of a thing than blindness is a thing. It is not a something but a nothing. Just as blindness is a lack of sight, evil is a lack of a good that should otherwise be there. Both exist, but neither has any being of its own. Instead it exists in the form of a deprivation. In fact, blindness in the philosophical sense of the term is an evil; a lack of sight in a being that should otherwise see. Evil only exists as a parasite to some good and has no existence of its own.
Whence cometh Evil?
This philosophical hair splitting is necessary because it addresses Epicurus’ question “whence cometh evil?” and demonstrates how God can be all good and there still be evil. God, as Creator, gives being to all things. He is, in an absolute sense, the cause of being. God cannot create non-being, not because He isn’t omnipotent, but because “create non-being” is nonsense. To create is to give being and to create something with no being is a contradiction. God’s omnipotence does not suddenly make the intrinsically impossible, possible. God could no more create evil than He can make a square with three sides, omnipotent or not.
If we are to take the world as it is, that is a material world with a multitude of creatures, we could see why a certain amount of evil might be logically necessary. We call these evils physical evils or evils suffered. These types of evils are not privations per se, even though they can be causes of privations. They are simply incidences where two goods collide. When the good of the lion’s preservation meets the good of the lamb’s, the lamb tends to get the short end of the stick. Physical evils are always connected to a good directly. The lion’s self-preservation is a good thing, even if the lamb’s demise is not. For God to remove such evils is not simply to make our world better, but to make an entirely different kind of world. Whether that world would be better or not can be debated, but the presence of physical evil is no argument against God’s omnipotence or omnibenevolence because one could readily imagine that same God guiding all interactions such that they work out for the good of the whole.
Moral evils, that is, evils done by rational creatures, are by far the more difficult to explain. There are no goods in conflict, only a failure to do what is good. The moral agent deliberately introduces disorder into what should otherwise be good. Exonerating God from responsibility for these evils is a bit more challenging.
God is not just the Creator, but the sustainer of creation. That means nothing happens without His somehow being a cause. He is not only the cause of a man, but a cause of His free will activity. Related to the topic at hand, God is not the cause of the man’s choice, only his power of choosing. The man cannot choose without God, but what he chooses is up to him.
Recall that God, through His omnipotence, can do anything that does not imply a logical contradiction. God could have made a world in which a man might choose freely but always choose good because there is no contradiction. But He did not. Instead the world we inhabit allows for free choice that can include evil. This is allowed because God’s will in creating is to create a world such that His goodness is most fully made manifest through the goods of His creatures. One can readily see that there are a multitude of goods that would never be made known were it not for the ability to choose what is evil: courage, forgiveness, mercy, justice to name just a few. If through the designs of divine Providence God wanted to make His creatures participate in these real goods, there must be some evil present; not just physical evil, but moral as well. Eliminate all evil, and you drag goods with it.
Why the Argument Fails?
This is why the argument ultimately fails. One may readily admit that there are a multitude of evils present in the world, but not without admitting that there are many cases in which goods that would not otherwise be created are made present. So, the good trailing on evil is proof not of God’s non-existence or His weakness, but of His goodness and power. As Aquinas puts it, “‘Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.’ This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good” (ST I, q.2, a.2, ad.2).
Once we define evil for what it is metaphysically, that is a “no-thing”, we realize that it is only God Who is All-Good and All-Powerful that can create good ex nihilio. The fact that good does come from evil shows that to be the work of God Himself. So, the Problem of Evil, rather than leading us away from God, actually leads towards Him.