If God is all-good and all-powerful, why is there evil?
A perfectly good God would want to eliminate evil, and an all-powerful God could eliminate it. Yet evil exists. So either God is not all-good, or not all-powerful, or he does not exist at all.
— The classic 'logical problem of evil'; see J. L. Mackie, 'Evil and Omnipotence', Mind 64 (1955)
The argument assumes that a good God would never allow any evil for any reason. But a good God might allow evil if it is the cost of something very valuable, such as creatures who can freely love. Even many atheist philosophers now grant that God and evil are not logically contradictory. And Christianity does not stop at an argument: God entered our suffering in Jesus, defeated evil at the cross, and promises to end it for good.
What Scripture says
31And God looked upon all that He had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
God made a world that was 'very good'. Evil is not part of the original design.
1Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field that the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” 2The woman answered the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, 3but about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You must not eat of it or touch it, or you will die.’” 4“You will not surely die,” the serpent told the woman. 5“For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom, she took the fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. 7And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed together fig leaves and made coverings for themselves. 8Then the man and his wife heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the breeze of the day, and they hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9But the LORD God called out to the man, “Where are you?” 10“I heard Your voice in the garden,” he replied, “and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” 11“Who told you that you were naked?” asked the LORD God. “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12And the man answered, “The woman whom You gave me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” 13Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” “The serpent deceived me,” she replied, “and I ate.” 14So the LORD God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and every beast of the field! On your belly will you go, and dust you will eat, all the days of your life. 15And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. ” 16To the woman He said: “I will sharply increase your pain in childbirth; in pain you will bring forth children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” 17And to Adam He said: “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat, cursed is the ground because of you; through toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18Both thorns and thistles it will yield for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground— because out of it were you taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”
Evil enters through the free choice of creatures to reject God, and its effects spread through the whole of human life.
15See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, as well as death and disaster. 16For I am commanding you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, statutes, and ordinances, so that you may live and increase, and the LORD your God may bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. 17But if your heart turns away and you do not listen, but are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18I declare to you today that you will surely perish; you shall not prolong your days in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. 19I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore choose life, so that you and your descendants may live, 20and that you may love the LORD your God, obey Him, and hold fast to Him. For He is your life, and He will prolong your life in the land that the LORD swore to give to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
God sets real choices before his people: life and good, death and evil. Human choices matter.
20As for you, what you intended against me for evil, God intended for good, in order to accomplish a day like this—to preserve the lives of many people.
Joseph's brothers meant evil, but God meant it for good. God can bring good out of evil without approving the evil.
18I consider that our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us. 19The creation waits in eager expectation for the revelation of the sons of God. 20For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but because of the One who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until the present time. 23Not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in this hope we were saved; but hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he can already see? 25But if we hope for what we do not yet see, we wait for it patiently. 26In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words. 27And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28And we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.
Present sufferings are real, but creation is headed for liberation, and God works in all things for the good of those who love him.
2How long, O LORD, must I call for help but You do not hear, or cry out to You, “Violence!” but You do not save? 3Why do You make me see iniquity? Why do You tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me. Strife is ongoing, and conflict abounds. 4Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.
The prophet himself raises the problem of evil to God. Scripture does not hide from the question.
3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. 4‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’ and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.” 5And the One seated on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” Then He said, “Write this down, for these words are faithful and true.”
The story ends with God wiping away every tear and making all things new.
The case
Stating the argument fairly
The problem of evil is the most serious and most personal objection to faith in God. It has an intellectual form and an emotional form, and both deserve respect. This entry deals mainly with the intellectual form; see the related entry on where God was in my suffering for the personal side.
In its classic "logical" form, popularized by the Australian philosopher J. L. Mackie in 1955, the argument runs like this:
- If God is all-powerful, he can prevent all evil.
- If God is all-good, he wants to prevent all evil.
- Evil exists.
- Therefore an all-good, all-powerful God does not exist.
The argument is valid only if a hidden premise is true: a good being always prevents every evil it can. That premise is the weak link.
The hidden premise
Good people allow suffering all the time when it serves a greater good. A parent lets a child get vaccinated, a surgeon cuts, a coach pushes an athlete through pain. Allowing harm is not always wrong; it depends on the reasons.
So the real question is not "Could God stop evil?" but "Could God have a morally sufficient reason to permit it?" To show that God and evil are contradictory, the skeptic must show that God could not possibly have such a reason. That is a very heavy burden.
The free will defense
In God, Freedom, and Evil (1974), Alvin Plantinga offered what is now called the free will defense. In outline:
- A world containing creatures who are significantly free, able to choose real good or real evil, is more valuable than a world of programmed robots.
- God cannot cause free creatures to always do right. If he determines their choices, they are no longer free in that sense. This is not a limit on God's power; it is like saying God cannot make a square circle.
- It is possible that in every world God could create with free creatures, some of them would freely choose evil.
- So it is possible that God has a good reason for permitting moral evil.
A defense does not claim to know God's actual reasons. It only needs to show that God and evil are logically consistent. Most philosophers of religion, including many atheists, now agree that it succeeds at this, and the debate has largely moved on to the weaker "evidential" version (whether evil makes God improbable). The atheist philosopher William Rowe, whose 1979 paper set the terms for that newer debate, acknowledged that the strict logical version had not been made good.
What evil is
Christian thinkers since Augustine have argued that evil is not a "thing" God created. It is a privation: the absence or corruption of a good that should be there, as blindness is the lack of sight or a wound is damage to healthy tissue (Augustine, Enchiridion 11). Evil is parasitic. Lies depend on truth; cruelty twists the good of strength. This fits the biblical picture: God made the world "very good" (Genesis 1:31), and evil entered as creatures turned from him.
The skeptic's own problem
If there is no God, what makes anything evil rather than merely unpleasant or unwelcome? On a purely naturalistic view, the universe is, as many atheists admit, indifferent: no good, no evil, just events. Yet the objection is powered by real moral outrage at real wrongs. That outrage is right, and it assumes an objective standard of goodness that the world falls short of. Ironically, the problem of evil presupposes the moral law that best points toward God.
| Question | Atheism | Christianity |
|---|---|---|
| Is evil objectively real? | Hard to ground | Yes, a corruption of God's good creation |
| Where did it come from? | Nature, chance, evolution | Creaturely rebellion against God |
| Can evil be defeated? | No final answer | Yes, through Christ's cross and resurrection |
| Will justice be done? | Not for most victims | Yes, God will judge and make all things new |
Not only an argument
The Bible does not answer the problem of evil mainly with a theory. It answers with a story and a Person. Scripture is full of people crying "how long?" (Habakkuk 1:2; Psalm 13:1). God does not scold them for asking.
Most importantly, God did not stay distant from evil. In Jesus he entered it, suffered injustice, betrayal, torture and death, and then rose, breaking evil's final hold. The cross shows that God takes evil more seriously than we do. It cost him his Son.
Why it matters
Whatever reasons God has for permitting evil, we know they are not that he does not care, because he came and bled. And we know evil does not get the last word: "he will wipe every tear from their eyes" (Revelation 21:4). The Christian hope is not that suffering is unreal, but that it is temporary and will be overcome.
Word study
hebrew · “evil, bad, harm, calamity” · Genesis 2:17
The tree of 'the knowledge of good and evil' uses this common word. Its range runs from moral wickedness to disaster and misery. In Genesis evil is not a rival power co-equal with God but a corruption that enters a good creation.
“But what about…?”
Couldn't God create free creatures who always choose the good?
If God causes a creature to choose the good, the choice is no longer free in the sense that matters for love and moral responsibility. Philosopher Alvin Plantinga argued that it may not be within God's power to create a world of significantly free creatures who never go wrong, because what free creatures do is up to them. That is enough to show there is no contradiction.
Even if there's a reason for some evil, why so much of it?
That is a different, weaker argument (the 'evidential' problem): it claims evil makes God unlikely, not impossible. We are poorly placed to judge whether a given evil serves a purpose, because the ripple effects of events across history are beyond our sight. The Christian also weighs evil against all the other evidence for God.
If there's no God, isn't evil easier to explain?
Suffering is easier to explain, but calling anything truly evil is harder. Without God there is no objective standard of good that the world falls short of; there is only what happens. The very outrage that drives the objection presupposes a moral law, and a moral law points to a moral Lawgiver.
Doesn't God cause evil if he is sovereign over everything?
Scripture holds that God is sovereign and that human beings are responsible for the evil they do, and that God himself is never the author of sin (James 1:13). Christians explain how these fit together in different ways, but all agree God permits evil for good purposes without doing evil himself.
Where Christians differ
Go deeper
- book · 1974God, Freedom, and EvilAlvin Plantinga
- book · 1940The Problem of PainC. S. Lewis
- book · 2013Walking with God through Pain and SufferingTimothy Keller
- book · 2010Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of SufferingEleonore Stump
- book · 1966Evil and the God of LoveJohn Hick
- ancientEnchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope and Love)Augustine
Sources (5)
- J. L. Mackie, 'Evil and Omnipotence', Mind 64 (1955)
- Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1974)
- William L. Rowe, 'The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism', American Philosophical Quarterly 16.4 (1979): 335-341
- Augustine, Enchiridion 11: evil as the privation (absence) of good
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 48-49, on the nature and cause of evil
Related questions
Why does God allow natural disasters and disease?
Natural evil is the hardest part of the problem of evil, and Christians should admit it. But several things help: a stable, law-governed world is necessary for meaningful life and choice; many of the same processes that cause disasters also make Earth habitable; Scripture teaches that creation itself is 'subjected to futility' and groaning; and Jesus shows God's posture toward sickness and storms. He healed, calmed the sea, wept, and promised a renewed creation.
Where was God when I was suffering?
Your pain is real, and Scripture gives you words for it: many of the psalms are prayers by people who felt abandoned by God. The Christian answer is not a formula but a Person. In Jesus, God came into suffering, was betrayed, tortured and cried out 'why have you forsaken me?' on the cross. He was not absent from your suffering; he has been there himself, he is near the brokenhearted, and he promises that your pain will not have the last word.
Can you be good without God?
Yes, atheists can be good people, and the Bible explains why: God's moral law is written on every human heart. But that is a different question from whether goodness can be *real* without God. If there is no God, it is hard to see what makes moral duties objectively binding rather than just feelings or social conventions. Our deep conviction that some things are truly wrong is itself a clue that God exists.
This entry is a draft and has not yet been theologically reviewed.