WHERE DID EVIL COME FROM?

 My last post alluded to the problem the above question raises.  Based on the Bible, my answer is, “I don’t know.  But, what I do know is that God is good.  Etc.”  Surd evil (physical chaos) is present in the beginning, such that God’s creative action is to speak order into chaos (Gen 1).  Moral evil (the serpent figure) is present before Adam and Eve rebel against their creator (Gen 2).  The Adversary (Satan) who appears before a heavenly council in the wisdom literature of Job is also without an explained origin.  However, since people are not content without answers to such issues, they “find” solutions in Scripture.

The most popular explanation for the origin of Lucifer (equated with Satan) comes from a literary taunt against the king of Babylon (Isa 14:3-23), particularly verses 12-15 about “lucifer.”  [See similar taunts against the king of Tyre in Ezek 28.]  However, this text models an Ancient Near Eastern taunt genre against a ruler and is based on imagery that is taken from ancient mythology in which a “heavenly host”( = a star = a god) rebels and is cast down, becoming the lowest “star” on the horizon, probably the planet Venus: “Look how you have fallen, O Shining One, Son of the Dawn” (Isa 14:12a).  The name here, which from the Hebrew is “Helel, Son of Shachar,” and in the KJV was translated “Lucifer (light bearer) Son of the Morning,” was a god in Canaanite lore who had a failed coup against the main god.  However, people who must have an answer to the origin of evil (e.g. Satan, who is not mentioned here) first turn the order of literary borrowing upside down and then convert the text into heavenly history!^1,2

Reflection: Life as we know it (not God’s “existence”) requires a delicate balance of both order and chaos.  Too much chaos and no organized systems supporting life could emerge in our universe.  Too much order and all would be “crystalline.”  This observation supports a supposition that surd “evil” (physical chaos) is necessary for life in this universe and that perhaps even moral “evil” is necessary for the capacity for a “free” relationship with God.

Application: What is most important to me is that, as a being who must live with the chaos of surd and moral evil, I have a God who became in-fleshed in this same world of chaos, who died and rose “above” it, and who now intercedes for me and walks with me through the chaos that I face and so brings divine order into my life.  The Christian witness to others, then, is not that we escape the chaos in this life, but how we face it in Christ.
Lord, I trust you to take my hand amid life’s chaos, so that I find “order” in You.  Amen.

Notes
1) The idea of the origin of evil being attributed to fallen angels is at least as early as the Jewish intertestamental Book of Enoch, a book which was quoted by the second-century Christian, Justin Martyr.  However, the Book of Enoch was rejected from the Hebrew canon apparently in part because of this teaching; and, it was also not accepted as part of the Christian Scriptures.]

2) Interestingly, Venus as a bright “star” being visible in the early evening or dawn also developed into positive symbolism and is used of Jesus (Rev 2:29; 22:16, see, too, 2Pet 1:19).

3) Also, fun to think about: At the level of neurology, scientists would also note that genetically much about a person is generically ordered/fixed.  However, although the topic of why humans have a sense of “free will” is certainly debated, some people point to how the billions of neurons of the brain function probabilistically and/or to the rise of unpredicted emergent systems of the brain lead to a sense of consciousness and agency that transcend the ever-changing individual atoms, molecules, cells that make up the material brain.  Again, both order and chaos.

WHY "FREE WILL?"

A student asked me why God would create humans with the freedom to not accept salvation: “If He loves us and want us all to receive salvation, why did He create us, knowing many of us wouldn't?  If He knows everything, then He knows that.  If He knows the future, He knew that.  Yet He created us anyway.  Why not create humans who only choose Him?  This weighs on my mind VERY heavily.”

I have three suggestions about how to think about this topic.  The first suggestion is that we have to be careful about defining God in rationalistic categories “from the ground up.”  When we define God on our terms as omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent, etc., we then run into conflicts among those abstract categories.  One silly example, but to the point: “If God is both all-powerful and can create anything he wants, can he create a rock so big that he cannot lift it?”  Another example, frequently raised by atheists: “God cannot be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent and allow evil to exist.  Either God is not all good or not all powerful – or, by implication, there is no such god!”  The problem is created by us defining God with abstractions as well as by trying to answer questions not answered in the Bible (e.g. Why is there respectively pre-existent surd and moral evil prior to creation and prior to Adam and Eve’s sin?)  Instead, our understanding of God should be based on what He reveals of Himself, “from heaven downward.”  For instance, we have to be careful about foisting onto God our notions of what it would be like to stand outside of our conception of time or to be all-powerful or to be all-knowing.

Secondly, we need to accept the biblical portraits of the nature of humanity.  A couple of key biblical portraits (Gen 1 and 2) show us that God created humanity in God’s image with the ability to exercise sovereignty over the domains of the earth and with the capacity to enter into a life-giving relationship of submission to our Creator.  Another portrait (Gen 3) shows us that “evil” in the figure of the serpent (an image of chaos) pre-exists without explanation and that humanity has the freedom to choose self-rule (“be like God”) and reject the proper creature-Creator relationship.  The “curse” that follows shows chaos encroaching into and damaging the spheres of the ideal God-human, human-human, and human-earth relationships.  (Paul will speak of all creation coming under the reign of sin, chaos, death.)  Having chosen self-rule, man is removed from access to the Tree of Life and has to face his mortality.  We see a human propensity to choose self-rule and its consequences, BUT I find nothing here about a “Fall” (a non-biblical term) changing the will/nature/freedom of humanity as is often assumed.

The third suggestion is to focus on the biblical portraits of God as present to us, as unilaterally condescending to offer renewed relationship, as willing to lift/bear our sins, as patient and long-suffering with us, etc.

Some reflections: 1) Abstract theologians want to qualify how humans have a “capacity” to move closer or away from relationship with God, based on assumptions about origin of evil, the human condition (bound or free), forms of graces of God, etc.  I try to stick with the biblical portraits as we have them.  2) Had we not been created with, and somehow maintained, the capacity to choose between self-rule and God-rule, we could not be relational beings able enjoy life with God.  3) Given that God created us with the gift of being able to enter relationship with God, and it is God’s desire that we will all enter a life-giving relationship with Him, I find no inconsistency in the character of God.  God is good.

Lord, I celebrate your goodness and thank you that you extend your offer of relationship to me.  Amen.