THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

The question of evil has been a timeless question asked all throughout the ages. Still today the question passes over into the twentieth century with the same negative overtone. The question has existed in many forms but the main idea of the question has never changed. That is if there was a loving and sovereign God how could he permit evil in the world? During calamities, many people question the goodness of God. Sometimes these questions will lead us to sub-standardize the power and the goodness of God. There are those situations that we follow His will and do His commandments yet in the end we still challenge by some problems and anxieties of life which we call evils. Gone were the days, when we are trying to be good to our brothers and sisters in our community, but then again we hardly feel the blessings of God because it is being blocked by the difficulties we face. Sometimes we cannot understand why bad things happened to good people and in reverse, why good things happen to bad people? Although we cannot grasp clearly or entirely the will of God, but through our good works, we already assumes that we will receive a reward in the end. Yes, we are bombarded with different problems in our life but still we could hardly understand why these things are necessarily happened. Every now and then, we encounter unexpected bad happenings.    

These problems are being studied by the Theologians of the church. They try to explain this negative reality in such a way that through their explanations, people may understand and accept the reality and be ready for the upcoming day by day struggles. The famous theologian and philosopher, St. Augustine, tackles about the problem of evil and the existence of evil in the world. 

In Augustine’s Confession the discussion of good and evil begins with God, he argues that God is absolutely good and that there can be no corruption in Him. Augustine employs words such as “supreme good” and “best good.” He is the highest conceivable being of goodness and Augustine adds that what God wills for himself is good which “he himself is that same good.” Furthermore Jesus exhorts that all men be perfect as his Heavenly father is perfect in Matthew 7:35. Thus there exists this perfectly good God, in whom no evil could exist because it is contradictory to his character. Consequently a good God could not create anything that is not good.    

       Therefore if evil is not good as Augustine contends then it was not created. That is because all things that God created is good. Moreover all created substances created by God have a state of being so if evil does not have a state of being then it follows that it is nothing. However evil does exist as some form in the world because there are clear objective moral values that are actually evil. This is the dilemma because evil does exist all though God did not create it. This is where Augustine transitions over to man’s limited in nature and free will.

            This world is a limited and finite place – what we call suffering and evil is simply the natural result of that limited nature. In other words, to expect that a limited, finite creature can live for ever and never suffer is simply to misunderstand what it is to be a limited creature. The world does not belong to us, we cannot determine what shall happen, but are always limited by factors outside ourselves over which we have no control. Other question contends that why God did not create the world perfectly? If God creates the world perfectly, then it is contradictory to his nature as the only one supreme and ultimate good. If God will allow these, there can be two ultimate good and this would lead to understand that the creator’s initiative is equal to his creation. We have to remember that the creator is also higher than his creation. Therefore, it is very contradictory to the nature of God.

For us to understand evil in the forms of suffering in our lives, it is important to take more seriously on Augustine’s argument that evil is only a limitation of good, rather than a force itself. Augustine conclusion on moral evil is that evil and suffering are either sin or the punishment for sin (the world is the way it is because of our fall from grace, and that of the angels). In other words, Augustine is saying, in effect, that suffering and evil are punishment from God, in that they are the result of human and non-human disobedience. Furthermore, Augustine argues that evil is a result of humans abusing the gift of free will. Only God will judge how we have responded to that suffering, and will reward or punish us after this life on the basis of how we respond to it. There is no escape from the control of God for he is not only justified in allowing present suffering, but will also choose to punish some people in an afterlife for the way in which they have responded to this limited life. Since evil is the absence of good, the best way to avoid it is to participate God’s loving work.

Augustine’s view on the persecution that happened in the Church under tyrant emperors happened to be the great evil in those times. There is a disease that Augustine believes is the worst disease in the world. This disease claims more lives then any other disease. It is a disease that everyone who ever lived, lives and will live is going to suffer under. This disease is called sin, which is evil. Evil that exists in the form of thousands of persecuted Christians and horrific crimes that were taking place in the Roman Empire. Evil that has spread to all men everywhere it man is utterly hopeless. However Augustine advocates that there is a cure. The Gospel calls him the great physician. Man’s free will is responsible for the evil that exist in the world, but it is also man’s free will to restore the goodness that God created in all men from the beginning of all time if they chose to accept Christ as their savior.