When an unbeliever raises the problem of evil as an objection to theism, the apologist is faced not just with a singularly daunting intellectual challenge to Christianity, but also a potentially difficult pastoral problem requiring Spirit-led sensitivity. This is no puerile sophistry about God being unable to create a rock he cannot move. It is a real question, often rooted in authentic personal suffering and in the angst that attends God’s sensitive image-bearers as they are forced into contact with a cursed and fallen world.

The necessity of a careful, pastoral approach to this kind of apologetic interaction is difficult to overstate. Few will adduce this argument merely out of a desire to gain the tactical advantage in a debate. The apologist must discern whether the objection is made through veiled tears, and be willing to encounter the suffering soul not just with the good news of the Gospel, but with empathy and with the love of Christ. It is not inappropriate for the apologist to mourn with those who mourn while at the same time giving a defense of the veridicality of the Apostolic faith.

Fortunately, the foundation of our empathy puts down deep intellectual footers. When the doubting soul says, “I cannot believe in the God of the Bible because of all the evil in the world,” we must understand the implied syllogism and how to blunt its impact or defeat it altogether. The unstated argument holds that God as conceived by Christianity is omnipotent, and therefore able to prevent evil; and omnibenevolent, and therefore should desire to prevent evil. Yet evil exists, so God must not.¹

Short of embracing atheism, there are several bad solutions to this dilemma, and no shortage of apologists have affrirmed them. Gaining some currency in recent years is the tacit denial of God’s omnipotence in Openness theology. Building upon considerable theological scaffolding whose edifice we will not describe here, Openness proposes that God is powerless to control a future which does not yet exist; hence he cannot be blamed for the wicked choices made by his utterly free creatures.² Short of Openness, one might posit the classical free will defense. In this scenario, God knows and has absolute power over all future events, but grants libertarian freedom to his creatures; thus he does not in any sense ordain or interfere with the exercise of their wills, and he is exculpated from any evil actions undertaken by them. This approach fails adequately to deal with the reality of natural evil (e.g., floods, volcanoes, hurricanes, etc.) and makes questionable philosophical, theological, and exegetical claims on the relationship between the human will and divine sovereignty.

Further one might attempt to deny the existence of evil. This approach owes more to Eastern monism than it does the flawed approaches of wayward Christian apologists,³ and its heterodoxy is as evident as its existential impotence. It is to be avoided, and fortunately in the scope of evangelical apologetics, it usually is.

A robust intellectual framework for dealing with the problem of evil acknowledges the reality of evil yet carefully avoids assigning responsibility to God for creating it. It views evil as a state of privation, the absence of the good, not as a created substance.⁴ It acknowledges that the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe and ordainer of all things that come to pass has ordained evil outcomes under the terms of relative, instrumental dualism as a means to good ends not otherwise achievable.⁵ This blunts the force of the deductive form of the problem-of-evil syllogism, establishing that God sought to cause good effects through the instrumentality of evil–good effects that would not otherwise have obtained in the presence of eternal, unmixed good.⁶

J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendary trilogy is not known for reflecting a scrupulously orthodox Christian theology (at least it should not be), but in the opening pages of the companion mythological history, The Silmarillion, Tolkien provides a cogent metaphorical answer to the problem of evil that matches precisely the theological and philosophical claims we seek to make. In the first act of the Middle Earth creation myth, Iluvatar, the creator, answers his rebellious creature, Melkor, who has been playing wickedly discordant musical themes in rebellion against what Iluvatar would have him and the other angelic Ainur play. Finally silencing Melkor with a deafening blast, Iluvatar says to him:

Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Iluvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.⁷

This is the Christian’s answer to the problem of evil.

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¹Winfried Corduan, Reasonable Faith (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1993), 126-127.
²Douglas Groothuis, Defending The Christian Faith class notes, Denver Seminary, 14 December 2004.
³Corduan, 130.
⁴Corduan, 132.
⁵Douglas Groothuis, Defending The Christian Faith class notes, Denver Seminary, 14 December 2004.
⁶Ibid.
⁷J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, ed. Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1977), 17.

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• Posted by Tim on Monday, December 20, 2004 at 7:55:17 am PST
• Category: Theology
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