If God is nice and created all issues good, the place did evil come from? On this episode of What within the Phrase?, Phillip Cary joins Kirk E. Miller to discover Genesis 3 and the origins of evil.
The place did the serpent—this crafty adversary and deceiver—come from? And the way might Adam and Eve, who created good and with out sin, fall into its temptation? What does the Bible train about God’s relationship to evil?
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Episode visitor: Phillip Cary
Phillip Cary was professor of philosophy at Japanese College close to Philadelphia for over 20 years, the place he has additionally been scholar in residence on the Templeton Honors Faculty and taught within the Grasp of Arts in Classical Instructing program.
Phillip is writer of The That means of Protestant Theology: Luther, Augustine, and the Gospel that Provides Us Christ (Baker Educational, 2019); The Nicene Creed: An Introduction (Lexham, 2023); The That means of Protestant Theology: Luther, Augustine, and the Gospel That Provides Us Christ (Baker Educational, 2019); in addition to Good Information for Anxious Christians: 10 Sensible Issues You Don’t Need to Do (Brazos, 2010). He has additionally printed lecture sequence with the Nice Programs, together with programs on Luther, Augustine, the historical past of Christian theology, and philosophy and faith within the West.
Episode synopsis
What’s the issue with evil?
Genesis 1 and a couple of describe a creation that God declares “good,” and even “excellent.” But, in Genesis 3, a crafty serpent all of a sudden seems in God’s good creation. This creature tempts Adam and Eve to disobey the Lord, initiating the autumn of humanity.
This raises troublesome questions: The place does this evil come from in a world that God repeatedly declares “good”? Did God create the serpent? If Adam and Eve have been good, how can creatures created good flip to sin?
Genesis 3 raises deep theological and philosophical questions associated to the origin and existence of evil. Philip explains the strain: Christians affirm that each one issues have been made by God, and that every thing God created is nice. God doesn’t create evil issues (Jas 1:13). So how can evil come up in a world that was created completely good?
Evil is just not a created substance
Philip turns to Augustine, one of many nice theologians of the early church, to assist clarify how Christians have traditionally thought concerning the nature of evil. Augustine insisted that evil is just not a “factor” that God created. As an alternative, evil is a privation, a scarcity or absence of the nice that must be current. It’s like darkness: not one thing created, however the absence of sunshine. By this account, evil has no impartial existence. It’s not a substance or being of its personal.
Quite, evil is what occurs when good issues turn into corrupted, once they lose or lack the order or goodness they have been created to have. Corruption is the concept good issues can “go dangerous.” Like a rotten apple or a collapsed roof, evil is what outcomes when one thing good is broken, disordered, or ruined. As Philip places it, “Each evil factor is an evil good factor.” In different phrases, each sin is a corruption of one thing good that God made.
Nonetheless evil is actual
Kirk raises that some may fear that this makes evil appear to be an phantasm. However Philip is evident: Evil is just not imaginary. It’s profoundly actual in its results, even when it lacks substance. The leak in your roof is actual, regardless that the outlet itself isn’t “made” of something. The absence of what must be, like a scarcity of integrity or goodness, is actual, painful, and harmful.
So Christians don’t imagine evil is a created being. However they do affirm that its presence on the earth is a real and really actual tragic distortion of what God made.
The Devil behind the serpent
The following query turns into: Who or what’s the serpent? Genesis 3 doesn’t identify him Devil, however the remainder of Scripture does.
In Revelation 12, the “historical serpent” is explicitly recognized as “the satan and Devil, the deceiver of the entire world” (Rev 12:9). Likewise, Luke 10 parallels Revelation 12 when Jesus says, “I noticed Devil fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). And Romans 16 echoes Genesis 3:15 when it connects the serpent to the defeat of Devil underneath Christians’ toes (Rom 16:20).
The cumulative witness of Scripture identifies the voice behind the serpent as Devil himself, a created being who rebelled towards God.
However that also leaves the query: The place did Devil come from?
Use the Necessary Passages part in Logos’s Passage Information to find key cross references.
The creation of invisible issues
Genesis 1 describes the creation of the seen world (“the heavens and the earth,” Gen 1:1). However Colossians 1:16 goes even additional, stating that in Christ, “all issues” have been created, together with issues in heaven and on earth, seen and invisible (cf. John 1:3). Angels, then, are a part of that created “invisible” world. God made them; they don’t seem to be everlasting or self-existent. And he made them good.
In Job 1, we see Devil depicted as amongst these “sons of God,” the heavenly beings (Job 1:6).
Augustine’s studying of Genesis 1:3–4
Sooner or later, a few of these angelic beings, together with Devil, should have fallen. Philip explains that Augustine gives an intriguing (and speculative) interpretation of Genesis 1 to account for this fall.
In Genesis 1:3, God says, “Let there be mild.” However the solar and moon aren’t created till day 4. What is that this mild? Augustine advised that that is the sunshine of the invisible heavens, maybe the angels, and even the glory of God mirrored in creation.
Of significance, the textual content doesn’t say God created the darkness; fairly, he created the sunshine (1:3) which he separated from the darkness (1:4). He calls the sunshine good, not the darkness (1:4).
Thus, Augustine posits that this separating of the sunshine from the darkness refers back to the separation between the obedient angels and those that fell. The fallen angels, akin to Devil, turned away from God because the supply of their goodness and lightweight. They selected themselves over the Creator. In doing so, they turned darkness.
Corruption & free will
But when God created every thing good—each angels and people—then how did they even have the capability to fall away, to decide on sin?
To reply this query we should acknowledge the vulnerability of excellent issues. All the things created— together with the human will—was created good. However it’s additionally corruptible. God alone is incorruptible. He can’t sin, change, or fail (Jas 1:17). However creatures, whether or not angels or people, can.
We should acknowledge that free will then (nevertheless outlined) might be corrupted, might be bent in the direction of sinful ends. When the desire turns away from God, it turns into twisted. Once we love ourselves or lesser items greater than God, sin is born.
This doesn’t excuse our selections. It explains them. Free will means we’re accountable. The satan could tempt, however he doesn’t management. Adam and Eve selected sin—and so can we.
Adam’s culpability in Eve’s sin
In Genesis 3, the serpent tempts Eve by questioning God’s phrase: “Did God truly say … ?” (Gen 3:1). However discover, Eve hadn’t obtain God’s command immediately—Adam alone did. In different phrases, implied is that Adam was alleged to train God’s Phrase to Eve. However Adam failed to satisfy this discharge.
And the place is Adam throughout Eve’s trade with the serpent? The textual content says he was “together with her” (Gen 3:6). He’s current. Silent. Passive. He lets the serpent converse, lets Eve eat, after which follows her lead.
When confronted, Adam blames the girl—and implicitly, God: “The lady whom you gave to be with me …” (3:12; emphasis added).
Philip notes that evil typically requires multiple individual. It’s communal. It takes two to fall in Genesis 3. Adam’s failure was not simply consuming the fruit. It was failing to show, lead, and shield.
This sample is seen all through Scripture. Israel’s kings, like Solomon or Ahab, are led astray by their idolatrous wives once they fail to uphold the phrase of the Lord. Evil multiplies in relationships that fail to steward God’s fact.
Sensible takeaways
Philip thus highlights the communal nature of succumbing to and resisting evil. The serpent overcame Eve partly as a result of Adam stayed silent. So too the folks of God right this moment want each other to face agency. We train, remind, and uphold the Phrase collectively.
For pastors, small group leaders, and academics, this implies taking severely the accountability of speaking God’s Phrase clearly and faithfully. But in addition, of doing so in group. Nobody resists the satan alone. We depend on the sunshine of God’s Phrase handed down by means of devoted voices.
Logos values considerate and fascinating discussions on essential biblical subjects. Nevertheless, the views and interpretations offered on this episode are these of the people talking and don’t essentially replicate the official place of Logos. We acknowledge that Christians could maintain totally different views on this passage, and we welcome various engagement and respectful dialogue.
Augustine as regards to evil
For additional rationalization of Augustine’s method to the character and origin of evil, see Phillip Cary’s “Augustine on Evil” in The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evil.
If in search of course on the place to begin in Augustine himself, take into account starting with the next picks from his writings:
- Augustine, Metropolis of God, books 11, 12, and 14
- Augustine, Confessions, books 7 and eight
- Augustine, Enchiridion on Religion, Hope, and Charity
The Metropolis of God, 2 vols. (The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the twenty first Century)
On the character & existence of evil
On the origin of Devil & fallen angels
In opposition to the Darkness: The Doctrine of Angels, Devil, and Demons (Foundations of Evangelical Theology)
On human freedom, together with the desire to sin
On deciphering evil in Genesis
