The Problem of Evil

Some people believe that man is basically good, but that brings up a difficult question. How could a good DJ who has no evil inclination or disposition whatsoever in their soul or in their mind ever choose evil. That's the problem. The question would be interesting for many people. Those who reject God altogether because the city of God is good, he would prevent bad things from happening today on Renewing Your Mind wrapping up a week of messages by RC Sproul that we have never here before the from an archive that we reserve for our ministry pictures and I'll tell you more about that little bit later on. Right now, let's listen to Dr. scroll as he addresses this problem was playing ping-pong. The freshman dorm of the college for I attended the rec room and in the middle of one of the volleys. It struck me the question how can I perfectly just and righteous God create a creature that would incline itself in any way towards evil and I stop right there at the table and began to think about it, then tried to figure it out and found no success in that endeavor.

This is a question that is called in theology. The mystery of iniquity. Now like to say this morning that there have been all kinds of attempts to explain this difficulty and what I'm going to try to do with you this morning is not to explain it, but rather to explain to you why in my judgment, the prevailing explanations are simply inadequate and why I think we have to leave it, at least for now. In the realm of mystery. Some of the simple and I have to say simplistic explanations for it to include the following. Some people say oh well, it's easy to understand how Adam and Eve send. They send out of ignorance and insofar as they were ignorant. They didn't really fully grasp the import of what was going on, and therefore they fell well or to serious problems with that explanation. The first one is obvious. It is contrary to the text itself because the text makes it clear that they were not ignorant that their creator had informed them of what the parameters of the limits that they had in the garden and what the consequences would be if they violated his law, so on the last day.

Adam and Eve cannot appeal to ignorance, to excuse them, nor can an appeal to ignorance, explain for us the mystery of how they could have seen their but see that I second argument is that they were deceived and this argument is based upon the biblical description of Satan's guile and craftiness, and the Bible itself speaks of thieves having been deceived, it was full but again, this falls back on the first argument of ignorance because deception is just one way of provoking ignorance.

If you fool somebody you get them to do something they don't know what they're doing because they have been tricked. They have been to see but again that falls right back on the argument that we had a moment ago about ignorance because even as crafty and a sly and as deceitful as the serpent could be. Nevertheless, God was not deceitful God was crystal clear. According to the text in his telling them what they could and could not do. And after all of the beguiling attempts to deceive Adam and Eve in the final analysis, the serpent did come straight up and directly contradict what God had said in such a manner that any sentient creature, particularly one who is not yet fallen, one who has no effects on their mind from the ravages of sin would've spotted in an instant and would not have fallen into the snare of the deception I have to say something here. One of my frustrations as a student of theology is all talk to Christian people about this problem and the look at me like what's the matter with you. This is simple. This is not a problem doesn't bother me I'm at ease in Zion. This is why are you so exercised about it because it's simple. The obvious answer to the problem is that Adam and Amy send true their own free will. I can't tell you how many people look me in the eye and think that there telling me the answer to the problem because they haven't felt the weight of the problem.

So yeah, I understand that Adam and Eve made a choice and they were coerced because if they were forced just another option if they were absolutely coerced, then what then they wouldn't be held accountable either but they were how how accountable the Scripture gives no indication that they were course certainly will agree that they chose to disobey God. They exercise their will freely from any external coercion will understand that. But the question is, how could a good being who has no evil inclination or disposition whatsoever in their soul or in their mind ever choose evil. That's the problem that's the weight of this question that takes us back to what I said when you first came in the room that you every time you choose.

You choose according to your desires and your whole life.

No one in this room has ever ever chosen to do something they didn't want to do ever what you think about that is already your thinking. Wait a minute. As recently as this morning I got in the car and I came to this class and I didn't want to come this class but my wife said I had a come of this class and so she dragged me all the way here and make me listen to you talk about these things. Maybe that's what you're thinking, but what happened, really, when your wife yelled at you and said you better get out of bed and you better get ready go to church, converting to go to the class this morning.

Your thinking I don't want to go to the class but there's something worse.

I don't want to have to endure the wrath of my wife. If all things were equal. I just assume not have to go to church this morning, but all things are never equal. So I have to choose here between two alternatives.

Neither one of which is particularly appealing to me, but I want to choose the one that's most appealing or least appalling to me. I choose according to my strongest inclination at the moment and at the moment of your choice to come this morning your mindset. It would be more pleasing or less painful for you to come then the stay at home so you chose to come free will does not operate in a vacuum free will and choices that we make those choices are never effects without causes.

Every choice that we make has a cause and the cause is the strongest inclination or desire that we have at the moment of choosing if that's true, and we now go back to the garden and we see Adam and Eve confronted by the serpent and we know that they chose to disobey, which can only tell me that at the moment of decision. Their desire to eat from the tree was greater than their desire to please God. Their desire to sin was greater than their desire for obedience.

In other words I can think of no rational explanation for their choosing evil, except that they already had an evil disposition or desire in their heart because it's axiomatic biblically that prior to every evil act in a human being lurks an evil desire in the heart. And if that's the case, then Adam is falling before he fell. The say is already committed sin before he disobey us because he already has the evil desire in his heart. Are you beginning to feel the weight of the problem because reason demands as far as I can see that Adam and Eve sinned, because they had an inclination to sin, and if they had an inclination to sin were to get now there are some theologians, very few of them who argue that they got it from their creator, the God created Adam and Eve with an inclination towards righteousness and an inclination toward evil and so that Adam and Eve got there disposition toward sin from their creator. Where else could they get it can get it from society can get from their parents. Adam could say I was born in sin, and sin did my mother conceive me. What David did. Then if you say that was the problem.

Now you raise questions about the integrity of God, because the most important actually and what we call the biblical law pry where I that over riding primary assumption of Christian theology is that God is not the author of sin. And if God created Adam and Eve with the disposition to sin and then punish them when they worked.

According to this disposition and this would seem to indicate that God himself was unjust, and if I'm just not righteous. That's a pretty heavy price to pay and I have to say this, the most logical explanation that I can think of for the origin of sin is the God created Adam and Eve, not just with an ability to sin, but with a disposition toward sin. That's scary. Now what happens in Orthodox theology, particularly reformed theology is that the vast majority of reformed theologians would say luck reason may demand that Adam and Eve were created with a fallen inclination. But the Bible doesn't say that they were and we can't understand how a good creature would in fact choose a bad action that's a mystery. And that's were going to place the mystery were an essay Adam was created good, he did something bad and we have no idea how we did it as a mystery. That's were theologians throw hands up near safe. We can't fathom that on the other side. Those who say well we can fathom that he was made that way and they say well then that must mean that God is unjust and unfair. Ono though say God is not unjust. God is not on fear is perfectly holy and is perfectly righteous and in his righteousness he has every right to create vessels fit for destruction as the apostle Paul speaks of in Romans nine and manifest his glory by creating creatures with an inclination to do wickedness and then punishing them for that wickedness. We don't see how that would be just we don't see how that is righteous, but we trust that God is righteous in this how we can do this and still be righteous is a mystery to see what's going on here. The difference between the two camps is simply where the mystery is placed say again, the first group say Adam was created good and this good creature did something bad. How we did it we don't know.

It's a mystery second group says now we know how he did it.

He did it out of an evil inclination. The only place he could've gotten evil inclination was from his creator, but God is righteous in creating somebody with an evil inclination. How he could be righteous and do that we don't know. It's a mystery. Either way, you are impaled on the horns of a terrible terrible dilemma. That's why it said that the origin of evil, or the origin of sin is the Achilles' heel of Christianity. Others try to do with this philosophically have argued that Adam sinned out of finitude because that which is finite cannot be perfectly righteous while there is no reason to assume that that being, which is finite, must be morally imperfect. There's nothing in the concept of finitude that requires wickedness F.

There were, then the argument would prove too much because in heaven we will still be finite, but yet we will be without sin. Jesus human nature was finite and he was without sin, which proves that finitude does not absolutely require moral imperfection.

Memphis looking for much time on that but if you've been exposed to that kind of argument from people like Paul Tillich and others you've heard a brief rebuttal to I take comfort in this, that, though I cannot at this point in my life not yet been able to figure out how a good creature made by a perfectly righteous God could do sin.

One thing I understand, just like I don't understand how electricity works and I don't understand how gravity works really, but I know there is such a thing as electricity and I know there is such a thing as grabbing and I know there is such a thing as evil, and I know that Adam and Eve sinned, that they send is not in question by me how they did it.

I don't know but I do know that sin as mysterious as it is, is real, but there are those who say you know that the reality of evil disproves Christianity because it proves that God is not good because he has let evil into the world. Let's look at that for second first place in our study of the Westminster confession we looked at the problem of evil.

I talked about the nature of evil as being negation and privatization that evil was always explained or described in negative terms. Evil is a parasite insofar as the parasite depends upon its host for its own existence that once the host dies. The parasite parishes as well because the parasite cannot live independent from the host. In that sense of evil is parasitical.

It depends upon the good for its very definition we talk about evil in terms of un-righteousness, imperfection, law less Nass this O Beatty's so that we understand evil. Only against the background of the standard. The prior standard of goodness, because evil is only known in so far as it fails to conform to the standard of goodness, you see that. So in an indirect way a backdoor kind of the way the very presence of evil bears witness to the prior existence of the good. And so I will admit to the pagan that as a Christian I have an enormously vexing problem with evil but they have a problem not only with evil but they have a problem with good because they have no basis for believing in the good in the first place and if they don't have any understanding of good. They can't have any basis for talking about evil so again evil indirectly as a parasite bears witness to the host and that's a small comfort, but it is a comfort that doesn't solve the problem. Finally, the weightiest matter is the question I mentioned last week or so.

How can a righteous God allow unrighteousness in his creation. Now here's what I'm convinced of unconvinced of the reality of evil.

I'm also convinced of the reality of God and the God is righteous.

Now we have a problem if God is righteous and evil is real. How is it that a good God could allow evil in his creation. Now take it one step further. It is a sin.

The Bible says to call good evil, and a call evil good.

We talked about last week when we get involved in sin and we don't want to bear the weight of our consciences were the weight of our guilt will try to get as many people as possible to agree that what were doing is okay to call evil good that since we all do that again. It's a sin to call evil good order call good evil not want to commit that sin and I've already said that the first sin of Adam and Eve was real sin and it was really evil.

However, as evil as the fall was it's good that there was a fall. How I know that because I know that God is omnipotent, and I know that God is good and omnipotent God would not allow wickedness to come into his world unless his intent in allowing it to happen was a righteous intent. This is the whole point that we learn in the book of Genesis in the story of Joseph when he is confronted by his brother seven over this with you many times but again when his brothers are expecting a fierce reaction by Joseph to get even an act of vengeance. Joseph says what you meant it for evil but God meant it for good to see that that's how God in his providence can ordain evil and not being able because when he ordains evil he does it because it's good looking good one come to us in the fall was real. It was real sin, but it's good that there was one because God can stop it like that.

He knew before it happened. What was going to happen and people asked a question. Both he knew in advance of them to do that.

Why did he just not create them. I don't know. It may seem to me the been better for all of us well may be better for some of us that God had not created any of us know Christian but ever say that is a hand created me, I would have the opportunity to be with him with absolute felicity for eternity enjoying sweetness of his beauty and of his own. I hope you found the message helpful. That's RC Sproul and you're listening to Renewing Your Mind on this Friday. Ugly web.

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