The question of God and Evil is a difficult one. It has been a stumbling block in the lengthy efforts to present a convincing theodicy. Ireneus of Lyons in the second century suggested that God “did not create humanity in a state of perfection, but with the capacity to achieve this perfection through a process of growth” (McGrath, Reader, 156). Origen insisted that God did not create evil, but that he can even use evil to produce good (Ibid, 160). In the V century, Augustine of Hippo proposed that evil was the result of “a free turning away from God rather than a positive entity in its own right” (Ibid., 172). Building on Augustine’s thought, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio argues that evil “is to be seen as an absence of goodness,” and not as a positive reality (Ibid., 181). Aquinas tried to explain suffering in terms of secondary natural and historical causes. God can only work with the laws and circumstances available in the present time (Ibid., 218). For David Bentley Hart, suffering and evil reflect the presence of God’s enemy (Ibid.). “Hart’s response mingles a principled refusal to make simplistic judgments about a complex world and a firm conviction of the hope of ultimate transformation” (Ibid., 219).
McGrath, in his Introduction, explains that “The history of dogma” movement declared that Christian thinking had taken a wrong turn in the patristic period” (McGrath, Introduction, 183). The patristic writers were influenced by philosophical ideas about the impassibility of God and elaborated their theologies and their arguments around logical deductions and assumptions based on that basic idea. Karl Barth, in turn, suggested that the Reformed doctrine of omnipotence [also] rested largely upon logical deduction from a set of premises about God’s power and goodness” (Ibid., 204).
In contrast with these logical efforts to reconcile God’s power, impassibility, transcendence, and goodness with the problem of suffering and evil, the biblical texts present a God who is in a relationship with his creatures. He chooses to love them, and he chose to create them the way He wanted. He chose to create the universe the way it is. God decided to give certain autonomy to his creation and to the humans who live in it. God acts in the world within the parameters that He chose. God’s choices potentiate loving responses and relationships, but at the same time, they allow indifference and hatred. There cannot be a loving response, without the freedom not to love. Likewise, there cannot be growth in a relationship that is perfect from the beginning.
When God chose love, he committed to get involved in his creation. He took the risk that his creatures could decide not to love him. He opened the possibility that his creatures could build a world based on selfishness instead of one constructed in love. He also opened the possibility that a world based on selfishness could render a Creation subjected to futility where suffering and evil can also happen.
At the same time, when His creatures opted to invent a world opposed to God's will, He committed to be part of the struggle and suffering needed to restore his creation and to take it to its complete telos. God was willing to set limits to his all-powerful ability. He pursued his purpose through love and not by imposing his power.
