The Origins of Evil

I've been working in the "innards" of a micro-course for Kingswood Learn featuring Chris Bounds: "Basic Christian Beliefs." This site with free resources for the church is going to be spectacular, by the way! Look it up. Working on the course made me think of a book I published.

It's been a few years since I self-published The Problem of Evil and Suffering: Why Does God Allow It? in 2012. I don't know that my thoughts have particularly changed much in the last 11 years. My presentation has likely improved and sharpened.

Some of my thoughts are just the same old same old:

• Augustine, blah, blah, blah -- Free will is better than being robots. But if you give an Adam a free will, he might just use it. Bam. Evil.
• Irenaeus, blah, blah, blah -- Without suffering and resistance, we would get morally flabby. C. S. Lewis and the problem of pain (not sure if I mention Lewis much)

So the book didn't have "Wow, all my questions are finally answered!" dynamic. Frankly, I'm not sure if I've ever sold a single copy!

So none of that material is new. Where I am unusual is in what I might call a contextualist approach to evil. Augustine and Lewis are still Platonists. They tend to treat good as a thing.

For me, good is an adjective, not a noun. It describes certain intentions and the actions that follow. I thus disagree with Augustine both in his thinking that evil is a "privation" of the good or a twisting of the good. Both assume that good is a thing.

Here's the Table of Contents:

1. Where Was God?

2. Questionable Explanations

3. What Is Evil?

4. Pain Is Not Evil.

5. What Is Sin?

6. Does God Tempt?

7. God and Catastrophes

8. What Did God Create Evil?

9. Why Does God Allow It?

Back to work...