Origins of Evil

Again, the Devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. And he said to Him, "I will give You all these things if You will fall down and worship me." -- Matthew 4:8-9

William Dembski is best known as an advocate for Intelligent Design, but his recent book, The End of Christianity, is on the subject of theodicy — defending the benevolence and power of God in a world of evil. I've been reading along in the book, and I am somewhat less than impressed.

For one thing, Dembski spends a lot of time in an internecine conflict with the "Young Earth Creationists". I suppose this is reasonable given Dembski's likely audience, but, to me, it was a waste of time. I do not find YEC arguments compelling in the least. Dembski feels challenged by the YEC insistence that all evil much originate with Adam, and, thus, 4.5 billion years of evolution, replete with extinctions, suffering, blood, and death must be explained in terms of human evil.

C.S. Lewis dealt with the idea of evil quite simply by attributing the origin of rebellion to another order of being — namely Satan, AKA Lucifer, who fell prior to the creation of man. Dembski acknowledges Lewis' argument but refuses to accept it. He insists that the fall of man impacted earth retroactively. Such a concept is plausible, given that God would know man was going to fall. Those under the Mosaic Covenant as well as the Patriarchs were "saved by faith" in the Cross of Christ, though the Incarnation and Passion were far in the future — not three or four billion years in the future, but it's only a matter of scale.

Still, I think Dembski dismissed Lewis unfairly, not, perhaps, fully understanding the rather prefunctory treatment Lewis gives the idea in his essays. A better place to study this view is in Tolkien's creation account in The Silmarillion and in Lewis' Space Trilogy. As someone who has read nearly every scrap Lewis ever wrote, I would classify the second volume of the trilogy, Perelandra, as one of my least favorite of his works, but Out of the Silent Planet is pretty good and That Hideous Strength is acceptable, if at times laborious, reading. What Lewis postulates is that there are angelic beings ruling various planets and other bodies in the solar system, and probably throughout the universe.

As a result of his rebellion, Lucifer is confined to earth which is then cut off from communication with God — hence becoming "the silent planet"or "Thulcandra" as it is named in the trilogy. The devil wrecks havoc upon earth which is somewhat consistent with Chapter 12 of Revelation — more consistent, certainly, than typical fundamentalist, dispensational interpretations of the same passage.

I suppose God could have destroyed Lucifer at the moment of his rebellion. But that is not God's way. Tolkien's "The Music of the Ainur" is his creation myth, and it describes how Melkor sowed discord with his own song. God countered the rebellion, not with expulsion and starting over, but by weaving in a new theme that overpowers the attempts of the rebels.

The Lord uses the rebellion of Satan and the subsequent evil as the basis for a new and more unimaginably beautiful history to arise. The planet is laid waste, but, out of destruction, life begins. Every attempt by Satan to thwart what God is doing turns to something creative. Death and waste and loss become the hedges that guide life from the simple to the increasingly complex. Out of this chaos, order and consciousness slowly arise on the very battleground between the Lord and the adversary.

Is this really a surprise from the God who incarnates and uses His own death to redeem humanity?

Something else it might be worthwhile to consider. Man was cast out of Eden for his rebellion. Though Eden is described as a garden here on earth, it is certainly more than that. It seems to be a sanctuary of sorts and is possibly on a different "plane" than the material one on which we mostly live. Eden, like the redeemed, may have been (or may be) in the world but not of the world.

Because Adam united with Satan in rebellion against God, humanity was expelled into Satan's kingdom. Remember that Jesus Himself calls Satan "the god of this world" and "the prince of the power of the air". Upon our expulsion from our rightful place, we entered into a world where death rules, for everything lives by the death or loss of something else.

Christ has made it possible for us to be reconciled to the Father. We become part of the Body of Christ moving through history, moving toward the terminal point of history when we will achieve the "measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ". When this happens, all of creation will be redeemed and restored with us and in us. We will return to Eden but with all the spoils of our victory over the enemy.

Another way to look at it is that Eden is the Platonic ideal. Sin has caused us to live in a corrupted version of the perfect. Evil is all that which differs from the ideal. The end of history will be the equilibrium achieved when the corrupting barrier is breached and we are reunited with Reality.

In a way, this is just another beachhead, another campaign in a war that has been going on long before humanity landed in the dust of earth. Human history is a fairly brief episode. From the beginning of consciousness to the coming of Christ is comparable to the D-Day invasion of Normandy. It gave us the foothold and guaranteed victory in the long-run, but there is a lot of fighting still to be done.

The enemy's most potent tactic is deception.