The problem of evil is old and tired and jagged, the sort of thing philosophers regularly cut themselves on quite badly, then go on bleeding all over history. Then along comes an ordinary Christian and deals with it in practice, facing all the grime and wickedness, and again a reminder comes of humility. Of course, plenty of the time this problem really does present a problem. How can evil exist, if God also exists? Must not a God who allows wickedness be Himself wicked? How can this be when God rules? These questions occur to many a man and trouble him. To some they are an excuse for desired rebellion. To some they are torment despite faith. The questions seem to have no answer. Of course, the problem of evil has Biblical answers, from the sufficient to the philosophical to the emotive.

Before proceeding, however, two divisions must be made. First, the problem of evil is often conflated with the closely related but separate problem of pain. The question of why people sin is not the same as the question of why people suffer- though answering the second does require answering the first. The distinction’s virtue can be seen in how it underlies Frame’s response to (but not full dismissal of) the character-building theodicy (163-164). The problem of pain’s solution will be a subset of a full theodicy, but clear thinking requires the consideration of the ought (evil) before dealing with in is (suffering) which is, apart from the ought, not actually a problem. Second, the structure of an answer to the problem of evil (and pain) must be divided into two categories: defense and reason. A defense is an argument which shows how God and the existence of sin are consistent; a reason is a proposal of why God created a world with evil in it.

Is it moral at all to seek an answer to this question? Consider the Biblical response to the problem of evil. Scripture brings the problem forward several times. Job and Romans are of particular interest here, as Frame points out. In Job, the question is raised implicitly by Job in questioning his suffering, and Job’s answer is the series of questions stretching across chapters 38 to 42 of the book, questions which do not provide a philosophical structure. Instead, God’s defense of Himself is to declare by rhetorical question His majesty, His might, His wisdom (Frame 174). If God does not condescend to give the “blameless and upright” man an answer, do the rest of His people have the right to demand it (Job 1:1)?

Most assuredly not. As Frame states, “When we put ourselves in the proud position of demanding an answer, then we can expect a rebuke from God” (174). It is the same pattern as that found in Adam’s contention with God in Genesis 3 (172). Similarly, Romans 3:5-8 deals with the problem of evil not by a detailed explanation, as might be expected of so didactic a work when encountering a thorny philosophical issue, but by bare appeal to God’s nature as necessary. God is the judge, and so sin must be subject to His justice. Admittedly, the problem here is not precisely the problem of evil but a related difficulty- the question of how man can have responsibility for what God has decreed he will do.

If Job alone were in evidence, it might be supposed that sovereignty was the sole morally-allowable explanation. Scripture has more to say, however. It provides implications and explanations which invite further investigation of the problem. Romans 9 appeals to God’s sovereignty, as did chapter 3, but it emphasizes an element which was only hinted at in 3:6. Paul declares in 9:15 that God has not only the power and position to do as He does but the right. This was, notably, implicit in not only chapter 3 but Job’s explanation. God asserts His moral state and position to be uncompromised by sin- which begs the question of how, as part of understanding Scripture.

Psalm 73 deals with a variant on the problem of evil, that of the problem of apparent injustice, how evil can seem to prosper despite God’s rule. In the twenty-seventh verse the psalmist’s answer finds summary: “For behold, those who are far from You shall perish; You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to You.” Thus once again God’s word appeals not just to His sovereignty but to His righteousness. A moral answer is clearly in view. Blind faith is not the solution Scripture requires (Frame 179).

Due to the lack of an explicit command, the argument against seeking a theodicy- a defense to the point of certainty- lies in an assertion that the Biblical example is to stop at the point of recognizing His sovereignty and position, without interrogating the nature of the relationship which allows this (Plantinga 28). Such, however, is hardly the Biblical example. Certainly Scripture considers the statements’ face value to suffice in answering; Job is answered and so are those Paul dismisses in Romans 3:8. Scripture, however, does not stop there in considering the facets of the problem of evil, as Romans 9:15, Psalm 73:27, and even Ezekiel 18:25 testify. In the lack of a command against it, Christian should follow the same course here as in other issues: inspect Scripture with intention of understanding by His Spirit what is communicated there (Ps. 119:15). If a theodicy arises from that study, as it does, then it is righteous to present and hold to it; it is righteous even to pursue and test it.

This pursuit, however, has one clear command attached to it: do not pursue as a judge over God. God may not be put in the dock; He is the judge. Man may not say, “If God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty and disease, [I will] listen to it” (Lewis 464[1]). The man who seeks to contend with God in such a way is a fool at best (Job 42:2-6). Just as in apologetics man has no right to set his own existence as prior to God’s, so here man has no right to set his moral judgement as superior to God’s justice (Frame 168-9). He must declare, ‘I wish to know the nature of God’s righteousness more clearly,’ not ‘I wish to know if God is righteous.’ Thus, ‘I wish to know how God can be righteous’ is at best dubious, but ‘I wish to understand God’s righteousness better’ passes the test. Man comes as an explorer of His nature and relationship to creation, not an inspector or auditor.

Further, theodicy is not desirable merely as an answer to a problem. If the goal was merely to defend God from a charge, the quoting of Job would perhaps suffice. Theodicy, however, forms another of the many connective webs of theology, pulling together theology proper, ethics, anthropology, and theology of history at minimum- ontology and metaphysics too, when done right. As such, it can form a way of checking conclusions against their brethren, seeing whether a doctrinal position in one area is consistent with a surer doctrine in another area, to theological and apologetic benefit both (Clark, 1- What, 15:00). So a definition of responsibility and of sin’s nature can be checked against the nature of God to see whether it holds up. This is in fact one of the major contexts in which theodicy and its relatives come up. In discussing soteriology, Arminians have often accused Calvinists of making God the author of evil- and in this, any answer must necessarily brush with theodicy of some sort (Swan). Developing a consistent theodicy, a theodicy self-consistent and consistent with all the rest of what is known to be true, thus serves the purpose of furthering understanding in areas no doctrinally diligent Christian considers futile or off-limits.

As for the task of actually developing a theodicy, that’s where the rub appears. Frame explicitly states his belief that a theodicy in full is impossible (152). To an extent, he is correct. While a defense is thoroughly possible, a comprehensive account of His reason for evil’s existence is probably beyond mankind. Men can propose answers; men can come up with reasons- His glory, etc.- but those reasons will always be in the mind of man, not God, and thus not full accounts of His actual reasons, which being integral to His being are not within man’s ability to fully compass.

When the Christian says that God created evil in order to bring Himself glory, there will always be room to question, ‘Why this means of glory rather than another?’ Of course, as has been shown elsewhere, God did not act here on a deterministic necessity, and so the alternatives to a world containing evil (at minimum, no creation at all) must have been precisely equal to it in their benefit towards Him (Potter). As to a defense, however, Frame’s pessimism is unjustified by the evidence, if taken as instruction for others.

Theodicies aplenty have been offered in history, it is true, and none of those Frame condemns are sufficient (though two have more truth than he allows, there being a little truth to Augustine’s defense and a variant of the best possible world theorem). Even Frame’s own solution seems largely insufficient, which is consistent with his pessimism. While it is true that evil is remedied in the end by a greater good and with full justice- see Psalm 73:27 again-, while it is true that post-glorification this will no longer be an issue, while it is true that God has the professed right to act as He wills, none of this quite deals with the problem of the apparent inconsistency between God and evil’s existence, except by simple assertion of consistency (Frame 171-2, 186-7, 187-8). Still less does an assertion of the need for tension in history suffice; tension requiring evil in no way obviates an inconsistency between God and evil, if such exists, for tension is not integral to God, so far as is taught in Scripture, and if it were, Frame’s argument would merely indicate that God contained some evil in Himself (which he does not assert) (180-4).

Still less does Plantinga solve the problem. His argument itself is dubious, to start with, for it relies on the idea that free will requires indeterminism, while actually free will requires determinism (Plantinga 31; Frame 163; Clark, Religion, 245; Potter). This leads into the error in his arguments vis a vis the possible necessity (how odd a conjunction of words) of a world which, though in theory sinless, cannot but result in sin, in an arrangement reminiscent of Molinism’s philosophical spaghetti, as he does not consider that any world-segment, from the objective view such considerations must take, includes also all its implications; so to include something which will result in sin is impossible in a world which contains no sin by definition. Because term b’s second segment is impossible and therefore must be excepted, the term as a whole is a self-contradiction, seeking to say that a sinful element (in S’) is included in something definitionally sinless (W’) (Plantinga 56). The whole structure of the argument too is disturbing, as it seems to hold possible worlds are preexistent for God to choose between, rather than as created ex nihilo by God alone (60-1).

More damningly, however, Plantinga almost entirely omits to actually solve or address the problem, even when his argument is accepted uncritically. His conclusion is that the goodness of certain choices of creation may have required the existence of evil for the eventuation of that good in full. This solves the problem only if those particular ‘good options’ were God’s only choices. In fact, the doctrine of creation’s superfluity to God, that He does not need mankind, requires the precise opposite (Sproul). Plantinga himself acknowledges that God could have created a world devoid of moral agents and fails to show that such a world is necessarily inferior to a world containing moral agents (55). This being the case, Plantinga’s theodicy leaves still the central problem of evil untouched- ‘How can God and evil both exist?’- because it at its maximal strength fails to remove circumstances in which evil does not exist. Of course, if it were to reach that result, it would merely prove evil ‘necessary,’ confining God to the state of having no choice as to whether He created it. Even then the problem would not be quite solved, as it would still seem impossible for a purely good God to create wickedness.

Clark, meanwhile, has in the first theodicy he offers, that of the difference in causes, the beginning of the true theodicy. He goes wrong with remarkable vigor in his other theodicy. Clark, who apparently founds responsibility entirely in the power to call to account (which indicates, although probably not irremediably, that those who stoned Stephen were in the right of it), offers the following statement regarding the nature of morality: “It is His will that establishes the distinction between right and wrong…. He might have easily created a world with a different number of plants, had He so desired…. But for some peculiar reason, people hesitate in applying the same principle of sovereignty in the sphere of ordinary ethics” (Religion 263, 270; Acts 7:54-60).

Against this, three human witnesses provide a first barrage. Frame states, “Clark forgets [or] denies the Reformed and Biblical maxim that the law reflects God’s own character” (167). Junius, speaking long before Clark, provides evidence to Frame’s historical assertion, saying, “God Himself is the very eternal law and principle of all sacred laws…” (68). In conjunction with this let another prominent presuppositionalist theologian speak on an analogous case: “If one should say that logic is dependent on God’s thinking, it is dependent only in the sense that it is the characteristic of God’s thinking” (Clark, Logic, 122). Perhaps the discrepancy here can be explained by Clark’s stance on the univocality of logic, when he has already endorsed an analogical view of ethics in the previous section of Religion, Reason, and Revelation (246-9). If so, however, the contradiction is only moved, not dispersed. How is God righteous and man potentially likewise, if they are, in Clark’s argument, analogical and thereof equivocal (Ps. 4:1)? How is God’s morality equivocal in His image and His logic univocal?

The second barrage, the killing blow, is from Scripture. Morality being summed as an imitation of God by His image, when Matthew 5:45-48, 1 Corinthians 11:1, and Genesis 1:26-27 are taken into account, it is necessary that morality be intrinsic to God, not extrinsic. The imitation of a God acting in Clark’s pattern would be rather different from what Scripture actually commands; it would indeed be to give moral dictates on authority (assuming the imitation is analogical and not univocal) without having any duty to obey said moral dictates. In other words, this would require God’s command to be, ‘Obey my commands by imitating my essentially pre-moral (amoral) nature.’ This would be absurd. The ex lex theodicy, for these reasons, cannot be relied upon.

A simple theodicy in a similar vein can be assembled. This argument urges that sin is defined by relation to God’s character, in God and in man, and since God acts according to His nature at all times (as does all His creation), He is definitionally incapable of sinning. It is a true defense but not a satisfying one. It resides entirely within definitions, and thus it is no answer. Indeed, the assertion of the problem of evil is that sin exists, that God’s definition is inconsistent with it, and that He therefore must not exist. This theodicy may be a technical victory, but it does not answer how God can be other than inconsistent with the existence of sin (which only the fool denies (Chesterton, Ch. 2).

The first step of assembling a working defense (for this is a defense, not a reason, though it implies some reasons) is to disagree with Frame. Frame disposes of the evil-as-illusion theodicy with proper contempt, but his argument against Augustine has an issue (156). Frame indicates correctly that the nature of evil as a non-substance and non-trait, as a lack and negation, as a nonexistence, is insufficient to clear out the whole problem (156; Augustine 89; Potter). The lack-nature of evil, however, is actually necessitated by God’s nature as the origin of all existence- evil must be either a negation (of righteousness) or a trait which is a positive reflection of some part of God. The second being untenable, the first must be true. That this does not suffice for the entirety of a theodicy does not, contrary to Frame’s implication, prove it false. As a matter of fact it is essential to theodicy, for it removes the difficulty inherent to an evil which is existent rather than negative- the problem that such an existence implies God created it directly, for else it could not exist, and thus makes Him the direct worker of wickedness (89).

The second step is to recognize the terms of the problem. Here, ‘to sin’ is sufficiently and rightly defined as ‘to act outside of one’s right to act.’ It is transgression of moral borders; it is rebellion against authority, which is the expression of right (Is. 59:12-13). In these terms, the basic problem remaining is that for God to create a world in which evil happens seems to implicate Him in committing evil, which is definitionally disallowed to the Deity. It seems to implicate Him because it seems necessary that creating a person who commits evil in knowledge thereof and decreeing that evil act is an exceeding of any agent’s right-to-act (in other words, a sin). Yet God does not sin.

The third step is an analysis of the places in which evildoing may be suspected on God’s part when He decrees a sin. This has three parts: the potential guilt of the historic act, the potential guilt of being complicit in the sin, and the potential guilt of inciting someone to sin. God’s right in the first is simply established, for Scripture is clear. God has a right to dispose of man’s life, including body, mind, property, and relationships, as He purposes (Jer. 18:1-11; Rom. 9:21). The guilt of acts such as murder, rape, kidnap, and theft comes from the fact that man lacks the right to do these things, not having been given those rights by God, a relationship most clearly seen in that it is moral for God to say, “I am God,” and damnable for a man to do the same (Ex. 3:14; Acts 12:23). The solution to this portion of the problem, then, is to recognize that God has the right to enact every is He wishes (this limits it to the desire of His nature, as is important in considering the problem of pain).

The second possible path for the problem of evil is the potential that in decreeing a sin, God is guilty by partaking in the guilt of the sin, however innocent He is in eventuating the act itself; the third is the potential that in decreeing the sin, God is guilty of inciting sin, on the theory that such is in itself a sin. Both of these problems require an establishing of the actual nature of responsibility. Clark equates responsibility to accountability, but such is merely descriptive (if made definitional, it easily blends into might-makes-right) (Religion 263; Stirner 29-31). The question of what occasions responsibility still remains. The common Arminian view, that moral responsibility attaches to acts insofar as they are performed without external determination, is also incompatible with Scripture (Frame 162-3; Potter). Responsibility rather attaches to any act made by the agent according to its own nature, spiritual and physical, and moral responsibility attaches in situations where matters of right are in concern (Potter). This remedies the potential that God is the sole or primary worker of evil in an act of sin He decrees, as man’s will is now responsible even when determined; the question remains of whether He acts outside of the rights inherent to His nature in decreeing wrongdoing, either as participant or inciter.

Here Augustine’s argument reappears. If sin is a negative, a lack, then strictly speaking God does not decree it; He decrees the sinner. The sinner’s guilt remains, of course, as he expresses upon and acts in a lack of righteousness. Does God have the right to create one who is himself lacking in righteousness? Note that if the answer is ‘yes,’ then no sin attaches to God in that creation; He is not the author of sin, not being the agent responsible for sin-as-sin, only for the existence of the sinner (which includes the existence, insofar as it has existence, of the sin). There can be no rebuttal declaring it sinful to Him to create a sinner if He has the right. Scripture, thankfully, answers: yes, He does have the right, for He says, “Woe to him who strives with Him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it…?” (Is. 45:9). The rest of Scripture testifies as well- for God does not create that which He has no right to create, being righteous, and so that evil men exist testifies that He must be right in creating them (Ps. 7:9). There being no evidence to the contrary, this evidence would suffice in itself.

The final challenge is a continuation of the third avenue, that of questioning whether God is guilty as inciting sin. When a man knowingly incites another to sin, the tempter is guilty- not actually with the guilt of the sin incited but rather because man has no right to tempt another to sin (Matt. 18:6). The argument seems clear: God decrees that man will sin, inciting him; man sins; therefore, God bears guilt for tempting man to sin. Of course, James states that God “tempts no one” (1:13). How can this be, if He decrees that the man will sin? Does not the one who causes to sin himself sin?

‘Temptation’ is not, however, a synonym to ‘incitement’ in the sense here used or to ‘decree’, to ‘determine,’ which are more precise terms for what ‘incitement’ here refers to. Temptation’s sin does not lie in actually causing the sin, for the guilt of that is the sinner’s own. Temptation’s sin lies in seeking to bring about sin- which is why tempting to murder is a greater sin than tempting to grumbling about not getting cotton candy, the sin desired being greater (Matt. 4:1-11). Merely providing the conditions for a sin is not temptation (Deut. 13:3). The sin of temptation indeed comes from man’s lack of right to effect a lack of righteousness- but it is precisely that right which has been confirmed previously.

It may be objected, with facial accuracy, that because Scripture flat-out states that “God does not tempt,” this, by stating that He does tempt, is proven false (James 1:13). That injunction, however, must be taken in context; it will in fact provide the grounds for the second distinction between temptation and God’s decree that men sin. James states the doctrine as a reason reproving men who seek to justify their own sin by appealing to God as the cause of it, implying that His causal status either removes their responsibility, as they could not resist, or gives them His actual endorsement, making their sin no longer sin. James 1:14 provides the rebuttal: “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.” God decrees the existence of temptation, but it is in the nature of the man that the sin of temptation actually appears, a lack of proper direction to his desires. Thus His ‘incitement’, such as it is, is no work of tempting- which is further shown in that temptation, in light of 1 Corinthians 10:13 and James 1:13’s implication that God’s inability to be tempted is proof of the fact He does not tempt, temptation appears to require a desire not merely for somebody else to sin but for sin itself, which is obviously not within God. As for instances of external tempters, as in Mark 1:12-13, 1 Thessalonians 3:5, and Hebrews 2:18, all such fall under the category delineated above: those who have no right to (seek to) effect a lack of righteousness sin another.

All three elements thus considered, God having been seen just in all three, what remains is natural evil (as Plantinga terms it) and suffering. Natural evil itself is a phantasmal category. That of it which rises from the actions of moral agents (which is in a sense all of it, as per Romans 8:22) is comprehended in the former consideration; that of it which rises from God directly is comprehended between the first consideration of the theodicy proper and the problem of pain-and-suffering.

The problem of pain is emotionally difficult, but morally it’s not that hard. All suffering in creation, with one exception, has been experienced by men who sinned. God has the right and even, in His nature, duty to cause suffering to all who sin in proportion to that sin, and any who say that the suffering any person experiences on earth exceeds the guilt of his sin, whether the sin of his nature or of his actions, has much too small an estimate of sin’s gravity (Rom. 6:23; James 2:10). Thus nearly all suffering is, while unpleasant by definition, justified. That single exception is the suffering of Christ on earth. In the case of His suffering on the cross, that suffering is easily understood as retribution for the guilt He took upon Himself (Lev. 16:22). As for the earlier suffering, it is no great stretch to argue that since Christ’s sojourn upon earth was causally reliant on His self-sacrifice on the Cross, that same imputed guilt can justify His suffering up till that point (and no suffering is spoken of thereafter in the Gospels).

All this theology is very well and good, but it has a tendency to be less than comforting in the midst of agony. In such cases, an appeal to the sovereignty of God is more mete, but such cannot be engaged in as a blunt hammer of Facts. Here the category of ‘reasons’ can play a role, not as answers but as aids in reconciling to Him- though of course they must be true. Hebrews 12 exemplifies this approach in discussing the pain of discipline. That author, whoever he was, could have chosen merely to appeal to God’s undoubted right, but he chooses instead to lay out that this discipline should be a comfort because of the reason underlying it, that God disciplines from love (Heb. 12:1-6). Similarly, in pain of various sorts, whether from discipline or grief or something else, the Christian may be comforted by various reasons, whether by His love expressed even in suffering, by the analogy of God as author (which is circular, as authors are imitating God, and thus non-probative), or by some similar reason-theodicy, despite the lack of comprehensiveness.

To show how God is righteous despite all the allegations of men is possible, despite Frame’s over-caution. That it is a difficult endeavor, prone to prat-falls and complete derailing, is shown by both Plantinga and Clark in their failed attempts. Yet God remains sovereign and shows even here a part of His sovereignty’s nature to His people. The Christian need not fear that “Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing” (Chesterton; Clark, 13- Language, 14:00). They need not resort to denying sin, as many have tried in answer, nor to other forms of irrationalism. They can instead take the existence of evil as the call for a Savior which it truly is, striding forth into a world which screams desperately for the Good Word of God.

God bless.

Works Cited

Augustine. Augustine: Confessions. Translated and edited by Albert Outler. University of Pennsylvania, 2023, <https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/hum100/augustinconf.pdf>. Accessed 12 March 2024.

The Bible. ESV Study Bible, Crossway, 2016.

Chesterton, G.K. “Orthodoxy.” The G.K. Chesterton Collection: 50 Books. E-Book edition, Catholic Way Publishing, 2014.

Clark, G. “01- What_is_Apologetics.” APL410, Whitefield College, 2025.

_____, _. “13- Language,_Truth,_and_Revelation,_Part_3.” APL410, Whitefield College, 2025.

_____, _. “Religion, Reason, and Revelation.” The Works of Gordon Haddon Clark Volume 4: Christian Philosophy. The Trinity Foundation, 1995.

_____, _. Logic. Second Edition, Trinity Foundation, 1988.

Frame, J. Apologetics to the Glory of God: An Introduction. P&R Publishing, 1994.

Junius, F. The Mosaic Polity. Trans. By T. Rester, ed. by A. McGinnis, Christian Library Press, 2015.

Lewis, C.S. “God in the Dock.” The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis. Inspirational Press, 1996.

Plantinga, A. God, Freedom, and Evil. William B. Eerdmans Company, 2001.

Potter, Colson. Defining Determinism. Unpublished, 2024.

Sproul, R.C. “God Needs Nothing.” Ligonier.org. 2024, <https://learn.ligonier.org/podcasts/ultimately-with-rc-sproul/god-needs-nothing>. Accessed 1 July 2025.

Stirner, Max. “Max Stirner: from The Ego and His Own.” The Anarchist Handbook. Edited by Michael Malice, 2021.

Swan, J. “God and Evil: The Trauma of Sovereignty.” AOMin.org, 2010, <https://www.aomin.org/aoblog/reformed-apologetics/god-and-evil-the-trauma-of-sovereignty/>. Accessed 1 July 2025.

---