Isn't that the core principle of monotheism, that one God does everything, both good and evil?
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
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We let Satan into our lives when humanity ate from the fruit of the forbidden tree. It is our punishment that we live in sin and have evil/bad things. But even though God gave us salvation in Christ and Satan has been beaten. And on top of that God said He will make everything new and good again. If that's not grace I don't know what is.
We let Satan into our lives because Eve (not we) ate from the fruit of the forbidden tree? Inheritance of punishments is one of the many reprehensible staples of Abrahamic religions.
It is our punishment that we live in sin and have evil/bad things.
So, we are born into punishment because of someone thousands of years ate a fruit without understanding the consequences? That's like imprisoning someone's great-great-great-grandchild because they once jaywalked.
Not letting it get ****ed up in the first place?
A model is only a crude sketch of the reality.
You won't be able to debunk it. Logic does not apply to faith. It's like dividing by zero. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. Trying to apply logic to matters of faith is a fools errand.
There is another option Mr Epicure forgot to add: God can and wants to destroy evil, but has a good reason not to.
I'm not 100% certain what that good reason is yet. The instant removal of all evil from the planet and all ability to perform evil will constitute pretty irrefutable evidence of his existence to even the most determined doubter so maybe that's got something to do with it.
That is part of the paradox. Could god have created a universe where that good reason to not destroy evil didn't exist? If no, then he is not all-powerfull.
In Judaism, ha-satan does work as a kind of public prosecutor. You get a public defender too.
Rev. Mark Woods discusses this a bit.
I like his conclusion, even though it doesn't solve anything:
"arguably, when we're face to face with such things, our instinct shouldn't be to discuss them, but to get angry and do something about them. Part of our discipleship is to work for human flourishing in body, mind and spirit: we should make the world better, as far as we possibly can."
There's no devil causing evil. There's only us, flawed as we are.
And what God can do and what God will do are not the same.
What about all those non-human evils like earthquakes, tornadoes, droughts, tsunamis, wildfires, parasites and disease? They cause immense suffering and death, even of innocents such as the newly-born.
If god can stop these, why won't he?
(Edit: misspelling)
If he can and doesn't he's evil; if he can't he's not all powerful. Lucky for you he doesn't exist.
Ah, now we're shifting into the ancient Greek idea of "evil": what is harmful, rather than what is immoral.
But to actually answer your question, I don't remember anything in the Bible about God being omnibenevolent. That seems to have been added to Christian doctrine by later religious philosophers.
That said, I just don't know. And I'm alright with not knowing, because it's that or be tortured by something outside my control.
I don't remember anything in the Bible about God being omnibenevolent. That seems to have been added to Christian doctrine by later religious philosophers.
These properties were indeed added but it was by the church fathers very early in church history when christianity was very different in belief and form compared with today.
At this time the early church interacted with greek and roman ideas to create a new religion to differentiate it from Judaism from which it was born - you can see some of this debate in the new testament between the traditional jewish pov (such as in Matthew in the sermon on the mount) and different laws for non-jews such as circumcision not being needed in Paul's letters.
In exactly the same way, it's impossible to find the doctrine of the trinity in the bible. And yet the trinity is declared in the nicene creed and is the keystone to christian identity
Funnily enough, I'm also a unitarian. Unitarianism (the denomination) was pretty popular until the middle of the last century when it was mostly absorbed into Unitarian Universalism, and other denominations (eg. Jehovah's Witness) are still unitarian, so I wouldn't call it a "keystone".
Following the example of Christ is a keystone. True repentance is a keystone. Professing the Gospel is a keystone.
Sad things, tragedy, and death are not the same as evil.
Without answering the question here, just wanted to point out that it's a different question, so don't try to apply the answers to one question to the other question.
You're talking about 'the problem of suffering' not 'the problem of evil'
yeah it's not even a Christianity point to make. Who are we to condemn the happenings of Earth and it's inhabitants just because it can harm humans? We are not above our planet.
Sad things, tragedy, and death are not the same as evil
Agreed.
Evil is a moral judgement describing a motive or agent (in the sense of something with agency, something that causes something to happen). Sad things, tragedy and death are not in and of themselves evil, they are the result of evil.
When a person does things that directly cause immense suffering on purpose, we can say the evil came from a human.
Now on to god. God is normally ascribed the properties of omniscience, omnipotence and all omnibenevolence. In addition God caused the universe to come into being.
As he is omniscient he knew the world he created would cause untold suffering and so either he is not omnipotent (i e. Could not create a world without suffering) or omnibenevolent (i.e. is fine with a world where the innocent suffers. (The comments have several versions of this argument done better than I could).
If we argue that it's impossible to create a world without suffering, then what is heaven?
You're talking about 'the problem of suffering' not 'the problem of evil'
No, I'm highlighting the real problem of evil - that it seems inherent to the world that an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent created.