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If God created everything and evil exists, does that mean God created evil? In this episode, Karlo Broussard unpacks at least one version of the problem of evil and show how understanding evil as a privation resolves the apparent conflict with God’s goodness and creative power.
TRANSCRIPT:
If God is the Creator of everything—as classical theists claim—and evil exists…then doesn’t that make God the creator of evil too?
And if that’s true, then God wouldn’t be all-good.
At first glance, that sounds like a serious problem for theism.
But is it really? Stick around, because I think there’s a way through it.
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Alright, let’s jump in.
The problem of evil is probably the biggest obstacle people face when thinking about whether God exists. Even St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae, lists it as one of the strongest objections to God’s existence.
But here’s something important right off the bat: the problem of evil isn’t just one single problem. It actually comes in a variety of forms.
So before we tackle today’s specific version, let’s zoom out for just a minute and get the lay of the land.
Broadly speaking, the problem of evil usually takes on one of two general forms: the intellectual problem and the emotional problem.
The intellectual problem asks: Is it reasonable to believe that God and evil can coexist?
The emotional problem is different. That’s when someone is dealing with real pain—suffering, loss, tragedy—and they’re wrestling with God on a personal level. They’re not looking for an argument…they’re looking for meaning, or relief.
It’s important not to mix those two problems up.
If someone is hurting, philosophical answers can feel cold. But if someone is asking a philosophical question, emotional responses can feel unsatisfying. So we need to be clear about which conversation we’re having.
In this video, we’re dealing with the intellectual problem.
Now, even within the intellectual problem, there are two versions.
Some argue that God and evil are logically incompatible—that it’s impossible for both to exist. That’s called the logical problem of evil.
Others take a softer approach. They say, “Okay, maybe God’s existence isn’t impossible with evil—but given how much useless evil there is, God’s existence is unlikely.” That’s the evidential problem of evil.
Today, we’re focusing on a specific version of the logical problem—one that zeroes in on God as Creator.
Here’s how the argument goes:
P1: God is the creator of all things that exist.
P2: Evil exists in the world.
C: Therefore, God is the creator of evil
That leads to a dilemma.
If you say God created evil, then He’s not all-good.
But if you say He didn’t create evil, then something exists outside of His creative power—which seems to undermine His omnipotence.
So how can we respond?
I think the key move is to challenge that second premise—“evil exists.”
Now, I know what you might be thinking:
“Karlo…how could you deny that evil exists? Just look around.”
And you’re right—evil is “real” in the sense that we in fact suffer, we in fact sin. I’m not denying that.
But here’s the crucial distinction: Evil is not a thing.
It’s not an entity that exists in the way a tree exists, or a person exists, or even a rock exists. And once we see that clearly, the whole argument starts to fall apart.
So what is evil?
Traditionally, we distinguish between two kinds: moral evil and physical evil.
Moral evil is what philosophers sometimes call “evil done”—that’s sin, the misuse of human freedom.
Physical evil is “evil suffered”—things like bodily defects, disease, decay, and death. This is also sometimes called natural evil.
Now here’s the crucial idea:
Evil, in both cases, is a privation of good. It’s also a privation of being, since for Aristotle and Aquinas goodness and being are convertible with each other.[1]
And by “privation” I do not mean merely a lack, but a lack of due good or being—a good, or being, that’s supposed to be there.
Let me give you a few examples.
A tree doesn’t have eyesight—but we don’t call that a physical defect or evil. Why? Because trees aren’t supposed to see. Eyesight doesn’t belong to the nature of tree.
But if a human being lacks sight—that’s a physical evil. Why? Because he lacks the sight that he ought to have, given the kind of thing he is—that’s to say, given his nature as a rational animal, which involves eyesight.
Or take something simple—like a sock with a hole in it. The hole isn’t some “thing” that was added. It’s a lack of fabric where fabric should be.
That’s what evil is like.
It’s not a positive reality—it’s a kind of gap between what is and what ought to be.
The same applies to moral evil.
Take something like murder.
Why is it wrong? You’d probably say, “Because it takes the life of an innocent person.” And you’d be correct.
But why is it wrong to take the life of an innocent person? You’d probably say, “It’s an injustice.” And you’d be correct again. (For a fuller explanation of this, see my article “What If It’s Okay to Kill Innocent People?” at catholic.com).
Now, notice that injustice implies a deprivation of justice—a failure to live in accord with the order of justice that nature demands. There is a lack of actuality in the order of human behavior that nature prescribes.
So here’s the takeaway:
Evil, whether moral or physical, is not some “thing” out there that God could create.
It’s a lack of being—a lack of goodness where goodness should be.
As Davies writes in his book The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil, when we call something bad or evil, “we are lamenting an absence of being, the fact that what could and should be there is not there” (pg. 177).
Now, if evil is a lack of being, then it’s not a real existing thing. To use the technical jargon, it’s not an existing substance.
Again, I’m not saying that the absence of being or good is an illusion or not factual. There in fact is a hole in the sock, the defect in the eye in fact is there, and the failure to choose did in fact occur. But the lack of the being or due good is not a subsistent/actual thing in and of itself that has positive qualities and attributes.
So now we can go back to the main argument.
The claim was: God must have created evil because He created everything.
But if evil isn’t a thing—if it’s not an entity with being—then it’s simply not the kind of thing God creates.
In the classical tradition of philosophical theology (the study of God by reason apart from divine revelation), “being” is the proper effect of God as the primary cause. God is the ultimate source of being for all real (actual) things. Only that which is real can be attributed to God as a proper effect of his creative action. For more on this, check out part one of Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, question eight, article one.
So, if evil is the absence of being (what is not there), and God can only create being (what is there), then it follows that God cannot make evil to be. Davies puts it succinctly:
“What is not there cannot be thought of as made to be by the source of the being of things.”[2]
Therefore, we conclude with Davies,
“evil, including evil suffered, cannot intelligibly be thought of as something which God has made to be.”[3]
So, the “existence” of evil—or to be more precise, the fact of evil—doesn’t pose a problem for God as Creator.
Now, at this point, you might be thinking:
“Okay, maybe evil isn’t a thing. But God still interacts with a world where evil happens. So what is or is not His role when it comes to evil?”
Let’s take that in two parts: physical evil and moral evil.
First, physical evil.
In the material world, we notice that things have a potential to corrupt. And when they do corrupt (physical evil) it’s due to flourishing activity of something else, which is a good.
Fire burns—and in doing so, an animal’s life is destroyed.
A lion thrives—and in doing so, the gazelle dies.
Germs flourish—and we get sick.
In each case, the success of one thing being the kind of thing it is (a good) causes the defect in another (an evil).
In his The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil, Davies explains it this way:
We have evil suffered [physical evil] only when we have goodness curtailed by goodness. Or, to put it another way, there is always concomitant good when it comes to evil suffered, evil suffered only occurs as something thrives at the expense of something else.[4]
Here’s how Aquinas puts it in the first part of his Summa Theologiae, question 49, article 2:
“God, by causing in things the good of the order of the universe consequently . . . causes the corruptions of things.”[5]
This is what he means when earlier in the same article he says,
“[T]he evil which consists in the corruption of some things is reduced to God as the cause.”[6]
So physical evil arises when one good thing limits another. And that’s just the way the material world works.
As to God’s causal role? Insofar as God causes a thing’s flourishment, he’s causing the good. And the evil follows as a side effect of that good.
Now, someone might object to there being a material world in the first place. And that God shouldn’t have created such a world. But that’s a discussion that goes beyond what we can do here. I do plan to deal with that in a future episode.
Let’s not turn to moral evil.
God’s causal role is essentially different from that with physical evil.
Unlike physical evil, moral evil is purely the absence of a due good or being, and God in no way causes it (neither directly nor indirectly—check out paragraph 311 of the Catechism for support). In other words, when the murderer fails to choose what is good—when there is a lack of being or actuality that ought to be in the behavior, there is no concomitant good that God causes to bring about that defect.
The lack of good or being in the action (the moral evil) is attributable to the murderer alone, not to God. Although God causes the existence of the murderer, and even sustains the act of willing in being, God in no way is the cause of the evil in the act. He’s not the cause of the absence of being or actuality that nature demands the behavior to have, which is conformity to the rule of reason.
Here’s an example from Aquinas that might help flesh this out. Suppose I have a deformity in my leg that causes me to limp. When I limp, is it my willing the leg to move that causes the limp, or is it the deformity in my leg?
The deformity or infection is the obvious answer. My willing the limping leg to move causes the motion.
Similarly, God causes the act of choosing (e.g., me causing the act of motion in the leg). But he doesn’t cause the defect in the choice—the failure to choose the good (e.g., me not causing the limp). The evil in moral evil is attributable to the acting agent but not to God, who sustains the agent’s power to act and choose.
So, physical evils arise due to the material nature of things, whereby one thing flourishes at the expense of the destruction of another. Moral evils arise because humans misuse their power of freedom and fail to direct it to their true good.
When we put it all together, here’s what we get:
God is not the creator of evil—because evil isn’t something that can be created.
It’s a privation, a lack of good—a lack of being.
Physical evils arise as a byproduct of God causing the good functioning of the physical world.
Moral evils arise from the misuse of human freedom alone. And the only thing that God causes is the being the act of willing itself.
In both cases God is causing good. Thus, he can’t be charged as a malevolent Creator.
So the original dilemma—that God must either create evil or not be all-powerful—turns out to be a false dilemma.
Once we understand what evil actually is, the tension disappears.
God can be both all-powerful and all-good…even in a world where evil is real.
Well, my friends, that’s it for today!
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Thanks for hanging out—and I’ll see you next time. God bless.
[1] See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I:5:1.
[2] Davies, The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil, 178.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Brian Davies, The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (New York: Continuum, 2006), 181.
[5] Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I:49:2.
[6] Ibid.