Why Does God Allow Evil to Exist?
Defeating Evil: How God Glorifies Himself in a Dark World, Scott Christensen. Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 2024. Softcover, 249 pages.
I love a good book on apologetics (defending the faith) and this one checks almost all the boxes. It deals with one of the biggest challenges to our faith: the problem of evil. Unbelievers will latch on to this as an excuse for rejecting belief in the God of the Bible. They say if God is all-powerful, he should be able to eliminate evil. If he is all-loving, he should want to eliminate evil. But evil exists. So, God, if he does exist, is either not all-powerful or not all-loving. Either way the Christian conception of God loses.
But this problem can also trouble Christians. We believe that God is both all-powerful and all-loving, but there is still evil in the world. So how can we make sense of that? As the Creator, could he not have made a world without a fall into sin? Wouldn’t that have been better all around? These are tough questions!
If you or someone you love has struggled with these kinds of questions, then this book is a must-read. The author, associate pastor of Kerrville Bible Church in Texas, has adapted and simplified an earlier, more academic work on the same topic. Defeating Evil is a book that plumbs the depths, but does so in an accessible and readable manner. I commend the author for the way he’s been able to chart an easy course through what is really challenging theological terrain.
Christensen compares the different approaches to the problem of evil. He finds the Arminian approach, known as the free-will defence, to be problematic. Instead, he proposes an improvement on what’s known as the greater-good defence. The greater-good defence argues that “God brings about greater goods via evil that could not otherwise come about without the evils connected to the emergence of those goods” (p.218). This is a traditional Reformed answer. But Christensen sharpens it by bringing in the glory of God. Why did the fall into sin happen and evil enter the world? “The panoramic narrative of the Bible tells us that the fall occurred so that the Father would have occasion to put the glory of his grace on full display through the work of the Son’s redemption” (p.105). Christensen calls this “the greater-glory theodicy” – a theodicy is an attempt to answer the problem of evil. To learn more details about this, you’ll have to get the book and read it for yourself. It’s not only fascinating but theologically satisfying.
Earlier I mentioned that Defeating Evil checks almost all the boxes. So what’s left unchecked? Chapter 8 must be read with discernment. This chapter deals with eschatology, the doctrine of the last things. Sadly, the author contradicts what our Reformed confessions say by promoting a premillennial view. In Christensen’s scheme (confirmed by the Doctrinal Statement of his church), Christ returns and establishes his literal millennial kingdom on earth, based in Jerusalem. After the literal 1000 years reign, “the grand conflict of the ages finally unfolds” – Christ battles Satan and wins. This contradicts our confessions (cf. Belgic Confession article 37) where Christ returns, judges the living and the dead, and inaugurates the age to come immediately. I’m rather surprised that P & R Publishing would allow this viewpoint in print, seeing how as how their company is committed to only publishing books that align with the Westminster Standards (which premillennialism also contradicts). It also makes me wonder whether Joel Beeke, who wrote the Foreword and called the book “thoroughly Reformed,” actually read the entire book.
I can’t call it “thoroughly Reformed,” but I will call it really helpful in explaining an extremely difficult issue. To enhance its helpfulness, Defeating Evil also includes study questions with each chapter. So it could be profitably used for a topical Bible study. However you use it, it will lead you to a better understanding of who God is and what he is doing in this world.
Originally published in Clarion 74.04 (March 21, 2025)
