Lux Lucet

God and Evil: The Problem Solved by Gordon H. Clark (Unicoi, Tennessee: The Trinity Foundation, 91 pages, 2004) $5.00.

Responding to president Bush’s proposal to allow public schools to teach intelligent design along with Darwinism, veteran political commentator Daniel Schorr remarked, “[Bush] might well have reflected that, if this [Hurricane Katrina] was the result of intelligent design, then the designer has something to answer for.” From a Christian perspective, this comment is a bit off the mark. For Christians do no not, or at least ought not, argue for intelligent design. Creationism – the doctrine that God created all things of nothing, by the Word or his power, in the space of six literal days, and all very good – is the proper Biblical stance. Nevertheless, Schorr’s statement certainly does apply to creationism. In fact, Schorr’s argument is really more of a problem of the creationist than it is for the proponent of intelligent design.

Writing in his 2006 book Letter to a Christian Nation, atheist evangelist Sam Harris was even more pointed in his criticism of Christians than was Schorr.

Examples of God’s failure to protect humanity are everywhere to be seen. The city of New Orleans, for instance, was recently destroyed by a hurricane. More than a thousand people dies; tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions; and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Hurricane Katrina struck shared your belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while Katrina laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Do you have the courage to admit the obvious? These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend (52).

From the start, Christians have found themselves confronted with arguments similar to those above and have handled them with various degrees of success. Far too often they have come off as the proverbial fellow who made the mistake of brining a knife to a gun fight. They are unprepared and overmatched. In the opinion of this reviewer, a Christian who and understands and believes Clark’s argument in God and Evil: The Problem Solved (hereafter God and Evil)
will find himself in the happier position of the man who brought a gun to a knife fight. The opposition won’t have a chance.

The Problem of Evil

In my earlier review of Clark’s Incarnation, it was pointed out that the book was a remarkable work for several reasons, not the least of which was that, although it was written at the very end of Clark’s life, the author’s command of his subject was just as acute as in his earlier works God and Evil, by contrast, shows Clark in the early stages of his career – the essay dates from 1932, the author being 29 at the time it was published – already in possession of remarkable theological understanding.

According to the Foreword by John Robbins – Robbins’ Foreword is a mini-masterpiece in itself, this reviewer knows of no other author who writes better introductions than Robbins did – the contents of God and Evil were first published in a British journal and then later included as Chapter 5 of Clark’s Religion, Reason and Revelation.

As the title indicates, the focus of this book is to address the problem of evil. In the foreword, Robbins frames the problem for us this way,

The problem may be stated as follows: If God is all-good, and if God is all-powerful, why are sin and suffering in the world? Surely if God were both all-good and all-powerful, he would rid the world of evil, or, better yet, would not have allowed sin and suffering to appear in the first place (7).

This puts, or seems to put, the Christian in the awkward position of having to deny the God of the Bible. God, so goes the argument, either is not all-good (he could end evil but doesn’t want to, or not all-powerful (he wants to end evil but isn’t quite up to the task). Or perhaps, the critics continue, God is neither all-good nor all-powerful. He has no desire to end evil, and couldn’t do so even if he wanted to. On the other hand, maybe atheists such as Sam Harris have it right and there is no god at all. Or the polytheists may be onto something when they claim there are more gods than one. Finally, the presence of evil may be the result of an impersonal, Force-like god who is conscious of nothing. At any rate, according to those who use these arguments, the presence of evil disproves the existence of the God of the Bible, who is both almighty and all-good.

Historically, the response of Christian scholars to these arguments have fallen into two main categories. One argument denies the existence of evil. As Clark notes on page 10, Augustine was one such theologian. But by far the most popular argument used by theologians seeking to explain the existence of evil while maintaining God’s omnipotence and sinless character is that of free-will. These men assert that God permits, but does not cause, evil. Free-will, we are told, gets God off the hook. Man has sinned and brought evil into the world of his own volition. God, having nothing to do with it, is absolved.

But as attractive as this approach may seem, it has the distinct disadvantage of denying the omnipotence of God. For if man’s will is not determined by God, but rather is something that God himself must respect, then God is not all-powerful.

On the other hand, if we deny, as do the Calvinists, that man has free-will – and here let us use Clark’s definition of free-will: the notion that man, when faced with incompatible courses of action, is as able to choose any one as well as any other – and assert that man’s will is determined by God, do we not then make God the author of sin? Or to ask it another way, does not the denial of free-will make God responsible for sin?

As Clark makes clear in God and Evil, the Biblical answer is no.

Clark’s Argument

As the omnipotent creator of the universe, God is in complete control of all that happens. Jesus said as much when he pointed out that not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of God. This control extends to the will of individual men, some of whom God calls to repentance. Some of whom he hardens for destruction.

“I wish very frankly and pointedly to assert that if a man gets drunk and shoots his family, it was the will of God that he should do so.”  – Gordon H. Clark

While it is easy for people to accept that God is the cause of good, many stumble over the notion that God is the cause of evil also. Clark provides us with one such example in the person of writer Georgia Harkness, who stated,

Some still hold that when the typhoid victim dies from lack of proper sanitation, it happened because it was “to be.” There is a good deal of illogical comfort in such a view. But not many, even of the most rigorous of Calvinists, would now say that if a man gets drunk and shoots his family, it is the will of God that he should do so (24).

To which Clark makes the classic reply, “I wish very frankly and pointedly to assert that if a man gets drunk and shoots his family, it was the will of God that he should do so” (27). A bit shocking, is it not? Perhaps it is. But it is also logical deduction from the Bible’s teaching on the decrees of God, which are, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it, God’s, “eternal purpose, according to the counsel of his will, whereby, for his own glory, he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.” Or to site just a few several passages in the Bible that teach this,

“I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things” [Isaiah 45:7].

The Lord has made all things for himself, yes, even the wicked for the day of evil [Proverbs 16:4].

You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who has resisted his will?” But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God?…Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? [Romans 9:19-21].

Clark is to be commended for squarely stating what the Bible teaches that God is the cause of evil. He does not ignore the issue. He does not talk nonsense to obscure the force of the Bible’s teaching. And this is what made Clark the great theologian that he was.

For those who are concerned that this teaching makes God responsible for sin, Clark addresses their concern by going back to the basics. He asks us to consider the definition of responsible. What does this word mean? This is a hallmark of Clark’s work. He was a theologian who was always careful to define his terms. And once we understand what responsible means, the solution to the problem of God and evil becomes obvious.

Now the word responsibility looks as if it has to do with making a response. Or, accountability is to give an account. A man is responsible if he must answer for what he does. Let us then define the term by saying that a person is responsible if he can be justly rewarded or punished for his deeds. This implies, of course, that he must be answerable to someone. Responsibility presupposes a superior authority that rewards and punishes. The highest authority is God. Therefore responsibility is ultimately dependent on the power and authority of God (34).

Responsible means “required to give an answer.” I am responsible to my employer for my work. A student is responsible to his teacher for completing his lessons. But to whom is God responsible? To whom must he answer? The answer is clear: no one. There is no power greater than God. No one stands in authority over him. Therefore, is not responsible for evil. He does whatever he wills. And whatever he does, by simple virtue of the fact that he does it, is righteous.

Clark concludes his essay with the following paragraph,

Man is responsible because God calls him to account; man is responsible because the supreme power can punish him for disobedience. God, on the contrary, cannot be responsible for the plain reason that there is no power superior to him; no greater being can hold him accountable; no one can punish him; there is no one to whom God is responsible; there are no laws which he could disobey. The sinner, therefore, and not God, is responsible; the sinner alone is the author if sin. Man has no free will, for salvation is purely of grace; and God is sovereign.

Simply put, this reviewer is unaware of a better statement of God’s sovereignty and defense of God’s character, what theologians call a theodicy, anywhere in the entire body of Christian literature.

Conclusion

God and Evil is a brilliant book and really is a must read. The Christian who understands and believes the argument set forth by Clark will be well prepared to refute one of the most common objections to Christianity, the so-called problem of evil.

The edition produced by the Trinity Foundation is attractive for several reasons apart from the essay itself. It is a wide book with plenty of room for margin notes. Also, editor John Robbins supplied notes for many of the key points throughout the book, making it easy for the reader to keep track of the main argument.

Finally, it is a short book. The actual text itself is only 33 pages long, so it can be read in a single sitting.

When it comes to the subject of God and evil, too many theologians are reduced to darkly muttering about mysteries, antinomies and tensions. Their work does not edify, but rather confuses, the body of Christ. On the other hand, Clark’s work here is brilliant, refreshing, and highly recommended.