God is Good

PART III. Providence and Evil

by Benjamin Dean

Contents Outline

GOD”S GOODNESS IN PROVIDENCE

The Providence of God
- 1. Providence Revealed and Grounded in God’s Saving Purpose
- 2. The Scope of God’s Providential Care in Creation
- 3. The Meaning of the Good and its Fulfilment in Christ
- 4. The Nature, Goal, and Right Understanding of Providence
All Things Work Together for the Good of Those Who Love God
- 1. The Certainty of God’s Providential Goodness
- 2. The Nature of the Good and the Role of Suffering
- 3. The Ground of Providence in God’s Eternal Saving Purpose
- 4. Living by Faith in the Mystery of Providence
God Does Well Even When He Allows Horrible Things to Happen
Fundamental to Christian Life
Bounded, Ordered, and Governed by a Faithful Father

A DEEP PROBLEM – HORRENDOUS EVIL IN A GOOD GOD’S WORLD, AND THE GOSPEL’S GREATER GOOD

1. Sin and Evil Are Not From God But They Are Within God’s Allowance
2. Sin and Evil Had No Place in the Original Creation
3. God Wills Different Things in Different Ways, To Bring Good Out of Evil
4. By Overcoming Evil with Good, God Demonstrates the Difference Between Them

God’s Goodness in Providence

‘Ignorance of providence is the ultimate of all miseries; the highest blessedness lies in the knowledge of it.’¹

‘God’s activity in the world has a centre and a circumference. The centre is the coming of God’s kingdom in Jesus Christ, the circumference around this centre is God’s gracious providential rule of all things.’²

The Providence of God

1. Providence Revealed and Grounded in God’s Saving Purpose

It is significant that God – YHWH in the Hebrew Old Testament – is first known as ‘Providence’ (YHWH-JIREH), within the explicit context of redemption history, as he supplies a lamb for Abraham to sacrifice instead of Isaac (Gen 22:14, 8). From the outset, therefore, that is, the doctrine of providence rests on the doctrines of both creation and redemption, grounded in God’s foreordained purposes for mankind in Jesus Christ. As we will see below, the providence of God, his governance of creation and history, stretches outward from his saving purposes, which came to their fulness in Jesus Christ and embraces every dimension of life.

Accordingly, God’s goodness is neither occasional nor unreliable, but constant and dependable. The Bible tells its long-term story, with a whole grand narrative reporting countless episodes and instances of it. From beginning to end, the Lord plans and acts for our ultimate good.

2. The Scope of God’s Providential Care in Creation

At the most basic level, God sustains all life – we are all kept in existence, which is good. ‘In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind’ (Job 12:10). In Christ ‘all things hold together’ (Col 1:16).

This sustaining goodness is extended universally: God provides the conditions necessary for the lives of human beings and other creatures, even in a world marked by sin and wrath and death. Because God is good, he is merciful, and these two qualities are linked (Pss 100:5; 107:1; 109:21; 118:1; 136:1). Otherwise, no-one would survive. ‘The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all he has made’ (Psa 145:9). Trauma, tragedy, threat, and turmoil are terrible, real evils, yet they are restrained, confined, kept within limits. The level of pain and the extent of suffering – whilst actual and deep and extensive – are restricted and bounded by good.

God’s providence is also seen in his abundant provision to all creation: ‘The eyes of all look to you,’ says the Psalmist, ‘and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing’ (Psa 145:15-16). ‘In past generations,’ Paul declared, ‘he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness’ (Acts 14:16-17). As Luther expressed it: ‘God gives us sun and moon and stars, fire and water, air and earth, all creatures, body and soul, all manner of maintenance, fruits, grain, corn, wine, whatever is good for the preservation and comfort of this present life; moreover he gives unto us his all-saving Word, yea, himself.’³

3. The Meaning of the Good and its Fulfilment in Christ

Even outside explicit faith, the sensitive non-Christian observer can claim that:

‘We see the world through a hierarchy of value. This is the map we use to guide our navigation through the unknown territory in which we would otherwise be lost. … We begin our continual journey forward by positing a good … Our aim delineates around us a moral landscape, with the destination we are striving toward serving as the highest imaginable good.’

So, we say, let your ears hear the promises of God and your heart be moved towards being embraced by Christ. Then your now-Christian-mind can move from ‘imaginable good’ to confident knowledge of real good. That true knowledge moves us further:

‘We want to understand, as profoundly as we are able, the nature of the Good that stands behind all proximal goods – the Good who brings about the compelling life … We want to understand, likewise, the Villain who stands behind all acts of villany – the nature of the spirit who wishes to produce all the suffering of the world for the sake of nothing but all that suffering. We want to understand Good so that we can be good and understand Evil so that we can avoid being evil.’⁴

Scripture presents all human history and every individual life as marked by goodness given by God – goodness that is personal, real, and unstoppable. For those in Christ, it is endless. God in goodness preserves and protects his chosen people particularly. This is seen vividly as Joseph famously ‘comforted … and spoke kindly’ to the brothers whose treachery he had suffered so painfully: ‘you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear, for I will provide for you and your little ones.’ (Gen 50:20-21).

4. The Nature, Goal, and Right Understanding of Providence

Creation is God’s good work in bringing the world into existence. Providence concerns his ‘continuing relationship’ to it,⁵ his ‘ongoing involvement and care.’ The term ‘providence’ itself entered Christian teaching through the Latin translation of Genesis 22:8, ‘God will provide’ (Deus providebit). It expresses the constancy of God’s goodness to what he has made and loves. Providence regards, ‘the loving care that God makes available to all who orient their lives to him.’⁶ It reveals him as a faithful Creator, ‘making things available’ and ‘making provisions in the darkness of life.’⁷

It regards ‘the care God takes over existing things,’⁸ so that they reach their promised end. ‘For creatures … their goals and ends are intrinsic to their natures.’ In creation, ‘God forms creatures with their powers and ends already inscribed into their being such that they can pursue those ends for themselves, sustained and guided by God’s primary causal power.’⁹ The goal of such goodness is eternal life in the new creation.

Most importantly, the providence of God is neither a mechanistic nor a dry doctrine. But ‘it has its setting of trust in the God we have learned to know in Jesus Christ and who, by his Spirit, directs us to be transformed in his image. Providence is therefore not a theoretical explanation of human history, but a confession of trust in God, who has shown in Jesus Christ that he remains faithful to his work.’¹⁰

Sadly, at times when God’s saving purposes in Christ have been side-lined or even removed from our understanding of providence, we have embraced evil.

Some have looked for the providential finger of God in special events occurring in their nation’s distinctive history, in political events. Thus, they hoped in their immediate national and cultural context to obtain guidance as to how align themselves to God’s side, God’s providence, God’s governance. In Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler constantly appealed to providence to justify his vision and actions for the Third Reich (the Third German Empire). In 1934 six hundred ministers and fourteen theologians signed a declaration which said:

‘We are full of thanks to God that he, as Lord of history, has given us Adolf Hitler, our leader and savior from our difficult lot. We acknowledge that we, with body and soul, are bound and dedicated to the German state and its Führer [Leader]. This bondage and duty contains for us, as evangelical Christians, its deepest and most holy significance in its obedience to the command of God.’¹¹

In 1945, at the end of World War II in Europe alone 20 million were dead. Most of them civilians, 6 millions of whom were Jews systematically murdered in German gas chambers.

By contrast, the Bible presents providence as the stage upon which God’s redemptive purposes unfold. It is ordered toward the fulfilment of his promise to save a lost and rebellious world. God’s providence is therefore Christ-centred, directed toward the good of his people, and aimed at their final glory. Through it, God is gathering a people from all nations who trust in his promises, bringing them to eternal life in the new creation.

All Things Work Together for the Good of Those Who Love God

1. The Certainty of God’s Providential Goodness

Eventually, everything that exists and all that occurs contributes to the Christian’s benefit and blessing.

‘The doctrine of providence teaches Christians that they are never in the grip of blind forces (fortune, chance, luck, fate); all that happens to them is divinely planned, and each event comes as a new summons to trust, obey and rejoice, knowing that all is [ultimately] for one’s spiritual and eternal good (Rom 8:28).’¹²

That fundamental passage of Scripture has these powerful and beautiful words as its centerpiece: ‘And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good’ (Rom 8:28).

2. The Nature of the Good and the Role of Suffering

The ultimate ‘good’ toward which ‘all things work together’ is nothing less than our glorious transformation into conformity with the likeness of God’s Son (8:29). Yet this majestic promise has to be understood in its own proper context: ‘of deliverance from suffering.’¹³ The difficulties, terrors, annoyances, and agonies of the present are exactly what are what Paul has in mind. His conviction is that ‘those sufferings of this present evil age … despite their negative character, nonetheless “co-operate” together for the ultimate “good” of the children of God in the coming age.’¹⁴

This confidence is not confined to the New Testament. For example, a similar assurance is present in the Psalms: ‘Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hand against the wrath of my enemies, and your right hand delivers me. The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands’ (Psa 138:7-8). Thus,

‘Confidence in the sovereignty of God in dire circumstances is one of the fundamentals of the faith. It is one thing – and very necessary – to assent to the great historical facts of the gospel as touching the birth of Christ, his miracles, atoning death, resurrection from the dead and return in glory. But … confidence in God’s sovereign goodness in the midst of a baffling and painful providence is equally important, if not more so. Yet as we actively trust him in those circumstances we share in his kingly rule during the “not yet” times ahead of the Last Day.’¹⁵

3. The Ground of Providence in God’s Eternal Saving Purpose

It is not only that, by God’s ongoing care and involvement, life’s troubles do not hinder our salvation; they actually assist it. For ‘by a wonderful contrivance,’¹⁶ he turns sorrow and seeming losses to final good. Afflictions, whilst not good themselves, contribute to lasting true good because they are an integral part of the way sinful human beings are conformed to the image of Christ.¹⁷

Accordingly, the claim – ‘all things work together for good’ – is based on an underlying assumption:

‘Because those whom he [God] foreknew he also predestined [the word proōrizo means “marked out before,” and could equally be translated “pre-identified”] to be conformed to the image of his Son that he might be the firstborn among many brothers’ (Rom 8:29).¹⁸

‘Paul uses the language of predestination to speak both of our genesis and our ongoing relation to this God: “even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Eph 1:4-5). And then he places this gracious choice and act of God in the context of the whole creation being brought back to its right, its righteous order, with respect to God, in Christ: “as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (v. 10).’¹⁹

Each individual believer, created by God, is identified and known by him in advance. His intended purpose is to call (drawing us inwardly by his Word), to justify (declaring us righteous in relation to his law), and to glorify (bringing us to inherit eternal life), to that together with Jesus Christ – and with one another – we share in the fullness of his saving life (Rom 8:30).

4. Living by Faith in the Mystery of Providence

Yet we do not know why the circumstances and experiences and details of our lives unfold the way they do. We cannot fully explain the events of history or understand the causes of and reasons for our deepest and most distressing personal heartaches. God knows, but these things remain hidden from us. Indeed, ‘God has chosen to conceal all future events from us, that we may prepare for them in uncertainty.’²⁰ Still this much is clear: God is God, and God is good; ‘he will have his way in his world with and for his people … despite the evils of the age through which [his] children make their way.’ He cannot be ‘deflected from his good purposes for them.’²¹ Despite being ignorant, unaware of so much, ‘we can rest assured that everything is safe with him.’²²

‘God always has the best reason for his plan: either to instruct his own people in patience, or to correct their wicked affections and tame their lust, or to subjugate them to self-denial, or to arouse them from sluggishness; again, to bring low the proud, to shatter the cunning of the impious and to overthrow their devices. Yet however hidden and fugitive from our point of view the causes may be, we must hold that they are surely laid up with him.’²³

As the well-known hymn has it, ‘From life’s first cry to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny.’²⁴ Above all, best of all, nothing can ‘separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom 8:39).

God Does Well Even When He Allows Horrible Things to Happen

Although sin rejects the goodness of God, and evil corrupts and opposes it, God’s goodness remains such that our lives, though degraded, are not destroyed or dissolved. The Bible consistently affirms that human sin does not mean that all is lost or that everything becomes wholly evil. Despite pervasive wickedness, God’s goodness continues, prevails, and ultimately wins. Here is Augustine:

‘Nothing … happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen. He either allows it to happen or he actually causes it to happen. Nor should we doubt that God does well, even when he allows whatever happens ill to happen. For he allows it only through a just judgment – and surely all that is just is good. Therefore, although evil, in so far as it is evil, is not good, still it is a good thing that not only good things exist but evil as well. For if it were not good that evil things exist, they would certainly not be allowed to exist by the Omnipotent Good, for whom it is undoubtedly as easy not to allow to exist what he does not will, as it is for him to do what he does will.’²⁵

Augustine’s point is not that evil is good in itself. Evil remains the rebellious, God-hating and therefore good-opposing contradiction of God and his goodness. Rather, his claim is that God, in his loving sovereignty, uses and governs even evil to produce good, in us, his sons and daughters in Christ. God does not endorse evil; he overrules it. He bends its intent and redirects its effects so that it contributes, ultimately, to the good of his people in Christ.

This also bears on the inseparable relationship between God’s goodness, justice, and power. The effectiveness of divine goodness depends upon God’s sovereign ability to accomplish his will. As Augustine further insists, God is rightly called Almighty because nothing can frustrate his purposes:

‘Unless we believe this, the very beginning of our Confession of Faith is imperiled –

the sentence in which we profess to believe in God the Father Almighty. For he is called Almighty for no other reason than that he can do whatsoever he wants and because the efficacy of his omnipotent will is not impeded by the will of any creature.’²⁶

Accordingly, sin and evil possess no independent sovereignty. They do not operate outside God’s rule, nor can they ultimately resist his purposes. Rather, ‘he foresees sins in advance, and wills to permit them; and as they are seen beforehand, he destines them to some universal or particular good, whether for a display of his mercy or justice, or for some other good.’²⁷

In this way, even the darkest realities of human experience fall within the scope of God’s providence. Evil remains truly evil, yet it is never ultimate. God’s goodness stands over it, works through it, and finally overcomes it.

Fundamental to Christian Life

It is neither possible nor necessary for us to fully understand the workings of God’s providence.

‘The reason … providence is mysterious lies in the fact that it brings together God’s utter sovereignty and his unqualified goodness. On the one hand, God truly reigns: the world never escapes from his ultimate control. Yet if that is the only thing to be said, one risks giving the impression that God stands symmetrically behind good and evil – and that would make him immoral. But the same Bible that affirms God’s sovereignty insists equally on God’s goodness: he reigns providentially.’²⁸

In other words, even when we cannot perceive it—indeed, even when circumstances seem to suggest the opposite—God in his good providence is actively reigning to restrain, direct, and ultimately overthrow evil. Faith in providence, therefore, is not merely belief in divine power, but trust in divine goodness. Such trust is

‘in certain ways central to the conduct of the Christian life. It means that we are able to live in the assurance that God is present and active in our lives. We are in his care and can therefore face the future confidently, knowing that things are not happening merely by chance. We can pray, knowing that God hears and acts upon our prayers. We can face danger, knowing that he is not unaware and uninvolved.’²⁹

So, the Christian may rely on God’s protection (John 10:27-30), rest in Christ’s love (Rom 8:35-39), and expect a path through every type of ordeal (Matt 24:15-31; Phil 4:11-13; 1 Peter 1:6-7; 4:12-13; Luke 22:42-43). We may also trust God for the ability and strength to endure – and even escape – temptation (1 Cor 10:13). God may be trusted ‘not only in those situations where his goodness is obvious, but when sin and evil seem to be gaining the upper hand. While God never causes sin, he is Lord over it, and it can progress no further than his wisdom and goodness allow.’³⁰

This personal confidence guards the believer against excessive worry and fear (Psa 46:1-3; 91:5-6, 11; Matt 6:25-30; 10:28). We do not say this lightly. Such assurance is not naïve or superficial. Scripture and experience acknowledge the harsh realities of human life with unsparing honesty. Here is Calvin, with unflinching realism:

‘Innumerable are the evils that beset human life; innumerable, too the deaths that threaten it. We need not go beyond ourselves: since our body is the receptacle of a thousand diseases – in fact holds within itself and fosters the causes of diseases – a man cannot go about unburdened by many forms of his own destruction, and without drawing out a life enveloped, as it were, with death. … [W]herever you turn, all things around you are hardly to be trusted but also openly menace, and seem to threaten immediate death. … Yet, when that light of divine providence has once shone upon a godly man, he is then relieved and set free not only from extreme anxiety and fear that were pressing him before, but from every care. … His solace, I say, is to know that his Heavenly Father so holds all things in his power, so rules by his authority and will, so governs by his wisdom, that nothing can befall except he determine it.’³¹

In the light of God’s providence, then, the Christian does not deny the dangers and sufferings of life, but faces them with a deeper assurance: that behind and beyond them stands the wise, powerful, and good governance of God.

Bounded, Ordered, and Governed by a Faithful Father

God’s goodness takes shape in his providence, by which he works in and through everything toward good ends and purposes. His goals, objectives, methods, plans, tactics, and actions are wholly and perfectly good. His intentions are good, and, even in the face of evil, God’s directs all things so as to accomplish the good he has in mind.

This is secured by God’s almightiness—his limitless and absolute power. Because he is omnipotent, his goodness is never frustrated. He not only intends what is good but is fully able to bring it about. God does whatever pleases him, and what pleases him is always good. His providence is therefore not passive but active: a deliberate, wise, and sure-handed governance of all things.

The Westminster Confession of Faith captures this well, linking God’s goodness with his direction of events, in terms of ‘bounding,’ ‘ordering,’ and ‘governing’:

‘The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God so manifest themselves in his providence, which extends itself even to the first fall [of Adam], and all other sins of angels and men; and that not by bare permission, but such as has joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding, and otherwise ordering, and governing of them, in manifold dispensation, to his own holy ends; yet so, as sinfulness proceeds only from the creature, and not from God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither is not can be the author or approver of sin.’³²

God’s special saving goodness to ‘those who believe’ (1 Cor 1:21; Gal 3:22; cf. John 7:29; 17:20; 20:29; Acts 18:27 etc.) is, therefore ongoing and constant, the soundtrack and background music, as it were, to the believer’s life. God is good as one who is ceaselessly loyal, dependable, trustworthy, and true. His goodness is not intermittent but continuous, expressed in unwavering loyalty to his purposes, his promises, and his people.

This ongoing goodness is closely bound to God’s Word. He remains faithful to the gospel and to all that he has spoken in Scripture. ‘So, with confidence we commend God’s Word to all around us as a good word. God has given us the Bible for our good, collectively as well as individually. It sheds light into the darkness and proclaims life-giving truth to counter ignorance, falsehood, and fear. It brings real freedom.’³³

If the cross of Christ is the supreme expression of God’s goodness, then his providence is its continual outworking in unbroken ‘faithfulness to his purposes, promises, and people.’³⁴ This is The Heidelberg Catechism’s beautiful expression:

‘What do you believe when you say, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth”? That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who out of nothing created heaven and earth and everything in them, who still upholds and rules them by his eternal counsel and providence, is my God and Father for the sake of Christ his Son. I trust God so much that I do not doubt that he will provide whatever I need for body and soul, and will turn to my good whatever adversity he sends upon me in this vale of tears. He is able to do this because he is almighty God; he desires to do this because he is a faithful Father.’³⁵

The continuous goodness of God in Scripture – ‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever’ (Psa 23:6) – and especially in the good news of the gospel, tell us that:

‘Wherever we are and whatever our circumstances may be, the hand of God is upon us, shielding us from harm, bestowing all kinds of blessings on us, and leading us to eternal life in heaven. Everything else proceeds from that, and it is in this daily provision and protection that we come to understand what it means for us to say that God is “good.”’³⁶

In Christ, this goodness becomes not only visible but approachable. The majesty of God, which might otherwise inspire fear, is clothed in grace and fatherly kindness. As a result, we may confidently rely upon God, knowing that he is not distant or hostile, but gracious and for us.³⁷

A Deep Problem – Horrendous Evil in a Good God’s World, and the Gospel’s Greater Good

No doubt, the presence everywhere of devastating and heart-breaking evil in a world created by a perfectly good God presents, from a human perspective, the deepest of all problems. How can—and why would—an all-good God permit, or even ordain, so much material, moral, relational, and spiritual evil?

The biblical writers do not avoid this question; they voice it repeatedly with searing honesty amid their own suffering. ‘Why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power?’ (Job 21:7).Even Christ himself cried out in anguish from the cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Matt 27:46; echoing the words of King David in Psalm 22).

Christian thinkers such as Augustine of North Africa have sought to understand this problem within the larger framework of God’s goodness. Augustine’s quick answer is this: ‘For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.’³⁸ ‘For it would not be done without his allowing it – and surely his permission is not unwilling but willing – nor would he who is good allow the evil to be done, unless in his omnipotence he could bring good even out of evil.’³⁹ More fully, from within the breadth and depth of God’s self-revelation to us, Augustine says:

‘[T]he Christian believes that nothing exists save God himself and what comes from him; and he believes that God is Triune, i.e., the Father, and the Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the same Father, by one and the same Spirit of the Father and the Son. By this Trinity, supremely and equally and unchangeably good, were all things created. But they [that is, ‘all things’] were not created supremely, equally, nor unchangeably good. Still, each single created thing is good, and taken as a whole they are very good, because together they constitute a universe of admirable beauty. In this universe, even what is called evil, when it is rightly ordered and kept in its place, commends the good more eminently, since good things yield greater pleasure and praise when compared to the bad things. For the Omnipotent God, whom even the heathen acknowledge as the Supreme Power over all, would not allow any evil in his works, unless in his omnipotence and goodness, as the Supreme Good, he is able to bring forth good out of evil. What, after all, is anything we call evil except the privation of good? … For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.’⁴⁰

Yet the very nature of evil places severe limits on our ability to understand it. Why? Because evil is not a thing in its own right, but the corruption and perversion of good—the contradiction of God himself, who is the source of all that is good.

For this reason, as we grapple with this profound and persistent question—arising both from the evil we see around us and the evil we experience within us—it is essential to return to the framework Scripture provides. Here again is the context in which the Bible teaches us to reflect upon evil:⁴¹

1. Sin and evil are not from God but they are within God’s allowance.

Where sin originally came from, and how and why it came forth, are mysteries to which the Bible provides no complete explanation. Evil could not have come from a perfectly good God. But by creating a world into which evil could emerge and did indeed enter, God created the possibility of sin. Being all-knowing, it came as no surprise to him. Sin was contained within his decree. He deliberately decided to allow it. ‘All “permission” is an act of God’s will; he willed to permit it.’⁴² Clearly, its emergence was within his counsel.⁴³ But the Creator’s intention in permitting evil, and at some level or in some way willing evil, is a good intention. We say ‘good,’ because God is himself nothing but Good, the source of all goodness and being and meaning. Sin and evil is a rebellious flight away from God, and thus from all goodness and meaning, that is, into darkness and therefore into ultimate unintelligibility. To put it another way, because it is in flight away from God, sin and evil is irrational. Therefore, we cannot hope to have any final, clear, rational knowledge of sin and evil in the way we can have for faith in God, for righteousness and love. Indeed, Paul cautions us: ‘be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil’ (Rom. 16:19). With that in mind, then, we can only seek to view the possibility and existence of sin in the light of the goodness of God – but with caution, for in the end, sin and evil are incomprehensible.⁴⁴

2. Sin and evil had no place in the original creation.

Creation and fall, then, are completely different to one another. Sin cannot be attributed to the nature of creation. Nor can sin be blamed upon God. Out of absolutely nothing, God created a ‘very good’ world (Gen 1:31). Sin had no part in the original nature of created things. ‘God made man upright’ (Eccl 7:29). God’s human creatures came into existence in a state of innocence, situated in an entirely excellent environment. ‘The evil can therefore only come after the good, can only exist through and on the good, and can really consist of nothing but the corruption of the good.’⁴⁵ Sin is parasitic. ‘The good is necessary even for evil to exist.’⁴⁶ Sin is therefore clearly not a condition of created nature but the desecration of it. ‘To the extent that it clearly falls within God’s purpose and will, we could say that up to a point and in some sense it had to be there. But then certainly it always had to be there as something that ought not to be there and has no right to exist.’⁴⁷

3. God wills different things in different ways, to bring good out of evil.

Augustine’s treatment of Biblical teaching concerning these matters is (again) not unhelpful. ‘For the Omnipotent God … would not allow any evil in his works, unless in his omnipotence and goodness, as the Supreme Good, he is able to bring forth good out of evil.’⁴⁸ The Creator ‘foreknew that evil things would arise out of good,’ and that it would then be for ‘his most omnipotent goodness even to do good out of evil things rather than not to allow evil things to be at all.’⁴⁹ Augustine is saying that ‘God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to not permit any evil to exist.’⁵⁰ ‘[T]he God and Lord of all things, so ordained the life of angels and men that in it he might first of all show what their freedom was capable of, and then what the kindness of his grace and the judgment of his righteousness was capable of.’⁵¹

God created us with the freedom, to want, to willingly and gladly embrace the good, that is, himself. In other words, not to ‘embrace him’ robotically, but personally, willingly, from the depths of our being. And that freedom implies that we could instead of saying ‘yes’ to God, and be ruled by him in his loving majesty, say ‘no’ and turn our backs on him in self-centredness. So, in that way we may say that God willed the prospect, the possibility of sin and fall, because it was preferable that sin should exist and be overcome by God than we not have a direct, personal, willing loving relationship with him. The issue is paradoxical, for sin is against the will of God but ‘never outside of or beyond’ the will of God.⁵² God wills different things in different ways:

‘As the Supreme Good, he made good use of evil deeds … In [the] very act of going against his will, his will was thereby accomplished. … [I]n a strange and ineffable fashion even that which is done against his will is not done without his will. For it would not be done without his allowing it – and surely his permission is not unwilling but willing – nor would he who is good allow the evil to be done, unless in his omnipotence he could bring good even out of evil.’⁵³

4. By overcoming evil with good, God demonstrates the difference between them.

But this is not to say that God compelled or made anyone to sin. ‘For just as He is the Creator of all natures, so He is the giver of all powers. Not of all wills, however; for wicked wills certainly do not come from Him, because they are contrary to nature, which does come from Him.’⁵⁴ Having said this, it is important to recognize that the sinful choices of God’s creatures are subject to God’s will; ‘they have no power except what He has granted.’⁵⁵ In allowing sin to occur, God’s purpose is to overthrow it, outdo it, outbid it, overcome it, and bring greater good out of it. For in the process of overcoming sin, God shows the difference between sin and its opposite, between disobedience and obedience, mistrust and trust, unbelief and faith.

‘He arranged things to demonstrate in the experience of the intelligent creation, human and angelic, how great a difference there is between the private conceit of the creation and the Creator’s protection. … God preferred to leave [the possibility of sin] in their own power, and thus to show both what evil could be accomplished by their pride, and what good could be accomplished by his grace.’⁵⁶

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1
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.17.11; ed. John T. McNeil, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols (Westminster Press, 1960), 225.
2
Melvin Tinker, Salt, Light, and Cities on Hills: Evangelism, Social Action and the Church (Evangelical Press, 2014), 72; referring to Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4 (T & T Clark, 1961), 565-94.
3
The passage continues: ‘Yet what gets he thereby? Truly, nothing, but that he is wickedly blasphemed, and that his only Son is condemned and crucified, his servants plagued, banished, persecuted, and slain’ (The Table Talk of Martin Luther, section 65; ed. Thomas S. Kepler (Baker Book House, 1979), 47).
4
Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine (Portfolio-Penguin, 2024), xxvii, xxx; cf. xxix.
5
Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 2^nd ed. (Baker, 1998), 413.
6
Cornelius Van Der Kooi, ‘Creation and Providence,’ in Michael Allen and Scott Swain eds., The Oxford Handbook of Reformed Theology (Oxford University Press, 2020), 429.
7
Van Der Kooi, ‘Creation and Providence,’ 429.
8
John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2.29; NPNF 2.9:41b. [Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff (Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Orig. 1886).]
9
Simon Oliver, ‘Creation and Providence,’ in Michael Allen ed., The New Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine (Cambridge University Press, 2023), 32.
10
Van Der Kooi, ‘Creation and Providence,’ 429-30.
11
Cited from G. C. Berkouwer, The Providence of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), 162-63.
12
J. I. Packer, Concise Theology (Tyndale House, 1993), 56.
13
Paul Barnett, Romans: The Revelation of God’s Righteousness (Christian Focus Publications, 2014), 194.
14
Barnett, Romans, 194.
15
Barnett, Romans, 194.
16
Calvin, Comm Romans 8:28; trans. Mackenzie, 179.
17
Calvin, Comm Romans 8:28; trans. Mackenzie, 180-81.
18
Following Barnett, Romans, 195.
19
Robert Doyle, The Evangelical Doctrine of the Church: The Church and Kingdom Communities of Those Who Belong to the Lord (Lexham Press, 2022), 253.
20
Calvin, Institutes, 1.17.4; trans. Osborne, 78 [Battles trans., 216]. Osborne’s translation is an abridged version based on the Beveridge translation: John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, eds. Anthony N. S. Lane and Hilary Osborne (Hodder & Stoughton, 1986).
21
Barnett, Romans, 197.
22
Calvin, Institutes, 1.17.4; trans. Osborne, 76 [Battles trans., 215-16].
23
Calvin, Institutes, 1.17.1 Battles ed., 211
24
In Christ Alone, by Stuart Townsend and Keith Getty. Thankyou Music, 2001. Available at https://www.stuarttownend.co.uk/song/in-christ-alone/
25
Augustine, Enchiridion, 24.95-96; Outler ed., 395.
26
Augustine, Enchiridion, 24.95-96; Outler ed., 395.
27
Leiden Synopsis, Disputation 11; 107.
28
D. A. Carson, ‘Foreword’, in Melvin Tinker, Intended for Good: The Providence of God (IVP, 2021), 9-10.
29
Erickson, Christian Theology, 413.
30
Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Zondervan, 2011), 312.
31
Calvin, Institutes, 1.17.10-11; Battles trans., 223-224.
32
The Westminster Confession of Faith, 5.4; Van Dixhoorn ed., 193, slightly amended (Chad Van Dixhoorn, Creeds, Confessions, and Catechisms: A Reader’s Edition (Crossway, 2022).
33
Mark D. Thompson, Doctrine of Scripture: An Introduction (Crossway, 2022), 182-83.
34
Packer, Concise Theology, 46.
35
The Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 26; Van Dixhoorn ed.,298.
36
Gerald Bray, God is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology (Crossway, 2012), 158.
37
‘The sum of all this is that we may safely call on God, since we know he is propitious to us. This happens … because when Christ accepts us into his faith and discipleship, he covers with his goodness the majesty of God which would otherwise be fearful, so that nothing appears except grace and fatherly goodwill’ (Calvin, Comm Hebrews 4:16; trans. Johnstone, 57).
38
Augustine, Enchiridion, 3.9-11, 8.27; Outler ed., 342, 355, slightly amended, italics supplied. A useful discussion of providence and evil including its personal dimensions is Paul Helm, The Providence of God (IVP, 1993), 193-217.
39
Augustine, Enchiridion, 26.100; Outler ed., 399.
40
Augustine, Enchiridion, 3.9-11, 8.27; Outler ed., 342, 355, slightly amended, italics supplied. The Leiden Synopsis (Disputation 11.20-25; 108) echoes Augustine’s reflections on the matter: ‘permission for all sins belongs to God’s providence. For although sins are evil, and accordingly cannot be provided by God, nevertheless the permission of them is good. So then, God both wills and directly decrees the permission, and ordains it for some good purpose that is greater than that of which the absence is the evil that is permitted. For since God is good to the highest degree, he would in no way permit there to be anything evil in his workings, unless he were no so almighty that even concerning evil he would still do good.’
41
Extracted in slightly adjusted form from Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – Sin and Death: 2.1 The Origin of Sin, available at https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/sin-and-death/.
42
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 348.
43
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 340.
44
Thanks to Robert Doyle for commenting here.
45
Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, trans. Henry Zylstra (Eerdmans, 1956), 229.
46
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 340.
47
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 352. Refer here to John Calvin’s scattered discussion of God’s secret and incomprehensible will, e.g., Institutes, 1.17.2 (212-13 note 4); 1.18.1-4 (228-237); 3.20.43 (906); 3.24.17 (985-87); all page numbers are from Battles’ translation. See Paul Helm’s various discussions of this, e.g., in Calvin: A Guide for the Perplexed (T&T Clark, 2008), 89-92; idem, John Calvin’s Ideas (Oxford University Press, 2004), 106, 301, 312-13.
48
Augustine, Enchiridion, 3.11; trans. Outler, 342. See Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – The Creation of the Universe: 6. God’s Motive in Creating the Universe, available at https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/the-creation-of-the-universe/.
49
Augustine, A Treatise on Rebuke and Grace, 10.27; NPNF 1:5, 482.
50
Augustine, Enchiridion, 3.9-11, 8.27; Outler ed., 342, 355, slightly amended.
51
Augustine, A Treatise on Rebuke and Grace, 10.27; NPNF 1:5, 482.
52
Anthony A. Hoekema, Created in God’s Image (Eerdmans, 1986), 132.
53
Augustine, Enchiridion, 26.100; trans. Outler, 399.
54
Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, 5.9; ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 202-203.
55
Augustine, The City of God, 5.9; trans. Dyson, 203.
56
Augustine, The City of God, 14:27; cf. alternative trans. Dyson, 629-30.

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God is Good

PART III. Providence and Evil

by Benjamin Dean

Contents Outline

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