Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about why God permits evil. As far back as we have written history, mankind in every place, in every culture, in every age, has wrestled with the problem of why do we have evil on the earth? If there is a God, and if God is good, and if God is almighty, then there should be no evil. Or at least that's the way it seems to a lot of people. Now, the early Christians had some excellent insights on this issue.
And that's what I want to share with you during the next 60 minutes, is how they answered this question. But now at the outset, let me lay down a few of the ground rules. This is only a brief overview. To cover this subject in the detail that it deserves, I would need to write a book on the subject. And who knows, maybe someday I will. But tonight, we're going to be just looking at the general framework, the highlights of what they believed. We're not going to be able to go into depth on the various issues.
But now to understand what they believed about the problem of evil, you're also going to have to grasp, or first, I should say, you're going to have to grasp what they believed about the nature of God, what they believed about the nature of man and the nature of angels, what they believed about the fall of man and its effect on the offspring of Adam and Eve. You also need to be familiar with what they believed about free will and predestination.
And you also have to understand what they believed about salvation, particularly the inner relationship of faith and obedience. Now, obviously, I can't cover all those topics tonight in any detail at all. So I'm going to assume that if you're listening to this message, that you've already read my book," Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up?" Because it discusses what they believed about salvation and what they believed about predestination and free will.
So I'm going to just assume that you have that basic knowledge of what they believed concerning those two subjects. And then I am going to explain tonight just briefly what they believed about the nature of God and of man and the fall, at least as it relates to the question of why God permits evil.
So my basic plan of attack tonight is going to be to explain to you, help you to understand what the early Christians believed about the problem of evil without trying to prove that their solution, their understanding is the right one or the only right one or disproving that somebody else's answer to this question is wrong. Now, again, if I were writing a book, I would want to discuss all of those things. I'd want to make a case that their view really is the best answer to this question.
But tonight, I want to just explain to you what their view was and leave it to you, whether it's something that helps you or you'll listen to it and say, no, I don't think that covers the answer. There's got to be more. So in other words, I can't answer all of your objections to, well, but what about this or what about that? And as I said, I'm not even going to try to prove that somebody else's system is wrong.
And unlike most of my messages, I'm not even going to be able tonight to read to you just a whole lot of quotations from the early church or a whole lot of scriptures in support of what they said. There just isn't going to be time if I'm going to adequately explain to you what they believe. But we will look at some of the scriptures and some of the quotations so that you can see, yes, this is what they said. And yes, there is a biblical basis for it.
But there are other scriptures that could be quoted and a lot more quotations that could be put forth from the early Christians. Now, I should forewarn you, if you're a five-point Calvinist, you're not going to like their answer on why God permits evil. And that's fine. I'm not going to try to disprove Calvinism tonight or anything like that. I'm just telling you in advance, if you are a Calvinist, you're not going to like what they had to say.
But rather than just deciding mentally, OK, I'm not going to listen anymore he has to say on this. Let me just put this challenge to you. Okay, this is going to step on your toes. And so just listen to it as a history lesson. This is what these early Christians believe. And if you want to feel that, boy, they sure got things wrong. They were really off base. Fine, that's your prerogative tonight. I'm not going to try to defend their position against another position.
But I think you owe it to yourself to at least hear them out, hear how they understood this problem and their answer to it, because maybe it will help you. Or if not you personally, maybe somebody else that you know. Because my own experience has been virtually all of the atheists that I've met, or agnostics, invariably, the reason that they will put forth as to why they do not believe there is a God is because of the evil on the earth.
As I said at the beginning, their thinking is if there really is a God and if he really is omnipotent, and if he's really good, then there wouldn't be evil here. Since there is evil, then there must not be a God. Or if there is one, he's someone bad. And it's easier just to say there's not a God than to think that. And yet I think that the understanding of the early church might open the minds and the eyes of some of these people who have decided there can't be a God because there's evil.
And similarly, I've met a lot of believers who struggle with this issue, that it keeps them from having the full relationship with Jesus Christ that they should have because this is like a barrier. Okay, I believe you, Christ, but what about all of this? Well, maybe this will help you.
Now, if we were to sit down right now, if I were able to bring forth here with me, one of the early Christians, and we did this in a dialogue or an interview, and I asked him," Okay, explain to us your view of why God permits evil." I think all of them would say," Well, it all begins with a proper understanding of man that is humankind, the angels, and God." If you don't have a proper understanding of the nature of these three entities or classes, you're not going to understand the problem of evil.
Because to understand why evil exists, you have to recognize that angels and humans were created in the image of God. So we have to start off with knowing what is God's nature since we were made in His image and since the angels were. This is exactly what the Scriptures tell us, Genesis 1:26, where we read," Then God said," Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness." All right, so mankind has the nature of God, or at least in the beginning, mankind did.
So I think the next question is, all right, what is the nature of God? Well, of course, God has many attributes, and we're not going to be looking at very many of them tonight, but because they don't particularly pertain to the or have a direct bearing on the question of why he permits evil. But the attribute that is the key to this issue is the attribute of free will. God has free will. And so in order for us to be in the image of God, we must have free will as well, or else we're not in the image of God.
Maybe you're thinking, yeah, we had it before the fall, but after the fall, we've lost our free will. Okay, we're going to get to that question in a minute. Okay, so just hold your question. We're going to talk about that, but let's at least agree that in the beginning, man had free will and that God has free will. Now, something that's hard for most of us, and this was a very new thought for me, is recognizing that since God has free will, it means that God has the power to choose good or evil.
For example, Clement of Alexandria wrote this," God is not involuntarily good. The way of fire is involuntarily hot. Rather in Him, the imparting of good things is voluntary. Therefore, God does not do good by necessity, but He benefits others from His free choice." Now, this was very new thinking to me because without probably giving much thought to it, I had always assumed that God was involuntarily good. I mean, I would have never said that, but if I analyzed my conception of God, that's really what I believed.
That is that he did not have the power to choose evil. That as Clement of Alexandria used the illustration of a fire. I mean, if fire's hot, it can't help it. That's all it can be is hot. It's involuntary. A piece of ice is involuntarily cold. It has no choice in the matter. And that's how many of us think of God, that he's involuntarily good. I mean, he does not have the power to choose evil. He only has the power to choose good. Now, I know what many of you are thinking right now.
You're thinking, David, but what about all the scriptures that say, for example, that God cannot lie, that with evil things, God cannot be tried and passages like that. What did the early Church do with those verses? Oh, they definitely believe those verses, every one of them. Let me give you an illustration to help you maybe grasp their concept of God. Let's suppose in the city where I live, Tyler, Texas, that some horrible, vicious murderer was going around murdering people with a meat cleaver.
And I mean, just grisly, gruesome, horrible things. And they don't know who's who's doing this. Now, I could state categorically without any doubt in my mind that my wife, Deborah, could not possibly be the one committing those murders, that she just could not do such a thing, absent as some kind of medication that would totally alter her personality and character or absent some sort of mental illness. Now, if I were to say, no, my wife couldn't possibly do that.
Would I be saying that she doesn't have the power to do it? Well, no, of course. Sure. I mean, she could go out and do it. It's within her power as a human being. But it would be so contrary to her nature that she couldn't possibly do that. And I think hopefully all of us, it would be so contrary to our nature that we could do no such thing. Okay, that, it's in that sense that God always does good. It's in that sense that we can even say God cannot do evil.
If we understand, we're not saying that it's not within His power, but we're saying it is so contrary to His nature that He couldn't possibly do evil, horrible things. Now, you may be sitting here scratching your head and saying, well, what's the difference, David? I mean, this sounds like a distinction without any difference in it. You know, what is this, some kind of high theological thing? No, it's not at all. And it's so important that we grasp this point or we don't ever comprehend why God permits evil.
Because if God were involuntarily good, in other words, he couldn't possibly do evil even if he wanted to. That is not even within his power. Well, then the question would be quite valid. So why is there evil then in the universe? Why has he allowed such a situation? But if God has the power to do evil, that is the, I hate to say physical power because, you know, God is not a person, but just in human terms, the physical power, it's within the ability of godhood to do evil. Let's put it that way.
But he voluntarily chooses to do good because his nature is good. And in fact, it is so good that he can't do evil because it would be so contrary to his personal nature, not necessarily contrary to the nature of, let's say, godhood. Okay, well, just kind of just, you know, chew on that in your mind. You may still be having trouble seeing the distinction. But perhaps as we carry this a little further, you'll understand why this is such an important point.
Now, God could have created the angels and humans any way he wanted to. But he chose to create beings, persons who would be in His image and would be in the, in the case of mankind, be in the image of the angels as well. But the only way he could do this would be to endow the angels and to endow mankind with free will. Because if we don't have free will, we are not in the image of God. We're something very different than God.
In other words, God didn't want a planet of robots out here, people who could only do what they were programmed to do. Now, he had the ability to create all of us that way. He could have done that. But as the Psalm says, the Psalms refer to mankind as gods. And that's a correct theological term if by that we recognize that mankind is made in the image of God, that we're endowed with these godly, god-like qualities. And so God wanted to populate the heavens, the spirit world.
He wanted to populate the earth with persons who would be like himself, who could choose to do good or evil. And that shouldn't be hard to understand. We humans are exactly the same way, but who do we want for our companions? Who did animals want? Do most of us? Can we find fellowship with plants, with with rocks? I mean, they never do anything evil. I mean, they don't have to worry about your plant in the middle of the night strangling you to death or anything like that.
I mean, this wouldn't be so true today, but say 400 years ago, I mean, you could maybe find an island out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. You definitely could have that was uninhabited. The only thing on it were plants. Now, would that be a wonderful place to live because no evil would go on there if you were stranded there alone because you just have plants for companions and therefore nothing bad would ever be done? Would that be a paradise? Would that be a wonderful place to live?
No, we would hate living in such a place. We want companionship in persons who are like ourselves, even animals who have a degree, it would seem, of free will, at least higher animals like dogs, monkeys, et cetera. But even those aren't satisfactory for most people as companions. Now, God wasn't lonely. He wasn't in need of company as if something were lacking in himself.
This was part of his creative nature to make angels, to make humans, but not because he was lonely by himself or just among the persons of the Trinity. But it was an expression of God's love and His godhood to give others this marvelous gift of life. And in the case of humans and angels, the marvelous gift of being made in God's image. So in creating mankind in His image, God chose what was best, not just best for Himself, but what was best for the universe. What was best for us?
I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm glad I'm not a robot. I'm glad I'm not an earthworm. I mean, he could have filled the earth with nothing but earthworms. I mean, they never do anything evil. They would never have rebelled against their creator. They don't ever get depressed. They don't get their feelings hurt. They don't lust. They don't have wars among themselves. They don't steal from one another. They don't gossip. I mean, a perfect world. But would it be a perfect world?
And we wouldn't think so would we. Just earthworms. And none of us would want to exchange our lives, I don't think very many of us would, with all of the evils that are out there in the world today and the causes of sorrow in life, there aren't very many of us, if any, who would want to exchange our life in order to be an earthworm where we wouldn't have to deal with this sort of thing. You see, God did us a favor in creating us in His image. He gave us a wonderful gift.
All right, but now being in His image, there are a number of principles we have to look at that are corollaries of being in the image of God. The first is that to be in the image of God, humans and angels had to have free will. However, the fact that they had free will would mean that some of them would choose to do evil. That comes with the territory.
And see, if we imagine that deity can exist involuntarily good, and yet to see that God has free will, it would mean that there would have been some way to have endowed us with free will and yet made us involuntarily good. But see, the whole answer to understand why evil exists is because those would be two contrary things. As the Scriptures say, God cannot deny Himself. And part of His divinity is this free will that He has to choose good or to choose evil.
And because we're blessed with a benevolent God, a perfect, wonderful God, He has always chosen what is good and always will, that this has become part of His nature as a person, but it is not an attribute of Godhood or divinity. And therefore, since angels and men were made in the image of God, we were endowed with free will, but God knew that free will would mean that not everyone would turn out like Him.
Many would choose the good and would become like Him voluntarily good to the point that evil would be beyond their nature, but others would choose to do evil. And in a nutshell, that's why evil exists. Despite the fact that we have a God who is all-powerful and is all good. He could stop evil right now by taking away our free will. But that would thwart his whole purpose. It isn't God who created evil. It's we ourselves. It's our free will.
And it's the free will of angels like Satan who have chosen the path of evil instead of the path of good. As the Scriptures say," Let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed." So God is never behind evil things.
And in saying that He cannot be tempted by evil, you were talking about the nature, the personal nature of our God, not denying that God has free will to choose good or evil, but evil things aren't even a temptation to Him because they're so far from His nature. I've met plenty of godly Christians who are the same way. I could say that certain sins wouldn't even be a temptation to them. I think for almost all of us, there would be a lot of sins that would be no temptation, such as robbery.
I mean, if you're in a store and say there's only one sales clerk there and he or she are called on the phone, step out of the room for a second. I mean, do you feel any temptation to grab a watch and stick it in your purse or your pocket or something like that? No, I don't think very many of us do. That's not a temptation. Now, there are other things that are temptations to us, but that wouldn't be one. And yet there are other people that that would be an enormous temptation to him.
And it's the same way with God that these things aren't a temptation to him because his nature is to be good and evil has no part in him. And like I say, even spirit begotten people approach some of that, but never to the degree that God has that. That was James 1:14 I just read. As Methodius said," God did not make evil, nor is He at all in any way the author of evil.
But whoever failed to keep the law after being created by God with the faculty of free will is called evil." So mankind, in conjunction with the help of the wicked angels and demons, were the ones who authored evil. Were the ones who perpetuate evil. It is not God. All right, so the first principle I talked about, what it means that we're in the image of God is that we have free will. And having free will means we have the will to choose evil and that some people will choose evil.
If you give millions of creatures, angels or human free will, some of them will choose to do evil. All right, that's principle one. Now, principle two is God wants with him in eternity those who choose to serve him, those who love him. Now, to know who these people are, who really choose to serve him, who really love him, he tests mankind. And often the tests are ones that he allows that are actually brought about directly by Satan or by other humans.
God would never author an evil test, but He allows us to be tempted and tested by evil that does not originate with Him. Now, we have the example of Adam and Eve from the very beginning. What was God's method to test them? It was a very seemingly simple test, but he knew it would be one that even if Adam and Eve had never sinned, that some of their offspring would have, that give enough people with a test, there will be a certain percentage who fail the test and perhaps the majority.
I'm talking about it even in the beginning before the fall. When you see the example with Abraham, all through the Scriptures. Take the Old Testament, New Testament. It's always God's method is to test His servants, His people, anyone who would want to be a child of God is going to have to be tested. All right, now the next part is what gets hard for most of us Western Christians because Western Christianity ever since around the year 400 has been thoroughly immersed and indoctrinated in the theology of Augustine.
And I mean, people who've never even heard of Augustine or Augustine as he's often called. Even if you've never even heard of him, I can guarantee you that most people who profess to be Christians, at least in the West, have been heavily influenced by Augustine, or at least have been around other Christians who have been heavily influenced by them. Now, and Augustine was the spiritual father, theological father, of both the Roman Catholic Church and the Reformers. Luther had been an Augustinian monk.
He and Calvin simply resurrected Augustine's theology. Rome kept most of Augustine's theology, but they doctored with it over the centuries and changed this and that. And by the end, it was somewhat different, although still based on the basic preconceptions that Augustine had. Now, what Augustine taught is that as a result of the fall, humans no longer have free will. Martin Luther wrote a book entitled Bondage of the Will.
And the whole message of that book, I have a copy of it, is that, sure, Adam and Eve had free will, but that was gone. We no longer have free will. We can only do evil. Our will is bound up in evil. Augustine, like Luther and Calvin taught that humankind are totally depraved from birth. And so therefore, if it was true in the beginning that God wanted with him in eternity, those who would choose to serve him, well, it's no longer true because we cannot choose to serve or to obey him because of total depravity.
Like I said, this is an Augustinian theology. This is basic Reformation theology. Now, the early Christians would have taken sharp disagreement with such a teaching. Augustine departed dramatically from what the church had believed before his time, particularly on this subject. His doctrine was much more akin to that of the Gnostics and the Manicheans, and he had been part of the Manichean cult or religion before becoming an Orthodox Christian.
Now, the early Christians certainly believed in the fall, but their concept of the fall was quite different from that that we're used to hearing as Western Christians. To begin with, they didn't see Adam and Eve quite as perfect or complete as we often see them today. I mean, I was raised to believe that Adam was essentially on the same level of Jesus Christ as a man when Jesus Christ was on earth. But the early Christians would have seen Adam and Eve as not being complete, not being mature.
In their minds, Adam and Eve were more like children. I don't mean physically, but in their maturity and their understanding of things. I mean, they were only, who knows, a few weeks old, a few months old, a few years old when they sinned. In other words, Adam didn't start off, even though perhaps he was created as a mature man. And we all assume he was. Scriptures don't really say.
But God didn't create him with all of the maturity, all of the life experience that, say, a 30-year-old man would have, or the same with Eve. Their minds were like that of a baby, except that they could talk, they could reason and think, carry on conversation with God, but they didn't have any experiences that make up maturity in our lives. And so the early Christians wouldn't have put Adam and Eve quite so high as we would, although they certainly believed Adam and Eve were sinless before the fall.
Secondly, they believed that after the fall, Adam and Eve still possessed a measure of the divine nature of the divine spark in them. They still had free will, which is one of the singular attributes of the divine image, but they no longer had free will in perfect form. That is, their inclination would be to sin, but they still had the power to do good or evil.
Now, the early Christians never took it as far as Pelagius, who argued that theoretically, any of us could live a sinless life since we have the power to do good and evil, to make the right decision. If we can make it for one day, or let's say for five minutes, and all of us, I think, have the ability for five minutes to not commit any sin. When he said, well, we can do it for five minutes. Why not 10? Okay. Most of us could do it for 10. How about one hour? How about 24 hours?
If you do it for one hour, why not 24? If you do it 24, why not for a week? And so on. Well, it sounds like a logical argument, but it's really fallacious. Because we can do good for one hour, doesn't mean we can do it forever in our fallen state. I use the illustration in the Heretics book. I don't know if it's any longer true, but I used to be able to type 80 words a minute without making a mistake. And I could do that for three minutes.
That's the kind of time trials we had in school were three minute time tests. But because I could type 80 words a minute for three whole minutes and not make a mistake does not mean I could type 80 words a minute for a whole hour and not make a mistake. I couldn't have done that even then, let alone now. And let alone could I have done it for a whole day or for a whole week because you could do something on a limited scale does not mean you could do it on a never ending scale.
So again, the early Christians didn't have Adam and Eve quite so high as Augustine and Western Christians have put them since his time. And they didn't have him fall quite so low as Augustine had them fall and that we've most of us grown up being indoctrinated with his views. And they believe that the same thing that was true of Adam and Eve were true of their offspring. We've been affected by the fall.
That is why without God's grace, none of us can be saved, as salvation is a matter of grace because without His grace, we would not be saved. And on that point, Augustine, Martin Luther, all the Reformers are absolutely correct. On the other hand, unlike what the Reformers said and what Augustine said, the early Christians believe we still have the power and free will to choose to obey God. We're not going to obey Him perfectly in our fallen nature, but we can choose to obey Him. We are still capable of doing good.
We are not totally depraved, but we are fallen. And that is why even humans who are not Christians can still do good, and many have done good things, very noble things, acts of love, of unselfishness in their lives. But they're not going to be saved by that because again, we need God's grace to be saved. But it's either we're totally depraved or we're totally good. No, those are two extremes. We are fallen, but we still have a measure of that divine image in us.
Even humans who have not been regenerated, they still have a measure of that image in them. Don't you see that? To take Augustine's view, to take the view of Luther and Calvin would mean that God was defeated, that Satan won. God's purpose, His eternal purpose, was to fill the universe, both the earth and the Spirit Realm, whatever life exists out there that we don't even know about, that his purpose was to fill the whole universe with beings who had chosen of their own free will to serve him.
It would be filled with people who loved him, people who were tested and passed the tests that were given them. But if Augustine is true, if what he said was correct, then and we're all totally depraved, we no longer have free will, then God's eternal will has been thwarted. He started off with one purpose for the universe and all that's been taken away. God's not going to have His way now because Adam and Eve sinned that they totally changed all of the plans of God, all of His eternal purposes.
No, that didn't happen. God's purposes never returned to him. Empty. What he has willed is exactly what will happen in the way that he wanted it to happen, that the universe will be peopled by angels and humans or former humans who truly love God, who have chosen, not just chosen Jesus Christ to be their Savior, but truly chosen Him to be their Lord as well and have surrendered themselves to the will and the power of God. But see the way Augustine has it, all of his purposes were lost.
So now all God could do would be to arbitrarily choose people either for eternal life or eternal damnation, not based whatsoever on anything to do with them, anything they've done or haven't done with anything that's in their heart or not in their heart. Everybody is totally depraved. And so now it's just a matter of God arbitrarily choosing who will have life, eternal rewards, and who will have eternal punishment. And so his whole purpose, if that were true, has been defeated and Satan is the victor.
In other words, the Almighty God was defeated by a mere angel. See, to the early Christians, that was unthinkable. That was denying the divinity of God, that His purpose could be thwarted by an angel or by humans. To them, a God like that is not a sovereign God. Now, a sovereign God is one who's not a robot, who it was within his power as God to choose good or evil. But his nature is so much the nature of good that he's not able to choose the evil.
And he will have his universe populated with other beings who, even though they had the power to choose evil or good, they chose the good, even in the face of severe torture, in the face of opposition, in the face of persecution. In fact, the early Christians would say not only has God not been defeated by Satan, in fact, Satan has unwittingly helped God in His purposes. As we said, God is going to test everybody. And sometimes God directly tests people. We mentioned Abraham. That test was directly from God.
And you remember what God said after he stopped Abraham from killing Isaac? He said," Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son from me." See, that's how he determines what is in our heart, how much love we really do have, how much faith we have.
Now, the early Christians would have said that God in His foreknowledge knew that Abraham would pass the test in his foreknowledge, but he knew it because Abraham passed the test. And that'll be another whole subject of discussion some other evening. But really, for most of us, most of the time, it's either Satan or his demons or other humans who provide the tests for us. In fact, life here on earth for a Christian is a daily test. But God doesn't bring evil tests, but He allows evil to test us.
Okay, so principle number two, we've been talking about it, and that is God wants with Him in eternity those who choose to serve Him, those who really love Him. Principle number three is to have stamped out evil when it first occurred would have meant stamping out the human race. God's own mercy towards our first parents and towards us means that He has allowed evil to exist for a period of time. I mean, it's real big of us to say, oh, I wish God would just wipe out all evil.
Of course, in our concept of that, I mean, let's be honest with ourselves, we're saying that he also bring this age to an end and therefore bring future generations to an end. You see what I'm saying? I mean, if Christ returns tomorrow and the end of this system as we know it comes about, the end of the world, well, then we're not going to have great grandchildren, are we, or great, great grandchildren or whatever. I mean, that's going to be the end of the human race to that point.
Again, I don't want to get into eschatology and what happens after his return and that sort of thing. I've discussed it before in a message on the millennium and the rapture. But see, if God had brought the end, let's say in Noah's day, okay, that's the end of everything, you and I would have never been born. So it's silly for us to complain about evil because his way of doing away with evil is to bring the nations of this earth to an end, to bring the world as we know it to an end.
So we are actually glad, if we're honest with ourselves, that he hasn't stamped out evil up to this point. And we would like him to stamp it out tomorrow because we don't have any affection towards great-great-grandchildren who never been born. And I'm not saying that's a wrong attitude. I'm just saying, you know, that's the way it is. But we are glad he didn't put an end to evil when it first popped its head up with Adam and Eve and Satan, because then we wouldn't have been born if he had.
The other thing, not only is God's permission of evil been merciful to us, is that, I mean, God could triumph any minute he wanted to over Satan. But he didn't want just he himself to defeat Satan. And the father didn't just want he and his son to defeat Satan as Jesus did when he was on earth, but rather he wanted mankind itself to triumph over Satan.
So that in eternity, when all of these things have passed away, there won't be an eternal blot on the name of mankind because mankind will be remembered in eternity as those who gave God His victory over Satan, as those who triumphed over Satan. Tertullian wrote this," By allowing permission for the operation of Satan's designs, God acted consistently with the purpose of his own goodness.
He deferred the devil's destruction for that very same reason that he postponed the restitution of man, for he afforded room for a conflict wherein man might crush his enemy with the same freedom of his will as had made him succumb to Satan. This proves that the fault was all his own, not gods, and it enables man to worthily recover his salvation by a victory. In this way, also, the devil receives a more bitter punishment by being vanquished by him whom he had previously injured.
By these means, God is discovered to be so much more the good, for he has waited for man to return from his present life to a more glorious paradise with a right to eat of the tree of life. It's in volume three, page 306 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. So do you see the difference here between what the primitive Christians believed and what Augustine taught, what the Reformers taught, what any of us who have had an evangelical background have grown up to believe or been converted to believe?
See, we would say, no, we can't defeat Satan by our own free will because that was totally lost. They'd say, no, it's fallen. It's diminished, blemished, but it's still there. The problem is now we have to have God's help and grace to be victorious, but it's not God working with robots. It's not God doing everything through us like we were mere pieces of wood. It's God working together with us, giving us the power that our fallen nature lacks.
But working together as partners with our free will, allowing us to be victorious over Satan. All right, that was principle number three, that God's permission of evil has really been kindness on his part. It means that we're alive, and it means that we have the opportunity to defeat the very one who brought our forefathers into sin. Principle number four is that we have to remember that God is so in control of things that even Satan's evil, even man's evil, ends up working to fulfill his purposes.
We mentioned how God allows Satan to tempt us. And Satan doesn't do it because he wants to do God a favor. He does it to draw more people after himself. But he's accomplishing what God wants accomplished. He wants us to be tested as the Scripture New Testament teaches over and over that like gold going through fire, like gold tested by fire.
1 Corinthians 10:13 says," No temptation has overtaken you except such as common is common to man, but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able." See, God does not allow evil to run unchecked. Now, it may seem that way sometimes when we don't really think about it. In other words, so often we will say, oh, there's the evil everywhere. Why doesn't God do something? Well, he's done an enormous amount.
Or what do you think it would be like here on the earth if Satan was totally in charge instead of only being allowed to do what God permits him to do? I can guarantee you one thing, if God wasn't restraining evil, none of us Christians would be around. Satan would have every single one of us put to death. He would have every copy of the Bible destroyed. I mean, that's obvious, isn't it? I mean, Satan doesn't hold back because he's such a nice guy.
He holds back because God will not permit him to wipe out His church, will not permit him to destroy His Word. He permits Him to tempt us, to test us, to do all sorts of things, and to kill many of us. But he would never allow Satan to destroy the whole church. One of the, I think, very good examples in the Scriptures of how God places limits on Satan is in the book of Job, where Job had to ask permission to be able to bring calamity upon Job and his family.
And even there, we read, the Lord said to Satan," Behold, He is in your hand, but spare his life." Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with painful boils. It's Job 2 verses six and seven. Now, sometimes God gives Satan permission to take the lives of his worshippers. But again, only if he gives Satan that permission. Now, the interesting thing is that God doesn't only put limits on evil in protecting his own people, but he limits it that is evil for the sake of the unsaved as well.
And that's why all of the world would be Hitlers and totalitarian dictatorships that have been in the world have never ultimately succeeded. They've succeeded for a time, but God always puts limits on that. In short, God is still sovereign. He fixes the boundaries on evil. At the same time, he allows this world and Satan and his demons to test us. We can see that in the example of Job. And sometimes his people pass the test as Job did, and sometimes they don't pass.
Not only that, God turns evil around in order to bring good out of it. Clement of Alexandria wrote this," Evil has sprung from voluntary apostasy." That's my comment now, only that's on the part of both the angels and on the part of mankind. Now, back to Clement, yet it is the greatest achievement of divine providence not to allow this evil to remain useless, for it is the work of the divine wisdom to ensure that whatever happens through the evils hatched by someone, a good and useful result will come of it.
It's in volume two, page 320. I can think of so many examples in history of things that were evil and yet good came out of it. Well, for example, in the Bible, we have the illustration of Israel of old when God allowed the Assyrians and then the Babylonians to take them captive. On the first level, the good that came out of this evil was that it brought at least a remnant of them to true repentance so that they did not continue in idol worship for generation after generation.
But God had even a greater plan and how he used this. And certainly nothing Satan would have ever dreamed possible when he maneuvered those various nations under God's hand of authority. But because of the dispersion of the Jews being scattered all over the face of the Mediterranean world, well, this helped to advance Christianity once Christ came.
You may remember from the book of Acts how Paul's normal method of evangelism was to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath and preach there and he would keep going there until they finally threw him out. And what we read in Acts is that a small number of the Jews in those synagogues would believe, but usually a greater number of the Gentiles there would embrace the gospel. And so because of the dispersion, you had all of these centers of Judaism all over the pagan world, and this helped the advancement of the gospel.
An example here in our country would be the evil of slavery, which is a very wicked thing and very wrong for professing Christians to have had anything to do with that. And yet I would dare say there are very few black persons in our country today if they thought about it who would wish there never was such a thing as slavery and that they were born in Africa. Now this in no way justifies the evil that was done. But again, God turned it to good.
He didn't let evil be the final mark, although there's been seeds from that evil that society is paying the price today because of that evil that was done. Okay, so we're talking about principle number four, which is that God is still in control and he limits evil and he often turns it to his good. And our final principle, principle number five, is I think that we have to remember, our time on earth is a full-time enrollment in the school of God, a school from which we never graduate, at least not in this life.
As James wrote," My brethren count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience." Now, Satan thinks that he's thwarting God right and left, and instead he's helping God train us, God's people, for eternity. For one thing, people are more often drawn to God through calamity than they are through a sudden gift of riches.
When the terrible calamity happened last year on September 11th, the destruction of the World Trade Towers, for the months right after that, the enrollment in churches, the attendance in churches rose rather dramatically. I say evil often draws people to God. The other thing we have to remember is that we're working in God's timetable, not human timetables. In eternity, all of the evil that goes on here on earth and that has been going on since the fall of Adam and Eve will seem like nothing.
The Scriptures say a thousand years is like one day with God. It's a big deal. Evil abounded for six days. 20 billion years from now, it's going to seem rather insignificant. Yet the lessons that we learn from seeing and experiencing evil and failing ourselves will be things that we're going to remember for all eternity. Clement of Alexandria wrote this," Although disease, accident, and death come upon the spiritual man, by the power of God, they become the medicine of salvation.
Through discipline, they benefit those who are difficult to reform. They are allotted according to what is deserved by providence, which is truly good. It's in volume two, page 540. Origen wrote," God also knows the secret things of the heart and foresees future events. In His long suffering, He permits things to happen. And by means of those things that happen outside ourselves, He reveals the secret evil within a person in order to cleanse him.
For God governs souls not with reference to the 50 years of the present life, but with reference to an unlimited age. So He's preparing us right now for eternity. He sees things in our lives that we need to get worked out. And He allows evil to come in our life that will test us in a particular area and will help us to develop the quality that we're going to need throughout eternity.
Lactantius wrote," God arranged that there would be this distinction between good and evil things so that we can know the value of the good from observing that which is evil." We can also recognize the meaning of evil from observing the good. The nature of either one cannot be fully comprehended if the other one is taken away. So in order that the nature of virtue could be evident, God did not banish evil. For how could patient endurance have any meaning and name if there were nothing that we were forced to endure?
How could faith deserve praise unless there were someone who wished to turn us away from God? For this reason, God permitted the unjust to be more powerful and to be more numerous so that virtue might be precious on account of its rarity. It's an interesting thought that I guess I had never reflected on. How would we know what love is if there were no such thing as hate, if we'd ever had to make sacrifices out of love? How could we understand really what good is unless we had experienced and seen what bad is like?
So this is in a nutshell what the early Christians understood of why God permits evil. Let me go over. We talked about five different principles surrounding the character of God and of mankind since we are made in his image. Let's just review these very quickly. We started off learning that God has free will, that He has the power to choose good and evil. That's an attribute of divinity, to have that power.
But the nature of our Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit is such that they cannot choose evil because it's contrary to their personal nature. So we learned that to be made in the image of God meant that angels and humans also had to have free will or else we would not be in the image of God. But the fact that we have free will, God knew before He ever created mankind that some of us would turn to evil. He knew some of the angels would. He knew that free will was such that not all persons would turn to good.
In fact, as we've seen in history, the vast majority choose evil over good. And that's the basic reason why evil exists. To do away with evil, he would have to do away with our free will. And that would thwart his entire purpose.
And we've seen that that purpose is in eternity, He is going to populate His universe with those beings, whether spirit or former humans, but they will be persons who choose to serve Him, who had the power to choose evil, but they chose to suffer as a servant of His rather than take the broad way that leads to destruction, that His universe will be populated by those who voluntarily love Him.
Principle number three was that if God had stamped out evil at the very beginning, like so many people say, well, why does He do away with evil? Well, He would have done away with us. I mean, He would have done away with our forefathers, and you and I would have never been born. We would have never had the privilege of living in eternity. In God's presence, I mean, this wonderful thing that He's laid out for us, we would never have.
So we in any generation have to be thankful that he didn't bring an end to evil yet, or we wouldn't be here. We've seen, though, principle four, that God is in charge of things ultimately. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't let Satan have his way in a lot of things. He lets Satan and his demons do many things, but not ever where it's beyond his control. He's never let evil become so great that mankind was annihilated or that his church was annihilated.
And principle number five is that God designed all of this as a school for us. He didn't need to know what evil was. He was complete in himself, but the rest of us, weak creatures, needed to experience evil. If in eternity, we're going to live in a universe that is only good.
We will never appreciate that or we would not have if we had not had this drama of the last 6,000 years in both the spiritual realms and the earthly realms of good and evil being at battle, of God's people and Satan's followers at enmity with each other. We've seen that Satan is actually, through his evil, has served God's purpose, has tested us and helped us to develop the spiritual qualities that we'll need for eternity.
And I know learning these things for me from the early Christians, and I can see it in the Scriptures, although I can't take a book of the Bible and say," See, this explains why God permits evil." But when I saw their explanations, and then when I read through the Scriptures, I realized, yeah, this is in the Scriptures. This fits what you see in Genesis. It fits Job. It fits the gospel accounts. It fits what Paul writes. It's all there in the Scripture. And to me, it makes perfect sense.
It helps me to understand that I don't have to fret and be upset because there is evil. I rejoice that God has permitted evil to go on long enough that I came into this world. And when evil comes into my life personally, when I'm the one personally affected, of course, I don't like it at the time, and I'll gripe and holler the same as anybody else. You know I'll find now when I sit back and reflect on things that have happened in my life that, at least in my eyes, were wrong, were evil, I see the good.
Yes, I have learned something through that experience. God was needing to humble me, and he did a pretty good job, or you know whatever it was, I need to learn patience. And God was helping me do that with this person, or God has afforded me such a wonderful opportunity to love my enemy, to forgive somebody who wronged me. And see, all of these things that I get to experience have a little taste of what divinity is like, what God is like, who forgives, who loves those who even do evil and who hate Him.
You know, I never thought about it until I reflected on those things that we would never know what forgiveness meant if God had not permitted evil to come into the world.