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Divine Mysteries: Exploring the Trinity, Evil, and Human Destiny  /  Why God Permits Evil  /  Discussion Questions
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Question 1
David Bercot says the early Christians believed the problem of evil “begins with a proper understanding” of God, angels, and humankind as created in God’s image; what specific misunderstandings about any of those three does he imply make modern Christians unable to make sense of evil?
Another way to ask: Bercot says we can’t understand evil unless we understand God, angels, and humans as made in God’s image. What wrong ideas about any of those three does he think keep modern Christians confused about evil?

Direct Answer Based on David Bercot’s teaching, modern Christians get stuck on evil because they misunderstand God’s relationship to free will and misunderstand what the fall did (and did not do) to human and angelic freedom. If you assume God is “involuntarily good” and assume humans lost free will entirely, evil looks like God’s responsibility or God’s defeat.

Support from Transcript:

  • He says you can’t understand evil unless you grasp “what they believed about the nature of God… man and… angels,” because humans and angels were “created in the image of God.”
  • He identifies the key attribute as “free will. God has free will,” and says if we don’t have free will “we are not in the image of God.”
  • He claims many people assume God is “involuntarily good,” like “fire is involuntarily hot,” and says that assumption makes the question “why is there evil” seem decisive.
  • He argues Western Christians are shaped by Augustine: “as a result of the fall, humans no longer have free will… We can only do evil… totally depraved.”
  • He says the early Christians disagreed: after the fall humans still had “a measure of the divine nature… they still had free will… diminished… but… the power to do good or evil.”
Discussion Follow-ups Which misunderstanding affects you most—how you picture God’s goodness, or how you picture human ability after the fall? How would your “problem of evil” questions change if you corrected just one of those?

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