Review: Evil and the Justice of God, Part 1

This will be the first in a series of posts that review N.T. Wright’s book Evil and the Justice of God. In this book, Wright provides an overview of the Bible’s understanding of evil, as well as God’s response to it.

In the first Chapter, Wright considers what philosophers and theologians have often called the “problem of evil”; that is, how can God allow suffering and wrongdoing in the world if he is (a) good and (b) all-powerful? He immediately points out that there is no satisfying, final solution to this problem in scripture. However, he says that the true “problem of evil” is not a philosophical one, but a practical one. Evil, he says, is something that acts as a destructive force, blowing up buildings and leaving death and suffering in its wake. If we are to truly understand evil, he argues, we cannot look at it solely as a philosophical problem.

The trend, over the last century or so, he says, is to either treat evil as something that isn’t so bad after all, or to simply deny its existence. Worse yet, when evil is ignored or downplayed, those who ignore it tend to react in exaggerated and un-helpful ways in dealing with it.

Wright concludes the chapter by pointing out that we should recognize three things in order to develop a full, healthy appreciation of the true “problem of evil”:

1. Democratic systems and open markets, though they may provide some benefits to those who live within them, are not going to solve the world’s problems.

2. Evil can manifest itself in a “supra-personal” way. That is, it can “infect” people and institutions in ways that are fitting of the language of the demonic.

3. Evil runs through all of us. Some, perhaps, moreso than others, but we over-simplify the situation when we speak of the “others” that are evil and the “we” that are good.

What do you think of Wright’s argument that evil must be seen primarily as a practical problem rather than a philosophical one? How does a conversation about evil change when the focus is “what can be done about it?” – as opposed to “why does it exist?”