Recently I was in a discussion in which someone asked whether God could be evil. Is it possible that the Ultimate Reality that is the source of all other realities is actually malevolent? Fortunately, it is both an evidential and a logical impossibility for God to be evil. God cannot be evil due to both an a priori reason (a reason which comes prior to experience in the world) and an a posteriori reason (a reason which comes from reflection on experience in the world).
From an a posteriori perspective, the kind of Divine Reality that is revealed in the longest lasting and most widespread spiritual traditions, and definitively embodied in Jesus, shows that Ultimate Reality is Love and wills goodness and life for all persons. It can sound, and even feel, very pious for someone to say “God can do what God wants and we should not question it, for it is the decision of God!” We can even rely on that misquoted and decontextualized nugget of Paul that he grabs from Jeremiah to place in his letter to the Romans: “Who is the pot to say to the potter, why have you made me this way?” Just sit down and shut up and don’t question what God does (and especially don’t question those who do awful things in God’s Name!). So, if God wants to be evil, that should be God's business, right? Wrong.
I know this can sound and feel pious because I used to do it. I used to feel it. It is a central point of Reformed theology and spirituality: Don’t question God (or those who speak for God). But truly, this is not piety. It is blasphemy. Because if following God means anything, it means holding God to account when God seems to not be acting in a way that is entirely in line with God’s own character. It means arguing with God about Sodom and Gomorrah with Abraham. It means wrestling with God until daybreak with Jacob. It means challenging God until he shows up with Job. It means asking why God has forsaken us with Psalm 22. It means praying with Jesus so hard you sweat blood because you don’t understand why God is leading you the way you are going.
The central insight into the necessity of God’s goodness and our intuitive grasp of that goodness also comes from Jesus: "Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" (Matthew 7.9–11). This is because “no one is Good except God alone”, and that means God is better than the best parent we can imagine, not worse than the worst. To expect anything less from God would be blasphemy.
From an a priori reason, Ultimate Reality as evil is a self contradiction. Evil is by definition limited: It can only consist in destroying life and goodness. When it has completely destroyed them, it has a limit at death and nothingness. There is no more activity or possibility after all finite goods have been eliminated. That is not an Ultimate Reality, but rather the complete absence of any reality. This follows the Platonic and Hindu insight that evil can only have temporary existence as the privation or abuse of some good. Evil cannot exist or persist on its own.
Therefore if there is some Ultimate Reality that grounds and contains all other realities and real things, that Ultimate Reality must by definition be infinite (unlimited in power and potential to create) and self-diffusive (willing to give itself to create for the life and good of that which is created). This infinite and self-diffusive Ultimate Reality is the only logically coherent type of Reality to which we could meaningfully refer to as “God”. Thus God is Good, all the time. Because God is the Good, the Summum Bonum, the infinite Life and Love and Light which all beings are drawn to inherently (even if they do not fully realize it).
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