Henri Blocher, Evil and the Cross, (Leicester: InterVarsity, 1994)

The standard question at the core of the evil and theology is how evil can exist in the same reality of an all-good, all-powerful God—or as Blocher writes, “a God who is good and sovereign cannot permissively decree that the creature shall choose against the Creator” (100). Some attractive reasoning puts forth the idea that an all-good God is too good to let evil exist and an all-powerful God is strong enough to bring it to an end. Based upon this reasonable premise, a few options emerge:

1) God is wholly powerful, but not wholly good

2) God is wholly good, but not wholly powerful

3) God is neither wholly powerful nor good.

It is this “intuitive” premise that allows humans to so commonly speak of evil as a problem. It is a baffling reality that many thinkers that ventured to understand. Henri Blocher writes,

Finally, the question of the victory of evil,  a question that is both existential and religious, deserves to be called the ultimate question, if it is not the first. For a humanity that is overwhelmed by suffering (evil endured) and guilt (evil committed), that is the question that matters (13).

In his book, Evil and the Cross: An Analytical Look at the Problem of Pain, Blocher considers three different solutions of human reason to the existence of evil—optimisim, pessimism, and dualism. Blocher traces these solutions throughout major theological and philosophical attempts explain evil. The tensions that are difficult to hold together in each of these attempts is the evil of evil, the lordship of the Lord, and the goodness of God (100). Blocher analyzes the three approach in light of this immovable criterion.

Blocher critiques optimism to be too caught up in evil as non-being and therefore is devoid of respecting the “spontaneous sense of evil” (14). He writes, “The strategy consists of erasing and blurring the most scandalous aspects of evil, and choosing a perspective which appears to diminish the anomaly” (19). Leibniz is included in this category by trying to rationalize the presence of evil in this world by make this world necessarily the best world possible.

While Blocher appears to agree with the Augustinian explanation that sin is the privation of good, he is leery of views that can “water down” the severity of evil (cf. 31). He highlights the “bite of non-being” and insists that such an understanding does not let evil off the hook. He writes, “as privation, evil exists in things: ‘the paradox of evil is the terrible reality of its privative existence’” (27).

In chapter two Blocher considers the explanation that connects the reality of evil to the libertarian freedom of the will. In this category he mentions A. Plantinga and Paul Ricoeur and shows how such a view explains how evil arises from freedom. He also gives considerable attention to John Hick and his thesis of soul-making. The plight of such a view is that it credits evil as purpose for human’s maturity. While such a position hopes to free God of being the cause of evil, it actually fails. He writes, “In spite of his monotheistic stance, the impossibility of God’s creating persons that are morally perfect turns out to be well and truly a limitation on him” (56).

Diletical reasoning, in chapter three, is set in its Hegelian context and thereby exposed of its hollowness. Blocher includes Moltmann and Barth in this category, and while their work is aesthetically satisfying, he is unconvinced of its accuracy. However, a point of praise and learning among such thinkers is the Christological concentration and focus on the cross. Blocher writes:

The dialectical solution to problem of evil has merit in reminding us that God is able to turn the work of evil human beings to fulfill his own designs, to make it serve the good, most notably the supremely evil act of the crucifixion of the Son. But as for the problem itself, it is a pseudo-solution which is more perverse in the way it (falsely) excuses evil, than those solutions that appeal to universal order and to the autonomy of human freedom (83).

Blocher puts forth his own position in chapter four as chapter five elaborates the position in light of differing eschatologies. Important to his position is the unwavering recognition that evil really is evil. He writes:

The fact that evil is vanity (‘awen) and the lack of something good (i.e. privation) does not remove the weight of sin, for evil makes use of the substance of created goodness, which it turns and reverses for its own purposes against that entity’s Creator. Such is the weight of untruth, borrowed from the truth that it has travestied and perverted. It is a hideous reality which draws down upon itself the judgment of God (87).

Blocher does not go beyond his critique of the three categorical approaches in an attempt to give an explanation for evil. He concedes that such an explanation is impossible. He writes, “For pilgrims such as we are, there is no rational solution to the problem of evil: the theoretical problem of the origin of evil” (101). Blocher calls evil a mystery—the great  mystery—and is content to leave it there. “Evil is not there to be understood, but to be fought” (103).

Although he is content not to explain evil, neither does he leave the reader hopeless. Blocher goes to the cross to harmonies the three points of the “T”—the evil of evil, the lordship of the Lord, and the goodness of God.  This is the high point of the book and of the history of the world. Blocher writes:

The sheer and utter evilness of evil is demonstrated there: as hatred in the mockery of the criminals who also hung there; as hateful in the weight of guilt which could be removed only by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God . . .

The complete sovereignty of God is demonstrated there: all this happened ‘by God’s set pupose and foreknowledge’ (Acts 2:23), for it was necessary that the Scripture be fulfilled. Those which bore witness to the destiny that the Lord had assigned to his Servant . . .

The unadulterated goodness of God is demonstrated there. At the cross, who would dare entertain the blasphemy of imagining that God would, even to the slightest degree, comply with evil? It brought him death, in the person of his Son. Holiness stands revealed. Love stands revealed, a pure love; there is no love greater (104).

I appreciate Blocher’s treatment of such a significant subject. His insistence on the primacy of Holy Scripture is wonderful and his passionate disapproval of excusing the evilness of evil is mobilizing. I embrace Blocher’s position as my own—accepting the Augustinian explanation that evil is the privation of good while also maintaining the force of evil in its perverting work. The ultimate answer to the existence of evil is the cross of Jesus Christ and hope that evil will one day be brought to its consummate end—indeed is now being brought to an end.

The implications of such a position are specific and weighty. If God is conquering evil, has conquered evil, and is currently using his Church to affect such a purpose, what is my role in regard to the suffering of the world? As one writer put it, “the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” By God’s grace, as reconciled sinners gladly brought into the supremacy of Christ, we must not “do nothing.” Our call is action in the world. “Evil is not there to be understood, but to be hated.”

“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” (Romans 12:9)