One of the most common objections to the Christian doctrine of God appears simple enough: "If God is all-powerful, why did he not simply create human beings unable to do evil?" At first hearing the argument seems forceful. If God possesses unlimited power, he could surely have made a world in which murder, hatred, deception, cruelty, and every other form of moral evil were impossible.
The objection, however, does not establish what it appears to establish. It does not demonstrate that God lacks power. It states what the objector believes God should have done with that power, and those are entirely different questions. The objector is in effect saying, "If I possessed God's power, I would have created humanity differently." Perhaps so. Christianity has never claimed that God created the world according to what fallen human beings would have done had they possessed divine power. The Christian claim is that God deliberately created moral creatures capable of obedience, and that those creatures rebelled against him. This distinction leads directly into the Christian doctrines of creation, the Fall, original sin, regeneration, and finally glorification.
Man Created Able Not to Sin
Christian theology has traditionally used several Latin expressions to distinguish the moral condition of man before and after the Fall. The first is posse non peccare, "able not to sin." It describes the original condition of Adam. Adam was not created sinful, morally corrupt, or enslaved to evil. Genesis records the verdict of the Creator on all that he had made: "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."1 God did not create Adam already fallen.
The command concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would make little sense if Adam possessed no genuine capacity to obey: "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it."2 Adam could obey. Adam also possessed posse peccare, "able to sin," and the distinction is essential. God created man with the ability not to sin, but he did not originally create man unable to sin. Adam could obey the command of God, and he could disobey it. Genesis 3 records which he chose.
When someone asks why God did not create us unable to sin, therefore, the Christian answer is not that God lacked the power to do so. Christianity teaches that God chose to create humanity in a condition in which obedience was possible and disobedience was possible. The existence of that possibility does not demonstrate a defect in divine omnipotence.
The Rebellion of the Creature
The Christian account of evil does not begin with God creating morally evil human beings. It begins with good creatures rebelling against a good Creator. Paul writes, "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin."3 The direction of his argument is plain: sin "entered into the world." The original condition of man and his fallen condition are therefore not identical.
This matters because many objections to Christianity quietly treat fallen humanity as though Christianity taught that this is exactly how God originally made us. It does not. Genesis 1 describes creation; Genesis 3 describes catastrophe; and those categories must not be collapsed. Adam was created upright and capable of obedience. Adam rebelled, and that rebellion had consequences extending well beyond the first act of disobedience. This brings the argument to original sin.
The Corruption Within
After the Fall the human condition changed. The traditional expression for the new condition is non posse non peccare, "not able not to sin." This does not mean that every person commits every possible sin, nor that every human action is equally wicked. It means that fallen humanity cannot, by its own natural power, escape the dominion and corruption of sin.
Sin is not merely something that happens around us; it comes from within us. Jesus himself located the problem there: "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit..."4 That is a far more disturbing diagnosis than the observation that human beings sometimes make unfortunate choices.
Ordinary experience confirms it. No one has to teach a toddler to be selfish; parents teach children to share. No one sits a child down and teaches him how to lie when he fears punishment; parents teach children to tell the truth. We teach restraint, patience, generosity, and honesty, and we teach them because something has gone wrong within man. David states the fallen condition starkly: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me."5 The biblical diagnosis is therefore deeper than bad education, unfortunate circumstances, or inadequate social structures. Those things may aggravate particular evils, but Christianity places the fundamental problem within fallen human nature.
The Violation of Our Own Standards
The problem can be seen from another direction. Human beings routinely set moral standards for themselves and then fail to keep them. A man resolves that he will never again lose his temper in that way, never again speak to his wife in that manner, never again lie about that matter, and then he does it again. Paul describes something remarkably similar: "For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do."6
Whatever one's interpretation of the precise identity and theological condition of the speaker in Romans 7, Paul's description captures the terrible conflict associated with sin: knowing what ought to be done does not itself produce the power to do it. The problem therefore cannot be solved merely by supplying more moral information. Humanity does not simply need another list of instructions. Something must happen to the person himself.
The Necessity of the New Birth
This is the point of the conversation between Christ and Nicodemus. Nicodemus was religious, educated, and learned in the law, yet Jesus told him, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,"7 and again, "Ye must be born again."8 The Lord spoke of birth because Christianity does not teach that the fundamental problem of man can be solved through minor moral adjustment. Christ did not tell Nicodemus merely to try harder. He told him that he needed new life.
John had already introduced the idea at the opening of his Gospel: "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name."9 The answer to fallen human nature is regeneration. For this reason, turning the problem of evil into an accusation against God can miss the personal force of the Christian doctrine. Evil is discussed as though it were an abstract philosophical problem somewhere outside ourselves. Christianity turns the question around and asks what is to be done about the evil within.
Regeneration and Glorification
The gospel does not teach that regeneration immediately makes believers incapable of sin; that condition belongs to the final state. Regeneration does, however, change the relationship of man to sin. Paul writes, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof."10 The command assumes that the believer, through the grace of God, can resist the rule of sin. The regenerate Christian therefore returns, in an important sense, to posse non peccare, "able not to sin." Sin remains present, but its dominion has been broken.
The final Christian hope goes further still. Glorification brings non posse peccare, "unable to sin." John describes the final state: "And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth."11 The final kingdom of God is therefore precisely the kind of world the objection demands, a world in which evil no longer corrupts human existence. Christianity holds that God reaches that end through creation, the Fall, redemption, judgment, and glorification. The objector may say that he would have chosen another route. That is not an argument against the omnipotence of God. It is a disagreement with the purposes of God.
The Problem of Evil Made Personal
The statement "If God were all-powerful, he would never have allowed evil" assumes something it has not demonstrated: that an all-powerful and good God could have no morally sufficient reason for temporarily permitting creatures capable of rebellion to rebel. Christianity makes a different claim. God created man able not to sin. Man sinned. Humanity fell under the corruption of sin. God now commands fallen people to come to Christ for something they cannot manufacture for themselves, which is new life.
The Christian response to evil therefore becomes intensely personal. A man may spend his life asking why God permits evil in other people, and why God permits evil in the world. Christianity eventually places another question before him: what is he going to do about the evil within himself? He cannot claim innocence. He has violated even the standards he himself affirms; he has known what he ought to do and failed to do it. The gospel does not invite him to make himself the judge of God. It calls him to run to God for mercy, and the answer Christ gave Nicodemus remains the Christian answer: "Ye must be born again."
That is where Christianity locates the solution to the moral condition of man. The solution is not to pretend that evil does not exist. It is not to blame the Creator for every rebellion of the creature. And it is not to imagine that fallen human beings can repair themselves through greater effort. God created man able not to sin. Man chose sin. Fallen humanity now lives under its corruption. Christ came to redeem sinners, to give them new life, to break the dominion of sin, and finally to bring the redeemed into a state in which sin will be no more. The Christian story begins with a world that God called "very good" and ends with a world from which evil has finally been removed. Between the two stands the gospel: "Ye must be born again."
You May Also Enjoy
The Problem of Evil: A Christian Response
The Moral Argument for God's Existence
The Righteousness of God Revealed: What Paul Means in Romans 1
Christ Is the End of the Law
Lesson 6: Called into His Kingdom and Glory — 1 Thessalonians 2:10-12
From One God to Many: Humanity's Drift and God's Response