EVIL-ORIGIN

While we do not believe that personal freedom is the ultimate explanation of the origin of evil, we do believe that freedom was the means which sin did come into the world.

John Gerstner

If trifles are vital parts of divine providence, what of evil? Evil is often vastly significant. The most important event which ever occurred was, in one aspect, horribly evil. The crucifixion of Jesus from the standpoint of the crucifiers was grotesquely wicked. Yet, even though the killing of Christ was atrocity itself, what event was so vital and its effects so beneficial as the death of Christ? If God's providence does not include evil, it does not include the most important event which has ever taken place.

John Gerstner
Theology for Everyman, Moody, 1965, Chapter 2.

Evil is a parasite, not an original thing.

C.S. Lewis

Many have puzzled themselves about the origin of evil. I am content to observe that there is evil, and that there is a way to escape from it, and with this I begin and end.

John Newton

Where does [evil] come from, then? The only way to get a bad thing is to take a good thing and spoil it. For example, darkness isn’t made up from nothing; you get it by blocking the light. Disease isn’t made up from nothing; you get it by ruining health. Notice that this doesn’t work the other way around – you can’t get light by blocking darkness or health by ruining disease. So God created only good things, but some of them have been spoiled.

J. Budziszewski