Christ: The Answer to the Problem of Evil


The problem of evil is the most popular and most powerful argument for atheism. In some sense, it is the argument for atheism. The argument has been discussed for centuries if not millennia with theistic philosophers providing various purely philosophical answers to the problem. While these answers have their merit and place in the dialectic between theists and atheists, these answers often fail to convince atheists to abandon their atheism. This fact does not reflect the philosophical strength of these responses, but rather shows that the real force of the argument comes from the fact that the problem of evil is more aptly termed the problem of the experience of evil. Such philosophical and metaphysical responses fail to address this aspect of the argument. This does not, however, mean that the problem of evil is intractable, it simply means that the definitive theistic answer to the problem will involve an answer to this experiential problem, which is the heart of the problem. Such an answer is found in the person of Christ: He Who is both God and man, not only occupies a unique space to solve the atheist’s philosophical contention, but also mend his wounded heart. His experience of the totality of human existence, including the depths of human suffering, resolves the experiential problem of evil as through experiencing human suffering and conquering, He performs an act of Divine solidarity with human suffering and also paves a way out of that suffering for humanity. The Biblical narrative displays this through the life, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ.

Christ’s suffering during his earthly life begins God’s act of solidarity with human suffering, ultimately ending his conquest and destruction of it; two important examples of the suffering he endures prior to His Passion are the Flight into Egypt and the Temptations in the Desert. The recording of Christ’s experience of suffering starts at the beginning of his life as He begins His earthly life under the threat of death from government persecution. In order to escape this, Christ undergoes an experience of alienation as He must flee to Egypt in order to escape persecution: ‘​​“take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him,”’(New Revised Standard Version, Matthew 2:13). Through this, Christ experiences the horror of alienation and, thus, unites Himself in solidarity with those who are alienated. However, this merely marks the beginning of Christ’s encounter with suffering as the next critical point in Christ’s journey of unification with creation is when He wanders in the desert. This next deeping of solidarity begins when Christ voluntarily enters the desert: “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,” (Luke 4:1). The voluntary nature of His entering the desert makes His engagement with suffering an act of solidarity: if He were unwilling to enter the desert and merely forced to do so against His will, He would not truly be in solidarity with human suffering because He would not be acting of His own accord. Moreover, the alluring nature of the temptation intensifies the suffering He experiences, thereby enabling Him to unite Himself with the sufferings of the poor in body and spirit. This is made clear by Christ’s deprivation from food and drink for forty days and nights: “He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry” (Luke 4:2). Moreover, that which the Devil tempts Christ with encompasses the totality of what humanity’s temptation as Christ’s temptation consists of “bread,” worldly power through the lordship of “all the kingdoms of the world,” and heavenly power through the lordship of “angels” (Luke 4:3, 5, 10). This voluntary entrance into temptation where Christ experiences the totality of human temptation is the means by which He experiences suffering such that each person with their unique manifestation of temptation, can find themselves in Him. Furthermore, this enables Him to lead people out of these temptations when He conquers them.

The point in Christ’s life where He takes in the totality of evil and human suffering and experiences the farthest extent of human physical, psychological, and existential suffering is the Passion. His Passion begins when Judas betrays Christ for thirty pieces of silver: “Judas said, ‘Rabbi!’ and kissed him,” (Mark 14:45). Betrayed by Judas, His beloved, Christ endures the acute pain of forsaken love, thus allowing Christ to experience the emotional pain of abandonment by one’s friend and the isolation which ensues from this, furthering the Divine act of solidarity. Christ then goes on to experience the most powerful forms of physical suffering in His scourging, “Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged,” and crucifixion: “There they crucified him,” (John 19:1, 18). Such excruciating pain allows Christ to take in the physical suffering that all humans experience. The varieties of pain He endures and the depths of the suffering induced provides Him with an intimate, experiential knowledge of all the kinds of physical pain that colors human existence. The psychological suffering that occurs in the Passion, as in the process of physical torture, confronts Christ with the abandonment of His followers and the reality of being forsaken by His closest disciple, Peter: “‘Woman, I don’t know him,’” (Luke 22:57). Such loneliness is overwhelming; this connects Christ to the, often, destructive effect that psychological suffering has on people. This psychological suffering leads to the final and most powerful suffering that Christ experiences in His passion. Christ exclaims on the Cross: “‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ (which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’)” (Matthew 27:46). On the Cross, Christ experiences an alienation from God – an abandonment from God. He experiences the most terrifying and overwhelming suffering that a human being can experience: despair. In this moment, Christ takes in the suffering and evil of the world into Himself. He then lets Himself be defeated by it; He dies. Death does not have victory over Him, however, since He is God. Death is merely the end of God’s act of solidarity with human suffering and the beginning of God's conquest of evil, suffering, and death.

Christ conquers and destroys humanity’s bondage to death and completes God’s perfect act of solidarity with human suffering in the Resurrection. The final point of human suffering is death. However, this final point of suffering for human beings is not the end of Christ’s journey; rather, it is a critical part of His conquest of suffering as it allows Him to destroy death – the final extent of human suffering. This destruction of death is executed in the Resurrection: “Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen,” (Matthew 28:5-6). In His Resurrection, Christ has taken in the whole of human suffering and evil and conquered it, destroyed it by love. Love is the only way to destroy evil and suffering as love is the opposite of these things. This love is witnessed in the Gospels, especially when Christ greets His disciples once He has been raised with a warm, loving “‘Peace be with you!’” (John 20:21). This greeting disarms the fears of those who abandoned Him and assures them that their sins are forgiven and that the love they experienced from Christ was not defeated, but truly real. Later in Acts, Peter summarizes the arch of Christ’s life when he says, “‘You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead,’” (Acts 3:15); Christ embraced human suffering, all of human suffering, and did not give into evil as other humans have, but destroyed it by love, thereby leading the way out of human suffering. 

Evil is the main, perhaps the only, philosophical enemy of theism. Often theistic responses to evil are unconvincing to atheists, not because they lack philosophical merit, but because they fail to answer the real issue: the experience of evil. Christ is the answer to this issue. Christ’s experience of evil and suffering in His life and Passion and His conquest and destruction of evil in His Resurrection is the solution to the problem of evil as it deals with the experience of evil. This is the final answer to the problem of evil: humans are not alone in their suffering because God experienced all of it as well and evil is certainly not final and will eventually be destroyed as it already has been in Christ.
















Works Cited

Attridge, H. W., Meeks, W. A., & Bassler, J. M. (2006). The Harper Collins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, with the apocryphal/deuterocanonical books. HarperOne.

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