EVIL (רַע֒, H8273, bad, usually tr. evil; πονηρός, G4505, wicked; κακός, G2805, bad).
Often ra’, appearing about 800 times with its cognates in the OT, refers to what is physically undesirable, what is bad as the opposite of what is good. Rotten figs are “bad,” as are poisonous herbs (2 Kings 4:41), and a ravenous beast (Gen 37:20). A child must refuse the “bad,” of all sorts (Isa 7:15). It is also used of moral evil as that which is “wicked in the sight of the Lord” (Gen 38:7; Deut 4:25; Ps 51:4); and it is the same with the counterpart words of the NT (Matt 6:23; 24:48, 49; Mark 7:21-23).
Ponērós, with its noun ponēría, occurs 82 times in the NT; of physical evil only twice (Matt 7:17f.; Rev 16:2). Kakos is another generic NT term for evil, appearing 78 times with its cognates. It usually signifies moral evil—sin, disobedience to God.
Natural, or physical evil, occurs when undesirable natural occurrences tend to frustrate human life. Examples of such evils are earthquakes, tornadoes, tidal waves, disease, and imbecility. Accidents are usually thought of as instances of natural evil, although they often happen as a result of improper human decisions. A psalmist complained, “Evils have encompassed me without number” (Ps 40:12). Jeremiah asked, “Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?” (Jer 15:18). Natural evil has presented a difficult dilemma for believers in God. If God is God, they ask, why do the wicked often flourish like the green bay tree while the righteous salt their bread with tears? Leslie Weatherhead confesses, “The subject of pain has haunted my thinking ever since I began to think for myself at all” (Why Do Men Suffer [1936], p. 9). John S. Whale has called it “this notorious problem which has vexed thought and tried faith in every age of human history” (The Christian Answer to the Problem of Evil [1939], p. 13).
On this problem, some have been embittered, “pan-diabolistic” pessimists (Buddha, Schopenhauer, Joseph Wood Krutch). Others have been optimists of some sort (Neo-Platonists, Spinoza, Calvin, Mary Baker Eddy), agreeing in general with Robert Browning who said, “God’s in his heaven—all’s right with the world” (“Pippa Passes”)—and with Alexander Pope who announced, “One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right” (Essay on Man). Some would call themselves meliorists (esp. E. S. Brightman), and say that both good and evil are real and that men should become co-workers with God to rout evil and enhance what is beneficial to men.
It might well be that an adequate conception of the Incarnation would furnish a pointer on this problem. Perhaps Christ, who holds the solution of moral evil, is also the locus of solution for the abysmal mystery of natural evil. His enfleshment surely implies that materiality as such is not evil. His healings suggest that diseases are not necessarily the direct will of the Father. Since the Father is “to unite all things in him [Christ]” (Eph 1:10); since there is to be “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev 21:1); and since “the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now” (Rom 8:22), along with our groaning “inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (8:23)—it is evident that through Christ, the harbingers of redemption from all evil (natural as well as moral), which may now be experienced, are one day to be complete, “all things” being “put in subjection under him [Christ],” “that God may be everything to every one” (1 Cor 15:27, 28).
Bibliography H. W. Robinson, Suffering: Human and Divine (1939); C. R. Smith, The Bible Doctrine of Sin (1953); A. MacLeish, J. B. (1956); C. Marney, Faith in Conflict (1957).