The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was merely giving voice to what must have gone through the minds of millions of religious believers soon after the disaster when he said publicly that the magnitude of suffering led him to doubt God’s existence.¹

The Anglican bishop’s question seems to be a reasonable one. The great thinker and saint St Thomas Aquinas admits that there is nothing more difficult to reconcile with Divine Providence than the suffering of the innocent.² The problem of evil continues to haunt the faithful whenever they experience or witness great suffering.

This same problem is also a stumbling block for non-believers trying to accept the idea of an all-powerful and all-loving God. Last year, prominent philosopher Anthony Flew shocked the (academic) world when he publicly announced that he was no longer an atheist but had become a theist.³ Despite expressing a great respect for Christianity, he said he had sincere doubts about ever becoming a Christian precisely because of the problem of evil.⁴

The problem of evil – the question of suffering and why a loving God permits the suffering of innocents – is a vital issue for believers and non-believers alike. As such, it deserves a systematic examination.

Two Kinds of Evil

Let us first understand the terms of our discussion. What do we mean by ‘good’ and ‘evil’? For St Thomas, things are good insofar as they exist, for existence (or being), is a good in itself.

Evil therefore – the opposite of good – cannot be anything that exists. Evil has to be understood as the absence of a good “which is due.”⁵ Evil does not occur in every absence of good but only when the good “naturally due” does not occur. For example, St Thomas explains, the lack of sight is “not an evil in a stone, but it is an evil in an animal; since it is against the nature of a stone to see”.⁶

Next, the Angelic Doctor distinguishes between physical evil (suffering) and moral evil (sin). Physical evil can be understood as the evil that humans passively endure (involuntarily) while sin can be said to be the evil that humans actively do or the good they do not do (voluntarily).⁷

Now, it is clear that God is neither the direct nor indirect cause of moral evil. God is not the direct cause of sin because He is all good and orders all things to himself. God cannot be the indirect cause of sin either; St Thomas explains that if God denies anyone of divine assistance to avoid sin, He does it out of His wisdom and justice.⁸

On the other hand, it seems that God can be said to be the cause of physical evil. This is because He designed the universe to include corruptible creation. God, who causes the good of order in the world, also causes the corruption of things.⁹ Therefore, natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis, which are the result of the laws of nature, are part of God’s plan for the world.