Its not for everyone. There are far more important aspects to approaching the mystery of holiness than philosophical questions.
There is grace, for instance, the awareness that what we receive is not earned, but gift, given freely without conditions, which is freedom from guilt, from self-condemnation, from pressure, performance, and expectation. It is pure acceptance; a realisation that we are already loved and there is nothing left to prove.
Then there are the Beatitudes that turn our understanding of ‘success’, of ‘a life well lived’, completely on its head; where power, strength, fame, and wealth, along with self-seeking pleasure, are exposed as false, shallow and cheap gods, chased after by the superficial and insecure; where the humble, the poor, the weak, the simple, and those who long for justice, who exercise kindness and compassion, are celebrated as the true humans, the ones in Christ’s image. To such as these belongs the kingdom of God. Such as these will inherit the earth. No philosophy or theology is needed here.
But for some the question is deeply troubling, unsettling, and requires facing.
In response to my Letter from Bewcastle for April 2026, I received the following from one reader:
Many thanks for this.
What worries me, though, is that if we can derive a belief in God
from the existence of love, it seems that we could also derive
a Manichean belief in the devil from the existence of evil.
What is meant, do you think, by 'lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil' ?
Is it an accurate translation?
Forgive me for sharing my doubts
They were happy for me to share my response (slightly elaborated here). Not that this is a systematic treatise on the problem of evil, but just some pointers from a Trinitarian perspective that may help someone:
Thank you for sharing – please don’t ever not. I really value the conversation.
One of the aims of the letter was exposing the absurdity of so-called ‘atheism’ (that no one really believes in), and challenging the apathy of agnosticism, rather than a defence of monotheism (which is your challenge).
One thing I would say, though, is that we don’t derive a belief in God from the existence of love. Instead, our belief in love and care and compassion reveals we already believe in God without realising it; love matters to us because we are made in the image of the God of Love. Otherwise it couldn’t – that’s the point about blind chemistry. In other words our compassion, love, appreciation of beauty etc, is a revelation, the ‘eye-opening’, of the other, rather than a basis for belief. So there’s a reversal of logic, a kind of anti-logic, going on. You may think this pedantic, but its a vital epistemological point – knowledge about God comes from revelation, not from logic. (If the latter, God would always be contained by [human] reason, and therefore subject to our understanding, rather than the Mystery for which we search.)
But you are right to push it further. There is undoubtedly a potential for dualism in Christianity, and the problem of evil is one that dogs every faith. It is why Manichaeism proposes a dualistic theology, as does Buddhism (permanence/impermanence), Chinese yin and yang, gnosticism (matter and spirit), and all the ancient near-Eastern religions of the Old Testament (OT). In Hinduism and the animist religions there are multiple gods for the same reason. In these systems, the gods are always played off against each other, and the battle between them explains why there is suffering and evil in the world. Hence the gods always need placating, first one, then another, in order to maintain ‘balance’. Or in the case of Buddhism, the denial of the existence of personal life, itself.
The radical point of the Hebrew faith (and its derivatives, Christianity and Islam) was its monotheism, which leaves it with a unique problem; if there is only one god, how do you explain the presence of evil, if not to say that this god is the source of both good and evil, in which case there is an internal contradiction and a whimsical instability.
As I’m sure you know, the devil or Satan is described in the OT in terms of the fallen archangel ‘Lucifer’ (= ‘morning star’) – created, and originally pure and good. The main passage is Isaiah 14:3-23, but particularly vv12-15:
“How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!
You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God;
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’
But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit."
He is the one attributed as being the serpent in the Garden of Eden that tempted the first woman and man. In this sense, the source of evil is the rebellion of a created being; one of the most powerful of the archangels, but created nonetheless.
But that only kicks the ball further down the road, because the question still lurks: if Lucifer was created by a good God, from where did his rebellion come? At a certain level, the answer must remain unknown.
However, in the monotheistic faiths evil is never given an ontology of its own. In Christianity, because of the revelation of the One God as a Trinity of Love, evil is described as the absence of love, a separation from God, non-participation in the Trinitarian dance, a non-entity, nothingness; and therefore dualism never arises. As a consequence, ‘good’ can never described as the opposite of ‘evil’ (since that would make it dependent on the existence of evil for its definition, like yin and yang), but rather as a defining characteristic of God – ‘God is good’. Evil, instead, derives from the breakdown of communion, of the choice instilled in created beings to choose to love, which implicitly means there is the choice to not love.
And this is where the language of ‘temptation’ and ‘evil’ derives in the Lord’s Prayer. ‘Temptation’ can be seen as our choice to love or not love (‘lead us not into temptation’), whereas ‘evil’ can be seen to relate to the effect of the non-loving choices of others on us (‘but deliver us from evil’). This doesn’t mean evil has no force, or cannot take on a form of life, but rather that it is parasitic – it is given existence and life by agents such as ourselves. (One could expand on this, comparing it to the almost independent ‘super-entity’ that is formed when a crowd seems to take on an uncontrollable existence of its own – which is why I am terrified of large gatherings).
But therein lies the crux – if love is a choice for us, then there must, by implication, exist a similar ‘choice’ in the Godhead. In other words, the concept of ‘choice’ could only exist in creation if it already existed in God. Which we see manifested in the ‘choice’ by God to freely create in the first place. But here we need to stop, because our language concerning ‘choice’ can only exist in, and necessarily implies, temporal space, where there is a ‘before’ and an ‘after’, and these concepts and logical constructs cannot be applied to the mystery of the eternal God.
So this is where we travel the ‘via negativa’, and can only speak of what God is not: there is no evil in God; there is no ‘before’ or ‘after’ in God. And yet we must also say that the revelation of God in Christ, quintessentially in the Incarnation and Cross, shows that God’s love really acts, and interacts, in and with us in our temporality. This is how the language of the Spirit of God derives in the OT, in order to speak of the unapproachable holiness of God that yet involves himself in creation. And so we are left with mystery that is beyond our comprehension. Which is as it should be.
To respond to your doubt, then, I am not afraid to admit to the power and presence of evil. One has only to look at human history to see it manifested through the ages in different ways and through different agents, including the Church. But I do not give it the power of ontology – it is the negativity that belongs to non-existence, separation and denial, and that can therefore only exist parasitically. And I believe in the mystery of God’s Love, that, infinite as it is, has the power, through the unfathomable sacrifice of Christ wherein all evil is consumed and extinguished, to redeem and bring all things back into communion with him. Perhaps, one day, including Lucifer, himself.
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