Many people, strangely, blame good for evil rather than blaming evil for evil. God, who is wholly and only good, is simultaneously both sovereign and not the author of evil, and yet evil occurs. How to explain this is what the present article tries to show from a squarely Biblical perspective.
On the other hand, mankind as a whole has presented himself to the wicked one as his slave: "Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?" (Romans 6:16; cf. 2 Corinthians 4:4, Ephesians 2:2, Revelation 12:9).
Even to the post-resurrection Church, St. John wrote, "The whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one" (1 John 5:19). Only those in Christ are set free. In other words, mankind, having given control of himself to the evil one, has as a consequence given his rightful dominion of the earth to the control of the evil one. Although the earth is given by God to man, through sin man has become an agent of the evil one and thereby bequeathed control of the earth to the evil one.
Now, regarding theodicy, since the earth is controlled practically by evil, what grounds remain for anyone wondering why evil is in the world? What grounds remain for questioning either God's goodness or His existence based on the presence of evil in the world? According to the Bible it appears that since the practical dominion of the earth is man's, then all evil is squarely the responsibility of man, and caused through man by his own sin and by his being submitted to the evil one.
Since evil has no existence in itself but is a corruption and misuse of the good, God cannot be blamed for evil but only blamed for the possibility of evil, which is to say people are critiquing God for creating free will. (If there is no free will then there is no critique.) In other words, God creates the possibility of both good and evil, and so revealing the mechanism of the world's evil shifts the argument regarding the responsibility for evil's existence: God who is good makes man good and therefore makes man responsible for man's own evil. Man creates it, so to speak, by the misuse of the gift of his freewill by submitting it to the evil one. Sadly, people would often rather blame the Good for the evil.
It is one thing to blame God for evil, and another to blame God for creating an environment in which one can freely depart from the good He creates and wills. God is therefore not to blame for evil, whether it be natural as in the case of tornadoes or certain diseases, or moral as in the case of theft or war, for the mediating agency that maintains the world's balance is, by design, man. Just as a small cog when damaged can ruin the right functioning of a large machine, so man's moral injury likewise sets the whole earth out of right balance. If man had full use of his natural and moral faculties, with no interference of the evil one, it is entirely possible that there would be neither disease nor destruction. Evil can therefore be blamed on evil.
-Fr. Joshua Schooping
