Ouweneel on the Problem of Evil

In the last chapter of his book De schepping in het geding (1981), Dr. W.J. Ouweneel addresses questions related to “the problem of evil.” That will perhaps interest you as a visitor to this site. From an evangelical perspective Ouweneel goes extremely far, and he comes to the following conclusion:

God created moral beings, who could fall into sin and who, according to God’s foreknowledge, also did so, because the very best world could only be reached through the stage of a morally corrupt world. (p. 141)

God has from eternity calculated sin into His plans (indeed, the ultimate perfect world would without the fall even have been unthinkable)… (p. 151)

Here Ouweneel thus states that God calculated sin into His plans and that in order to reach the best conceivable world, the fall was necessary. In this presentation God fully retains the direction and everything truly proceeds “according to His counsel.” You will understand that I wholeheartedly say “amen” to that! Ouweneel also brings forward that by eating of the forbidden fruit man for the first time truly also came to know the good. Thus he writes:

But still it was not a “tree of knowledge of evil” only: it was “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (p. 145)

Ouweneel argues that the new world to come will not be “back to square one,” no, it will be a better and even the best conceivable world, precisely because of the preceding “stage of a morally corrupt world.” Ouweneel puts it this way:

“… in the way of redemption man ultimately receives infinitely more than Adam ever lost.” (p. 141)

Wonderful that Ouweneel brings these things forward in this way! It perfectly agrees with what Scripture teaches, and moreover it truly gives an answer to the question of how an almighty, all-knowing, all-good God can create a world that at present still “lies in the wicked one.”
It is, however, a pity, a real pity, that Ouweneel in the same chapter largely backs down again and weakens and even contradicts the above statements. Then he writes, for example:

Neither may we say that God willed or intended the fall into sin (…) or that it would have been a part of His counsels. (pp. 141 and 143)

… I repeat that man did not have to fall into sin, nor that his fall would have been determined by God; that goes too far. (p. 145)

With these statements the entire preceding argument is in fact undone again. While we first read that God “had calculated sin into His plans,” here Ouweneel writes the opposite by denying that the fall into sin “would have been a part of His counsels.” That is a contradiction of the first order! But why actually Ouweneel’s retreating movement? Why does he shrink back from his own conclusions? I quote further:

It is then difficult to avoid the thought that God nevertheless in some way would have been the author of evil, however indirectly. And that is a dangerous thought… (p. 143)

It seems to me precisely safe to believe God at His Word when He solemnly declares:

“Forming light, and preparing darkness, Making peace, and preparing evil, I [am] Jehovah, doing all these things.” (YLT)
Isaiah 45:7

Does God thereby incur blame? No, on the contrary! It is precisely God’s glory when He creates evil (read: the adversary) with the purpose of bringing about the very best world! Indeed, God would have been a failure (=sinner) if evil had not been part of His plans. And that I call “a dangerous thought.” Ouweneel continues with:

Adam would not have been truly free if in the counsel of God it had been decided that he must sin. And how could he then still be held responsible? (p. 143)

This objection looks exactly like the objection of Paul’s opponents in Romans 9. There Paul argues that it was God who hardened Pharaoh’s heart, so that He might display His power. And then Paul writes: “Thou wilt say, then, to me, Why yet doth He find fault? for His counsel who hath resisted?” And what answer does Paul give to this question? He actually gives no answer. Paul simply denies man the right to call God to account.

“O man! who art thou that art answering against God? shall the thing formed say to Him who did form [it], Why me didst thou make thus? hath not the potter authority over the clay, out of the same lump to make one vessel to honour, and one to dishonour?” (YLT)
Romans 9:20–21

This seems a cruel answer. Unless… you are aware of the final destiny of the whole creation. God knows through which course the ultimate goal can be reached, and because He has full authority over every creature, nothing hinders Him from actually arriving there. If God would not have free authority over His own creatures (the doctrine of free will), then it is in theory possible that a large part of them would never arrive at the destination intended by God. And that is indeed what Ouweneel (and with him the whole Christian world) teaches. Over Ouweneel’s “very best world” hangs a never-ending, pitch-black shadow. It is the world of hell, in which all will end up definitively who have not chosen for God. Because Ouweneel holds on to that, he is forced, despite earlier statements, ultimately to fall back upon “the free will of man” and, in the deepest sense, to deny that everything proceeds “according to the counsel of God’s will.”

Unless we “glorify God as GOD” (and thus acknowledge that with Him NOTHING goes wrong), all our philosophical and theological deliberations are doomed to be nullified, so Scripture teaches (Romans 1:21). We see this illustrated in Ouweneel’s discourses. As long as he starts from a good God who determines all, he makes excellent, Biblical, and logical statements about the origin and meaning of evil. But as soon as he lets go of this starting point and relies on “the free will of man,” he falls into contradictions and his argument ends in the darkness of a never-ending hell…

Delen: