(The following was transcribed from the Q&A portion of the late Rev. Dr. Greg Bahnsen’s apologetic lecture series titled, “Loving God with All Your Mind.”)

Question: If God is all love and righteousness, then how did evil come about?

Dr. Bahnsen: I don’t know.

[After an uncomfortable few seconds of silence, he continues…]

Oh, is that not adequate? 

[Laughter.]

I don’t know because the Bible doesn’t tell us how it is that God, who is perfect, nevertheless could create a creature like Satan that is imperfect. 

But I do know that man is not the same as God, and that it is not at all philosophically disturbing to think that God could create a creature that is less than him and therefore is not able to do all that He does and, in that sense, subject to doing what is evil.

But if you want to know the psychological mechanism by which a man that was morally pure, like Adam, or in the first instance Eve, was able to conceive of rebellion against God and have a desire to do it, the Bible does not tell us how that comes about. 

The Bible does tell us, nevertheless, that you cannot make sense of evil apart from knowing that God is the ultimate standard and that it was introduced into this world by the rebellion of man and that only God can overcome it.

The Bible tells us that God does all things well, so that even though Eve, and Adam following her, sinned against God and did that which was contrary to His revealed will, God’s ordaining it was not for evil purposes. God is not the author of evil and God will use even the evil of men to bring glory to Him and to accomplish good purposes in the end. 

And, believe it or not, the Bible says that when the wicked are cast into hell, though they will be in torment, even they will acknowledge the justice of God that they are getting what comes to them.

Now, I can tell you all those things about evil and expound upon them, but the Bible does not tell us the mechanism, psychologically, by which a man, who was unfallen, was able to rebel against God. The Bible does tell us that we must trust God about this matter.

Now, what are your options? You can either say, “Well God, you either explain to me why you did this and how you did it, or I’m not going to follow you.” Or you could say, “No, I bow my heart and my mind to you and I trust you, as an Ultimate Presupposition, that you do all things well. And since it’s an ultimate presupposition, it is that by which I evaluate everything else and I do not call you into question. 

…If someone says to God, “I will not trust you until you give an account to me,” stop and think about the implication of that. That means that the person who has issued the challenge to God say, “I stand at the bench and, God, you stand in the dock. And when you make yourself worthwhile to me; when you vindicate your ways to me, then I will bow to you as God.”

You see, there is an internal contradiction in taking that approach. Because what you are saying is, “I will be superior to you; authoritative over you; I will judge you, and if you pass my test, then I will grant that you are my Maker and that I have to submit to you and that you are the Superior One.” Well, you can’t have it both ways. 

Now, what happened in the Garden of Eden according to the teaching of Scripture? What happened in the Garden of Eden was just a miniature, microcosmic version of what we’ve just been talking about: man standing in judgment over God. God had said to Adam and Eve they could eat of anything but not of this one tree. Satan comes along and says, “You’re not going to die if you eat of that tree; God’s hypothesis is wrong. And Eve makes the mistake of falling for the subtlety of Satan, and she decides that she will make the ultimate decision here. She doesn’t rebuke Satan. She doesn’t assume, as a presupposition, the truth of God; she decides that she’ll determine what is good and evil for herself. And that is exactly what people who challenge the goodness of God in [His} allowing evil to come into this world are doing. They are saying, “I will stand in judgment over you, God, so that you might eventually become my God.” But anybody who is so defiant as to put God to the test, will never really allow God to be God. 

So, what we are left with is an ultimate mystery, here, that calls upon you trust God that He does all things well.