Evil

  • The Mystery of Iniquity by R.C. Sproul

    FROM TABLETALK | December 2008

    It has been called the Achilles’ heel of the Christian faith. Of course, I’m referring to the classical problem of the existence of evil. Philosophers such as John Stuart Mill have argued that the existence of evil demonstrates that …Read More

  • The True Face of Evil by David Robertson

    FROM TABLETALK | August 2008

    Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.” So writes the Nobel …Read More

  • An Epic in the Making by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | December 2008

    The theme of this month’s Tabletalk is Paradise Lost, which is the title of what most critics would agree is the greatest poem in the English language. John Milton was an English puritan revolutionary who helped overthrow King Charles …Read More

  • The Decree of God by Derek Thomas

    FROM TABLETALK | October 2007

    Joseph has just revealed his true identity to his astonished brothers. It had been a tearful moment (Gen. 46:2, 14; cf. 42:24; 43:30). He is about to engage in a discourse on predestination and the divine decree …Read More

  • Paradise Lost by David VanDrunen

    FROM TABLETALK | December 2008

    In the second chapter of Hebrews, the author notes that God did not appoint angels, but human beings, to rule the world to come (v. 5), and he quotes Psalm 8 to prove it: “You made him for a little …Read More

  • Simul Iustus et Peccator by Kelly Kapic

    FROM TABLETALK | May 2010

    Why do we do the things we do? Scholars struggle to understand human nature and, in particular, what theologians call sin. Where does it come from and why do we do it? In 2002, James Waller produced a careful work …Read More

  • What’s the Problem? by Burk Parsons

    FROM TABLETALK | June 2006

    You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that evil exists. You don’t even have to be a theologian to know that evil exists. All that is necessary for you to know that evil exists is …Read More

  • The Problem of Pain by R.C. Sproul

    FROM TABLETALK | June 2006

    The problem of evil has been defined as the Achilles’ heel of the Christian faith. For centuries people have wrestled with the conundrum, how a good and loving God could allow evil and pain to be so prevalent in His …Read More

  • The Potter’s Freedom by E. Calvin Beisner

    FROM TABLETALK | June 2006

    Of all the challenges to the Christian faith, the most powerful has been the “problem of evil” — the alleged inconsistency of believing in the God of Scripture while recognizing the occurrence of evil. Why would a good God permit gratuitous …Read More

  • Why? The Nagging Question by Paul Helm

    FROM TABLETALK | June 2006

    We routinely speak of “the problem of evil.” But during the Christian era there have been two main problems of evil, and it is important to distinguish these, as well as how Christians ought to respond to them. Let us …Read More

  • Turning Evil on Its Head by Joni Eareckson Tada

    FROM TABLETALK | June 2006

    Ask my husband; I am no theologian. I’ve never read Calvin’s Institutes all the way through, nor do I know Greek or Hebrew. But years ago, when I snapped my neck under the weight of a dive into …Read More

  • What’s Our Problem? by R.C. Sproul Jr.

    FROM TABLETALK | June 2006

    There is a great divide between the city of God and the city of man. The competing armies of the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, however, have this much in common — we’re all sinners …Read More

  • Bringing Christ Into the Problem by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | June 2006

    Charles Darwin finally gave up his belief in God not because he discovered evidence for evolution by natural selection (a theory he developed some years earlier) but because of his anguish at the death of his ten-year-old daughter. When he …Read More

  • He Who Has Ears by R.C. Sproul Jr.

    FROM TABLETALK | November 2007

    Lord Acton was absolutely right that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. He may have been more right, however, if he had adapted a bit of biblical wisdom in articulating the dangers of power. What if he …Read More

  • Passionate Complacency by Burk Parsons

    FROM TABLETALK | March 2006

    Sir Edmund Burke is quoted as having said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”— a true statement indeed. For as the history of civilization has shown, when we stand by …Read More