Frank M. Hasel
The One forming light and creating darkness, causing well being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these. Isaiah 45:7.
In the King James Version the text reads, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” The assertion in this text is so bold that the early Christian heretic Marcion used this text to prove that the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New. This passage and other texts (cf. Amos 3:6; Jer 18:11; Lam 3:38) seem to describe God as the author of evil. The problem is: how can a perfect and just God, who is upright and without injustice (Deut 32:4), who does not take pleasure in wickedness and in whom is found no evil (Ps 5:4), who has thoughts of peace and not of calamity (Jer 29:11), who is light and in whom is no darkness (1 John 1:5), and who cannot even be tempted by evil (Jas 1:13), be the author of evil?
God’s sovereignty – The context of this statement makes clear that God’s ultimate sovereignty over this world and His people is affirmed. In His sovereignty, God used even the Persian king Cyrus as His servant to bring deliverance and judgment (Isa 45:1, 2). Thus, “light” and “darkness” here describe not so much the cycle of day and night but stand for “deliverance” and “judgment” through which salvation comes to the people of God. When God delivers His people, He can at the same time bring judgment and through it calamity on nations, as He did in the case of Babylon through Cyrus.
The meaning of “evil” – The Hebrew word for evil (rac) is used in different ways in the Bible. It can mean “evil” as in “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 2:9, 17). In other places it is translated as “disaster” (Jer 26:3, NIV), “ruin” (2 Sam 15:14, NIV), or “wickedness” (Gen 6:5, KJV). The context in Isaiah 45 indicates that the best translation may be “calamity” (NASB and NKJV) or “disaster” (NIV). Contextually, this verse is dealing with God’s supreme sovereignty in judgment, deliverance, and His rule over the earth. Furthermore, it should be noted that the evil spoken of in this text (and in similar passages above) can refer to the evil of punishment or natural disaster and not necessarily to moral evil. God does not create the evil of sin. God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (Jas 1:17, KVJ).
God is not the author of evil – God is not the author or originator of evil. Such an act would be totally contradictory to His whole nature and character as revealed in Scripture. However, God is able to use things (even bad things) in the natural world for His own purposes, and He can use other people, such as King Cyrus who knew nothing as yet of the only true God, to accomplish His ultimate purpose to save. In biblical thinking any disaster falls within the sovereign will of God, even though God is not the author of that evil. In Hebrew thought, God is commonly credited with actively doing that which in Western thought we would say He permits or does not prevent from happening. If God allowed it, He “did” it, the biblical writers would say. God permits evil things, but He never promotes evil. God is responsible for creating moral beings with a free will and the possibility of its misuse, but He is not the author of evil. It is the moral creatures, with their power of free choice, who are responsible for sin and evil.
I find the doing of the
will of God leaves me
no time for disputing
about His plans.
George MacDonald