![[satan-and-the-problem-of-evil-cover.png]] # *Satan and the Problem of Evil* by Gregory Boyd: A Review Why does an all-powerful and loving God permit terrible suffering? Christians have wrestled with this question for centuries. In *Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy*, theologian Gregory A. Boyd offers a provocative answer: much of what happens in the world does not reflect God's will at all. Creation is a battlefield in which human and spiritual agents can genuinely resist God's purposes. This is a challenging book, but its central message is deeply practical. When evil occurs, Boyd argues, Christians should not automatically search for a hidden divine purpose. They should recognize evil as an enemy, stand with those who suffer, and join God in resisting it. ## What Kind of Book Is It? *Satan and the Problem of Evil* is a work of Christian philosophical theology and apologetics. More precisely, it is a **theodicy**—an attempt to explain how belief in a good, powerful God can be reconciled with the reality of evil. It is not a novel, biography, or popular guide to demons. Although Satan appears in the title, the book's real subject is the character of God and the nature of creation. Boyd calls his position a **Trinitarian warfare theodicy** because it combines three convictions: - God is the loving Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. - Creation is involved in a genuine conflict between God's kingdom and rebellious powers. - God will ultimately defeat evil, even though creatures can temporarily resist his will. The book is academically serious and often dense. Boyd engages biblical interpretation, philosophy, church history, science, free will, divine foreknowledge, prayer, natural disasters, evolution, Satan, and hell. [IVP Academic currently lists the book at 456 pages](https://www.ivpress.com/satan-and-the-problem-of-evil), so this is not a light introduction. It is best suited to pastors, theology students, thoughtful lay readers, and anyone willing to wrestle carefully with difficult questions. ## What Does the Title Mean? The **problem of evil** asks how three claims can be held together: 1. God is perfectly good. 2. God is all-powerful. 3. Evil and apparently pointless suffering exist. Boyd believes many Christians respond by assuming that everything happens according to a detailed divine plan. He calls this the **blueprint worldview**. On that view, even when an event is evil, God has chosen or specifically permitted it for some higher purpose. Boyd rejects the claim that every tragedy has a secret divine reason. His alternative is the **warfare worldview**. God created angels and humans with meaningful freedom because love cannot be forced. Some creatures used that freedom to rebel. Consequently, history includes events that God opposes rather than secretly ordains. Satan is important because Boyd treats him as the foremost example of a created being whose will genuinely conflicts with God's. Satan is not God's equal, and the universe is not divided between two equally powerful deities. Satan is a finite rebel whose defeat is certain. Nevertheless, his rebellion—and the rebellion of other spiritual and human agents—has real consequences within creation. ## Summary: The Main Points Boyd organizes the heart of his argument around six theses: - **Love must be freely chosen.** A being programmed to behave lovingly would not possess genuine love. Real love requires self-determining freedom. - **Freedom introduces genuine risk.** If creatures are truly free, they may act against God's desires. God cannot guarantee every free choice without turning freedom into an illusion. - **We are responsible for one another.** Love requires the ability to affect other lives. Our decisions therefore have consequences beyond ourselves. - **The power to love includes the power to harm.** The greater our ability to bless others, the greater our potential to injure them when freedom is abused. - **Freedom must have a degree of irrevocability.** If God immediately canceled every harmful consequence, creaturely choices would not carry meaningful weight. - **Creaturely freedom remains finite.** Human beings and angels are not infinitely powerful. They can resist God temporarily, but they cannot prevent his ultimate victory. Boyd then applies this framework to several difficult theological questions: - **Prayer matters because the future is not entirely settled.** Prayer is one way believers participate in God's work rather than merely accept a predetermined outcome. - **Some suffering is gratuitous.** God can bring good out of suffering, but this does not mean God planned every tragedy for a greater purpose. - **“Natural” evil may not be entirely natural.** Boyd argues that disease, disasters, animal suffering, and destructive forces in nature may reflect the corrupting influence of rebellious spiritual agents. - **God's knowledge of the future includes possibilities.** Boyd defends open theism: God perfectly knows everything that can be known, but future free decisions exist partly as possibilities rather than eternally settled facts. - **Hell must be understood in light of God's love.** Boyd questions the traditional doctrine of never-ending conscious torment. Drawing partly on Karl Barth and C. S. Lewis, he proposes a model combining elements of continuing exclusion and annihilation. - **God's victory is certain.** The present conflict is genuine, but it is not an equal contest. Rebellious creatures possess limited freedom, while God retains the wisdom and power to bring creation to its intended conclusion. ## The Principal Figures and Their Characteristics Because this is an argument rather than a story, it does not have “characters” in the ordinary literary sense. Its principal figures and agents are: - **The Triune God:** Perfectly loving, relational, sovereign, resourceful, and committed to creation. God grants freedom and accepts the risk that accompanies it without surrendering ultimate victory. - **Jesus Christ:** The clearest revelation of God and the decisive conqueror of evil. His ministry, death, and resurrection demonstrate that God defeats evil through self-giving love rather than coercive domination. - **The Holy Spirit:** God's active presence within creation, empowering prayer, transformation, resistance to evil, and participation in God's kingdom. - **Satan:** A created, finite spiritual being who becomes the chief rebel against God. He originates and organizes opposition but is neither omnipotent nor equal to God. - **Fallen angels and demons:** Spiritual agents who participate in Satan's rebellion and may corrupt human societies and the natural order. - **Human beings:** Finite but morally significant agents capable of love, rebellion, cooperation, and destruction. Human freedom is real, yet it is influenced by other people, social systems, and spiritual powers. Several historical thinkers also function as important conversation partners. Augustine represents the theological tradition Boyd believes eventually displaced the early church's warfare emphasis. John Calvin represents a strong blueprint account of sovereignty. Karl Barth and C. S. Lewis contribute ideas to Boyd's treatment of hell. ## The History Behind the Book The philosophical problem of evil is ancient. Epicurus is traditionally associated with one of its earliest formulations, while David Hume later made the argument central to modern philosophy of religion. The [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://iep.utm.edu/epicur/) and [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-religion/) provide useful introductions to this history. Christian thinkers have proposed several major responses. Augustine understood evil as a corruption or deprivation of the good and traced moral evil to the misuse of created freedom. His thought became especially influential in Western Christianity. The [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's discussion of Augustine](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/) provides helpful historical context. Boyd accepts the importance of freedom but challenges what he considers the later Augustinian tendency to place every event within an all-encompassing providential plan. He argues that the Bible and early post-apostolic Christianity placed greater emphasis on cosmic conflict, hostile spiritual powers, and Christ's victory over them. The immediate history of Boyd's book began with a paper he presented at Wheaton College in 1995. Afterward, InterVarsity Press editor Rodney Clapp invited him to develop the argument into a book. Boyd originally envisioned one volume covering the Bible, philosophy, and church history. The project expanded into a planned trilogy. The first volume, *God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict*, appeared in 1997 and presented the biblical case for the warfare worldview. *Satan and the Problem of Evil*, published by InterVarsity Press in 2001, became the philosophical second volume. A proposed third book, *The Myth of the Blueprint*, was intended to examine the historical rise of the blueprint worldview but remains listed by [Boyd's ReKnew ministry](https://reknew.org/book/satan-the-problem-of-evil-constructing-a-trinitarian-warfare-theodicy/) as a work in progress. The book also appeared during a heated evangelical debate over **open theism**. Open theists such as Boyd argued that God relates dynamically to creation and knows the future partly as a field of possibilities. Critics believed this compromised divine foreknowledge, sovereignty, and biblical authority. For that reason, the book became more than a discussion of suffering; it became part of a larger controversy over what Christians mean when they speak of God's power and knowledge. ## The Book's Historical Value The historical value of *Satan and the Problem of Evil* lies in its effort to bring spiritual conflict back into the discussion of theodicy. Modern Christian treatments of evil often emphasize human free will, character development, natural law, punishment, or a greater divine purpose. Boyd insists that the Bible's language about Satan, demons, principalities, and powers must also be taken seriously. He places the **Christus Victor** understanding of Christ—Christ as the conqueror of enslaving powers—near the center of the problem of evil. The book is also an important document in the development of contemporary open theism. Even readers who reject Boyd's conclusions can use it to understand why some Christians find the open view pastorally and philosophically compelling. ## Strengths of the Book Boyd's greatest strength is his moral clarity. He refuses to make evil secretly good by calling every tragedy part of God's plan. Abuse, murder, disease, and disaster are enemies to be resisted—not puzzles Christians must justify on God's behalf. The warfare model also matches the way suffering often feels. People experiencing tragedy usually do not feel as though they are standing inside a carefully arranged lesson. They feel attacked, wounded, and disoriented. Boyd gives theological language to that experience while preserving hope in God's presence and final victory. Other strengths include: - A serious engagement with Scripture, philosophy, science, and historical theology. - A strong account of the relationship between love and freedom. - A compelling explanation of why prayer and human action genuinely matter. - A picture of God as opposed to suffering rather than morally implicated in it. - A practical call to join God in resisting evil and caring for its victims. ## Weaknesses and Questions The book does not eliminate every difficulty. In several places it may relocate the problem rather than solve it. If God has the power to intervene but sometimes does not, readers may still ask why God permits a particular atrocity. Appealing to irrevocable freedom explains why choices must have consequences, but it may not fully explain why the worst consequences are allowed to continue. Boyd's treatment of natural evil is even more controversial. Connecting disease, earthquakes, animal suffering, or evolutionary violence to fallen spiritual powers goes beyond what many readers will believe the biblical or scientific evidence can establish. The entire argument also depends heavily on libertarian freedom and open theism. Readers who believe God exhaustively foreknows or ordains the future will reject major parts of Boyd's framework. A [contemporary review from Dallas Theological Seminary](https://voice.dts.edu/review/gregory-a-boyd-satan-and-the-problem-of-evil/) praised the argument's creativity while concluding that it did not fully escape the traditional objections Boyd directed at other theodicies. Finally, despite Boyd's desire to reach nonspecialists, the book can be repetitive and philosophically demanding. Readers wanting a brief pastoral treatment of suffering may find it overwhelming. ## Its Value and Use in Modern Times The book remains valuable in a world marked by war, abuse, terrorism, pandemics, natural disasters, systemic injustice, and personal trauma. Its most helpful modern application is pastoral. Boyd warns Christians against telling suffering people that God caused their pain for a hidden reason. That kind of explanation can deepen a victim's wounds. The warfare worldview instead permits the church to say: “This evil does not reflect God's heart. God is with you, and we will resist it with you.” The book can also encourage active faith. If history is not simply the automatic unfolding of a fixed blueprint, then prayer, compassion, medicine, justice, peacemaking, and responsible choices matter. Believers are participants in God's work rather than spectators waiting for a predetermined plan to unfold. However, its spiritual-warfare language must be used responsibly. It should never replace medical care, psychological treatment, scientific investigation, or attention to social and political causes. Nor should Christians label human opponents as demons or use Satan as an excuse to avoid human accountability. Properly understood, the warfare model should increase compassion and responsibility, not superstition or hostility. ## Final Assessment *Satan and the Problem of Evil* is ambitious, controversial, and imperfect. Its conclusions will not persuade every Christian, particularly those committed to classical Calvinism or exhaustive divine determinism. Its explanations of natural evil and hell are among its most speculative features. Nevertheless, Boyd asks a question the church cannot afford to avoid: **What picture of God are we presenting when we say that every tragedy occurs according to a divine plan?** The lasting contribution of the book is not that it solves every philosophical problem. It is that it makes Christians confront the difference between God defeating evil and God secretly designing it. Boyd presents a God who creates out of love, suffers with his creation, battles everything that destroys it, and invites human beings to join that resistance. ## The One Big Takeaway **Not everything that happens is God's will. Genuine love requires genuine freedom, and genuine freedom creates genuine risk. Therefore, the faithful response to evil is not to explain it away as part of a secret plan, but to resist it, care for its victims, pray, act, and trust in God's final victory.** --- - [[A Citizen of Heaven]] - [[Daily Bible Reading]] - [[Faith - A Devotional]] - [[Hope - A Devotional]] - [[The Historical Value of the Bible]] - [[The Spiritual Value of the Bible]] - [[The Pursuit of Holiness]] - [[Visualizing Spiritual Warfare]] - [[The Wesleyan Quadrilateral]] - [[Understanding Spiritual Warfare--A Comprehensive Guide for Evangelical Christians]] - [[A Biography of Marcus Aurelius]] - [[Abundance Grace]] - [[Home]] ◦ [[About]]