Origin of Evil by R. F. Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 20, 1875

“Origin of Evil.”

By R. F. Cottrell

I heard a discourse on this theme by a minister who holds to human progression; that is, that man was at first in a savage state, with reasoning faculties but a little above the brute creation, and that in the course of some hundreds of thousands of years he has risen to his present state of development in knowledge, arts, civilization and refinement. The doctrine of the “fall of man” he rejected. That the term is not found in the Scriptures was adduced as conclusive proof that the doctrine is not a Bible doctrine. Instead of falling from a state of holiness, man had, he held, been rising in the scale and progressing toward perfection.

Evil, he held, was not introduced by the act of the creature, but by the will of the Creator. God was the author of evil; it was a part of his all-wise plan. An appeal was made to the Scriptures to prove that God was the originator of sin. The text relied upon as proof of this was Isa. 45:7: “I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and CREATE EVIL; I the Lord do all these things.”

Sophisms, or logical fallacies, are often founded on the ambiguity of terms, the hearers being led astray by the adroit handling of a term, making it convey a meaning not intended in the proof text. Here evil is the ambiguous term. Sin is always an evil; but evil is not always a sin. So far from it, evil is sometimes the just punishment of sin; and that this is its sense in the text, is evident from a comparison with other texts.

“Therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against him. And he hath confirmed his words, which he spake against us by bringing upon us a great evil.” See Dan. 9:11–14. “Shall the trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?” Amos 3:6. “All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us.” Chap. 9:10.

A multitude of texts might be quoted, showing that God hates sin; that evil, in the sense of sin, he is of “purer eyes than to behold;” that it shall not “dwell with” him; and that he creates evil only in the sense of sending his judgments against sin, as in the following: “For the inhabitant of Maroth waited carefully for good; but evil came down from the Lord unto the gate of Jerusalem.” Micah 1:12.

And those who would charge sin against God, by dextrously using terms in a sense directly opposite to the true one, I would refer to the word of the Lord by the prophet: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight.” Isa. 5:20, 21.

R. F. Cottrell.