Q. 10. If our good God made and governs all things, why is the world full of evil?
Our first parents, Adam and Eve, freely chose to sin against God, and fell from the holiness and happiness in which they were created, plunging the human race into sin, death, and misery.
Genesis 2:17; 3:6–8, 16–19; Ecclesiastes 7:29; Romans 5:12; 8:20–22; 1 Corinthians 15:21–22; Ephesians 2:1–3.
- WSC 13; 17
- Belgic Confession 14; 17
- WCF 6.1; 9.1–2
Freely chose. Before the fall, Adam and Eve had natural free will. “They subjected themselves willingly to sin and consequently to death and the curse, lending their ear to the word of the devil” (Belgic Confession 14). After the fall, the human will is in bondage to sin; apart from God’s grace, the will is not free to do what is truly good (see Q. 12; 49).
Sin … fell. Adam and Eve ate the fruit which God had forbidden. Their sin, and the consequences it entailed, are commonly called the fall or lapse of mankind. While Eve was deceived and the first to transgress God’s commandment, the fall is attributed to Adam as the head of the human race. “In Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22).
Holiness and happiness. Human nature was corrupted through sin (see Q. 12), and human beings lost the close fellowship with God for which they were created (see Q. 1; 8).
Human race. Adam’s sin affected the whole human race after him, even as the head of a river, when it is polluted, poisons the whole body of water. “Man ‘found out to himself many inventions’ of happiness, independent on God; and … by his apostasy from God, he threw not only himself, but likewise the whole creation, which was intimately connected with him, into disorder, misery, death” (Wesley, Sermon 56, “God’s Approbation of His Works”). “The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it” (Romans 8:20).
Sin, death. “Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).
Misery. Man sought to “invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God,” and human history since then has been “the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity). “He lost the blessedness for which he was made, and he found the misery for which he was not made” (Anselm, Proslogion 1).
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