Article September 28, 1992 ISSUE

Second Thought

Looking again at news and commentary

"From DNA to DEAN"by Arthur Peacocke—December 1991

Zygon

"In the late 1940s, my generation had seen ... what the Allied forces had uncovered at Dachau, Auschwitz, and Belsen. We had looked into the bottomless pit of the potentiality of human evil. ...

"I tried, in my own way, to come to grips with the problem of evil. ... It certainly became clearer, then, and still seems to me valid, that even if the existence of evil raises baffling intellectual questions, ... we have been shown how evil is to be overcome in reality and not just in theory. ...

"It is love that overcomes evil ... and the one Creator God ... was also ... the One whose character is least misleadingly described as Love and whose outgoing activity is an expression of that same nature that shines through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ."

Reprinted with permission.

Editors' comment: There are any number of answers proposed to the so-called "problem of evil." Philosophical and doctrinal answers.

But writings such as the above remind us that the resolution is not to be found in theory or doctrine; it's found in doing, in actually learning to overcome evil.

Events of the twentieth century, from mass genocide to environmental degradation, argue hard for the reality of evil, argue that there is little reason not to be overwhelmed. But being overwhelmed, or even learning to accept evil, is not the Biblical way. It was not Christ Jesus' response to the myriad forms of evil he encountered—hunger, sickness, depravity, death, corruption. And it is not the way of his followers.

St. Paul responded to evil as a Christian: "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."

About the author

[Arthur Peacocke is a British biochemist and an Anglican priest. After a career teaching and researching at Oxford University in biochemistry (studies on DNA and other macromolecules), he became Dean of Clare College, Cambridge.]

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