Book Review – What About Evil? – A Defense of God’s Sovereign Glory by Scott Christensen

You can find a break down, chapter-by-chapter look at this book and interview with the author by clicking this link.

What Scott Christensen has done here is provide a scholarly and biblical undertaking on the alleged problem of evil. With a brief overview of the history of philosophy in chapter two and then dealing with some of the main explanations for theodicy, Christensen points out the flaws both philosophically and Scripturally with them. He provides a fair and, at times, praise-worthy when called for look at them. Some of the discussion around the free will theodicy will sound familiar from his previous book “What About Free Will” but is important to the discussion.

This isn’t your normal, dry and academic look at the problem of evil. Christensen gives you the answer right on page 6 and comes from the Reformed perspective. After critiquing the other views, he launches into providing support for his view. And just like the Reformed perspective does, and what his view calls for, Christensen goes into a beautiful discussion of who God is, His nature, Jesus’ Incarnation, and the ramifications of God’s work in creation. All this adds to and leads up to putting the point on the fact that God is the ultimate focus of Scripture, creation, history, and yes – even in the theodicy.

Two chapters that should be viewed of high value is the chapter on God being a storyteller. Taking a page from Jordan Peterson but putting it through the Reformed Christian perspective, this chapter probably provided me with some of the most spiritually rich and useful action in applying and living out my Christian faith – no small feat for a scholarly book on the problem of evil! Another chapter that, in a few pages, take an amazing breakdown of an important Christian concept is the chapter on the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. There was a lot of notes and underlining here and would be a great standalone chapter to give someone on the greatness and glory of the Incarnation.

I believe this book does what it needed to do, what other scholarly works tend to fail to do, and does what it did well enough that this sits at the top of my recommendation for the subject. While there might have been a few chapters that could have been boiled down for the purpose of space and focus on the actual theodicy, the same case could be made to expand the book further with more focus on different aspects of God’s nature. Even the final chapter on putting the theodicy into practical living should have been longer with a focus more on action points for the Christian walk. However, that could have been another book in and of itself and from this book I found myself applying what I was reading to my own walk and in answering questions of faith from those of 6 years olds to new Christians to general discussions of life, politics, and faith.

This book is a great tool and a useful addition to the topic of the alleged problem of evil. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has any interest in the subject and want an amazing tool that will challenge you to glorify God and put Him in His rightful place as the apex of life.