Letters from a Skeptic: A Son Wrestles with His Father's Questions about Christianity

by Gregory A. Boyd

But there yet remains at least some natural evil which doesn’t seem due either to the limitations of the world or to the fact that people aren’t as perfectly loving as they were created to be. Deformed babies, for example, aren’t explained by either of these two explanations. How does a theist respond to these? This leads to my third consideration. If the Bible is correct, Dad, human free wills aren’t the only free wills which have been created. The universe is inhabited by innumerable spiritual free beings as well, beings which are not physical, at least not as we understand physics. I know this may seem like a ludicrous idea to you, Dad, but you should at least try to realize that this is a view which has been shared by almost every culture which has ever existed up to our own. Perhaps here our “enlightened” scientific mentality prevents us from understanding something other peoples have always understood. The biblical term for these beings is “angels” or “demons”—but I don’t want you to get the idea of winged, white harp players or red-horned pitchfork holders. There’s nothing in the Bible about such silly notions. They are also called “principalities” and “powers,” which gives much more the impression of a “spiritual force” than an embodied entity. In any case, the Christian understanding, based on Scripture, is that these entities are, like us, personal and free and, like us, some of them have used their freedom for evil. These evil spiritual forces—“demons,” if you w...