Beatific Governance and the Problems of Evil

Abstract

Several authors have recently argued that the Reformed doctrine of providence poses particular problems of evil that are intractable. How can one hold to a robust, Reformed doctrine of providence without either making God the author of evil or turning God into a Machiavellian tyrant? In this paper, I outline a model of providence I call “Beatific Governance”, in which God ordains and directs all that comes to pass unto the display of his beauty in all things without being the author of evil; and he does so, I argue, without violating an agent-causal view of freedom. I then resource this model to address several formulations of the problem of evil.