Evil

Evil, in Scripture's vocabulary, is both a moral category — what is wrong in God's sight and harmful to human beings — and a word for trouble and calamity that befalls them; the Hebrew ra' and the Greek kakos and poneros each carry this double range, and the text regularly treats evil as something to be named, resisted and avoided rather than explained away, as in the plain instruction "Abstain from every form of evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:22). Linguistically, the term is a wide one; Scripture does not restrict it to dramatic wickedness.

Much of the New Testament's practical teaching on evil is relational rather than abstract. The text says that no one lives or dies to himself, since we belong to the Lord in life and death (Romans 14:7–8), and that each person will give account of himself to God (Romans 14:10, 14:12) — which is why judging or despising a brother is treated as a serious matter rather than a matter of taste. Paul applies this to food and freedom: if food causes a brother to stumble, he will not eat meat at all (1 Corinthians 8:13), and he surrenders his freedom to serve others in order to gain them (1 Corinthians 9:19; 10:33). On this understanding, evil includes not only private vice but the damage my liberty may do to another's conscience.

The same passages define evil partly by contrast with the good they name. The text says God's Kingdom is not eating and drinking but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17), and it directs believers to pursue what makes for peace and mutual upbuilding (Romans 14:19), doing everything — eating and drinking included — to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). Where those things are absent or opposed, the biblical writers speak of evil.

Christian traditions differ on several points. The rendering of 1 Thessalonians 5:22 is one: older English versions read "every appearance of evil," while modern versions read "every form of evil," and the two are taken to counsel somewhat different things — avoiding anything that looks wrong to others, or abstaining from evil in all its varieties. Historically, Augustine's teaching that evil has no positive existence of its own but is a privation of good became standard in Western theology, while other Christian thought has stressed evil as an active personal power; the New Testament uses the term for both moral acts and a personal adversary. Traditions also weight the Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8–10 material differently: Catholic and Orthodox teaching tends to stress the obligation not to scandalize the weaker brother, while many Protestant readings stress the liberty of the informed conscience before God, and both appeal to the same texts.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.