Chapter 2 of Evil and the Justice of God

In the second chapter of his book, "What Can God Do About Evil?" Wright focuses on the Old Testament. He notes that there the Old Testament does not forthrightly address the problem of evil in a good world. Yes, there are a few tangential glimpses of evil as an unwanted marauder in God's good creation, but they aren't very satisfying answers. He writes, "The Old Testament oscillates among three things: evil seen as idolatry and consequent dehumanization; evil as what wicked people do, not least what they do to the righteous; and evil as the work of the "satan" (a Hebrew word meaning "accuser"). He acknowledges that none of these are really explanations, and that the Bible "simply doesn't appear to want to say what God can say about evil."

He spends the first third of the chapter discussing the fall, the tower of Babel, the flood, and God's covenant with Abraham and the mixture of good and bad in the stories of Genesis. He then says,

Somehow, strangely (and to us sometimes even annoyingly), the Creator God will not simply abolish evil from his world. The question that swirls around these discussions is, Why not? We are not given an answer; we are instead informed in no uncertain terms that God will contain evil, that he will restrain it, that he will prevent it from doing its worst, and that he will even on occasion use the malice of human beings to further his own strange purposes.

The Psalms frequently lament about the state of affairs: the evil prosper, the good suffer, and it doesn't make any sense. Yet they acknowledge that somehow God remains sovereign over the paradox of good and evil.

Wright then focuses on three specific texts that address evil, Isaiah 40-55, Daniel 7, and Job, and looks for clues in them. He concludes the chapter by making four observations. 1. The satan, evil personified, plays an important but not too important role. 2. The responsibility that humans bear for evil is undeniable and universal in extent. 3. There is a connection between human evil and "the enslavement of creation" but is complicated and unclear. At this point he notes that the Bible offers no theory for natural evil, evil like earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, etc. The Bible's focus is on moral evil, evil created by human beings. 4. The Old Testament does not address evil in a philosophically satisfying way, with a logically clear and understandable explanation of it. He writes,

At no point does the picture collapse into the simplistic one which so many skeptics assume must be what religious people believe, in which God is the omnicompetent managing director of a very large machine and ought to be able to keep in in proper working order. What we are offered instead is stranger and more mysterious: a narrative of God's project of justice within a world of injustice.

He concludes by stating that within this narrative lie the seeds that he will address in chapter 3, "Evil and the Crucified God."