Discourse about the so-called problem of evil frequently proceeds under the supposition that there are two categories of evil: moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil is seen as evil that results from the action of a morally free agent and natural evil is understood as any evil that results from some kind of non-rational physical force; person S punching person S’ with the intention of doing her harm is an example of the former and a child being crushed under the rubble of an earthquake is an example of the latter. I propose that, given the Christian narrative, these two categories are illusory and what philosophers usually describe as natural evil can, on at least one understanding of this narrative, be reduced to moral evil. Toward the endeavor of reduction, it will be helpful to formulate a broad construal of moral evil and of natural evil, each with three necessary conditions. Let us formally define moral evil as:
(ME) An event e is a moral evil only if: (1) e is caused either directly or indirectly by a rational agent S, (2) S is such that she is morally free with respect to making the decision to cause e, and (3) the harm, h, in e to another agent, to an animal, or to an object, caused by S is such that S is morally culpable for h.
Moreover, natural evil may be understood as follows:
(NE) An event e is a natural evil only if: (1) e is caused by another event e1, (2) for any morally free agent, S, S did not cause e1, and (3) the harm, h, in e to another agent to an animal, or to an object, caused by e1 is such that no morally free agent, S1 is morally culpable for h.
Notice that I have broadened my understanding of ME to include cases of mediate or indirect causation. That this broadening is justified will prove to be key to my argument. A preliminary justification: suppose I knock over my coffee mug and the contents conveniently find their way into my computer’s keyboard, ruining the delicate electronics under the plastic keys. When I take the machine to Apple for repairs, I am asked for an explanation: how did this happen? I would likely relate my tale of woe, that I spilled my coffee into my keyboard and that it subsequently stopped working. Who broke my computer? I did. What broke my computer? My coffee did. This is a form of what I will call mediate agent causation. I, an agent, initiated a chain of events, the first of which (my mug’s spilling) was immediately agent caused, and the terminus of the chain (my keyboard’s breaking) was not. Consider, therefore, the following definition of immediate and mediate agent causation:
(1) An event e3 is mediately agent caused only if the first event, e1, in the causal chain leading up to the occurrence of e3 is directly agent caused and the second event, e2, is not.
(2) An event, e1 is immediately agent caused only if some agent S causes e1 to occur and e1 is such that it is not preceded by anything other than S’s action that causes e1.
