Basil was Bishop of Caesarea, monastic reformer, and one of the three Cappadocian Fathers who shaped the theology of the Eastern Church in the fourth century. He is recognized as a Doctor of the Church in both East and West. Basil argued that evil has no independent existence as a substance — it is not a co-eternal dark principle but an absence, arising from the misuse of the will. He approached the problem of evil as a pastoral question rather than a philosophical one: how do ordinary Christians understand and endure suffering? His homilies on divine providence remain among the clearest pastoral treatments of the subject from the patristic era.