THE PROBLEM OF EVIL:

“Videbam Satanam
sicut fulgor de caelo cadentem.” 1
Exonerating God
By: Geoffrey K. Mondello
(Revised August 17,
2024)
The Problem of Evil
Exonerating God
No
single factor is invoked more often in people turning away from God,
or in their failing to believe in Him, than the occurrence — note that
I do not say the “existence” of evil, especially as it manifests itself
in suffering.
The occurrence — not the
existence — of evil appears incompatible with God, or at least a coherent
conception of God as both — and simultaneously — absolutely good and
absolutely powerful. That God and the occurrence of evil should coexist
appears logically contradictory and ontologically incompatible. The
one is effectively the abrogation of the other. The existence of God,
it is argued, precludes (or ought to preclude) the occurrence of evil,
and the occurrence of evil precludes (or ought to preclude) the existence
of God.
While we can readily adduce
empirical evidence, that is to say, tangible instances, of evil to discredit
the existence of God, the availability of evidence to corroborate the
existence of God, on the other hand, is so exiguous that even when such
instances are invoked, they are deemed extraordinary events in the affairs
of men; indeed, events so far from commonplace that we call them miraculous
— that is to say, inexplicable interventions conditionally attributed
to God in the absence of alternate explanations that may yet be forthcoming.
Whether or not this is a sufficient, if concise, summary, the general
implication is clear: evidence of evil overwhelmingly exceeds evidence
of God. If sheer preponderance is the criterion to which we appeal,
God loses.
Evil comes as a scandal to the believer who asks, “How can this be,
given the existence of God?”
To the disbeliever no such scandal arises — only scorn for the
believer who is left in perplexity, unable to deny the existence of
God on the one hand … while equally unable to deny the occurrence of
evil on the other.
We appear to be consigned to either nihilistic resignation in the one
camp (understanding evil as somehow ontologically inherent and
rampant in the universe …. although we cannot explain why), or an unreasoned
and therefore untenable affirmation of the existence of God —
despite the contradictory concurrence of
evil — in the other. Both appear to be damned to perplexity.
Neither has satisfactorily answered the question implicit within every
occurrence of evil: “Why?”
The Problem ... and why
we must respond to it
Before we
begin our attempt to arrive at an answer to the problem of evil, we
must first clearly summarize and completely understand the nature of
the problem itself.
While this may appear obvious, all too often our efforts to make sense
of the experience of evil in our lives and in the world fail to adequately
address implicit or unstated premises apart from which no answer is
either forthcoming or possible.
Failing to follow the premises, we fail to reach a conclusion.
Instead, we reflexively seize what is incontrovertible (the occurrences
of evil) and … understanding nothing of its antecedents, satisfy ourselves
that it is entirely a mystery — in other words, utterly incomprehensible
to us — in fact, so opaque to our ability to reason it through
(which we do not) that we throw up our hands in either frustration or
despair … declaring that either it is the will of God in a way that
we do not understand, or that there can be no God in light of the enormities
that we experience.
In either case — whether we affirm that God exists despite them,
or deny that He exists because of them — we confront the experience
of evil as an impenetrable mystery. Such a facile answer, I suggest,
is not a satisfactory state of affairs at all.
Antecedents
We can only speculate upon the pre-Adamic origin of evil.
That evil preceded the creation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise
is clear.
We are given no explanation of the genesis of evil as it predated the
creation of man. We only know that it had already manifested itself
in the Garden — as something already extrinsic to it and
antagonistic toward it. That is to say, in the Creation
Narrative, we encounter from the outset the parallel existence
of the serpent (a personification of evil) with man prior to the Fall.
I say parallel because the serpent possesses a supernatural
existence parallel to and contemporaneous with, the created nature of
man, much in the way that the supernatural being of Angels coexists
with the natural being of men.
While we are unable to explain evil prior to the creation of
man (simply because no narrative exists to which we can appeal apart
from one utterance of Christ in Saint Luke 10.18: “I saw Satan like
lightning falling from heaven.”), we are not, however, for this
reason absolved from explaining not only how evil came to obtrude upon
the affairs of men, but why it is not incompatible with our conception
of God as all-good and all-powerful.
Philosophy calls this endeavor a theodicy. We needn’t be intimidated
by this, nor think ourselves unequal to it, as we shall see.
To further compound the issue, the problem is no mere academic matter
from which we can stand aloof as so many theorists to hypothetical abstractions.
It is a problem that vexes us, and lacerates us at every turn, believer,
and unbeliever alike. It has a direct and painful bearing upon us; it
affects us, afflicts us, and, yes, sometimes crushes us.
Despite the refuge that the believer has taken in the notion of mystery,
or the cynicism to which the unbeliever consigns himself in hopeless
resignation, each cry out, equally, “Why?” — especially
when the evil experienced or perpetrated is an effrontery to justice
or a violation of innocence.
The skeptic ... most often a casualty of evil … cannot reconcile the
occurrence of evil with the existence of God. The two appear to be …
not just rationally incompatible … but mutually exclusive. What is more,
the empirical evidence of evil is far more preponderant and far more
compelling than any evidence that can be readily adduced to the existence
of God.
The believer, on the other hand, is painfully perplexed, and sometimes
deeply scandalized, by this seeming incompatibility which often buffets
the faith which alone sustains his belief — the faith that, somehow,
the occurrence of evil and the existence of God are not, in the end,
irreconcilable.
First and foremost, then, it is critical to be clear about the context
in which the problem first occurred, and from which all subsequent instances
follow.
Even before this, however,
and as we have said, we must be absolutely clear about the problem itself
which, in summary, follows:
The Problem Summarized:
• We understand
by God an absolutely omniscient Being Who is absolutely good and absolutely
powerful.
• A being deficient
in any of these respects — that is to say, wanting in knowledge, goodness,
or power — we do not understand as God, but as less than God.
• An absolutely
good, absolutely powerful, and absolutely omniscient Being would know
every instance of evil and would neither permit it because He is absolutely
good, or, because He is absolutely powerful, would eradicate it.
• Suffering and
evil, in fact, occur.
• Therefore, God,
from Whom evil cannot be concealed, cannot be absolutely good and absolutely
powerful.
• If absolutely
good, God would eradicate all evil and suffering — but does not, and
therefore, while all-good, He cannot be all-powerful.
• Conversely, if
absolutely powerful, then God could abolish evil and suffering but does
not, and therefore, while all-powerful, He cannot be all good.
• Hence, there is
no God, for by God we understand a Being perfect in goodness and power.
Until we are perfectly clear about this, we can go no further. Unless
we fully grasp the magnitude of this problem, we cannot hope to understand
the reasons why men either fail to believe in God or having once believed,
no longer do so. The occurrence, the experience, of evil, as we had
said in our opening, appears as nothing less than a scandal to believers,
and the cause of disbelief in unbelievers.
It need not be so.
For our part, we must be prepared to follow St. Peter’s exhortation,
“being ready always to satisfy everyone that asks you a reason of that
hope which is in you.” 2
Hence, we begin.
The Solution to the Problem of Evil
As mentioned
earlier, any attempt to come to terms with the problem of evil vis-à-vis
the existence of God inevitably entails linguistic and conceptual complexities,
especially in the way of suppressed premises, or unstated assumptions.
It is absolutely essential that these latent features, these uncritically
assumed concepts long-dormant in language, be made manifest.
What really is the problem of evil, and what really is the nature of
God in its simplest formulation? Can God really be exculpated? …. Can
He be exonerated of this ontological cancer that we call evil? ……And
what is the real nature of evil itself?
All too often we are too facile with our answers through some articulation
of faith that we are not adequately prepared to defend.
Our confrontation with the problem of evil is the greatest confrontation
of all — for it is, in the end, not only the genesis of all that we
suffer but remains the apocalyptic culmination of all that has been
and ever will be.
The Solution Summarized
• The problem of
evil and suffering is a moral problem with existential
consequences that extend to, and are manifested within, the universe
of experience.
• The universe of
moral discourse within the context of which alone a discussion
of the notion of evil is possible …. is not coherent apart from the
notion of volition (the will; specifically, the free will).
• Evil, therefore,
cannot be understood apart from moral agency, especially as it pertains
to man of whom it is predicated as either an agent or
a casualty. That is to say, man either causes evil, is
a casualty of evil, or both.
• An all-good and
all-powerful God would not create man imperfectly. If He chose
to create an imperfect man, He would not be all-good; if He was
unable to do otherwise, He would not be all-powerful.
• Free will is
a perfection in man. If we do not concede that free will is a perfection,
then we cannot not concede … to this concession … which is to say we
cannot hold ourselves free to disagree with it, and deem this
better than to be free to disagree with it, which is logically
untenable.
In a word, if
free will is not a perfection, then it pertains more
to the notion of perfection that the will not be free. However,
apart from free will, there is no universe of moral discourse;
nothing meritorious and nothing blameworthy, no intention, action,
or event in the affairs of men that is susceptible of being
construed as either good or evil — and no action is good, and
conversely, none is evil — for there is no evil and no good
pertaining to the actions of men.
• But there is evil.
• And there is good.
• What is more,
if I am not free not to love God, then my loving God — or anyone or
anything else, for that matter — is without value, for we do not ascribe
the notion of valuation to that which proceeds of necessity.
That the sum of the interior
angles in any triangle is 180 degrees possesses nothing in the way of
valuation. We do not say that it is good or evil. It is geometrically
necessary.
If we agree that free will is a perfection (that it is better to possess
free will than not to possess it), then in creating man, God would have
deprived man of a perfection in his created nature, had He not
endowed man with free will — a notion that would be inconsistent with
either the goodness or the power of God, or both.
• Eve already knew
… was acquainted with … good … for the Garden of Paradise was replete
with everything good, and devoid of anything evil. Eve experienced no
want, no privation. We must keep this in mind, given our classical
understanding of evil as “a privation of good.”
• Eve chose to
know good and evil.
• Eve, by nature
created good, therefore chose … not to know good, the first term,
with which she was already naturally acquainted … but she chose to
know the second term as well: evil. Eve already knew
good, but she knew nothing of evil, for only good existed in
the Garden of Paradise, and she herself was created good.
• Now, it is not
possible to know evil without (apart from) experiencing
evil, any more than it is to know good without experiencing good. We
cannot know, understand, or comprehend, pain and suffering without
— apart from — experiencing pain and suffering — any more
than we can know, understand, and comprehend the color blue without
apart from experiencing the color blue.
• In choosing
to know evil, therefore, Eve inadvertently, but nevertheless
necessarily and concomitantly, chose to experience the evil
of which she erstwhile knew nothing. It was not the case that Eve was
conscious or cognitive of the deleterious nature of evil (for prior
to Original Sin, as we have said, Eve had only known, experienced, good).
• What is more,
no one chooses what is evil except that they misapprehend it as a good,
for every choice is ineluctably a choosing of a perceived good,
even if the good perceived is intrinsically evil.
• The most evil
act is latently a choice of a good extrinsic to the evil act. Man, only
acts for, and is motivated toward, a perceived good, however spurious
the perception or the perceived good. It is impossible to choose an
intrinsically evil act apart from a perceived extrinsic good motivating
the intrinsically evil act.
Eve’s choice,
while free, was nevertheless instigated through the malice and
lie of the Evil One who deceived Eve that an intrinsic evil
— explicitly prohibited by God — was, in fact, an intrinsic
good, which it was not.
I wish to add
that the susceptibility to being deceived does not derogate
from the perfection of man, for the notion of deception is bound
up with the notion of trust, which is an indefeasible good.
The opposite of trust is suspicion which already, and hence
anachronistically, presumes an acquaintance with evil.
• In choosing to
know evil, Eve’s choice necessitated, precipitated, those conditions
alone through which evil can be experienced, e.g., death, suffering,
illness, pain, etc.
Her choosing to
know evil bi-conditionally entailed the privation of the good,
the first term, through which alone we understand evil, the
second term.
Evil instantiates
no esse, no actus essendi, for evil has no substance:
which is to say, evil possesses no being of its own apart from
the good of which it is only privative, a negation in part or
whole. For this reason, we see the two terms conjoined in Holy
Scripture in, “the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”
The existence of the good, does not, as some suggest, still
less necessarily entail, the experience of evil. Adam and Eve
in the state of natural felicity in the Garden of Paradise knew
good apart from any acquaintance with, or any conception of,
evil.
• Evil necessarily
implicates good, but good in no way necessarily implicates evil. The
notion of knowledge by way of contrast and opposition is confined to
relatively few empirical instances and always yields nothing of what
a thing is, only that in contradistinction to what it is not.
To know what a
thing is not tells us nothing of what it is. We do not know
the color blue by its opposition to, its contrast with, or in
contradistinction to, a not-blue, for there is no existent
“not-blue.” There are only other colors we distinguish from
blue — but we do so without invoking the notion of contrast
or opposition. I do not know blue as “not-red” (or, for that
matter, through invoking any or all the other colors). I know
blue in the experience of blue only. If there is an “opposite”
of blue, or a corresponding negative to blue, it can only be
the absence of color — not simply another color that is “not-blue,”
for in that case every other color would be the opposite of
blue — and the opposite of every other color as well.
• Once again, in
Eve’s choosing to know evil, she consequently and concomitantly chose
the conditions under which alone such knowledge was possible. Among
the conditions informing such knowledge were death, suffering, pain
— and all that we associate with evil and understand by evil.
• Far from being
culpable, God warned Adam and Eve to avoid, “the tree of knowledge of
good and evil.”
• To argue that
the goodness of God is compromised by His injunction against the plenitude
of knowledge through His forbidding them to eat of the “tree of knowledge
of good and evil” is spurious inasmuch as it holds knowledge,
and not felicity, to be the greatest good possible to man. In
withholding complete knowledge, it is mistakenly argued, God deprived
man of an intrinsic good.
• Felicity, or complete
happiness, not omniscience, or complete knowledge, is man’s greatest
good, and only that which redounds to happiness is good for man, not
that which redounds to knowledge, and the two do not completely coincide.
• To maintain that
to know evil, suffering, illness, death — and unhappiness — redounds
to man’s happiness is an irreconcilable contradiction. Evil is a privation
of the good; consequently, to choose evil is to choose a privation of
the good, specifically that which vitiates or diminishes the good.
• To maintain, furthermore,
that man can know evil, suffering, illness, and death without experiencing
evil, suffering, illness and death is equally unacceptable. By this
line of reasoning, one whose vision is color-deficient can know the
color purple without ever experiencing the color purple ….. know what
is bitter without experiencing bitterness …. know “hot” without experiencing
hotness. Purple, bitterness, hot — evil, suffering, illness, death (all
that we understand by “evil” are not concepts (in the way, for example,
that a simple binomial equation (1+1=2) is a concept independent of
anything existentially enumerable) but experiences, the knowledge of
which demands the experience and cannot be acquired apart from it any
more than pain can be known apart the experience of pain. Pain, illness,
suffering, death, etc. are in no way inherently, intrinsically good.
No one who has experienced the death of a loved one, the pain of an
injury, or illness of any sort will maintain that such knowledge acquired
through these experiences redounds to their felicity; that their “knowledge”
of any of these evils either promotes or contributes to their happiness.
• God, then, is
in no way culpable of, nor responsible for, the existence of evil. The
occurrence or experience of evil derogates neither from His goodness,
nor detracts from His power.
• If God is all
good, He would confer the perfection of freedom upon man in Adam and
Eve. If He is all-powerful, He would permit the exercise of this freedom.
• To confer the
perfection of freedom of will upon man does not eo ipso imply
that the exercise of the will necessarily involves a choosing between
the good and the not-good or the less-good, still less a choice between
good and evil. Presumably the exercise of this freedom prior to the
Fall was exercised in choices between things of themselves inherently
good, albeit distinguishable in attributes. The fig and the pear are
equally good in nature, but differing in attributes, and to choose the
one over the other is not to imply that the one is good and the other
not-good or even less-good. The choosing to eat the one and not the
other is a choice among alternative goods.
• Nor is the thing
not chosen “less good” in itself than that which is chosen. It is good
proper to its nature. The pear and the fig are distinctly equally nutritious.
• The notion of
choice is only coherent in the context of right reason. Choice (the
exercise of free will), is never gratuitous but is always in accordance
with reason which alone mediates the choice to a coherent end. What
we choose, we choose to coherent ends. In other words, we choose for
a reason — and not spontaneously or gratuitously. Choices are always
ordered to ends, however disordered the choices themselves may be.
• One does not,
for example, choose as the means to nutrition, a stone rather than a
fig. The choosing of the fig does not imply that the stone is not good.
On the other hand, one does not choose figs to build a house, rather
than stones. This does not imply that the fig is not good. The nature
of the fig redounds to nutrition, while the nature of the stone does
not, and the nature of the stone redounds to building while the nature
of the fig does not. One can still choose to eat stones or to build
with figs, but such choices do not accord with ordered reason, which
of itself is also an intrinsic good.
• Only God can bring
good out of evil He does not will, but nevertheless permits
through having conferred the perfection of freedom upon man. While God
could not have endowed man with this perfection without simultaneously
permitting the consequences necessary and intrinsic to it, He is not
Himself the Author of the evil but of that perfection in man through
which — not of necessity (for man is never compelled to choose
— inasmuch as compulsion by definition abrogates choice) — man chooses
evil and subsequently becomes the agent of it.
• The occurrence
of evil, consequently, is neither inconsistent with nor contrary to
the notion of God as absolutely good and absolutely powerful.
The Scriptural Narrative
as the Logical Antecedent:
1.
“And He commanded him, saying: Of every tree of
Paradise thou shalt eat: But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil,
thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou
shalt die the death.” 3
2. “Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the
beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made. And he said to the
woman: Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every
tree of paradise? And the woman answered him, saying: Of the fruit of
the trees that are in paradise we do eat: But of the fruit of the tree
which is in the midst of paradise, God hath commanded us that we should
not eat; and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die. And the
serpent said to the woman: No, you shall not die the death. For God
doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall
be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good
and evil.”
4
Concerning the Genesis
of Evil
The argument thus far articulated is clearly framed within the Biblical
context in which it first presents itself to us, and as such may be
understood as a type of epoche, or bracketed narrative, the authenticity
of which we assume as Catholics — not necessarily apart from discursive
reasoning, but not articulated exclusively or even largely in terms
of it, either. Whatever we can speculate upon regarding the origin of
evil, of one thing only can
we be certain: that the origin of evil is radicated in the will.
If we seek an ontological genesis of evil, we shall not find one … simply
because what we understand as evil is a privation of being and not constituting,
let alone instantiating, a being itself whose ontology is tautologically
reciprocal with evil.
In the strictest sense, there is no purely evil being. This is tantamount
to saying there is a being nothing, or, alternately, a nothing being.
In a word, it is an oxymoron.
This is also not to say that there is no single being, or categories
of beings, from which the good has been exhaustively, but not totally,
deprived, and we understand such beings as evil not in the sense of
what they possess in their being but in the sense of what is
deficient in their being: specifically, the good in whatever
measure — and precisely by that measure — of the absence of good
in their being, are they construed as evil.
In that inverted and simulative realm of evil, just as there are differing
magnitudes of goodness in the holy, there are differing magnitudes of
the absence of goodness in the evil. As some are to greater or
lesser degrees holy … so, to greater or lesser degrees, are the evil.
The ultimate expression of this near total privation of the good is
personal because it pertains to a will, and the person in whose
will we find this nearly total extinction of the good we understand
as Satan, or the devil.
Apart from a coherent notion of the will we find nothing
to which we can assign moral predicates, nothing inculpatory or exculpatory,
praiseworthy or blameworthy, no sanctity and no sin; we find no world
of moral discourse.
To speculate upon the root of all evil from the beginning is
to speculate upon the first instance of the corruption of the will.
We have no Scriptural narrative to which we can appeal in answering
this and thus no phenomenological bracket (or epoche)
in which to address it as Catholics. Consequently, every effort will
be, at best, conjectural.
We at least know that it pertained to freedom … specifically freedom
of the will … apart from which there is no moral discussion. We have
no narrative through which we can answer the question of why,
in the first instance, Satan sinned through a willful refusal to cooperate
with God.
This has been speculated upon by theologians throughout history as attributable
to pride, specifically concerning the Incarnation of Jesus Christ in
the Immaculate womb of Mary which instigated the sin of angelic pride:
specifically, in Satan’s refusal to worship God Who became man
— in the Person of Jesus Christ — for we must remember that, in
the hierarchy of being, “man … was created less than the angels”5. The refusal to worship the True God Who became True Man — the
first corrupt act of free will in the created world, was arguably the
primal evil act, the very first instance of evil in the chronology of
creation.
The earliest allusion to this occurs in the Book of Wisdom: “For God
created man incorruptible, and to the image of His own likeness he made
him. But by the envy of the devil, death came into the world.”7
Thus, while the circumstances surrounding the first defection of the
free will from the supremely good will of God can only be speculated
upon, the free will of Satan nevertheless is resolved into a causa
sui, a cause in and of itself, originating from no prior cause that
could be held to subvert or attenuate the autonomy of the free will
of Satan.
That this primeval malice obtruded upon the natural world through the
equally free agency of the will of Eve and Adam is, unquestionably,
the greatest tragedy in human history. This, however, is not do indict
God for endowing man with free will, as I have argued. Indeed, understood
in the context of the Felix Culpa, the remedy that we find in
salvific history in the Person of Christ Jesus has immeasurably exceeded
in supernatural felicity what had erstwhile only been endowed
with natural felicity and was subsequently lost through sin.
________________________________________
Note: The provenance of this primeval malice which antecedes the creation
of man is the topic of another subject. Evil was in no way intrinsic
to the Garden of Paradise. Happiness was. The intrusion of evil upon
nature through supernatural artifice only indicates the pre-existence
of supernatural evil apart from nature which was created good. While
chronologically antecedent to nature it was not manifest within it,
even while concurrent with it, for the two — the natural and the supernatural
— are ontologically distinct. The present argument purposes to explain
the origin of evil as it touches upon human existence in nature, not
the provenance of evil as it pertains to diabolical being in the supernatural.
1
“I saw Satan like lightning
falling from heaven.” (Saint Luke 10.18)
Apart from the diabolical, by whose instigation Eve was
deceived. The provenance of this primeval malice which antecedes the
creation of man is the topic of another subject. Evil was in no way
intrinsic to the Garden of Paradise. Happiness was. The intrusion of
evil upon nature through supernatural artifice only indicates the pre-existence
of supernatural evil apart from nature which was created good. While
chronologically antecedent to nature it was not manifest within it,
even while concurrent with it, for the two — the natural and the supernatural
— are ontologically distinct. The present argument purposes to explain
the origin of evil as it touches upon human existence in nature, not
the provenance of evil as it pertains to diabolical being in the supernatural.
2 1 St. Peter 3.15
3 Genesis 2.16-17
4
Genesis 3.1-5
5
Hebrews 2.7
6
Wisdom 2.23-24
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Saturday August 18, 2024
Feast of St. Agapitus, Martyr
author of
The Metaphysics of Mysticism: A Commentary
Available on
Amazon
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Totally Faithful to
the Sacred Deposit of Faith entrusted to the
Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum
Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power, and
yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.”
(Apocalypse 3.8)
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