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THE PROBLEM OF EVIL:
![The Problem of Evil: Exonerating God](images/evil-angel-1.jpg)
“Videbam Satanam
sicut fulgor de caelo cadentem.” *
Exonerating God
By: Geoffrey K. Mondello
(Revised February 16, 2023)
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 (evil is
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 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 (an embodiment 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
1), 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, and withal, “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 asketh you a reason of that hope which is in
you.” (1 St. Peter 3.15). 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 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 (the penultimate
of the superlative perfect) than to be free to disagree with it. 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 — 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 —
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.
• Eve
chose to know good and evil.
• Eve, by
nature created good, therefore chose — not to know good, the first term,
with which we 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 evilest
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. 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 biconditionally entailed
the privation of the good, the first term, through which alone we understand
evil, the second term. Evil is not substantival, 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, “ligno autem scientia boni
et mali,” or “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 entirely
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 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.”
“... de ligno autem scientiae boni et mali ne comedas: in quocumque
enim die comederis ex eo, morte morieris.” (Genesis 2.16-17)
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.”
“Sed et
serpens erat callidior cunctis animantibus terrae quae fecerat Dominus
Deus. Qui dixit ad mulierem: Cur praecepit vobis Deus ut non comederetis
de omni ligno paradisi? Cui respondit mulier: De fructu lignorum,
quae sunt in paradiso, vescimur: de fructu vero ligni quod est in
medio paradisi, praecepit nobis Deus ne comederemus, et ne tangeremus
illud, ne forte moriamur. Dixit autem serpens ad mulierem: Nequaquam
morte moriemini. Scit enim Deus quod in quocumque die comederitis
ex eo, aperientur oculi vestri, et eritis sicut dii, scientes bonum
et malum.” (Genesis 3.1-5)
Concerning the Genesis
of Evil
As one reader
pointed out, the argument above does not address the genesis of evil
ab initio:
It “does not address
the idea of the origin of evil. It does not explain how evil came about.
It does not exonerate God or vindicate the assertion that He is not
responsible in some way, either directly or indirectly, for what we
call “evil.”
This is a point
well taken. 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.
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
are they construed as evil. In that inverted and ever mimicking world
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 ultimate 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. Just as the
will is the radix bonorum, it is the radix malorum as
well.
To speculate upon
the radix malorum ab initio (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 (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. It has been speculated upon by theologians throughout history
as attributable to pride (e.g. concerning the Incarnation of Jesus Christ
in the Immaculate womb of Mary and the angelic pride this instigated
through the refusal to worship God Who became man (Verbum caro factum
est 4) “man who was created less than the angels”
5 for the sake of our salvation 6 and to Whom,
as True God and True Man,7 worship is due), itself an expression
of the will.
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 would subvert
or attenuate the notion of the authenticity of the free will itself.
Objections Answered
The following questions
were submitted and the line of reasoning is instructive in further elaborating
the problem of evil and a coherent response to it. I have abbreviated
the questions and eliminated redundancies in them for the sake of concision
and clarity. Because they are common objections, it is well to state
them and answer them in turn.
Objection 1:
Why does evil exist at all?
“I don’t think
it’s necessary as such to pin-point the precise time or place when the
first evil thought or act occurred: we should only really be concerned
about why it exists in the first place.”
Reply:
The possibility
(not the actuality) of evil understood as the privation of good is the
condition of the free will. To argue that evil “exist” as a necessary
condition to our understanding or apprehending the good (analogous to
the proposition that, —unless we do not know (experience) pain we cannot
know (experience) its presumed opposite, pleasure — which is a discredited
argument, for we do not, in fact, know (experience) pleasure merely
in contradistinction from pain. There are many types of pain. Does each
have its opposite in pleasure as a necessary condition to experiencing
that pain? If, so, then please tell me what the opposite and corresponding
pleasure is to having forcefully struck one’s thumb with a hammer and
experiencing the resulting pain. Is it a “pleasurable” thumb? Of course,
this is a reduction ad absurdam and need not be pursued.
Objection II:
The Paradigm of the Perfect Programmer
“If we can look
at this situation in an analogous way, God could be likened to a programmer,
they create something. The programmer has the knowledge and certain
foresight to predict how his program would run, he creates his program
so that it is safe for the user to run, he has safe-guarded it against
attacks as best as he knows how, but eventually over time, due to his
finite knowledge, a loophole is found and another user hacks it, or
renders it into something for malicious intent.”
Reply:
Your analogy fails
altogether. Programmers do not create — nor is their “knowledge” in
any way possessed of the apodictic certainty that we find invested in,
say, analytical propositions such that any possible outcome must follow
— and necessarily so — from irrefragable premises. Programmers do not
bring something into existence ex nihilo; they merely synthetize, constructing
source code from already existing binary information into object code.
Yes? This is no mere carping. Linguistic precision is absolutely necessary
to any plausible explication of the problem evil. You could as well
have used a child with Legos and wheels as your analogue. This is not
being unkind. It is merely being necessarily clear.
Nor is it the case
that God is not omniscient, unlike the programmer. I earnestly suggest
you read David Hume’s analysis of the Problem of Induction in
his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding — it is first-year
freshman philosophy, and very accessible — understanding this will help
you see in the problem inherent in your argument. In so many words,
all the possible combinations considered by your hypothetical programmer
not merely cannot be logically anticipated, but even the first presumed
causal nexus between the source language and the low-level compiler
is only probable at best in resulting in any intended executable — and
may result in something quite different in the next instance.
Objection III:
The Omniscience of God Necessarily Implicates God in Evil
“God is omniscient,
He knows the results of his actions over an infinite period of time,
He knew when that first instance of evil would arise, so in a sense
they [the programmer and God] are very alike, but yet very different
because God should by definition have (or be able to) create a scenario
(program) where no fault arises (evil).”
Reply:
In other words,
God could have created a non-moral universe —and such a universe would
be the best of all possible worlds. This is a very old argument that
would be tiresome to recapitulate, and I suggest that you read it at
your leisure. To cut to the chase, God could have created a world of
automatons, in your estimation, incapable of choosing evil because there
would be no evil from which to choose. Essentially it is a universe
without moral predicates — which would, eo ipso, be a universal
within which there would be no will or volition to which alone moral
predication is coherently both ascribable and attributable. But a world
without will or volition is not a moral world. There still could be
choices between competing goods, but we could not say of such choices
that they possess moral predicates. We could still choose, but we could
only choose good, which is tantamount to saying that we have no moral
choice. All possible choices would be good. What is chosen would always
be good — but we have argued that evil is radicated in the will. Then
every will would necessarily be good and incapable of evil. A necessarily
good will would necessarily always choose the good even were the good
to coexist with evil (even understood as something actually subsistent,
which it is not, rather than as a privation of the good, which it is).
So, once again, a notion of authentic choice is essentially subverted.
What is chosen would always be good and the will which chooses would
be indefectibly good. A coherent concept of moral agency under such
conditions is impossible. No choice is laudable, because it is necessary,
and nothing chosen is other than good.
To understand the
will as the origin of all moral agency, even as it expresses itself
materially, and at that the same time also ask what is the origin of
the free will is to ask what is the origin of the origin. This question
results in an absurd tautology. “What motivates the will to will?” is
a question that is regressive ad infinitum unless the will is
understood as the motivating agency itself capable of appropriating
distinguishable choices freely.
Objection IV:
Evil is not in the Will
“I also do not
agree with your statement: “that the origin of evil is radicated in
the will.” I think the origin of evil may be realized through
free will, but not radicated in it. For evil cannot occur without there
having been a framework for it to occur, in other words, the potential
for evil to occur must exist for it to have any chance of it existing,
and that potential has existed with creation, and hence the creator's
hand has been explicitly and solely a part of that.”
Reply:
That necessary
framework we understand to be libero voluntate, the freedom of
the will, which is recognized as a perfection accorded man by God; id
est, to be endowed with, rather than deprived of, freedom is conceded
to be an eminent good redounding to the perfection of man. Moreover,
evil is a privation of the good, and the “framework” for the very possibility
of evil is the good of which alone it is privative. To argue that there
can be a “framework” apart from the good in which alone evil can occur
is contradictory since it is precisely a privation of the good by which
we understand the concept of evil.
Objection V:
Evil Contradicts God’s Omnipotence
“If God has had
no hand in creating evil, then that implies that's an element of creation
that he has had no control over and that ultimately in his will to create
something good he had to have evil necessarily tied in, which contradicts
omnipotence, and necessarily implicates him as culpable.”
Reply:
Evil, as we have
repeatedly said, is ontological privation — not, as you appear to suggest,
a being of some mysterious sort. It is a privation of what should be.
It is much like asking why God created nothing, or the absence of something
that should be. One cannot — even God —create nothing. God can choose
not the create something, but He cannot choose to create nothing, for
nothing is the negation of something, and even if it were possible for
nothing to be created without contradiction, what would we call it?
Nothing. It is a circular, contradictory argument. What is more, all
that God created is good according to the Genesis account.
Objection VI:
The Omnipotence of God and Evil in the Fallen Angels
“Let us consider
the practically observable source of evil, I take it that the rebelliousness
of man is the result or at least a part of the actions of Lucifer? If
God is omnipotent and omniscient, then He would have foreseen the actions
of Lucifer before creating him. Given the infinite powers of God as
implied by Scripture, it would have been possible for him to create
an angel like Lucifer that he would have known would not have strayed.”
Reply:
“… practically
observable source of evil …”? I do not understand this statement, so
I cannot answer it. I will conjecture that you are suggesting that God
could have created the angels less perfectly, or possessed of a lesser
degree of perfection than we find in the perfection of free will with
which He endowed them? But then God would not be perfectly good were
He to withhold a perfection in justice due the created nature of a being.
________________________________________
* “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 enacted in nature, not the provenance
of evil as it pertains to diabolical being enacted in the supernatural.
3
De Divinis Nominibus 4.31, (Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite);
Summa Theologiae, Question 103 Article 8 (St. Thomas Aquinas), etc.
4 St.
John 1.14
5 Hebrews
2.7 &
6 Philippians
2:7
7
Symbolum Nicaenum — Nicene Creed, circa 325 A.D.
“... by one man's
offence death reigned ...” (Romans 5.17)
“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.” (Wisdom 2.23-24)
† Evil has
no existence, only occurrence. It is, as we have seen, the privation
— in whatever measure — of that which is good.
* “Cum essem
párvulus, loquébar ut párvulus, cogitábam ut párvulus. Quando autem
factus sum vir, evacuávi quæ erant párvuli.” (I Corinthians
13.11)
Contributed
by:
Geoffrey K. Mondello
author of
The Metaphysics of Mysticism: A Commentary
Available on
Amazon
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