1Our Lady of Thornwood

The Question of Evil

Director: Fr Cathal Deveney, LC

Student: Br Máté Benkóczy, LC
Bachelors Thesis

April 28, 2007

Center for Higher Studies
Thornwood, New York
 Table of Content

Introduction..……………………………………………………………………………3

The Christian and the Greek Understanding of Evil………………..……………4

What Is Evil......................................................................................................................6

I. Physical Evil..……………………………………………………………….....6
II. Moral Evil...…………………………………………………………………...8

The Effect of Evil on Nature…….………………………………………………….12

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..13

Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………...15

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Introduction

At the very beginning of the Encyclical letter of Fides et Ratio John Paul the
Great addresses some questions of the human heart, that have been constantly returning
throughout the flux of history. Among those questions he mentions the following: why is
there evil? In this paper I will try to answer this question taking as a guide the chapter of
Christian Optimism in the book of The Spirit of the medieval Philosphy of Etienne
Gilson. Gilson puts the doctrine of mediaeval philosophy together contrasts it with the
Greek philosophy and draws the conclusion which will be quite different from the
common belief about Christians’ understanding of this topic.

“The Church is not a stranger to this journey of discovery, nor could she ever be.
From the moment when, through the Pascal Mystery, she received the gift of the ultimate
about human life, the Church has made her pilgrim way along the path of the world to
proclaim that Jesus Christ is the “the way the truth and the life1”2”. Gilson will point out
many instances where the Christian philosopher inspired by revelation was able to
discover the objective truth about the world and reality itself and thus about evil as well.
He himself called the philosophy of Middle Ages “Christian philosophy”, as the
“philosophy which although keeping the two orders [of faith and reason] formally
distinct, nevertheless considers the Christian revelation indispensable auxiliary to
reason.”3” In this chapter he will point this fact out many times by showing that
Christians just because they are Christians have to think in a positive way about all reality
since that comes from the creative act of God. This doctrine of creation is which will lead
Augustine and many other Christian philosophers to tackle the problem of evil.

1
Jn., 14, 6
2
JOHN PAUL II, Fides et Ratio, 2
3
A. MAURER, “Thomism” in New Catholic Encyclopedia , Catholic University of America,
Washington DC, vol. 14, 126-138

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 The Christian understanding of evil was mainly elaborated by St Augustine and
was adopted by other mediaeval Christian philosophers such as St Thomas and Blessed
Duns Scotus as their own. The Christianity worldview, even though for the first glance
seems pessimistic as opposed to the Greek one, has a fundamentally optimistic
explanation for the presence of evil in creation.

Many think that the Middle Ages, which is the time of flourishing Christian
philosophy, was a radically pessimistic way of looking at reality, because Jesus Christ
himself preached the self-denial detachment from worldly goods, and other saints
following his example preached and lived in the same way. This detachment from
worldly goods, this spirit of denial presents Christianity as a fundamentally pessimistic
way of understanding of the world and relating to it. And so in answer to this alleged
pessimism the following generation, “The Renaissance called up the gods of Greece once
more from the place where they had laid them, at least it called up the spirit that gave
them birth and to set over against Pascal we have Voltaire, against St. Bernard,
Condorcet.4” That this alleged pessimism and repugnance of Christianity about the world
is mistaken becomes obvious by considering and comparing Greek philosophy to the
mediaeval philosophy.

The Christian and the Greek understanding of Evil

The foundation upon which Christian philosophy’s explanation of evil is built, is

in the first chapter of the Genesis, where we see God creating the world and seeing the
work of his own hands, He declares that “it is good” and at the end of the last day of
creation He takes a comprehensive look at the whole of creation and sees that it is very
good.5 Gilson points out that this is a foundational truth which is pointed at in revelation,
and which is solid enough to sustain the philosophical reflections. The goodness of all
4
E. Gilson The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy ,109
5
Gen. 1;13

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that is, is a necessary consequence, as Gilson shows by referring to Iraeneus, of the
doctrine of creation. The creative act happens without any secondary causality. It is a
good God who gives existence to everything. God created everything and He is good
therefore the creatures that are the effects of his creation have to be like their cause, that
is: good. Here is where the philosopher has to work and give the answer why is it so.

St Augustine saw the presence of evil and good in the world and the question
came to him “If there is no God, whence comes the good? But if there is a God, whence
comes the evil?6” Here the Greeks and Plotinus give the answer that the principle of evil
is matter, he can admit that since for him being is good and therefore, its opposite what is
non-being, has to be evil. Matter in a Platonic sense is non-existent. Matter, then, is for
the Greeks and for Plotinus as well, the principle of evil (insofar as it is non-existing).
By looking at the relationship of body and soul this becomes very obvious. According to
Plato the soul is imprisoned in the body and waits its liberation, which happens after
death when the soul is separated from the body, thus the body which constitutes the
material dimension of man is the principle of his misery and suffering7.

Plotinus following the long tradition of Greek philosophy to explain this problem
says that the cause of evil is matter, since matter in a certain sense insofar as it is not
good is non-being which is opposed to being, to the source of all goodness. St Augustine,
who was the first Christian philosopher to address this problem, did not accept the
explanation of Plotinus, because he could not accept it. It is due to the difference between
the Christian conception of God‘s creation and the Greek understanding of the world’s
coming into being. Plotinus can accept all this since it fits perfectly in his philosophical
system, but St Augustine as a Christian philosopher can not admit that God, goodness
himself, who is the Author and Creator of all things would create something that is evil.
That would be a contradiction in terms. Gilson here points out that this is a perfect
example how the Christian philosopher led by a religious principles was able to discover
good in everything and how this optimism became a metaphysical optimism.

6
E. Gilson The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy ,110
7
Cf. Plato Phaedo, 81, C

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What Is Evil

To have a better understanding of what physical evil is we have to make some

dialectical considerations regarding matter as such. Even if we take matter as “absolutely
formless and without quality8” it can still be called good since it is still able to receive a
form and thus become good. It is good in the sense that, even though it is only a pure
ability, it can still receive a form, and thus become a being. St Thomas explains the
goodness of prime matter saying “ every subject, even prime matter, inasmuch as it is in
potentiality in regard to any perfection whatsoever, from the very fact that it is in
potentiality has the nature of good9”. Beings are from God and all things that are from
God are good. Applying these principles for the doctrine of creation: “If matter is good
we can rest assured that it is the work of God;[…] if it is the work of God we can be quite
sure that it is good.10” Thus everything that is, including spiritual beings, insofar as they
are, they are good.

The principle and the explanation of the intrinsic goodness of all that is, is the
phrase of the Genesis “Ego Sum Qui Sum11” is the principle upon which his reflection is
based. God is Being whose essence is his act of being, and therefore He is fully realized
and in him therefore there is no change at all. He is perfectly immutable. He is Being par
excellence and everything has received its being from him. So his contrary is that which
is not. This means that everything in nature is good, but all that is good is from God.
Therefore the origin of everything in nature has to be God12

8
St. Augustine, De Natura Boni, Ch 18
9
St. Thomas A., De Malo q. I art. 2, resp.
10
E. Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, 112
11
Ex. 3, 14
12
Cf. St. Augustine, De Natura Boni, Ch 19

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I. Physical Evil

There are two reasons why things could be called evil in the physical order.
Things are good, and among them there is some that are better than others and thus
necessarily some that have lesser degree of goodness than others. The lesser goods in a
certain sense could be called evil. The other reason on account of constant generation and
corruption of living things takes place, the corruption of these beings in the Universe,
which constitutes the so called the phenomenon of physical evil.

It would be a certain exaggeration to call something evil just because there are not
equally good and are limited to a certain degree of goodness. This would work in a very
qualified sense and would not be the proper use of the term evil. Moreover if matter can
be called good then everything else could be properly so called.

The second reason why certain things could be called evil is because they are
mutable and limited. They are mutable, because they undergo change (generation and
corruption). Both of these properties of all beings, is metaphysically inherent to finite
beings as such. Even if they were equal and immutable in their mode of being they would
still remain contingent in their very act of being, that is they would not be necessary
beings: their essence would not be their “to be”. As St Augustine points this out “All
other good things are only from Him, and not of Him. For what is of Him, is Himself.
And consequently if He alone is unchangeable, all things that He has made, because He
has made them out of nothing, are changeable13”. Because they are made out of ex nihilo
they cannot be immutable.

“All things composed of matter and form are subject to natural

contingency: they are intrinsically corruptible and therefore contingent by
their very nature […] On the other hand all the finite beings are subject to
the ontological contingency, insofar as non of them is identical with his
existence, but all of them possesses it by participating in it: therefore their

13
St. Augustine, De Natura Boni, Ch 1

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 existence is always excluded form their essence, which cannot become
ontologically necessary, and so it remains always radically contingent.14”

This mutability is a necessity from which God himself cannot absolve creation,
though He could annul its effects. However all created things would still remain radically
contingent, and thus mutable. Things are kept in being by the continued act of creation
and therefore they are contingent. Thus the true reason why things are mutable is because
they are contingent.

Therefore things are mutable not only because of a quality or a certain class of
beings, namely material beings as the Greeks tried to explain it, but because of the very
existence of beings. Thus things’ form and act of being is mutable in the same way as
matter is for the Greeks. Since things are contingent not only in their essence but also in
their very act of being. This tendency toward non-existence in all finite beings is
necessary effect of creation itself. Thus, Christian philosophy does not return to the spirit
of the Greek philosophy, calling the matter the source of evil rather shows that because
beings are, they are mutable.

In the order of matter this is all true, but in the order of the spirit it will be
different. In the first fall not the body as such was tempted rather the spirit brought
misery upon the body by its choice. According to Gilson “…what now permanently
threatens the work of creation is literally, and in the full rigor of the term, the possibility
of its defection.15” This is a possibility without a real danger in the physical order, but in
the order of beings endowed with freewill it is a real danger.

In this manner connects St Augustine the possibility of physical evil with the
contingency of created beings. Due to this principle medieval philosophy showed that
physical evil, taken as a positive quality present in a being is intrinsically impossible.
Thus this reality still has to be called a lesser good that should be present in a being, but

14
B. Mondin, “Contingenza” in Dizionario enciclopedico del Pensiero di San Tommaso
D’Aquino, 136 (my translation)
15
E. Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, 114

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still that is a good. Evil, as a privation of a due good, still can be so called only because it
has a relation to a being that is a good. Thus evil, in itself considered, is meaningless.
Evil, a privation of a due good needs a really existing subject to inhere in. Then evil in a
sense belongs to unreality, incapable to exist on its own. It is therefore true to say that
good is the subject of evil. Here again Gilson calls the readers attention how this
optimism did not really solve the problem rather oppressed it due to his Christian
character.

II. Moral Evil

Animals that undergo corruption do not suffer. It does not matter to anyone of
them if an individual passes away; even less so with regard the universe as a composed of
many of these animals. One good passes away and another takes its place. It is clear that
the corruption is not a real problem when it is related to these animals. “But to things
falling away, and succeeding, a certain temporal beauty in its kind belongs, so that
neither those things that die, or cease to be what they were, degrade or disturb the fashion
appearance and order of the of the universal creation16”

When corruption is related to human beings the result is quite different, here is
where suffering appears on the horizon as the result of pain, sickness and death. To
address this problem, we have to consider first of all the goodness of man as a rational
being endowed with intellect and free will and in the second place in light of his natural
end: he is called to possess the greatest of all the goods, namely to enter in society with
God. In order to enter in society with God man has to have intelligence; the “beatitude or
happiness consists principally and essentially in an act of the intellect17” and we need a
will to be able to rejoice in it. Thus it is necessary to endow man with intellect and will to
be capable of the most excellent of all the goods. But to create a being with will and
intellect is to create a free being. Thus it would be impossible to create a being capable of
16
St. Augustine, De Natura Boni, Ch. 8
17
St. Thomas A., Summa Contra Gentiles, I, Ch. 26

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the highest of all the goods without creating him free. But the very meaning of liberty
expresses that man who possesses it, is capable not only to gain by means of it the
greatest of all the goods, but also able to loose it. It is a necessary condition for beatitude,
but in itself it does not suffices for obtaining the beatific vision. It can be used for man’s
benefit by directing it towards its most proper object or it can be also misused.

Man in the first fall did in fact misuse it. This does not consist in any choice of an
intrinsically evil end. It was rather a turning way from the best to gain a lesser good.
Man, by eating from the tree gave expression of his preference to a good as opposed to
the Divine Good. He sinned, his sin consists in rebelling against God, thus man destroyed
the order that God has established in man’s faculties. He preferred the satisfaction of his
appetites to choose the best that would perfect his soul. This choice that man made in the
realm of his spirituality, had its effect on his bodily dimension. In other words by the
choice of eating from that tree, disorder between man’s bodily and spiritual dimensions is
brought about. Ultimately this will be the reason for suffering and death.

Admitting that man is a creature of God who willed sin, even though at the very
beginning he was without sin, is to admit also that his will was bad in some way at the
very beginning since he willed something that was evil. It would not be enough to say
that it became bad because he willed it. If it so then again, his will must have been bad
already. In God’s creation according to the Christians the responsibility for the whole is
God’s. But then how is to be explained that God, who is good, has created something
from which evil has come forth.

Gilson here reminds us that the principle by which this problem can be solved is
that, God could not have created beings that would be immutable. Just as the necessary
Being is necessarily immutable, so is the mutable being necessarily, by its very nature
mutable. This same principle now is applied for beings that are endowed with free will.
Even if it be that neither man nor angels had realized the possibility of defection they
would still be remain mutable in their very being. Thus “we must accept the possibility

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of moral evil as its [creation’s] necessary correlative.18” The question rises then: Why did
God create free beings then?

The answer is that, man and angel are the most excellent beings in the universe
among all the creatures on account of their property of intellect and will, which proper
only to them in creation, and because of this property they are the final cause of the
creation, after God. The physical world lower in excellence then must be there only in
order to make beatitude possible for man, so that he as an incarnate spirit immersed in
that world might arrive to beatitude. God created free beings so that they might have the
beatitude by participating in his glory. In order to have the beatitude they must will.
Certainly it would be much better for man not to be able to sin, but that is only possible in
the case of God who has freewill yet he is unchangeable. So in the case of man to be able
to will beatitude freely, means also that they must be able to reject it.

If man was not able to sin, they would be immutable creatures which as above is
shown is the property that belongs exclusively to God. If they were to sin necessarily,
they would be free creatures with a nature ordered against their own natural end, good.
Thus they could not exist, since not even God can contradict himself and consequently
can not create a being whose essence is contradictory to his end. For man to achieve
beatitude is to will it. To see all this we do not have to accept Christianity rather accept
the metaphysics of being upon which the solution of this problem is based. Then the true
root of the evil that comes from the will is the “…that metaphysical contingence
inseparable from the state of a created being19” Now, to see how optimistic this
understanding of human nature is, Gilson goes even further and shows that, that in itself
does not even have actual existence, but is a pure ability, an ability ought not to be
actualized, as it is inscribed in human nature. Thus we can say that Christian philosophy
by the use of metaphysics did everything to explain evil in the most optimistic way
possible.

18
E. Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, 115
19
E. Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, 121

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 All this shows perfectly that the way in which St Augustine explains the problem
of evil is a radically optimistic one. He sees a universe created from non-being to being.
It is a world in which evil cannot subsist since it is always just a privation of a due good
that ought to be present in a being. St Thomas, who will basically follow him in almost
everything what was said up until now, puts it this way “For all being, as being, has
actuality and is in some way perfect; since every act implies some sort of perfection; and
perfection implies desirability and goodness […] Hence it follows that every being as
such is good.20” Taking this look at perennial Christian philosophy it is clear that a
negative and pessimistic view of this problem does not lie on the philosophical principles
of Christian Philosophy

It is not dubious that we are far from the universe upon which God has bestowed
measure order and beauty by bringing it into being as St Augustine said. Still it is a world
over which sin does not have the power, because thus non-being would be predominant
over being and then it would cease to exist. So when we observe that St Augustine writes
lamenting over what man has lost by the first fall, he never ceases admiring and
emphasizing all the good that still remains. Moreover he admires man not only on
account of his intellectual capacity, but also the beauty of his body. Thus St Augustine’s
look at man as he was before his fall and as he will be when enters into the glory of God.

The Effect of Evil on Nature

So far our guide was St Augustine who by explaining the presence of physical and
moral evil has shown that evil can not destroy nature. St Thomas went even further and
proved that evil not only cannot destroy nature, but cannot even alter it. So when we find
the words: “corrupted nature” so many times in his works referring to man’s nature it is
clear that he does not refer to very essence of man as something corrupted as it is
manifest from the following arguments of his.

20
St. Thomas A., Summa Theologiae I, q. 6, a. 3, c

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 Gilson distinguishes between the different meanings of the expression: the “good
of human nature” in order to see the effects of original sin on that nature. Now there are
three different meanings of the word “good” of the human nature, in order to understand
better we need to distinguish between these usages. First we can take it in the sense of the
human nature defined as “rational animal”. In the second sense of the word we can
understand it as man’s natural inclination for the good, without which he would not even
be able to live since what moves the will is always a good desired. In the third sense it
can mean the original justice conferred on man by God, which was given to him as a
grace. As regard this last usage the good of human nature is not the part of the human
nature and is destroyed by the original sin. In the seconds sense of the word this good is
part of the human nature, only diminished, since man by all of his good acts can start a
new habit that is an inclination for the good: a virtue. Taking the word in the first sense it
means the very essence of man, and thus it can neither be diminished, nor suppressed.
This is a necessity because nobody ceases to be a man and is a man at the same time just
because he is sinning. This belongs to man’s metaphysical status which can not be by an
accident, namely an operation, but is fixed.

Conclusion

After having considered all this we can return to the spirit of the Renaissance and
it will appear more evidently that, the real reason why the Mediaeval philosophy is
accused of looking at the world in a negative way is because it claims that man lived
better times, and even better ones awaits him than those of the present. Thus it does not
want to accept the first fall as a victory to be rejoiced over.

It is obvious that Christian philosophy has never given in to anyone with regard to
this problem by accepting easy answers for the presence of evil in creation. Christian
philosophy thus has defended the goodness of matter and of all creation. St Augustine

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saw the goodness of matter because it was created by God and therefore intrinsically
good. Because of this principle he did not accept the solution for the presence of evil
given by Plato. “Since therefore He is being par excellence He has no contrary save that
which is not, and, consequently, as all that is good exists by Him so everything in nature
exists by Him, for everything in nature is good. In one word, every nature is good, now
all that is good comes from God; therefore every nature comes from God.21”

So those opinions that the Christian worldview is fundamentally a negative one,

which today is so widespread, is because many people see the “other side” of that
optimism that has been described here. This “other side” is that asceticism and self-
denial that Gilson mentioned at the beginning of the chapter. Thus why the medieval man
mortified his body was not because he saw only the evil in the flesh rather, because he
knew what the history of his forefathers was and what awaited him. He knew that the
only thing to which it is worth getting attached is not here in this world, but in the world
that is to come. So the real difficulty when we observe these two opinions regarding the
question of evil “is not whether the world is good or evil, but whether the world is
sufficient to itself and whether it suffices22”

21
St. Augustine, De Natura Boni, Ch. 19
22
E. Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, 127

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 Bibliography

Primary sources

Augustine. De Natura Boni, Translated by Albert H. Newman, D.D., L.L.D., Professor of

Church History and Comparative Religion, in Toronto Baptist (Theological)
Seminary, Toronto, Canada. Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other
Works" originally published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in
Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning in 1867.

Gilson, Etienne, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy (Gifford Lectures 1931-1932)

(Chapter VI, Christian Optimism). Translated by A.H.C. Downes. Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1991.

Secondary sources

Aquinas Thomas, De Malo, Translated by Jean Oesterle, University of Notre Dame

Press, 1993

_______. Summa Theologiae, Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province,

Texas: Christian Classics, 1981.

_______. Summa Contra Gentiles, Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican

Province, New York, 1924

Mondin Battista, Various articles in Dizionario Enciclopedico del Pensiero di San

Tommaso D’Aquino, Studio Domenicano, Bologna, Italy, 1991

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