Evil and Christianity
Dateline: July 19, 2000
Why is there evil in the world? How can there exist evil if, as so many theists claim, there is a perfectly good God who created it? Quite often the discussion of evil in the world focuses on whether or not God - in particular, the Christian God - is responsible for the origin of that evil. It seems that it is logically contradictory for a perfectly good God to have created evil as well. If both cannot be true and there is obviously evil in the world, then any God that exists cannot be perfectly good.
Typically Christians will rebut this argument by pointing to humans' free will and claiming that it is through our choices that evil exists in the world. Were we not to choose the wrong things all of the time, there would be more good.Thus it is not God's fault that there is evil in the world, but ours.
However, there is a second issue which is sometimes overlooked and which is not so susceptible to this "free will" defense. Specifically, to what extent might this Christian God be responsible for the continuing existence of evil in the world?
This is important in Christian theology because God is often not just regarded as the originating cause of the universe, but also the sustaining cause of the universe. It is in this way that some theologians argue not only that there must be a god because the universe began, but also because it continues. Thomas Aquinas describes this position thus in Summa Contra Gentiles:
Just as God not only gave being to things when they first began, but is also - as the conserving cause of being - the cause of their being as long as they last... so He also not only gave things their operative powers when they were first created, but is always the cause of these in things. Hence, if this divine influence stopped every operation would stop. Every operation, therefore, of anything is traced back to Him as its cause. (emphasis mine)
As we can see, Aquinas is attributing every action in the universe to the continuing influence and will of God. Every action includes not simply natural events, but also the actions of individual human beings. That nothing at all happens without God willing it to happen has profound impact upon the existence of evil in the world. Aquinas clearly recognized this when he later wrote in the same book:
God alone can move the will in the fasion of an agent, without doing violence to it.... Some people...not understanding how God can cause a movement of our will, have tried to explain...authoritative texts wrongly; that is, they would say that God 'works in us, to wish and to accomplish' means that He causes in us the power of willing, but not in such a way that He makes us will this or that.... These people are, of course, opposed quite plainly by authoritative texts of Holy Writ. For it says in Isaiah (xxxvi, 2) "Lord, you have worked all of your work in us." Hence we receive from God not only the power of willing but its employment also. (emphasis mine)
Evidently, Aquinas was responding to the arguments of people attempting to portray God as just a bit less monstrous than Aquinas understood him to be. According to these others, God was merely responsible for the ability of people to desire this or that - but not also necessarily the actual will to carry out actions that would achieve those desires. This would, for example, make God responsible for people's ability to be greedy and hateful, but not necessarily their actual desires, much less the fact that they go out and steal or kill.
But Aquinas would have none of this. Indeed, he goes much further - not only is God responsible for people actually having the will to go out and steal or kill, but is also responsible for the employment of that will. This, in effect, makes God directly responsible for those actions. Although this may seem like an odd concept, it is quite consistent with Aquinas' earlier statement that "every operation" has God as its cause.
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