Aquinas on Fitting God and Evil Together

St. Thomas Aquinas was a 13th century scriptural theologian and philosopher, whose importance still permeates the philosophical traditions and discussions of modernity. A prolific writer and teacher, Aquinas wrestled with all manner of concepts from metaphysics to ethics. Most interestingly and most pressing for this essay however, was Aquinas’ treatment of good and evil. A compelling and subtle analysis, Aquinas wanted to explain how evil existed; and needed to demonstrate the possibility of its existence in a world created by a good and perfect God. There was then, and still is today, the problem of evil which follows as: how one can consolidate a world created by the good graces of God, and the presence of evil within it. How could God, the ultimate and perfect good, allow evil to exist as part of creation? Through careful consideration of what evil is, Aquinas wanted to show that in fact God did not create evil at all, evil was in a sense a non-creation, a non-entity, and so not part of creation. In this essay, we will unpack the thinking behind Aquinas’ answer to the problem of evil, and critically engage with the philosophical manoeuvres he made in an attempt to remove responsibility for evil from God. There must first be an exploration of Aquinas’ definition of evil as a privation of good. This concept is divided into three parts, each with its own enlightening message as to how we can think about evil as a privation. Second, is Aquinas’ examination of the cause of evil, where in which he arrives at two ends. Evil is created by good as both accident, and as deficiency. Inside of both of these philosophical expositions are Aquinas’ cleverly constructed movements that explain away the problem of evil, and release God from responsibility for its existence.

The foundational principle of Aquinas’ treatment of evil lies in his claim that evil is not an entity, but rather that evil is a privation of the good. That is to say that evil exists only insofar as it is a lack or absence of goodness. If something exists only as a lack, or as an absence, then it does not intrinsically exist. If evil is a privation, then what is good? For Aquinas, the good is the perfection of any particular thing to which its desires are directed and to which allows that thing to fulfil its perfection as that such thing endowed by God. It is from this position that Aquinas mounts his first reason as to why evil is not an entity. Good as the desirable, has the order of an efficient cause, God, and so is ordered towards an end. The origin of good can be traced back to a universal goodness in God the creator. Good, having an efficient cause, and therefore ends, is desired by that which desires particular ends. “since what the first and universal cause of being causes is a particular being, what the first and universal good causes can only be a particular good” (Aquinas, Regan and Davies, 2003). Evil, has no such efficient cause, and no such ends, and that without efficient causes or ends cannot intrinsically exist; “everything that is a real thing needs to be a particular good and so, by reason of what exists, cannot be contrary to good” (Aquinas, Regan and Davies, 2003). The conclusion that can be drawn here then, is that evil, without efficient cause or any desirable ends, is a privation of the good. As evil, is that which something lacks to achieve perfection, and if evil is a lack, then evil is not an entity.

Aquinas builds on this thought and discusses further the importance of his distinction of good as the desirable perfection of a thing. Everything that does exist is directed towards attaining the good; “every real thing has an inclination and desire for something that befits itself. But everything that has the nature of being desirable has the nature of good” (Aquinas, Regan and Davies, 2003). Everything desires to fulfil its perfection, and perfection is what is good. So, everything that is an entity, which is the same as to say: everything that exists, is conforming to the good. Evil, by being contrary to good has no such relationship with real things; “every real thing has a conformity with some good, and evil as such is not in harmony with good but contrary to it” (Aquinas, Regan and Davies, 2003). If evil was a real thing then it would never be moved or acted upon, nor would it ever move or act, desire or be desired. That is because evil has no ends, and everything acts towards an end that leads to that thing’s fulfilment, towards good, an evil is contrary to fulfilment and contrary to good. Therefore, it must be concluded that evil, again, is not an entity.

Aquinas turns his attention to existence itself as his third step in building his definition of evil as a privation of the good, and therefore not an entity. Existence by its very nature is something desirable, as that which exists acts incessantly to preserve its existence; “everything by nature […] avoids things destructive of its existing and resists them as far as possible” (Aquinas, Regan and Davies, 2003). That which is desired, as we have seen, is that which is good. Evil, being universally contrary to good, must then also find itself as universally contrary to existence. It then appears an obvious conclusion that evil, being contrary to existence, cannot possibly exist, other than as a privation, a lacking, an absence, of that which does exist, the good.

And so, through this admittedly brilliant deconstruction of evil, we arrive at evil existing as a privation of the good. Aquinas’ biggest problem was demonstrating how God in all his goodness, created a world in which there was evil. In defining evil as a privation, Aquinas cleverly discounts evil’s existence all-together, instead allowing for it as a lacking, a non-creation. If we are to accept Aquinas’ definition of evil, then we must too accept that God in creation, cannot be responsible for the creation of a non-entity. As that which does not really exist, surely cannot be created. Evil here is positioned as a condition of the combination of goodness and freedom. There is only good in the world, and everything can only act and desire that which is good, at least in some particularity. Aquinas furthers his dislocation of God and evil with two different ways of thinking about good and evil: good and evil in particular and good and evil absolutely. Good and evil in particular describes a good or an evil that is particular to a subject. For instance, punishment. Punishment may appear to be an evil in particular, as it is a privation of the good for a certain individual. However, punishment is necessary for justice, which is an absolute good. This touches on the nuances of good and evil, but also helps Aquinas to explain away again the sorts of evils we may ascribe to God. As Aquinas says: “And so it is evident that Scripture says that God created evil, not because it is evil, but because it is good, absolutely speaking, and evil in a particular respect.” (Aquinas, Regan and Davies, 2003). So, in creation, we may be mistaken about the outcomes of what can appear evil. For evil cannot be created, it is when there is an absence of God’s goodness in the world that evil arises. Evil is, so to speak, a hole in the wall of good. The wall is made of tangible material, it exists in creation. The hole is nothing more than an absence in the wall, where there is nothingness. This nothingness represents evil, where the somethingness of the wall represents good. God cannot be responsible for creating nothingness, which is exactly that: nothing, God is only able to create what is something, and so only creates good.

Having established that evil is not an entity, Aquinas moves to explain how evil is caused in the world. The outcome of his inquiry is that evil is caused by good, but is only caused by good, insofar as evil can have a cause. This is the case because secondary to his initial outcome, is that evil has no intrinsic causes. He develops this line of thinking in three parts. Firstly, effects that have intrinsic causes come about because of purposeful intention of an actor. Evil is never something willed or desired, because only the good can be willed or desired. Even action that is bad is done only because it seems good in particular to a subject who commits themselves to that action. Aquinas provides us with an example that follows: “it seems good to the adulterer that he enjoy sense pleasure, and he commits adultery for that reason” (Aquinas, Regan and Davies, 2003). The adulater committed this action in the direction of fulfilling the good of pleasure, and so had no active intention toward evil, and so evil has no intrinsic cause. Secondly, every intrinsic effect resembles its intrinsic cause in some way. “For every efficient cause, causes insofar as it is actual” (Aquinas, Regan and Davies, 2003), actuality is reserved in the good, and evil is contrary to that good. So evil being contrary, leads us to understand evil here again as having no intrinsic cause. Thirdly, Aquinas explains that every intrinsic cause must have an ordination to its effect. In the case of evil however, it cannot be the effect of that which is ordained, and rather is the resulted of a disregard of the ordained, “what results by ordination is not evil; rather, evil results when ordination is neglected” (Aquinas, Regan and Davies, 2003). God does not ordain evil into effect, evil as Aquinas points out is contrary to ordination, so here again we see that evil has no intrinsic cause.

It has been shown that evil is not an intrinsically existing thing, but it is present in things as a privation. Though there are things that are deficient due to their nature, and we cannot say that this is evil, nor can we say these are truly deficiencies. It is not an evil for example for humans to be deficient in wings for flight, or a rock to be deficient in eyes for sight. But there are deficiencies that we must call evil, and for them to be present in the world even as privations, Aquinas understands there must be cause for this. He arrives at two cooperating explanations for the causation or evil, evil is caused by the good, either in deficiency, or in accident. In good there is always potential for deficiency, and this deficiency is evil, so good necessarily causes evil insofar as evil can be caused. This is not an intrinsic cause, as good does not commit intentional action toward the evil, the evil rather is again the privation of the good, its deficiency. There is too, the good that causes evil accidentally. Aquinas illustrates a picture of fire and water to aid our understanding: “the cause of the evil that is the destruction of water is the causal power of fire. And this power indeed does not chiefly and intrinsically strive to destroy water but chiefly strives to induce the form of fire in the matter” (Aquinas, Regan and Davies, 2003). Here we see the destruction of water, which is an evil. This evil was arrived at however, through the intention of the fire fulfilling the form of fire in perfection, and so causes the destruction of water only accidentally, with the intention to some other good. So, we see that good can cause evil in accident and in deficiency only.

It is here again, that Aquinas uses his subtle reasoning to distance God from the evil in the world. We see that God only creates good, with the existence of good, comes the conditions of good’s existence. One such condition is that it can be deficient, and in its lacking, there is evil. God however, did not create or cause this evil, he only created the good which then accidentally is the cause of evil. The second condition of goodness is that it can find that it engages in conflict with itself. As in the case of fire and water, there is good acting to fulfil the perfection of fire, but in doing so leads to the destruction of water via accidental cause. God again only creates that good, and that good is not always in agreeance with every possibility of perfection, and so by accident and deficiency only is there evil caused by good, but no possibility of evil caused by God.

Aquinas’ treatment of good and evil is a brilliantly composed abstraction that quite beautifully captures the nature of evil. He does though attempt to reason his way around, rather than through the problem of evil existing in some way inside God’s creation. There seems little to say about his definition of evil as a privation of the good, other than it is compelling and convincing. He does however seem to fail to repeal God’s responsibility for evil in the world. While evil may be a non-entity, and God in creating can only create something, rather than nothing, the conditions of creation that follow, whether real or not must be owned absolutely by God. For the reality of our universe is that evil exists, perhaps as a privation as Aquinas so thoughtfully asserts. Nonetheless, privation or otherwise, if we are created by one all mighty divine force, then God in all His powers of creation must bear the burden of all entities and non-entities alike. Aquinas, like any one of us, can only speak to the outcomes of God’s creation through a mortal lens. God being such an incomprehensible powerful force of creation, we cannot reach with human reason alone, how God, in this unfathomable power could allow for evil. With infinite creative ability, there must be the possibility of infinite creative outcomes, and so Aquinas must face either that God gave way for evil in our world, or evil is an infinitely inescapable energy, that even God cannot overcome. The problem of evil then, or the problem of God’s perfection, is still one that must be wrestled with even now. How can a perfectly good God have creative responsibility for evil? Despite Aquinas’ insights and brilliance, we find ourselves still without satisfaction, this question of evil remains largely unanswered.

References

Aquinas, T., Regan, R. and Davies, B. (2003). On evil. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.55-87.

Brown, C. (2017). Thomas Aquinas. [online] Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: http://www.iep.utm.edu/aquinas/ [Accessed 27 Mar. 2017].

Echavarría, A. (2013). Thomas Aquinas and the Modern and Contemporary Debate on Evil. New Blackfriars, 94(1054), pp.733-754.