Ontology, or the Theory of Being

by P. Coffey

In the action of physical causes we may distinguish between the operative agencies themselves and the subjects in which the effects of these operations are produced. Sometimes the effect is wanting in due perfection, or is in other words imperfect, physically evil, because of some defect in the agencies: the statue may be defective because the sculptor is unskilled, or his instruments bad; offspring may be weak or malformed owing to some congenital or accidental weakness or unfitness in the parents. Sometimes the evil in the effect is traceable not to the agents but to the materials on which they have to work: the [pg 186] sculptor and his instruments may be perfect, but if there be a flaw in the marble the statue will be a failure; the educator may be efficient, but if the pupil be wanting in aptitude or application the results cannot be “good”.

All this, however, does not carry us very far, for we must still inquire why are the agencies, or the materials, themselves defective. Moreover, physical evil sometimes occurs without any defect either in the agencies or in the materials. The effect produced may be incompatible with some minor perfection already in the subject; it can then be produced only at the sacrifice of this minor perfection: which sacrifice is for the subject pro tanto an evil. It is in the natural order of things that the production of a new “form” or perfection excludes the actuality of a pre-existing form or perfection. All nature is subject to change, and we have seen that all change is ruled by the law: Generatio unius est corruptio alterius. It might perhaps be said that this privation or supplanting of perfections in things by the actualization in these things of incompatible perfections, is inherent in the nature of things and essential to their finiteness—at least, if we regard the things not individually but as parts of a whole, as members of a system, as subserving a general scheme;—and that therefore such privation should not be regarded as physical evil proper, but rather as “metaphysical” evil, improperly so called. However we regard it, it can have no other first source than the Will of the Creator decreeing the actual order of the existing universe. And the same must be said of the physical evils proper that are incident to the actual order of things. These evils are “accidental” when considered in relation to the individual natures of the created agencies and materials. They are defects or failures of natural tendencies: were these natural tendencies always realized there would be no such evils. But they are not realized; and their “failure” or “evil” is not “accidental” in regard to God; for God has willed and created these agencies with natural tendencies which He has destined to be fulfilled not always and in every detail, but in such measure as will secure the actual order of the universe and show forth His perfections in the finite degree in which He has freely chosen to manifest these perfections. The world He has chosen to create is not the best absolutely possible: there are physical evils in it; but it is the best for the exact purpose for which He created it.

There is also moral evil in the universe. In comparison with moral evil, the physical defects in God's creation—physical pain and suffering, material privations and hardships, decay and death of living things—are not properly evils at all. At least they are not evils in the same profound sense as the deliberate turning away of the moral agent from God, his Last End and Ultimate Good, is an evil. For the physical evils incident to individual beings in the universe can be not only foreseen by God but accepted and approved, so to speak, by His Will, as subserving the realization of the total physical good which He wills in the universe; and as subordinate to, and instrumental in the realization of, the moral good of mankind: for it is obvious that in the all-wise designs of Providence physical evils such as pain, suffering, poverty, hunger, etc., may be the means of realizing moral goodness. But moral evil, on the contrary, or, in the language of Christian ethics, Sin—the conscious and deliberate rejection, by the free agent, of God who is his true good—though necessarily foreseen by God in the universe He has actually chosen to create, and therefore necessarily permitted by the Will of God consequently on this foresight, cannot have been and cannot be intended or approved by Him. Having created man an intelligent and free being, God could not will or decree the revolt of the latter from Himself. He loves essentially His own Infinite Goodness: were He to identify His Will with that of the sinning creature He would at the same time be turning away from His Goodness: which is a contradiction in terms. God, therefore, does not will moral evil. Nevertheless He permits it: otherwise it would not occur, for nothing can happen “against His will”. He has permitted it by freely choosing to create this actual universe of rational and free creatures, foreseeing that they would sin. He could have created instead a universe of such beings, in which there would be no moral evil: for He is omnipotent. Into the secrets of His election it is not given to finite minds to penetrate. Acknowledging His Infinite Power, Wisdom and Goodness, realizing at the same time the finiteness of our faculties, we see how rational it is to bow down our minds with St. Paul and to exclaim in admiration: “O, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways!”[192]

If it be objected that God's permission of moral evil in the universe is really the cause of this evil, and makes God Himself responsible for sin and its consequences, a satisfactory answer is not far to seek. It is absolutely incompatible with God's Infinite Sanctity that He be responsible for sin and its consequences. For these the free will of the creature is alone responsible. The creation of intelligent beings, endowed with the power freely to love, honour and serve God, is the most marvellous of all God's works. Free will is the noblest endowment of a creature of God, as it is also the most mysterious. Man, who by his intelligence has the power to know God as his Supreme Good, has by his will the power freely to tend towards God and attain to the possession of God as his Last End. In so far as man sins, i.e. knowingly, deliberately, and freely violates the tendency of his nature towards God by turning away from Him, he and he alone is responsible for the consequences, because he has the power to accomplish what he knows to be God's design in his regard, and to be his true destiny and path to happiness—viz. that he tend towards union with God and the possession of God—and he deliberately fails to make use of this power. Such failure and its consequences are, therefore, his own; they leave absolutely untouched and unassailed the Infinite Goodness and Benevolence of God's eternal design in his regard.

In scholastic form, the objection is proposed and answered in this way: “The cause of a cause is the cause of the latter's effects; but God is the cause of man, and sin is the latter's effect; therefore God is the cause of sin”. “That the cause of a non-free cause is the cause of the latter's effects, we admit. That the cause of a free cause is the cause of the latter's effects, at least in the sense of permitting, without intending and being thereby responsible for them, we also admit; always in the sense of intending and being responsible for them, we deny. The positive effects of a created free cause, those which the latter by nature is intended to produce, are attributable to the first cause or creator of the free cause, and the first cause is responsible for them. The failures of the created free cause to produce its natural and intended effects, are not due to the first cause; they are not intended by, nor attributable to, the first cause; nor is the latter responsible for them: they are failures of the free cause, and of him alone; though they are of course foreseen and permitted by the first cause or creator of the latter. The minor [pg 189] premiss of the objection we may admit—noting, however, that sin is not properly called an effect, but rather, like all evil, a failure of some cause to produce its connatural effect: it is a defect, a deficiency, a privation of some effect, of some positive perfection, which the cause ought naturally to have produced. The conclusion of the objection we distinguish, according to our analysis of the major premiss: God is the cause of sin in the proper sense of intending it, willing it, and producing it positively, and being thereby responsible for it, we deny; God is the cause of sin in the improper sense of merely foreseeing and permitting it as incidental to the universe He has actually willed and decreed to create, as occurring in this universe by the deliberate failure of free creatures to conform themselves to His primary benevolent intention in their regard, we may grant. And this Divine permission of moral evil cannot be shown to be incompatible with any attribute of the Divinity.”

In the preceding paragraphs we have barely outlined the principles on which the philosophy of theism meets the problem of evil in the universe. We have made assumptions which it is the proper province of Natural Theology to establish, and to that department also we must refer the student for a fuller treatment of the whole problem.

It has been sometimes said that the fact of evil in the universe is one of the greatest difficulties against the philosophy of Theism. If this be taken as an insinuation that the fact of evil can be better explained—or even as well explained—on the assumptions of Pantheism, Monism, Manicheism, or any other philosophy besides Theism, it is false. If it means simply that in accounting for evil—whether on principles of Theism or of any other philosophy—we are forced to raise some ultimate questions in the face of which we must admit that we have come upon depths of mystery which the plummet of our finite intellects cannot hope to fathom, in this sense indeed the assertion may be admitted. As we have already hinted, even with the light of the Christian Revelation to aid the natural light of reason, there are questions about the existence and causes of evil which we may indeed ask, but which we cannot adequately answer. And obviously this is no reflection on Theism; while in the latter system we have a more intelligible and more satisfactory analysis of the problem than in any other philosophy.

Among the ancient Greek philosophers we find “matter” [pg 190] (ὕλη) identified with “vacuum” or “empty space” (το κενόν) and this again with “nothingness” or non-being (τὸ μη νὀ). Now the concept of evil is the concept of something negative—a privation of goodness, of being or reality. Thus the notion of evil came to be associated with the notion of matter. But the latter notion is not really negative: it is that of a formless, chaotic, disorderly material. When, therefore, the Manicheans attributed a positive reality to evil—conceiving it as the principle of all disorder, strife, discord—they naturally regarded all matter as the expression of the Evil Principle, in opposition to soul or spirit as the expression of the Good Principle. The Manichean philosophy of Evil, a product of the early Christian centuries, has been perhaps the most notable alternative or rival system encountered by the theistic philosophy of Evil; for, notwithstanding the fantastic character of its conceptions Manicheism has reappeared and reasserted itself repeatedly in after ages, notably in the Middle Ages. Its prevalence has probably been due partly to the concreteness of its conceptions and partly to a certain analogy which they bear towards the conception of Satan and the fallen angels in Christian theology. In both cases there is the idea of conflict, strife, active and irreconcilable opposition, between the powers of good and the powers of evil. But there the analogy ends. While in Christian theology the powers of evil are presented as essentially subject to the Divine Omnipotence, in Manicheism the Evil Principle, the Summum Malum, is presented as a supreme, self-existent principle, essentially independent of, as well as antagonistic to, the Divine Being, the Summum Bonum. Since there is evil in the world, and since good cannot be the cause of evil—so the Manicheans argue—there must be an essentially Evil First Principle which is the primary source of all the evil in the universe, just as there is an essentially Good First Principle which is the source of all its good. Everything in the world—and especially man himself, composed of matter and spirit—is the expression and the theatre of the essential conflict which is being ever waged between the Good and the Evil Principle. Everywhere throughout the universe we find this dualism: between spirit and matter, light and darkness, order and disorder, etc.

From all that has been said in the preceding paragraphs regarding the nature and causes of good and evil the errors of the Manichean system will be apparent. Its fundamental error is the [pg 191] conception of evil as a positive entity. Evil is not a positive entity but a privation. And this being so, its occurrence does not demand a positive efficient cause. It can be explained and accounted for by deficiency or failure in causes that are good in so far forth as they are operative, but which have not all the goodness their nature demands. And we have seen how this failure of created causes is permitted by the First Cause, and is not incompatible with His Infinite Goodness.

Besides, the Manichean conception of an intrinsically evil cause, a cause that could produce only evil, is a contradiction in terms. The operation of an efficient cause must have a positive term: in so far as the term is positive it is good: and therefore its cause cannot have been totally evil, but must have been in some degree good. The crucial point in the whole debate is this, that we cannot conceive evil as a positive entity. By doing so we render reality unintelligible; we destroy the fundamental ground of any possible distinction between good and evil, thus rendering both alike inconceivable. Each is correlative to the other; we cannot understand the one without the other. If, therefore, goodness is an aspect of real being, and identical with reality, evil must be a negation of reality, and cannot be made intelligible otherwise.