This solution of the problem must be rejected as completely unsatisfactory. God is good, and is blessed, by his nature. The human nature of Christ is holy, impeccable, and beatified, by its hypostatic union with the divine nature. The Blessed Virgin was impeccable from the instant of her immaculate conception. The holy angels and just men made perfect have finished their moral probation, and are in an unchangeable state. The perfection of the intelligent nature, therefore, so far from implying, excludes liberty of choice between good an evil. If this be so, this liberty of choice is an imperfection. Why, therefore, did God create rational existences with this imperfection? Without doubt he could have given them impeccability. He could have elevated them to a state of perfection without requiring them to pass through any probation. He could have placed all rational creatures at once in the state of beatitude, and kept all sin an evil out of the universe. Why, then, is evil allowed to enter?
Moreover, whence and what is evil? How is it possible that there should be any evil? Extrinsic to the being of God which is the absolute good, nothing does or can exist, except that which God has created after the similitude of his own being, and which, therefore, participates according to its measure in his goodness. Besides, God has created all things in view of an end. Being infinitely wise, he [{291}] knows how to attain this end through his works, and being infinitely powerful, he is able to do it. Being also infinitely good, only good can terminate is volition. Therefore, if evil were possible, he could not will to actualize it; and if, by an impossible supposition, it could come into actual existence without him, he must will to destroy it. The superficial theology and philosophy which dates from the Reformation, is tied up here in a Gordian knot, which no skill can unravel. It contains two dogmas which are absolute contradictions: creation, and the substantive essence of evil. These two can never coexist in harmony. One or the other must be modified or given up. Either the dogma of creation must be so far given up as to admit of some eternal self-existent materia in which lies the essential principle of evil, or the substantive existence of evil must be denied. Those who deny or impair the first, have ceased to be Theists in the strict and proper sense of the word, and are already moving toward Pantheism. Those who deny the second, throw up with it the conception of a moral order in the universe, of a state of probation, strictly so called. There is no Theistic, Christian philosophy of any depth or comprehensiveness on these topics, except that which is included in the theology of St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and other great Catholic writers.
It is well known how completely the ancient philosophers were befogged in regard to the nature and origin of evil. Plato taught that the materia out of which God formed the universe is eternal, and that, from an inherent intractability in its essence, it is incapable able of perfectly receiving the of the divine ideas. The constructor of the universe was, therefore, hindered from realizing his ideal and fully executing his design by the defectiveness of his material. He was like an architect who has only soft, crumbling stone, or a sculptor with veined marble. From this source, according to Plato, is all the evil existing in the universe.
The Persians, whose great master was Zoroaster, resorted to the theory of two subordinate creators, both the offspring of the Supreme Being, one Ormusd, being good, and the other Ahriman, being evil. All that is good in the creation comes from the first, and all the evil from the second of these great master-mechanics. Ahriman is destined, however, to be eventually converted, with all his liege subjects, his botched workmanship will be repaired, and the universe will come all right in the end. This ingenious theory left out, however, one essential point; namely, how Ahriman came to have an evil nature, since he was created by the good God as well as Ormusd, and how he and his works could become good, if they were essentially evil.
Manes and the Manichaeans carried their dualism to a point of more complete consistency, and more absolute absurdity. They taught the existence of two eternal, self-existing principles, one good, the other bad, who are engaged in perpetual warfare. Spiritual existences proceed from the good principle, corporeal existences from the evil one. Human souls, having been in some way allured into corporeal forms, are polluted by them and involved in evil. It is necessary for the soul to disengage itself from matter, and it will then be fit to return to the supremely good being from whom it proceeded.
Any system which teaches that evil has anything essential or substantive, must give up the pure dogma of creation. For it is inconsistent with that dogma to suppose that God can create anything essentially evil, or that any creature can create anything, or that any substance essentially good can become essentially evil by corruption; since corruption produces no new substance, but modifies substance already existing.
Whence, then, and what is evil? What can there be as an alternative of good before the intelligence and will of a rational creature to form the material for a dilemma, and oblige him to exercise a faculty of choice? Where is the substratum of a state of probation?
Metaphysical evil, or that evil which is included in the metaphysical essence of all created things, is merely the limitation of their possible good. Simple being, ens simpliciter, is alone the absolute good in possibility and in act. Jesus Christ has said, "There is one good, God." [Footnote 62] In actual existences, evil is merely a recession from God. It is only relative, and negative, therefore, and expresses the absence of that good which exists in some other creature, or in God. In created existences, good is relative and positive, and evil, or the absence of good, is relative and privative. It is a mere deficiency, but nothing substantive, any more than darkness, cold, or vacuity are substantive.
[Footnote 62: St. Matt. xix. 17.]