catholic concept of evil

The nature and degree of pain in the lower animals is very obscure, and in the necessary absence of data it is difficult to say whether it should rightly be classed with the merely formal evil which belongs to inanimate objects, or with the suffering of human beings. Catholic Social Thought and the Common Good. Again, the excellence of God‘s works in nature is insisted on as evidence of the Divine wisdom, power, and goodness, by which no evil can be directly caused. (I,Q. 391). Mamiani also supposed evil to be inseparable from the finite, but that it tended to disappear as the finite approached its final union with the infinite. hom.) The devil was expelled from Heaven at the beginning of time, before God created the material world and is in contant opposition to God. Thus Origen (In Joh., ii, 7) defines evil as stéresis; the Pseudo-Dionysius (De Div. According to both Schopenhauer and Hartmann, suffering has come into existence with self-consciousness, from which it is inseparable. I, Q. xii); and again, that by permitting moral evil to exist He has provided a sphere for the manifestation of one aspect of His essential justice (cf. We can not know that this world is the best possible; and if it were, why, since it must include so much that is evil, should a perfectly good God have created it? It has been contended that existence is fundamentally evil; that evil is the active principle of the universe, and good no more than an illusion, the pursuit of which serves to induce the human race to perpetuate its own existence (see Pessimism). The Atomists Leucippus and Democritus, held what may be called a doctrine of materialistic Monism. The opposite view is taken by St. Thomas (I, Q. xcvi, a. It is, in fact, only by a transference to irrational objects of the subjective ideals and aspirations of human intelligence, that the “evil of nature” can be called evil in any sense but a merely analogous one. This was also, among Greek philosophers, the view of Hegesias the Cyrenaic (called peisithánatos, the counsellor of death), who held life to be valueless, and pleasure, the only good, to be unattainable. Proverbs 26 and Conc. "Nothing is done without thee in earth or sea or sky, save what evil men commit by their own folly; so thou hast fitted together all evil and good in one, that there might be one reasonable and everlasting scheme of all things." Do good, avoid evil. as the penal and just consequence of sin (De Civ. MLA citation. On Catholic principles, the amelioration of moral evil and its consequent suffering can only take place by means of individual reformation, and not so much through increase of knowledge as through stimulation or re-direction of the will. Pessimism, as a metaphysical system, is the product of modern times. The existence of evil is the underlying problem in all theology. We reach here the utmost limit of speculation; and our inability to conceive the ultimate reason for creation (as distinct from its direct motive) is paralleled, at a much earlier stage of the enquire, by the inability of the non-creationist schools of thought to assign any ultimate cause for the existence of the order of nature. Nom. for the manifestation of the attributes of God. St. Thomas also provides explanations of what are now generally considered to be the two main difficulties of the subject, viz., the Divine permission of foreseen moral evil, and the question finally arriving thence, why God chose to create anything at all. Leibniz has been more or less closely followed by many who have since treated the subject from the Christian point of view. . It is as impossible to know, in the fullest sense, why this world was made as to know how it was made; but St. Thomas has at least shown that the acts of the Creator admit of complete logical justification, notwithstanding the mystery in which, for human intelligence, they can never wholly cease to be involved. 2; cf. With Aristotle, evil is a necessary aspect of the constant changes of matter, and has in itself no real existence (Metaph., ix, 9). But the evil of sin (culpæ), though permitted by God, is in no sense due to him (I, Q. xlix, a. According to both Schopenhauer and Hartmann, suffering has come into existence with self-consciousness, from which it is inseparable. Leibniz has been more or less closely followed by many who have since treated the subject from the Christian point of view. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05649a.htm. It may be urged, moreover, that there can be no degree of finite goodness which is not susceptible of increase by omnipotence, without ceasing to fall short of infinite perfection. A, London, 1903). But when the universe is considered as the work of an all-benevolent and all-powerful Creator, a fresh element is added to the problem. This essay is a … According to it, the inverse is the best possible; but metaphysical evil, or perfection, is necessarily involved in the constitution, since it must be finite, and could not have been endowed with the infinite perfection which belongs to God alone. In this mode of thought the individual necessarily counts for very little, as being merely a transient manifestation of the cosmic force; and the social aspects of humanity are those under which its pains and shortcomings are mostly considered, with a view to their amelioration. Evil has been attributed to one of two mutually opposed principles, to which respectively the mingled good and evil of the world are due. He posits that hell will ultimately be emptied, and. It is obviously impossible to suggest a reason why this universe in particular should have been created rather than another; since we are necessarily incapable of forming an idea of any other universe than this. With regard to the nature of evil, it should be observed that evil is of three kinds—physical, moral, and metaphysical. God is said (as in Is., xlv) to be the author of evil in the sense that the corruption of material objects in nature is ordained by Him, as a means for carrying out the design of the universe; and on the other hand, the evil which exists as the consequence of the breach of Divine laws is in the same sense due to Divine appointment; the universe would be less perfect if its laws could be broken with impunity. By contrast,evil-revivalists believe that the concept of evil has a place in ourmoral and political thinking and discourse. Thus fire could not exist without the corruption of what it consumes; the lion must slay the ass in order to live, and if there were no wrong doing, there would be no sphere for patience and justice (I, Q. xlviii, a. No system of philosophy has ever succeeded in escaping from the obscurity in which the subject is involved; but it is not too much to say that the Christian solution offers, on the whole, fewer difficulties, and approaches more nearly to completeness than any other. 19). Vol. for the manifestation of the attributes of God. III. The Catholic Encyclopedia. The third way of conceiving the place of evil in the general scheme of existence is that of those systems of Monism, by which evil is merely viewed as a mode in which certain aspects of moments of the development of nature are apprehended by human consciousness. We reach here the utmost limit of speculation; and our inability to conceive the ultimate reason for creation (as distinct from its direct motive) is paralleled, at a much earlier stage of the enquire, by the inability of the non-creationist schools of thought to assign any ultimate cause for the existence of the order of nature. If animal suffering is excluded, no pain of any kind is caused by the inevitable limitations of nature; and they can only be called evil by analogy, and in a sense quite different from that in which the term is applied to human experience. If it had been more perfect in detail, it would have been less fitted as a whole for the attainment of this object. The notion that evil is necessarily inherent in matter, independent of the Divine author of good, and in some sense opposed to Him, is common to the above theosophical systems, to many of the purely rational conceptions of Greek philosophy, and to much that has been advanced on this subject in later times, In the Pythagorean idea of a numerical harmony as the constitutive principle of the world, good is represented by unity and evil by multiplicity (Philolaus, Fragm.) 3). The evil eye is considered to be a look given to inflict harm, suffering, or some form of bad luck on those that it is cast upon. The features which stand out in the earlier Christian explanation of evil, as compared with non-Christian dualistic theories are thus the definite attribution to God of absolute omnipotence and goodness, notwithstanding His permission of the existence of evil; the assignment of a moral and retributive cause for suffering in the sin of mankind; and the unhesitating assertion of the beneficence of God's purpose in permitting evil, together with the full admission that He could, had He so chosen, have prevented it (City of God XIV). Vat., can. xliv). Derham (Physico-Theology, London, 1712) took occasion from an examination of the excellence of creation to commend an attitude of humility and trust towards the creator of "this elegant, this well contrived, well formed world, in which we find everything necessary for the sustenation, use and pleasure both of man and every other creature here below; as well as some whips, some rods, to scourge us for our sins". This was also, among Greek philosophers, the view of Hegesias the Cyrenaic (called peisithanatos, the counsellor of death), who held life to be valueless, and pleasure, the only good, to be unattainable. It will be observed that St. Thomas’s account of evil is a true Theodicy, taking into consideration as it does every factor of the problem, and leaving unsolved only the mystery of creation, before which all schools of thought are equally helpless. Bourdeau has asserted in express terms the futility of seeking a transcendental or supernatural origin for evil, and the necessity of confining the view to natural, accessible, and determinable causes (Revue Philosophique, I, 1900). 2). Plato held God to be "free from blame" (anaítios) for the evil of the world; its cause was partly the necessary imperfection of material and created existence, and partly the action of the human will (Timeaus, xlii; cf. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. But unreflective adherence to a group identity that requires us to jettison the workings of conscience—that is, to reject what makes us fully human in the likeness of God—is the very definition of sin. Evil is threefold, viz., "malum naturæ" (metaphysical evil), "culpæ" (moral), and "paenæ" (physical, the retributive consequence of "malum culpæ") (I, Q. xlviii, a. As darkness is nothing but the absence of light, and is not produced by creation, so evil is merely the defect of goodness. Catholic teaching on free will recognizes that God has given men and women the capacity to choose good or evil in their lives. as the penal and just consequence of sin (City of God XI.12, De Vera Relig. It may further be understood from St. Thomas, that in the diversity of metaphysical evil, in which the perfection of the universe as a whole is embodied, God may see a certain similitude of His own threefold unity (cf. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05649a.htm. Throughout Sacred Scripture, we find mention of Satin, the devil. Descartes and Malebranche held that the world is the best possible for the purpose for which it was created, i.e. (I, Q. The prohibition against eating "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" spells this out: "for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die." May 1, 1909. The evil from which man suffers is, however, the condition of good, for the sake of which it is permitted. (Greg. We have to enquire, that is to say, how evil has come to exist, and what is its special relation to the Creator of the universe. Bardesanes, however, and his followers regarded evil as resulting from the misuse of created free will. Though the same cause may give pain to one, and pleasure to another, pain and pleasure, as sensations or ideas, cannot but be mutually exclusive. . Div. Thus Boethius asks (De Consol. Thus the Manichiean dualism has no foundation in reason. Any Catholic explanation must take into account the defined truths of the omnipotence, omniscience, and goodness of God; free will on the part of man; and the fact that suffering is the penalt… Antioch., Ad Autolyc., II; cf. Such action, when it proceeds solely from ignorance, is not to be classed as moral evil, which is properly restricted to the motions of will towards ends of which the conscience disapproves. Poverty, oppression, and some forms of disease are instances of evil arising from imperfect social organization. Moral evil, in particular, arises from error, and is to be gradually eliminated, or at least minimized, by improved knowledge of the conditions of human welfare (Meliorism). To what, then, is the evil of human life, physical and moral, to be attributed as its cause? APA citation. The medieval Christian notion that good government is ordained by God for the promotion of virtue and the protection of the faithful against evil is distinctly absent from the world of The Prince. According to the Epicurean Lucretius (De Rerum Natura, II, line 180) the existence of evil was fatal to the supposition of the creation of the world by God: Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse creatum Naturam mundi, quæ tanta est prædita culpa. Phil., I, iv) Who can be the author of good, if God is the author of evil? The Stoics conceived evil in a somewhat similar manner, as due to necessity; the immanent Divine power harmonizes the evil and good in a changing world. The question, which Schopenhauer has called "the punctum pruriens of metaphysics", is concerned not so much with the various detailed manifestations of evil in nature, as with the hidden and underlying cause which has made these manifestations possible or necessary; and it is at once evident that enquiry in a region so obscure must be attended with great difficulty, and that the conclusions reached must, for the most part be of a provisional and tentative character. The world is what we make it; evil tends to diminish with the growth of experience, and may finally vanish; though on the other hand, there may always remain the irreducible minimum of evil. Evil results Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called 'Satan ' or the 'devil '' no actual. Double effect dates at least as far back as the penal and consequence. Lines have been offered, differing according to Buddha, is the limitation by one another of component... 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