- The problem of evil is raised by the combination of certain traditional theistic beliefs and the acknowledgement that there is evil in the world. If, as the major monotheisms claim, there is a perfectly good, omnipotent, omniscient God who creates and governs the world, how can the world such a God created and governs have evil in it? In medieval philosophy in the Latin-speaking west, philosophical discussion of evil is informed by Augustine’s thought. The literature on Augustine’s refl ections on goodness is vast; but see, e.g., Christopher Kirwan , Augustine (London: Routledge, 1989) and G. R. Evans , Augustine on Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) for helpful introductions. For more recent discussion, see Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump , eds., The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) . For a good overview of the problem in the context of medieval philosophical theology, see Ingolf Dalferth , Malum: Theologische Hermeneutik des Bösen (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008).
- Aquinas himself would certainly not have supposed that anything about the metaphysical status of evil provided a reason for God’s permitting human suffering to occur (Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Augustine is also known for his suggestion that the evil permitted by God contributes to the beauty and goodness of the whole universe, just as a dark patch may contribute to the lightness and beauty of a painting. Some people also mistakenly interpret this suggestion on Augustine’s part as an attempt at theodicy. But taking Augustine’s point in this way is to suppose that, for Augustine, the answer to the question of why God allows suffering is that suffering has an aesthetic value for God. The moral repulsiveness of such a position strikes many people as obvious; it would most certainly have been obvious to Aquinas. Augustine would also have found such a position unacceptable (see “The Problem of Evil,” in Robert Pasnau, ed., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy). Aquinas himself explicitly repudiates the idea that God would allow the suffering of human persons for any reason other than benefi t to the sufferers.(edited)
- So, for example, Aquinas says, “Whatever happens on earth, even if it is evil, turns out for the good of the whole world. Because as Augustine says in the Enchiridion , God is so good that he would never permit any evil if he were not also so powerful that from any evil he could draw out a good. But the evil does not always turn out for the good of the thing in connection with which the evil occurs, because although the corruption of one animal turns out for the good of the whole world—insofar as one animal is generated from the corruption of another—nonetheless it does not turn out for the good of the animal which is corrupted. The reason for this is that the good of the whole world is willed by God for its own sake, and all the parts of the world are ordered to this [end]. The same reasoning appears to apply with regard to the order of the noblest parts [of the world] with respect to the other parts, because the evil of the other parts is ordered to the good of the noblest parts. But what ever happens with regard to the noblest parts is ordered only to the good of those parts themselves, because care is taken of them for their own sake, and for their sake care is taken of other things. . . . But among the best of all the parts of the world are God’s saints. . . . He takes care of them in such a way that he does not allow any evil for them which he does not turn into their good. “
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- Aquinas Scale of Value
- On Aquinas’s views, the worst thing that can happen to a person is to become alienated from God; it is to be endlessly isolated from God’s redemptive goodness. God is a person, on Aquinas’s views of God. A union of love with God is thus a personal relationship, too; on Aquinas’s views, it is the greatest of personal relationships. The best thing for human beings, the intrinsic upper limit on human fl ourishing, is to be in a union of love with God. And so the worst thing for human beings and the best thing for human beings are correlatives. That is because, on Aquinas’s views, the hallmark of a great good is that it is shareable, that it is not diminished by being distributed. The union of love with God, which is the greatest of goods for a human being and the best of personal relationships, is consequently also the most shareable. The love of one human being for another is also a shareable good, and human loves can themselves be woven into the shareable love between God and human persons. So the shared union of love among human beings and God is the best thing for human beings, on Aquinas’s scale of value.
- In Aquinas’s terms, the point has to be put differently, of course; on the doctrine of the Trinity, in medieval terms, there is one God in three persons. But this is a technical sense of “person,” drawn from Boethius’s formulation: a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. Nonetheless, the technical sense as it is used in the doctrine of the Trinity is compatible with the claim that God is a person, in our sense of the word “person.” There is just one will and one intellect in the triune God, on the orthodox views Aquinas accepts. Insofar as, in our sense of “person,” something having one mind and one will is a person, it is true to say that for Aquinas God is a person. Some readers will also want to object to the claim that for Aquinas God has a will and a mind, on the grounds that for Aquinas God is simple and therefore has no parts that can be distinguished from one another as mind is distinguished from will. But although it is true that Aquinas’s God is simple, Aquinas himself talks about the intellect and the will of God. Formulating claims about God in order to bring the doctrine of simplicity to the fore requires so much clumsiness in locution that Aquinas himself regularly omits it. For defense of Aquinas’s views on simplicity, see the relevant chapter in my Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003).
- Furthermore, on Aquinas’s views, human beings are permanent and not transitory things. For this reason, the best thing and the worst thing for human beings can also be permanent things. For Aquinas, heaven is the best thing made permanent and unending. The permanent shared union of loving personal relationship with God in heaven is thus, fi nally, the truly best thing for human beings. The worst thing is the permanent absence of that shared union. For Aquinas, because a human will is free in a libertarian sense. It is possible for a human being never to want or to achieve real closeness or love with God or with any human persons either. A human being is capable of being in such a condition forever; and this is hell. For examination of Aquinas’s view that the union of love is possible only in integration around goodness, see (my “Love, By All Accounts,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 80:2 (November 2006): 25–43). On Aquinas’s worldview, then, not only is loneliness hellish, in the sense that it is one of the worst things for a human being, but also hell, which is the worst thing made permanent and unending, is lonely. There is more to hell than simply the loss of God’s presence, on Aquinas’s views, because there is also penalty or punishment; but Aquinas supposes that the loss of God’s presence is suffi cient for hell.
- Aquinas supposes that there is no traffi c between heaven and hell; that is, no person who was really in heaven ever goes to hell, and no person who was really in hell ever goes to heaven. Aquinas supposes that there is no traffi c between heaven and hell; that is, no person who was really in heaven ever goes to hell, and no person who was really in hell ever goes to heaven. It is clear enough why the inability to lose heaven would be essential to peace and joy in heaven. But it is less easy to see why a person in hell could not repent and come to heaven. The reasons Aquinas gives for his view that it is not possible have to do with his understanding of the conditions needed for changing one’s mind. If he were wrong on this score, the error would necessitate only a redescription of the extrinsic lower limit of the scale of value for human fl ourishing. Aquinas’s views of the best thing and the worst thing for human beings mark out a scale of value on which human suffering and the benefi ts which might be thought to redeem it can be measured. Aquinas himself thinks that acceptance of the view that there is an afterlife and that true happiness consists in union with God in that afterlife is essential to his theodicy. Without it, he thinks, the theodicy he adopts will appear senseless. What Aquinas goes on to say spells out explicitly the difference between the commonly accepted worldview of his society and that of the popular culture of our own (Aquinas, In I Cor 15.2).
- The Role of Suffering in Warding off the Worst Thing
- Because Aquinas thinks of justifi cation and sanctifi cation as healing for a human psyche, he often speaks of suffering as God’s medicine for the psychic disorder of postlapsarian human beings (Thomas Aquinas, Super ad Thessalonicenses I , prologue; Larcher and Duffy, Commentary , 3). Aquinas comments in great detail on the line in Hebrews: “whom the Lord loves he chastens” (Super ad Hebraeos , chap. 12 , lect. 1). The same general point appears recurrently in Aquinas’s commentary on Job. Arguing that temporal goods such as those Job lost are given and taken away according to God’s will (Aquinas, Expositio super Job , chap. 1 , sec. 20–21). In commenting on a line in Job containing the complaint that God sometimes does not hear a needy person’s prayers (Aquinas, Expositio super Job , chap. 9 , sec. 15–21; Damico and Yaffe, Literal Exposition on Job , 174). For Aquinas, then, suffering is medicinal for the parts of a person’s psyche in need of healing. For those who are already healed to a certain extent, the experience of suffering enables them to open in a deeper way to the love of God, as Aquinas says in the commentary on the Creed. But for those who are very far from being healed, suffering is medicinal in the sense that, as Aquinas puts it, it helps the sufferer forward to salvation. For those very alienated from themselves and from God, suffering contributes to warding off from the sufferer the worst thing for human beings.
- The Role of Suffering in Providing the Best Thing
- Aquinas’s sense that the inner wholeness of a person renders her more, rather than less, likely to suffer can be understood in light of his taking suffering as medicinal. Strenuous medical regimens are saved for the strongest patients, in the hopes of bringing them to the most robust health and functioning. On Aquinas’s theodicy, for those people who are psychically healthier, the benefi t that justifi es suffering is the connection between suffering and glory (Super ad Hebraeos , chap. 12 , lect. 2). In his commentary on Thessalonians, Aquinas makes the same point in a slightly different way (Aquinas, Super ad Thessalonicenses I, chap. 4 , lect. 2; Larcher and Duffy, Commentary , 39). Elsewhere he puts the point in a more general way (Aquinas, Super ad Philippenses , chap. 3 , lect. 2; Larcher and Duffy, Commentary , 102). These and many other passages make it clear that Aquinas thinks there is a connection between suffering, on the one hand, and glory in shared union with God, on the other. It is not surprising, then, to fi nd that Aquinas sees a person’s enduring severe suffering as a sign of the spiritual greatness of the sufferer. Aquinas does not lose sight of the fact that any particular involuntarily endured suffering is real suffering, lamentable, sorrowful, execrable, and to be avoided or remedied if at all possible. But because Aquinas thinks that the suffering for those able and willing to receive it as sanctifying contributes to the best thing for human beings, he also thinks that there is something to exult in as regards such suffering (Aquinas, Super ad Romanos , chap. 5 , lect. 1).
- Suffering and Consolation
- Even with this much clarifi cation, Aquinas’s theodicy is still not presented in full. What is yet missing is his understanding of the role of divine consolation. Because God is omnipresent and perfectly loving, Aquinas thinks that all suffering is encompassed even in this life by the love of God. The experience of the personal presence of God is not reserved just for mystics. For those who are open to God’s presence, the minimal omnipresence of God becomes presence in love; and this presence brings consolation with it. In fact, Aquinas thinks that, for sufferers who are open to God’s presence, the consolation of that presence is felt with increased intensity in direct proportion to their sufferings. At the start of his commentary on 1 Thessalonians, Aquinas quotes with approval the line in 2 Corinthians, which says that “as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds by Christ” (2 Cor. 1:5). It should also be said that Aquinas’s notion of consolation is not abstract or anemic; rather, it emphasizes the role of personal presence in relationship with God (Murphy translation helpful. Super ad Galatas , chap. 5 , lect. 6; Larcher and Murphy, Commentary , 179–80).
- Moreover, on Aquinas’s views, the joy that comes from such personal presence between God and a human person is essential to a religious life of a believer; and he expects that all persons of faith will have such joy (ST I-II q.70 a.3). As Aquinas sees it, without the joy of this relationship, no progress is possible for anyone in the life of faith (Super ad Philippenses , chap. 4 , lect. 1). Someone might object that suffering interferes with the joy of loving relations and that Aquinas simply fails to appreciate this point. In response to such an objection, Aquinas would grant that loving relationship even with the deity does not prevent or take away suffering. On the other hand, however, Aquinas would reject the objection itself. Aquinas thinks that no sort of suffering, not even pain, can destroy the good of the loving personal relationship between God and a human being open to God’s presence.
- Morally sufficient reasons for God’s allowing suffering: As pointed out by William Rowe, in his classic formulation of the argument from evil, it is also possible to rebut the argument from evil effectively without a theodicy by employing on it what Rowe calls “the G. E. Moore shift” ( William Rowe , “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 [1979]; reprinted in Daniel Howard-Snyder, The Evidential Problem of Evil [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996], 1–11 ). As Rowe explains it, the G. E. Moore shift consists in taking as a premiss the negation of the conclusion of an opponent’s argument and deriving as a conclusion the negation of one of the premisses in the opponent’s argument. In the case of the argument from evil, the G. E. Moore shift is a matter of taking as a premiss the existence of God and concluding that there is a morally suffi cient reason for God to allow evil. This response to the argument from evil depends on some support for the premiss that God exists, support which is not effectively undercut by the problem of evil itself. The G. E. Moore shift has not received much attention by contemporary philosophers because they suppose that support for the premiss that God exists would have to come from arguments for the existence of God, and few people now have much confi dence that such arguments can be adequately defended.
- So, e.g., Peter van Inwagen says that a response of this sort to the argument from evil is “unappealing, at least if ‘reasons’ [for preferring the claim that God exists to the rival claim of atheism] is taken to mean ‘arguments for the existence of God’ in the traditional or philosophy-of-religion-text sense. Whatever the individual merits or defects of those arguments, none of them but the ‘moral argument’ (and perhaps the ontological argument) purports to prove the existence of a morally perfect being. And neither the moral argument nor the ontological argument has many defenders these days” ( Peter van Inwagen , “The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence,” in Daniel Howard-Snyder , ed., The Evidential Argument from Evil [Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 1996], 154 ). Even if none of the arguments for the existence of God is successful, however, it might still be the case that for any particular individual belief in God is rooted in religious experience or is in some other way a properly basic belief. In that case, the G. E. Moore shift would be an adequate response to the argument from evil for such a person. On the other hand, even if it were successful, the G. E. Moore shift would not obviate the usefulness of a theodicy, because a theodicy contributes an explanation of evil, as the G. E. Moore shift does not.
