Evil and Suffering

Abstract

The specifically modern problem of evil was, of course, unknown to Aquinas. This does not mean that evil did not pose an intellectual problem for him, but rather that the nature of the problem was not the need to provide a rational justification for belief in God’s goodness in the face of evil through either theodicy or logical defense.1 Aquinas instead began with a strong doctrine of divine providence and sought to show how that providence encompassed and defeated evil. In reply to the argument that the reality of evil is incompatible with infinite divine goodness, he invokes the fundamental Augustinian axiom that governs his entire treatment: “God, since he is maximally good, would not have allowed any evil into his work unless he were so omnipotent and good that he could even make good come out of evil. Hence it pertains to the infinite goodness of God that evil be permitted so that he might bring good out of it.”2 Thus rather than impugning or thwarting the goodness and omnipotence of God, evil instead provides the opportunity for God to display these attributes more clearly by making it the occasion for the introduction of an even a greater good than that which evil originally threatened. The root of this claim is decidedly theological since it presupposes the doctrines of original sin and redemption: in response to the evil introduced into creation by the sinful misuse of freedom, God has sent his Son as Savior so that human beings might reach a state of divinisation higher than that wh i ch nreceded the Fall . 3