The syllogism is simple. Let P = God is ultimate; let Q = there is evil. Then:
- ¬ P → ¬ Q
- ¬ ¬ Q
- ¬ ¬ P
In English:
- If God is not ultimate, then there is no evil.
- It is false that there is no evil.
- It is false that God is not ultimate.
Clever, but wrong. It has been the position since St. Augustine that evil does not in fact exist because it cannot exist; and it cannot exist precisely because of God's ultimate status as creator of all, combined with God's goodness. Evil simpliciter would be a created thing that was not in any way good; but everything that follows from God must be good, because God is perfectly so (and in a way that is higher and better than things we encounter in the world are).
The orthodox position is that "evil is a privation," that is, a failure of the material to realize God's perfect design. Thus, all evil turns out to be is an imperfect realization of the good. Everything that exists must be good to some degree just because God created it.
[Even more emphatically in the later Aristotelian Christianity of Aquinas and his era, God's existence and his goodness are a mere prioritization of thought about the same quality. God's essence is existence: and as existence is the thing that all things desire, existence is just another name for the good (per Aristotle; because all things desire to continue to exist, to reproduce, to perfect their health and thus their existence, etc, 'the good' simpliciter is existence). Therefore, everything is good insofar as it has being; and evil thus cannot exist because it cannot have being, i.e. goodness.]
Then the syllogism doesn't work:
- ¬ P → ¬ Q
- ¬ Q
- ¬ P
That syllogism is a known fallacy, "Affirming the Consequent" or the "converse error." It doesn't prove anything because the form is invalid. For example, you could give the argument:
- If she screams, someone pinched her.
- She screamed.
- Therefore, someone pinched her.
In fact it's obvious that there could have been several additional causes for the scream; she might have seen a dead body instead of being pinched.
Of course one can take the position that orthodoxy is wrong, and evil simpliciter does exist: that's the Manichaeist position, which in Christianity is traditionally considered a heresy. It doesn't work out logically to have two basic creative principles, as Avicenna explains: either one is really superior, or there must a third thing that holds them together and allows them to interact, in which case that thing is the ultimate creative principle (and you're back to one). Since this is the case, any syllogism that asserts that 'God is ultimate' but that evil simpliciter also exists as a countering force will prove to be illogical.
One could further take the position that logic does not give you access to knowledge, but only preservation of knowledge, and that knowledge about God is ultimately ineffable at best (and thus inadmissible to logical forms). This is close to the Buddhist position, which might be true but won't be logical. At that point there's just no reason to even talk about syllogisms.
6 comments:
I have 3 questions.
1. Is this useful as an answer to the problem of evil?
2. How does this relate to evil as an adjective? E.g., murder is an evil action. Here, evil is not something created and so doesn't exist independently, but it does exist in the same way that big, heavy, or red does.
3. The idea that no created thing can be evil is interesting. It assumes that change from good to evil is impossible. But we also know that Satan cannot repent and be saved. He was created good, but through his own free choice rebelled against God. His state was permanently changed. Is it not possible that his change also changed something created good into something evil? In that case, evil would exist, wouldn't it?
1. Yes, it is St. Augustine's answer to that problem, which became Catholic orthodoxy. Aquinas has a much more detailed Aristotelian answer, but he doesn't remove or adjust Augustine's foundation.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/#WillEvil
2. Every being, insofar as it is/has being, is good. Using the word as an adjective is to refer to some other aspect of that entity besides its existence, or a way in which it has not lived up to the perfection of its existence. Aquinas: "No being can be spoken of as evil, formally as being, but only so far as it lacks being. Thus a man is said to be evil, because he lacks some virtue; and an eye is said to be evil, because it lacks the power to see well."
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1005.htm#article3
3. Again, there is a distinction between 'insofar as it has being' and 'in equivocal senses of the term.' What you know about Satan is not that he cannot repent but that he will not.
What absolutely cannot exist is pure and complete evil, what the Orthosphere tried to refer to as is evil simpliciter. Everything that exists is at least somewhat good because existing is being, and being comes from God.
1. Interesting! I'll have to read up.
2. I'm trying to think through this. I understand adjectives don't exist in themselves, like height doesn't exist w/o something that can be measured. So does height not exist at all?
Maybe a better question is whether actions exist, in the sense we are talking about. Does murder exist?
3. How would we describe Satan, then, in terms of good and evil? It seems odd to say that Satan is good, but so far that's where the argument leaves me.
Also, not that it necessarily matters here, but I think only a being with a mortal body can repent. Since Satan doesn't have a mortal body, I don't think he can repent.
1. Good.
2. There's a whole talk about adjectives as applied to God versus to anything else; the keywords are "univocal" and "equivocal." They mean just what they say they mean, 'in one voice' or 'in similar voices.' ('Equi-' implies a relationship of some sort that may not be perfect, as 2+2=4 even though 'two and another two' is conceptually distinct from 'four'; but also equity, in which the relationship involves differences of treatment to try to balance; or even 'equity' in the strict sense of ownership, where a person who owns 51% has more rights than someone with 15%, but it's not thought unfair).
To say that God is good is to say something different from to say that a man is good; that's an example of equivocal talk. God is good in the sense that his essence defines what is good, that is, not only essentially but in the way that establishes what is good for everything else. A man is good if and only insofar as he lives up to the potential God set for him. Whenever you're in the space we're in now, in which divine qualities, actions, or attributes are under discussion, you have to keep in mind that words will often have different meanings, and that's both ok and appropriate given the differential.
3. You don't have to go as far as Satan, and it might be confusing to do so because people are accustomed to thinking of him as a kind of ultimate evil. And perhaps that's reasonable, if you can understand the limit even 'ultimate' evil has to operate under: insofar as he exists, he was created by God, and his being is thus a divine work. Even the ultimate evil isn't evil simpliciter, because if and insofar as it exists it participates in divine creation and the sustenance of its being by divine will.
You can work through the good and evil of more ordinary creatures with Aquinas, here:
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2018.htm
Thanks!
You are welcome.
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