Evil is not Omnipotent

 

Picture in your mind a Red Delicious apple.    As with others of its kind it has a dark red colour that looks fairly uniform from a distance, although when viewed close up you can see streaks of golden yellow in it.   This particular Red Delicious also has a spot of brown on it where it has been bruised.

 

While the apple you have just pictured in your mind is not real it is the image of countless such apples which are real, many of which you have seen and eaten over the years.

 

Now let us consider a few distinctions concerning any real Red Delicious apple that matches the description of the one imagined.    Of such an apple in would be true to say that it exists.   It would also be true to say that the apple is red.  The statement that the apple is red can also be worded, although it is hardly the way we ordinarily speak, that redness exists in the apple.    The apple exists, therefore, and redness exists in the apple.

 

This illustrates the philosophical distinction between things that exists in themselves, such as the apple, and things that only exist as properties of things that exist in themselves, such as redness.    This is a distinction between two different kinds of existence.   It is closely related to the distinction between that which is essential to any given thing and that which is accidental.   You can conceive of an apple without redness, such as a Granny Smith or a Golden Delicious.    You have actually seen numerous examples of apples without redness.   Redness, therefore, is not essential to the being of apples, but an accidental property of certain kinds of apples.   You can also conceive of things other than apples that are red and, presumably, unless you are colour-blind, of course, have seen things other than apples that are red.   What you have never seen is redness by itself and not in something else like an apple or wagon or crayon or fire truck.   This is because redness does not exist in itself, only in other things.    It exists, but its existence is a lesser, subordinate type of existence to that of the existence of things, such as apples, which exist in themselves.

 

I trust that you all understand the distinction between things that exist in themselves and things that exist only in other things.   Now let us consider a further distinction illustrated by our apple.

 

Part of the apple is bruised.   The bruise is manifest to the eye by the fact that where red used to be there is now brown.   Now, it is as true of the brown on the apple as it is of the red on the apple that the brownness exists in the apple and not in itself.   There is, however, an important difference between the redness and the brownness.   Neither the redness nor the brownness is essential to the apple, both are accidental, but the redness is natural.   It is the nature of a Red Delicious apple to be red and a Red Delicious apple will be red unless something happens to change the colour.   Dropping the apple on a hard floor, for example, will produce the kind of bruise that changes a part of the apple’s redness into brownness.   The brownness is not a natural part of the apple, but is the result of damage or injury to the apple and its redness.

 

You have probably figured out, even if the title of this essay had not already tipped you off, that my purpose in explaining all of this is not to make some deep, philosophical, point about apples.   Rather it is to illustrate what orthodox Christianity teaches about evil.

 

There are many people who think of good and evil as being two equal forces locked in an eternal struggle.   There are many who even think of this as being the Christian point of view.   It is not.   Indeed, to the extent that there is truth to the idea that Christians share elements of a common worldview with Jews and Muslims, an idea which is not as true as most who articulate it think, but more true than many who oppose it are willing to admit, the idea of an eternal battle between the equal forces of good and evil is the opposite of what that worldview has to say about good and evil.  This idea of good and evil being equals and even, in some versions of the notion, each requiring the other, belongs to the worldview of comic books and science fiction movies, and perhaps some Eastern religions.   It does not belong to the worldview of those who believe that there is One God, that He is omnipotent, and that He is Good.

 

In orthodox Christian doctrine evil is like the bruise on the apple.   It does not exist in itself.   God, Who exists in Himself in a way that is truer than of anything He created, because all other things that we conceive of as existing in themselves are dependent upon Him for their own lesser being as He is the Source of all Being, is Good, with a capital G.   He created all other things and pronounced them to be good.   See Genesis chapters 1-2.   After each separate act of creation God looked at what He had made and saw it to be good.   This happened on each of the six days of creation except the second, for the work of that day was one of separation rather than creation, a work which was not completed until the third day, at which point God saw it to be good, as He did the vegetation He created later on the same day.   The sixth day also has God looking at what He has made and pronouncing it good twice.   The first time is after He creates the land animals, the second time is after He creates man, which brings the Creation to a close, at which point He looks on everything He has made, the whole of Creation together, and sees that it is good.   God, Who is Good in Himself, created only good things. 

 

What then is evil and where does it come from?

 

The orthodox answer to the second question is “free will.”   Or, to express the concept more accurately, “moral responsibility.”   It is the ability of certain created beings, human beings and angels to be precise, to make choices for themselves for which they are accountable and for which they face consequences if they choose wrongly.   Moral responsibility is a better term for this than free will because the latter often has the connotations of something that is absolute and not subject to limitations.   Human and angelic moral responsibility is free in the sense that the decisions we make are real and not pre-programmed, but it is subject to such limitations and restraints as God in His sovereignty places on it.  

 

Human and angelical free will or moral responsibility is not evil.   Nor, for that matter, is it morally neutral.   It is itself good.    This is true in two senses.   The first, is that it is a necessary means for the end of the goodness for which men and angels were created.   Think of a person who does the right thing even though he would rather not because he has been forced to do so under duress – the existence of laws, divine and/or human, prohibiting wrongdoing and threatening the dispensation of justice to wrongdoers does not constitute duress.   Such a person does not deserve the praise for doing the right thing which somebody who deliberated on the decision and freely choose to do what is right because it is right does.   Morally responsible agency is necessary for praiseworthy moral goodness.   As a necessary means to the end of this kind of goodness it is therefore good itself.

 

There is a second way in which human and angelic moral agency is good.  It consists of the wills which God gave to men and angels.   Those wills included the capacity for weighing decisions and choosing for one’s self, but they were not created neutral.   Human and angelic wills were created with a natural inclination to choose right.   Free moral agency does not require a neutral will with a 50/50 chance of choosing right and choosing wrong.

 

This is why it is a mistake to think of Original Sin in terms of “a natural disposition to sin.”   It is rather a defect in the natural disposition to the good with which we were all created.   The thing is, when you make a wrong choice, this tends to lead to other wrong choices, which in turn lead to other wrong choices.   When our first parents sinned it became a defect in our human nature which has been passed down to us.

 

This needs to be stressed because this is the right way of thinking about evil – not as a powerful force that exists in itself, let alone one that is the equal of goodness, but as a defect in the goodness with which all beings were created.  

 

This is important to remember in times, such as these, when those bent on doing evil seem to have the upper hand.   Evil is not omnipotent.   To ascribe undefeatable power, omnipotence, to the conspiratorial forces, is to give Satan exactly what he wants the most, to be regarded as God’s equal.  Only God is omnipotent and God is good.  Do not give to Satan that which is due to God.