Does evil come from evil and good from good?

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fakename

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It seems that it does but then this implies that God did not order Sodom destroyed since it would be an evil to deprive people of something. So the people withdrew themselves from God and were destroyed by their own vices or demons but then, where would the literal interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah be?

Help with this anyone?
 
fakename said:
It seems that it does but then this implies that God did not order Sodom destroyed since it would be an evil to deprive people of something. So the people withdrew themselves from God and were destroyed by their own vices or demons but then, where would the literal interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah be?

Help with this anyone?
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What “something” that God would be depriving them of do you mean? Their lives? Every person lives by God’s mercy and indulgence. You answered it yourself. They withdrew from God’s grace and love, they’d destroyed their own conscience and were determined to destroy the righteous man’s (Lot’s and his family’s) conscience, as well. God did no evil by destroying their cities.

And evil doesn’t come from evil, in the sense that it is created thing. Evil is the absence of good or the twisting of good for evil purposes. Evil isn’t a thing but a result, such as dark being the absence of light or cold the absence of heat.
 
fakename said:
It seems that it does but then this implies that God did not order Sodom destroyed since it would be an evil to deprive people of something. So the people withdrew themselves from God and were destroyed by their own vices or demons but then, where would the literal interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah be?

Help with this anyone?
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Evil and good come from the same source, our free will. However, if you chose evil, and continue to chose evil, then your soul grows more distant from GOD and HIS saving grace, such that “evil” becomes normal and you do not think of it as evil, it is simply your life style, and you likewise do not think about GOD, since you have become so selfiish and self centered that there is no place for GOD.
If you can pull back from evil, and at some point “come to your senses” and return to GOD, then you can reverse course.
The greatest saint that never was, was Judas, who did not turn back to GOD in forgiveness, compared to King David, who committed adultry and murder, but turned back to GOD.
Your life, your free will, your choice, evil or good?
 
Explain what you mean by “evil to deprive someone of something”.
 
Evil doesn’t have any existence of its own. It is merely the absence of due good.
 
kage_ar said:
Explain what you mean by “evil to deprive someone of something”.
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Well to me, God does no evil (that is, he doesn’t deprive people of things). So depriving someone of something is an evil and an action God doesn’t do. Therefore how is it that God could destroy a city? Shouldn’t the destructive force be some demon or the sinfulness of the city and not God?
 
fakename said:
Well to me, God does no evil (that is, he doesn’t deprive people of things). So depriving someone of something is an evil and an action God doesn’t do. Therefore how is it that God could destroy a city? Shouldn’t the destructive force be some demon or the sinfulness of the city and not God?
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What if the destruction of the city wasn’t evil? What if it was a good thing?
 
kage_ar said:
God is just. God must punish evil.
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Does God need to punish evil in order to be just? No, since he can simply correct and improve people so as to avoid evil -this would also be just. Anyways, a punishment implies an evil added on to the evil committed -a deprivation from a creator God?

In what way can the “taking away of something” be considered good from God’s point of view?
 
Saint Thomas Aquinas: “by the name of evil is signified the absence of good.”
Summa Theologica, I, Q. 48, A. 1.

There are three types of evil:
  1. moral evil
    Sin is moral evil, and moral evil is sin.
  2. physical evil
    Something of a misnomer, since physical evil includes deprivations that are not physical.
  3. metaphysical evil
    Theologians disagree on how this should be defined, but it is perhaps best and most simply represented as the lack of goodness in any finite created things – finiteness, as compared to the infinite goodness of God.
None of the acts of God are moral evil, since morality is defined by the goodness of the Nature of God, and God cannot deny Himself.

God does sometimes will physical evil, such as the sufferings of Purgatory, or such as the destruction of a city as a punishment for sin.

Sacred Scripture says this: “Shall there be evil in a city, which the Lord hath not done?” (Amos 3:6, Challoner version). The note for this verse says: “Evil in a city. He speaks of the evil of punishments of war, famine, pestilence, desolation, &c., but not of the evil of sin, of which God is not the author.”
 
fakename said:
Perhaps, but then, isn’t evil the deprivation of something -so in our case the deprivation of the city.
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Or the deprivation of the due good that would have sustained the existence of the city?
 
Ron_Conte said:
Saint Thomas Aquinas: “by the name of evil is signified the absence of good.”
Summa Theologica, I, Q. 48, A. 1.

There are three types of evil:
  1. moral evil
    Sin is moral evil, and moral evil is sin.
  2. physical evil
    Something of a misnomer, since physical evil includes deprivations that are not physical.
  3. metaphysical evil
    Theologians disagree on how this should be defined, but it is perhaps best and most simply represented as the lack of goodness in any finite created things – finiteness, as compared to the infinite goodness of God.
None of the acts of God are moral evil, since morality is defined by the goodness of the Nature of God, and God cannot deny Himself.

God does sometimes will physical evil, such as the sufferings of Purgatory, or such as the destruction of a city as a punishment for sin.

Sacred Scripture says this: “Shall there be evil in a city, which the Lord hath not done?” (Amos 3:6, Challoner version). The note for this verse says: “Evil in a city. He speaks of the evil of punishments of war, famine, pestilence, desolation, &c., but not of the evil of sin, of which God is not the author.”
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I think I discovered an answer -God does “do” some evil but this is not inconsistent with His personality because some deprivations are deprivations of unnatural things which are inconsistent with the good of that thing. So depriving someone of bizzare things like sinful habits is okay since it results in a net betterment of the creature to the glory of God.

So it is not bad for God to justly destroy a city.
 
fakename said:
I think I discovered an answer -God does “do” some evil but this is not inconsistent with His personality because some deprivations are deprivations of unnatural things which are inconsistent with the good of that thing. So depriving someone of bizzare things like sinful habits is okay since it results in a net betterment of the creature to the glory of God.

So it is not bad for God to justly destroy a city.
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It is not moral evil for God to do physical evil to a city as a punishment for sin.

A sinful tendency (as distinguished from the sin itself) is a ‘physical evil’ (harm or disorder). A sinful tendency is a deprivation, so it cannot be taken away by another deprivation. A deprivation is like darkness. Darkness is an absence of light. A deprivation is an absence of some good. Just as darkness is dispelled by light, sinful tendencies are overcome by adding virtue and grace, not by a deprivation of the sinful tendency. (A deprivation of a deprivation would not make sense.)

We say, as a manner of speaking, that the sinful tendency is taken away, but philosophically a deprivation can only be ‘taken away’ by adding what is absent. For example: a deprivation of food in a city is taken away by adding food.
 
This is all very confusing to me.
  1. God can do physical evil. True but now that I think about it, how can the ALL good God take away something? He would be both creator and destroyer? Some say that he can take away things to punish, but aside from the semantic problem of saying God is a creator and can deprive people of things, still there is a real problem in that, punishment doesn’t really improve people -the doctor doesn’t improve the patient in as much as he slices and cuts the patient but only in as much as his cuts allow the patient to reassert his natural health -truly the patient heals himself. So punishment is not the thing that improves people but is only a compromise with evil for some greater good.
 
To destroy a city is something that God can do, the city, the entire world, belongs to Him. The creator has the power of life and death.

It is not evil for God to destroy something.
 
"To destroy a city is something that God can do, the city, the entire world, belongs to Him. The creator has the power of life and death.

It is not evil for God to destroy something."

The point is, why? I suppose it is because God has the power of life and death and yet, this doesn’t seem to mesh with God as creator and always in favor of perfection or good. How could he use his goodness -which is His power itself -to destroy without contradicting his creativity?

Could He, I hypothesize, in a way punish people by giving them lesser goods than they expected or by what comes to the same thing, through denying them a good they don’t deserve? Surely God doesn’t go about the earth whipping people with His love and pronouncing it creation?
 
fakename said:
"To destroy a city is something that God can do, the city, the entire world, belongs to Him. The creator has the power of life and death.

It is not evil for God to destroy something."

The point is, why? I suppose it is because God has the power of life and death and yet, this doesn’t seem to mesh with God as creator and always in favor of perfection or good. How could he use his goodness -which is His power itself -to destroy without contradicting his creativity?

Could He, I hypothesize, in a way punish people by giving them lesser goods than they expected or by what comes to the same thing, through denying them a good they don’t deserve? Surely God doesn’t go about the earth whipping people with His love and pronouncing it creation?
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The way God dealt with mankind before the Incarnation of Christ was very different from the way he does after. Before Christ came, men were subject to God’s direct judgment. They had no buffer between their sin and God’s righteousness, except the sacrifices and the Law of Moses, neither of which the people of Sodom and Gomorrah followed or cared to follow. Their sin was grievous and ongoing. They had no intention of repenting. God didn’t deprive them of what they deserved by destroying them and their cities.

Since Christ came and gained our redemption and salvation, though, God deals with us accordingly. Does this mean that God didn’t love the people he destroyed? No. They died physically, but we don’t know their eternal destiny. Only God knows that.

You have to understand the covenants God made with Adam, then Noah, then Abraham and then Israel in order to understand the writings of the OT. You can’t just read them cold and think you can figure it out. It’s why we need the Church to interpret such matters.of faith and morals. It’s one of the reasons why Christ established his Church.
 
To the post above -true maybe it is that people changed so God “changed” but I’m looking for the timeless principle which allows God to do what He does. In any case, it does look at first to be against God’s love to destroy a city, simply because it belongs to the essence of cities and people to shun non-existence and to embrace existence and it seems unnatural for people to be destroyed -the substance is insulted.

But primarily I was asking if God positively punishes people or if he punishes people through denying them what they wouldn’t deserve, not what they deserve.
 
fakename said:
To the post above -true maybe it is that people changed so God “changed” but I’m looking for the timeless principle which allows God to do what He does. In any case, it does look at first to be against God’s love to destroy a city, simply because it belongs to the essence of cities and people to shun non-existence and to embrace existence and it seems unnatural for people to be destroyed -the substance is insulted.

But primarily I was asking if God positively punishes people or if he punishes people through denying them what they wouldn’t deserve, not what they deserve.
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No where did I claim that God changed. God never changes. How he dealt with men changed from the old covenant to the new covenant. Before Christ God’s grace had not yet been “poured out” on all mankind. Jesus’ death and resurrection is the new covenant in which God made his saving grace available to all in Christ.

And wherever did you get the idea that death equals “non-existence”? All human beings have immortal souls that don’t die. The people of those cities physically died but their souls are very much alive.

God exacts his justice as he sees fit. He made us. We have to answer to him not he to us. If he deems people unworthy of what they have he can take it from them without having done any injustice to them.

You seem to want to put God within limits that make sense to you. That’s the wrong approach. You should be exploring God’s nature–what he is and how he operates according to what he is.
 
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