Dominican thomism and the problem of evil

[Boywonder23k]

Can anyone offer a defense for the problem of evil from the Thomist view? It would seem to me that the free will defense won’t work considering Dominican theology and its similarities to Calvinism.

 

[Love4All]

Can anyone offer a defense for the problem of evil from the Thomist view? It would seem to me that the free will defense won’t work considering Dominican theology and its similarities to Calvinism.

I don’t know if this is from Saint Thomas or elsewhere, but, to my mind, evil has no substance, but is a privation of good, which has substance. Evil is like shadow or cold.

Evil has no substance, but the will has substance and the Law has substance. The Law determines what the will ought to do, so for this relationship to hold, creates the goodness of the act committed in obedience to the Law. But if the relationship fails, the will is not in conformity with the Law, and we call that evil. I guess this would be a free will defense then, but, Saint Thomas knows free will is real. He’s not a Calvinist.

 

[Theophorus]

Can anyone offer a defense for the problem of evil from the Thomist view? It would seem to me that the free will defense won’t work considering Dominican theology and its similarities to Calvinism.

I’m a student of ‘dominican’ Thomism (if by dominican you mean The Order of Preachers/Sons of St. Dominic) and although there are several strands under that umbrella, I cannot see how it is even remotely like Calvinism. In fact the Thomistic view of evil as privation and God willing Himself as Goodness itself, absolutely excludes double predestination in particular and Calvinism in general. God is entirely free to act, and human beings are entirely free to act to achieve the Good as they perceive it.

Could you provide some examples of the similarities please?

 

[ccmnxc]

Well, you could put up the axiological argument and say that if evil exists, God must exist.

 

[Boywonder23k]

Thank you all for your replies! Dominican thomism as presented by Fr garrigou legrange is very close theologically and especially practically to Calvinism. Jimmy Akin wrote a classic piece on this that I will post here

ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/TULIP.htm

Although Thomists believe in a kind of free will it is one that God actively “moves” so that the will is not autonomous. This undercuts the free will defense of the problem of evil severely. I was wondering if alternative defenses from an apologetics standpoint were available

 

[ccmnxc]

To build upon my previous post:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
   a. Evil is being applied in an objective standard. A subjective standard would make the problem of evil meaningless.
3. Therefore, God exists.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

Thank you all for your replies! Dominican thomism as presented by Fr garrigou legrange is very close theologically and especially practically to Calvinism. Jimmy Akin wrote a classic piece on this that I will post here

ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/TULIP.htm

Although Thomists believe in a kind of free will it is one that God actively “moves” so that the will is not autonomous. This undercuts the free will defense of the problem of evil severely. I was wondering if alternative defenses from an apologetics standpoint were available

At the time Mr. Akin wrote that article he was a fairly recent convert from Calvinism and therefore understandably interested in the question of whether there is as large a divide between our theologies as is commonly supposed. The article, which in many respects is excellent, does approach the subject from this peculiar angle which is not the best one for examining the truth of the matter. One could likewise write an article on how close a Catholic can get to Pelagianism (or any other heresy) without contradicting Church teaching and make it accurate and informative, but the whole approach would be less than ideal and could leave the reader that a Catholic can be almost a Pelagian (or almost any other kind of heretic), just as this one can leave a reader with the impression that a Catholic can be almost a Calvinist and that this, therefore, is somehow a realistic way to think of Thomism.

On this subject I also identify more or less as a Thomist, and dislike the comparisons to Calvinism. Free will and God’s universal salvific will are essential parts of the Thomist philosophy of predestination and grace, after all.

I’m not sure what you mean by “the free will defense of the problem of evil.” The problem of evil needs no defense: it is obvious from the fact of evil and the fact of the goodness of God, and no rationalization can pierce the darkness of that mystery. What Catholics (and many Protestants) say about evil, that it contradicts God’s desires but that God gives us free will, and our free choices in disobedience to God’s law is what brings evil about, without God being the cause of that evil either directly or indirectly, all this Thomism supports. If you have not read Fr. Garrigou-Legrange’s book Predestination, or have not done so for a while, I recommend you take a look. He insists on this principle over and over again there.

What Thomism does do is avoid saying that creaturely acts came come about independently of the First Cause/Prime Mover, or that divine Omniscience is subject to information acquired from outside itself thus making God determined by creatures in some respects. In this lies, in my opinion, its principle superiorities to Molinism.

The reconciliation of these principles (though the subject certainly does remain mysterious) comes mainly in the recognition that evil is a privation of being rather than being itself. God is the cause of all that has positive being in our acts, even while we are committing a sin, but the evil of these acts is a privation that does not in any way have its source in God.

 

[belorg]

To build upon my previous post:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
   a. Evil is being applied in an objective standard. A subjective standard would make the problem of evil meaningless.
3. Therefore, God exists.

This is not exactly correct

It’s more like

1. If the Christian God exists, objective evil does not exist.
2. According to Christian teachings, objective evil does exist
3. Therefore, the Christian God doesn’t exist.

The porblem of evil is a problem of internal consistency and does not presuupose objective moral values.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

Thank you all for your replies! Dominican thomism as presented by Fr garrigou legrange is very close theologically and especially practically to Calvinism. Jimmy Akin wrote a classic piece on this that I will post here

ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/TULIP.htm

Although Thomists believe in a kind of free will it is one that God actively “moves” so that the will is not autonomous. This undercuts the free will defense of the problem of evil severely. I was wondering if alternative defenses from an apologetics standpoint were available

I hope you will forgive two long responses to one short post. In my first I neglected to address your idea God’s movement of the will makes the will “not autonomous.”

It seems to me that this approach does not sufficiently distinguish between the freedom of voluntary acts and the sense in which God is the cause of all being, including free acts.

God is the cause not only of the actions of creatures but of the nature of those actions. For instance when something happens through natural causes, say photosynthesis in a leaf, God is the first cause not only of the act of photosynthesis but of the natural character of that act.

Similarly God is simultaneously the cause of our free choices and of the very freedom of the choices. Far from taking away our freedom, God’s creation and movement of our will is the source of our freedom. It is only by erroneously conflating God’s action (grace, in the case of the movement of the will to do something meritorious) with man’s action (the choice to do something meritorious) that an apparent lack of freedom would arise.

Ultimately it comes down to the distinction between the First Cause and secondary causes. We human beings are creatures, and as such we are not our own first cause, either in our existence or in our actions. There can be only one First Cause, and that is God. But this does not take away from secondary causes their identity as true causes of their effects.

The will is truly free to choose among partial goods, not drawn inexorably to any of them. To use a more Molinist definition of freedom, even when everything is in place for the will to choose a particular partial good it is still free to choose it or not to choose it. But as a human faculty the will is still something created and therefore constitutes a secondary cause of the choice that is made rather than being the First Cause.

 

[Theophorus]

Thank you all for your replies! Dominican thomism as presented by Fr garrigou legrange is very close theologically and especially practically to Calvinism. Jimmy Akin wrote a classic piece on this that I will post here

ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/TULIP.htm

Although Thomists believe in a kind of free will it is one that God actively “moves” so that the will is not autonomous. This undercuts the free will defense of the problem of evil severely. I was wondering if alternative defenses from an apologetics standpoint were available

I didn’t see anything in that article to back up the claim re Garrigou-Lagrange. Predestination in Catholicism(esp in the Thomism of Garrigou-Lagrange) is very different to classical Calvinism.

I’m not sure what you mean by “Thomists believe in a kind of free will it is one that God actively “moves” so that the will is not autonomous”

In Thomism operation reveals the will, what you will is what you want, the object of the will is the good(perceived or actual) in this there is always freedom to choose for Catholics. The only operation in God is his own goodness. He wills his own goodness to be. That is the only operation in God. Now unless you want to introduce temporal succession in God his Will and his being cannot be separated. Insofar as God is, He wills His own Good, and He, being the most perfect thing in existence is His own good. Now this in no way limits his autonomy or his freedom, His willing of Himself is an act that can in no way be constrained, He has free choice, without any external constraint how to manifest his goodness. It is in willing the Good itself, God wills to manifest his goodness to a being endowed with free will(ie us and Angels). Please note however this means not that creation is necessary but that it is fitting.

This also undercuts classical Calvinism, as double predestination on this model would require duality in the will of God and the capacity in God for evil intent/ill will towards created reality, neither of which work in the Thomistic model.

Now maybe you are thinking of “unconditional election” which means that God does not base his choice (election) of certain individuals on anything other than his own good will/love.

God loves each and every human person equally, in their substance. He loves us not because of any merit of ours, but because he is good, He even loves Satan in his Substance, He has no preferences! (Incidentally this is a large part of our love the sinner hate the sin concept)

Individuals can however be more or less receptive and so responsive to God’s Love, in this sense only and per accidens in Thomism, we can speak of God loving someone more but this is NOT a sign of favour in the Calvinist sense, rather Thomism views this as a form of secondary causation and example. he example of the Saints who burned with the Love of God, for the benefit of all humanity. Such “unconditional election” based solely on God’s Love is not privilege for the individual but a call to serve in the fullest sense. The Saint shows more of the Love and Goodness of God because the Saint loves God more and because God uses this love(love is always a free choice) to Show the rest of us what we can choose to be by cooperating with Grace.

This is Thomism!

To sum up that article you linked, in relation to classical Calvinism:

Thomism and Catholicism reject the concept of Total depravity
Thomism and Catholicism reject the concept of Limited Atonement
Thomism and Catholicism reject the concept of Perseverance of the saints

To expand on the other points:
We would classify Grace as either ordinary grace, and extraordinary grace. Thomism and Catholicism hold that God gives sufficient grace to all, and they can freely choose to cooperate with this grace or not. I believe that this is also a departure from Calvinism. The concept of ‘Irresistible grace’ falls under extraordinary grace and relates to those receptive to Gods Love as outlined above, as mentioned above on the Thomistic view it would be for the purpose of Manifesting God’s Goodness in the world, not for individual salvation per se.

The concept of Unconditional election, as modified above is also substantially different to that found in classical Calvinism.

To return to the initial point, the Thomistic understanding of the Will in God demonstrates that God does not will evil, but that He wills only Himself, the ultimate Good, and in doing so wills all other things which exist.

Sin, in Thomism, is a refusal of God’s Goodness through disordered action freely willed when the rational creature pursues an end which is not fitting to his status as rational creature. As a result of this operation of the will, there is a privation of the good, the good which should be, is not and its absence is evil. Evil is always a privation of the good which should be there.

 

[JonEvan]

Can anyone offer a defense for the problem of evil from the Thomist view? It would seem to me that the free will defense won’t work considering Dominican theology and its similarities to Calvinism.

Evil is a lack of good according to St Thomas

 

[Love4All]

This is not exactly correct

It’s more like

1. If the Christian God exists, objective evil does not exist.
2. According to Christian teachings, objective evil does exist
3. Therefore, the Christian God doesn’t exist.

The porblem of evil is a problem of internal consistency and does not presuupose objective moral values.

That’s not exactly correct. It’s more like,

1. God exists, and is All-Good.
2. Freedom is a good; thus God is Free.
3. Evil is a privation of good, and an abuse of freedom.
4. God is All-powerful and able to bring good even out of evil.
5. Therefore God allows evil to exist, temporarily, in order to bring good out of it.

Additionally,

1. God allows sophistry like equivocating on the term, “objective evil,” temporarily, to bring about a greater good.
2. If by “objective evil” we mean some intrinsically evil substance, there is no such thing.
3. If by “objective evil” we mean the effects of an evil will, plainly, they exist — but temporarily.
4. Since God, in His omnipotence, designs to bring good even out of “objective evil” (per 8.), its temporary existence in no way indicates His absence, but rather demonstrates His Omnipotent Power.

 

[Boywonder23k]

Thank you all very much! I have had an incredibly difficult time finding anyone educated on Thomism to help me out and it seems like Catholic answers comes through again. Let me clarify my question so that we can get to the heart of my question.

1. How would a Thomast respond to the atheistic objection to the existence of God named “the problem of evil”. Everyone so far has been hung up on the axiomatic defense (evil entails God) but the problem with this is that the argument can also be ran as “the problem of pain and suffering”. It runs something like this

1.God is all good and all powerful
2.an all powerful all good God would not create a world where there is an abundance of pain and suffering.
3. Pain and suffering are abundant in our world
4. Therefore our world is not the creation of an all good all powerful being.

There are variations but you get the point.

Free will defense

It seems to me that the Thomist (unlike the molinist) is unable to employ the most frequently used defense of said argument which is the free will defense perfected by Plantiga and William Lane Craig. The response usually goes like this

1. Out of all possible worlds with free will this is the one with the least amount of pain and suffering and the optimal amount of individuals who will come.to know God.

2.God will bring about some greater good from all of our pain and suffering

1. Namely, the salvation of Gods elect

Here the molinist can say that God created this world and allowed pain and suffering because He foreknew that said suffering would bring people to salvation. The thomist does not have said option since according to Thomism God unconditionally elects people through his efficacious grace while “passing over” others. The result of this is identical to that of John Calvins doctrine of double predestination without officially saying that God intentionally reprobates sinners. Instead He “passes them over” in favor of those whom according to legrange He loves more. Technically God gives these reprobate “sufficient grace” but the grace is not sufficient in any real way since it provides salvation for.absolutely no one. This puts the Thomist and the Calvinist in a pickle. It would appear the God could absolutely save every single person if He so chose.without the aid of pain and suffering at all. He need not have created a world filled with so much pain and suffering.because He could just override peoples “freewill” at any point with His efficacious grace. This takes us back now to the atheist argument

A good God that was all powerful would not have created a world with an abundance of pain and suffering

 

[Theophorus]

Here the molinist can say that God created this world and allowed pain and suffering because He foreknew that said suffering would bring people to salvation. **The thomist does not have said option since according to Thomism God unconditionally elects people through his efficacious grace while “passing over” others. **The result of this is identical to that of John Calvins doctrine of double predestination without officially saying that God intentionally reprobates sinners. Instead He “passes them over” in favor of those whom according to legrange He loves more. Technically God gives these reprobate “sufficient grace” but the grace is not sufficient in any real way since it provides salvation for.absolutely no one. This puts the Thomist and the Calvinist in a pickle. It would appear the God could absolutely save every single person if He so chose.without the aid of pain and suffering at all. He need not have created a world filled with so much pain and suffering.because He could just override peoples “freewill” at any point with His efficacious grace. This takes us back now to the atheist argument

This is not an accurate reflection of Thomism, you forget the distinction between ordinary grace given to everyone which can be freely accepted or rejected and extraordinary grace given to those who respond to his Love more fully to better manifest God’s glory in the world. It in no way reflects Calvin’s doctrine of double predestination as that would require dualism and ‘ill will’ in the will of God, which is impossible on the Thomistic model.

The Thomistic model gives space for free will whereby all men can accept God’s grace and be saved, the Calvinistic model does not. If there were no free will then man could not freely choose the beatific vision as he can on the Thomistic model. Universal Salvation through efficacious grace as you describe it above would no longer be a free response to the Love of God but coercion and the bending of Man’s will whether he wants it or not thus making a mockery of our rational capacity and destroying who we are in our essence-this would be double predestination but it has no place in Thomism, or in the will of the loving God Thomistic Philosophy describes-I’m you have a skewed view of what Thomism is, and a misinformed view of the work of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange.

The Thomistic view is and always has been that man is free, but that his passions are disordered(original sin is difficult to demonstrate philosophically) and directing his will towards the good he can choose the Good itself-beatitude, virtue, the noble life etc. or the good as perceived which is is not fitting for man as his final end-this is where sin and evil as privation of the good come in.

God allows man’s free will that man might freely choose beatitude in accordance with his natural state-God does this because He sees that it will bring about the most good, whereas universal salvation through coercion is not really salvation at all. The ‘free will argument’ is entirely compatible with and central to thomistic philosophy, Man’s rational intellect is free in its will, informed by the intellect and the passions and influenced by grace. If man cannot freely choose then he becomes a caricature of himself, this does not fit with Thomistic philosophy.

I hammer this repeatedly because, your argument:

1.God is all good and all powerful
2.an all powerful all good God would not create a world where there is an abundance of pain and suffering.
3. Pain and suffering are abundant in our world
4. Therefore our world is not the creation of an all good all powerful being.

Does not take into account free will as mentioned above, and fails because of it. Pain and suffering can be rationalised philosophically to a certain extent by recognising man’s free will and his ability to Choose.

However it can only truly be appreciated through revelation and the Theology of God on the Cross, which again sees God as having free will completely directed to His Goodness/Love which by which He chooses to come and suffer for us. ultimately it can only be completely rationalised in along these theological lines.

 

[Boywonder23k]

Theophorus,

Can a man be saved and freely choose God through ordinary grace or soley through the extraordinary efficacious grace? It was my impression that salvation was given only through the latter. This maintains “free will” in a kind of dictionary sense but not practically if no one can choose God through ordinary grace. Do you see what I’m getting at or am I just hopelessly misunderstanding? Why would there need to be pain and suffering if all who cone to God do so but extraordinary grace?

 

[Boywonder23k]

It seems to me that the salvation of the elect would be a morally sufficient reason to allow pain and suffering… When that is taken off the table no other reason remains

 

[Theophorus]

Theophorus,

Can a man be saved and freely choose God through ordinary grace or soley through the extraordinary efficacious grace? It was my impression that salvation was given only through the latter. This maintains “free will” in a kind of dictionary sense but not practically if no one can choose God through ordinary grace. Do you see what I’m getting at or am I just hopelessly misunderstanding? Why would there need to be pain and suffering if all who cone to God do so but extraordinary grace?

I do see what you are getting at, I think its a misunderstanding of the role of grace and the (free) will in Thomism. Salvation on the Thomistic model can, and most often does, come through cooperation with ordinary grace which is offered to everyone without fail. Cooperation with ordinary grace is the normal route of Salvation in Catholicism, and it is man’s free response to God’s ordinary outpouring of grace that ultimately leads him to the beatific vision. Anyone who chooses to cooperate with the grace offered to everyone can be saved.

As St. Thomas says
Summa Contra Gentiles:

Those alone are deprived of grace who offer an obstacle within themselves to grace; just as, while the sun is shining on the world, the man who keeps his eyes closed is held responsible for his fault, if as a result some evil follows, even though he could not see unless he were provided in advance with light from the sun." (SCG III.159.2)

"

Pain and suffering occur when we freely choose a (perceived) good which is not fitting to our nature and which does not orientate us to God. The free will which allows cooperation with grace allows evil, but only because greater good will come from freely chosen good than could ever come fro enforced good or freely chosen evil(disordered/mistaken good)

 

[Boywonder23k]

Theophorus,

You are not answering in line with classical legrange thomism but from the views of William most. Fr Mosts position in my eyes border on molinism. I was inquiring about the old school thomasts.

 

[Theophorus]

Theophorus,

You are not answering in line with classical legrange thomism but from the views of William most. Fr Mosts position in my eyes border on molinism. I was inquiring about the old school thomasts.

That may also be the opinion of Fr. Most, I haven’t studied his stuff. What it defiantly is is full fat Thomism, and nothing I’ve ever read of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange contradicts this position. Garrigou-Lagrange uses more extensive terminology but his meaning is the same, and the bottom line is that all human beings are offered sufficent grace to attain salvation, it cannot be meaningfully compared with Calvinism. His work entitled “Grace” may help you out here.

 

[Boywonder23k]

Thank you for the book recommendation I will check it out! I still firmly maintain that you are mistaken about Fr Legrange. He did not teach that the “majority” of people who attain final perseverance do so by sufficient grace. He held that its “possible” for someone to do so by this grace but absolutely no one does. 100% of everyone who gets to heaven does so by God efficacious grace. He held that its also possible for those people to resist that grace but 100% of them never do. In other words… Its a distinction from Calvinism without a real difference. Or a meaningless distinction basically.