God is everything, so God is evil?

[blossom02]

God created everything but God is not everything.
God is not snow.
God is not a tree.
God is not a the sun.
God is God.
God is the creator.

 

[Green_Tea]

blossom02:

God created everything but God is not everything.
God is not snow.
God is not a tree.
God is not a the sun.
God is God.
God is the creator.

God is snow, a tree, the sun, God, and the creator in the specific sense that “from Christ and through Christ and to Christ are all things.” If we speak of God as “pure being,” then whatever is can be identified with God in that specific respect (hence my earlier post).

God is not snow, a tree, the sun, God, and the creator in the specific sense God transcends creation. Even the most lofty of our human concepts (“God,” “creator”) must be recognized as insufficient, albeit helpful, approximations and graspings in this respect (hence my earlier post).

 

[Ghosty]

God is snow, a tree, the sun, God, and the creator in the specific sense that “from Christ and through Christ and to Christ are all things.” If we speak of God as “pure being,” then whatever is can be identified with God in that specific respect (hence my earlier post).

God is not being in the same way that snow, a tree, or the sun is a being. Properly speaking those things are less than being, but rather are participated or contingent beings (in Thomistic theology there is a distinction made between “pure being” which is God, and “being in general” which is said of creatures). Since their being isn’t the same as God’s being, we can’t say “God is snow”. Since the being is not the same, we can’t make a one-for-one identity statement about it; to use St. Thomas Aquinas’ terminology, the being of God and the being of a tree are analogical, not identical.

What we can say, however, is that God is IN snow by giving it a participation of His being. There is no way we can say that God IS snow without limiting God, however, since snow has a definite size and shape and such.

To use a classic theological analogy, fire is not metal by heating metal, but fire can be said to be IN metal by extending its own properties to metal in lesser, participated way. The metal doesn’t become fire by becoming heated, but it does share in fire in a very real sense, and we could even say that it participates in the nature of fire by fire extending itself to the metal.

When a person murders another, that is not an absence; it is a presence.

It’s a real action with real, quantifiable results that can be experienced, but that action is missing the perfection of virtue, and that is what is said to be missing. Evil isn’t a pure privation, not the utter absence of something, but the imperfection of something. It’s the “making less” of something that is, not something being altogether absent.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Green_Tea]

Ghosty,

I am fine with everything you said about ontology. That is why I specified the difference senses in which the verb “is” (which denotes being) can be understood.

I am not sure what you mean exactly about “evil.” Is “evil” strictly a conceptual label we give things, or does it have some existence in its own right?

 

[Ghosty]

I am not sure what you mean exactly about “evil.” Is “evil” strictly a conceptual label we give things, or does it have some existence in its own right?

Neither.

It has no being in its own right, but it’s not merely a concepual label. It is the description of some real thing that falls short of its perfection, a quality of something that has real existence. An evil man is not someone who absolutely doesn’t exist, but is a man who falls short of what a man should be; they fall short of perfection of existence.

Perfection isn’t purely our own private and human label on things, so falling short of perfection isn’t purely conceptual. We can really experience this “falling short” without that falling short having its own exisence. I can take a long walk off a short pier, and experience the drop-off, without “drop-off” having its own existence. What exists is me falling, not the drop-off, so while I experience the sensation of “falling from a drop-off”, that doesn’t mean “drop-off” exists in itself, but the fact that the pier is only a certain length is a real fact.

To use a human example, the fact that this man fails in virtue, or falls short of what it means to be a human (by murdering someone), is a real thing, but “failure” is not a something, but the lack of something. We experience the fact of evil (the murder), without evil having its own being.

Does that make any sense?

Peace and God bless!

 

[Coleski]

There is a fundamental mistake in the statement God is everything. The statement is pantheistic. God is all. God created the universe from nothing. God is not the creation. In His creation God allowed change or movement, therefore things will come and things will go. To that which goes it might seem evil. For spiritual beings as angels and men God allowed free will. Therefore we can choose to disobey God and sin. From thense comes spiritual evil. Natural evil is only that which is preceived as evil in a universe of movement. To think otherwise would have God rushing around to avoid us humans any harm lest we dash our foot against a stone.

 

[Green_Tea]

Coleski:

There is a fundamental mistake in the statement God is everything. The statement is pantheistic.

Not unless the statement were to read, “God is only everything,” or something like that.

Ghosty:

Does that make any sense?

I think so. I will have to consider it a bit longer before I can tell you what I think of it. Thank you.

 

[Hastrman]

There is a fundamental mistake in the statement God is everything. The statement is pantheistic. God is all. God created the universe from nothing. God is not the creation. In His creation God allowed change or movement, therefore things will come and things will go. To that which goes it might seem evil. For spiritual beings as angels and men God allowed free will. Therefore we can choose to disobey God and sin. From thense comes spiritual evil. Natural evil is only that which is preceived as evil in a universe of movement. To think otherwise would have God rushing around to avoid us humans any harm lest we dash our foot against a stone.

Yes, more or less, but natural evil really exists and is not a mere perception. Natural evil is when a thing lacks those perfections proper to it–blindness is a natural evil in things with eyes, but it is not evil in a chair that it cannot see.

 

[catholic2]

Anyway, one of my friends said “how do we know what is good?” And then she said “If God created everything, and everything is from God, and since there is evil, God must be evil.”

I simplified her argument into a logic statement (If A then B, etc.) and pointed that her logic was not valid. She did not like this answer

I’m interested how you posited her argument into an invalid conclusion?

 

[Dan86]

Evil isn’t something; it’s the lack of something. It’s like a shadow.