The Problem of Evil

Evil, then, consists essentially in the choice of what is lower in preference to what is higher.

Against the Heathen (Contra Gentiles), by St. Athanasius (html)

Evil came from man choosing the lower, thereby moving to the contrary: moving their hands to murder, their hearing to disobedience, “their other members to adultery,” their tongue to slander, and the belly to drunkenness and gluttony.

The cause of this is nothing more than the rejection of better things – choosing the lower instead of the higher:

For just as a charioteer, having mounted his chariot on the race-course, were to pay no attention to the goal, toward which he should be driving….

Man invents his own goal – that to which he aims, the finish line for which he strives.

…he regards the running only, and does not see that he has passed wide of the goal….

In just this way, man’s soul turned from the way toward God, driving the body and all members of it beyond what is proper, swerving from the goal of truth.

From the previous post, recall that the good is, and evil is not. Evil does not have a substantive existence. For heathen teachers, they find evil in matter; for heretical teachers, they offer some form of dualism.

In this they make a double mistake: either in denying the Creator to be maker of all things, if evil had an independent subsistence and being of its own; or, again, if they mean that He is maker of all things, they will of necessity admit Him to be the maker of evil also. For evil, according to them, is included among existing things.

But this is paradoxical. Evil does not come from good, and cannot be the result of good. This then leads some to see another god besides the true God – that good came from one god and evil from another. Yet, this is impossible – can there be two creators, one creating good and the other evil? But then who created these? Or is one superior to the other? Or does each one live in spite of the other?

The truth as to evil is that which the Church teaches: that it originates and resides, in the perverted choice of the darkened soul. …the truth of the Church’s theology must be manifest: that evil has not from the beginning been with God, nor has any substantive existence…

The source was man, when he moved away from the vision of the good and began to devise what is not, for his pleasure. Instead of doing something (the good), he is doing nothing (evil).

…men from the first discovered and contrived and imagined evil for themselves.

And from here came the invention of idolatry. Having lost sight of God, and, instead, focusing on earthly things, man turned these things into gods. It was not enough to turn to evil; that evil now needed a face, a name – it needed being.

Nothing existed beyond that which is seen (a problem 1700 years ago just as today). Hence, there was nothing of being made in God’s image and what that meant for him, for man. What a soul ought to be and ought to behold was lost, hidden by fleshly desire.

…glorifying only those things which she desires and which are pleasant to her eyes…evil is the cause which brings idolatry in its train.

Focusing on the carnal, images of these “gods” were made. The creature was glorified, instead of the Creator; the works were deified rather than the Master.

...the longer they went on in their first condition, the more new superstitions they invented; and not satiated with the first evils, they again filled themselves with others, advancing further in utter shamefulness…

Haven’t we been living the same thing, wondering when the last letter of the alphabet soup would finally be added?

Athanasius traces this progression (regression?): first, worshipping the stars and the moon, then the elements, heat and cold, dryness and wetness. Stones and rocks followed. When they ran out of things in nature, they invented things: the dog-headed, the snake-headed. Not satisfied, they made idols of their pleasure and lust – Eros and Aphrodite.

According as the wisdom of God testifies beforehand when it says, “The devising of idols was the beginning of fornication.”

Conclusion

Whereas if they are to make gods, they ought to be themselves gods; for that which makes must needs be better than that which it makes… If then they decree whomsoever they please to be gods, they ought first to be gods themselves.

Men have forgotten God; so says Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In His stead, man – each man – has become God.

Judges 21: 25 In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

Trouble enough. We see how much more troubling when man lives as if there is no King – the King, the Lord Jesus Christ.