PROBLEM OF EVIL

Catholic doctrine maintains that evil is the privation of the good that belongs to the nature of a thing as willed by God. A thing is evil in the absolute sense when it fails to fulfill its nature and evil in the relative sense when it interferes with the fulfillment of another in its nature. Evil is committed by individuals. God allows individual evil because he has given humans freedom.

Evil does not exist as an eternal, separate force against God. Dualistic ideas regarding God’s nature are condemned in Catholicism. All created beings exist outside of God’s eternity. Satan, by whatever name, is the chief fallen angel and is evil insofar as he willfully chose to oppose God. Satan is not an opposing divine force equal to God, but only an opposing creature, whose influence over others does not exceed his angelic powers. God provides humans sufficient grace to resist Satan’s temptation, thus offering confirmation of his sovereignty over evil.

The problem of evil concerns this question: If God is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present, and all-loving, how is it that God allows sin and suffering? Moral evil, sin, is not only a lack in one’s nature but also is the act of willfully choosing to go against one’s own good. Suffering is due to the sins of oneself or others or is due to the “natural” factors of the world. What creation would have been had sin not intervened cannot be known; surely, human life would have been different. What is known is that suffering is not a defect of God’s plan nor is it due to some eternal evil force equal to God.

See: Devil and Evil Spirits; Fatherhood of God; Freedom, Human; God, Nature and Attributes of; Hell; Manichaeism; Omnipotence; Omniscience; Original Sin; Process Theology; Providence; Suffering in Christian Life.



Russell Shaw. Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine. Copyright © 1997, Our Sunday Visitor.

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Last Updated: Sunday, April 01, 2001 01:25:11 PM