St. Thomas Aquinas: Does God Cause Evil?

One of the most controversial questions in the Christian world today is this: how can a world created by such a loving God have so much evil? It is a valid question, and no matter where each one of us is in our spirituality, it is one we have all asked ourselves at one point-maybe even asked God. St. Thomas Aquinas must have dealt with this as well, proving it to be a timeless inquiry. Did God cause evil? And if not, where does it come from? St. Thomas Aquinas takes an interesting angle at analyzing these questions. In a very admirable manner, he contradicts himself and is not afraid to be wrong- finding fault in his own thoughts. Each point he makes, he rationalizes, but also provides a contradiction that changes the whole perspective on the question itself. Unfortunately, when seeking answers today, this is a long-lost practice. The first question St. Thomas Aquinas addresses is if good can be the cause of evil. This can only be questioned if it is assumed that everything must have a cause (For the sake of this particular part of the analysis, we will assume that everything, including evil, must have a cause…although, the absence of cause is addressed later). The definition of evil given by St. Thomas Aquinas seems to eliminate the possibility that any evil could derive from any good. He writes, “for evil is the absence of good, which is natural …show more content…
St. Thomas Aquinas uses Amos 3:6 to give evidence to the fact that God did indeed create evil. “Shall there be evil in a city, which the Lord hath not done?”(St. Thomas Aquinas, 1947, Question 49). Therefore, God created evil. Objecting this verse, though, it is realized that in context, the “passages refer to the evil of penalty, and not to the evil of fault” (St. Thomas Aquinas, 1947, Question 49). This would be assuming there is not one overarching evil, but divisions in the entity of