In the following essay, I will explain how Aquinas thinks God is not responsible for moral evil.
On Aquinas’s account, everything in the universe aims for the good. And to be good means to be desirable. For example, a good husband is a man who has achieved perfection in terms of the duties he ought to perform towards his wife by virtue of being married to her. If the good thing is able to manifest its desirability, it follows that the good thing should also necessarily exist.
Aquinas argues that God is the cause of all things in the universe. And if God is the cause of all things in the universe, then all these things must derive their existence from God. If all these things depend on God for their existence, then there must be something …show more content…
Perception is facilitated by the agent’s sense organs and it is what makes it possible for the agent to receive information from his or her surroundings. Once the information has been received by the senses, they are built into concepts and sorted out by the judgment of the perception. The judgment of perception identifies the nature of the received information, compares the information with what is already in the mind, decides whether the information forms a new concept or adds on to an existing concept stored in the mind’s memory, and sorts the concepts into good or bad concepts. Once the information has been conceptualized and sorted out, the will then decides on what to do with the new concept. The will can decide to act on the concept or ignore it. The actions of the will are thus morally binding by virtue of being voluntary.The motive power is what enacts the will’s decision to act on a concept. If a bad concept is willed, the action is considered evil. Hence, moral evil is actually the result of an agent’s bad will.
Now, considering our two concepts of evil, how are we supposed to absolve God of all blame? It seems that if God created everything in the universe, he may have also created evil because he structured the world in such a way that multiple entities could compete for limited resources. And the competition would lead to natural evil as one entity may be better off than another entity at actualizing itself. Additionally, it is possible that the more actualized entities in trying to achieve more actualization could go after the weaker entities. Thus causing evil to the weaker
On Aquinas’s account, everything in the universe aims for the good. And to be good means to be desirable. For example, a good husband is a man who has achieved perfection in terms of the duties he ought to perform towards his wife by virtue of being married to her. If the good thing is able to manifest its desirability, it follows that the good thing should also necessarily exist.
Aquinas argues that God is the cause of all things in the universe. And if God is the cause of all things in the universe, then all these things must derive their existence from God. If all these things depend on God for their existence, then there must be something …show more content…
Perception is facilitated by the agent’s sense organs and it is what makes it possible for the agent to receive information from his or her surroundings. Once the information has been received by the senses, they are built into concepts and sorted out by the judgment of the perception. The judgment of perception identifies the nature of the received information, compares the information with what is already in the mind, decides whether the information forms a new concept or adds on to an existing concept stored in the mind’s memory, and sorts the concepts into good or bad concepts. Once the information has been conceptualized and sorted out, the will then decides on what to do with the new concept. The will can decide to act on the concept or ignore it. The actions of the will are thus morally binding by virtue of being voluntary.The motive power is what enacts the will’s decision to act on a concept. If a bad concept is willed, the action is considered evil. Hence, moral evil is actually the result of an agent’s bad will.
Now, considering our two concepts of evil, how are we supposed to absolve God of all blame? It seems that if God created everything in the universe, he may have also created evil because he structured the world in such a way that multiple entities could compete for limited resources. And the competition would lead to natural evil as one entity may be better off than another entity at actualizing itself. Additionally, it is possible that the more actualized entities in trying to achieve more actualization could go after the weaker entities. Thus causing evil to the weaker