Natural and Moral Evil

Saint Thomas Aquinas in his book Summa Theologica writes that God in creation of our world does not will evil. Evil consists in absence of good and is not something that can be willed. We call evil anything that does not have an appropriate goodness. So in seeing that human beings are not boundlessly good, then there will be a lack of goodness and as a result evil will come to be. As a consequence contingent beings are the creators of evil for God gave us free actions, and therefore we can choose without goodness, creating moral evil. Evil exists in two forms: natural evil and moral one. Moral evil is the most horrifying and depraved of evils because it makes one of God’s creatures knowingly choose against virtue and commit an immoral act. This form of evil is the hardest for Aquinas to rationalize because human beings naturally ask why God would create a world where such evil has place. Natural evil is easier to explain because it is a shortage of an appropriate good in out universe. To have a baby born disfigured is a natural evil for no action was taken upon the baby from the direction of contingent beings, but still the baby came into the world lacking the natural virtue of a fully functioning body.

Aquinas in his book demonstrates us how necessity can cause contingency, and how evil becomes apparent by our shortage of goodness. Consequently appears a question: what is the aim of evil? Why would God create a world of human beings where evil is so conspicuous. Why do we have to live in a world of evil and atrocities? Why didn’t God will a world with moderate evil or without it at all? For God is omniscient, he knew that our world would become as evil as it is, so evil must serve some goal of God.

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