Ethics and the Problem of Evil by Sterba James P.;

Author:Sterba, James P.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2017-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

Divine Cooperation in Evil

Preconditions of Evil Acts

We are now in a position to apply the narrow theory of cooperation in evil to our main topic: does God cooperate in evil? Defenders of an affirmative answer to this question often support their view with examples of especially vicious acts that humans have been allowed to commit. Since the theistic assumption is that God (as a perfect being) sustains in existence free human agents, their powers, and the acts that exercise those powers, it seems that he cooperates with their acts, including their evil acts. This yields the argument described in the introduction to this essay, which concluded that there is no perfect being. Since the argument is logically valid, which is to say the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises, perfect-being theism survives only if the argument is unsound, having at least one false premise.

Proponents of the traditional theory of cooperation might reject the second premise: a being that cooperates in evil acts is not a morally perfect being. Given the traditionalist claim that preconditions and permissions of evil acts are possible ways of cooperating with them, even a perfect being may in principle cooperate with evil. In fact, since God’s creative act brings about every precondition of every evil act and no event in the universe occurs without his permission, the traditional view entails that God is the cooperator in evil than which none greater can be conceived. It seems to me that this approach effectively surrenders perfect-being theism, an outcome that warrants serious attention to alternative theories of cooperation in evil.

At this point, it is only fair to add that Thomas appears to accept the broad view, though appearances may be deceiving in this case. When he considers God’s contribution to evil acts in the Summa Theologica, Thomas lists only their preconditions: “Whatever there is of being and action in a bad action, is reduced to God as the cause; whereas whatever defect is in it is not caused by God, but by the deficient secondary cause [i.e., the will of the human agent].”43 He elaborates on that account in his treatise On Evil when addressing the question, “Do acts of sin come from God?”

Since God is by his essence being, for his essence is his existence, everything existing in whatever way derives from himself. . . . Acts of sin are evidently beings and classified in the category of being. And so we need to say that the acts are from God [in this respect]. . . . We trace what regards the activity of those with the power of free choice to God as the cause, while only free choice, not God, causes what regards the deordination or deformity of those with the power of free choice. And that is why we say that acts of sin come from God, but that sin does not.44

This passage indicates that Thomas rejects the claim that God cooperates materially in evil acts. Rather, he intends only the good—the existence of

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