the problem of evil, from augus

7/27/2019 The Problem of Evil, From Augus

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The problem of Evil, from Augustineto contemporary Genetics by Fr. Nikolaos Loudovikos (*) Professor of the Higher Ecclesiastic School of Thessalonikiand the Orthodox Institute of CambridgeRe-published, from : http://www.romios.bravehost.com/theologia/loudobikos/kako.html

Even before World War II was over, the important English author C.S. Lewis had published in1944 his novel "Perelandra", in his desire to re-narrate the story of the Garden of Eden.

Perelandra is another planet of our solar system - the one that earthlings call Venus -inhabited however by logical beings which, along with their planet, miraculously live in

Paradise - exactly the way that the latter was described by an Augustine or a Basil the Great:in complete harmony, peace and incorruptibility everywhere, an absolute absence of pain,sickness, tribulations and agonies, and an unrestrained and undisturbed bliss. God (who wascalled Maledi on that planet) will send an earthling sage (who according to the story isactually a university professor) by the name of Ransom (a word that also implies redemption),in order to inform the innocent denizens of the planet about the danger of Evil - representedin the book by a wily earthling named Weston, who confronts the denizens of the planet fullyarmed and seeking to corrupt them and then subjugate them. (It is not perchance that hisname is a derivative of the term "West").

As soon as Ransom finds himself on Perelandra, he is dumbfounded: he immediately realizes

that his senses function in an entirely different manner - far more profound and clear - withhis mind unexpectedly at peace and his body much lighter. He had never felt his sense of taste, hearing and vision so vivid, while he is also overwhelmed by a complete fearlessness:wild animals are playful friends... Amazed and overwhelmed as he is, he meets Eve of Perelandra - the Lady, as she is referred to in the book - and is not in the least shocked byher total nudity. "I come in peace", he greets her, stammering. "And what is peace?" shereplies. Having never confronted evil, she is afraid of no-one and nothing. Like very youngchildren, her entire life is that "peace" - she knows nothing else...

I will put aside the outcome of the battle between good and evil, which comprises thecontinuation of the novel (but of course not before reassuring you so that you won't worry,that the outcome was a positive one), in order to comment on this brief dialogue a littlemore, and then embark on our topic.

So, despite the undeniable bliss of the denizens of Perelandra, Ransom - the earthlingsaviour - appears to know far more than them, with all his tribulations and alienation. Theblissful inhabitants of the inter-planetary Paradise are truly defenceless, opposite the otherside of the Being - Benevolence; I mean, opposite Nil - Evil, which - albeit a non-"being" - isabsolutely real, acts subcutaneously and effectively, threatening to destroy everything - truly!After all, that was the reason God sent the Redeemer-Prophet (Ransom) to them (and doesnot select one of them for this reason): it is the knowledge of Nil - or of Evil, if you wish -that renders the earthling sage capable of preserving the Being-Benevolence. But does thismean that Evil is existentially and ontologically inevitable? That is it a prerequisite of theBenevolence, necessarily? That it belongs (we could boldly ask) to the being of Benevolence(and therefore of God)? In the end, does Evil belong to the Being of beings, and if not, thenwhere does it belong?


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We shall attempt to give a first reply to these questions, by traversing philosophical andtheological tradition and ending up at contemporary Genetics, whose quests are paradoxicallylinked with the aforementioned traditions.

There is no doubt that the discerning between Good and Evil permeates ancient Hellenicthought, with many forms. The fear of chaos, of immoderacy, of Hubris, of non-being, allhound the ancient Hellene profoundly, which is why as early as the pre-Socratics all theontological meanings regarding the notion of Being (and these are not just Heracletus'"Logos", or Anaxagoras' "Nous", or Pythagoras' "Number" or Parmenides' "Being", but alsoAnaximandros' "Infinity" and Empedocles' "Philotes" and Leukippus' and Democritus' "naturalindividual as the opposite of Void" - see Fr. N.Loudovikos' Theological History of AncientHellenic Philosophy, Book 1, Pournaras Publications, Thessaloniki 2003, pp. 31-138) - arecontradistinctions precisely of that non-Being which, in different forms as we mentionedearlier express Evil at a moral level. This is more so with Plato, in whose work Evil is linked -

whether as Ignorance and an absence of Prudence (Prot.355e), or as a sickness of the soul(Sophists, 228e), or as the fall of the soul from its hyper-celestial place (Phaedros 246e), oras an intrinsic badness of matter in Timaeus (42e) - to the deception and fooling of this fakeworld; which (world) - as seen in the myth of the Cave in Plato's "Republic" - is unable to turntowards the celestial Sun of Benevolence and the world of Ideas (as above, pp. 159-177).

Evil is also non-being in Aristotle (Met. VIII, 9, 1051a), given that it does not belong in theworld of realities, while in Plautinus Evil ultimately relates to matter (Enn.1,8,3) as it is so faraway from the One/Benevolence which is, however, its distant source. As an ontologicalprinciple, Evil will appear in its essence with Manichaeism*- that Judeo-Christianizing,eastern, diarchic heresy, which supports two principles in the Universe, both opposing each

other. In this theory, entire sections of the world are bad - made by Evil - while othersections - the more spiritual ones - are made by the Good, thus, reconciliation of the two isimpossible.

* Manichaeism:The syncretic, dualistic religious philosophy taught by the Persian prophet Manes, combiningelements of Zoroastrian, Christian, and Gnostic thought and opposed by the imperial Romangovernment, Neo-Platonist philosophers, and orthodox Christians.A dualistic philosophy dividing the world between good and evil principles or regardingmatter as intrinsically evil and mind as intrinsically good.

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Now, with regard to Christian theology, the position both of the Eastern-Hellenic and theWestern-Latin traditions appears initially the same as that of ancient philosophy. Thus,Origen on the one hand reassures us (De Princ. II, 9,2 In Joh. 4, II, 17) that God is not theCreator of evil (no longer with a capital E, since only God comprises the true Being) and that itdoes not possess a hypostasis or life or essence of its own, but exists as a denial of Good -an idea that we shall encounter many times in Western thought, up until Hegel. Augustine onthe other hand (for example Conf.III, 7, 12) similarly reassures us that evil does not exist asone among beings, but is encountered as a denial of Good, privatio boni. It is a mereabsence of Good, whose creator of course is not God (De quaest. 83, 24).

Nevertheless, with Augustine begins a series of huge problems on the subject of evil, which


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continue to torment both East and West, to this day. You will understand what I mean, when Imention that Augustine is, on the one hand, the one who linked evil to the renowned (asnamed by him during the year 396) "Original Sin" which, to him is a historical event - muchlike the siege of Troy or the Persian wars - an entirely inconceivable notion for the Hellenic-speaking Patristic tradition however. So now it is Sin that "gives birth" to Evil, and not vice-versa. To understand the difference, I will point out that for Saint Maximos the Confessor (forexample) the cause of Evil is the "ex nihilo" creation of the world; in other words, it exists, not

only towards the direction of Being, but also in another direction - towards the"decomposition" (apogenesin) of beings: evil -fundamentally- is a deterioration of the being,and not a "moral" event. Thus, while for Saint Maximos (or Athanasius the Great) it isprecisely the primeval seed of nihil inside the bowels of the being that gives birth to thepotential of sin and consequently of evil (if and provided it is activated by Man's free will), forAugustine it -reversely- is the moral decision of humans (Adam and Eve) that gave birth toevil (with all its guilt); Augustine is the... father of guilt, in the West.

This has an immense impact at the level of ontology. And yet, with all the above, evil wasregarded by Augustine as something "invented" by man (abetted of course by the devil,whose position however is not a powerful enough one - something not so unusual in

Augustine's work), even though this invention reveals a complete and witting destruction of man's nature. In other words, with this invention man showed that his nature - albeit createdinnocent and good by God - wittingly became evil in essence, especially female nature;because woman (even before her encounter with the Serpent-Devil) already had within her thethirst for power and the audacity for an easy acquisition of divinity, into which she guilefullydragged Adam also, thus proving him to be similar to her. In plain words, according toAugustinian theology man is not evil because he wittingly or after being fooled participates in- and abandons himself to - the worldly deterioration that is already under way, but becausehe himself finds deterioration within his own nature. (I am not ignorant of the possibility thatwe can find similar positions in the Hellenic-speaking Fathers, however, I think that these donot prevail theoretically in the Patristic tradition, inasmuch as they probably have the

character of a kerygma**). Thus was born the idea of inherited guilt, as well as that of absolute predestination. Given that man's nature is now absolutely perverted, it is impossiblefor man to truly seek God and His Grace - the latter can only be an involuntary andirresistible (a word that Augustine characteristically uses) gift of God, to those whom He - forunknown reasons - prefers. the rest are just a doomed crowd: "massa damnata". But thisway, very little is mentioned about man's freedom. Indeed, human freedom is of minimalsignificance here; or, rather, there is no freedom at all - as a choice - but only as acompulsory acceptance of the irresistible Grace of God.

** Kerygma: (Greek: , rugma) is the Greek word used in the New Testament forpreaching (see Luke 4:18-19,Romans 10:14, Matthew 3:1).& It is related to the Greek verb (krss), to cry or proclaim as a herald, andmeans proclamation, announcement, or preaching.

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To recap: While all of ancient philosophy and Christian theology (with the exception of Manichaeism) agree in essence that Evil is merely a denial of Good, with Augustine manactually became the cause of evil, and ever since, has also become evil towards his verynature; so now, evil and its guilt both become inherited, together of course with theircondemnation. Thus, while for Saint Irenaeus of Lyons - for example - the first couple hadsinned involuntarily (because of their spiritual immaturity), with Augustine, sin is anexpression of a pre-existing and conscious natural perversion ("pervertio"). And of course atthis point it is impossible to describe the fear and the guilt that positions like those hadinstigated through the ages, along with the constant temptation to accuse God Himself, Whohad created a human nature so easily and profoundly and permanently perversion-prone.Thus, man is a "sinful automaton"; it is impossible for him to not sin, because sin and evil


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have become a part of his nature. Only God's unfathomable intervention can stop this drama,and absolutely no well-meaning human intervention or attempt whatsoever. God maypossibly collaborate with human freedom, however He alone decides, independently of thatfreedom.

Positions such as these persisted tenaciously in Western theology, in spite of the immenseturnabout that the other great Westerner, Thomas Aquinas, had attempted by likewise

ascribing (like the Hellenic-speaking Fathers) the cause of evil to the createdness and thechangeability of beings, and not to the Original Sin. During that same period, HellenicPatristic theology had crystallized its positions regarding the justification of evil, in a mannerthat we could schematically describe as follows, on the basis of what we have already said.The causes, therefore, of evil are mainly three:

The first cause is the very state of createdness and the "ex nihilo" creation, a fact that rendersthe nature of beings prone to "slipping" easily towards the absolute Nil from which they came- especially if man considers his existence self-sufficient and not in need of divine Assistanceand Grace.

The second cause of evil is man's free-willed disposition, whereby as a person, he sins or errsbut simultaneously undertakes the responsibility of his choices: the perverting or thedestruction of man's nature and the world's is a simple manifestation of his own, erroneouschoice; it is consequently a non-permanent but remediable event (gradually, even from now,and completely healed, by the end of time), with only a change in man's will.

And the third cause of evil - and indeed considerably linked to the previous two - is the factthat the world is not constituted as a "monologue" by God, but as a "dialogue" between Himand mankind. For every benevolent will of God, therefore, an equally "benevolent" responseby man is required. If the latter is missing, the former is annulled. God cannot "impose"good directly, if man refuses it. So, He does it indirectly, which means He utilizes the

produced evil in defence and vindication of Good, exactly as with Ransom - the story herothat we mentioned in the beginning. Ransom was made to (quite painfully) pass through evil,however, he is now the best defender of Good - he, and not the blissful and unbruisedinhabitants of Perelandra, who precisely because of their paradisiacal bliss were strangelyunable to discern the evil behind the deceitfulness of the wily Weston (much like whathappened with the Serpent and Eve in the Biblical narration of Genesis). The fact that Ransom- despite his knowledge of evil - desires Good and defends it to the death, signifies preciselythat - as opposed to Augustine - evil does not belong to man's nature, and that man is notperverted entirely, but that depending on the free inclination of his disposition, he is able todisplay all the innate benevolence of his nature - which after all does reflect the benevolenceof God Himself. Besides, according to the Patristic tradition evil is something that man issubject to, even when he is committing it - he does not invent it, hence the absence of moralism or legalism in the Hellenic-speaking Fathers. Man suffers the pre-Creation Nil,when he does not partake of God's Grace: that is the mystery of Evil.

Furthermore, it is wrong to regard God's Biblical expression of the world being "very good" aspertaining to the "beginning" of the world; it is actually an eschatological expression, whichrefers to the eschatological perfection of the world, according at least to the Patristictradition, as I have tried to indicate elsewhere (see: "Eucharistic Ontology", DomosPublications, Athens 1992). This expression definitely also signifies the final transcending of death, which clearly (naturally) existed before man's creation, otherwise the world andmankind would have been - by nature and compulsorily - gods, from the very beginning.Death was pre-existent, precisely (as we said) because of creation "ex nihilo", without this of course negating the prospect of transcending it by Grace and not by nature, otherwise, (if Adam knew nothing about death), there would be no meaning to God's warning to him thathe would "suffer death" if he were to consume the forbidden fruit.


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Adam received an ontological proposition by God for the transcending of death (and not aproposition to make a moral choice); Adam is the being that is defined existentially (we couldsay) by that very proposition by God, that it be the one through which the Uncreated entersthe created, of its own free will. The ontological 'texture' of this dialogue between man andGod is at risk, within the boundaries of recent subjectivism, inasmuch as evil - whethermoralistically or rationalistically - is either placed inside the person as a part of his nature, oroutside the person, as an "objective", external event. Apart from the fact that the above

necessarily end up as various forms of theodicy, they conceal the fact that evil does not existas an Augustinian natural perversion (pervertio) because of sin, but as an interruption -partialor complete- of that dialogue between man and God, Who freely attaches death to life - thecreated to the Uncreated. As a matter of fact, if the above are correct, it is that very dialoguethat constitutes the process through which the eschatological elimination of evil becomespossible; that is, as a predisposition by the created Being to be incorporated in theResurrected Body of Christ, as a "communion of opinion" per the expression of Saint NicholasKavasilas, and not simply a compulsory resurrection of the dead. With this dialogue,therefore, man eliminates from creation certain pieces of the pre-Creation Nil, according tohis disposition, by transforming it by Grace into an uncreated Body of Christ. A stance suchas that allows God to intervene more in the world, confining evil even when man is

inadequate to do it; however, evil (as the denial of dialogue with God) will never vanishaltogether - not even during the end - despite the obligatory incorruptibility of beings. Whatwill become apparent then, however, is that evil is not a part of Creation, of Being, of Life, butan elective denial of these.

In contrast to Augustine, Maximos the Confessor further regards only the "fall of disposition"as something corruptible, whereas the fall of nature as incorruptible. There is no such thingas "evil nature", according to the Patristic tradition; the event that is described in the Genesisnarration as the Fall of man is a voluntary departure from God's experientially"incorruptifying", uncreated Providence, and it does not interest us as a historical event.

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But now let us return to the West once again, to take a brief look at the continuation, in orderto come to contemporary Genetics. My evaluations are of course subjective and certainpoints of the story cannot possibly be discussed differently. The two major problems thatarose in the West on account of the propagation of Augustine's positions (which we analysedpreviously) were, I believe, to begin with, the problem of defending God and thereafter theproblem of defending nature (of man and of the world). The first opus was undertaken by theGerman philosopher Leibniz, and the second one by the French philosopher Rousseau.Leibniz (1646-1716) attempted an entire "theodicy" - a term coined by him, and the title of his homonymous book (1710). The philosopher tries to vindicate God, by supposing that Hetolerates evil, in His desire to eventually evoke some kind of good from it, in a world createdby Him - a world that is "the best possible of those that could be created", according to hisfamous expression. That people can think of better worlds does not signify that those worldswould in fact be better ones, given that human judgment errs, inasmuch as it is confined bysubjective passions and ignorance. God therefore created the best possible world, under theprovision that we would see it in the light of His choices, which are far superior and wiserthan our own.

These positions became a favourite target for a host of attacks on the part of atheists, eventhough they do not differ essentially from their long past processing by Hegel, who, as wementioned, saw in evil a necessary "negativity" which is utilized by God the Spirit for a moresuperior synthesis that includes the fusion of the two (Good and Evil or Being and Nil) withinBeing. However, I think that the other philosopher had a far greater influence on the West;the defender of human and cosmic nature, Rousseau (1712-1778). The French philosopher's


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position has the merit of exceptional simplicity: the nature of man and the world - he says -is profoundly good and benevolent. As opposed to Augustine (or Calvin), he regards natureas the best possible teacher of Good, and a concordance with it a rule for life and truth.Death, consequently, is not a product of a sin or a fall, and furthermore, civil inequality isentirely unfounded.

With Rousseau, the West regained the fundamental Christian position that the nature of man

and the world are the benevolent work of God - except that it regained this position as anopposition to the official ecclesiastic teaching which (either in Calvin's Geneva whereRousseau grew up, or in the remainder of Roman Catholic or Lutheran Europe) sees nature -usually in the Augustinian manner - as fallen and perverted. Thus the Europeans - withRousseau, then with the Enlightenment - re-discover a fundamental Patristic position, butonly as a protest against the Church or Her theology, by formulating an anthropology whichthey regarded as atheistic (as does the Church), even though it is even more Christian thanthe ecclesiastic one. But the worst does not stop here. Without any theological reference, thisre-evaluation of nature saw the theoretical path by De Sade opening before it. Indeed, thelatter was nothing more than a vehemently anti-Christian student of Rousseau, who revealsthat nature does not only teach harmony, but also violence and murder. Natural life would

therefore thus signify the reception of those "natural" performances, "beyond the Good andthe evil" as Nietzsche would have said (who was also the culmination of the road that theWest took, with Rousseau, in its opposition to Augustine). Nature, finally, dictates as thesupreme criterion of life the will for power. I have shown in older books of mine (Fr. N.L."The Closed Spirituality and the Meaning of Self"; "The Mysticism of Power and the Truth of Nature and Person", 2nd edition, Ellinika Grammata Publications, Athens, 1999) that in thisway, Nietzsche not only doesn't distance himself from Augustine, but in fact adopts thelatter's deeper form of thought: that the place of fallen nature (which according to Augustineis governed by the immortal and spiritual soul) is now taken up by all this unsubstantiated"spirituality" which is governed by vital natural instincts.

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This is in brief the spiritual atmosphere in which latter-day, theoretical contemplation on thematter of Evil was born in the space of Genetics. In recent years, the development of psychology and sociology have significantly advanced all this rationalized quest for the causeof Evil, within the boundaries of human nature and never beyond it. Pursuant to this, was theacceptance of Evil as an element of nature with a suitable "scientific explanation" - or at leasta partial exoneration of it. From the complete debilitation of nature, to the unconditionalacceptance of it however, the ontological backdrop still remains unchanged: there is noforeseen, essential prospect for freedom being a possibility for transforming that nature, andnot simply the acceptance or the rejection of it.

At this point I would like us to briefly examine three recent books which place the problem of Evil in the perspective of a Genetics explanation. The first of the three is the book by RobertWright, "The Moral Animal" (1994). In his book, Wright sets down for discussion what he calls"the psychology of evolution", with biological conditions: everything is explained as derivingfrom people's desire for survival, which is determined one way or another by naturalselection. Consequently, there is very little genetic basis in the distinction between Good andEvil, moral or immoral: with regard to the sexual behaviour of women, for example, thosewho are "reserved" and more "moral" are simply the ones who are more confident inthemselves, whereas the more aggressive ones are the more insecure. But the objectiveremains the same; it remains the same, for every behaviour. Morality in reality conflicts withevolutionary logic, which is determined effectively by genes and the environment. If we werein a position to accept this - the author argues - we would have had a far greater toleranceand forgiveness towards each other. Of course every kind of altruism or selflessness would


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also have to be ascribed to a genetically determined, superior evolutionary self-interest.

The second book that we shall examine is the one by Lyall Watson, "Dark Nature : a NaturalHistory of Evil" (1996). Watson argues that nature is profoundly non-moral; it exists beyondGood and Evil. This can be seen clearly in the cosmos of genes, which simply do whateverthey can for survival, mainly by applying the following methods:

1) by being hostile towards strangers2) by being friendly towards friends3) by deceiving as much as possible.All human behaviour is in reality built on the basis of these principles, the author argues,although there may be other, not-so-apparent biological principles like altruism, martyrdom,asceticism, which also play a part except with basically volitional objectives, allowing arelatively minor emergence from the ocean of natural selection : a tiny but essentialdifferentiation of man from animals.

Lastly is the book by . Appleyard, "In Brave New Worlds. Staying Human in the GeneticFuture" (1998). In this book of his, the author confronts what he calls "genocentrism" and

dares to pose the question of human freedom and responsibility, if almost everything inbehaviour were determined by genes. The true unconscious, he notes, has to do with thatlatent, deeper activity by the genes inside us, which follow their own biological wayregardless of morals and our supposedly conscious choices. Appleyard mourns thepossibility of a complete prevalence of "genocentrism", which would clearly allow fortotalitarian solutions in the future but at the same time with nothing to juxtapose.

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It is obvious that a series of ontological and mainly theological questions still continue toarise. The West of course is teetering between contemporary, complete acceptance and itsancient Augustinian and Calvinist complete rejection of nature, but the question that theirtheology still hasn't answered is the one that refers to the possibility of an actual relationshipbetween this nature and the uncreated God. If God - acting as a Person - has uncreatedenergies, and if man - also as a person - can receive God with his own energies, then natureis transformed, not lost, and every compulsory natural determinism disappears.

But what is the meaning of "person"? And what is "freedom"? Is there a biochemistry of freedom? (If it does exist, then there is no freedom...). Where are "person" or "freedom"seated inside man? Inside his soul? And what is the soul, when in fact the Hellenic Patristictradition has rejected every metaphysical notion of "soul" and has regarded it as material inessence? We truly have many more things to learn about man, precisely because - accordingto Patristic theology - man is not a given being, but a being that evolves, that is constantlybeing created, and it is only in the end that we shall see what it finally is. The immensecontribution of Orthodox theology in this anthropological query is that it has taught us that itis impossible to separate the question of man from the question of God, and that only theanswer to the latter can forebode the answer to the former.

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(*) Father Nicholas Loudovikos was born in Volos. He studied Psychology, Pedagogics,Theology and Philosophy, in Athens, Thessaloniki, Paris (Sorbonne Paris 4 and the Institute


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Catholique de Paris) and Cambridge. He has a Doctorate in Theology of the University of Thessaloniki, and has also worked at the research center for Primeval Christianity, TyndaleHouse, Cambridge. He has taught at the Cambridge Universitys School of Theology(C.A.R.T.S.) as well as the University of Durham. He is a Professor of Dogmatics andPhilosophy at the Higher Ecclesiastic School of Thessaloniki; a scientific associate at the post-graduate Theological program of the Open Hellenic University and also a part-time lector atthe Orthodox Institute of the University of Cambridge. Works in book form by him:

Eucharistic Ontology (Domos, Athens, 1992); Closed Spirituality and the Meaning of Self (Hellenic Letters, Athens, 1992) and The Apophatic ecclesiology of the Homoousion. Theprimeval Church today (Athens, 2002).

Translation: K.N.

the problem of evil, from augus

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