The Different Understandings of the Augustinian Principle ‘God permits the evil for the good’ (Enchiridion, ch. 3) and their Importance for the History of Salvation

Abstract

St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure inherited the very same doctrine of evil, which was a bonum commune in the middle of the thirteenth century. According to it, evil is not a cause of good but only an opportunity (occasio) for it1; moral evil (malum culpae) is not wanted by God but only permitted2, and this kind of evil does not add anything to the perfection of the universe on the level of its essence but only by accident (accidentaliter, not substantialiter)3. Nevertheless, even if the main stream of the doctrine concerning evil is the same in both Thomas and Bonaventure, there is a slight difference, which has its consequences for the understanding of the History of Salvation.

The understanding of God’s acceptance of evil for the sake of good follows two main approaches in medieval theodicy5. The first approach finds its source in Pseudo-Dionisius. Expressed in its simplest form, it says that God wants evil, which is understood as a lack of perfection, to bring the universe to perfection, that is to say, to give the beautiful good of variety to the whole universe6. This is so because the variety of beings manifesting the divine perfection is possible only thanks to different levels of perfection – and imperfection - in beings. This type of reasoning is expressed in the terms of the part and the whole: an imperfection of a part is needed for the perfection of the created whole. I will not directly deal with this type of theodicy in this paper.