Part III. Part IV.
Part V. Part VI.
Part VII.
At the time of its inception, Gnosticism was able to recruit many followers because it created a way for people to understand their place in the world during a very chaotic age. They wanted to escape the problems they faced on a daily basis. Believing in a transcendent reality with a transcendent divinity seemed like an acceptable enough solution. “The men and women of late antiquity no longer experienced the world as a cosmos or ordered universe, but rather felt themselves to be estranged from the world even while they lived in it. The divine, as a result, became the totally other, an inconceivable and ineffable Absolute,” Walter Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ. trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Crossroad: NY, 2003), 252. In today’s world, we can learn about the breakdown and overcoming of the old rationalistic order presented to us in modernism by post-modern philosophy; while its disputes with the old worldview are sound, the implications of post-modernism have not been fully established. Today, people are left in a state of confusion similar to, but not exactly the same as, the confusion people faced in antiquity. While post-modernism does not have to lead to a revival of Gnosticism or its ideologies, it has helped create a cosmological vacuum whereby elements of Gnostic thought have been strengthened in society. Post-modernism rightfully questions many of the relationships and entities established by rationalism; however, as a consequence of this, methodologically, what once was united has become divided, and past dualities, such as the division between spirit and matter, the sacred and the profane, have become enhanced.
It should come as no surprise that in such an environment people have begun to reconsider notions of good and evil, and especially what it means to call something good or something evil. However, most people seem to create their own individual answers to this question in ignorance of the wisdom of the past. What is evil is what they do not like, what is good is what they like (Plato answered this sophistry well, but how many people really pay attention to him anymore?). There are varying degrees of relativism going on in the modern world. What lies at the center of many moral questions is a subjective-relativism which has combined itself with an ontological dualism. And it is here where we find Gnosticism continuing to have an active influence in the public square. Despite what many might think, relativism does not have to deny the existence of evil; and indeed, some forms require its existence. This is very true today. Ever since the holocaust we have not been able to deny the power of evil in the world. What is in question is how evil is to be discerned, not its existence. But once something is deemed evil (whether or not others agree with it being an evil), a person feels justified in removing that thing from existence. For one person, the evil might be anyone or anything which limits their freedom, limits their search for pleasure (the way many women treat abortion suggests this is the way they consider a child developing in the womb: it is an evil, an invader who has no right in the woman’s body; because such a child has perpetrated an unjust invasion, the woman is free to fight back and eliminate it — the child is an evil in this case; does anyone else notice how eerily similar this approach to abortion is to the way many approach war?). For another person, evil is discerned according to various authoritative principles they want to follow, such as sexual mores, and if someone violates a given individual’s ideology, that individual considers the violator to be evil. While this might be closer to the truth than the first, it still has its faults. It still does not explain why certain mores are good and others are evil. Moreover, it views evil as a substance, and believes that people can be classified as essentially evil if they are contaminated by that evil. This is especially true within the realm of politics. Whatever party affiliation one has, whatever political views one has, becomes the mores by which one judges others. And in this judgment call, one looks for how others fail to meet one’s subjective criteria for being good. Whatever failings a political opponent has is used to denigrate them with the implication that it makes them evil.
Both the substantialization of evil and the belief that one can call someone essentially evil have been consistently refuted by Christian theology. Dogmatically, dualism is a heresy. Theologically, there are many explanations for this, though most follow along the lines of the definition of evil as being a privation of the good, and the designation that existence itself is a good, so that anything which exists is good in its nature (essence) and nothing, not even the devil, can be said to be purely evil. St. Augustine, in his anti-Manichaean writings, provided the basic foundation here. “Nature,” he tells us, “therefore which has been corrupted, is called evil, for assuredly when incorrupt it is good; but even when corrupt, so far as it is nature it is good, so far as it is corrupted it is evil,” St Augustine, “Nature of Good: Against the Manichaeans” trans. Albert H. Newman. NPNF1:4(Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdman’s Publishing, 1994), ch. 4. Augustine explained in many of his works that free choice provides for the foundation of sin. When we sin, we do it, not for the sake of evil, but for the sake of a lesser good. No one goes out into the world wanting to do evil. While it might make for a monster on the screen, no such monster ever exists in the real world. Even those like Aleister Crowley who admit that what they do might be seen as evil by others would suggest they are after a subjective good which cannot be denied them. Thus people do evil because their vision of the world is incomplete. They are focused on something which they think is good, and indeed, they are right in saying what they like or want contains goodness within it. But it is not the whole of the good. Something is missing in the act of will which should be there. So there is truly something good which is wished, but not the good which should be there. Sexuality, for example, is a sacred good. But it is to be engaged in the right circumstances in the proper fashion. Sexual sin is not a sin because sexuality is evil, but rather, it is because the sexual act is not willed to attain completion; there is something which is neglected in the action which does not open up to the fullness of the sexual act. This characterization is true not just for sexuality but for all sins. There is certainly something good which is being willed, but it is not all that should be willed. St. Anselm picked up this idea when he wrote, “To be evil or unjust, however, is to lack righteousness which ought to be present. Righteousness truly is a kind of thing, whereas unrighteousness is not a thing at all, as I have said,” St. Anselm, “De Concordia” pages 435 – 474 in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works. ed. Brian Davies and G.R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), ch.7. All sin ultimately is sin because it lacks some aspect of righteousness which should be present in the act.
The world and all that exists in it must be seen to be good. Even if that which we see is not exactly how it should be, even if it is deficient so that it has not achieved its natural potential, nonetheless the goodness within it must not be neglected and ignored. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20). To call something or someone purely evil is to ignore the goodness of creation, the goodness inherent in all things, and to denigrate the work of God. “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31a). All which exists, and all people who live, are essentially good. Their existence is not something we should ever want to blot out. This is especially true for human life. “Even in the midst of difficulties and uncertainties, every person sincerely open to truth and goodness can, by the light of reason and the hidden action of grace, come to recognize in the natural law written in the heart (cf. Rom 2:14-15) the sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end, and can affirm the right of every human being to have this primary good respected to the highest degree,” Pope John Paul II, Gospel of Life. Vatican Translation (Vatican: 1995), par 2. No one can be said to be purely evil. “But there cannot be a supreme evil; because, as was shown above (48, 4), although evil always lessens good, yet it never wholly consumes it; and thus, while good ever remains, nothing can be wholly and perfectly bad. Therefore, the Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 5) that if the wholly evil could be, it would destroy itself; because all good being destroyed (which it need be for something to be wholly evil), evil itself would be taken away, since its subject is good,” St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Volume One. (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1948), I.49-3. Understanding the goodness of creation helps explain why the devil continues to exist, for in existence, the devil, despite whatever he may or may not want, continues to represent the good given to him. If the devil were to be annihilated by God then God would be working to eliminate some good from the world. Since evil is the elimination of the good, God would be doing evil if he were to annihilate the devil.
The implications of this in the real world should not be difficult to see. The response to someone who wills an evil is to see why it is they have willed as they did. What good is it that they are after? What good is it they have neglected? Why have they neglected it? How can we see to it that they understand this neglect and help them fulfill their true potential? What was it that was deficient in their action? What is needed to make up for that deficiency? Can it be made up? Are they willing to make it up? Or are either of these now impossible to achieve? If it is impossible, what are we to do now? And if someone consistently acts in such a way to prevent the greater good from being achieved, what is it that we are to do? Of course we cannot destroy their presence in the world and eliminate the essential goodness within them, but we cannot let them to continue to violate the essential goodness of others. If we do the first, obviously we validate them in their violation of the good, because we say the good can indeed be violated. That is the problem inherent with the death penalty. If we say it is wrong to take a life, how can we then take a life? If we say it is only innocent life which cannot be taken, who is it that is innocent? If we say someone loses their innocence once they take the life of someone else, do we not lose our innocence if we take the life of a murderer? “Punishment as intimidating revenge (the typical instance of which is capital punishment) cannot from the moral point of view be justified, for it denies the criminal his character, deprives him of the right of existence which belongs to every person, and makes him a passive instrument of other people’s safety. No more, however, can we justify from the moral point of view an indifferent attitude to crime, the attitude of not resisting it,” Vladimir Solovyof, The Justification of the Good. Trans. Nathalia A. Duddington (New York: Macmillan Company, 1918), 322. Christians must work with both dimensions in their application for justice. If they ignore one for the sake of the other, whichever it is they ignore, will make what they do wrong because it will be incomplete. Yet that is what most people do. They choose one or the other because it is for them the path of least resistance. But when they do this, things never improve, and the problems they face are never solved. The path of least resistance only ends in disaster. Christians must work for what is best, no matter how many people oppose them. They need to realize the promotion of individual welfare is to the benefit of the community, and the promotion of the community is of benefit to the individual. They are interrelated. And until Christians work for the benefit of both, their vocation will never be fully realized. For their vocation, no matter what religious state they are in, is for the betterment of the world: the whole world and all within it. For the world is good and it is the creation of a good, just, loving God.
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