St. Thomas Aquinas famously suggested that governments should allow “certain kinds of evil,” because by allowing them, either some greater good is possible to come out of it, or some greater evil is prevented. He bases his position, in part, upon the words of St. Augustine, whom he uses as an authority to demonstrate that his teaching is within the spectrum of respectable Christian thought. “Accordingly in human government also, those who are in authority, rightly tolerate certain evils, lest certain goods be lost, or certain greater evils be incurred: thus Augustine says (De Ordine ii, 4): ‘If you do away with harlots, the world will be convulsed with lust.’”[1] On first glance, this understanding appears to be consequentialist. Was St Thomas Aquinas advocating evil for the sake of a greater good? Obviously, if that is what he is suggesting, one could use this to question his moral theology. But that is not what we find here.
Aquinas’ point is that if you allow someone to do evil, that does not mean you make them do that evil itself, and you are not culpable for the evil if it is allowed. Just because you allow prostitution does not mean you are for prostitution. Just because you allow people to get drunk, doesn’t mean you encourage them to get drunk. You are not to be said to be helping them get drunk unless you do something else, such as giving them the alcohol. Allowing evil is not the same thing as supporting that evil, and society, for the sake of freedom, must have a sense of tolerance when it comes to sin. This is not to say all sins should be tolerated, for some will endanger society more than by allowing them to be done (such as intentional killing of innocents) than by forbidding them. Society, Aquinas says, needs to discern which kinds of sins can be tolerated, and which cannot, and his method is that one is to decide which kinds of toleration work for the common good, and which do not. It’s not an easy task, but it is an important one.
Yet, the most important element of Aquinas’ thought is that we should not confuse the toleration of evil as if we are seen to support it. Even if we decide, as a society, to allow some kinds of evils which end up hurting the society itself, the tolerance itself is not enough to suggest society is to be blamed for the sins themselves. Theologically, Aquinas finds this to be very important, because it is connected to theodicy. If we do not believe one can allow evil, at least in some circumstances, then the end result is that God, who allows all kinds of evil to be done in his creation, must be said to hold some blame for it. Since we know this cannot be, that is, since we know God is free from all blame, and there is nothing evil about God, this ends up proving the fact that toleration of evil is not morally the same thing as the advocation of such evil. Thus, we must understand Aquinas (and Augustine’s) allowance of evil to be first and foremost a justification for God, and only secondarily a presentation of how human government should act in relation to the divine. Thus, before he even suggests this possibility, Aquinas says, “Human government is derived from the Divine government, and should imitate it. Now although God is all-powerful and supremely good, nevertheless He allows certain evils to take place in the universe, which He might prevent, lest, without them, greater goods might be forfeited, or greater evils ensue.”[2] Even for God, the toleration of sin in the world is united to God’s desire for humanity to experience the greatest possible good, a good which includes the freedom of the will and the human ability to choose a lesser good.
It is not difficult to see the ramification this should have for modern political debates. When one is trying to discern what is best for the common good, and what brings it out the most, that is an issue of prudence. People of good will can and should debate what a society should or should not allow. The understanding is not that what is legal is to be only those things which are moral, but that, which is legal are those things which help produce a great society. When ill will gets thrown in, then the rhetoric forgets this, and people will begin to impute the evil that a politician is willing to allow to the politician themselves. As Christians, we cannot allow this kind of rhetoric to last. For if we accept this line of reasoning, we must end up convicting God of all the evil that is done in the world. All of it. For all of it is allowed by God (even if not willed or desired by him). Instead, we must realize how such accusations are ad hominems, and are not fit for political discourse. We must work to remove it from our line of reasoning. And then we can better work from a position of true charity as we seek to remove those evils which society should not allow (such as abortion, euthanasia, eugenics, racism, terrorism, et. al.). Coming in from such a better position, it is far more likely we will be able to convince others that we are in the right. Indeed, this is exactly how the early Christians converted the hearts of Rome. They had enough faith to love their enemies. What about us today?
Footnotes
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