St. Dionysius & Evil

Jonathan McCormack of the great Christian blog Disfigured Praise really introduced me to some important concepts and teachings on evil.

There's an awful lot going on here, and it is a rather long article.

While I advise people to read the full article, I will post some of the more important quotations here:

Basically, [the best theodicy] is the well known evil as privation argument, known from Plotinus to Augustine to Aquinas, however, articulated by St. Dionysius, its very success is that he, unlike others, at the very end of his reasoning, refuses to succeed with it.

Naturally, one must be familiar with the entire argument, and terminology, but grounded in the observations of the things in the world he logically works his way to the idea that to be is to be intelligible, and the source of beings is, of course, beyond being, the source of all actuality is, by definition, the Good, and the source of all form, is Beauty itself.

Goodness, recall, is the ability to go from potential to actual, a good acorn is one which grows into a tree, and by doing so “reverts” to God as the Good, the Telos thawed which things are aimed from potential being to actual being.
...
The traditional claim that “every being, insofar as it is a being, is good” is virtually a restatement of the law that to be is to be intelligible, for the intelligibility of anything consists in its goodness. That which is altogether devoid of goodness has no intelligibility, no unity, no identity, and hence is not anything at all. Nothing can be and be evil, insofar as it is. A wholly evil being is a contradiction in terms, for it would be a wholly unintelligible being, and so not a being. It is from these fundamental considerations that the Neoplatonic doctrine of evil as deficiency is developed.

The causes of evil are not productive powers, but lack of power, of productive activity: “Therefore the generation of what is contrary [to good] comes about . . . on account of weakness of that which makes. Again, “evil is alien and supervenient, an unattainment of the befitting end for each thing. But the unattainment is through the weakness of that which makes” Since evil itself is a deficiency, its “cause” is a lack of efficiency, of productive power. “ And as good, [an evil thing] is from the gods, but as evil, from another, weak cause; for every evil is generated through weakness and privation” (And since the “cause” of evil is in fact a lack of causal power, evil, as deficiency, can even be said to be “without cause”

Evil can be found, then, only as a deficiency in a being which, in that it is a being, must have some goodness whereby it is intelligible and so is.

Nothing, then, is evil insofar as it is a being. Conversely, anything is evil insofar as it fails to be. Dionysius’ doctrine of evil as non-being must be understood in light of the principle that any being is in virtue of its proper determinations or perfections, which are its way of being good and therefore its mode of being. Anything is evil, i.e. not good, then, insofar as it lacks the proper goodness which is its constitutive determination, and to that extent fails to be itself and so to be. ...
Thus Dionysius says, for example, that “the demons are not evil by nature” and are called “evil” “not insofar as they are, for they are from the Good and received a good reality, but insofar as they are not, by being weak (as the Oracles say) in preserving their principle. For in what, tell me, do we say they are evil, except in the cessation of the possession and activity of divine good things?” He then says, still more clearly, that “they are not evil by nature, but by the deficiency of angelic goods”

They are evil, then, insofar as they lack the perfections proper to and constitutive of them as angels. And since these perfections are their very being, to the extent that an angel lacks them (i.e. is a demon), to that extent it fails to be. Dionysius goes on to point out that the demons do have some perfections, for otherwise they would not exist at all, and to this extent they are good:

“They are not altogether without a share in the Good, insofar as they both are and live and think”, and again, “In that they are, they both are from the Good and are good . . . and by privation and fleeing away and falling away from the goods that are appropriate to them they are called evil”.

Exactly the same principle applies to human souls.

“This is evil, in intellects and souls and bodies: the weakness and falling away from the condition of their proper goods.” And in lacking its “proper goods,” a being lacks the very unity and identity whereby it is, and to that extent it fails to be.
...
A being is evil, then, insofar as it does not perform the proper activities which are its mode of being, and to that extent it fails to be.

As a being’s partial lack of its proper perfections, evil is ultimately a failure of reversion, the being’s failure to appropriate, to desire, to love God as the Goodness whereby it is. Since, as we have seen, to be is to love God, and anything can be only in and by desiring God, then insofar as anything does not desire God, it falls short of complete being.

The natural activity of any being is its reversion, its mode of being, of desire for God. A thing’s lack of its proper perfections, which qualifies it as evil, is a failure of this desire, and therefore a deficiency of being.

Having come this far in the discussion of evil, we inevitably ask: Why do some beings not fully desire God? What is the cause of this failure? By raising this question we reach the very heart of Dionysius’ doctrine of evil: as non-being, as inactivity, evil is without cause. For it is only beings and their activities, things that are and that take place, that must have causes, without which they would not be or happen. To look for the cause of evil is to ask why it occurs. But evil is not something that occurs, but not-something that does not occur. It is not an act of non-love, but a non-act of love.

As we have seen, whatever any being does, it does for some cause, and that cause is a good. As non-activity, evil is precisely what is not caused to happen and hence does not happen. Hence there can be no reason why a being fails fully to love God, i.e. to be. If there were such a reason, the “failure” would not be a failure but an activity, and as such not evil but good.

Although I expect posting this will give you a little cognitive boner to peer lovingly at, I don’t think anyone will be much interested in your pseudo-intellectual copy-pasted counter-measure thread Jacob.

@divegeester said
Although I expect posting this will give you a little cognitive boner to peer lovingly at, I don’t think anyone will be much interested in your pseudo-intellectual copy-pasted counter-measure thread Jacob.

@philokalia said
It deserves it, of course, not because of me, but because of the wisdom of the Saint and the intelligence of Jonathan McCormack.

@philokalia said
The Christian thing to do: mock another Christian poster who wants to bring up discussion of the words of a Christian Saint, implying the contribution is useless.

@philokalia said
Jonathan McCormack of the great Christian blog Disfigured Praise really introduced me to some important concepts and teachings on evil.

There's an awful lot going on here, and it is a rather long article.

While I advise people to read the full article, I will post some of the more important quotations here:

[quote]Basically, [the best theodicy] is the well know ...[text shortened]... someone who does not believe in God is the notion that we have to have proper intentionality.

@kellyjay said
No such thing as evil unless there is a good. 🙂

@philokalia said
Jonathan McCormack of the great Christian blog Disfigured Praise really introduced me to some important concepts and teachings on evil.

There's an awful lot going on here, and it is a rather long article.

While I advise people to read the full article, I will post some of the more important quotations here:

[quote]Basically, [the best theodicy] is the well know ...[text shortened]... someone who does not believe in God is the notion that we have to have proper intentionality.

@whodey said
"The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing"

I tried looking up who said it but I'm not sure we know for sure.