Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I hope last night cleared up the issue I wrote for and I do hope my readers understood it. It’s a difficult topic to explain and I certainly won’t claim to have full knowledge of it yet. I see through a glass darkly. Tonight, we’re going to continue looking at the will of God in the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. That can be read at newadvent.org for free and I hope that many of you who might be being introduced to Thomas for the first time are really enjoying his knowledge and seeing how he dealt so well with questions we are asking today.
Aquinas says that in no way can God will evil because the good relates to the appetite and a good appetite always seeks the good. A wise man is one who in no way would help someone be worse. If that is the case, how much more would God, in an a fortiori sense, not help someone else be worse seeing as he is not just wise, but wisdom, and not just good, but goodness?
Aquinas does say that God might allow some evils to happen accidentally. The example is given of a lion who kills its prey. What the lion really seeks is the food that he desires. What he does not seek is simply the death of the gazelle simply to kill the gazelle.
In the sense of ethics, Aquinas tells us that no one seeks evil for the sake of evil. They seek it for something else. The man who seeks an adulterous affair does not seek it for the sake of adultery. He seeks it for the sake of pleasure perhaps from secrecy or the idea that he could get caught at any moment.
C.S. Lewis once spoke of a man who is a sex addict and how someone will say of him that he needs a woman and Lewis says that a woman is the last thing he needs. He is seeking instead pleasure and a female body is the apparatus by which he intends to get that pleasure. If he met a woman, he would not know what to do with her.
God then does not seek out evil. he does bring about punishment as a natural order of things and that is in the willing of justice, which is a good. He does will some things to be corrupted, but this is willed in the ordering of the preservation of nature as a whole. In willing the good of human freedom, he also willed that there would be a possibility of evil, but we are the ones who have actualized that possibility.
In conclusion, God being goodness wills the good of all things. We Christians should take heart in that. Whatever is going on in our lives, God is willing our good. He is seeking that which is best for us and what we need to do is submit to the hand of the potter and allow him to operate.
That’s it for tonight and remember dear readers that I do always seek your support be it prayerfully or financially.
We shall continue tomorrow.
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