ON THE NATURE OF EVIL - IS THERE A PROBLEM OF EVIL
by Rama
Coomaraswamy
Accordingly, when the Catholic Church declares that God is the author of
all natures and substances, those who understand this understand that at the
same time that God is not the author of evil. For how can he who is the cause
of the being of all things be at the same time the cause of their not being -
that is, of their falling off from essence and tending to non-existence? For
this is what reason plainly declares to be the definition of evil.
Augustine, On the Morals of the Manicheans.
If God is, whence come evil things? If He is not, whence comes good?
Boethius Consolation of Phil.
Evil like goodness are realities on the level of the world, and indeed
the two things belong together as members of an inevitable duality, as shadow
belongs to light and cannot help doing so. Indeed, without evil, there could be
no goodness. Yet the argument put forth by a disbelieving culture is that
"if God is all powerful, how is it that He created a world so full of
evil. Answers provided by most religious writers - that God 'permits' evil in
view of a greater good, or that evil derives from the misuse of our free will,
while theologically valid, fail to satisfy those who can readily point to
innocent victims of disease or disaster. Why indeed did not God create a world
free of evil, pain and anxiety?
Those that would absolve God of responsibility are forced to embrace a
duality, ascribing to the powers of evil a separate and distinct source which
inevitably leads to seeing the world and our involvement in it as evil, rather
than as a reflection and manifestation of God Himself. Still others, bred in
the agnosticism of our age, ascribe all evil to the forces of evolution which
removes from the reproductive field those who are biologically inferior and at
the same time keeps the world from being overpopulated. Neither of these
solutions solves the "problem," if indeed, a problem exists.
Genesis, properly understood, provides us with many answers. First to be
noted is that within the Garden of Eden a snake, symbol of evil, existed. There
is a Muslim story of a man who asked a saint who was in the habit of visiting
paradise, to bring him back an apple from that "perfect" place. On
eating it he exclaimed, "there is a worm in this apple!"
How is it possible for snakes and worms to exist in
In the center of the Garden of Eden is the Tree of Life, corresponding
to the axis of the universe. Adam, primordial man, dwells at peace with all his
fellow beings, and they along with him participate in the center so long as his
attention remains focused there. Along comes the snake and offers Adam a
hitherto untasted experience, that of fragmented unity, of things unreferred to
the center and valued for their own sake as if they were self-sufficing
entities. It is not without reason that the Tree now becomes a tree of Good and
Evil. A Tree, as Marco Pallis has said, "bowed under the weight of its
fruits, light and dark, containing the seed of indefinite becoming... regarded
from the viewpoint of ignorance, the Tree of Life becomes the Tree of Knowledge
of Good and Evil."
Once we enter the world of duality we are forced to choose and hence it
is true that free-will plays a significant role. War, surely one of the
greatest evils, is a result as Paul assures us, of our "lusts and
greed." And these in turn are subject to our wills. Adam and Eve's
disobedience is in fact their choosing to follow their own wills as against the
will of God. And this makes clear the relationship of evil to sin, for every
sin is in principle a rejection of truth or a rejection of God's law. This
centering of reality on ourselves is an act of egoity or pride, which
unfortunately is with each and every one of us down to the present day. Yet God
continues to love us and want what is best for us, and hence, in His
Providence, he draws good out of and despite our evil acts.
Theologians inform us that God created the world out of love, and that
love, being His intrinsic nature, He cannot help but love us. He desires us in
turn to love Him - to love Truth, Beauty and Justice, which are but His various
names. Had He created the perfect world, a world in which we could not choose
Truth, Beauty and Justice, a world in which we could not love, we would be
robots and would lack even the possibility of dignity. Instead of raising the
"problem of evil," we might well ask why God bothered to create the
world at all. In fact, why do we exist?
God who in creating us, places us in the realm of relativity, does not
will evil qua evil; that is evil as it appears to us. As Marco Pallis puts it,
"He is the creator of the relative, as is required by His infinity, and
that relativity which we call evil, is a necessary function, being in fact the
measure of the world's apparent separation from its principle, God - an
illusory separation inasmuch as nothing can exist side by side with the
infinite, however real it may claim to be at its own relative level." As
Frithjof Schuon has put it, "One cannot ask of God to will the world and
at the same time to will that it be not the world." The world is a
whirlpool of contrasts as is so well expressed in the Hindu word samsara. It is
not a unity in its own right. It is no limitation on the Almighty that He
cannot produce another Himself, a second Absolute. The world is there to prove
it.
What then of those who are victims of evil. The almost inevitably are
led to ask, "Why me." The very question demands an erroneous answer.
We are part of the relativity. Just as posing the question in terms of a
"problem of evil," leads one away from truth, so also asking of
"why me" centers the problem on our individual ego and begs the
issue. The real challenge is to recognize that one is part of the relativity of
creation and that one is therefore forced to choose and act. Suffering seen in
this light is always a gift, leading us to, as it were, abandon the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil, and turn again to the Tree of Life, for it is only
in this way that one can escape from the samsaric sea in which we all are
forced to swim. As
"We have eaten of the fruits of the tree of knowledge and the taste
of ashes is left in our mouths." - Anatole France.