Privatio Boni

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear All,

As part of a paper I am writing, I need to confirm that the doctrine of privatio boni, namely that evil is absence or privation of the good, did (or did not) originate with St Augustine. St Augustine certainly discusses it in his Confessions (bk VII), but was he the first to do so? And is our Orthodox teaching on evil the same as St Augustine's, or slightly different?

I would appreciate precise responses, with references where possible.

Many thanks,

In Christ
Byron

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Byron,

I am not at all knowledgable about St Augustine or exactly what he means by evil as the privation of good. Although it sounds like the Patristic understanding that evil is not inherent to nature.

In any case another source worthy of looking at is The Divine Names of St Dionysios Areopogite. Look specifically under Chapter IV: 17-35 which is basically the whole last half of this chapter.

I do not have the opportunity to go through this chapter right now but a few suggestive sentences from this: "Thus evil is not be-ing nor is it in beings, for evil as evil is of nothing at all. The coming to be of evil does not happen according to power but according to weakness. As for demons, which are and are from the good, evil arises from the declension and alteration of their own goods and is a weakness concerning the sameness and condition of the most angelic dignity which is appropriate to them. Insofar as they desire being, life, and intellect, they desire the good. But insofar as they do not desire the good, they desire what is not; this is not a desire but a declension from true desire."

There is also this short sentence which seems to sum up everything the saint is saying: "evil is being contrary to nature."

God support you in your search.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Alec Lowly]

Father Raphael writes:


"There is also this short sentence which seems to sum up everything the saint is saying: 'evil is being contrary to nature.'"

Hmm. I must be a dummy because I've never been able to understand how anything that is "contrary to nature" can exist within nature. But then, like everything else, all meaning depends on one's definitions.

A.L.

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear Fr Raphael,

Father, bless!

Thank you for your reference to St Dionysius, which I will look up. Other Fathers and theologians whom I am aware of as having written on the subject are: Origen, Theophilus of Antioch, Basil the Great and John Chrysostom.

As you confirm in your message, and as has been discussed elsewhere at length on monachos, the Christian understanding of evil is that it has no essential being, nature or ousia of its own, but is instead a privation, absence or distortion of the Good; Good is, in other words, characterised by being, whereas evil is a perversion of being - "contrary to nature" as St Dionysius explains. I understand this as saying that everything God created is good and rightly exists, but the distortion, or lessening (depletion), of what exists is evil. Evil cannot exist without a perfectly good "substrate" on which it 'feeds'.

In light of this philosophy of being, which has its origins with Aristotle and Plato, I wonder what to make of the following passage from Isaiah 45:7


I form the light and I create darkness; I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things

Is it correct to think of God as beyond good and evil?

One more question: could St Augustine have been influenced by St Dionysius? Were the Dionysian writings available then, or are they medieval in their historical origins?

In Christ
Byron

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Father Raphael writes:


"There is also this short sentence which seems to sum up everything the saint is saying: 'evil is being contrary to nature.'"

Hmm. I must be a dummy because I've never been able to understand how anything that is "contrary to nature" can exist within nature. But then, like everything else, all meaning depends on one's definitions.

Actually I think the point Alec makes is very profound since acting 'contrary to nature' affects us all so directly.

We engage in the Lenten journey so that we can see not just how we act at times contrary to nature. But so that we can realise to the degree Christ allows how much we are 'contrary to nature'.

With Christ's help we'll see the next step but the above realisation is a good beginning.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Byron,

Christ's blessings on us all!

You wrote:


Good is, in other words, characterised by being, whereas evil is a perversion of being - "contrary to nature" as St Dionysius explains.

St Dionysios and the Patristic tradition associate good with an open ended movement of each particular nature towards God. Through this movement towards God each nature fulfills itself. But since this movement is potentially never ending, being and good can only be understood in relation to the way in which each nature is always in the process of fulfilling itself. Thus there is always something beyond nature in nature itself. At least in the way God made it!

I think this explains better what St Dionysios is getting at by his point about acting 'contrary to nature'. For him and the whole Patristic tradition evil is to act in contradiction to the above described movement towards God. That is why ultimately the point is not about being in itself as it is about obedience or rebellion to the word of God. And just as there is a mysterious way in which nature is always transcending itself in obedience to God; so in reverse image there is a way in which nature can act contrary to itself.

There is undoubtedly another way however in which good and being have been seen. One is in a dualistic sense and another is in an abstract sense. One defines good and being within the context of an immaterial/material dialectic while the other works off of intellectual constructs. I am not going to get into how much each of these really corresponds to the philosophical background that Origen and St Augustine could have shared. For myself I think the only useful purpose of these terms comes from acknowledging their crucial role as modern Orthodox shorthand in criticising what is theologically unacceptable. Whether they are accurate historical descriptions of actual pagan philosophical positions of the day I believe is secondary. The main purpose of the shorthand has always been as a safeguard against current temptations.

Do Origen and St Augustine stand within the above Patristic tradition? The whole spiritual life especially as it was accepted and understood by the Church during that time assumes this understanding. The ascetic tradition which was already well formed by this time is also what underpins this understanding. Where things get tricky however is in the way in which St Augustine's theological language often shows in a unique way its philosophical baggage. The argument about this is endless with some claiming St Augustine in his theology is a barely converted Platonist or Manichean. I believe however that St Augustine seen in total context fits into the Patristic tradition even if his manner of expression is a bit unique at times.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

"Repentance is the returning from that which is against nature to that which is according to nature, from the devil to God, through ascesis and agony" (St John of Damascus De Fide Orthodoxa 2, 30, PG 94, 976A).

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear Fr Raphael, Alec, all.

Thank you Fr Raphael for your extensive post on the understanding of the goodness of movement according to nature in the Patristic tradition. Your explanation is clear and fascinating:


being and good can only be understood in relation to the way in which each nature is always in the process of fulfilling itself. Thus there is always something beyond nature in nature itself.

Funny how profound things often sound quite simple in the initial reading!

I wonder if you could clarify, Fr Raphael - is the "dualistic sense" you refer to above, that way in which good and being have been seen in the Manichean and associated Gnostic / heretical ideas; and the "abstract sense" you refer to that of Platonism (and presumably Neo-Platonism?).


For myself I think the only useful purpose of these terms comes from acknowledging their crucial role as modern Orthodox shorthand in criticising what is theologically unacceptable. Whether they are accurate historical descriptions of actual pagan philosophical positions of the day I believe is secondary. The main purpose of the shorthand has always been as a safeguard against current temptations.

It would be relevant to my paper to know more precisely what you mean here - do "current temptations" refer respectively to the tendency to dualism and to abstraction?


Last but not least, I wonder if Fr Raphael or others could comment on what I asked above (#298), namely I wonder what to make of the following passage from Isaiah 45:7

I form the light and I create darkness; I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

Is it therefore acceptable in Orthodox understanding to think of God as beyond good and evil (at least whatever we humans understand by those terms)?

In Christ
Byron

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Byron,

You wrote:


I wonder if you could clarify, Fr Raphael - is the "dualistic sense" you refer to above, that way in which good and being have been seen in the Manichean and associated Gnostic / heretical ideas; and the "abstract sense" you refer to that of Platonism (and presumably Neo-Platonism?).

I meant this in a general sense of any definitions about good and being. These could refer to the ancient heresies or philosophy but I wasn't making a definitive statement about these. It could just as easily refer to more modern ideas about good and being which are often dualistic when they become consciously religious and/or extremely abstract when referred to in a general cultural or social way. This is what I meant by "current temptations".

This vs from Isaiah was discussed a few months ago I think at monachos. First of all there is a mistranslation in the KJV when it says about God that "I...create evil." The Hebrew meaning is closer to "creating calamity." Meanwhile the Septuagint (I'm referring specifically to the Russian Synodal version) is closer to "cause calamity." (Evgeny I believe was the person who referred to the best way to translate "proizvozhu bedstviya.")

In any case this still leaves the question of why God would "cause calamity." But I think this is a very long discussion that perhaps would need a thread of its own. It also is close to the point contained in the book of Job which is certainly lenten material. I'm just beginning to read a book by Fr Patrick Reardon on the book of Job called The Trial of Job (Conciliar Press)if anyone else is interested.


About "Is it therefore acceptable in Orthodox understanding to think of God as beyond good and evil (at least whatever we humans understand by those terms)?" God is certainly above all human understandings of good. But this does not mean He is beyond good since He is good.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Fr Raphael, Byron and others,

I've very much enjoyed this thread; thank you to all for the interesting reading.

Fr Raphael wrote:


I think this explains better what St Dionysios is getting at by his point about acting 'contrary to nature'. For him and the whole Patristic tradition evil is to act in contradiction to the above described movement towards God. That is why ultimately the point is not about being in itself as it is about obedience or rebellion to the word of God. And just as there is a mysterious way in which nature is always transcending itself in obedience to God; so in reverse image there is a way in which nature can act contrary to itself.

One of the most important disputes (or rather, contexts of multiple disputes) in the early centuries of the Church, was precisely over this question of evil and its 'reality' in the cosmos. The groups that scholars today like to call 'the Gnostics' (though very few contemporary fathers ever called them this) were at the very least honest about one thing: suffering, which they equated with evil, is pervasive. It is not a small hiccup in reality that might or might not challenge one's belief and action; not a thing that one can elect to avoid or engage. It is all around, concrete in its form yet subtly intangible. The questions of 'How?', 'What?', 'Why?' are especially pertinent.

To speak in broad generalisations, the basic approach of many of these groups was to see in the pervasiveness of evil and suffering a kind of ontological root. Evil is a thing, or rather an inherent quality in the substance of all material things. Thus the famous dualism by which such groups are characterised: materiality is 'intrinsically evil' because it is material, of a substance that is deficient/flawed. Spirit could be understood as free from such evil in its ultimate sense, since it was free from the substance that generated it.

The reason such groups attracted such large followings in the early centuries was because this is actually a coherent, and in some senses compelling, way to deal with the reality of evil. It explains (a) why evil/suffering is so pervasive in the cosmos, namely because the cosmos is material, and materiality ontologically degenerate; (b) how one can acknowledge this reality of evil yet not assign God responsibility for it (this rather more complex, and grounded in varied mythologies about 'God' as not directly responsible for material creation); and (c) how one can look forward through the pervasiveness of evil in hope, since liberation will come at the separation of soul from the world of material corruption.

It doesn't take much to see that these lines of thought remain popular today, in various modern forms.

The chief problem identified with them by the early Church was the reality of creation. The scriptures proclaim that God created the cosmos, directly, and that he looked upon this creation as 'Good, yea very good'. Moreover, as a creation 'out of nothing' (ex ouk onton), the very fabric of created reality itself is understood as being God's direction creation; he was not 'limited' in his creative capability by having to work with pre-existent matter, which might then be understood as deficient or limited. Rather, God creates all things out of non-being; and as God creates what is 'good', it cannot be maintained that any existing reality is, with respect to its created nature, evil. Or to put it more succinctly, evil cannot be understood as having ontological reality, since all 'ontologies' are created by God, and God does not fashion evil.

The project then is to articulate how evil has reality, without being an ontological reality. This led the early fathers to speak of evil primarily as economy - as act, or what is done with created reality, rather than what created reality is itself. So for Irenaeus, evil is at its root the fruit of disobedience; for Tertullian it is the fruit of impatience of good. It is in this context that one needs to look at the concept of 'privatio boni', the deprivation of good, which is another way of articulating the non-ontological reality of evil. It is not a 'thing', but the economic reality of life lived in rejection of authentic reality (which is 'good'). This defines evil as requiring an actor. A rock or a tree cannot effect a deprivation of good, since rocks and trees do not 'effect' or 'act' at all.

INXC, Matthew

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear Matthew,

Thank you for your encouraging comments and bringing together the related threads on this, surely a crucial issue for today's Christian.

You write:


as God creates what is 'good', it cannot be maintained that any existing reality is, with respect to its created nature, evil.

If a certain 'created reality' in other words, does appear evil, it is so only to the extent to which it is out of step with the essence God created it to be, or the direction God created it to go or to grow in. Could it therefore be that, as Fr Raphael suggests above, "the way in which each nature is always in the process of fulfilling itself" (#958) is indeed a process ordained by God with a specific direction and purpose? Are we living, in other words, in a cosmos where not only man's soul and body, but also the animals, plants, minerals, the chemical elements and the forces of nature, each has their own specific destiny to fulfil? Let me make it more explicit for the sake of clarification: is this stone in front of me, this computer screen, going to be a different stone or a different computer screen in five minutes time, according to whether it has "fulfilled itself" as its Divinely ordained nature prescribes it ought to, or alternatively (sadly) taken a path contra naturam (whatever that means for a stone or a computer screen!)?

In Christ
Byron