Thank you SFA fore the beautiful and always inspiring writing of Blessed Thomas Aquinas, in this case asserting that in God there can be no evil.
The orthodox teaching of the catholic faith is that God is Essense and that in order for evil to be from Hom, evil would be His nature.
This is, of course, contrary to the Christian teaching of an unchanging, eternal God, who is Love itself. Our one, holy, catholic and Apostolic Church teaches that the origin of evil began with a free-will rebellion against God by Satan and his fellow angels. This is indirectly addressed in the Book of Revelation.
But the origin or Christian demonology is also found in Jewish demology, in what the heretics refer to as the "Apocrypha," and represents an act of rebellion against God.
By denying free will, some heretics are faced with a dilemma: whence came the evil. And, once locked in their own error, they conclude—from God! In other words, evil is a creature of God (by necessity), br of evil that in Him!
But if God is Love, if God is Good, then evil is un-love and un-good, indeed un-God! So, in their schizoid theology, the heretics are creating a God who is both the essence of good and evil! But they are locked in by their denial that love is freedom, that only free love is true love and that forced love is no-love, indeed un-love, and by extension un-God.
As the Saint puts it more aptly: "There cannot therefore be in Him anything that is not goodness, and so evil cannot be in Him at all."
And by the same understanding, being the Creator of everything and all, a God is the Giver of Life, not death. Death is un-life, and therefore cannot be from God. Christ tells us that God is the God of the living. God cannot be the cause of death; the sin is. The sin separates us form Life, and results in death. Yet the heretic "God" does kill. He even creates people for the sole purpose of being kept eternally alive so that they can be eternally tortured.
It is through the Gospels and contrasted by our fallen nature that we realize that our very notion of mercy is not of this world, for none it to be found in this world of its own nature. Love is also Mercy, and mercy is un-vengance to our fallen nature. God's vengeance is loving even His enemies. That's the kind of vengeance that burns the most.
In other words, the heretics not only teach that which is not of the Church, but their God is un-God, and essentially a very different deity.
Yes ,I agree
“”But if God is Love, if God is Good””
Blessed Aquinas addresses this as well
That God is the Good of all Good
"GOD in His goodness includes all goodnesses, and thus is the good of all good.2. God is good by essence: all other beings by participation: therefore nothing can be called good except inasmuch as it bears some likeness to the divine goodness. He is therefore the good of all good. Hence it is said of the Divine Wisdom: There came to me all good things along with it (Wisd. vii, 11)". -Thomas Aquinas
“The orthodox teaching of the catholic faith is that God is Essense and that in order for evil to be from Him, evil would be His nature”
“But they are locked in by their denial that love is freedom, that only free love is true love and that forced love is no-love, indeed un-love, and by extension un-God.”
“that the origin of evil began with a free-will rebellion against God by Satan and his fellow angels.”
That’s all well and good but if God created the cosmos and everything in it to operate with a uniformity of cause and effect how then can He have created absolute “free-will” with the potential for rebellion without creating the concept rebellion? Are you saying that a creature can create a concept not known or thought of by God or that God learned something because of the creature’s exercise of “free-will”?
I know,Dear Brother, and what troubles me most about this is that when someone buys into this theology,the psychological effect “can” cause loss of love for others since God's creative power is thus not for the purpose of love for ALL His created.
This seems due to lack of understanding of God's knowledge of evil and somehow attributing evil being created by God for some purpose to be used by God.
This type of view of God strips away love being the essence of God .
I Think the following excerpt's from Blessed Saint Aquinas should give our reformed friends something to think about.
That God knows Evil Things
WHEN good is known, the opposite evil is known. But God knows all particular good things, to which evil things are opposed: therefore God knows evil things.
2. The ideas of contraries, as ideas in the mind, are not contrary to one another: otherwise they could not be together in the mind, or be known together: the idea therefore whereby evil is known is not inconsistent with good, but rather belongs to the idea of good (ratio qua cognoscitur malum ad rationem boni pertinet).* If then in God, on account of His absolute perfection, there are found all ideas of goodness (rationes bonitatis, as has been proved (Chap. XL), It follows that there is in Him the idea (ratio) whereby evil is known.
3. Truth is the good of the understanding: for an understanding is called good inasmuch as it knows the truth. But truth is not only to the effect that good is good, but also that evil is evil: for as it is true that what is, is, so it is true that what is not, is not. The good of the understanding therefore consists even in the knowledge of evil. But since the divine understanding is perfect in goodness, there cannot be wanting to it any of the perfections of understanding; and therefore there is present to it the knowledge of things evil.
4. God knows the distinction of things (Chap. L). But in the notion of distinction there is negation: for those things are distinct, of which one is not another: hence the first things that are of themselves distinct, mutually involve the exclusion of one another, by reason of which fast negative propositions are immediately verified of them, e.g., ‘No quantity is a substance.’ God then knows negation. But privation is a sort of negation: He therefore knows privation, and consequently evil, which is nothing else than a privation of due perfection.
8. In us the knowledge of evil things is never blameworthy in mere point of knowledge, that is in the judgement that is passed about evil things, but accidentally, inasmuch as by the observation of evil things one is sometimes inclined to evil. But that cannot be in God; and therefore there is nothing to prevent His knowing evil.
With this agrees what is said, that Evil surpasseth not [God's] wisdom (Wisd. vii 30) and, Hell and perdition are before the Lord (Prov. xv, 11) and, My offences are not hidden from thee (Ps. lxviii, 6); and, He knoweth the vanity of men, and seeing doth he not consider iniquity? (Job xi, 11.)
It is to be observed however that if God's knowledge were so limited as that His knowledge of Himself did not involve His knowing other beings of finite and partial goodness, at that rate He would nowise know privation or evil: because to the good which is God Himself there is no privation opposed, since privation and its opposite are naturally about the same object; and so to that which is pure actuality no privation is opposed, and consequently no evil either. Hence on the supposition that God knows Himself alone, by knowing the excellences of His own being, He will not know evil.* But because in knowing Himself He knows beings in which privations naturally occur, He must know the opposite privations, and the evils opposite to particular goods.
It must be further observed that as God, without any argumentative process, knows other beings by knowing Himself, so there is no need of His knowledge being argumentative in coming to the knowledge of evil things through good things: for good is as it were the ground of the knowledge of evil, evil being nothing else than privation of good: hence what is evil is known through what is good as things are known through their definitions, not as conclusions through their premises.