Correction!

In my last post I typed that St. Augustine believed that God must be part evil because of all of the evil in the world, But! I misinterpreted my information. St. Augustine did not believe that god must be both good and evil, he believed that there must be an explanation for the evil in the world and if there was not than we must assume that god must be part evil.

When I read this my initial thought was thank god because it was really hard for me to question whether the god that I grew up knowing was really part evil. I do think it was a good exercise though. The misinterpretation led me to question a belief that I hold very close to me and it was good to do so.

I do agree with St. Augustine (now that I actually know what he believed :D). I think that there should be an explanation for evil because it leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation and unanswered questions.

But! Aren't unanswered questions a part of Christianity? I was brought up to  believe that some of the questions that I do not have answers to was just something that people were never supposed to know about or figure out. I was taught that god was all-knowing and that I would never have all of the answers to some of the questions I asked because I just had to have faith in my god. But honestly that is very difficult, especially as a child where all I did was ask questions. It was hard for me as I grew up to just stifle my questions and answer them with faith.

St. Thomas has a great quote that encompasses my beliefs:

"Since God possesses Being in its entire perfection, it follows that He is able to communicate it to others, giving His creatures the power to act self-existently."

So if god has ultimate power, as is believed, and he is perfection, as is mostly believed, then he is good enough to give us the power to make our own decisions. This is how there is evil in the world; we decide whether or not to be good or evil.

BUT! God created us in his image so does that mean that he can be evil too?

I would like to think that he would never be evil, but why do bad and "evil" things happen?

I previously have argued that if there wasn't bad in the world than we could not appreciate the good. I still believe this but I have seen bad and appreciate the good, now can we make it stop?

 

St. Thomas also stated that:

“The nearer a creature is by nature to God, the less it is determined by Him, and to that greater degree does God allow the creature to determine itself.”

 

So St. Thomas is saying that we have the option to “determine” ourselves. So can we “determine” to stop the evil in the world. Food for thought.