The Divine Names

^21. Neither inhereth evil in existent creatures.^[335] For if all creatures are from the Good, and the Good is in them all and embraces them all, either evil can have no place amongst the creatures, or else it must have a place in the Good.^[336] Now it cannot inhere in the Good, any more than cold can inhere in fire; just so the quality of becoming evil cannot inhere in that which turns even evil into good. And if evil doth inhere in the Good, what will the mode of its inherence be? If you say: It cometh of the Good, I answer: That is absurd and impossible. For (as the infallible Scriptures say), a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, nor yet is the converse possible. But if it cometh not of the Good, it is plainly from another origin and cause. Either evil must come from the Good, or the Good from evil, or else (if this is impossible} both the Good and evil must be from another origin or cause. For no duality can be an origin: same unity must be the origin of all duality. And yet it is absurd to suppose that two entirely opposite things can owe their birth and their being to the same thing. This would make the origin itself not a simple unity but divided, double, self-contradictory and discordant. Nor again is it possible that the world should have two contradictory origins, existing in each other and in the whole and mutually at strife. For,^[337] were this assumed, God^[338] cannot be free from pain, nor without a feeling of ill, since there would be something causing Him trouble, yea, all things must in that case be in a state of disorder and perpetual strife; whereas the Good imparts a principle of harmony to all things and is called by the Sacred Writers Peace and the Bestower of Peace. And hence it is that all good things display a mutual attraction and harmony, and are the offspring of one Life and are disposed in fellowship towards one Good, and are kindly, of like nature, and benignant to one another. And so evil is not in God,^[339] and is not divine. Nor cometh it of God. For either He is not good, or else He worketh goodness and bringeth good things unto existence. Nor acts He thus only at some times and not at others, or only in the case of some things but not of all. For were He to act thus, He must suffer a change and alteration, and that in respect of the divinest quality of all—causality. And if the Good is in God as His very substance, God must, in changing from the Good, sometimes exist and sometimes not exist. Doubtless if you feign that He hath the Good by mere participation therein, and derives It from another, in that case He will, forsooth, sometimes possess It and sometimes not possess It.^[340] Evil, therefore, doth not come from God, nor is it in God either absolutely or temporally.^[341]

22. Neither inhereth evil in the angels.^[342] For if the good angel declares the Divine Goodness, he is in a secondary manner and by participation that which the Subject of his message is in a primary and causal manner.^[343] And thus the angel is an image of God, a manifestation of the invisible light, a burnished mirror, bright, untarnished, without spot or blemish, receiving (if it is reverent to say so) all the beauty of the Absolute Divine Goodness, and (so far as may be) kindling in itself, with unallowed radiance, the Goodness of the Secret Silence. Hence evil inhereth not in the angels; they are evil only in so far as they must punish sinners. But in this respect even those who chastise wrong-doers are evil, and so are the priests who exclude the profane man from the Divine Mysteries. But, indeed, ‘tis not the suffering of the punishment that is evil but the being worthy thereof; nor yet is a just exclusion from the sacrifices evil, but to be guilty and unholy and unfit for those pure mysteries is evil.

[335] So far D. has been showing that evil is not an ultimate principle, being neither (1) identical with the Good, nor (2j self-subsistent. Now he argues that it is not a necessary element in any created thing: neither in their existence as such, nor in any particular kind of creature.

[336] D. rambles characteristically, but the general argument is plain. All existence is from the Good. Hence, if evil is inherent in the nature of existence, evil is from the Good. Thus D. meets again and proceeds to lay the ghost of a theory which he has already elaborately slain in the previous section.

[338] D. here uses the name “God” because he is thinking of the Absolute or the Good, not in Its ultimate Nature, but in Its emanating or creative activity, in which the Personal Differentiations of the Trinity appear. See II. 7.

[339] i. e. Evil does not arise through the passage of the Good from Super-Essence into Essence. It is not in the Good through the Good submitting to the conditions of existence (D. has already shown that evil has no place in the ultimate Super-Essential Nature of the Good).

[340] This is a reductio ad absurdum. D. considers it obvious that God possesses the Good as His Substance and not by participation. The Persons of the Trinity are not products of the Absolute but Emanations or Differentiations of It.

[341] The argument is as follows: No evil is from God. All existence is from God. Therefore no existence is evil.

[342] Having shown that existence as such is not inherently evil, D. now takes various forms of existence and shows that none of them is, as such, inherently evil.

[343] Cf. Old Testament title, “Sons of God,” and D. on Deification. Cf. also “I have said, Ye are Gods.”