GOD

AND THE PERMISSION OF EVIL

ACCORDING TO

JACQUES MARITAIN

HOC ENIM BONUM EST

ET ACCEPTUM CORAM SALVATORE NOSTRO DEO

QUI OMNES HOMINES VULT SALVOS FIERI

ET AD AGNITIONEM VERITATIS VENIRE

l Tim 2, 3-4

EGO SUM VITIS VERA

ET PATER MEUS AGRICOLA EST

OMNEM PALMITEM IN ME NON FERENTEM FRUCTUM TOLLIT EUM

ET OMNEM QUI FERT FRUCTUM PURGAT EUM

UT FRUCTUM PLUS AFFERAT

IAM VOS MUNDI ESTIS PROPTER SERMONEM

QUEM LOCUTUS SUM VOBIS

MANETE IN ME ET EGO IN VOBIS

SICUT PALMES NON POTEST FERRE FRUCTUM A SEMETIPSO

NISI MANSERIT IN VITE

SIC NEC VOS NISI IN ME MANSERITIS

EGO SUM VITIS VOS PALMITES

QUI MANET IN ME ET EGO IN EO HIC FERT FRUCTUM MULTUM

QUIA SINE ME NIHIL POTESTIS FACERE

Jn 15, 1-5

DENIS A. SCRANDIS SYMPOSIUM ON EVIL

FORDHAM PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY FEBRUARY 26, 2002

INTRODUCTION

In his work God and the Permission of Evil¹, Jacques Maritain examines the cause of moral evil. He argues that it is caused by fallible creatures and permitted (sometimes) by God without being willed or caused by God. Maritain works within a Thomistic world view according to which God creates and sustains in being free and fallible creatures and also, as the First Cause of motion or change, God also activates these created natures throughout the life of the world. With God so intimately involved in the lives of His creatures, Maritain balances principles delicately as he articulates his defense of the innocence of God.

Maritain distinguishes moral or blamable evil (or sin) from physical evil. While he maintains the innocence of God in regard to moral evil, he does not disinvolve God from physical evil. God, as the transcendent First Cause of the material universe, wills and causes the good of the universe and of the things of this world. Thus the good achieved in nourishing the lion is willed by God, while the losses or evil suffered by the gazelle in nourishing the lion are indirectly and accidentally linked by nature to the goods and gains willed by God.

Maritain’s discussion focuses very sharply within Thomistic ethical thought on the acts of conscience, election, and choice. Conscience is a judgment of the intellect regarding something that the agent is thinking of doing that involves moral rules. Election is a judgment that defines an action in accordance with the judgment of conscience. And choice is an act of the will that projects into the world the concrete action of the agent, which may, or may not, be specified by the rule of the preceding judgment of conscience.

Let us examine some moral reasoning, which may be attributable to the Good Samaritan. The most general moral principle is, “Do good and avoid doing evil.” A less general moral principle is, “It is good to help people in distress,” which in the Good Samaritan context can be represented by, “This injured man should be helped.” The judgment of conscience of the Good Samaritan then is, “I should help this injured man.” The judgment of election of the Good Samaritan is, “I will help this man now,” and the following choice of the will produces the celebrated act of mercy. The Samaritan chose as he did in consideration of this rule. Had the Samaritan not considered the rule, his choice would have been without the obligation to help or “rule-less” as was the action of the priest, i.e., of the one in the parable who walked by on the opposite side. The motion to consider the rule is known in Christian ethics as sufficient grace; the motion toward the production of a morally good act (which is good because it is specified by the rule) is known as efficacious grace. The priest’s option of choosing while not considering the rule, i.e., to produce an act that is not specified by the rule, is the production of a morally evil act.

THE GUIDING PRINCIPLES AND METHODOLOGY OF MARITAIN’S POSITION

Maritain begins God and the Permission of Evil by setting forth the principles that command his entire discussion: “The fundamental certitude, the rock to which we must cling in this question of moral evil, is the absolute innocence of God.² He cites two texts in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. The first is: God is absolutely not the cause of moral evil, neither directly nor indirectly.³ Even the shadow of indirect causality must be excluded. The second principle is: “The first cause of the absence of grace comes from us.”⁴ The first cause of moral evil is to be found in us. Sin is an invention of the free creature.

Maritain believes that the language and concepts of the discussion of evil must be re-designed to meet the special needs of describing evil. The good is being, i.e., the plenitude or completion of being. Evil, on the contrary, is the absence of being; it is nothingness. When we reason in the line of evil, we must reason in the line of non-being because evil is in nowise being. Thus, there must be a dis-symmetry between, on the one hand, our accustomed and comfortable manner of examining and explaining moral acts in the perspective of being and good and, on the other hand, our newly designed and disciplined manner of looking at and explaining evil acts in the perspective of evil. Maritain sees a "fundamental, irreducible dis-symmetry, between the line of good and the line of evil.”⁵ He regards this methodological invention as “a principle which is like a beacon illuminating the whole debate.”⁶

SPEAKING IN THE LINE OF NON-BEING OR EVIL

Maritain interprets a passage in the Gospel of John (Jn 15, 5 “Without Me, you can do nothing.”) that is a point of departure for the doctrine of the dis-symmetry between the line of good and the line of evil; his interpretation illustrates the two lines. Read in the line of being where God has the first initiative, it says, “Without Me, you can do nothing good.” Read in the line of evil where created liberty has the first initiative, it says, “Without Me you can do nothingness, without me you can introduce into being that nothingness or that non-being of the due good, that privation, which is evil.”⁷

THE NOTION OF THE NON-CONSIDERATION OF THE RULE.

Maritain, emphasizing the rigors of non-being discourse writes that the “non-consideration of the rule" is not an “act of non-consideration,” such as when I ignore a distracting noise, but a “non-act of consideration,” as when, while attending to one matter, I attend to another, losing sight of the first. He writes:

This defectus, this free failure which is the cause of moral evil without being itself an evil, is the non-consideration of the rule--which is not, note well, an act of non-consideration, but a non-act of consideration.⁸

To consider the rule is not of itself a due good. A non-act of consideration is not itself evil.

In the context of a concrete whole action, Maritain distinguishes two features in the nature of the act.

First instant of nature: not to consider the rule, which is a mere withdrawal from being, ... a mere absence of a good that is not due. And, second instant of nature: to act with this absence, which, from the sole fact that one acts [without the rule], becomes a privation, the absence of a due good, and causes the operation to deviate.⁹

These two instants are really distinct one from another inasmuch as the cause of evil is in the first instant while the evil effect is in the second.

THE NOTION OF THE SHATTERABLE MOTION.

Maritain says that it is the Thomistic view that the creature acts only under the motion of the First Cause. It is a view that emphasizes the intimacy of divine activation. Maritain defines here what he calls a shatterable motion in this way: “I call shatterable motion a divine motion or activation which causes the free agent to tend to a morally good act, but which includes of itself by nature, the possibility of being shattered.”¹⁰ This notion of “a shatterable motion … to a morally good act” is the concept in the line of non-being that corresponds to the notion of sufficient grace in the line of being (at least for a Christian philosopher like Jacques Maritain).

When does the free creature shatter the shatterable motion?

Ordinarily ... God gives to free agents ... shatterable motions, which are shattered if

at the moment of time when the election is about to be made the free agent nihilates in not considering the rule.¹¹

Thus we have, on the one hand, the judgment of conscience, which embodies a rule of relevant and morally good conduct, and, on the other hand, a voluntary choice. A shatterable motion (from the First Cause) causes the free agent to tend to do the morally good act. The free creature can either cooperate with grace or reject it. If the creature exercises in the moment of election its free and first initiative not to consider the rule, it nihilates and shatters the shatterable motion to do the morally good act producing a rule-less and defective evil act. However, if creatures do not shatter motions toward good acts in elections, the natures of the motions change.

They ... fructify of themselves ... or by the very love of God from which they proceed ... without having need of being completed by the slightest actuation or determination coming from the creature, into unshatterable motions (let us say, if you will, into efficacious graces) which replace them and under which the creature, freely and infallibly, will consider the rule in its very operation and will produce the good act to which it is moved by God.¹²

Thus, man has the first initiative in the line of evil, and God has the first initiative in the line of good.

THE PERMISSION OF EVIL

Maritain’s treatment now turns to the notion of the “consequent permissive decree” or, as Maritain prefers, the “permission” of evil which is a notion that is co-equal in importance with the notions of the non-consideration of the rule and the shatterable motion to the morally good act. It is “consequent” in that it comes in the act of election after the will’s nihilation or non-consideration of the rule whereby the shatterable motion is shattered. Such permission represents a divine decision not to prevent the created liberty’s act from coming into being along with the privation that wounds it. Maritain observes that God’s permission does not always follow necessarily. God is the master of secondary causes who, for example, can thwart a murderer by inducing a sneeze while the murderer discharges his weapon causing the shot to go awry. Maritain sees in this non-necessary aspect of “permission” not ambiguity or indifference but “the absolute liberty of the consequent permissive decree.”¹³ God permits evil or bars it freely and with a purpose.

Maritain states an “axiom” regarding God’s permission: “God permits evil only in view of a greater good, that is to say, by referring or ordaining this evil to a greater good.”¹⁴ God’s permissions are given with a view to the greater goods He wills to draw from them “principally and above all in the order of eternal life, but also, and secondarily in the order of temporal history itself”¹⁵

THE ETERNAL PURPOSES

When Maritain addresses the issue of a divine plan, he rejects the idea of a pre-ordained plan but constructs a notion of a divine plan to which God and man contribute. Maritain does not like to speak of an eternal divine “plan” for the salvation of mankind which suggests something prepared in advance. It also suggests that the players are acting out a plot and playing roles already determined for them by a playwright.¹⁶ No, Maritain prefers to write about the “eternal purposes.”

The discussion of the eternal purposes occurs within a discussion of time and eternity. For Maritain, all the moments of time, all of creation, have a simultaneous real presence before the divine eternity in which there is no succession, which is an instant without beginning or end because the divine creative ideas (according to their own measure which is eternity) embrace the material beings which they cause to be (according to their own measure which is in time).¹⁷ God does not “fore-see” the things of time; He sees them; He sees them in the “existential freshness of their emergence into being.”¹⁸ Maritain writes: “He sees in particular the free options and decisions of the created existent which, inasmuch as they are free, are unforeseeable in themselves.”¹⁹ Maritain insists here both that free choices are intrinsically unforeseeable because they are intrinsically un-necessitated (or free) and that they are seen along with every other determination of every other being.

Let us begin the discussion of the eternal purposes by examining a passage that provides a role for the free creature. Maritain writes:

And I have said that in the ... sovereignly free establishment of these eternal purposes or of this eternal plan … the intelligent and free creature has its share by reason of its initiatives, second initiatives in the line of good, first initiatives in the line of evil.²⁰

In this view, the work of God runs real risks because the drama of life is not merely portrayed it is actually lived. God knows in His science of simple intelligence all possible evil. However, the invincible wisdom and power of the eternal purposes manifest themselves under all circumstances. God wins even when He seems to be losing. Each time a free creature undoes for its part the work that God accomplishes, God remakes it for the better to the extent that this work leads it to higher ends. Yet, when the creature prefers to remain its ultimate end to itself, it prefers the pains of Hell over love. There will be real losses to be compensated for: the creature’s damnation will be compensated for by the manifestation of eternal justice. However, the creature, who in the end will not have said “No!,” will enter into the glory that God has prepared for those who love Him which was His intention in creating this world where evil is permitted.²¹

Maritain agrees with Saint Augustine (Enchir. III, 11) that, “God would never permit evil if He was not strong enough and good enough to draw good even from evil.” He also agrees with Augustine that the principal compensations for the evils of this world are not worldly goods. It is in grace and in the communion of saints that God’s reward is enjoyed. God permits persecution while blessing the victim and offering the grace of repentance to the persecutor.

Now, there is a sense in which God freely establishes an eternal plan:

All these moments are there, present before God, and it is in taking account both of all our initiatives of good of which He is the transcendent First Cause and of all our initiatives of evil of which we are the nihilating first cause, that He freely establishes, according as He wills to cause or to prevent or to permit, His immutable eternal plan.²²

In the establishment of the divine plan, Maritain suggests back-and-forth movement between the side of the eternal purposes and the side of created natures.

la. (On the side of the eternal purposes) All events which happen on earth, whether necessary, contingent, fortuitous, or free, are necessary--account being taken of all the nihilatings of the free creature--once they are assumed as willed by God or as immutably established as His plan of which they are a part.²³

lb. (On the side of nature) Acts of created liberty are of two kinds. On the one hand, some are sure to happen if they are taken collectively and indeterminately. For example, an unjust politician may condemn an innocent man for political reasons although no one can say with certainty when. Yet, on the other hand, a free act individually taken, such as, an act of betrayal, is not necessary by its own nature and it is not certain to be done in any particular case.²⁴

2a (On the side of the eternal purposes) All the good--at once human and divine--of Jesus’ Passion is willed by God: (a) Jesus Christ’s supreme act of love and obedience that is the immolation that He accepted and willed; (b) the infinite merit with which this immolation is resplendent; and, (c) the redemption that it effects. Yet, the sins committed by the authors of the death of Jesus are not willed directly or indirectly by God; these sins remain outside the field of divine causation.²⁵

2b (On the side of nature) A friend of the Holy Family who knew the life, person, and ministry of Jesus and who knew Israel’s longing for a political messiah and who knew the political dynamics of the Judeo-Roman world could have concluded with certainty that the priests and the procurator would send Jesus to His death. Yet, no one could be certain that Judas would betray Jesus. Judas’s created liberty was free to take or not take the first initiative on which this sin depended.²⁶

3a (On the side of the divine purposes) Judas’s betrayal had been permitted; Judas’s nihilating first initiative, perhaps his non-consideration of the prohibition against shedding innocent blood, was possibly the failure that was the condition for permission. Yet, if Judas had not betrayed Jesus, some other eternal plan would have been immutably established by the divine will.”²⁷

3b (On the side of nature) Had Judas not betrayed Jesus, Jesus would have fallen into the hands of His enemies in some other way.²⁸

PREDESTINATION AND REPROBATION

Maritain’s analysis of the permission of evil now comes to the end game. He distinguishes in God between an antecedent will, which he prefers to call a primordial or un-circumstanced will, and a consequent will, which he prefers to call a definitive or circumstanced will.

The primordial or un-circumstanced will is the will by which, to quote St. Paul (1Tim 2, 4) God wills “all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” God’s will is real but it is conditional: it can be frustrated by a created liberty and the initiatives of nothingness. When it is not frustrated, it is confirmed by the consequent will, by the definitive or circumstanced will.²⁹

The elect are by definition the chosen. God chooses all men conditionally.

By His primordial ... will God wills that all men be saved--He wills that all be saved if only they do not refuse, for all this is an affair of love, and love necessarily implies liberty and free gift. He wills that all be saved if only certain ones do not frustrate this antecedent will of universal salvation by a free nihilating of their will which will make them, at the very instant when it settles down for eternity, prefer to the beatific vision and to the love of God over and above all, the love over and above all of their own grandeur.³⁰

When a choice of self rather than God “settles down for eternity” and when that ultimate choice is permitted and assumed as willed by God, it is rendered dreadfully immutable in hell.

Maritain discusses three classes of people in terms of their outcomes, namely, the “elect,” the “general run of the elect,” and the “condemned.” He says that, although the Gospel proclaims the equal dignity of all men, when it comes to the affairs of the Master of the vineyard, which are affairs of the heart, the Gospel is not egalitarian. There are some who will be saved by a “love of predilection” and despite their sins. These elect will receive from God at death “an unshatterable-from-the-very-first motion " to love Him over and above all. These are predestined unconditionally from the very first. (Maritain does not suggest examples, but the martyrs are likely candidates, especially, Saints Stephen, Peter, and Paul.)³¹

The “general run of the elect” probably constitutes the vast majority of the chosen. These are neither the martyr nor (alas!) the one who would frustrate God’s primordial will to save. The merits of these elect are not the reason or cause of their election. These elect (unlike the first group) are chosen not simply by the unconditional will of God but are chosen by the unconditional and un-frustrated will of God.³²

The condemned are those who have withdrawn from divine grace by their free initiatives of nihilating, especially, when they shatter the last grace offered at the ends of their lives. They are fixed in aversion to God and pass from the care of mercy to the reality of justice. Whoever turns from the goods to which God has ordained them will be excluded from them. However, they will not be denied a sufficient albeit shatterable last motion toward final repentance; they will be denied repentance through their own terrible free nihilation.³³

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Maritain, Jacques. God and the Permission of Evil. Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company,

1966.

NOTES

¹Maritain, Jacques. God and the Permission of Evil, (Milwaukee: 1966), p. 6. Hereinafter known as GPE.

² GPE p.3.

³ Summa Theogiae I-II 79, 1.

⁴ Summa Theogiae I-II 112, 3, ad2.

⁵ GPE p9.

⁶ GPE p9.

⁷ GPE p.33.

⁸ GPE p. 35.

⁹ GPE p. 36.

¹⁰ GPE p. 38.

¹¹ GPE p. 39.

¹² GPE p. 39.

¹³ GPE p. 61.

¹⁴ GPE p. 62.

¹⁵ GPE p. 63.

¹⁶ GPE pp. 77 and 84.

¹⁷ GPE pp. 77-78.

¹⁸ GPE p. 79.

¹⁹ GPE pp. 78-79.

²⁰ GPE pp. 82-83.

²¹ GPE pp. 85-87.

²² GPE pp. 90-91.

²³ GPE p. 94.

²⁴ GPE p. 95.

²⁵ GPE p. 96.

²⁶ GPE pp. 96-97.

²⁷ GPE p. 97.

²⁸ GPE p. 98.

²⁹ GPE pp. 99-100

³⁰ GPE p. 104.

³¹ GPE p. 105.

³² GPE pp. 105-108.

³³ GPE pp. 109-111.