Monday, August 6, 2018

The problem of evil

“NO EVIL as such can be desirable, either by natural appetite or by conscious will. It is sought indirectly, namely because it is a consequence of some good. This is the rule for every type of appetite. A natural force works for a form, not the absence of form. Yet one form may extrude another. A lion kills for food, that means the death of the deer; a fornicator wants pleasure, and incurs the deformity of sin.”

~St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica, I, q. 19, a. 9.

(Thomas Gilby's translation)

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