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And when they are cured, they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else. [19] Augustine also mentioned the doctrine in passing in his City of God, where he wrote that "evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name 'evil.'" [20]
One of the earliest proponents of this theory was the 2nd-century Clement of Alexandria who, according to Joseph Kelly, [61] stated that "since God is completely good, he could not have created evil; but if God did not create evil, then it cannot exist". Evil, according to Clement, does not exist as a positive, but exists as a negative or as a ...
Augustine proposed that evil could not exist within God, nor be created by God, and is instead a by-product of God's creativity. [13] He rejected the notion that evil exists in itself, proposing instead that it is a privation of (or falling away from) good, and a corruption of nature. [5]
The theodicy argues that humans have an evil nature in as much as it is deprived of its original goodness, form, order, and measure due to the inherited original sin of Adam and Eve, but still ultimately remains good due to existence coming from God, for if a nature was completely evil (deprived of the good), it would cease to exist. [50]
For some thinkers, the existence of evil and hell could mean that God is not perfectly good and powerful or that there is no God at all. [58] Theodicy tries to address this dilemma by reconciling an all-knowing, all-powerful, and omnibenevolent God with the existence of evil and suffering, outlining the possibility that God and evil can coexist.
Evil may be said to exist in the same way the hole of a donut exists: the donut was created, but the hole itself was not made, it was just never filled in – it is an absence. [10] And just as the hole could not exist without the donut, evil is parasitic upon good, since it is the corruption of a good nature. "God is infinite, and the devil is ...
An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. (Therefore) There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. [2] Another by Paul Draper: Gratuitous evils exist.
This has led to the rejection of any separate power being the source of evil, or of God as being the source of evil; instead, the appearance of evil is the result of a mistaken concept of good. Christian Scientists argue that even the most evil person does not pursue evil for its own sake, but from the mistaken viewpoint that he or she will ...