NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

“The Earth was Invisible and Unfinished.”attacks, will end in self destruction. But if one should gain the mastery it would completelyannihilate the conquered. Thus, to maintain the balance in the struggle between good andevil is to represent them as engaged in a war without end and in perpetual destruction, wherethe opponents are at the same time conquerors and conquered. If good is the stronger, whatis there to prevent evil being completely annihilated? But if that be the case, the very utteranceof which is impious, I ask myself how it is that they themselves are not filled with horror tothink that they have imagined such abominable blasphemies.It is equally impious to say that evil has its origin from God; 1424 because the contrarycannot proceed from its contrary. Life does not engender death; darkness is not the originof light; sickness is not the maker of health. 1425 In the changes of conditions there aretransitions from one condition to the contrary; but in genesis each being proceeds from itslike, and not from its contrary. If then evil is neither uncreate nor created by God, fromwhence comes its nature? Certainly that evil exists, no one living in the world will deny.What shall we say then? Evil is not a living animated essence; it is the condition of the soulopposed to virtue, developed in the careless on account of their falling away from good. 14261424 With this view Plutarch charges the Stoics. Αὐτοὶ τῶν κακῶν ἀρχὴν ἀγαθὸν ὄντα τὸν Θεον ποιοῦσι.(c. Stoicos, 1976.) But it is his deduction from their statements—not their own statements. cf. Mosheim’s noteon Cudworth iv. § 13. Origen (c. Celsum vi.) distinguishes between την κακίαν καὶ τὰς ἀπ᾽ αὐτῆς πράξεις, andκακόν as punitive and remedial; if the latter can rightly be called evil in any sense, God is the author of it. cf.Amos iii. 6. Vide, also, Basil’s treatment of this question in his Treatise ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν αἰτιος τῶν κακῶν ὁ θεος.cf. Schroeck. Kirchengeschichte xiii. 194.1425 Fialon points out the correspondence with Plat. Phæd. § 119, καί τίς εἰπε τῶν παρόντων ἀκούσας…πρὸςΘεν, οὐκ ἐν τοῖς πρόσθεν ἡμῖν λόγοις αὐτὸ τὸ ἐναντίον τῶν νυνὶ λεγομένων ὡμολογεῖτο, ἐκ τοῦ ἐλάττονοςτὸ μεῖζον γίγνεσθαι, καὶ ἐκ τοῦ μείζονος τὸ ἔλαττον, καὶ ἀτεχνῶς αὕτη εἶναι ἡ γένεσις τοῖς ἐναντίοις ἐκ τῶνἐναντίων ; νῦν δέ μοι δοκεῖ λέγεσθαι ὅτι τοῦτο οὐκ ἄν ποτε γένοιτο. Καὶ ὁ Σωκράτης …ἔφη…οὐκ ἐννοεῖς τὸδιαφέρον τοῦ τι νῦν λεγομένου καί τοῦ τότε· τότε· μὲν γὰρ ἐλέγετο ἐκ τοῦ ἐναντίου πράγματος τὸ ἐναντίονπρᾶγμα γίγνεσθαι, νῦν δὲ ὅτι αὐτὸ τὸ ἐναντίον ἑαυτῷ ἐναντίον οὐκ ἄν ποτε γένοιτο, οὔτε τὸ ἐν ἡμῖν οὔτε τὸἐν φύσει· τότε μὲν γὰρ περὶ τῶν ἐχόντων τῶν ἐναντίων ἐλέγομεν, ἐπονομάζοντες αὐτὰ τῇ ἐκείνων ἐπωνυμί&139·, νῦν δὲ περὶ ἐκείνων αὐτῶν ὧν ἐνόντων, ἔχει τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν τὰ ὀνομαζόμενα, αὐτὰ δ᾽ ἐκείνα οὐκ ἄνποτέ φαμεν ἐθεγῆσαι γένεσιν ἀλλήλων δέξασθαι.1426 “Cette phrase est prise textuellement dans Denys l’Aréopagite, ou du moins dans l’ouvrage qui lui est attribué.(De Div. Nom. iv. 18. Laur. Lyd. de mensib. ed. Rœth. 186, 28.).” Fialon. In the Treatise referred to, περὶΘείων ᾽Ονομάτων, “evil” is said to be “nothing real and positive, but a defect, a negation only. Στέρησις ἄραἐστὶ τὸ κακὸν, καὶ ἔλλειψις, και ἀσθένεια, καὶ ἀσυμμετρία.” D.C.B. i. 846. cf. “Evil is null, is nought, is silenceimplying sound.” Browning. Abt. Vogler.270