summa-contra-gentiles

CHAPTER XLI 93
Hence it is said (Isa. xlv. 6, 7)
: / am the Lord and there
is none other God:^ I form the light and create darkness, I
make peace and create evil: I am the Lord that do all
these things: and (Ecclus. xi. 14): Good things and evil,
and life death, poverty and riches, are from God: and
(ibid, xxxiii. 15) Good : is set against evil . . . so also is
the sinner against a just man. And so look upon all the
works of the Most High. Two and two, and one against
another.
God is said to make or create evils, in so far as He creates
things that are good in themselves, and yet hurtful to
others for :
instance, the wolf, although in his species he is
a good of nature, is nevertheless evil to the sheep, and
likewise fire to water, inasmuch as it is corruptive thereof.
In like manner He causes in men those evils which are
called penal. Wherefore it is said (Amos iii. 6) Shall
:
there be evil in a city, which the Lord hath not done? In
this sense Gregory says :^ Even evils, which have no natural
subsistence of their own, are created by the Lord. But He
is said to create evils when He employs creatures that are
good in themselves to punish us who do evil.
Hereby
is excluded the error of those who asserted
contrary first principles. This error began with Empedocles.
For he held that there are two first active principles, attraction
and repulsion, of which he asserted that attraction
the cause of generation, and repulsion the cause of
corruption. Wherefore it would seem as Aristotle says
(i Metaph.y that he was the first to assert two contrary
principles, good and evil.
Pythagoras asserted two primaries, good and evil, as
formal however and not as active principles. For he stated
that these two are the genera under which all other things
are comprised, as the Philosopher declares (i Metaph.).*
Now, though these errors of the earlier philosophers
were refuted by those of later times, certain men of perverted
sense have presumed to combine them with Christian
is
*
Vulg., none else.
* Moral, iii. 9.
* iv. 3.
* V.