Why I converted from Orthodoxy, by Gideon Lazar, Catholic University of America.

[Nazianzen]

Evil is not the absence of good, it's the absence of a due good.

The absence of just any good is mere limitation, which is a necessary condition of any created being; whereas the absence of a due good is an actual defect.  Something is lacking which ought to be present.

In the Immaculate,
Nazianzen.

This changes nothing about the discussion or the objections.

Well, it should.

It's an opportunity to retreat to an orthodox position.

God created all things.  That is a dogma.  All that God made is good.  That is a dogma too.

Evil therefore cannot be something created, but rather it must be explained as a lack.

I do not say this isn't mysterious, because it is, but it's also necessary.

So, evil is not the mere absence of good, it's the absence of a due good.

The absence of just any good is mere limitation, which is a necessary condition of any created being; whereas the absence of a due good is an actual defect.  Something is lacking which ought to be present.

In the Immaculate,
Nazianzen.

[Tales]

The Hebrew of the Torah is many things, but clear is not one of them. Translators can't even agree on its opening clause, no, on its opening word. Watch out, because we're approaching "The Bible calls bats birds" levels of argument when we read the Torah like this. You're a 21st century Anglophone reading in translation a 3,000-year-old text through the lense of an understanding of the world shaped by Western culture that, even in its theistic form, is radically different from that of its authors and fundamentally, when dealing with the natural world, physicalistic. How radically different is evident from how you still don't get what I'm even alluding to.

The ancient Hebrew language is fundamentally symbolic and process-oriented, being subjective and personal, concrete and image-laden and descriptive by function. Even its nouns are denotive of actions. It stands in total contrast to Greek and Indo-European languages and how they shape our way of thinking. It doesn't say things like we say things as it doesn't see things as we see things, making the two in some ways incommensurable. All languages imply some kind of metaphysical structure and presuppositions embedded in their nature and structure, but ancient Hebrew, in a way marvellously coherent with its symbolic world view, presents a world view to us in a way no Western language does.

This a thousand times over.

Even within the same contemporary language there are a million complexities and misunderstandings.  Which is why we have lawyers endlessly battling over what some sentence in a contract means.

Your point about the "Hebrew" view of cosmology is also almost certainly correct.  Again, even within English, is it not unlikely that in centuries later people will claim that we believed the sun rotated around the Earth since the sun sets in the west?  We all project onto others our own mental frameworks.

It is enormously difficult, if not impossible on this side of the veil, for two minds to meet in complete understanding of one another.

[Kreuzritter]

Evil is not the absence of good, it's the absence of a due good.

The absence of just any good is mere limitation, which is a necessary condition of any created being; whereas the absence of a due good is an actual defect.  Something is lacking which ought to be present.

In the Immaculate,
Nazianzen.

This changes nothing about the discussion or the objections.

Well, it should.

But it doesn't. It doesn't change that "evils" are experienced as possessing their own unique essence, not as a reduction from something else. Hell, even something as natural and mundane as pain, in all its horror, is not in itself a lack of something or arrived at by depriving something of a good but is what it is, something having a positive existence. Encountering the nature of an evil, of a sin, especially in its unmasked demonic form, is much the same. And it doesn't change that the Stoic-derived Thomistic dictum, that evil acts are an erroneous choice of a lesser good over a greater good and that it is not a choice of evil over good as such, is rationalistic bunkum. Human beings do not generally think and act that way.

It's an opportunity to retreat to an orthodox position.

God created all things.  That is a dogma.  All that God made is good.  That is a dogma too.

God didn't create this computer. God didn't create the thoughts I'm having now. Your claim is patently false as it regards "all things".

Evil therefore cannot be something created, but rather it must be explained as a lack.

I do not say this isn't mysterious, because it is, but it's also necessary.

So, evil is not the mere absence of good, it's the absence of a due good.

This is ultimately reductionistic thought that explains nothing. And even if we posit a lack of good, or a lack of "due good" in something, it doesn't at all follow that this something would, rather than becoming neutral, become destructive and be perverted! It doesn't at all follow that by just depriving a an agent of "good" that he would become hateful, malicious and twisted, directing all his energies toward opposing God and negating the good!

What it is is not arrived at by taking something away. One doesn't fix an act or phenomenon of sodomy by adding something to it. It's not fixable. And thus the phenomenon itself, as actually existing as what it is and as it is, is not "explained" by a mere absence of something. One could get rid of it if the would-be-perpetrator weren't lacking in some good, but that doesn't change what the act itself is and that something like this exists, that its very substance and energy exists. Even if it arises through a lack, that doesn't explain its existence as what it is.

The absence of just any good is mere limitation, which is a necessary condition of any created being; whereas the absence of a due good is an actual defect.  Something is lacking which ought to be present.

This explains nothing. One might remove the oxygen from H2O to yield hydrogen, but hydrogen isn't equivalent to "H2O lacking oxygen", and taking oxygen away from hydrogen does not account for what hydrogen is.

[christulsa]

The divorce thing with the Orthodox is depressing.  To be honest if they believed properly on the matter I'd have no problem going to their Divine Liturgy since I don't believe Francis is the Pope.  So no matter where I'd go there would be no Pope, so you just look for valid sacraments.  Instead now I'm rejecting Francis because of his teachings on divorce to go to ...... the Orthodox?

Trad Mass and Trad sacraments is where it is at.

Yeah since my days going to the Byzantine rite in Tulsa, I've sometimes missed it and even wondered if it could ever be justifiable to participate in local EO liturgies.  Canon law says we can if there is no other Catholic Mass we can get to, so the Church would be supplying jurisdiction in that case to the EO priest.   In the Tulsa area I can only imagine two possibilities, that are interesting to consider, that could apply similarly to some people in other dioceses.  That is, if there is no Catholic Mass within reasonable driving distance (say 30 miles)--and that would arguably exclude most if not all Novus Ordo Masses in so far as they are not offered typically in a Catholic way--but there is an EO Liturgy within driving distance.  One can't make it to a Catholic Mass nearby, or at least one reverent enough to require attending, so they can go to the EO. 

Google map Eastern Orthodox churches in the Tulsa area.  Catholics south/southeast/or southwest of the EO church in Bixby more than say 30 miles could go, for example if they live in Okmulgee.   Catholics north/northeast/northwest of the two EO churches in Owasso could go if they lived 30+ minutes from either of the 2 trad Masses in the city, in say Bartlesville.  Of course the possibilities become more restricted if you believe you are morally required to attend at least the average Novus Ordo Mass Protestant service.   According to traditional Roman rite discipline at least.   But at this point all things considered, I think KR or RofL would agree we start to split hairs.

(there is one local, relatively traditional alternative though I've on occasion partaken of:  the Maronite rite!)

[christulsa]

Here is the Russian Orthodox chapel (Old Calendarists) in Owasso, OK just north of Tulsa.    Justifiable for the northerners perhaps, at least to attend.  I bet they're (mostly) against divorce.  Named after St. James!  Looks like a nice little community.

http://www.stjamesok.org/

[Nazianzen]

But it doesn't. It doesn't change that "evils" are experienced as possessing their own unique essence, not as a reduction from something else.

You're making it up as you go along.  E.g. - "their own unique essence" - what do those words mean, I wonder, when you employ them?  Do you define "essence" as the Scholastics do, and if so, why would you qualify it with "their own" or "unique", the first of which is a redundancy, and the second a contradiction of the very notion of essence?

And if you don't define "essence" as a Scholastic does, then why not give your (own, unique) definition, so that the reader can understand you?

Do you not know that you are writing incomprehensibly, or does it suit you to do so?

Anybody who can describe the doctrine of St. Thomas as "rationalistic bunkum" is in serious intellectual trouble.

The absence of just any good is mere limitation, which is a necessary condition of any created being; whereas the absence of a due good is an actual defect.  Something is lacking which ought to be present.

This explains nothing. One might remove the oxygen from H2O to yield hydrogen, but hydrogen isn't equivalent to "H2O lacking oxygen", and taking oxygen away from hydrogen does not account for what hydrogen is.

Oh my.  Hydrogen isn't due oxygen, is it?  So there's no lack of oxygen when hydrogen is isolated.

But all of this is pointless, given that you don't even take Aquinas seriously. 

I suspect that what is really going on is that your hyperventilating and almost superstitious notion of "evil" derives from the more general notion that if such a thing exists, then any sins you yourself commit are in a different genre, not "evil" in the same way, etc.

But that isn't true.  Your sins are exactly like those of Antichrist himself.  Get used to it.

In the Immaculate,
Nazianzen.

[Xavier]

Pope Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris: "17. Among the Scholastic Doctors, the chief and master of all towers Thomas Aquinas, who, as Cajetan observes, because "he most venerated the ancient doctors of the Church, in a certain way seems to have inherited the intellect of all."(34) The doctrines of those illustrious men, like the scattered members of a body, Thomas collected together and cemented, distributed in wonderful order, and so increased with important additions that he is rightly and deservedly esteemed the special bulwark and glory of the Catholic faith. With his spirit at once humble and swift, his memory ready and tenacious, his life spotless throughout, a lover of truth for its own sake, richly endowed with human and divine science, like the sun he heated the world with the warmth of his virtues and filled it with the splendor of his teaching. Philosophy has no part which he did not touch finely at once and thoroughly; on the laws of reasoning, on God and incorporeal substances, on man and other sensible things, on human actions and their principles, he reasoned in such a manner that in him there is wanting neither a full array of questions, nor an apt disposal of the various parts, nor the best method of proceeding, nor soundness of principles or strength of argument, nor clearness and elegance of style, nor a facility for explaining what is abstruse.

18. Moreover, the Angelic Doctor pushed his philosophic inquiry into the reasons and principles of things, which because they are most comprehensive and contain in their bosom, so to say, the seeds of almost infinite truths, were to be unfolded in good time by later masters and with a goodly yield. And as he also used this philosophic method in the refutation of error, he won this title to distinction for himself: that, single-handed, he victoriously combated the errors of former times, and supplied invincible arms to put those to rout which might in after-times spring up. Again, clearly distinguishing, as is fitting, reason from faith, while happily associating the one with the other, he both preserved the rights and had regard for the dignity of each; so much so, indeed, that reason, borne on the wings of Thomas to its human height, can scarcely rise higher, while faith could scarcely expect more or stronger aids from reason than those which she has already obtained through Thomas...

Z 1. But, furthermore, Our predecessors in the Roman pontificate have celebrated the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas by exceptional tributes of praise and the most ample testimonials. Clement VI in the bull In Ordine; Nicholas V in his brief to the friars of the Order of Preachers, 1451; Benedict XIII in the bull Pretiosus, and others bear witness that the universal Church borrows lustre from his admirable teaching; while St. Pius V declares in the bull Mirabilis that heresies, confounded and convicted by the same teaching, were dissipated, and the whole world daily freed from fatal errors; others, such as Clement XII in the bull Verbo Dei, affirm that most fruitful blessings have spread abroad from his writings over the whole Church, and that he is worthy of the honor which is bestowed on the greatest Doctors of the Church, on Gregory and Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome; while others have not hesitated to propose St. Thomas for the exemplar and master of the universities and great centers of learning whom they may follow with unfaltering feet. On which point the words of Blessed Urban V to the University of Toulouse are worthy of recall: "It is our will, which We hereby enjoin upon you, that ye follow the teaching of Blessed Thomas as the true and Catholic doctrine and that ye labor with all your force to profit by the same."(35) Innocent XII, followed the example of Urban in the case of the University of Louvain, in the letter in the form of a brief addressed to that university on February 6, 1694, and Benedict XIV in the letter in the form of a brief addressed on August 26, 1752, to the Dionysian College in Granada; while to these judgments of great Pontiffs on Thomas Aquinas comes the crowning testimony of Innocent VI: "His teaching above that of others, the canonical writings alone excepted, enjoys such a precision of language, an order of matters, a truth of conclusions, that those who hold to it are never found swerving from the path of truth, and he who dare assail it will always be suspected of error."(36)" http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris.html

Pope St. Pius X, Doctoris Angelici: "Now because the word We used in the text of that letter recommending the philosophy of Aquinas was 'particularly,' and not 'exclusively,' certain persons persuaded themselves that they were acting in conformity to Our Will or at any rate not actively opposing it, in adopting indiscriminately and adhering to the philosophical opinions of any other Doctor of the School, even though such opinions were contrary to the principles of St. Thomas. They were greatly deceived. In recommending St. Thomas to Our subjects as supreme guide in the Scholastic philosophy, it goes without saying that Our intention was to be understood as referring above all to those principles upon which that philosophy is based as its foundation. For just as the opinion of certain ancients is to be rejected which maintains that it makes no difference to the truth of the Faith what any man thinks about the nature of creation, provided his opinions on the nature of God be sound, because error with regard to the nature of creation begets a false knowledge of God; so the principles of philosophy laid down by St. Thomas Aquinas are to be religiously and inviolably observed, because they are the means of acquiring such a knowledge of creation as is most congruent with the Faith (Contra Gentiles, II, 2, 3); of refuting all the errors of all the ages, and of enabling man to distinguish clearly what things are to be attributed to God and to God alone (ibid., iii; and Sum. Theol., 1, xii, 4: and liv, 1). They also marvellously illustrate the diversity and analogy between God and His works, a diversity and analogy admirably expressed by the Fourth Lateran Council as follows: "The resemblance between the Creator and the creature is such that their still greater dissimilarity cannot fail to be observed" (Decretalis iii, Damnamus ergo, etc. Cf. St. Thomas, Quaest, disp. De Scientia Dei, a. 11). --For the rest, the principles of St. Thomas, considered generally and as a whole, contain nothing but what the most eminent philosophers and doctors of the Church have discovered after prolonged reflection and discussion in regard to the particular reasons determining human knowledge, the nature of God and creation, the moral order and the ultimate end to be pursued in life ...

St. Thomas perfected and augmented still further by the almost angelic quality of his intellect all this superb patrimony of wisdom which he inherited from his predecessors and applied it to prepare, illustrate and protect sacred doctrine in the minds of men (In Librum Boethii de Trinitate, quaest, ii, 3). Sound reason suggests that it would be foolish to neglect it and religion will not suffer it to be in any way attenuated. And rightly, because, if Catholic doctrine is once deprived of this strong bulwark, it is useless to seek the slightest assistance for its defence in a philosophy whose principles are either common to the errors of materialism, monism, pantheism, socialism and modernism, or certainly not opposed to such systems. The reason is that the capital theses in the philosophy of St. Thomas are not to be placed in the category of opinions capable of being debated one way or another, but are to be considered as the foundations upon which the whole science of natural and divine things is based; if such principles are once removed or in any way impaired, it must necessarily follow that students of the sacred sciences will ultimately fail to perceive so much as the meaning of the words in which the dogmas of divine revelation are proposed by the Magistracy [Magisterium] of the Church." From: http://iteadthomam.blogspot.com/2010/06/pope-st-pius-x-on-thomistic-philosophy.htmls

[james03]

Absence of good wouldn't be much of anything at all. I can only speak from experience, but from that experience I can't accept it. In my encounters with various demonic forces, there's a tangible sense of their nature. It permeates the fabric of reality around them and pierces the soul. And I can't call it a mere absence. Indeed, their natures were not all identical. Though the worst was like a sucking black hole of malicious nothingness and infinite despair in an eternal experience of that nothingness.

The black thing.  You can't see it, but you can.  It's just there, an infinite abyss.

I don't know. It's a mystery. But it's not something one should meditate on too much because of the forces it invokes. You can't even come into contact with them without being poisoned in some way.

That's why the best advice is to drop the curiosity.  When the black thing comes around, yawn, and turn your back to it.

Evil needs good. Evil is a negation of good. It has to pervert and destroy what good has wrought. It's fundamentally vampiric.

I think it needs good to feed its hatred.  In hell, cut off from good, they must truly suffer.

[james03]

These physical particles are abstracta from mechanical properties of mere attendant phenomena to the realities for which they are supposed to form the ontological foundation. And the notion that these invisible bits of nothingness, whose sole substantial content is to serve as placeholders for mechanical forces that have have mechanical effects, can be formed, arranged and tweaked to yield the living world of our senses, this is just plain nonsense. Moreover, this atomism of is not even compatible with the Aristotelian concept of prima materia as pure potency; it consists of differentiated objects that possess form.

I've been thinking about something I'm now terming "immaterial realism".  A few aspects:

1.  It is real, as in, there is a world outside of us.
2.  It is immaterial because it denies Prime Matter, or what we conventionally think of matter at all.
3.  As a result, there is no interface problem, which is fatal to atheistic materialism.  How does a muscle move?  Ultimately due to fields.  Describe a field materially.  We can't.  For the theist, you could hold on to matter and just use a literal Deus ex machina.  While I don't accept that, it is at least coherent vs. atheistic materialism.
4.  Since it is realism, much of Greek realism is retained, with a few caveats.
5.  In summary, the world is just information (Truth) and rules (described by mathematics).
6.  An analogy comparing this to The Matrix fails.  The Matrix is based on using material computers to program a material brain.

[james03]

I suspect that what is really going on is that your hyperventilating and almost superstitious notion of "evil"

I'll put money that he doesn't have a superstitious notion of evil.

Where I differ from KR is with regards to Greek Realism.  I find it explains a lot and has a lot of truth to it.  Also I've been quite interested lately in information theory and recasting a form as information about something, and then using Greek Realism with this change.  Stephen Myers uses "information" to show the glaring problems in evolution, but I digress.  In short, I find Greek Realism attractive, so I'm not throwing darts, which you may suspect K. of doing (I don't).  Besides the question on evil, I have 2 other main problems with Greek Realism, or at best to show where it is incomplete:

1.  I can't find any Greek Realistic explanation of the interface problem.  This doesn't challenge my Faith as the interface problem is absolutely fatal to atheists.  In short, a greek realist easily demonstrates that the immaterial interacts with the immaterial (think of a triangle) and will wait for the atheist to materially explain how a field interacts with "matter".  The theist can then at least posit an existence theory for interface, but only after the atheist gets back to us, which he can't.  So my Faith is actually strengthened by the interface problem.  But I'm still left with no explanation of how the interface can work if I stick strictly to Greek Realism.

2.  Perception.  I guess you could say perception is part of the form of a human (and likely animals), but that leaves us feeling cheated.  What is perception?  The best I can come up with is a kernel to it: I exist, and I know existence is True.  Or something to that effect.

So at best Greek Realism needs some work.

[Nazianzen]

Maybe try running your ideas past Ed Feser, James.  If you can get him interested in grappling with them, then maybe your problems do need addressing.  If not, then maybe you just need to be better educated?

[Kreuzritter]

But it doesn't. It doesn't change that "evils" are experienced as possessing their own unique essence, not as a reduction from something else.

You're making it up as you go along.  E.g. - "their own unique essence" - what do those words mean, I wonder, when you employ them?

He's sperging out now because he's on the back-pedal. I'm not making it up as I go along, and both philosophy and language exist outside the bubble of your Scholastic religion.   

Do you define "essence" as the Scholastics do, and if so, why would you qualify it with "their own" or "unique", the first of which is a redundancy, and the second a contradiction of the very notion of essence?

He's really sperging out. This is nonsense on the same level as his autistic attack on my use of "epistemological certainty" in another thread. I see your modus operandi now. Whenever something doesn't conform to your Scholastic notions and can't be processed by them you adopt the haughty and patronising attitude and go after a person's language, first maligning it and then throwing up your hands like a Socrates crying "I don't understand!". Right, you don't understand, and you can't understand.

And if you don't define "essence" as a Scholastic does, then why not give your (own, unique) definition, so that the reader can understand you?

Others seem to be understanding me just fine.

Do you not know that you are writing incomprehensibly, or does it suit you to do so?

No, any brick layer, washerwoman or school child can understand my language here. Your blinding your intellect by means of the Thomistic language game has rendered you incapable of seeing reality, having entered with it into a pretend world of concepts and the rules governing them, mostly devoid of phenomenological content and having no real referent, similarly to how the reductionists of scientific materialism have lost their own grasp on reality.

Anybody who can describe the doctrine of St. Thomas as "rationalistic bunkum" is in serious intellectual trouble.

No, anyone who has moulded his mind to use the Thomistic language game as the foundation of his thought and to see the world in its terms has put himself in serious trouble and a trouble he will have great difficulty in getting himself out of.

The absence of just any good is mere limitation, which is a necessary condition of any created being; whereas the absence of a due good is an actual defect.  Something is lacking which ought to be present.

This explains nothing. One might remove the oxygen from H2O to yield hydrogen, but hydrogen isn't equivalent to "H2O lacking oxygen", and taking oxygen away from hydrogen does not account for what hydrogen is.

Oh my.  Hydrogen isn't due oxygen, is it?  So there's no lack of oxygen when hydrogen is isolated.

It's irrelevant. The example is illustrative of how your verbal reductionism doesn't work. It's a silly word game. A phenomenon is precisely what it is, and it isn't what it is, ontologically, because of a lack of anything, and is even less what it is because of a lack of something that is morally "due" to it (assuming you can even define these words "due" and "ought") The phenomenological reality of  a child being tortured to death, and of the demonic lusts driving the perpetrator to do it, are not what they are because of the lack of something they "ought" to have; even on the level of the efficient cause of the agent's act, the lack of some "due good" is not sufficient to account for a choice that is not merely to do nothing at all but one that is actively destructive, but we're not even talking about that; we're talking about a living reality, a reality as it is experienced, and something which, like the vision of a red colour that appears to me, is no more reducible by means of your Thomistic scheme to Thomistic concepts than that vision is reducible by means of the schemes of scientistic reductionism to the concepts of physicalism. You and they are, more than you're capable of realising, kindred spirits in your blindness to and denial of reality in favour of your self-glorifying intellectual schemes.

But all of this is pointless, given that you don't even take Aquinas seriously.

It is pointless when your religion is Thomism and Thomism is there while reality is here.

I suspect that what is really going on is that your hyperventilating and almost superstitious notion of "evil"

Ah, that favourite word of all idolaters of "reason", from the Scholastic hellenizers right on down to the modern atheists: "superstition". As I said: kindred spirits. The programme is the same. One has just replaced the abstract "God" concept of Scholasticism's "Being itself" twaddle with another abstract concept as "cause". The irony of someone who believes in the reality of Scholastic babble calling another's ideas "superstitious".

derives from the more general notion that if such a thing exists, then any sins you yourself commit are in a different genre, not "evil" in the same way, etc.

Here it comes, the old "Your heresies are motivated by you desire to excuse your sin" line. The sperg now fancies a game of armchair psychology too.

But that isn't true.  Your sins are exactly like those of Antichrist himself.  Get used to it.

No two things in the world are identical. That would contradict the very possibility of distinction which is essential to the idea of there being two things. Get over it.

[christulsa]

Well here is what I can say (no darts).   Greek realism is best found in Aristotelian epistemology (later developed by St. Thomas), which helps answer the atheist materialist and interface problem.   Aristotle observed that all knowledge begins in the senses, with induction.  Humans first observe sensory data (necessarily coming from both matter and physical energy - example photons), forming perceptions which are still partly material.  Then the power of imagination and memory work on those perceptions to form abstractions which themselves are purely immaterial (example triangle).   The mind then proceeds through deductive logic examining abstract truth claims and how certain new truths can be derived from what is already known (example the length of the hypotenuse).  (sources:  Aristotle's Posteriori Analytics, Priori Analytics, De Anima;  St. Thomas' Treatise on Man).   Hope that helps.

[Xavier]

A couple of things: Anyone who has read even the slightest part of St. Chrysostom's commentaries on the Gospel of St. Matthew (which St. Thomas once famously said were preferable to all the glories of Paris) knows the Saint often spoke of how, in the age before the written law (from B.C. 5200 to about 1500) given to the Prophet Moses, all men everywhere were bound by, and able to follow, what is called the law of nature. This natural law is discernible through human conscience. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church correctly puts it, "1776 "Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. . . . For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. . . . His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."47". From moral conscience, it also follows that Our Good Lord, Almighty God, is Supreme Goodness.

When we look at poor secularists today and their weak and struggling faith, we see that even some who are ready to believe in God's Existence and Power, yet struggle to admit and believe His Goodness and His Love. Some even, especially when they see evil going on, presume rashly and foolishly to attack Him - but they do not understand that the God Who gave them their conscience, which urges them to do good, and avoid what is evil, is known by that very fact to be necessarily Good and source of all Goodness.

First Consideration: I. Man is able by his conscience to know good and evil, and is furthermore urged by the law on his heart to do good and avoid evil. II. Just as the existence of man and all things requires a first and ultimate cause, as can be proven separately, so also the existence of good and evil, and the obligation impelling us to do good, requires an ultimate first cause of goodness. III. Therefore, God is not only our Supreme Creator, but also Absolute Goodness.

A Second Consideration: Also, from the nature of the law, some of God's Attributes or Properties as source of all Goodness can be confirmed by reason. For, it is plain that the law we discern on our conscience is necessary, eternal and immutable, for we can clearly perceive, as truly as we can perceive by natural sight that light and darkness differ, that some things are always evil, such as blasphemy and perjury for e.g. and others will always be good, such as the two great commandments of Love for e.g.

But, the effect cannot be greater than the cause. And therefore, the cause of a law that is eternal and immutable can only be He Who by Nature is Eternally and Immutably Good, and is Supreme Goodness in Himself and of Himself, what Our Lord Jesus means by saying "None is Good but One, that is God."

That should do for now. Another thing, the Truth of natural law was taught by the Holy Spirit to St. Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit Apostle who won for Christ and baptized some 3 million souls. By it, St. Francis Xavier answered an objection, and those for whom he answered it were so happy by his answer, that they happily accepted the Catholic Faith, became Christians and were baptized. Having 2000 years of a glorious Catholic Tradition that is often envied by serious non-Catholics, Catholic Christians don't need to be afraid of any pagan secularist and their false objections. And we have seen for ourselves where modernistic anti-Thomistic actions and behavior lead these last 60 odd years - to unbelief.

Moreover, the Church has also seen by so many centuries of long and glorious experience how many and how great are the fruits of sound Thomistic Theology, as in the lives of St. Francis Xavier itself, and of other great missionary Saints, in helping all souls come to faith in Jesus Christ.

[Xavier]

Finally, since this thread is about Orthodoxy, it may be interesting to some readers to know that, at one time, the teaching of the Angelic Doctor was held in the highest esteem in seminaries of the Greek Church. The final schism, to many Catholic writers, dates not so much to 1054 as to 1484. Before that, there were many sentiments in the Greek Church that were truly Catholic and representative of the Universal Church. The last Patriarch of the Byzantine empire, Gennadius Scholarios, said of St. Thomas,"we love this divinely-inspired and wise man." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennadius_Scholarius Elsewhere, he said wistfully, "O most excellent Thomas! Why did Heaven give you birth in the West!"

Orthodox Wiki: "Orthodox theology has had a complex relationship with Aquinas' work. For a long time, Aquinas and scholastic or schoolbook theology was a standard part of the education of Orthodox seminarians. His philosophy found a strong advocate in the person of at least one Patriarch of Constantinople, Gennadius Scholarius." https://orthodoxwiki.org/Thomas_Aquinas

We cannot here forget that, as Pope Leo XIII remarks almost in amazement, "23. A last triumph was reserved for this incomparable man-namely, to compel the homage, praise, and admiration of even the very enemies of the Catholic name. For it has come to light that there were not lacking among the leaders of heretical sects some who openly declared that, if the teaching of Thomas Aquinas were only taken away, they could easily battle with all Catholic teachers, gain the victory, and abolish the Church.(37) A vain hope, indeed, but no vain testimony." the enemies of the Catholic Church always found in St. Thomas an immovable bulwark of Catholic Faith. It was only because Mark of Ephesus, the third cause of the Greek Schism after Photius and Caerularius, perceived more clearly than any other before him, that the teachings and proofs St. Thomas gave of the dogma of the Filioque (that had been ably defended by St. Albert the Great, and St. Bonaventure, in Lyons II itself) etc would ultimately prove fatal to "Orthodoxy" or the Photian Schism in the long run, that they finally rejected the Summa of the Angelic Doctor. Nevertheless, in other respects, they continued to make use of his theology, e.g. in discussions with Muslims etc. If anyone reads Summa Contra Gentiles carefully, he will see that St. Thomas himself very much follows the methodology of St. John Damascene, and other Fathers, Eastern and Western alike. That even serious non-Catholics have admired and praised St. Thomas Aquinas as a man of deep faith, a brilliant thinker, a lofty philosopher, and a great theologian, should give professing Catholics who disrespect him cause to pause their invective against a man from whom the Catholic Church has received many benefits. Even if individuals want to be ungrateful, the Catholic Church will always honor great Saints who devoted their lives to Her and to strengthening the holy Catholic Faith.

As Pope Leo rightly recalls, "20. And, here, how pleasantly one's thoughts fly back to those celebrated schools and universities which flourished of old in Europe - to Paris, Salamanca, Alcalá, to Douay, Toulouse, and Louvain, to Padua and Bologna, to Naples and Coimbra, and to many another! All know how the fame of these seats of learning grew with their years, and that their judgment, often asked in matters of grave moment, held great weight everywhere. And we know how in those great homes of human wisdom, as in his own kingdom, Thomas reigned supreme; and that the minds of all, of teachers as well as of taught, rested in wonderful harmony under the shield and authority of the Angelic Doctor ...

22. The ecumenical councils, also, where blossoms the flower of all earthly wisdom, have always been careful to hold Thomas Aquinas in singular honor. In the Councils of Lyons, Vienna, Florence, and the Vatican one might almost say that Thomas took part and presided over the deliberations and decrees of the Fathers, contending against the errors of the Greeks, of heretics and rationalists, with invincible force and with the happiest results. But the chief and special glory of Thomas, one which he has shared with none of the Catholic Doctors, is that the Fathers of Trent made it part of the order of conclave to lay upon the altar, together with sacred Scripture and the decrees of the supreme Pontiffs, the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, whence to seek counsel, reason, and inspiration."