109. Is man innately good?
109. IS MAN INNATELY GOOD?
If God created man in His own image, then man must be innately virtuous, right?
Whether virtue is in us by nature?
Whatever is in man by nature is common to all men and is not taken away by sin. . . . But virtue is not in all men, and is cast out by sin. Therefore it is not in man by nature. . . .
. . . [W]ith regard to sciences and virtues, some held that they are wholly from within, so that all virtues and sciences pre-exist in the soul naturally, but that the hindrances to science and virtue, which are due to the soul being weighed down by the body, are removed by study and practice, even as iron is made bright by being polished. This was the opinion of the Platonists. Others said that they are wholly from without. . . . Others said that sciences and virtues are in us by nature so far as we are adapted to them, but not in their perfection: this is the teaching of the (Aristotelian) Philosophers, and is nearer the truth . . . in man’s reason are to be found instilled by nature certain naturally known principles of both knowledge and action, which are the nurseries of intellectual and moral virtues . . . in so far as there is in the will a natural appetite for good in accordance with reason. . . . It is therefore evident that all virtues are in us by nature according to aptitude, inchoately, but not according to perfection, except the theological virtues, which are entirely from without (I-II,63,1).
By nature man is ontologically good, good in his being, good by his nature, his essence. After each day of creation, God pronounced it “good” (Gen 1:10,12,18,21,25), but after creating man “in His own image” (Gen 1:27) He pronounced His creation “very good” (Gen 1:31).
But man is not by nature morally good. Since man has free will, he has to choose to be morally good. In this sense of “good”, “there is none that (wholly) does good, no, not one” (Ps 14:3; 53:1,3; 1 Jn 1:8)—at least no one who ever lived after the Fall of Adam and Eve, except (1) Jesus Christ and (2) His mother. For (1) although He was sinless, Christ was a human being as well as God. And (2) God miraculously preserved His mother from both Original Sin and actual sins.
Have you ever met a man without any moral vices or sins, who never made a single less—than—morally—perfect choice? And have you ever met one without any virtues at all, not even “honor among thieves”? Who could be idiotic enough to deny that “there’s a little good in the worst of us and a little bad in the best of us?” Only a philosopher.
Some philosophers denied moral evil because they were intellectualists or rationalists like Plato, who said that all evil is due to ignorance; that if we only knew that good was good and evil was evil, we would always choose good and never evil. Some were sentimentalists like Rousseau, who denied moral evil in man and located it all in society or artificial conventions because they reduced all moral good to the easiest one of all: obeying your natural instincts, your desires and feelings, even though they are fallen, including the instinct Rousseau found in himself and followed: the instinct to deceive, rob, and seduce rich ladies and to abandon his own children.
Other philosophers, like Machiavelli, Calvin, and Hobbes, denied moral good in man and reduced all good behavior to external force, whether from a human or divine tyrant.
Both the “optimists” and the “pessimists” forgot that society comes from man, not from some—thing outside man, and therefore cannot make man bad if he is innately good or good if he is innately bad.
St. Thomas, as usual, is the apostle of common sense. Virtue, like reason and language, is in us by nature potentially—we are designed for it—but since the actualization of this potentiality depends on our free choices, there is in us by our own choice both good and evil; and since choices make habits, there are in us both good and evil habits. (Virtues are simply good habits and vices are bad ones.)