79. Being as such is good; all being is good
79. BEING AS SUCH IS GOOD; ALL BEING IS GOOD
If that title is true, then evil has no being; since all being is good; or else evil is good, if it has being.
We must speak of good and evil in actions as of good and evil in things: because just as a thing is, so is the act that it produces. Now in things, each one has so much good as it has being, since good and being are convertible (i.e., all that has being, has goodness and all that has goodness, has being). . . . But God alone has the whole plenitude of His Being in a certain unity, whereas every other thing has its proper fullness of being in a certain multiplicity. Wherefore it happens with some things that they have being in some respect and yet they are lacking in the fullness of being due to them. Thus the fullness of human being requires a compound of soul and body, having all the powers and instruments of knowledge and movement; wherefore if any may be lacking in any of these, he is lacking in something due to the fullness of his being. So that as much as he has of being, so much has he of goodness, while so far as he is lacking in the fullness of his being, so far is he lacking in goodness, and is said to be evil: thus a blind man is possessed of goodness inasmuch as he lives, and of evil inasmuch as he lacks sight. . . . Evil acts in virtue of deficient goodness. For if there were nothing of good there, there would be neither being nor possibility of action. On the other hand if good were not deficient, there would be no evil (I-II,18,1).
St. Thomas speaks of physical evil here, but also of sin. Insofar as sin is, insofar as it has some kind of being, there has to be some goodness even in sin. If there is no being in it, there is nothing that can be twisted and perverted. If there is no good, there can be no evil; if there is no being, there can be no non-being, or anti-being, or lack of being. What is evil about it is precisely that it is a lack of being that it should have. Evil is real, but it is a real lack of being, as blindness is a lack of the power of sight.
The better you are, the more real you are. The more evil you are, the less real you are. This is true of moral evil as of physical evil. Just as losing a limb by amputation, or losing your body by death, makes you less physically real, so losing virtue by sin makes you less spiritually real. Your soul can get sick and die just as your body can. Venial sin sickens it, mortal sin kills it. (Mortal sin does not kill its power to give biological life to its body, but it does kill its power to receive spiritual life, the life of grace, from God.) Heaven, and the people in Heaven, are far more real, unimaginably more real, than we are. Hell, and the people in Hell (if they are still people rather than ex-persons), are far less real, unimaginably less real, than we are.
Therefore whenever you see evil, look for the good behind it, the good that it is perverting. When you see a parasite, look for its host. When God saw the hate-filled persecutor of Christians, Saul of Tarsus, He saw a powerful mind and will that had been twisted by hate; and He untwisted it and filled it with His love; and thus Saul became Paul, the most powerful missionary in history. If Hitler had been a saint, how wonderfully he could have used his “charisma”, his psychological power, and his strong will. Poor Chamberlain was not a fanatic of either hate or love; Hitler was a fanatic of hate; a saint is a fanatic of love. Hitler, like Paul of Tarsus, was closer to being a great saint than Chamberlain was. It’s easier to change the direction of a speeding car by turning it around 180 degrees than it is to start up a stalled one. Alternatively, suppose St. Thomas Aquinas had used his astonishing mental powers in the service of atheism, or even Satanism. The world of thought would be in even deeper trouble, far deeper trouble, than it is.
The next time you meet someone with deep hate, fear, pride, or despair, ask God to show you the being behind the non-being, the man or woman behind the perversion of humanity, the healthy cells that are hiding behind the cancer cells. Sin is cancer; it only feeds on healthy cells. Rescue them.