Chapter XIV.—Evil of Two Kinds, Penal and Criminal. It is Not of the Latter Sort that God is the Author, But Only of the Former, Which are Penal, and Included in His Justice.

On all occasions does God meet you: it is He who smites, but also heals; who kills, but also makes alive; who humbles, and yet exalts; who “creates546    Condens. evil,” but also “makes peace;”547    See Isa. xlv. 7.—so that from these very (contrasts of His providence) I may get an answer to the heretics. Behold, they say, how He acknowledges Himself to be the creator of evil in the passage, “It is I who create evil.” They take a word whose one form reduces to confusion and ambiguity two kinds of evils (because both sins and punishments are called evils), and will have Him in every passage to be understood as the creator of all evil things, in order that He may be designated the author of evil. We, on the contrary, distinguish between the two meanings of the word in question, and, by separating evils of sin from penal evils, mala culpæ from mala pœnæ, confine to each of the two classes its own author,—the devil as the author of the sinful evils (culpæ), and God as the creator of penal evils (pœnæ); so that the one class shall be accounted as morally bad, and the other be classed as the operations of justice passing penal sentences against the evils of sin.  Of the latter class of evils which are compatible with justice, God is therefore avowedly the creator. They are, no doubt, evil to those by whom they are endured, but still on their own account good, as being just and defensive of good and hostile to sin. In this respect they are, moreover, worthy of God. Else prove them to be unjust, in order to show them deserving of a place in the sinful class, that is to say, evils of injustice; because if they turn out to belong to justice, they will be no longer evil things, but good—evil only to the bad, by whom even directly good things are condemned as evil. In this case, you must decide that man, although the wilful contemner of the divine law, unjustly bore the doom which he would like to have escaped; that the wickedness of those days was unjustly smitten by the deluge, afterwards by the fire (of Sodom); that Egypt, although most depraved and superstitious, and, worse still, the harasser of its guest-population,548    Hospitis populi conflictatricem. was unjustly stricken with the chastisement of its ten plagues. God hardens the heart of Pharaoh. He deserved, however, to be influenced549    Subministrari. In Apol. ii., the verb ministrare is used to indicate Satan’s power in influencing men. [The translator here corrects his own word seduced and I have substituted his better word influenced. The Lord gave him over to Satan’s influence.] to his destruction, who had already denied God, already in his pride so often rejected His ambassadors, accumulated heavy burdens on His people, and (to sum up all) as an Egyptian, had long been guilty before God of Gentile idolatry, worshipping the ibis and the crocodile in preference to the living God. Even His own people did God visit in their ingratitude.550    Num. xi. and xxi. Against young lads, too, did He send forth bears, for their irreverence to the prophet.551    2 Kings ii. 23, 24. [See notes 4, 5, 9, following.]

CAPUT XIV.

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Ad omnia tibi occurrit Deus: idem percutiens, sed et sanans; mortificans, sed et vivificans; humilians, sed et sublimans; condens mala, sed et pacem faciens (Deuter., XXXIII, 39): ut etiam et hinc respondeam haereticis. Ecce enim, inquiunt, ipse se conditorem profitetur malorum, dicens: Ego sum qui condo mala (Is., XLV, 7). Amplexi enim vocabuli communionem, duas malorum species in ambiguitate turbantem; quia mala dicuntur, et delicta, et supplicia; passim volunt eum conditorem intelligi malorum, ut malitiae auctor renuntietur. Nos autem adhibita distinctione utriusque formae, separatis malis delicti et malis supplicii, malis culpae et malis poenae, suum cuique parti definimus auctorem; malorum quidem 0301B peccati et culpae, diabolum, malorum vero supplicii et poenae, Deum creatorem; ut illa pars malitiae deputetur, ista justitiae, mala condentis judicii adversus mala delicti . De his ergo creator profitetur malis, quae congruunt judici. Quae quidem illis mala sunt, quibus rependuntur, caeterum suo nomine bona, qua justa, et bonorum defensoria, et delictorum, inimica, atque in hoc ordine, Deo digna. Aut proba ea injusta, ut probes malitiae deputanda, id est, injustititae mala: quia si justitiae erunt, jam mala non erunt, sed bona; malis tantummodo mala, quibus etiam directo bona pro malis damnantur. Constitue igitur injuste hominem divinae legis voluntarium contemptorem id retulisse, quo noluit caruisse; injuste malitiam aevi illius imbribus, 0301C dehinc et ignibus caesam; injuste Aegyptum foedissimam, superstitiosam, amplius hospitis populi conflictatricem, decemplici castigatione percussam. Indurat cor Pharaonis; sed meruerat in exitium subministrari, qui jam negaverat Deum; qui jam legatos ejus toties superbus excusserat; qui jam populo laborem operis adjecerat: postremo, qua Aegyptius 0302A olim Deo reus fuerat gentilis idololatriae, ibin et crocodilum citius colens , quam Deum vivum. Impetit et ipsum populum, sed ingratum. Immisit et pueris ursos, sed irreverentibus in Prophetam.