“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
Rom. 3:23
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Subsections
First Sin
Original Sin
Sin
God: Not the Author of Evil
God Uses Sin for Good
Reformed vs. Aquinas
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Order of Contents
Definition
Negative & Positive Aspects
What Makes an Act Sinful?
Moral vs. Natural Evil
Latin 10
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Articles
See also ‘Expositions of the Lord’s Prayer’ on the 6th Petition.
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1600’s
Wolleb, Johannes – 12. ‘The Suffering Caused by Sin’ in Abridgment of Christian Divinity (1626) in ed. John Beardslee, Reformed Dogmatics: J. Wollebius, G. Voetius & F. Turretin (Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), bk. 1, pp. 73-75
Wolleb (1589–1629) was a Swiss reformed theologian. He was a student of Amandus Polanus.
Leigh, Edward – ch. 5. Of the Evil of Sin in A System or Body of Divinity… (London, A.M., 1654), bk. 4, pp. 318-21
Baron, Robert – Disputation on Evil tr. by AI by Nosferatu in General Metaphysics… All to the Use of Theology Accommodated (London: R. Daniel, 1658), General Metaphysics, sect. 5, pp. 49-66
1. Whether evil belongs to Being 1
2. Whether Evil is an affection of Being 2
3. Whether Evil is something privative or really something positive 2
What is the habit of virtue 3
Difference between evil in itself and evil to another 4
Determination of the Question 5
Non-being is accepted in two ways 5
How viciousness is called the cause of punishment 6
How sin is the cause of other evils 6
What is the cause of vicious actions 7
How original sin is the cause of others 8
Determination of the question 9
[Clemens] Timpler’s opinion on the cause of Evil 10
In what way evil is divided 11-12
Edwards, John – The Eternal & Intrinsic Reasons of Good & Evil, a Sermon Preached at the Commencement at Cambridge… (Cambridge, 1699)
Fraser, James – Meditations 6, 8, 9, 10 & 11 on the Power, Evil & Vileness of Sin in Meditations on Several Subjects in Divinity… (d. 1699; Edinburgh, 1721)
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1700’s
Wishart, William – The Certain & Unchangeable Difference Betwixt Moral Good & Evil: a Sermon Preached Before the Societies for Reformation of Manners, at Salters-Hall… (London, 1732) 36 pp.
Chandler, Samuel – The Necessary & Immutable Difference Between Moral Good & Evil, Asserted & Explained: in a Sermon Preached to the Societies for Reformation of Manners, at Salters Hall… (London, 1738)
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Books
1600’s
Burroughs, Jeremiah – A Treatise of the Evil of Evils, or the Exceeding Sinfulness of Sin… (London, 1654)
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2000’s
Oderberg, David – The Metaphysics Of Good & Evil (Routledge, 2020) 495 pp. ToC
Oderberg is an Analytical Thomist.
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On the Definition of Evil
Quote
1200’s
Thomas Aquinas
A Compendium of Theology, ch. 114, ‘The Meaning of Good & Evil in Things’
“As the term ‘good’ signifies perfect being, so the term ‘evil’ signifies nothing else than privation of perfect being. In its proper acceptation, privation is predicated of that which is fitted by its nature to be possessed, and to be possessed at a certain time and in a certain manner. Evidently, therefore, a thing is called evil if it lacks a perfection it ought to have.”
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On the Negative & Positive Aspects of the Nature of Evil
Early Church
Quote
Augustine
Enchiridion, or Handbook on Faith, Hope & Love, section 11 trans. Outler (1955)
“11. In this universe, even what is called evil, when it is rightly ordered and kept in its place, commends the good more eminently, since good things yield greater pleasure and praise when compared to the bad things. For the Omnipotent God, whom even the heathen acknowledge as the Supreme Power over all, would not allow any evil in his works, unless in his omnipotence and goodness, as the Supreme Good, he is able to bring forth good out of evil. What, after all, is anything we call evil except the privation of good? In animal bodies, for instance, sickness and wounds are nothing but the privation of health. When a cure is effected, the evils which were present (i.e., the sickness and the wounds) do not retreat and go elsewhere. Rather, they simply do not exist any more. For such evil is not a substance; the wound or the disease is a defect of the bodily substance which, as a substance, is good. Evil, then, is an accident, i.e., a privation of that good which is called health. Thus, whatever defects there are in a soul are privations of a natural good. When a cure takes place, they are not transferred elsewhere but, since they are no longer present in the state of health, they no longer exist at all.¹
¹ This section (Chs. III and IV) is the most explicit statement of a major motif which pervades the whole of Augustinian metaphysics. We see it in his earliest writings, Soliloquies, 1, 2, and De ordine, II, 7… The good is positive, constructive, essential; evil is privative, destructive, parasitic on the good. It has its origin, not in nature, but in the will. Cf. Confessions, Bk. VII, Chs. III, V, XII-XVI; On Continence, 14-16; On the Gospel of John, Tractate XCVIII, 7; City of God, XI, 17; XII, 7-9.”
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Medieval Church
On the Thought of Thomas Bradwardine (c. 1290 – 1340)
Bradwardine was an Augustinian in the Middle Ages and was often highly approved and cited by Samuel Rutherford. His paradigm here on the nature of evil, from his book On the Cause of God, described by Dr. Leff, would be later adopted as standard by Reformed Orthodoxy.
Gordon Leff, Bradwardine & the Pelagians (1957; rep. Cambridge, 2008), pp. 54-56
“Everything created, therefore, as coming from God, is good; and nothing created is, by nature, bad. We can, Bradwardine says, see this principle of goodness in everything that exists…
Accordingly, everything that tries to follow its true nature, as created and conserved by God, is good, since goodness is inherent in it. Only when this nature is impaired does evil arise; for it then ceases to be a complete entity.
…Thus all that exists in its own right, possessing a positive nature, such as, say an apple, and is not a parasite on the positive, such as the canker in an apple, is by nature good. In this sense we can include such actions [considered apart from their moral relations] as homicide and adultery; they cannot be bad [in themselves], according to Bradwardine, because they represent actions from which, by nature, value derives. If we condemned the acts by which homicide and adultery were achieved, we should condemn the positive results which are achieved by these same actions. Not only do these acts lend themselves to homicide and adultery; they are also responsible for death (in its natural sense) and marriage.
The nature of anything must not be confused with the purposes to which it is put: an apple as an apple is a positive nature, and good; if it is worm-eaten instead of healthy, its nature as an apple is still good. Being alone is pure goodness. Evil, on the other hand, has no essence or positive nature; it is lack of goodness, and so negative [Rom. 3:23], without a positive cause; it cannot therefore be regarded as part of the natural order of creation. Moreover as parasitic on the good, which alone is positive, evil is always associated with good, as for example in the case of homicide and adultery which represent the distortion of death and marriage. Evil can thus never exist on its own, for pure evil is the equivalent of pure deficiency, that is, nothing. Indeed, it is only because the created world is by nature good that evil comes about, being conditional upon it. Hence the presence of evil is simply further evidence for the existence of good.”
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Post-Reformation
Articles
1500’s
Ursinus, Zachary – pp. 413-14 of 2nd Sophism: Of the Cause of Sin in The Sum of Christian Religion: Delivered… in his Lectures upon the Catechism… tr. Henrie Parrie (d. 1583; Oxford, 1587), Of God’s Providence, 2. What the Providence of God is
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1600’s
Rutherford, Samuel – Ch. 5, Section 4, ‘Whether Sinful Concupiscence is a Negative Entity or Positive Quality? We distinguish.’ in Rutherford’s Examination of Arminianism: The Tables of Contents with Excerpts from Every Chapter, trans. Johnson & Fentiman (1639-1643; RBO, 2019), pp. 82-83 (pp. 304-305 in the Latin)
Turretin, Francis – 11. ‘Whether original sin has corrupted the very essence of the soul. Also whether it is a mere privation or a certain positive quality too.’ in Institutes of Elenctic Theology, tr. George M. Giger, ed. James Dennison Jr. (1679–1685; P&R, 1992), vol. 1, 9th Topic, pp. 636-40
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Book
Hickman, Henry – A Justification of the Fathers & Schoolmen, showing that they are not Self-Condemned for Denying the Positivity of Sin, being an Answer to so much of Thomas Pierce’s book… (Oxford, 1659) 110 pp. No ToC
Hickman (bap.1629-1692) was one of the ejected English puritans at 1662, and was some time pastor of the English church at Leyden. Pierce (c.1621-1691) was an Arminian Anglican and president of Magdalen College, Oxford.
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Quote
Peter van Mastricht
Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 3, bk. 4, ch. 2
section 17, pp. 454-55
“XVII. There are as it were two essential parts of the corruption: an aversion from all moral good, especially spiritual and saving good, and an inclination to all moral evil ( Jer. 2:13). Here the description of actual sin presents an image of original sin, as a daughter does of her mother. The latter is expressed in the Scriptures στερητικῶς, privatively (Rom. 3:23) and the former θετικῶς, positively (Rom. 7:23; Gen. 6:5). Yet they do not differ so much as if both did not have a privation, but rather, that in the one a good habit is absent, and in the other a habit is indeed present, yet one that tends not toward good, but toward evil. Therefore, there is here a positive that is nothing but logical, as they say, and one that is such only verbally, which Scripture employs, partly so that we would not consider sin as merely nothing or negative, and partly so that we would more easily recognize its most pernicious fruits.
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section 21, p. 457
“The Reformed certainly acknowledge that there is some substrate present under sin, namely a faculty or action in which inheres wickedness, although it is not a substance subsisting through itself; likewise they acknowledge that sin is not something negative; but they deny that it is something real, something substantial or positive; they affirm rather that it is something privative, which consists
only in lawlessness, or the absence of moral uprightness in a capable subject. They do so because:
(1) John in his first epistle (3:4) defines sin as precisely as possible, by only ἀνομία, lawlessness: ἡ ἁμαρτία ἐστὶν ἡ ἀνομία, “sin is lawlessness.”
(2) Because if it were something real, substantial, or positive, it would necessarily require God to be its author, because he is the first cause of everything real, the author of what is substantial and positive.
(3) Nor does it consist in parts, in a substrate as the matter, and in lawlessness as the form, for in this way God, at least partly, would become the author of sin, since without a doubt he is the author of what is material.
Objections
Nor do I see anything that could be said to the contrary, except:
(1) that the original stain is everywhere called the flesh, the old man, the body of death, the law of the members, and so forth. To this it is easily responded that this occurs through a metonymy of the subject for the adjunct, because this stain pervades the whole man.
(2) That a nothing does not contract the guilt of punishment, nor can it be punished. I respond, We do not say that a sin is a nothing, but that it is a privation of moral uprightness that ought to be present.”
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Latin Article
1600’s
Pareus, David – Bk. 5, selection 86, ‘The Error of [Matthew Flacius] Illyricus is Refuted, which Asserts Original Sin to be a Substance’ in 6 Books on the Loss of Grace & the State of Sin by Robert Bellarmine… to which three following are joined, on Original Sin, are Explicated & Castigated (Heidelberg, 1613)
Pareus (1548-1622) was a German Reformed Protestant theologian and reformer.
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On God’s Concurrence in Evil Actions
1300’s
Latin
Bradwardine, Thomas – Book 1, ch. 34, ‘If and How God Wills and does not Will Sin’ in Of the Cause of God, pp. 294-307
Bradwardine (c.1290-3140) was a proto-reformed theologian in the Middle Ages.
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1500’s
Zanchi, Jerome – ‘God is not the Author of Sin’ from ‘Observations on the Divine Attributes’, 4.3. 5 paragraphs
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What Makes an Act Sinful?
Medieval
Aquinas, Thomas – Question 18, ‘The Good & Evil of Human Acts in General’ in Summa, First Part of the Second Part
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On the Distinction between Moral vs. Natural (or Miserable) Evil
See also ‘On the Ethical Principle of Avoiding the Greater Material or Miserable Evil’.
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Quotes
Order of
Byfield
Gillespie
Baxter
Fentiman
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1600’s
Nicholas Byfield
A Commentary upon the Three First Chapters of the First Epistle General of St. Peter (London: Flesher, 1637), on 1 Pet. 2:13, pp. 434–35
“Things inconvenient, even in matters of religion, may be commanded in some cases: as when it is to redeem a far worse inconvenience. For of two evils of punishments [cf. 2 Sam. 24:10–17], the magistrate may take the less, as well as any other private man. And if that subjects, to prevent worse inconveniences, may use inconvenient ceremonies, then may the magistrate, to prevent worse inconveniences, command inconvenient ceremonies.
If the apostles may use the inconvenient Jewish ceremonies, then the apostles may enjoin for a time the use of inconvenient ceremonies: as they did make ordinances about things which yet they called “burdens,” Acts 15 [v. 28]. And Moses may make an ordinance about the use of a bill of divorcement which yet was a grievous inconvenience to redeem a worse inconvenience.
But if magistrates do appoint inconvenient things and burden the Church with them, when there would be no great inconvenience to the Church if such things were not, then such magistrates must give their account to Christ for so doing; but yet the people are bound to obey still, because we cannot be freed from our subjection laid upon us by God except it appear to us that they command not only an inconvenience, but a sin, as all sound divines confess.”
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George Gillespie
A Dispute against the English Popish Ceremonies (1637), pt. 2, ch. 1, p. 10
“…in evils of punishment, we may choose a lesser [cf. 2 Sam. 24:10–14]…”
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Richard Baxter
The Unreasonableness of Infidelity (London: R.W., 1655), An Advertisement Explicatory, p. xi
“…but while man is man, it is contradictory and impossible that such natural good should not be good, and such natural evil as is contrary to it be evil.”
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2000’s
Travis Fentiman
“Theses on the Ethics of Civil Voting, with a Correction to the Booklet, Christ Centered Voting”, “Choosing the Lesser of Two Evils” at ‘On Voting’ (RBO).
“26. ‘Evil’ is an ambiguous term. It may stand for miserable evils or moral evils. One may morally choose to undergo and suffer certain miserable evils in necessity, other alternatives not being available, likely or reasonable.
Electing to eat expired food rather than starve is not wrong. One ought never to do moral evil, though it be lesser in respect to another (1 Cor. 15:34; WLC 99.5).”
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“Editor’s Extended Introduction” in English Puritans, A Refutation of the Errors of Separatists (1604; RBO, 2025)
p. 27, fn. 54
“[George] Gillespie here glosses over the difference between miserable and moral evil, and assumes all practice of inconvenient ceremonies is to “take well” with them in an approving sense and is a voluntary “cleaving unto” them, rather than a permissive, tolerating reception of them as imposed burdens without moral approval.”
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p. 55
“If God may graciously choose for us the lesser miserable evil, may not we concur (2 Chron. 12:5–8), when He reasons with us to do so (Jer. 27:12–13)? Richard Baxter later put it this way:
‘Though we think not that men may [morally] command us to destroy our neighbors’ souls by scandal, yet when disobedience to a ruler’s law is likely to do more hurt than the scandal taken at it comes to, we are for avoiding the greater hurt.'” (The English Nonconformity as under King Charles II & King James II Truly Stated & Argued
(London, 1689), ch. 2, p. 14)
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p. 139
“In preface to taking up some of [John Brown of] Wamphray’s arguments, he in general mistakenly infers, as did most opposed to the indulgence (and those of a similar mindset today), that if there are deficiencies or evils in the indulgence (or any such enactment), then it is sinful to accept those deficiencies and evils.
However, ‘evil’ is an ambiguous term and may stand for miserable or moral evils. One may morally choose to undergo and suffer certain miserable (though not moral) evils in necessity, other alternatives not being available, likely, reasonable or best. Choosing to eat expired food rather than starve is not wrong, though starving would be. That one must have the best or none at all, is against the greater good; miserable evils often contain a significant degree of good, and we ought not to choose the worst.”
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Latin
Disputations & Chapters
1500’s
Pacius, Julius – Disputation 8, De restitutionibus in integrum: de eo quod met. causa et de dolo malo (Heidelberg, 1589)
Polanus, Amandus – Bk. 1, ch. 13, ‘On Evil’ & ch. 14, ‘On Human Sin’ in The Divisions of Theology Framed according to a Natural Orderly Method (Basil, 1590; Geneva, 1623), pp. 45-56
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1600’s
Zanchi, Jerome – Of the Fall of the First Man, of Sin and of the Law in The Theological Works, vol. 4 (1618; n.d.)
2. Of Evil in General 6
Thesis 1, Evil essentially & from its own nature is nothing, but that only to which it is accidental is evil, which thing is surely a substance or accident 6
Thesis 2, Every evil is proper to some good, as in a subject 7
Thesis 3, Evil is so as not to be able to be except in a good; thus it is not able to arise except from a good, and yet that is not its cause 8
Thesis 4, A good is not able to be a cause of evil per se, but only by way of accident 8
Thesis 5, Evil is always in some substance or in an action of its agent 10
Thesis 6, Evil is in a substance by way of a privation of that good: so it is able and so it must hold. Indeed evil, as it must be, is in an action by way of a privation of such a kind of order and measure 10
Thesis 7, To be through no mode is such a highest category, as evil is, this is from where all evils come forth 10
Thesis 8, Every evil is either of guilt or of punishment. That of guilt is sin. That of punishment is thus death (which is the penalty of sin) and all those things which are broken paths, as much in the soul as in the body and eternal goods 10
Thesis 9, Yet the evil of guild is much more grave than whatever is simply the evil of punishment 11
3. Of the Evil of Guilt, or of Sin in General 12-30
Thesis 1 13
Thesis 2, Sin is twofold: original and actual 14
Thesis 3, The causes of sin are of a twofold kind, as some are outside us, and some inside us 15
Thesis 4 17
Of the causes of sin inside us 22
Scharp, John – ch. 19, ‘Of the Evil of Punishment’ in A Course of Theology, in which all the dogmas and controversies of faith agitated in this generation between us and Papists are handled… (Geneva, 1620), vol. 1, pp. 531-42
Voet, Gisbert – Of Evil in Syllabus of Theological Problems (Utrecht, 1643), pt. 1, section 1, tract 4 Abbr.
Chamier, Daniel – bk 4, ch. 8, ‘Of Good & Evil’ in A Body of Theology, or Theological Common Places (Geneva, 1653), pp. 133-35
Heidegger, Johann H. – The First Philosophical Disputation on Good & Evil (Heidelberg, 1659)
Du Moulin, Pierre – 20. ‘Theological Theses on Evil & Sin’ in Molina, Cappel, Ramburtio, Maresio, Calvino, Le Blanc, Le Vasseur, Alpaeo, A Collection of the Theological Disputations held at Various Times in the Academy of Sedan, vol. 1 (Geneva, 1661), pp. 178-85
Leydekker, Melchior – Of the Truth of the Reformed, or Evangelical, Religion (Utrecht, 1688), bk. 2, pp. 213-54
7. Of the Origin of Evil 213
8. Of the Origin of Good 236
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Book
1600’s-1700’s
Poiret, Pierre – Bk. 4, ‘On Evil, or Sin’ in Rational Thoughts on God, the Soul & Evil, in 4 Books 3rd ed. (1677; Amsterdam, 1713), pp. 647-716 ToC
Poiret was reformed.
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