The Necessity of Possibility and the Possibility of Evil

As alluded to yesterday, blame the Jews for discovering that it is the same God who causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on the good guys and bad goys alike, and for reasons we can supposedly never fathom. 

That latter in particular has always bothered me, in that, why should the very principle and substance of intelligence get a pass for behaving in such an unintelligible manner? There is no cosmic right to absurdity, and didn't we just stipulate that there is no privilege higher than truth? 

God did not create an intelligent being so that the latter might grovel before the unintelligible; He created him in order to be known starting from contingency, and that is precisely why He created him intelligent. If God wished to owe nothing to man, He would not have created him (Schuon).

Now, humility is one thing, groveling another. Moreover, there is no intelligence without humility, or to put it conversely, there is nothing more stupid than pride, since it poisons intelligence at the root. 

If the Divine Intellect is both shrouded in absurdity and the standard to which we ought to aspire, then we could rightly affirm that we ourselves have a right -- and obligation -- to sacred illogicality. 

And more than a few tricksy theologians and cult leaders flaunt their absurdity, preserve their mystique, and maintain their authority with such appeals. But if absurdity is the standard, by what standard are we to distinguish between this or that absurdity? 

If "the right is claimed to a sacred illogicality,"

then an explanation is due of what logic is and what human reason is; for if our intelligence, in its very structure, is foreign or even opposed to Divine Truth, what then is it, and why did God give it to us (ibid.)?

This would be like creating a creature who craves sweets while forgetting to invent sugar. 

Moreover, if God intends a message, to what and whom is the message addressed? Supposing I speak to you, then it presumes a message from my intellect to yours. Are we suggesting that God ignores our highest capacity and addresses it only to the will -- which reduces to a divine Because I Said So? 

My father used to play that card quite often, and even if the judgment was technically sound, such authoritarian trappings only nourish a covert spirit of rebellion, since the intelligence is not pacified. Which can lead to all sorts of intellectual mischief, up to and including tenure.

[W]hat sort of Divine message is it that is opposed to the laws of an intelligence to which it is essentially addressed, and what does it signify that man was created "in the image of God"? And what motive could induce us to accept a message that is contrary... to the very substance of our spirit (ibid.)? 

Now granted, most men are not intellectuals -- or nowadays, only intellectuals -- which is a real problem for God. In short, how to get the message through to an intelligence swollen with pride and presumption, while simultaneously constrained within infra-Gödelian rationalistic premises?  

Near as I can tell, that's why I'm here, nor would you be here if you weren't built the same way. 

In a fundamental sense, certain realities into which we are necessarily plunged are all necessarily related: relativism, contingency, freedom; but these only become absurd if they are detached from the Absolute, or if we posit a kind of radical, two-tiered distinction between Absolute and relative. 

Back to the question of evil, which, if it exists, is possible to exist. Now, where to situate this possibility? 

It seems that it must be situated in God, otherwise its possibility would be impossible. So, it seems that there can be no principle of evil as such, only a principle of possibility which may cut both ways, like the sun which is good in itself even if it shines on the baddies.

So, the following sketch may sound a bit sketchy, but it makes sense to me:

The ontological and hence "neutral" structure of evil is "in God," but not so evil as such; in other words, privative and subversive possibilities are not [in God] except insofar as they testify to Being and to All-Possibility, and not by their negative contents, which paradoxically signify non-existence or the impossible, hence the absurd (ibid., emphasis mine).

This is actually completely orthodox, in the sense that everything God creates is good, insofar as it partakes of being. 

But every created thing is more or less distant from this creative principle, and man in particular is in an ambiguous position, being that our freedom -- which is to say, our own reflected share of All-Possibility -- necessarily cuts both ways, meaning that we are free to align ourselves with the impossible and the absurd, and thereby rise up in rebellion against our very principle. In case you haven't noticed.

I'm starting to run out of gazz, so I'll hand the wheel over to Thomas:

The source of every imperfect thing lies necessarily in one perfect being.

The further a being is distant from that which is Being itself, namely God, the nearer it is to nothingness. But the nearer a being stands to God, the further away it is from nothingness.

Evil consists entirely in not-being.

We do not strive toward evil by tending towards anything but by turning away from something.

So, I suppose we could say that the principle of evil consists in this: in a cosmic divorce between Absolute and Infinite, or between necessity and possibility, or intellect and freedom. And I'll clean up any loose sh... ends tomorrow.