"Pure Evil"

A reader writes:

I don't consider myself a conservative of any stripe, but I am trained theologically and a regular reader of First Things, and I'm refreshed by Christian conservatives who aren't marching to the beat of the First Things drummer.

Nevertheless, of all the things you might agree with Bush about, I hope you'll reconsider your commitment to the possibility of "pure evil". This is among the least theologically orthodox concepts that Bush has invoked. For the classical theological tradition, everything that exists is good, full stop. "How do we know that God loves sinners?" asks Thomas Aquinas? "Because there are sinners."  God does not create evil creatures or natures. And nothing else "creates" in the technical theological sense of that word. Evil must therefore be the lack or corruption of something good rather than the presence of something purely or intensely evil. 

This strikes many people as counterintuitive. I'm fine with that. Incarnation and Trinity aren't simple, straightforward reflections either. But you can witness the power of the logic by rereading Augustine's Confessions  or City of God. In the latter work Augustine tries to imagine the most wicked creature he can think of - he invokes the mythical figure of Cacus, a big nasty creature who eats anyone who gets near him. Even Cacus, concludes Augustine, seeks peace.  Even Cacus wills what he wills under the aspect of some good. Sin does not destroy nature. "Evil cannot wholly consume good" (Augustine, enchiridion on faith, hope, and love, cited by Aquinas, Summa Theologia, Part I, Q. 48, sed contra).

There is a vital practical significance to the classical view. Since we can't reduce our enemies to pure blackness, we have to take them seriously as creatures of God whose evil willing is nonetheless always done under the aspect of some good. Even the suicide - the classical hard case - wills evil for the sake of the good of some peace, namely, being free from the distress of life. Even Bin Laden wills what he wills under some aspect of the good. Even Bin Laden wants peace of some sort.

Amazingly, some neoconservative Christians seem to make nihilism a genuine option in the world. As if one could actually will nothingness. Thus the neoconservative "remedy": annihilate the terrorists. As it turns out, this just makes an entire people feel backed into a corner and spawns more terrorists. It would be far more constructive to try to find some way to connect with that aspect of the good under which even the vilest of offenders are doing their evil deeds. For Bush, there is one path: kill the evil terrorists. This is the cul de sac of the new Manicheaism. But there are other options: get rid of the military bases in the Middle East; treat the terrorists as an international criminal conspiracy that requires international collaboration at the level of policing and prosecuting (like drug dealers and mafia syndicates); seek a genuine solution to the Palestinian crisis.