FORETHOUGHTS
Top Catholic Archbishop and theologian, Fulton Sheen in Your Life is Worth Living:
"Evil is either an excess or a defect of what is good. Food and drink are good. Too little or too much are bad. Sleep is good. When sleep interferes with duty it is not good. Evil is like darkness; it is the absence of light with no substance of its own. All badness is spoiled goodness. A bad apple is a good apple that became rotten. Evil is a parasite on goodness because it is has no capital of its own."
So for Christians,
goodness is originative not derivative. Badness is derivative - it is derived
from good. It is not originative.
Sheen in the same book says that a bad man
steals or kills or whatever. So doing evil acts may mean you are either evil or
bad.
He seems to mean that a bad person is one who is good but falls while an evil person is more persistently harmful. So, you can be bad but not evil as a person and you can even be evil but not bad as a person.
The evil man may do nothing obviously harmful or hurt anybody but instead plots and manipulates to destroy goodness in others. This is very interesting. Anti-social actions do not necessarily mark your core but setting out to destroy the good core of others must mark your soul. Thus religions that do not try to treat you with grace and powers to rise above your natural state are evil. Sheen would include Christianity in that if Jesus in fact has no power to access souls and help them heal. Not helping fix evil is helping evil so there is no neutral ground.
If you love the wrongdoer but hate the wrong that does not mean you can love the evildoer and hate the evil. Hating somebody who has become evil and who represents evil would go with hating the evil for they are the evil. Christianity ignores this distinction and thus marks itself as another hypocritical lying religion that is not truly about changing hearts but about making evil people being able to pass for good ones.
If evil is a parasite then in bad men and evil ones it is simply trying to make itself pass for good. Thus the distinction between bad men and evil men is incoherent. To pass for good, evil has to try and send a message to bystanders, "Copy me and I am good."
If somebody seems good, it takes a lot of discernment to see that they are in fact not.
That is parasitical evil covered - it is really just a defective good.
Substantial evil disagrees that evil is just that. It says it is a real presence and literal power. This understanding of evil would either say it always existed despite God meaning he is not very capable and thus not a real God. Or that he is a morally compromised being who made it. Or both.
THE ARGUMENT
Here is the argument that evil is compatible with the existence of an all-powerful and all-good God for it is not a thing or as power but a lack. A lack is not a thing or a power.
God is all-good and all-powerful and has made all things. There is evil in the world. How can an all-good and all-powerful God who issued all things create evil? The answer is that he cannot and he didn't. Evil has to be a positive or negative. That is to say it is a thing or it is not a thing.
Evil is not a thing. The believers in God say that evil does not really exist - it's just good in the wrong place or a lack of good. They say good is a power but evil isn't.
Believers in an all-good creator of all things hold that evil is real but unreal in the sense that it is a lack of good. A good that is less good than it can be is evil. Evil is not an energy or a thing or an entity. Thus it is not created. God did not make evil.
Is saying that evil is a negative, that is it is nothing, but good is real the same as saying that evil is good in the wrong time and place? Yes - because good alone is said to be real and evil is just good that is not as good as it can be. For example, hate is said to be good when directed at evil actions but wrong when directed against persons. This means that hate is good in itself. It is how it is used that is bad.
What is
being clamed by believers is this: Evil is simply the absence of good so it does
not exist in the sense that it is not a real thing. God is right to allow it to
happen for it is a negation and nothing more. Strictly speaking, there is no
evil - just misused good. God is not to blame for evil for evil isn’t real.
THE DODGE
Evil means that which should not be permitted for any reason. That is why calling it a lack is irrelevant. Making out that it is a lack is merely and cynically about preventing it from refuting God.
The
notion that evil is just the lack or absence of goodness is unhelpful. It is
playing with words. A really good God cannot cause or command an absence of
goodness any more than he can for an evil that is as real as an electric shock.
My point: to argue that evil fits God for he has nothing to do with it as it
is a defect is not to argue at all. It's being a defect is irrelevant for he can
still want the defect to happen and set it up. We have to be agnostic on that at
best. We cannot go as far as to found a religion on divine love. That is too
much. Don't go beyond the logic or the data.
Conclusion
The doctrine that evil is a negative—a mere absence or corruption of good rather than a substantial force—seeks to defend the compatibility of evil's presence with the existence of an all-powerful, all-good God. By framing evil as a parasitic distortion of the good, theologians like Fulton Sheen attempt to preserve God's moral perfection and creative innocence. However, this view ultimately raises more questions than it answers. If evil is truly "nothing," its real and often devastating effects remain unexplained. Furthermore, reducing evil to a lack of good risks trivializing profound moral suffering and injustice. It can come across as a semantic dodge—an attempt to preserve a theological system rather than confront the full moral weight of evil in human experience. While the negative view of evil may offer some logical insulation for theism, it struggles to account meaningfully for evil’s psychological, social, and spiritual power. For many, that gap renders the doctrine unsatisfying both philosophically and pastorally.
Now we must remember that if we treat good as what to aim for and evil as what to oppose, then to belittle what evil means and is, is indirectly to belittle good as well. As it is indirect it will be hard to spot. It does not inspire confidence that the person devoted to good really is.