On the Problem of Evil, Part II

When Your New Theodicy Is An Old Theodicy

One of the humbling aspects of writing about philosophical issues is that, no matter how much you believe you’ve stumbled upon a fresh insight, it is virtually certain that someone who died 2000 years ago has already thought of your idea.

Last week I presented my new theodicy on the problem of evil, arguing that the existence of evil in a universe created by an omnibenevolent deity demanded an independent source of evil. I was aware this theodicy was the basis of Zoroastrian cosmogony but I didn’t at the time know that it had been the opinion of the Middle Platonists.

The most notable of the Middle Platonists was Plutarch, the ancient biographer, and historian. In addition to his accounts of great men in Lives, Plutarch wrote extensively on philosophy and theology, elaborating on Plato’s cosmology from Timaeus.

Plutarch’s Warfare Theodicy

In his essay On the Generation of Soul in the Timaeus, Plutarch described the state of existence before creation as one of amorphous, incoherent, and irrational chaos:

What preceded the generation of the world was disorder, disorder not incorporeal or immobile or inanimate, but of corporeality amorphous and incoherent, and of motivity demented and irrational, and this was the discord of soul that has not reason.

Next, Plutarch argues that the disordered void that predates creation is the source of evil. In his essay Isis and Osiris, Plutarch wrote:

Neither is the Universe without mind, without reason, and without guidance, and tossed about at random, nor yet is there One Reason that rules and directs all things as it were, by a rudder and by guiding reins, but that there are many such directors, and made up out of good and bad; or rather, to speak generally, inasmuch as Nature produces nothing unmixed here below, it is not one Dispenser that like a retail dealer mixes together things for us out of two vessels and distributes the same, but it is from two opposite Principles and two antagonistic Powers; the one guiding us to the right hand and along the straight road, the other upsetting and rebuffing us, that Life becomes of a mixed nature; and also the Universe (if not the whole, yet that which surrounds Earth, and lies below the Moon), is made inconsistent with itself, and variable and susceptible of frequent changes.

For if nothing can happen without cause, and good cannot furnish cause for evil, it follows that the nature of Evil, as of Good, must have an origin and principle of its own.

Like me, Plutarch stressed the fact that while Evil is of infinite extent, being everywhere and in everything, it is nevertheless a lesser infinity than the infinity of Good. He refers to the disordered source of evil as "the “Bad One”, personified as the demon Typhon:

[T]he origin and constitution of this world are mixed, being formed out of opposite principles—not, however, of equal force with each other, but the superiority belonging to the Better One. But it is impossible that the Bad One should be entirely destroyed, as it is largely implanted in the body, largely in the soul of the all, and always contending against the Better One…

For the generative and conservative Principle of Nature is set in motion against Typhon for the purpose of Being, whilst the determinating and corrupting part is moved by Typhon for the purpose of not being…

Typhon, as above stated, is called Seth, Bebon, and Syn—these names being meant to declare a certain forcible and impeding check, opposition, and turning upside down.

Plutarch asserted that the existence of a separate evil power was not just a belief peculiar to him, but rather stood at the center of what today we call the prisca theologia, the ancient truths revealed to all men by God in antiquity:

And this is the opinion of most men, and those the wisest, for they believe, some that there are Two Gods, as it were of opposite trades—one the creator of good, the other of bad things; others call the better one "God," the other "Demon," as did Zoroaster the Magian, who, they record, lived 5,000 years before the Trojan War. He therefore calls the former "Oromazes," the latter "Arimanios;" and furthermore explains that of all the objects of sense, the one most resembles Light, the other Darkness, and Ignorance…

The Chaldeans hold that the gods belong to the planets, of whom two they call "doers of good," two "makers of evil;" the other three they describe as intermediate and neutral. But the notions of the Greeks are, I suppose, plain enough to every one, for they make the good part that of the Olympian Jove, that of the hostile deity they give to Hades…

Now the Pythagoreans characterize these Principles by several names: the Good One, as the "One," the "Definite," the "Abiding," the "Straight," the "Exceeding," the "Square," the "Equal," the "Right-handed," the "Bright;" the Bad One as the "Two," the "Indefinite," the "Unstable," the "Crooked," the "Sufficient," the "Unequally-sided" (parallelogram), the "Unequal," the "Left-handed," the "Dark"—inasmuch as these are supposed the final causes of existence—Anaxagoras defines them as "Mind," and the "Infinite;" Aristotle, the one as "Form," the other as "Deprival." Plato, as it were mystifying and veiling the matter, denominates in many places one of the opposing Principles as "The Same;" the second, as "The Other;" but in his "Laws," being now grown older, he no longer speaks in riddles and symbolically, but names them directly. "Not by one soul," says he, "was the universe set in motion, but by several, perhaps, at all events, by not less than Two; whereof the one is beneficent, the other antagonistic to this, and the creator of opposite effects: and there is room for a Third Principle to exist, one intermediate between the Two, which is neither destitute of soul, nor of reason, nor of impulse from within (as some suppose), but subordinate to those Two Principles, ever seeking after the Better One, and desiring and following after it…"

Plutarch in his day also confronted rival theodicies, of which the Stoic theodicy parallels what I called the Irenaean. George Karamanolis, writing for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, summarizing the argument found in On the Generation of Soul, explains how Plutarch addressed them:

If the human soul reflects the nature of the world soul, then also in the latter even when rationality prevails, when the cosmos comes into being, there is room for disharmony and disorder. This is evidenced by occurrences of badness in the world, such as accidents, natural catastrophes, etc. If there is no such non-rational aspect in the world soul, then either God must be ultimately accountable for such phenomena, which is what the Stoics maintain – and this, argues Plutarch, hardly fits God's goodness – or they must happen without cause, as the Epicureans maintain, which then diminishes God's ruling power. Better to think that such occurrences are caused by the [evil principle].

According to Plutarch, then, my “new” theodicy is not only correct it is actually the traditional way to understand the theodicies of the Egyptians, Zoroastrians, Chaldeans, Pre-Socratics, Platonists, Peripatetics, and Pythagoreans.

I suppose this makes me Alfred Russell Wallace to Plutarch’s Darwin, only with a 2000-year delay and substantially inferior grasp of Ancient Greek.