God and Evil in the Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas

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This class is a guided, close reading of an early work by Herbert McCabe, never before published. Each week the class will work through about 10 pages or so.

In a preface to the book, Terry Eagleton says it reads ‚Äúas though Thomas Aquinas were to have handed Herbert a clutch of his ideas with the injunction ‘Here, make this stuff sound a bit more lively.’ ‚Äù McCabe certainly is lively, as Eagleton continues: ‚ÄúWe learn [here] that it is proper in Aquinas’s view to say ‘The human being exists’ but not ‘The Englishman exists,’ a claim that will no doubt be greeted with acclaim in a good many outposts of the post-colonial world. We are informed that one dog can be more doggy than another, a proposition the English, if they existed, would surely be eager to endorse.‚Äù

McCabe makes a good deal of Aquinas memorably lively: that nothing can be purely evil; that creation is a causing that is unlike any other causing, in that it makes no difference to the beings it causes (save that it gives them existence, which is all the difference!); and much more. In the end, does he solve the theological problem of evil? Readers will have to judge for themselves, but it may be that it is one of those few questions that bring great insight while ever resisting closure.

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