Augustine gives in Enchiridion 24.96 an account of God’s will and of its relationship to the existence of evil: for him, though evil is not good, it is nevertheless good that evil exists alongside the good. The reason for this is that, since God does not prevent evil from existing, the existence of evil is somehow contained within God’s will. This doctrine is accepted by Anselm of Laon, who teaches it to his pupils, but is fiercely opposed by Rupert of St.-Laurent (a monastery in Liège) in his works De voluntate Dei and De omnipotentia Dei. For him, when God ‘permits’ evil, this does not mean that He ‘wants’ evil, but that He just wants to permit evil to be. For Rupert, this is the only way to account for God’s goodness and mercy, and is also a more correct way to understand Augustine’s teaching, compared with Anselm’s ‘scholastic’ distinction between ‘voluntas permittens’ and ‘voluntas approbans’. Both Anselm’s and Rupert’s positions influence later theologians, among which Peter Lombard and his followers, like Stephen Langton († 1228). For him, the fact that God does not prevent evil does not mean that He wills it. The reverse is in fact the case. In order to maintain this, Langton distinguishes between two different meanings of the claim that God ‘does not want’ (non vult). This phrase can either be interpreted as the third person of the Latin verb nolo, or as the negation of the third person of the Latin verb volo. On Langton’s account, God ‘does not want’ evil to be in the second sense. That is to say, God does not deliberate between desiring that people sin or not sin, for he simply does not want them to sin (non vult, as negation of velle), even though he does not prevent them from sinning (which would be necessary if non vult were understood as the third person of nolo). The article aims at showing how a theological problem (like that of God’s will) is discussed, throuought the 12th century, with increasingly recourse to the arts of language (in this case, logical and semantic analysis of the theological statements), and that Stephen Langton is a particularly good example of this trend.
Bonté divine, toute-puissance divine et existence du mal : la discussion autour d'Augustin, Ench. 24-26 d'Anselme de Laon à Étienne Langton
QUINTO, RICCARDO
2009
Abstract
Augustine gives in Enchiridion 24.96 an account of God’s will and of its relationship to the existence of evil: for him, though evil is not good, it is nevertheless good that evil exists alongside the good. The reason for this is that, since God does not prevent evil from existing, the existence of evil is somehow contained within God’s will. This doctrine is accepted by Anselm of Laon, who teaches it to his pupils, but is fiercely opposed by Rupert of St.-Laurent (a monastery in Liège) in his works De voluntate Dei and De omnipotentia Dei. For him, when God ‘permits’ evil, this does not mean that He ‘wants’ evil, but that He just wants to permit evil to be. For Rupert, this is the only way to account for God’s goodness and mercy, and is also a more correct way to understand Augustine’s teaching, compared with Anselm’s ‘scholastic’ distinction between ‘voluntas permittens’ and ‘voluntas approbans’. Both Anselm’s and Rupert’s positions influence later theologians, among which Peter Lombard and his followers, like Stephen Langton († 1228). For him, the fact that God does not prevent evil does not mean that He wills it. The reverse is in fact the case. In order to maintain this, Langton distinguishes between two different meanings of the claim that God ‘does not want’ (non vult). This phrase can either be interpreted as the third person of the Latin verb nolo, or as the negation of the third person of the Latin verb volo. On Langton’s account, God ‘does not want’ evil to be in the second sense. That is to say, God does not deliberate between desiring that people sin or not sin, for he simply does not want them to sin (non vult, as negation of velle), even though he does not prevent them from sinning (which would be necessary if non vult were understood as the third person of nolo). The article aims at showing how a theological problem (like that of God’s will) is discussed, throuought the 12th century, with increasingly recourse to the arts of language (in this case, logical and semantic analysis of the theological statements), and that Stephen Langton is a particularly good example of this trend.Pubblicazioni consigliate
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