We are all Manichaeans now; a discursion based on last week's Communio Circle discussion.

Sometime after he helped Kurt Russell out of Big Trouble in Little China - a movie warm to our hearts because it featured a friend’s brother in the seminal role of Chang Sing #4 - Victor Wong starred in another John Carpenter opus named Prince of Darkness. The premise of Prince of Darkness was that Donald Pleasance had discovered some eerie, glowing, green goop that was the “distilled essence of pure evil” or as the advertisements phrased the idea: "Before man walked the earth...it slept for centuries. It is evil. It is real. It is awakening." (Read the linked review for a sketch of the plot outline of the movie, as well as for some cool pictures and an assortment of snarky comments about Jameson Parker’s “Village People” mustache.)

However, enough about awful moments in horror movie history, what about that “distilled essence of pure evil” stuff?

While we have no idea what he would have said about John Carpenter’s thin plotline or Jameson Parker’s mustache, we are certain that St. Thomas Aquinas would have scoffed at the idea of “distilled essence of pure evil.” Here is why.

In his Summa, Aquinas addresses the key principles of “goodness” in the abstract. One of the questions he asks is whether goodness differs really from being. While any person of ordinary intelligence would ask “what is goodness?”, “what is being?” and “what is differs”, Aquinas is not burdened by ordinary intelligence. His answer is that “being” and “goodness” are really two words for the same thing. To wit:

Goodness and being are really the same, and differ only in idea; which is clear from the following argument. The essence of goodness consists in this, that it is in some way desirable. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. i): "Goodness is what all desire." Now it is clear that a thing is desirable only in so far as it is perfect; for all desire their own perfection. But everything is perfect so far as it is actual. Therefore it is clear that a thing is perfect so far as it exists; for it is existence that makes all things actual, as is clear from the foregoing (3, 4; 4, 1). Hence it is clear that goodness and being are the same really. But goodness presents the aspect of desirableness, which being does not present.

I think that Aquinas is putting his own spin on Aristotle’s point, here made in the Rhetoric, that “[f]or that which all desire is good, as we have said; and so, the more a thing is desired, the better it is.” Now, one thing that "all" desire is to be better and, hopefully, be perfect. Consequently, improvement, up to and including perfection, is good. Since it is unreasonably difficult, or merely illogical, to be perfect, or better, without existing, existence comes along for the ride as an aspect of “goodness.” Therefore, “existence” is an aspect of “goodness.”

So, what about the creepy, glowing, green essence of distilled evil or the “dark side” of the Force?

Aquinas gets vastly more interesting on the subject of “evil”, or, perhaps, the subject is simply more interesting. Concerning the question of ”whether evil is a nature”, Aquinas writes:

One opposite is known through the other, as darkness is known through light. Hence also what evil is must be known from the nature of good. Now, we have said above that good is everything appetible; and thus, since every nature desires its own being and its own perfection, it must be said also that the being and the perfection of any nature is good. Hence it cannot be that evil signifies being, or any form or nature. Therefore it must be that by the name of evil is signified the absence of good. And this is what is meant by saying that "evil is neither a being nor a good." For since being, as such, is good, the absence of one implies the absence of the other.

Got that? For something to exist it must be good in some absolute way because existence and goodness are the same thing. Or, to put it in more comprehensible movie terminology, if the glowing, green, gloopy “essence of distilled pure evil” was “pure evil” it would not “desire” anything “good”, it would not want its own perfection, and it would not, therefore “desire” existence. Even if the gloopy, green, glowing essence of pure evil wanted to exist in order to do evil to others, it’s existence would be “good” because it would provide the means of carrying out its nefarious plans.

In short, if it was “pure” evil, it would disappear in a spectacular display of self-loathing self-deconstruction.

Well, then, what is “evil” from a Thomistic - i.e., a Christian - perspective? For Aquinas evil is “only the privation of a due perfection.” (On Evil, Question 1, Article 2.) Note the “due perfection” language. Blindness, for example, is an evil because it deprives the eye of due perfection. On the other hand, your lack of wings is not “evil” because your due perfection does not involve flying with wings. (It may be “bummer” but it is not an “evil.”)

Evil, in other words, is parasitic and found only in good; it is found in those things and situations that limit or depart from excellence or “virtue”:

Therefore, although human beings, by the very fact that they are human beings, are one kind of good, till they are not by that very fact good human beings; rather, it is the proper virtue of each thing that makes it good. For virtue makes it possessor good as the Philosopher says in the Ethics. And virtue is a thing’s highest potentiality…”

(On Evil, Question 1, Article 2.)

This is why Star Wars is unmitigated heresy. The idea of a “dark side of the Force” contemplates a free-floating, self-contained, independent entity constituting evil and nothing but evil. Evil, however, is not an entity; evil is the flaw in an entity. It is the bug in the system, not the feature.

Why is this theologically important? Because the idea is out-and-out Manichaeism. As everyone acquainted with early Medieval history will recall, Manichaeism was a heresy imported into Christianity from Persian Zoroastrianism. Manichaeism posited a "dualistic theology" whereby a god of goodness was opposed by a god or principle of darkness or evil. Manichaeism had its heyday in the 4th and 5th Century, albeit dualistic heresies have recurred throughout Christian history. Catharism, which was exterminated by the Albigensian Crusade, was a dualistic heresy. Manichaeism was superficially persuasive enough to capture the allegiance of St. Augustine because it purported to offer an easy explanation to the question of where evil came from.

But these heresies make their force of evil independent from the dominion of God. Augustine's answer to the problem of evil, which was later adopted by Aquinas, is given perfect voice by James Blish's book A Case of Conscience in this passage:

These days, most sick children recovered in a day or so, after a shot of spectrosigmin or some similar drug, even from the brink of terminal coma. Question: Has prayer failed, and temporal science wrought the recovery?

Answer: No, for prayer is always answered, and no man may choose for God the means He uses to answer it. Surely, a miracle like a life-saving antibiotic Is not unworthy of the bounty of God.

And this, too, was the answer to the riddle of the Great Nothing. The Adversary is not creative, except in the sense that He always seeks evil, and always does good. He cannot claim any of the credit for temporal science, nor imply truthfully that a success for a temporal science is a failure for prayer. In this as in all other matters, He is compelled to lie.

But Star Wars fits the modern American psyche. We want to be in the middle. We want “good” sides and “dark” sides. We want Yings and Yangs. We want balance so that we can have freedom.

We certainly don’t want the sense that our evils come from our own imperfections.