Aquinas and Maritain on Evil: Mystery and Metaphysics

While Creatively Drawing on St. Thomas Aquinas, Jacques Maritain made the problem of evil a life-long philosophical inquiry. Indeed, Maritain tells us in his God and the Permission of Evil (1966) that "If philosophers lived up to their calling in the new age into which we have entered, the crucial work for them would be to renew the theory of evil … by examining it more profoundly." Exploring the problem of evil, indeed, its profound mystery, comes near the heart of the Christian philosophe...