John Damascene

Since the word evil is ambiguous it has two meanings, for it sometimes means what is by na­ture evil, being the opposite of virtue and against God's will, while at other times it means what is evil and painful in relation to our sensibility, which is to say, tribulation and distress. Now while these last seem to be evil, because they cause pain, actu­ally they are good because to such as understand them they are a source of conversion and salvation. It is these last that Scripture says are permitted by God. Moreover, one must know that we too cause them because involuntary evils spring from volun­tary ones.

It is, then, customary for sacred Scripture to speak of his permission as an action and deed, but even when it goes so far as to say that God “creates evil” and that “there is not evil in a city which the Lord has not done,” it still does not show God to be the author of evil. On the contrary, since the word evil is ambiguous it has two meanings, for it sometimes means what is by nature evil, being the opposite of virtue and against God’s will, while at other times it means what is evil and painful in relation to our sensibility, which is to say, tribulation and distress. Now while these last seem to be evil, because they cause pain, actually they are good because to such as understand them they are a source of conversion and salvation. It is these last that Scripture says are permitted by God. Moreover, one must know that we too cause them because involuntary evils spring from voluntary ones.