De Caasu Diaboli Analysis

Anselm is deliberating on the problem of evil and the origin of evil so as to prove that God’s creation is good, despite the creatures having the capacity to sin. The discussion of evil, according to me, has little to do with Lucifer’s disobedience in itself, but more to do with (re)establishing God’s supremacy in the face of evil. Without the perfection attributed to God and his creation, it would be difficult to locate the capacity to forgive and restore order within him. To understand Anselm’s elucidation on this tension, I am going to going to discuss his text De Casu Diaboli and the his process of explaining angelic sin
Anselm begins his treatise from the first beginning i.e. the creation. Anselm seems to follow in the tradition of St. Augustine in his conception of angelic sin. Augustine held the view that everything that is created by God, is good in itself. Since all angels have been
Furthermore, “…whatever is from the supreme Good is good, and every good is from the supreme Good, so also whatever is from the supreme Being has being, and every being is from the supreme Being” (DCD, 1: 170). To put it simply, everything that exists, is good, and vice versa, on Anselm’s view. Concurrently then, “since nothing and non-being do not have being, they are not good. And so nothing and non-being are not from him [God] from whom only good and being come.” (DCD, 1:170). Thus, evil does not exist because by lacking goodness, it lacks being. Evil is a merely an absence of that which is good, a privation of good, i.e. it is nothing as it lacks being. The non-being comes to exist because God causes it to be. It ceases to be when God stops preserving it and it returns to its original status of non-existence. This cannot be interpreted as a birth of a reality, rather a becoming in the sense of a alteration (loss) of an ontological status. (Deme, 2002: