There are a few things which need to be said to address this issue. First of all, the modal disproof you discuss (MD) presupposes a view of free will in which God cannot ensure that there is some moral good in the world. This presupposition assumes a strong version of libertarian free will which is at odds with both the Molinist and traditional Thomist conception of God's causality. That said, it is a view of free will which is plausible and popular in contemporary circles so I think the MD is still worth addressing.

Second, let us imagine the alleged possible world in which every agent always does moral evil, call it PWE. The presence of moral evil in PWE is either compatible with the existence of God (precisely, a good God), or it is not. If it is compatible, then no issue arises for the theist. Just as with any attempt at the problem of evil, if the evil in the world is compatible with God's goodness, it cannot be used as an argument against the existence of God. PWE may be compatible with God's goodness if a sufficiently strong version of the free will defense is used. (e.g. God is justified in creating creatures who can always freely choose the wrong because free will is such a good thing etc.)

On the other hand, we may be inclined to think that PWE is incompatible with the existence of a perfectly good God. In that case, the problem can be dealt with the same way the older modal problem of evil can be dealt with. We may simply opt to say that PWE is not a possible world.

Now, you may think that this move is not an option if we opt for the view of free will presented in 'Premise' since assuming that free will requires the ability to do otherwise (or more precisely, to choose wrongly) means that it is possible that humans always choose evil. But this isn't quite right. It doesn't take into account the background information.

If it is true that PWE is a world which is so bad that a good God has no reason to permit the evil in it (and thus no reason to

Given a Thomistic account of God's causality, God is the cause of our choices, albeit not the evil of certain choices (i.e. not the evil of sin). Given this, how can we reconcile God's love with the belief in certain evils? I have two things in mind. First, it seems that God is the cause of certain horrific and sick acts (e.g. rape & torture). Even though God is not the cause of the defect of these acts on Thomism, he nevertheless arranges for the acts to happen, in the way that they happen, with the effects that they have. This strikes me as contradicting any meaningful notion of "love" in God.

Second, how is that God arranges for creatures to act in ways that ensure their damnation? Even a modestly loving human, in fact, I would even say a positively corrupt person (so it seems), barring certain psychological issues, would not arrange it so that certain individuals were damned. Assuming these people deserve damnation on account of their sins does not solve the problem, for on Thomsim, it is God's causality which ensures that the reprobate perform the actions leading to their damnation

What do the Thomists think? Do the non-Thomists find this issue to be sufficient to undermine the Thomistic approach to God's causality and sin?

Camoden wrote:

Thanks for the reply. In some senses this sounds a decent bit like Calvinism, but not quite. Would you mine comparing and contrasting the differences between this and reformed theology?

Thanks in advance and may God bless you,

Cameron
 

Well, I am not expert in Calvinism and what Calvin himself actually wrote. So I speak somewhat tentatively. In any case, what I can say at first is that Calvin and Aquinas both are similar precisely because they are working with Augustine as a primary source. Augustine was one of the firsts to really articulate a view in which predestination takes place prior to consideration of our merits. In that sense, Calvin and Aquinas are Augustinians and insofar as they are faithful to Augustine, they are in agreement. 

Now, a lot of people would attribute "double predestination" to Calvin and this is certainly not what Aquinas or Augustine taught. In that sense, Calvin departs from these two. For Aquinas, God chooses who to predestination and consequently moves these people to perform good works. For a proponent of double predestination, God ALSO chooses who to damn and consequently moves these people to commit sins on account of this decree. So for Aquinas, the decision to damn someone is negative, i.e. prior to consideration of that person's sins, it is nothing other than the fact that God didn't predestine the person. However, for a proponent of double predestination, it is an additional decree to damn the person. (I realize that this distinction is somewhat obscure and perhaps a distinction without a difference...that is what the opponents of Aquinas's system argued).

Also, Calvin, I think takes a somewhat different view from Aquinas as to how God causes our actions. For Calvin, we are inevitably drawn towards choosing evil because we have evil desires unless God gives us grace. On account of giving us grace however, we are inevitably drawn towards the good. For Calvin, we are free as long as we choose from ou

Aquinas argues, and Thomists agree that God is not really related to His effects. The relation between God and creatures, on the part of God, is merely rational. How should we understand this? It seems to imply God would have been the same regardless of what knowledge He had

Timocrates wrote:

But God offers us grace and we refuse it. It's not that God was deficient in the actuality of a human moral evil; it's that we were deficient, and this is the cause of the evil. We at best choose a finite good over an infinite good. To be sure, the scandal of human evil results exactly from God's refusal to abandon us, His work/creatures. It is in man's power to make his ways evil; however, it is not in his power to make his ways good because no man is the cause as such of goodness; i.e., man could not be good unless something good was first given to him. Gratitude is thus an extremely important habit and virtue in man.
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This is a fine position to hold in my view. However, it is not the Thomistic position. The Thomistic position holds that in an act of moral evil, God causes the human being to choose to act wrongly and to choose freely that is. However, the choice itself is a good and therefore comes from God. The fact that the choice is for evil is a deficiency and therefore has no efficient cause. Rather, the cause is the human will in virtue of not striving for moral goodness. That is the Thomistic view