Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.7BJ

Summary of text [comment] pages 55 and 56

The Catholic Church has always resisted the temptation to divinize evil. The fourth Lateran Council in 1215 declared that God created all. The devil was created naturally good by God (in terms of dispositions) but became evil by himself (by way of thinkgroup and consciencelacking). Evil does not have God as its principle.

Similarly, St. Augustine rejected evil as a positive divine substance. “The cause of evil” is “deficiency of some good”.

How could this be?

How could “deficiencies of some good” arise?

St. Thomas thought that deficiencies could be due to the finiteness of the creature. Our limitations make deficiencies evil.

Along the same lines, Tielhard de Chardin thought that our genesis was fraught with evil in terms of both limitations and challenges.