I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create calamity: I the LORD do all these things.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
“I make good things and ‘create’ evil things.” For to “create” means to order and arrange. And so in most manuscripts it is written, “I make good things and order evil things.” To make is to give being to something that did not exist at all, but to order is to arrange something that already exists in such a way that it becomes greater and better. Thus, when God says, “I order evil things,” he means those things that fall away, that tend to non-being, and not those that have attained their end. For it has been said that, owing to the divine providence, nothing is permitted to reach a state of non-being. - "The Catholic and Manichaean Ways of Life 2.7.9"
“From my works they will learn; for when I needed to inflict pain on my people for their repentance and discipline, I gave them up to warfare as if handing them over to darkness and wrath on account of their wickedness.” Once they have turned and received help, [God] will deem it right to restore them, and it follows that the light of peace and of all good things will rise on them, but in my judgment also the things of wrath. So learn this lesson from me. As I am the creator of light and the leader of peace, likewise am I of dark things and those things considered painful. The evil things have been reckoned to the many whose creator inflicts evil on them. He does so whenever his righteous judgment appoints such, according to the various ways they deserve evil as judgment on their sins. - "Commentary on Isaiah 2.27"
These things have thus been clearly shown to you to be in some cases bad, some good and some in between, … the inspired author is saying the in-between things are not really bad but are thought to be by the general run of people—things like captivity, servitude and exile. Now, it is necessary to explain the reason for this statement. Loving as [God] is and quick to show mercy, while slow in exercising retribution and punishment, God sent prophets so as to avoid consigning the Jews to punishment, intending to frighten them in word, so as not to punish them in deed.…
Observing this and wishing to undermine the reform that was the result of such a threat, the devil sent down false prophets, and in contradiction of the prophets’ threats of captivity, servitude and famine, false prophets preached the opposite—peace, prosperity and enjoyment of countless good things. Hence, the genuine prophets also mocked the false by saying, “Peace, peace—and where is peace?” This every scholar knows, that...
For since we are accustomed to use the word evil to speak of calamities, and not only of thefts and adulteries, so the prophet allows this usage. On this basis the prophet can say, “There is no evil in the city that the Lord has not done.” This too, by means of Isaiah, God has made clear, when he said, “I am God who makes peace and creates evil,” again naming calamities evils. This evil also Christ hints at, thus saying to the disciples, “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,” that is to say, the affliction, the misery. It is manifest then on all sides that he here calls punishment an evil, even as we commonly do, affirming at the same time that God brings these on us. This affords us the greatest view of his providence. For the physician is not only to be commended when he leads forth the patient into gardens and meadows, nor even into baths and pools of water, nor yet when he sets before him a well-furnished table, but when he orders him to remain without food, when he oppresse...
Now (like many other persons nowadays, especially those who have a heretical proclivity), while morbidly brooding over the question of the origin of evil, Marcion’s perception became blunted by the very irregularity of his researches. When he found the Creator declaring, “I am he that creates evil,” Marcion had already concluded from other arguments that satisfy only twisted minds that God is the author of evil. So Marcion now applied to the Creator the figure of the corrupt tree bringing forth evil fruit, that is, moral evil, and then presumed that there ought to be another god, after the analogy of the good tree producing its good fruit. Accordingly, finding in Christ a different disposition—one of a simple and pure benevolence, differing from the Creator—Marcion readily argued that in his Christ had been revealed a new and strange divinity; and then with a little leaven he leavened the whole lump of the faith, flavoring it with the acidity of his own heresy. - "Against Marcion 1.2"
