Those Mutakallimūn, as I have made known to you, do not imagine nonbeing1 other than absolute nonbeing; but they do not consider the privations2 of all the habitus as privations. For they think that every privation and the corresponding habitus — as, for instance, blindness and sight, death ana life — have the status of two contraries, like the warm and the cold. For this reason they say in absolute parlance that nonbeing does not need an agent, for only an act calls necessarily for an agent. This is correct from a certain point of view. Though they say that nonbeing does not need an agent, they say, according to their principle, that God makes blind, makes deaf, and causes that which moves to rest. [16a] For these privations are to their mind existent things. It behooves us to let you know our opinion about this, according to what is required by philosophic speculation. Now you know already that what removes an impediment of motion is, from a certain point of view, the mover. Thus in the case of one who removes a pillar from under a piece of wood, whereupon the latter falls down because of its natural weight, we say that he who moved the pillar moved the piece of wood; this is stated in the “Akroasis.”3 In the same way we say of one who removes a certain habitus that he produces the corresponding privation, though that privation is not an existent thing. Just as we say of him who puts out a lamp in the night that he has brought about darkness, we say of one who has destroyed sight that he has made blindness, even though darkness and blindness are privations and do not need an agent. In accord with this interpretation, the dictum of Isaiah — who forms the light and creates darkness, who makes peace and creates evil4 — has become clear. For darkness and evil are privations. Consider that he does not say, who makes darkness and who makes evil, for these are not existent things with which the word making could be connected. With regard to these two things, he simply uses the expression who creates. For this word has a connection with nonbeing5 in the Hebrew language. Thus it says: In the beginning God created, and so on;6 namely, out of nonbeing. And the relation between privation7 and the act of an agent is according to the manner that we have stated. It is in this way likewise that you should understand its dictum: Who hath set man’s mouth? Or who setteth the dumb or deaf, or the seeing or the blind?8 However, another interpretation of this dictum is possible; namely, it can be said: who is he that created man as a being endowed with speech, or who creates him as a being lacking speech? In the latter case what would be meant would be the bringing into existence of matter that is not capable of receiving [16b] a certain habitus whatever that habitus may be. For he who brings into existence a certain kind of matter that is incapable of receiving a certain habitus may be said to have made the privation in question; just as one who is able to save an individual from perishing and refrains from saving him may be said to have killed him. It has thus become clear to you that, according to every opinion, the act of an agent can in no way be connected with a privation; the agent can only be said to have produced the privation by accident, as we have explained. On the other hand, that which is produced by an essential act of the agent9 is necessarily a thing that exists whoever the agent may be, for his act can only be connected with an existent thing.
After this preamble, you should recall that which has been demonstrated with regard to the fact that evils are only evils in relation to something; and that everything that is an evil with reference to one particular existent, that evil is the privation of this thing or of one of the states suitable for it. For this reason the following proposition may be enunciated in an absolute manner: all evils are privations. With respect to a man, for instance, his death is an evil, since death is his nonbeing.10 Similarly his illness, his poverty, or his ignorance are evils with regard to him, and all of them are privations of habitus. If you pursue all the particular cases falling under the above-mentioned general proposition, you will find that it is never at fault11 except in the opinion of one who does not distinguish between privation and habitus and between two contraries or one who does not know the natures of all things — one, for instance, who does not know that health is in general a certain equilibrium belonging to the domain of relation and that the privation of this relation generally constitutes illness. With regard to every living thing, death is the privation of form. Similarly with regard to everything that is destroyed among the other existents, its destruction is nothing but the privation of its form.
After these premises, [17a] it will be known with certainty that it may in no way be said of God, may He be cherished and magnified, that He produces evil in an essential act; I mean that He, may He be exalted, has a primary intention to produce evil. This cannot be correct. Rather all His acts, may He be exalted, are an absolute12 good; for He only produces13 being, and all being is a good. On the other hand, all the evils are privations with which an act is only connected in the way we have explained: namely, through the fact that God has brought matter into existence provided with the nature it has — namely, a nature that consists in matter always being a concomitant of privation, as is known. Hence it is the cause of all passing-away and of all evil. For this reason all the things that were not provided by God with this matter are not subject to passing-away and to being attained by any of the evils. Accordingly the true reality of the act of God in its entirety is the good, for the good is being. For this reason the book that has illumined the darkness of the world has enunciated literally the following statement: And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.14 Even the existence of this inferior matter, whose manner of being it is to be a concomitant of privation entailing death and all evils, all this is also good in view of the perpetuity of generation and the permanence of being through succession. For this reason Rabbi Meir interpreted the words: And, behold, it was very [meʾod] good — and, behold, death [maveth] was good,15 according to the notion to which we have drawn attention.
Remember what I have told you in this chapter and understand it. Then everything the prophets and the Sages have said will become clear to you regarding the good being in its entirety an essential act of the deity. Bereshith Rabbah says literally: Nothing that is evil descends from above.16 [17b]