The privation account of moral evil holds that the badness of morally bad acts consists not in the positive act itself or in any positive feature of the act but rather in the act’s lack of conformity to the moral standard. Traditionally recognized for its theological usefulness, the account has been the target of at least five recent objections. In this paper I offer a positive philosophical argument for the account and then show that the objections fail.

In this paper I will investigate one way of resolving the apparent tension between the following three propositions, endorsed by some theists: Every worldly event is a consequence guaranteed by God’s unimpedible causal activity, People sin, God is not the cause of sin. In particular, I will examine what I will call the unadorned privation defense, which has roots in Aquinas and continues to find defenders. I will argue that although defenders of this view successfully rebut certain criticisms, their defense (...) ultimately fails to reconcile these three propositions. (shrink)