Returning to Waggoner, he rarely makes references to evil. He rather equates evil with the harm created by the consequences of the original sin.
“Since evil is a part of man's very nature, being inherited by each individual from a long line of sinful ancestors, it is very evident that whatever righteousness springs from him must be only like ‘filthy rags’ (Isa. 64:6), compared with the spotless robe of the righteousness of God.”63
61 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican: Libreria Editrice
Vaticana/Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications, 1994), 82.
62 Irenaeus Against Heresies, trans. A. Cleveland Coxe, in ANF Vol.1 eds. Alexander Roberts and James
Donaldson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004), 456.
Waggoner’s logic seems to emerge from his scientific mind, as a mathematical insight derived from the rule of signs. Man cannot do right if ruled by wrong, as much as plus multiplied with minus results in minus. Brought on the spiritual realm, this logic implies that evil multiplied with evil yields good because it extinguishes into itself by the fact that a contrary multiplied against the contrary can only result in good. At the same time, good multiplied with good yields good, just as plus multiplied with plus results in plus.64 As Waggoner writes,
“a man cannot do good until he first becomes good. Therefore, deeds done by a sinful person have no effect whatever to make him righteous, but, on the contrary, coming from an evil heart, they are evil, and so add to the sum of his sinfulness. Only evil can come from an evil heart, and multiplied evil cannot make one good deed; therefore, it is useless for an evil person to think to become righteous by his own efforts. He must first be made righteous before he can do the good that is required of him, and which he wants to do.”65
In fact, Waggoner’s concept of evil is yet again consonant with the Orthodox outlook in the sense that evil is not regarded necessarily in a Manichaean fashion—as a force equally powerful with the good—but it is personalized as Satan and as such far less powerful than God. Waggoner does not classify Satan as a fallen angel because he does not spend time exploring who Satan is or where Satan originates from.66 For
64 Writing about the concept of evil in the Orthodox context, Marian Gh. Simion explains that “the monist
approach resolves the paradox of evil by analogy with the role of zero in mathematics–a model apparently formulated by one of the prominent early Christian writers, Dionysius the Areopagite.” See, Marian Gh. Simion, Religion and Political Conflict: From Dialectics to Cross–Domain Charting Preface by His All Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I (Montréal: Presses internationals polytechnique, 2011), 148–9. Quoting two of Dionysius’ exegetes, “we may illustrate this thought by the nature of zero in mathematics, which is non-entity (since, added to numbers, it makes no difference) and yet has an annihilating force (since it reduces to zero all numbers that are multiplied by it.) Even so evil is nothing and yet manifests itself in the annihilation of the things it qualifies. See, W.J. Sparrow-Simpson, and W.K. Lowther Clarke (Eds.) Dionysius the Areopagite (London: The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1957), 20; as quoted by Marian Simion, Ibid., 149.
65 Waggoner, Christ and His Righteousness, 55.
66 In attempting to explain the origins of evil, in the First Homily of his Hexaemeron, the early Christian
writer, Basil the Great, recognizes that evil was not created by God and does not exist as an entity. It only exists as a possibility for disorder, and as the absence of good. “If then evil is neither uncreated nor created by God, from whence comes its nature?” asks Basil. “Certainly that evil exists, no one living in the world will deny. What shall we say then? Evil is not a living animated essence; it is the condition of the soul opposed to virtue, developed in the careless on account of their falling away from good.” According to Basil the Great, evil has no intrinsic logic, if one is to regard God as the supreme good. In fact, “it is equally impious to say that evil has its origin from God, because the contrary cannot proceed from its contrary,” writes Basil the Great. “Life does not engender death; darkness is not the origin of light; sickness is not the maker of health. In the changes of conditions there are transitions from one condition to the contrary; but in genesis each being proceeds from its like, and not from its contrary.” See, Basil the Great, The Treatise the Spiritu Sancto, the Nine Homilies of the Hexaemeron and the Letters,
128
Waggoner, Satan is a deceiver who provides false testimony, and acts antithetically to the divine truth. Therefore, “we bid Satan be gone with his false witness against God,” states Waggoner.67 Event though able to fully control human being, by contrast to God’s love, Satan has limited power over the believer,
“Our ascription of praise shows to Satan that we have obtained re-enforcements; and as he has tested the power of the help that is granted to us, he knows that he can do nothing on that occasion, and so he leaves us.”68
Therefore, once personalized, Satan represents an imagined entity identifiable with anything that distracts the believer from the path to salvation. In the very few occasions when Waggoner writes about Satan, the information he gives does not contradict the Orthodox Christian view, making it impossible to find any disagreement between the two traditions.