of even their most basic beliefs. They needed to face the fundamental questions about their faith. Here is one of the most troubling: Why is there evil in the world? For many Christians from Aquinas’s age (and our own), the answer is a simple one: Satan. God creates a world of boundless goodness, and Satan enters God’s creation in Eden and corrupts it throughout history. Aquinas, of course, accepts this account as true (all of the Bible is true for Aquinas) but adds for himself the task of showing