does not mean there is no evil in the world, of course, but rather that evil always has the aspect of corruption, lack of form and being. Hence Augustine can say there are evil things in the world, but he adds that every evil thing has the character of an “evil good,” or (as we could also translate his phrase) a “bad good thing.”4 There is no deep paradox in this phrase: it simply means that every bad thing is a good thing that has been to some degree corrupted, its goodness partly spoiled. Insofar