"A Jovial Rebuke 'Of Goodness' "

[frill 2277]

BY QUILL OF 
HARACCUS of VES

or

Eidr Haraqqa;

 

OF THE WORSHIPFUL GUILD OF WRITERS OF THE GOLDEN CITY OF VES

1718

***

IN RESPONSE TO
GUY OF HAAS, 
TRULY MAN KNOWS NO GREATER PIETY THAN TO BRING STUDY TO GOD’S WORKS.

 

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Esteemed brother,

 

I wish not to begin with disagreement to your glorious missive but I fear it is a folly of a chemist or Dwe’r engineer to reduce the definition of good to its empirical, and pragmatic, capacity of utility. Surely it is within scripture to denote that all things are predicated as good through nature of existence? If all is but created in the image and design of GOD, then it is of a perfect being such as GOD to not err in his creation - and thus, all things of His creation are good innately, as it is not a capability of our perfect GOD to create something that is imperfect nor flawed.

 

This is why I stress, as I am sure a good man of the cloth does remember, that good is an innate status of our being. I fear that I need to expound this with some clarity, if but only to forbid myself from being too deft with the sharp-blows of vocabulary and mincing my own words.

 

It is of GOD to be perfect, for GOD is the highest being known - a man of the clergy such as yourself should thus agree.

 

Therefore, it is impossible for a perfect being to create the imperfect - an imperfection, even purposefully ordained by His divine will, is but perfect in-of-itself; our GOD, through his divine will, can not err.

 

Thus, if all is created perfectly, and goodness is that state of being which is both holily ordained and divined by Him as the superlative state of being, it must be concluded that goodness and being are the same. Your good pen did write itself that in the words of Scripture it is said that the Lord saw all His creation, and that it was good. And thus there is none but in his creation.

 

Therefore, the goodness - as I was so pressing in the canopied bench at the Bird and the Bard on our first foray into such a discussion - is but a privation, a perversion, and thus a lacking of the not-good, so created by some other malicious party. The opposite of good, hereafter referred to as bad for the sake of simplicity [we both very well know this is but an argument we could continue to split to the last hair], is thus not a status of being in its own right - it is but a privation of goodness. There is no bad, only a diminishing of the innate good as created by the Lord.

 

I am sure I have aptly expounded my disagreement with goodness as something to be strived, as you know full well from our days of shamefully unpenned debated that I see goodness as but the basal state of all creation, and that it is but the actions of monsters and Men alike to pervert this goodness, this badness being but a creation of our own. Our first parents in that lapsarian flower-grove would know nothing of badness, for they were those that were closest to the truest form, unadulterated, of His creation - but they would know not of badness to compare it, thus not seeing neither good nor bad for no such binary had been forced into their hands by the actions so wrought by Men.

 

I pray it brings you solace to know that I view the concept of goodness as something of our own creation, if but only to dilute the fact that it is but a by-product of the evils that those who pervert the Divine creation so duly create. 

 

I hope this letter reaches you well,

 

Eidr.

[John Ivory 4547]

Guy receives the refutation personally from Eidr on a day’s walk around Ves, accepting the pamphlet with a delighted smile. He quickly returns to his study in anticipation, candles burning ever into the night as he studies it over. Later in the evening, he is fast asleep; his pen shall return to work come the morning dew.