The notion of evil (Gk κακόν, κακία; Lat. malum; lit. “evilness”), along with its opposite, the idea of good (ἀγαθόν; καλόν), is in the focus of early Christian philosophical and theological reflection, largely based both on Greek philosophy and on Scripture. From the philosophical side, for Socrates, at an ethical-gnoseological level, evil was vice and ignorance, as opposed to the good, which was virtue and science. Plato elaborated a metaphysical doctrine of the good, as opposite to evil, which is mere negativity: …