Augustine and The Problem of Evil

899 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Augustine concept of evil

In the beginning, God created the world. He created the earth, air, stars, trees and mortal animals, heaven above, the angels, every spiritual being. God looked at these things and said that they were good. However, if all that God created was good, from where does un-good come? How did evil creep into the universal picture? In Book VII of his Confessions, St. Augustine reflects on the existence of evil and the theological problem it poses. For evil to exist, the Creator God must have granted it existence. This fundamentally contradicts the Christian confession that God is Good. Logically, this leads one to conclude evil does not exist in a created sense. Augustine arrives at the conclusion that evil itself is not a formal thing, but the result of corruption away from the Supreme Good. (Augustine, Confessions 7.12.1.) This shift in understanding offers a solution to the problem of evil, but is not fully defended within Augustine’s text. This essay will illustrate how Augustine’s solution might stand up to other arguments within the context of Christian theology. Augustine’s idea of corruption is grounded by the assumption that any given thing must start out good to be corruptible. The revelation that God created the universe as Good means that it is also created with the potential for corruption. However, one might ask, where does the force for this corruption originate? If change is to occur to an object doesn’t there have to be a force acting upon the objects? For example, if one rests a fishbowl on a shelf so that it will not fall, one can assume it will not fall unless something or somebody else comes and pushes it. The fishbowl, having been placed on the shelf cannot fall just like any body of creation into the universe can... ... middle of paper ... ... effects of a corrupting entity, what then is Christ’s work? How can a physical sacrifice save the world from sliding into nonexistence? The answer comes from another adjustment; Christ comes to pull creation back towards the eternal God. Salvation through Christ is does not look like Him coming as a warrior to vanquish the evil forces, but Him coming as a loving servant to heal the corrupted beings (i.e. sinners) back to their original state of grace. Thus, the idea of there being a war between forces of God and Evil is not compatible with truth of the Gospel; rather that God designed the world in harmony and wishes it to return to this state. This proves that, in the end, Augustine’s answer to the problem of evil is correct in accordance to Christian Confession. Works Cited Augustine, and Henry Chadwick. "Book 7." Confessions. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991. Print.

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Augustine's Conundrum

    1046 Words  | 3 Pages

    And then adopted the one who he laid down his life for into his own bloodline of God’s Children. Therefore, instilling in them his own great love for humanity and making them have the very necessary thing to keep them from sin, love for humanity, charity. Augustine’s conundrum is definitely in this author’s opinion solved using the arguments he made showing how love conquers even

    Read More

  • Augustine’s Divided Line

    1604 Words  | 4 Pages

    Augustine’s contention that man cannot possibly come into truth by reason in his temporal life constitutes his initial departure from the ancients, and results in the need for an entirely new structuring of the relationship between man and the good. In differentiating between the nature of God and man, Augustine argues that man’s nature—unlike God’s—is corruptible, and is thus “deprived of the light of eternal truth” (XI, 22) . This stands the thought of Plato on its head, since now no amount of contemplation and argument will be capable of getting man closer to a truth that exists on a plane that “surpasses the reach of the human mind” (XXI, 5). If reason is an instrument as flawed as man himself, how, then, is man to know the supreme good if he is forced to grope blindly for it in a state of sin without any assistance from the powers of his own mind? It is this question which serves as the premise for Augustine’s division of existence into the City of Man and the City of God and articulation of a system of vice and struggle against vice that keeps man anchored to the City of Man and prevents him from entering the City of God in temporal life.

    Read More

  • The Theodicies of Augustine and Boethius

    771 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Augustine's Confessions, the early church father puts forth a complex theodicy in which he declares evil to be nonexistent. Such a leap may seem to be illogical, but this idea stems from the understanding of what is substance and what is not. According to Augustine, the duality of good and evil is false, because anything that is good is substance and what humans think of as evil is simply the absence of the good (Confessions, 126). Vices for example, are just the display of the absence of the good. Pride is the absence of humility, unrighteous anger the absence of temperance, and so on. This idea is evident as he writes that the ability to be corrupted is what makes something good, not i...

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Augustine And The Will

    1456 Words  | 3 Pages

    He states “ Here are two natures, a good one lead one way, a bad one leads the other way. How otherwise explain the opposition of two wills to one another. But I affirm that they are both evil, both the will to attend their meeting and the will to go to the theater”(4). This shows us the belief that as people we believe that we have good and evil will but we fail to notice that this idea is corrupt on its own because we relate ourselves to god. Augustine thinks that evil arises from humans disobedient will and not from a lack of thought. Augustine questions the divided will. He is stuck between his own law and the law of others. He is unsure weather to impulsively commit or not and he resolves this when he submit his will to god “ Now, now, let it be” (5). In human nature we only posses one will “So the reason why there are two wills in us is because one of them is not entire, and one has what the other lacks” (9). Augustine references the issues when there are two wills in one person that are at conflict with one another. Augustine gives the example two wills “For both wills are evil when someone is deliberating whether to kill a person by poison or by a dagger; whether to encroach on one estate belonging to someone else or a different one, when he cannot do

    Read More

  • Augustine Sin Essay

    813 Words  | 2 Pages

    For the vast majority of his years Augustine was confused regarding sinful nature. Even as an infant, Augustine was not free from sin. Observing an infant, even though he is too weak to cause any harm, he shows the first steps of sinning if he doesn’t get what he wants. Later on he concludes that teenagers desire to do evil things because they do not understand the nature of beauty or goodness, which is God. What later troubles him the most, is that his main motive was the desire to sin and do wrong. He proceeds that the sinful nature, along with certain situations and people in his life lead him, and brought him closer to God.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Augustine's Free Will

    744 Words  | 2 Pages

    As a matter of fact, Augustine does not realize that if it is as he argues that God foreknows every event in the world, then God created determined creatures that have no knowledge of being determined. Augustine points out that, “…although God foreknows our future wills, it does not follow from this that we do not will something by our own will.” (3.3.7.27). Augustine’s argument here supports my criticism. Namely, what follows from this argument is that humans in reality are not free because every action that they will is necessary, thus already pre-determined by God. What Augustine does not realize is that his argument actually proves that humans have no knowledge of being determined—but they are determined! Therefore, as I shall point out, God could have created a determined world, without evil, where beings act freely not knowing that they in fact are determined.

    Read More

  • Conflict Between God And Evil Essay

    2051 Words  | 5 Pages

    “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world” (Lewis, 1994, p. 91). Throughout history man has had to struggle with the problem of evil. It is one of the greatest problems of the world. Unquestionably, there is no greater challenge to man’s faith then the existence of evil and a suffering world. The problem can be stated simply: If God is an all-knowing and all-loving God, how can He allow evil? If God is so good, how can He allow such bad things to happen?Why does He allow bad things to happen to good people? These are fundamental questions that many Christians and non-Christians set out to answer.

    Read More

  • Saint Augustine's Journey: Understanding Evil and God

    729 Words  | 2 Pages

    The majority of people experience numerous events that change the course of their life. Saint Augustine, a prominent figure in the Catholic Church, experienced this event when he converted to Christianity. The process of converting, however, was a long, confusing process. A philosophical man, Augustine made sure to think hard about something before committing to it; as a result, he had a plethora of religious questions, with the majority revolving around God. Several of these questions pertain to evil and the role God has with it.

    Read More

  • On Free Choice of the Will

    1445 Words  | 3 Pages

    It therefore appears evident that God must be the root of all evil, as He created all things. However, Augustine delves deeper in search for a true answer. This paper will follow ...

    Read More

  • Augustine's Thoughts on Free Will

    752 Words  | 2 Pages

    Before we dive into what Augustine has to say about free will, we must first understand what the problem is. In The HarperCollins Dictionary of Philosophy, the problem of free will is defined as:

    Read More

  • Analysis of St. Augustine’s Confessions

    1939 Words  | 4 Pages

    St. Augustine is a man with a rational mind. As a philosopher, scholar, and teacher of rhetoric, he is trained in and practices the art of logical thought and coherent reasoning. The pursuits of his life guide him to seek concrete answers to specific questions. Religion, the practice of which relies primarily on faith—occasionally blind faith—presents itself as unable to be penetrated by any sort of scientific study or inquiry. Yet, like a true scientist and philosopher, one of the first questions St. Augustine poses in his Confessions is: “What, then, is the God I worship” (23)? For a long time, Augustine searches for knowledge about God as a physical body, a particular entity—almost as if the Lord were merely a human being, given the divine right to become the active figurehead of the Christian religion.

    Read More

  • The Two Kinds of Evil According to Augustine

    1275 Words  | 3 Pages

    God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, which makes us wonder what kind of morally sufficient reason justifies God to allow evil. We know that evil exists in our world, but so does God, so would God be the source of evil as well as good? We have established that God is the omnipotent and benevolent free creator of the world, but suffering and evil exist. Is God unable to prevent evil? If so, he would not be omnipotent. Is He able to prevent the evil in our world but unwilling? If this were then case then he wouldn’t be benevolent. A Persian thinker, Mani, suggested that the answer to this question was a kind of duality between the good and evil. This pluralistic view of the good and evil in our world would suggest that God is not omnipotent, which is why Augustine would reject Mani’s Manichaeism philosophy. Augustine later says that there are two kinds of evils: Moral evil, which would be the suffering from a result of the action of a rational being, and there is natural evil, which would be suffering that comes from physical events (i.e. natural disasters).

    Read More

  • Divine Comedy - St.Augustine in Dante’s Inferno

    1160 Words  | 3 Pages

    The second circle of hell, a realm for those who fell victim of their carnal desires, is another level at which to place Augustine’s soul for he was consumed by lust in his pre-conversion days. He was encouraged by his family to learn the art of persuasion and making of fine speech when he was only sixteen. He used these skills, which he developed very well, along with his good looks to seduce as many women as possible. It was “in that sixteenth year of my life in this world, when the madness of lust. . . took complete control of me, and I surrendered to it” (Confessions, 987). He was in love with being in love. Yet, he was unable to discern between love and lust.

    Read More

  • Origin of Evil in The Confessions by Augustine

    783 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...lighted” Augustine’s body (Confessions VIII. 5, p. 148). In this example, regardless of Augustine’s want to will succumbing to God, he found that his habits had rendered him unable to. His will in favor of the lower things held Augustine tighter than his will for God, which caused Augustine to choose the lesser good, which left him “in the midst of that great tumult I had stirred up against my own soul in the chamber of my heart” (Confessions VIII. 7, p.152). His two wills tore at him until he fully abandoned his earthly lust for the spiritual Godly desires; supporting his conclusion that free will in favor of the lesser goods causes evil. Therefore, free will is the ultimate source of evil.

    Read More

  • St. Augustine: Thoughts on Good and Evil

    872 Words  | 2 Pages

    Author Claudia Gray stated, “Self-knowledge is better than self-control any day” (Goodreads). Evil and sin exists in our world today and the temptation they bring bounds many human’s spiritual being. Finding the root of all evil is a hard and torturous concept to understand, but knowing one’s own free will helps bring understanding and deliverance from the evils of the world. Throughout the book Confessions Saint Augustine “ponders the concepts of evil and sin and searches the root of their being” (Augustine 15). The existence of evil is one of the most worrisome challenges a Christian or any individual deals with throughout life. Saint Augustine’s beliefs concerning the root of all evil and sins transforms as he begins to grow and develop in the knowledge of his free will and spiritual being. Early on, he believes “God created all things and evil is a thing, therefore God created evil” (Augustine 73-74). From this he conceives the notion that God cannot be good if he knowingly created evil. As Augustine begins to grow in his spiritual walk, his views begin to evolve as he questions his Manichee’s beliefs and explores the concepts of good and evil. From his inquiring Augustine develops the question, what is evil and what if evil did not need creating? He asks, “Do we have any convincing evidence that a good God exists” (Augustine 136-137)?

    Read More

More about Augustine and The Problem of Evil

Open Document