The role of free will in the problem of evil emanates from Augustine's explanation of the origin of sin in his 'Confessions'. 'He is now certain that he has a free will, but the problem how evil comes to be in his will is unsolved.' This sentence is a summation of the chapter titled 'The Problem of the Origin of Evil'. Even after deep analysis of the origin of evil, Augustine still cannot give a definite answer to the question. In the context of the free will, the question that arises is, if God is benevolent and omniscient, why does He allow humans to sin. If the evil comes from human and the reason of it is human's free will, why do people have free will if God knows the consequences of it? God did not bestow a free will to a human for him …show more content…
Free will gives people choice, with a consciousness of what is good and bad. What leads on the wrong path, what renders the degradation of the thoughts and occasions the pollution of a free will, which leads to the sin. Augustine asks 'If the devil is the author, where does the devil comes from?'. In other words, what force provoked the angel to stand against God (and become a devil). A free will brings the possibility for people to guide their future. God is omniscient, He knows all the decisions that are going to be taken, He knows everything about all individual's lives. The construct of predestination and free will consist in conjoint action without debarring each other. Augustine in his piece 'The City of God' explores the connection between predestination and the free will in human's life. He explains it without divesting God His almightiness. God knows all the decisions nonetheless does not take the will to make a choice. For that matter, He does not change the sequence of events in order to contravene individual's decisions. Only a request in prayers can change them despite the previous actions of an
It is perhaps the most difficult intellectual challenge to a Christian how God and evil can both exist. Many of the greatest minds of the Christian church and intellects such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas spent their entire lives trying to solve this problem, and were unsuccessful (Erickson, 2009, p.439). However, this dilemma is not only an intellectual challenge, but it is emotional. Man feels it, lives it. Failing to identify the religious form of the problem of evil will appear insensitive; failure to address the theological form will seem intellectually insulting. This conundrum will never be completely met during our earthly life, but there are many biblical and philosophical resources that help mitigate it.
St. Augustine of Hippo, Boethius, and Anselm all address the concept of free will and God’s foreknowledge in their works “The City of God”, “The Consolation of Philosophy”, and “De Concordia”. While each work was written during a different time period, each of their approaches consists of a solution comprised of both unifying and unique points and arguments. While there is no clear contesting between one work and another, it is clear that free will is a complex and critical idea in Christian theology that has long since been debated. '
Many believe that our choices in life are already made for us and we have no control to what happens to us, although others believe that this life is like an epic journey and we can change our fate at any moment. It´s hard to choose which side you believe in my honest opinion I believe that our lives do not ¨lie in the fate of God¨ as stated by in the Iraq War Post by Faiza Al-Araji however I believe instead that our life is an odyssey, that we must travel through and make important choices by ourselves not by fate. But with many edvidence and claims in both story the question ¨How much in our lives do we actually controls?¨ wanders through our mind.
The cause of how people have chosen evil has been a conceptual issue for thousands of years on many different perspectives. People from a religious point of view believe that the underlining cause of evil is sin and temptation. Half of the time humans can choose good over evil in situations based off the legal system and the moral standards of society. "The interest of work in the common would not hold it together, instinctual ...
Free will is making choices and decisions that is not forced or driven by an external force but, instead comes from a intellect within on right and wrong. If an individual goes too far with his free will or takes advantage of having a free will then that results in the errors that humans tend to always commit. “Descartes thus concludes: 1)There can be both free will and God. 2)We can attain correct knowledge about ourselves and the world if we are careful to never judge anything that we do not clearly and distinctly understand.” (South University
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.
God is someone who encompasses all good things which means he must be a good God, and a good God would not want evil in our world. Humans having free will is a claim brought up by Stump to show Plantinga’s “Free will defense,” to possibly answer the problem of evil. Plantinga believes the response to the logical problem of evil is, the possibility of having free will and using it for good rather than evil, is a value that has the potential to outweigh all the evil in the world. Stump revises this claim because it leaves the existence of evil mysterious and does not fulfill the entirety of the response to the evidential problem of
Imagine starting your day and not having a clue of what to do, but you begin to list the different options and routes you can take to eventually get from point A to point B. In choosing from that list, there coins the term “free will”. Free will is our ability to make decisions not caused by external factors or any other impediments that can stop us to do so. Being part of the human species, we would like to believe that we have “freedom from causation” because it is part of our human nature to believe that we are independent entities and our thoughts are produced from inside of us, on our own. At the other end of the spectrum, there is determinism. Determinism explains that all of our actions are already determined by certain external causes
Free will is the ability to make choices that are not controlled by fate or God, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Human beings are mindful beings. By proposing that people can choose diverse ways to answer to a condition, it specifies the involvement of free will. On the other hand, as science remains to uncover new conclusions on human nature, it is shown that a huge deal of our own existence is the outcome of our background, education or organic nature, factors that are away from our control. A lot of our choices and experiences in life have been determined already. The problem between determinism and free will is that there are solid opinions that back up both sides. Noticeable philosophers have claimed these topics passionately. From observing their opinions, it is obvious that free will is incomplete and that inside the main source of human selections, are determined elements.
In the Confessions, Augustine wrote about his struggle with understanding how evil exists in a world created by God. He questioned how it was possible and why God allows evil in his creations because God is supremely good. After delving into finding a solution, Augustine concluded that evil does not exist, and the things deemed as evil are caused by free will. This paper will argue that Augustine has successfully proven that evil does not exist by explaining his earlier explanation of the origin of evil taught by the Manicheans, explaining Augustine’s teachings, and finally, using the textual descriptions of Augustine’s unwillingness to convert as support for his conclusion.
Having free will enables humans to have the ability to commit evil deeds as they desire, but, it also allows them to choose to commit pure acts representing the good. The idea that free will allows us to be praiseworthy is the reason it is considered such a great good. If the Divine created a world where humans were unable to pursue evil, then, we would not possess free will due to the fact that we would be controlled into pursuing only pure and good trials.
What this quote says, is that how can we possibly be responsible for our own actions if God knows what we are going to do anyways, and if God does know everyth...
this we call ‘God’” (Aquinas, p 351). He has all the say what happens to each and every person. People may believe they are making their own decisions but God has a premade plan. All change is just a movement from the potential of the action to the actually of the action.
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.
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)?