Exploring How the Theodicies of Irenaeus and Augustine Account of Natural Evil

Exploring How the Theodicies of Irenaeus and Augustine Account of Natural Evil

The problem of evil concerns the challenge of how an all-powerful and

all-loving God can allow his creation to suffer, without helping then

and putting an end to their suffering. This challenge is an often

quoted reason for being unable to believe in God for it is argued,

either God does not exist or, if he does then he is not a God worthy

of out worship.

St Augustine (AD354-430) tried to solve this problem and based his

arguments on the Bible, especially the stories of the creation and the

fall in Genesis. For Augustine, God is the source of everything, which

he believed had been created out of nothing - 'ex nihilo'. As a result

everything in the world is created good and therefore the world is

perfect and free from faults. As far as Augustine was concerned all

creation is good and it expresses the perfection of God's creativity

and goodness, 'God saw all that he had made, and it was very good'.This

implies that suffering and evil were unknown within this world. He

argued that as God is perfect he could not be blamed for the fact that

evil does exist within the world, and that any evil that is found is

purely deprivation, not a substance - evil and unhappiness is the

cause of lack of good and happiness. If evil was a substance, it would

mean that God created it, which Augustine rejects.

If God cannot have created evil, Augustine traced back its origins to

those creatures in the world that have free will - angels and human

beings. These creatures abused God's gift of freedom and choose

wilfully to turn away from God, the supreme good, and to turn towards

the lesser good instead. In keeping with the story of the fall in

Genesis 3, he argued that the desire for power proved too much for

Adam and Eve, who were tempted by Satan, a fallen angel, to break

God's command and to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of