However, n this world evil is constantly seen all around us. Because God is the author of all things in this world, and he is good, theists must then ask themselves what evil is and where it came from. Augustine sets up an argument I his Confessions that attempts to define evil, and in doing so he explains its existence. To follow this argument, it is important to realize that Augustine accepts some basic precepts regarding God and His creation. To begin with, God is the author of everything.
Considering that he is the sole creator, we would intent that all things he brought would be based on soulful and good intentions. But considering that there are evil things in the world, then wouldn’t he also be the sole creator to blame for evils existence? When discussing God’s capability of allowing evil to exists, one must be aware that there are two types of evil; moral evil and natural evil. Since we are discussing evil, we must take into account the several types of evil that exist in our world. Both moral and natural evil exist in the world.
Evil only comes into play when a member of God's world renounces his/her role in the proper scheme of things. Evil has no positive nature; but instead the loss of good is what constitutes evil. It is because of his definition of evil that Augustine buys into the free will defense. Augustine attributes all evil, both moral and natural, to the free actions of human beings created by God with the capacity to do either good or evil. While God is the embodiment of goodness and cannot make the decision to be anything but good, other members in the Great Chain of Being do have the ability to willfully alter their predisposition... ... middle of paper ... ...l, and knowing, suffering should not exist in the world.
Since God made us in His image, shouldn’t we have some part of us, however small, that is incorruptibly good? He puts the blame of evil on our free will. This means that God was not the creator of evil and could be both wholly good and omnipotent. Augustine also addresses the problem of bad things happening to innocent people. All of his arguments seem valid to me.
In monotheistic faith God is defined with a triad of attributes as being all good, all powerful and all knowing. This triad is what is empirically derived from God being the prime mover. The fact of evil, or theodicy, possess that there exists evil in this world and that this triad cannot exist through that evil conflicts with all three existing at once. The presence of evil means that God lacks one of these attributes because if he had them all, he would not allow evil to exist. If God and evil are to coexist then God must be: all knowing, all powerful, but good enough to want to stop it, lacking the knowledge to know how to stop it, or lacking the power to be able to stop it.
In “On Free Choice of the Will”, Augustine indicates the importance of his beliefs and opinions of human nature and of God. He thinks as greatly of God as possible and centralizes his thoughts of goodness with the concept of being/form (God); he also gives a description of how God’s rightness can be interpreted clearly through the evil doings of the world. One of the biggest and most difficult problems facing people is the problem of doing evil. If God is being, unchanging, eternal and all-powerful, then how is it that people do evil? Augustine tries to solve the problem by examining the “source of evil” and “what evil is”.
They believed that humankind, being a byproduct of the devil, was inherently evil and, therefore, not culpable for evil in the world. With the belief that humans were capable of free will, Augustine ultimately broke ties with the Manichaeans. Human beings as one entity of body and soul were made good by the almighty God and with their free will were able to cause evil phenomenons to occur, which rules out the idea that God is the cause of evil. Peter Kreeft was one that agreed with the ideals of Augustine and offered an answer to why God created the possibility of evil. According to Augustine, there is no such thing as evil.
(LPE5) Therefore, Christian theism is false (Merchant, 78).” The standard logical problem of evil brings God’s omnipotence into question, yet atheists have modified the logical problem of evil so that it also brings into question God’s omnibenevolence and even His omniscience. The modified logical problem of evil is as followed: “(LPE1) According to Christian theism, God is perfectly good and, thus, wills to prevent evil. (LPE6) According to Christian theism, God is all-knowing and, thus, foreknew that evil would exist. (LPE7) Therefore, according to Christian theism, God wouldn’t freely create this world. (LPE8) But, according to Christian theism, God freely created this world.
I told him that God could not accomplish two ends simultaneously – give humans free will and remove evil from the world – without contradicting His intentions to do one or the other. I outlined the distinction between moral evil and natural evil, in that moral agents (such as murder or rape) produce moral evil and natural evil occurs in the process of the functioning of the natural order (such as an earthquake, flood or plague). While we can attempt to question the intensity of ... ... middle of paper ... ...His creation even though He knew they could use it for evil. God is still good for giving His creation free will, even though it was abused by man, because a world full of free moral agents is far superior to one populated with automatons. God would not make humanity with free will and force them only to do good, because it would go against His will for creation to perform good acts freely.
THE FREE WILL DEFENSE The primary... ... middle of paper ... ... case in the present world in which we know given certain conditions person A would hypothetically engage in a morally evil action. It would no be impossible for God to create a world that were almost identical the present world, except that the person would then not engage in the evil. Since, to do so would deny him the freedom of individuality and his personality. That is, for God to ensure that he not engage in the evil would deny his freedom. The only other solution is for God to not create the world at all.