Augustine concluded that time begins with the beginning of the universe. He made a sharp cut between the things that exist in time and space and what is outside time and space.Augustine began with the question 'What was God doing before He created Heaven and Earth?' and decided that the question has no meaning because words such as 'before' and 'after' and 'then' can't apply where time as we know it doesn't exist." According to Augustine, time as we know it is part and parcel of this creation, not something that applies to God.The timeless present tense in which Augustine proposed that God exists is difficult to imagine or describe. Augustine wrote: 'Who shall lay hold upon the mind of man, that it may stand and see that time with its past
Depending upon your definition of the present, it is hard to distinguish when the present time really is. Trying to pinpoint the exact time of “now” seems to be impossible because when we actually finish saying “now” it is already in the past. It is believed by many people that when a human dies for example, they cease to exist. In this essay I will be looking at two key concepts that relate to the topic of existence and the present time. These concepts are ‘Presentism’ and ‘Eternalism’. I will begin the essay by outlining what ‘Eternalism’ is and how its followers may see the present in a different way because of it. From here I will propose some of its weaknesses followed by objections to these weaknesses. The second main concept will be ‘Presentism’ which will be the opposing argument that suggests that things only exist in the present time instead of the past, present and future. After giving this argument, I will also be giving objections and counters to it. I, myself believe that there is a present time and existence, as we I find it difficult to believe that something exists in the same way once it has died and decomposed.
...fer temporal goods (such as our body, health, beauty and so on) over goods of the will (such as knowledge and virtue)—inordinate desire’. The way we undergo these acts is by our own free will. Because we do not allow our minds to control the irrational parts of our souls and to perceive the eternal truths/ form/ being/ God, we sin; we allow our minds to be enslaved to inordinate desire. In other words, Augustine argues that we often turn away from the eternal truths, or the ethical truths, towards non-being which is evil because of temporal things. He says that evil lies in one’s intention, and not in their actions because one does evil as a result of their love for temporal goods; we misidentify the goods of the will (virtues) with temporal goods (wealth, honors, pleasures, physical pleasures and everything that a person cannot acquire of have simply by willing).
Saint Augustine’s Confessions are a diverse mix of autobiography, philosophy, and interpretation of the Christian Bible. The first nine Books of the work follow the story of Augustine 's life, from his birth (354 A.D.) up to the events that took place just after his conversion to Catholicism (386 A.D.). Born and raised in Thagaste, in eastern Algeria, he has one brother named Navigius, and two sisters. His father, Patricus, a small landowner and an official of the local government is still a pagan. Monica, his mother is a devout Christian. Augustine starts off by praising to God and that it is the natural desire of all men. Yet Augustine does not have a lot of knowledge about God because he felt that he was powerless for God to come to him
He struggled with the idea for many years over the course of his life. One approach he considered was that God created all things, evil is a thing, therefore, God created evil. He realized that this argument supported the idea that evil was a thing. Augustine then began to wonder if evil was even a thing at all? So he decided to approach the issue from a different angle. He believed that God exists and is good. That meant that God was incapable of creating evil, meaning something else must be its source. That lead him to conclude in two ideas. First, that all things that God created are good, evil is not good, therefore, evil could not have been created by God. And second, God created every thing, God did not create evil, therefore, evil is not a thing. So what is evil? He determined that everything God created was good and had a being. So that rather than a thing, evil was just the deprivation of good, just like darkness is just the deprivation of light. So how did evil come into this world? Augustine came to the conclusion that it was impossible for evil to be chosen since there would be no evil thing in existence to choose. He believes you are only able to turn from good to a lesser good, since all things are actually good. So evil, then, is the act of selecting the lesser good. That being said,
7-12- Again Augustines thoughts on God reflect that of the religious teachings of his day, namely those of the Neoplatonists. For example he refuses to speculate on how the soul joins the body to become an infant and even follows Plato when he suggests that this life could possibly be some kind of “living death”. He then goes into an examination of his infancy, which he depicts as a quite pitiful state. He described himself as a sinful and thoughtless creature who made demands on everyone, wept unceasingly, and gave everyone a hard time that took care of him. Though very brutal in his self examination, he later states that he does not hold himself accountable for any of these sinful acts because he simply can’t remember them.
For a majority of his life, St. Augustine attempted to solve the problem of evil. The problem has plagued Christianity for centuries, as the idea that God created evil would cause many contradictions to the religion. If God is the creator of everything, and evil is a thing, then God knowingly created evil. If this be the case, than God can not be good. Initially Augustine is intrigued by the solution introduced by the Manichees Understanding that the conclusion brought by that rationale could not be the conclusion, Augustine then asked “What is evil?”.
“Please tell me: isn’t God the cause of evil?” (Augustine, 1). With this question to Augustine of Hippo, Evodius begins a philosophical inquiry into nature of evil. Augustine, recently baptized by Saint Ambrose in Milan, began writing his treatise On Free Choice of the Will in 387 C.E. This work laid down the foundation for the Christian doctrine regarding the will’s role in sinning and salvation. In it, Augustine and his interlocutor investigate God’s existence and his role in creating evil. They attempt not only to understand what evil is, and the possibility of doing evil, but also to ascertain why God would let humans cause evil. Central to the premise of this entire dialogue is the concept of God, as relates to Christianity; what is God, and what traits separate Him from humans? According to Christianity, God is the creator of all things, and God is good; he is omnipotent, transcendent, all-knowing, and atemporal- not subject to change over time- a concept important to the understanding of the differences between this world and the higher, spiritual realm He presides over. God’s being is eidos, the essence which forms the basis of humans. With God defined, the core problem being investigated by Augustine and Evodius becomes clear. Augustine states the key issue that must be reconciled in his inquiry; “we believe that everything that exists comes from the one God, and yet we believe that God is not the cause of sins. What is troubling is that if you admit that sins come from… God, pretty soon you’ll be tracing those sins back to God” (Augustine, 3).
Al Ghazali studied Aristotelian philosophy in order to completely appreciate it and he then used the philosophers’ judgment to point out errors in the Aristotelian philosophies. Muslims in Al Ghazali’s time were concerned about the creation of the universe. He argued if we accept time as a creation of God, then God created time, has control to end time, time began when the world was created and will stop when the world ends. Al Ghazali contested Aristotelian philosophy that if God knew all the details this would imply an advantage in his spirit therefore there would be no change in everlasting knowledge. Consequently, Al Ghazali assisted adherents in the Middle Ages to understand; that God does know all the details and this does not imply an advantage in his spirit. To highlight God’s supremacy and ability to know all things Al Ghazali used what the Qur’an said about God being all
Augustine makes a point that God created evil in order to contradict the good of the earth. There had to be a power or force that tries to draw you away from the right path. Basically he is trying to explain that one cannot achieve great things without obstacles in his or her path. His thoughts and impressions of what God created are present in every decision made in a normal beings life. If one sits down to think about it, good and evil are in every tale, story, and movie from the beginning of
Augustine’s conflict between people being able to measure time and the difficulty in doing so is understandable because of his perspective on the present. He claims sensibly that the present moment has no overall value, but that doesn’t mean that in it we can’t assign points in time that pass and compare them. His conclusion arises because he doesn’t consider the possibility that time of something in the past still has value in the future as long as the difference between its start and end points are known. It is not surprising that he excludes this possibility, however, because he believes that time in the past is immeasurable.
In conclusion, Saint Augustine’s life is a good example of the concept of reading, conversion and memory, which we can use as a guideline for the quest in finding God. As we saw through out the book, Saint Augustine went through many processes of reading, conversion and memory. He not only went through these conversions in an academic way, but also in a religious way. He went from not believing in God to reading the Bible, reading Platonian books and Cicero’s Hortensius. It was after reading these literatures that he began to believe in God and went through a religious journey to understand God and Jesus Christ. It was during this journey to understand God and Jesus Christ that he used his memory to remember things he read and how they relate to what he was trying to figure out at the time.
In an attempted to defend the church, Augustine traced the history of two cities or states from the beginning of the world. The two cities had two main focuses. One was the city that was earth-like. In this city people were seen to
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.
Aurelius Augustinius, St. Augustine, was born in 354 A.D. in Tagaste, a town in North Africa. Born just over a century before the fall of Rome, Augustine would live his entire life within the Roman empire. Augustine was a great Christian thinker and wrote numerous works which survive today, and offer us a vivid glimpse into the period. His works and thoughts on Christ, the nature of God, the role of the Church, and myriad other topics, shaped much of medieval thought. He would remain a major influence for 1000 years after he died. Two of his works stand out as possibly the most important of his writings: City of God, and Confessions. Augustine's Confessions is the first ever autobiography. In his Confessions, Augustine outlines his life and path toward Christianity and the Grace of God. Augustine was born into a Christian household but did not convert to Christianity until he was 32. In Confessions, he traces his spiritual journey of enlightenment through four stages. His religious conversion began with his exposure to Classical philosophy and progressed through a period of involvement with the gnostic Christian sect of the Manichees. The road to conversion passes through Milan, where Augustine meets Bishop Ambrose of Milan, and culminates with a miraculous happening which allows Augustine to take the final step to complete conversion. With his account of internal resurrection, and a personal relationship with God, the journey which Augustine relates typifies the attraction to Christianity which so many people felt during the latter period of the Roman empire.
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)?