The Strengths and Weaknesses of Augustine’s and Ireneau's Theodicy

The Strengths and Weaknesses of Augustine’s and Ireneau's Theodicy

‘Evil did not come from God, since God’s creation was faultless and

perfect’ (St Augustine)

St Augustine was a man wrote a theodicy about the problem of evil and

suffering based on the Creation and Fall of Genesis in the bible, he

believed that evil was caused by something that was outside the

omnipotence of God. God himself is all powerful but after creating the

world, he Himself would not be able to control the actions that human

beings create in changing it. When God created the world, with

absolutely no evil and suffering, he saw what he had done and saw it

was all good.

God did not deprivate the world from having evil and suffering and he

has no reason to have any blame for it as God created the world with

nothing bad inside it. Evil is not a substance that could have been

created by God, therefore he cannot be responsible for it. I think

that this was a weak point in Augustine’s theodicy because he cannot

truthfully call evil a substance as humans do not know how much more

God could have done to create the world.

Human beings have chosen to make the world an evil place, they have

turned away from God and what he has created to make other beings

suffer. God did not put wars onto the world, human beings caused them

to happen over being greedy and selfish. Other humans want what other

humans have because of jealousy. For example; Why take a innocent

persons life just for the sake of it in less economically developed

countries? Is it just for the pleasure or fun of it? God left the

world in the hands of angels and human beings and they have just

abused...

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...of millions of people dying for the greed and jealousy of

other humans. Love from God cannot be expressed by the death of

people, that is not right. People dying of natural diseases that

cannot be helped and going to heaven is not as sinful as people dying

for no apparent reason and going to heaven.

‘Gods gift of free will is in no way an excuse for the existence of

evil’ If God knows the consequences of the humans that he had created

then why give them the choice of free will. Humans are like robots,

their actions can already be concluded before even having chosen them

yet. Therefore God would have known what the consequences of evil and

suffering could be. For example; wars, dying, the Holocaust and less

economically developed countries. An omnipotent God would not have

made humans suffer from evil for any purpose.