A foundational belief in Christianity is the idea that God is perfectly good. God is unable to do anything evil and all his actions are motives are completely pure. This principle, however, leads to many questions concerning the apparent suffering and wrong-doing that is prevalent in the world that this perfect being created. Where did evil come from? Also, how can evil exist when the only eternal entity is the perfect, sinless, ultimately good God? This question with the principle of God's sovereignty leads to even more difficult problems, including human responsibility and free will. These problems are not limited to our setting, as church fathers and Christian philosophers are the ones who proposed some of the solutions people believe today. As Christianity begins to spread and establish itself across Europe in the centuries after Jesus' resurrection, Augustine and Boethius provide answers, although wordy and complex, to this problem of evil and exactly how humans are responsible in the midst of God's sovereignty and Providence.
In Augustine's Confessions, the early church father puts forth a complex theodicy in which he declares evil to be nonexistent. Such a leap may seem to be illogical, but this idea stems from the understanding of what is substance and what is not. According to Augustine, the duality of good and evil is false, because anything that is good is substance and what humans think of as evil is simply the absence of the good (Confessions, 126). Vices for example, are just the display of the absence of the good. Pride is the absence of humility, unrighteous anger the absence of temperance, and so on. This idea is evident as he writes that the ability to be corrupted is what makes something good, not i...
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...d appear to be unrestrained and unpunished because their wickedness and the lack of true happiness that is associated with it is their punishment (Consolation of Philosophy 94). To both Augustine and Boethius, God is completely good and sovereign. However, He allows men free will and the punishment or rewards that come with these free decisions.
Both Augustine and Boethius agree that evil could not, by definition, come from God. Augustine abolishes this problem by declaring evil nonexistent while Boethius agrees and expands the idea so that the ability to sin is a weakness. Humans remain responsible amidst God's Providence due to the free will bestowed on Adam in the beginning. Although a difficulty to early Christian thinkers, the problem of sin does have answers consistent with Christianity's fundamental belief in a sovereign, perfect, and lovingly-good God.
Original sin arose from the rebellion started by Adam in the Garden of Eden. Since then, people have interpreted this in numerous different ways. Augustine sees original sin as the guilt that humans have inherited from Adam as descendants which cannot be absolved but can be redeemed. Conversely, Paul sees original sin as part of a former life which is absolved once one is baptized. Augustine and Paul have different views of man’s sinful nature because Augustine believes that man can never be rid of his desire to sin, whereas Paul believes that, if he chooses, man can return to the path of virtuosity. They differ in their thoughts based on the inherent quality to sin, the severity of sins as well as sex and sexuality as sins.
For the author the goodness of God remains despite the reality and face of evil in the world because evil is the result of man’s weakness, of man using his free will to veer away from the laws and opt to live in sin. God in all his power shows the utmost respect on man’s freedom by not imposing his will on men but by respecting his choice – to be good or to be evil.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430) is among the most influential thinkers in Christianity. He contributed a great number of ideas and notions to Christian theology that would have lasting effect on belief systems in Christian churches. One of his most notable contributions is the notion of “original sin” and his concept of “evil.” These notions evolved over the years. Augustine traces their evolution in his Confessions, a thirteen-volume autobiography he wrote when he was in his forties.
Augustine had the conviction that man is naturally good, since man was created by God, and that our nature has not been altered completely by the "original sin", but that our nature has simply been distorted or perverted from its original "good" state. He would say that, because of our corrupted nature, we do things selfishly, or, we do things to benefit ourselves instead of God and our neighbors. We tend to be unable of choosing good over evil in every situation. We have an inability to do what is right, while at the same time, we are completely responsible for what we do. This is not to say, however, that we never do what is right, or that we are pure evil, because evil is simply a corruption of the good. Instead, it means that our every action, when analyzed at the root, has the wrong motive, and ultimately we serve ourselves. Saying that human nature is not at least based on something good would imply that God created evil. Everything that is good is created by God, and there is nothing besides that. This ties into Augustine's belief that evil itself is not a thing, but is simply an absence of good.
Saint Augustine lived in a time where the pillar of strength and stability. Empires were being shattered, along with his own life that was filled with confusion and heartbreak. Augustine lost everyone, starting with his mistress, followed by his mother, after some time he lost his son. For a man to suffer this way can make him have his doubts about God, he had to know why God allows there to be suffering, if after all God is all-powerful and the best kinds of good. However from his student days one question always preoccupied Augustine: why does evil exist in the world?
In his Confessions, St. Augustine writes about a large number of topics that continue to have relevance today. The text documents the development of Augustine’s faith and his Christian philosophy, and one thing of particular interest is his argument for the nature of evil. Christianity predicates several important ideas that Augustine builds upon in his philosophy, and within its context, he presents a thorough, compelling argument against the problem of evil that identifies evil as a misperception.
In book 8 of Confessions it divulges the story of the moral conversion of Augustine written in 386 AD (Russo 14). In the beginning of the book it starts by explaining how Augustine obtained knowledge from the books of the epistles of St. Paul and the Platonists. Despite being aware that God is real, and is the supreme being of righteousness and power, he still ambivalent of it being not sufficient. In the book, he struggles with recognizing the contrast in logically being aware of something and following the bible by living a righteous life. For example, in the book it states “there is a difference between knowing what is good and going the good” (Russo 14). Later, he had an epiphany that the reason he cannot discover the difference between
Augustine conversation with his friend Evodius whether, "God is the cause of evil." This challenging question is one that I remember from my early teachings in Catholic school. Augustine clearly defines the difference of the evil people suffer and the evil they commit. The early philosopher talks about how God gives man the free choice and it is up to man to choose the correct path.
In the search of finally understanding evil and the being of God, Augustine understands who God is and what He stands for. He claimed that for God evil does not exists because He had created all things to be good. All element of the world are good, but may
Augustine’s Confessions is in itself a rather contradictory autobiography. It reveals the inner workings of St. Augustine’s mind, particularly the arduous mental obstacles he faces on his spiritual journey. Readers are exposed to an almost cyclical routine of behaviour in which Augustine descends into a whirlpool of sin, reaches an epiphany and emerges vigorously with newfound motivation. We begin to question whether St. Augustine is aware of how contradictory his own actions play out, and if so, how such contradictions may reveal deeper truths about human nature.
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 believed that God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. Yet, if God encompassed all these characteristics, then evil would not exist in the world. If God is all-powerful, he would be able to stop evil. If God is omniscient, he would know about evil. If God is perfectly good, he would want to stop evil. Therefore, the existence of evil demonstrates that God does not exist. However, Augustine asserts that evil is the privation of goodness and that it is not God’s fault that evil exists, but it is the consequence of man’s free will (Peterson). God who is perfectly-good, gave man free will because “it is better to have a universe with free will than without” (Lacewing). Free will was intended for man to choose the good, yet man is morally-imperfect and sometime chooses to bring about evil (Lacewing). Augustine who studied the teachings of Neo-Platonist Plotinus learned that “God, the ultimate Good, is the source of being from which all else receives its being” (Peterson 2). Augustine believed that the original sin; Adam and Eve’s sin, was “humanity’s fall from grace” (vision.org). Adam and Eve were consequently punished for their sin by God. As a result, by the sin of Adam of Eve, all of mankind was corrupted because it was human nature to sin. However, through the Grace of God, the human soul can achieve salvation. According to Augustine, the Grace of God entails that God can act without reason and that it is beyond human understanding. With the Grace of God, the human soul will be guided to understand what the good is, and thus, will do good. However, without God’s Grace, man by nature will sin. Augustine believed that one’s life is predestined; that a human being’s life is predetermined by God. The philosopher believed that some people are predetermined to use their free will to accept God’s grace, thus, achieve salvation. However,
But we humans are now constantly attracted towards evil, attracted to excessive satisfaction of our lower desires for material things and pleasures. And the only way we can break free from this kind of sinfulness is if we receive grace from God. But there is no way we can simply earn this trust or grace just by simply being good. We are unable not to sin. Our will cannot free itself from the bondage to sin through any effort of our own. However, through no merit of our own, God may bestow His grace upon us. And if he does, we may avoid sinning, but if he does not, we are left to what human nature now offers us, the certainty of sin. Augustine’s understanding of evil is that he circles around one main point; all that exists is good. To truly understand what Augustine, mean, we must first understand what is evil and what are the nature of God. He defines evil as a contrary to nature, hurtful and corrupts. This is a privation of good. For example, if a cut is evil, but if the cut is taken away then the evil is gone. However, the cut cannot have existed if the health of the body was good. By accepting these definitions, we can say that if evil is the privation of good, then as shown, something must first be good for it to be evil. Therefore, evil cannot have an independent existence apart from
In the following, then, the essay will be illustrated how the the theory of original sin in Genesis 1-3 is interpreted by Augustine; how Augustine 's perceptions of original sin directly apply to the Catholic Church and the Roman Empire; and how and why Elaine Pagels connects Augustine’s reading of Genesis 1 - 3 to define “the politics of
... effects of a corrupting entity, what then is Christ’s work? How can a physical sacrifice save the world from sliding into nonexistence? The answer comes from another adjustment; Christ comes to pull creation back towards the eternal God. Salvation through Christ is does not look like Him coming as a warrior to vanquish the evil forces, but Him coming as a loving servant to heal the corrupted beings (i.e. sinners) back to their original state of grace. Thus, the idea of there being a war between forces of God and Evil is not compatible with truth of the Gospel; rather that God designed the world in harmony and wishes it to return to this state. This proves that, in the end, Augustine’s answer to the problem of evil is correct in accordance to Christian Confession.