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The relationship between good and evil
The relationship between good and evil
The debate over good and evil
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The Bible portrays the story of the Devil’s fall from grace as an epic battle between good and evil. The devil faces off against God and the good angels, demanding that he be granted the same power as God. God cast down the Devil and all of his followers for turning away from him and willing for power they were not able to possess. In order to understand what it was that made the Devil turn away from God and what he willed for that was considered such a sin, I read Anslem’s On the Fall of the Devil to find out, not how the devil fell from grace, but why he fell from grace. By primarily interpreting Anselm’s accounts from On the Fall of the Devil, and reviewing Saint Augustine’s view on the Devil’s, biblical texts, and other philosophical interpretations, I will compare various accounts to discover why the devil chose to turn away from God and why he ultimately fell from grace.
In On the Fall of the Devil, Anselm argued that in order for the angels to protect their “righteousness” of will, they had to will for justice and will for happiness. “Imagine”, the Teacher in On the Fall of the Devil states, “that God creates an angel and gives him only the will for happiness. Is it possible that the angel wills anything besides happiness?” The Teacher explains that if the angels only had a will for happiness then they would have only willed for what they believed would make them happy, and because they were created by God, they would only find happiness in him and therefore, could not possess “self-initiated” action . In other words, they would not have free choice. If He only gave them a will for justice, then their will for justice would be in God, not themselves, just like the will for happiness. This is why, Anselm says, God gave the...
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...fered perseverance by God, he refused to receive it, because he believed he had the right to be as great as God.
Works Cited
Anselm, and Thomas Williams. Three Philosophical Dialogues. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub., 2002. Print.
Augustine, and Peter King. On the Free Choice of the Will, On Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. Print.
Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo; a Biography. Berkeley: University of California, 1967. Print.
Evans, G. R. Augustine on Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982. Print.
Fleming, Chris. René Girard: Violence and Mimesis. Cambridge: Polity, 2004. Print.
Girard, René. I See Satan Fall like Lightning. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2001. Print.
Tolkien, J. R. R., and Rosemary Phelps. Ainulindalë: The Music of the Ainur, The Creation of the Earth as Told by the Elves. Northfield, MN: Aragwanod, 2008. Print.
The plot of Raiders of the Lost Ark has many notable themes throughout: religion, exploration, transformation, wisdom & knowledge, politics, and good vs. evil. Of these, one of the most prominent themes throughout is that of good vs. evil. In Raiders of the Lost Ark any character who stays in the movie either ends up on the good side (with Indiana Jones) or the bad side (with the Nazis). There is no in between. What makes this movie so unique is how close the bad guys actually come to achieving their goal of using the Ark for its powers. One of the most iconic parts in this movie when this happens is a scene where Indiana Jones and Marion are tied up and the Nazis have control of the Ark. It looks as though it will end in favor of the Nazi
In his essay, "The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: a Theodicy," Peter van Inwagen alleges a set of reasons that God may have for allowing evil to exist on earth. Inwagen proposes the following story – throughout which there is an implicit assumption that God is all-good (perfectly benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient) and deserving of all our love. God created humans in his own likeness and fit for His love. In order to enable humans to return this love, He had to give them the ability to freely choose. That is, Inwagen holds that the ability to love implies free will. By giving humans free will, God was taking a risk. As Inwagen argues, not even an omnipotent being can ensure that "a creature who has a free choice between x and y choose x rather than y" (197)1. (X in Inwagen’s story is ‘to turn its love to God’ and y is ‘to turn its love away from God,’ towards itself or other things.) So it happened that humans did in fact rebel and turn away from God. The first instance of this turning away is referred to as "the Fall." The ruin of the Fall was inherited by all humans to follow and is the source of evil in the world. But God did not leave humans without hope. He has a plan "whose working will one day eventuate in the Atonement (at-one-ment) of His human creatures with Himself," or at least some of His human creatures (198). This plan somehow involves humans realizing the wretchedness of a world without God and turning to God for help.
Frankfurt, H.G., (2003). Freedom of the will and the concept of a person. In G. Watson, ed. Free Will, 2nd ed., New York: Oxford University Press, pp.322-336.
St. Augustine of Hippo, Boethius, and Anselm all address the concept of free will and God’s foreknowledge in their works “The City of God”, “The Consolation of Philosophy”, and “De Concordia”. While each work was written during a different time period, each of their approaches consists of a solution comprised of both unifying and unique points and arguments. While there is no clear contesting between one work and another, it is clear that free will is a complex and critical idea in Christian theology that has long since been debated. '
Augustine. “Confessions”. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 1113-41. Print.
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”. He explores the ways in which to live a happy life and an evil-free life by having a perfectly ordered soul—a life willed by the virtues—through free will. In the pursuit to find out how it is that evil exists, Augustine explores how people sin with inordinate desire as the driving force and free will. He lists the things we need to possess in order to sin and to live a happy life—goods of the will and temporal goods—that is, one cannot sin without temporal goods, inordinate desire, and free will. In the same way, one cannot live a happy life without goods of the will and free will.
...lighted” Augustine’s body (Confessions VIII. 5, p. 148). In this example, regardless of Augustine’s want to will succumbing to God, he found that his habits had rendered him unable to. His will in favor of the lower things held Augustine tighter than his will for God, which caused Augustine to choose the lesser good, which left him “in the midst of that great tumult I had stirred up against my own soul in the chamber of my heart” (Confessions VIII. 7, p.152). His two wills tore at him until he fully abandoned his earthly lust for the spiritual Godly desires; supporting his conclusion that free will in favor of the lesser goods causes evil. Therefore, free will is the ultimate source of evil.
Kane, Robert. "Free Will: Ancient Dispute, New Themes." Feinberg, Joel and Russ Safer-Landau. Reason and Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2013. 425-437. Print.
Augustine, Saint. “Of the Foreknowledge of God and the Free Will of Man, Against the
The biggest explanation to show that in fact God gives us the choice is that Augustine describes "evil to as a negation and does not have form or substance ...
Pope, Alexander. "Essay on Man." Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces 6th ed. Ed. Maynard Mack et.al. New York: Norton, 1992. 326-333
Mankind lives in a physical, tangible, material world, which is influenced by the invisible, spiritual world around us. The present day spiritual world is just as existent as it was nearly two thousand years ago when Lord Jesus walked the earth. The Old and New Testaments reveal to us from time to time, glimpses of this spiritual world. These Testaments provide us with the most factual information regarding Satan. Unfortunately, many have been misinformed and do not thoroughly comprehend Satan’s origin and what his purpose concerning the spiritual and physical world. There is a great need to set the record straight regarding Satan especially in our hour with its present angel craze, channeling and a belief in spirit guides. I chose Satan as the subject of my paper because I am one who does not thoroughly comprehend who he is and what his purpose in both the spiritual and physical world is.
The concept of free will has developed slowly, though ancient philosophers did address the subject when trying to reconcile intentional action with religious concerns about human and divine freedom. It wasn’t until the end of medieval times that the modern-day understanding of freedom as a completely undetermined choice between alternatives was introduced. However, it is unclear how to reconcile contemporary science that acknowledges the in...
W. Andrew Hoffecker. Building a Christian World View, vol. 1: God, man, and Knowledge. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., Phillipsburg, New Jersey : 1986. William S. Babcock. The Ethics of St. Augustine: JRE Studies in Religion, no. 3.
In the eyes of a non-religious person, the figure of Satan might appear as an obsolete, mythical character of an antiquated view of the world. However, upon immersing oneself in the study of this persona, one can observe the strong belief in its power and the influence that the figure of Satan represents in the religious world. One might wonder how such a feat is possible even after hordes of scientists and academics objected to the existence of such a fabled character. Moreover, many theologists advanced theories that strived to diminish the importance of Satan in order to achieve a more monistic religion. It would be normal, nowadays to find the figure of Satan relegated to the status of a mere myth of the old times much like the ancient