The majority of people experience numerous events that change the course of their life. Saint Augustine, a prominent figure in the Catholic Church, experienced this event when he converted to Christianity. The process of converting, however, was a long, confusing process. A philosophical man, Augustine made sure to think hard about something before committing to it; as a result, he had a plethora of religious questions, with the majority revolving around God. Several of these questions pertain to evil and the role God has with it. One of the many questions Augustine raised is ‘what is evil’? Committing an act of evil is doing something malicious; the act is done with the intent to cause harm. However, there is a problem with this definition …show more content…
Since God is perfect, he could not have created evil. Rather, the origins of evil date back to Adam and Eve. Satan, a fallen angel, managed to tempt Eve into eating the forbidden fruit; thus introducing evil into the world. One may wonder why God, whom is omnipotent, decided not to eradicate evil from the world. The answer is straightforward. When God created man, he gave him free will due to his immeasurable love. As a result, the introduction of evil into the world gave man a choice; to follow God and pursue righteousness, or pursue evil and henceforth separate oneself from …show more content…
However, what about when one commits a good act, only to have the act result in something evil? If one commits a good act that has an evil result is that act evil? For example, there were a multitude of charity schemes, namely phishing scams, which occurred after hurricane Katrina. If one were to have donated money to one of these scams, thinking they were helping the hurricane victims, they would have been committing a good act. However, in reality they were being cheated out of their money, which would have likely then been put to an evil use. This example illustrates that a good act that results in evil is in itself not evil. The individual still committed a good act since it was inspired by their love for
Claudia Card sees evil as “foreseeable intolerable harms produced by culpable wrong doing”, thus she builds her theory and views around this definition (Card, pg.3). She distinguishes wrongdoing and evil acts by the consequences and results of those actions, and to what extent they harmed the victim. She sees evils as actions that ruin people’s lives that achieve significant harm that causes permanent or difficult to recover from damage (Card, pg.3). However, she does make a point of differentiating evildoers from evil people, as they do not always have the purposeful intention to do the evil that they cause (Card, pg.4).
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...
Rather than spending time on trying to figure out why God allows evil to exist, the focus should be aimed at what is within our ability to control or to prevent the existence of evil and understand that without evil; good could not exist.
...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.
He states “ Here are two natures, a good one lead one way, a bad one leads the other way. How otherwise explain the opposition of two wills to one another. But I affirm that they are both evil, both the will to attend their meeting and the will to go to the theater”(4). This shows us the belief that as people we believe that we have good and evil will but we fail to notice that this idea is corrupt on its own because we relate ourselves to god. Augustine thinks that evil arises from humans disobedient will and not from a lack of thought. Augustine questions the divided will. He is stuck between his own law and the law of others. He is unsure weather to impulsively commit or not and he resolves this when he submit his will to god “ Now, now, let it be” (5). In human nature we only posses one will “So the reason why there are two wills in us is because one of them is not entire, and one has what the other lacks” (9). Augustine references the issues when there are two wills in one person that are at conflict with one another. Augustine gives the example two wills “For both wills are evil when someone is deliberating whether to kill a person by poison or by a dagger; whether to encroach on one estate belonging to someone else or a different one, when he cannot do
Philosophers of the Medieval period struggled with the problem of evil - specifically, the existence of evil brought a question to the fore: if the world was created by an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, then how was it that evil existed? To further complicate the matter, a second question branched off of the first as individuals pondered over whether or not God was ultimately the cause of evil. If God created everything, and evil exists as part of everything, then God, logically, had created evil. But this presented yet another issue, in that if God had knowingly created evil, then he could not truly be all-good. And it is these concerns that philosophers addressed.
Saint Augustine’s On Faith and the Creed breaks down the Apostles Creed and expresses the essence of the Christian faith. The 11 chapters within On Faith and The Creed express many truths of the faith. Chapter one explains the origin of the creed and object of its composition. The Apostles Creed is a sufficient summary of the faith for beginners and those who who are more diligent in their faith. Many heretics have tried to corrupt the interpretation of the Apostles Creed. Yet, since it is written according to the scripture, the Apostles Creed is based on complete truth. Chapter two expresses the fact that eternity is exclusive. Saint Augustine talks about how the Apostles Creed will not truly be understood or impact a person if they are not
Since the dawn of modern civilization the terms good and evil have been used to describe the world and the various things within it. Things ranging from the concepts of the Devil, to the kid the cut in front you in the lunch line in the third grade, evil can be defined in many ways, however, evil is generally defined as something that goes against a single set of moral principles that society has defined. This is not true because evil is something that an individual perceives that they believe will cause them harm and goes against their individual moral beliefs, not some universal concept accepted by everyone.
When people realize that good and evil are just points of view that are placed on other people and actions, it is possible to transcend these superficial roles. Since it is people who create the meaning of evil, it cannot be said that people are evil, or are born evil, because not only is that a perspective that is assumed onto others, which will change with different cultures, societies, and eras, but the very same acts may appear to be both good and evil, depending on the perspective in which the acts are seen. Ultimately, it is the individual’s responsibility to decide for himself the effects of his actions on himself and others.
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.
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)?
of Heaven with a third of the angels into the abysses of Hell. Satan then has only one
evil? Where does free choice of the will come into play when individuals are saved by God's
Evildoing is caused by inordinate desire. Things such as adultery, murder, and sacrilege, are considered forms of evildoing. If one desires to commit any of these evildoings then he is no less guilty than if he was caught in the act. In St. Augustine’s On Free Choice of the Will, he introduces a free will theodicy, which is one of the most influential theodicies and serves as a prominent foundation for Christianity today. He explains his theodicy as the following: free will, not evil, cause sin to happen. St. Augustine, an influential church father believed man caused most of evil. Relative to St. Augustine’s belief, in the dynamic poem Paradise Lost, free will is a consistent lingering theme throughout the poem. Milton acknowledges that God gave man free will alongside reason, by which he describes “reason also is choice”(III.108). Milton explains that it is our own choice whether we obey or disobey God because when he gave us reason, he gave us free will. In this paper, I will explore the joint between free will, love, and reason in relation to our obedience and/ or disobedience to God. More so, in this paper I will use the works of John Milton and St. Augustine to comprehend the notion that the presence of evil is a result of human’s free will, not Satan or a predestined fate.
Even though Adam and Eve did not encounter evil until the fall, they still had the potential for evil intrinsically within themselves. Likewise, although Lucifer was not wholly evil at the time of his formation, his pride and thus capacity to sin was part of his identity. If all of these characters developed the evil within them even though they were made good, one could question whether God is the creator of evil and is thus partly evil himself. Milton himself says that God “created evil, for evil only good / Where all life dies, death lives” (2.623-624). This seems in conflict with the earlier claim that God is omnibenevolent and free of