Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Essay on st Augustine
Essay on st Augustine
Appearance of good and evil
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Essay on st Augustine
Augustine’s Confessions is a biographic of the life of St. Augustine. The biopic chronicles the life of Augustine as he tries to navigate his way through life and find his path as it relates to the Christian faith. Augustine discusses many of his struggles and issues while on the path to find himself and his place in God. One of the main issues he covers in his biopic are the struggles had with reconciling the existence of evil with the goodness of God. He struggled with this issue in particular due to his participation in the belief of Manicheanism. Manicheanism is a heretical version of Christianity, that was first introduced by the self-proclaimed prophet Mani. Augustine claims he fell victim to this belief system when he was at a vulnerable point in his journey and was seeking answers for certain question he has pertaining to faith. He fell into Manicheanism when he tried to look at the scriptures himself and interrupt them but to a rhetoric like himself the scriptures made no sense at the time, so he turned from them and to the well-worded faith of Manicheanism. Augustine considers that decision one of the biggest mistakes of his life, attributing his great difficulties in reconciling the existence of evil with God’s goodness to his belief in Manicheanism. In this paper I aim to explore the reason behind why Augustine felt his belief in Manicheanism was such a grave mistake. I also hope to explain how he tried to reconcile his issues concerning evil and God’s goodness, and if he was successful in this attempt. In order to do this we must first look deeper at Manicheanism to examine what the core values and beliefs of the faith are, so that we can understand why Augustine had such a hard time dealing with the issue of evil and... ... middle of paper ... ...icism that was laid out before him. I do indeed think Augustine did a successful job of clearly, and logically presenting a valid argument to reconcile the issues of the existence of evil and the goodness of God. On a personal level I can understand where Augustine is coming from, as someone who is a person of faith but also likes to think about things in a logical way I can understand his passion behind wanting to disprove this particular Manichean criticism for not only the doubters of God but for himself. This is definitely the type of question that could lead to several other doubts and questions, if it goes unanswered. As Augustine stated in the “Confessions” this was something he struggled with himself for many years. It is like the bible says “we overcome by the word of our testimonies” (Revelations 12:11), and I think that’s exactly what Augustine did here.
This paper will outline specific points in Saint Augustine’s Confessions that highlight religious views following the fall of Rome. Though Augustines views on religion may not reflect that of most people in his time period, it still gives valuable insight into how many, namely Neoplatonists,, viewed God and his teachings.
The second circle of hell, a realm for those who fell victim of their carnal desires, is another level at which to place Augustine’s soul for he was consumed by lust in his pre-conversion days. He was encouraged by his family to learn the art of persuasion and making of fine speech when he was only sixteen. He used these skills, which he developed very well, along with his good looks to seduce as many women as possible. It was “in that sixteenth year of my life in this world, when the madness of lust. . . took complete control of me, and I surrendered to it” (Confessions, 987). He was in love with being in love. Yet, he was unable to discern between love and lust.
St. Augustine considers his mother as a crucial factor in his conversion to Catholicism. However through the analysis of his Confessions it leads me to believe that St. Augustine’s mother was not a decisive figure. Monica was in the background keeping him in thought and prayer however Augustine’s watershed moments came as a result of his own examination of readings as well as his conversations with his friends and mentors. Therefore I argue that Monica had delayed Augustine’s baptism and it was his own experiences that allowed him to come to God.
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...
In the Confessions, Augustine wrote about his struggle with understanding how evil exists in a world created by God. He questioned how it was possible and why God allows evil in his creations because God is supremely good. After delving into finding a solution, Augustine concluded that evil does not exist, and the things deemed as evil are caused by free will. This paper will argue that Augustine has successfully proven that evil does not exist by explaining his earlier explanation of the origin of evil taught by the Manicheans, explaining Augustine’s teachings, and finally, using the textual descriptions of Augustine’s unwillingness to convert as support for his conclusion.
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.
St. Augustine recognized that the solution to the problem of evil could be found in the definition of "evil." The aforementioned logical premise was rooted in the supposed notion that evil was a thing and what Augustine set out to prove was that evil was not, in fact, a thing and therefore had not been created by God. In order to reach the desired conclusion, Augustine had to show that there was evidence proving the existence of God. This proof was required for yet another premise - if ex...
It therefore appears evident that God must be the root of all evil, as He created all things. However, Augustine delves deeper in search for a true answer. This paper will follow ...
“Suddenly every vain hope became worthless to me, and with an incredible warmth of heart I yearned for an immortality of wisdom and began now to arise that I might return to thee” (Confessions, IV). He continued reading other works and Christian scriptures and began to wonder where evil came from. During this time of answer seeking, Augustine wanted to achieve personal victory over evil and sin in his life, so he explored the Manichean religion. “According to Manicheanism, there is a cosmic principle of darkness as well as a principle of light. What we experience in our lives is the warfare between the Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness” (Matthews pg. 9). The Manichean belief was attractive to Augustine because of its clear, materialistic viewpoint and explanation of evil. However, “After nine years spent in the school of Manicheanism he owned that his mind had become so clogged by material images that he habitually thought of mind and God in terms of matter” (Darcy pg. 156). Although he was very involved in the Manichean teachings and faith, his faith was shaken during a time of deep depression following the the death of a close friend and son. Towards the end of his apprenticeship a famous Manichean Bishop, Faustus, visited the city. Augustine was eager to ask Bishop Faustus questions about the Manichean faith that had been eating at him for quite some time. But to
A common thread of faith and reason runs through the two different theological visions of St. Augustine in his Confessions. This can be seen by comparing the ascent, the vision, the descent, and language in the two visions. Although other parts of the text will be referred to, the central part of these visions are as follows:Vision 1: "...
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.
Later, after much study and introspection, Augustine discovers that he has been mistaken in attributing a physical form to God. Yet, he still presses on to reconcile his mind to the true precepts of Christian ideology. But what does he...
In Augustine’s younger days he explored the concepts of Manicheism and studied the Manichee doctrine for nearly ten years. “Confused and bound by the ideas of his Manichee, Augustine’s interaction with astronomy and philosophy convict him that the Manichee beliefs are not the true truth” (Augustine 3, 135-136). Through the Manichee sect he was taught that God was not omnipotent and struggled...
During the 354 to 430 AD, St. Augustine served as a bishop in the church of Hippo and at the same time, he was among the early founders of Christian churches in northern parts of Africa. He was also a theologian and his ideas that were influential to the Roman Catholic believers and the Protestants. His journey to Christianity was not just a walk in the park. Augustine, in his early ages, began finding reality about the widely held pagan beliefs and sects in his life. He also practised a lot of immorality. He then confessed, about his evil life in the book Confessions, which up-to-date is rated as an extreme Christian testimony (Nicholson, 2018).
He takes a very logical and easy to understand approach of understanding how God and sinning works. God is all good, therefore anything that is not God must be evil. However, I do have some arguments with some of his ideas on the world and human nature. Augustine often cites the creation story in his arguments, claiming that God created the world and it was good. He then says the fall of Adam is what created the initial problem of evil, “if Adam had not fallen away from thee, that brackish sea--the human race--so deeply prying, so boisterously swelling, so restlessly moving, would never have flowed forth from his belly.” (Confessions 8.10.22)” This implies that Augustine believes the Orthodox Christian teaching that humans were created in the image of an all good being, therefore it must mean that they started off good and then fell. St. Irenaeus claims that if both humans and the world were naturally good, then it would remain in a static state, for if evil did not exist then suffering would not exist as well. If suffering does not exist then how can humans things like compassion? Humans can express goodness if there is no evil to dispell, therefor humans were never actually created in an all-good state. If there was no evil then how could they fall? St. Irenaeus instead proposes that the creation of humans is a two step process; we are initially created in the image of God, but only have to potential to strive for the