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At Augustine's philosophy
Religious views on good and evil
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St. Augustine and the Problem of Evil from a Christian Basis
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.
Augustine first characterizes God based on how he experiences God’s presence and qualities. Augustine searches for Him unsuccessfully in the physical world, and the physical universe for that matter, and then decides that he must look within himself to find God. His description of God illustrates the ideas in Christianity that God is omnipotent and entirely good, or all-loving. “I entered and with my soul’s eye, such as it was, saw above that same eye of my soul the immutable light higher than my mind… It transcended my mind… It was superior because it made me, and I was inferior because I was made by it.” (Augustine, 123) Augustine clearly conveys the magnitude of God and his greatness, which exceed the comprehension of man’s mind. This is perhaps the most important quality of God’s being, which properly coincides with His descriptions in Christianity, because it establishes a scale for measuring the qualities of God that He instilled in his creations.
Augustine next discusses three aspects that define God for him. Of particular importance is the idea that the Christian God is eternal, so there has never been a time w...
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... possible that, as with Augustine, the perception of evil leads people to think about its nature and, ultimately, they begin to learn the truth. From that point, they grow until they are able to feed from God’s goodness, and then they achieve the supreme goodness and become one with God. There is, then, no problem in ‘evil’ because it in fact is good.
Ultimately, it is impossible to know exactly the reasons for God’s actions. His qualities are such that He transcends being, and a person’s best effort to understand God can at best give him or her approximate understanding. Only through reason and discovery of the truth can a person grow until, finally, he or she is transformed by God into His Being. At that point, comprehension of it is no longer necessary.
Works Cited
Augustine. Confessions. Trans. Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.
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.
Although Augustine grew up knowing about Christianity, as his mother, Monica, was a devout Christian, he spent much of his early years indulging in worldly pleasures until finally converting to Christianity at the age of 32. This is unlike Perpetua in the fact that she became a member of the faith at a young age, against her father’s wishes while Augustine chose to rebel against Christianity. The fact that Augustine’s mother was a Christian who urged him to also convert is also contrasting from Perpetua’s story, as is apparent by Monica’s reaction upon her son telling her that he is no longer a Manichee, but still not a Christian. In Augustine’s words, “she did not leap for joy . . . for which she wept over me as a person dead but to be revived by you [God].” Therefore, Monica was saddened by the fact that her son was not a Christian, while Perpetua’s father was distraught over the opposite, her decision to be a Christian. Once Augustine had finally converted to Christianity, he interpreted his faith differently than Perpetua had. He believed that God is good and humans are also by nature good, but that “free will was the cause of our doing ill.” To him, being a Christian meant that he must not use his free will for evil, that he must resist the urge of temptation and follow God’s path of goodness. While Augustine believed in sacrificing desires of the flesh for God, there was no emphasis in his time on giving up his life for his religion as it was in Perpetua’s. These dissimilar qualities between the lives of Perpetua and Augustine are the effect of Christianity’s movement from a secretive, minority faith to a legitimate, national
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...
Augustine’s contention that man cannot possibly come into truth by reason in his temporal life constitutes his initial departure from the ancients, and results in the need for an entirely new structuring of the relationship between man and the good. In differentiating between the nature of God and man, Augustine argues that man’s nature—unlike God’s—is corruptible, and is thus “deprived of the light of eternal truth” (XI, 22) . This stands the thought of Plato on its head, since now no amount of contemplation and argument will be capable of getting man closer to a truth that exists on a plane that “surpasses the reach of the human mind” (XXI, 5). If reason is an instrument as flawed as man himself, how, then, is man to know the supreme good if he is forced to grope blindly for it in a state of sin without any assistance from the powers of his own mind? It is this question which serves as the premise for Augustine’s division of existence into the City of Man and the City of God and articulation of a system of vice and struggle against vice that keeps man anchored to the City of Man and prevents him from entering the City of God in temporal life.
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 ...
Down syndrome is a genetic disorder, associated with the presence of an extra chromosome. Downs is characterized by mild to severe mental impairment, weak muscle tone, shorter stature, and a flattened face. Down syndrome is not a very common disease, one in every 691 children are born with Down syndrome. The disability is an illness that people are born with and is not contagious. Most people with Downs have a life expectancy of about 40 or 50 years of age. They only live for that short amount of time because they begin to develop a similar disease to Alzheimer’s. “100% of people with Down syndrome will develop some physiologic signs of Alzheimer’s when they are over 35 years old in the U.S” (Statistics about Down Syndrome). They also die earlier because having Down syndrome increases the risk of leukemia 15-20 times in the US. Therefore most people with Downs will die because of leukemia or heart problems before the age of 50.
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: "...
Only after years of personal struggle did Augustine arrive at his own religious revelation. This ultimately made his conversion much more profound. To fully and eloquently express himself and his thoughts was essential to his writings. Clearly, he used his knowledge of rhetoric and the arts to express his views more effectively. His prose is both immaculate and powerful. The result was a masterpiece that greatly affected the growth of early Christianity.
Black, Tamara. 2008. Exercise and Fitness in a U.S. Commercial Gym.Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International.
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.
It is perhaps the most difficult intellectual challenge to a Christian how God and evil can both exist. Many of the greatest minds of the Christian church and intellects such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas spent their entire lives trying to solve this problem, and were unsuccessful (Erickson, 2009, p.439). However, this dilemma is not only an intellectual challenge, but it is emotional. Man feels it, lives it. Failing to identify the religious form of the problem of evil will appear insensitive; failure to address the theological form will seem intellectually insulting. This conundrum will never be completely met during our earthly life, but there are many biblical and philosophical resources that help mitigate it.
..., the closer he was really moving toward God. He began to realize that God is all good, so nothing he creates will be of evil. “God does not create evil but it is of the world” (Augustine 230-31). Once he took responsibility for his personal life and spiritual walk, Augustine began to uncover the truths to his life. He reveals one must take responsibility for their actions and confess to develop a stronger connection with God. He then comprehends; God allows bad things to happen in your life to show you that you need him. Evil is not a lesser good, but it is a reflection of ones moral well-being. In order for one’s well being to be saved one must confess their sins to Christ.
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 De Libero Arbitrio Book I, Augustine states that Evil has no teacher, so when people do evil, they are the cause of their own suffering. The question then becomes, did we learn how to sin? Augustine would say that learning is classified as a good and therefore, we do not learn evil. Augustine states, teaching produces understanding , which would make understanding a good, and if understanding is good then a person who understands eternal law/morals will do good, therefore, evil cannot be taught because it does not produce true understanding of the eternal law . In order to move forward through Augustine’s argument it is important to understand what is conside...
As for the smokers, their health is at a high risk. Smoking causes cancers to the voice box, esophagus, lungs, throat and mouth. Also it helps in developing cancers in the kidneys, bladder, pancreas and cervix of the body. Smoking can cause cardiovascular disease such as heart disease, diseases of the blood vessels and stroke. According to CNN “The landmark U.S. Surgeon General 's report linked smoking with bad health.” In this study, lung cancer was the first cancer to be linked to smoking in between the 1940s – 1950s. It is also the number one cause of cancer deaths worldwide. Between 80 to 90 percent of all lung cancer today is smoking related and there are eight other cancers linked to smoking. According to the CDC, “Cigarette smoking causes more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States. Smoking causes more deaths each year than all of these combined, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, and firearm-related incidents.” If smoking cause 480,000 deaths each year in the United States then people should stop smoking. People are still smoking today. Therefore, they don’t care for their health. Smoking can also cause respiratory diseases. About 8,000 people die each year from respiratory diseases from inhaling smoke from cigarettes which can permanently damage their lungs and airways. This is way people