St. Augustine
St. Augustine was a fourth century philosopher of the late Roman and early Medieval time. Today, he is still considered one of the most significant figures in the development of Western Christianity and played a huge role in bringing Christianity to dominance during the time when the Roman Empire was in a dark place. He is considered to be one of the most important Church Fathers in Western Christianity. At that time, many people saw Aristotle as one of the main influences to Christian thought. However, after St. Augustine’s own spiritual struggles and trials in his life, he combined his own wisdom with ideas from both Plato and Neo-Platonism into a unique philosophical system that supported the Christian belief.
St. Augustine
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“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 …show more content…
He struggled with the idea for many years over the course of his life. One approach he considered was that God created all things, evil is a thing, therefore, God created evil. He realized that this argument supported the idea that evil was a thing. Augustine then began to wonder if evil was even a thing at all? So he decided to approach the issue from a different angle. He believed that God exists and is good. That meant that God was incapable of creating evil, meaning something else must be its source. That lead him to conclude in two ideas. First, that all things that God created are good, evil is not good, therefore, evil could not have been created by God. And second, God created every thing, God did not create evil, therefore, evil is not a thing. So what is evil? He determined that everything God created was good and had a being. So that rather than a thing, evil was just the deprivation of good, just like darkness is just the deprivation of light. So how did evil come into this world? Augustine came to the conclusion that it was impossible for evil to be chosen since there would be no evil thing in existence to choose. He believes you are only able to turn from good to a lesser good, since all things are actually good. So evil, then, is the act of selecting the lesser good. That being said,
7-12- Again Augustines thoughts on God reflect that of the religious teachings of his day, namely those of the Neoplatonists. For example he refuses to speculate on how the soul joins the body to become an infant and even follows Plato when he suggests that this life could possibly be some kind of “living death”. He then goes into an examination of his infancy, which he depicts as a quite pitiful state. He described himself as a sinful and thoughtless creature who made demands on everyone, wept unceasingly, and gave everyone a hard time that took care of him. Though very brutal in his self examination, he later states that he does not hold himself accountable for any of these sinful acts because he simply can’t remember them.
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...
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.
Augustine is fixated upon the idea of evil and its origins in Christian theology. He struggles to come to terms with the doctrine of sin. A popular counterargument to the belief in God is that a good, kind, and loving divine power would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. According to Christian belief, God created everything, and everything He created is good because He Himself is righteous. Augustine claims that God pervades the entirety of the universe and all it contains. So, how can things outside of God, such as evil, even exist? He asks this in various forms of rhetorical questions, such as, “Where then is evil? What is its origin? How did it steal into the world?...Where then does evil come from, if God made all things
When Augustine joined the Manicheans he was faced with questions about evil and its origin which allowed the group to teach Augustine the Manichean ideas of evils source. The Manichean belief is not explicitly explained by Augustine (maybe because the people of Augustine’s time already knew about the Manicheans). The texts glossary explains the allusion by explaining that the Manicheans attributed evil to an evil force (Satan) that is in combat with God (Confessions 330). This evil is thought to have elements which are also evil and in one of these, the human body was included, meaning humans are inherently evil (Confessions Glossary. 330). The inherent evil conflicts with Augustine’s view which attributes the origin of evil to a will favoring lesser things, because this claims that “Human beings therefore, are not ultimately responsible for their own actions” (Confessions Glossary. p. 330). This would mean that God had created evil things, which is in direct conflict with Gods good nature and evil is caused by the divine. Augustine ultimately rejected the M...
...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.
St. Augustine is one of the ancient philosophers whose philosophical views imparted Neo-Platonism into Christian doctrines. He is associated with Catholic believers and is known for being the pioneer of “analogous argument” to oppose solipsism (Augustine, The City of God, 1972). According to Augustine, time is nothing but rather a mind-set of man's anxiety of the reality. He is one of the philosophers and theologians who have contributed significantly in the understanding of the original sin. Augustine’s view of original sin can be understood by analyzing his perception of the period before and after the fall of humanity.
“Please tell me: isn’t God the cause of evil?” (Augustine, 1). With this question to Augustine of Hippo, Evodius begins a philosophical inquiry into nature of evil. Augustine, recently baptized by Saint Ambrose in Milan, began writing his treatise On Free Choice of the Will in 387 C.E. This work laid down the foundation for the Christian doctrine regarding the will’s role in sinning and salvation. In it, Augustine and his interlocutor investigate God’s existence and his role in creating evil. They attempt not only to understand what evil is, and the possibility of doing evil, but also to ascertain why God would let humans cause evil. Central to the premise of this entire dialogue is the concept of God, as relates to Christianity; what is God, and what traits separate Him from humans? According to Christianity, God is the creator of all things, and God is good; he is omnipotent, transcendent, all-knowing, and atemporal- not subject to change over time- a concept important to the understanding of the differences between this world and the higher, spiritual realm He presides over. God’s being is eidos, the essence which forms the basis of humans. With God defined, the core problem being investigated by Augustine and Evodius becomes clear. Augustine states the key issue that must be reconciled in his inquiry; “we believe that everything that exists comes from the one God, and yet we believe that God is not the cause of sins. What is troubling is that if you admit that sins come from… God, pretty soon you’ll be tracing those sins back to God” (Augustine, 3).
In St. Augustine’s book entitled Political Writings, one could see that Christianity plays a very important role in his view of politics. His opinion on the morality or lack of morality in politics, to me makes it more evident that Christianity persuades his views. Although it seems his writings have become quite well known and admired, not everyone fully shared his beliefs. Niccolo Machiavelli, for instance, seemed to believe in a government that was not driven by morality, but more by practicality. In, The Prince, Machiavelli stresses that the moral fibers of government should not be so soft. Like St. Augustine, his work went on to become one of the most famous books ever written about politics. Throughout the two works there are some similarities and differences regarding politics, however it their view of Christianity and morality that many find most intriguing.
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.
Why does St. Augustine seek God? Through his Confessions we come to understand that he struggled a great deal with confusion about his faith, before finally and wholeheartedly accepting God into his life. But we never get a complete or explicit sense of what led Augustine to search for God in the first place. Did he feel a void in his life? Was he experiencing particular problems in other relationships that he thought a relationship with God would solve for him? Or perhaps he sought a sense of security from religion? A closer analysis of the text of St. Augustine’s Confessions will provide some insight into these fundamental questions.
Fornication became the direct problem for the sexual sin he would commit until he finally committed to the Catholic faith and decided to put that behind him. After the age of seventeen Augustine left his home town to continue his studies in Carthage. Here in Carthage he began to search for truth and wisdom this quest lead him to join the Manicheans. The Manicheans believed in the dualism of good and evil, man’s soul was good, but imprisoned by the force of evil. Carthage was the city he taught for two years until he decided to return home to Thagaste to teach for a year.
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)?
Augustine answers this question in a Platonist’s manner. In Augustine's view, evil is a mere form, caused by our inability to observe the entire cosmos and the interdependence between a single occurrence and the state of the whole world. If a state of affairs, is measured in isolation, it may give rise to the idea that the world-order is imperfect and that God does not care about humans. However, the one who is able to apprehend the world in its entirety, understands how every single event is meaningful by contributing to the perfection of the whole. The man, Augustine claims, who is capable of true insight into the harmonious constitution of the world, knows that there is no evil. Attaining this insight is the goal of education.