The Theodicy Of Augustine And The Existence Of God

Explain the Theodicy of Augustine (25 marks)

The main purpose of a theodicy is to defend God, whilst explaining the existence of both natural and moral evil. Both Epicurus and Hume argued the unsatisfying logic behind there being an omnibenevolent God which allows evil to intervene in individuals lives on a daily basis. Epicurus outlines the trilemma of the problem of evil “is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? But then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? The he is not omnibenevolent?” Hume later cited this in ‘Dialogues concerning Natural Religion’ to illustrate his ‘inconsistent triad’. The inconsistent triad is the way that the attributes we believe God has: omnibenevolence an omnipotence are inconsistent with the

Also, he considered Gods creation to be harmonious and so evil is not a separate entity, but a deviation from good. Augustine’s view is that evil came into the world through the ‘fall’. He said that angels were all created perfect, but misused the freedom God had provided for them and as a result decided to turn from God, the Highest Good, to ‘lesser goods’. Adam and Eve were then tempted by Satan, a fallen angel, in the Garden of Eden. By breaking Gods command, and eating the forbidden fruit, Adam brought original sin into the world. Sin was now seminally present in Adam, and so therefore every generation is guilty due to them inheriting his guilt for disobeying God. The reason being that when Adam was teste4d in the Garden of Eden he was representing the entire human race, therefore all humans- including innocent babies, deserve to suffer. This is emphasised by Paul, who came up with the idea that sin was present ‘in the lions of Adam’. He wrote in ‘Romans 5:12’: “therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have

An example of the expression would be how blindness is the privation of eyesight. This is the idea that evil does not exist in itself, but it the lack of where good should be, in the same way darkness is a privation of light. In ‘The Enchiridion’ Augustine explained how evil is the ‘parasite on the good’. However, philosophers such as Schleiermacher criticised this concept as he stated that either the world was not created perfect in the first place, or God made it go wrong; so God is to blame and not humans. Furthermore, another critic would be how the idea of evil being a privation of good does not explain or more so justify the historical events such as the Holocaust as just an incident which was a ‘lack of kindness’. Modern Platonist expanded on this, by stating that there is a substantial evil which he called ‘surd evil’ and J.S. Mill compared God to an artist who is limited by its