Augustine: Free Choices of Will

Out of all the different choices human’s have to make not all of them are made using freewill, for example someone’s choice may me chosen by something or someone else and thus any evil that is caused from that choice was not chosen via freewill. If evil is created this way then it is not supporting the existence of god. There are many examples of this like how suffering (evil) may be created from a natural disaster, which was not an option someone had chosen via freewill, this creates a problem for the free will defence. Not all evil is due to choices human’s have made. In response to this problem for the free will defence, if god was all good, powerful and knowing then he would have been able to prevent and stop natural disasters as the evil they create is not due to freewill. However, this is evidently not true as natural disasters have

“Where then is evil, and what is its source, and how has it crept into the creation? What is its root, what is its seed?”1 These are the first of the many inquiries that Augustine makes in his work entitled the Confessions. In fact, the question of 'what is evil' is the main concern of Augustine, eventually leading the theologian from Manicheanism, a heresy that Augustine spent nine years of his life practicing, back into the arms of the Church. The Manichees are not willing to say that God created evil, and so therefore evil must have existed from the very beginning, possessing its own being. At this time, Augustine has a very Platonist view of things and begins to question this view of the Manichees. As a Platonist, Augustine asserts that all being is fundamentally good because all being comes from a supreme Good, which is God. As it says in

This I believe to be true because even if one is a moral person and has never stolen before, they have at least thought of what they would do with the item that they are looking at. An example given to me about this was in my psychology class where the professor gave an example of someone setting a briefcase full of money on a table while he leaves the room in front of hundreds of people and that everyone would at least contemplate what they would do with the money if they were to take it. This example I believe connects with the idea that people do bad or evil things even though they know it is the wrong thing to do. This can be connected to free will because one is given the free will to be able to think about and to commit evil acts that they know are wrong. This part of Book 2 would imply that we do have free will which helps Augustine’s argument that we are capable of free will, and is what causes the suffering in the world. This part of Book 2 can also be helpful because Augustine thought that evil does exist, and evil is just the absence of good. This is one of Augustine’s reasons for why you need God because God is the highest good. The only real contradiction to this argument that I can think of is that if we have the freedom of the will then how would one explain predestination? Freedom of the will and predestination need to be exclusive of each other because

Lucretius: We obtain free by the collision of atoms which will then create a swerve. However it is very important to know how the atoms move and there is a total of three movements.

Augustine explains the origin of the evil will, or self-will, as a result of man’s will having been created by God, but “its falling away from its nature is due to its creation out of nothing” (XIV, 13). The will itself was not created out of God, and thus lacks His

Whilst Augustine argued that evil is not a real thing that is present in the world, many people, especially those who have really felt suffering, believe that is certainly is a real, present thing in the world. Overall, the Augustine Theodicy is attractive to conservative theists, because it provides a classical theistic answer to the problem of evil and suffering. However, the Theodicy does open up a larger amount of unanswerable questions, so the weaknesses out way the strengths.

At a younger and earlier stage of his life, St. Augustine felt abandoned in some way by God and found no strong connection to a higher being as he developed into a materialist who could only grasp tangible concepts. Little did he see in his life that God was with him through his trials and tribulations as a man on a journey who fell into a life of sin through lust and stealing. Augustine writes, “But in my misery seethed and followed the driving force of my impulses, abandoning you. I exceeded all the bounds set by your law, and did not escape your chastisement-indeed no moral can do so” (Confessions 2:4 p. 25). This driving force was God’s providence. Augustine was spending time in sin, God was punishing him with a sense of emptiness that could not be filled. By turning to such pleasures, he turned away from God and needed such illicit things to realize that he needs a sense of something more in his life. He states, “Before you I lay my heart and my memory. At that time you were dealing with me in your hidden

St Augustine of Hippo created the Augustinian theodicy in which he says that God created a perfect world free of all types of evil. He says that God gave us free will, therefore when Adam and Eve sinned for the first time, they destroyed the state of perfection and created a lack of good within themselves. St Augustine describes God as a loving and just father, and states that by allowing his children to suffer the punishment for sin, God is being just. But God is also loving and through the death of Jesus he grants us all a place in heaven. I have several problems with this theodicy.

Always the philosopher, Augustine spends a considerable amount of time in Book 7 of Confessions trying to figure out where evil comes from and why God allows evil to exist if he truly is all-powerful and could prevent evil from existing in the first place. Halfway through Book 7 in section XII he concludes that all things are good because God created everything. He also realizes that evil does not exist—at least not as a substance. Compared to the Gnostics, and specifically the Gospel of Mary, both seem to agree that sin comes from humans. However, the Gnostics and Augustine differ in that Augustine believes in one supremely good God who created everything, while the Gnostics believed in two Gods—one God who created matter, which is evil, and

In the book Augustine’s Confessions, there were multiply themes in the story which made the book great. One theme of Augustine’s Confession is the problem which many Americans face today. That is evil. Evil is everywhere in the world. Augustine lost his mistress, mother and even his own son in the book. He had to also figure out why god is punishing people with these action. So found out the answer to the evil, Augustine ask why is God good and still allows suffering to exist. Augustine found out that evil because of the free will that people have. God lets human pick what to do with their lives and the evil comes from the choices which you have decided. For example, a pregnant mother decides to drink alcohol while carrying her baby around. When the baby is finally born, the baby has problems with earing, talking, or even speaking. This is the evil choice which the mother had made. There are many kinds of evil and one of them are natural evil. Natural evil is a disease which another human has and it spreads around town. For example, people during the winter time have the flu. The flu spreads around town and soon enough, everyone will have it. This is a natural evil because you didn’t cause it. Another example of natural evil is the black plague. The black plague spreads all over Europe and killed about 30 to 60 percent of Europe. The black plague was started in China due to the workers not cleaning up there shop. Soon enough, it was death of 350 million people. It is said to

The cause of evil itself, according to Augustine, is the human will, and thus all blame for it rests on our shoulders, not on Gods. We willfully turn our souls away from God when we perform evil deeds. Even the punishment that God imposes on us for our evil is something that we brought on ourselves. Consequently, a first solution that Augustine offers to the problem of evil is that human will is the cause of evil and reason for divine punishment. A second and related solution is that the evil we willfully create within our souls is only a deprivation of goodness. Think of God’s goodness like a bright white light; the evil that we humans create is like an act of dimming that light, or shielding ourselves from it to create an area of darkness. It is not like we’ve created a competing light source of our own, such as a bright red light that we shine around to combat God’s bright white light. Accordingly, the evil that we create through our wills is the absence of good, and not a substantive evil in itself.

This is the problem of evil. Augustine summed it up most effectively when he said, “Either God cannot abolish evil or he will not. If he cannot then he is not all-powerful. If he will not then he is not all good.” Augustine viewed evil as merely the absence of good just as dark is the absence of light, a non-being “a name for nothing but the want of good”. He looked to the Bible for an explanation for the existence of God and believed that the fall of humanity from grace, as shown in Genesis, showed the origin of evil. He believed that evil came into the world because human beings had deliberately turned away from God and his goodness. This suggests that both moral and natural evil is a result of original human sin.

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

Augustine believed that all people are good but evil comes from deviating from the plan of God and doing theirr won thing. We see examples all throughout the stories such as when the ring is used by Sauron to make him into an evil power source. Sauron uses his own will to become evil. Also when people put on the ring they become a lesser version of themselves which Augustine says, “If we are evil, to that extent we exist less…”

Augustine was a great philosopher and theologian of his time. His writings began by 400 A.D. Augustine believed that humanity was different and special from God’s other creatures because we have free will. His text On Free Choice of the Will really delves into whether or not humanity is free or not. Augustine proves that humanity is free but within limitations. He makes his view clear by making a clear distinction between the soul and body called dualism. Augustine proposes that we have freedom within our soul but not in our body. He makes his view known by providing examples and explanations to his theory.