Definition Of Good And Evil Essay

“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

On this very debatable topic the common question that is commonly asked is “How can the two objective claims (1. Evil exists. / 2. God exists.) Both are true in the same universe?” First I’d like to talk to you about a philosopher by the name of Augustine who was born in 354 AD. Augustine offers two solutions to this intriguing question. The two solutions are that there is an all-powerful God and there is such thing as “free will”. Free will is simply just the willingness to make a decision by yourself without help or influence from anyone but your self-using your own logic or self-conscious. Augustine believes that God is all knowing and all powerful and that evil still exists only because

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

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

If God is good, and everything he created is good, how did evil originate? According to the Manichees, humans and human desires originate as evil, and since God created them, yet he cannot eliminate evil, he is not truly omnipotent. For a portion of his life, Augustine also believed in this ideology, but he soon realized his mistake. He spent much of his youth at Carthage attending theatrical plays, but eventually became aware that this was wrong because it encouraged a love of suffering, (Book III, Section 2). I believe he fell victim to the Manichees because he was in the prime state of life where one is searching for something more than themselves.

Both horns of this dilemma are impious, but particularly the latter (1.1.1). His approach to a solution to this problem is three-pronged: 1) he holds that evil is a privation and cannot be properly said to exist at all; 2) he argues that the apparent imperfection of any part of creation disappears in light of the perfection of the whole; and 3) he argues that the origin of moral evil, together with that suffering which is construed as punishment for sin, is to be found in the free choice of the will of rational creatures. As a Manachee, Augustine believed that both God and the principle of evil were some sort of material substances, neither deriving its existence from the other. Evil, although somehow *smaller* than God, was, nevertheless, infinite and presented a real problem for God to overcome in the course of his cosmic existence. He describes his motives for believing such things as follows: piety (however bizarre some of my beliefs were) forbade me to believe that the good God had created an evil nature (*Confessions* 5.10.20). Even after Augustine had abandoned these "bizarre beliefs" of the Manachees and had, as a Christian, arrived at the notion of God as an immutable, spiritual substance, the existence of evil still troubled him for: Although I affirmed and firmly held divine immunity from pollution and change and the complete immutability of our God, the true God . . . yet I

So he questions the root of evil, and wonders why hasn’t God simply rid the world of it, since he is the ruler of everything. Augustine is rather anguished in his quest for knowledge and the truth, but it is his pride which prevents him from progress. However,

Augustine is guided by the neoplatonic tradition that everything that exists is good. Those lower in the scale of being are not bad or evil, but are only less complete and far from created in the image of God who is eternal and unchanging. All creation is created in the existence of God, and thus they must seek a desire to return to God. Plato’s Symposium and Augustine’s Confessions share parallels and contrasts in certain aspects of this desire, despite the two writer’s difference in time.

Augustine sets up an argument in his Confession that attempts to define evil. God is the author of everything. Augustine says, "nothing that exists could exist without You [God]" (Book I, Chapter II). Nothing in this world exists apart from God.

From the portrayal of Augustine, he explains the argument that of which people can choose to be good or choose to be evil. Of those of which who choose to be good, he believes that it has been predetermined by God prior to birth. Augustine states that people can choose to be good but, explains that God has not chosen ones’ soul for salvation and the choice to be good has no relevance towards their salvation. Those who act horrible and in a worthless manor but are chosen by God as good, then those will be saved by God no matter what their actions or behavior is in life. Augustine claims that the matter of evil is the root of the aspect of free will. God is not the source of evil as proclaimed that he is one that saves all but, that it’s the

What is good? What is evil? How do they relate to one another? Where did they come from? These are questions nearly everyone has considered at some point in their lifetime. Humans use the terms “good” and “evil” for many things. For instance, one might say “Oh john, how good of you to come by.” Or perhaps you have heard “mom, this pie is very good!” Children will often express the way their day went simply by stating that it was a “good day,” while funeral directors frequently declare that the deceased person was a “good man.” On the contrary, the term “evil” is one of the top phrases used to describe bad guys. But what are good and evil?

pg. 3) It is from here that he draws the emphasis that mankind is born with sin from Adam. “In whom, that is in Adam, all have sinned… From him therefore all are sinners, because we are all produced from him” (155. Original Sin pg. 216). In addition to Augustine’s understanding of the notion of original sin, we find more quotes of the gravity of the burden of sin from Adam onto mankind, whom God created without sin but stained from the actions of one man. It was through Adams actions that God had no choice but to punish mankind with a label of original sin, however as a Merciful God, there is relief from the ‘righteous punishment’ he gave to man. “Truly the nature of man was originally created blameless and without any vice; but that nature of man, with which each is born of Adam, now needs a physician because it is not healthy,… it needs illumination and healing, was not derived from its blameless Maker, but from original sin which was committed through free choice; and on this account a penal nature, is a part of a most righteous punishment.” (Augustine, 160.

With God making these human-like decisions, it is hard to believe he is a real God. Augustine is placed in the camp of Manicheans, which believed there is an evil God

Evil no doubt has a strong presence and many theologians try to comprehend and offer a solution to the existence of evil. Evil has two forms which are known as the logical form of evil and the evidential form. These two forms of the problem of evil have been distinguished in order to understand the issue of evil. The main argument to the existence of an all good and powerful being is the existence of evil. If an omnipotent being exist evil would be presumed to be absent in our world, however evil remains present. Evil’s existence gives ground for atheism and the belief that an all powerful being does not exist.

Evil ia a creation of God. There is only one logical way evil is not created by or connected to God and that is if evil came to be in existence