Essay on On Free Choice of the Will: St. Augustine’s View on Evil

In the Confessions by Saint Augustine, this great philosopher experiences many problems and emotions related to sin and evil. As a boy, he often felt darkness, blindness, and confusion while attempting to find rest in God. Augustine started out in childhood with a restless heart because he had to live in two different worlds. These worlds consisted of his mother’s Christian faith, and the world of everything else. These two worlds confused and disturbed Augustine as a child. Augustine’s father was pagan and his mother was Christian, and they both wanted him to be very successful in the world. As he became confused, he began asking questions that could not be answered such as, “Humans often feel restless, but what is it they need to feel at

This essay examines a paper by Peter Van Inwagen, “The Argument from Evil”. Inwagen’s paper attempts to give a possible reason for why there is evil in this world. However, this essay will attempt to give reasons for why Inwagen’s reason for evil does not explain evil without compromising God’s essential quality of moral perfection.

Terrorism, deceit, rape, murder, theft, etc.; they result from the choices of free agents. We live in the world that is filled with countless instances of evil and suffering. The Philosophical Journey: An Interactive Approach defines moral evil as the “bad actions and their unfortunate results for which humans (or other moral agents) are morally responsible.” Moral evil is most challenging for some to accept and understand when they are questioning god’s existence. If God were all-powerful, the in theory that God would be able to do something about all of the evil and sufferings. If God were morally perfect, then in theory that God would want to do something about

In a world that seems to be going crazy and is filled with evil it is easy to often wondered what is going on wars are everywhere, genocide, and famine are rampant. The problem is that evil exist and that evil itself has a problem. Michael Peterson claims that the problem of evil is a moral protest in the following questions how could God let this happen? People often claim, It's not fair that God has let this happen. Sometimes people will question if God know how to prevent evil and is powerful enough but does not is he good unless he has a reason for it? The source of evil was the fall of Adam and the use of his free will disobey God, the problem of evil gets more problematic when one considers there are two types of evil moral and natural a theodicy must be consistent to answer the question of evil.

As Augustine grew, his theories and beliefs changed, adapted, and expanded, but he still maintained the belief that post-fall humans have free will, even after being accused of being inconsistent by Pelagius, who is claiming that Augustine is trying to argue against the Pelagians that human free will is unable not to will to sin. In response, Augustine agrees with him that post-fall humans have the ability o will not to sin and so the ability to do otherwise. (Cambridge Comparison, 2001, p. 135) This leads us to the idea that Augustine did not agree with libertarianism, which is “An agent acts with free will. Or is morally responsible for an act, only if he could have done otherwise”. He clearly accepts the idea of compatibilism, which is the condition that “An agent acts with free will, r is morally responsible for an act, only If the act is not casually determined by anything outside the agent.” Because he accepts compatibilism in his later works, his views on free will is a modified version of libertarianism.

Throughout this paper I am going to write about the nature of the problem we like to call evil. I want to define the moral and natural problems with evil and explain them. I am going to also explain the roles that God play when referring to the consistency and perception of God and the issue of evil. On top of that, I am also going to look at why we sometimes have bad things happen to those that we find to be genuinely good people. Evil in the simplest of ways is that which causes harm or misfortune. Evil is an immediate result of sin and is something that we all struggle with. If we want to grasp a better understanding of evil and its nature, we must first understand everything we can on sin’s orgin.

The second issue of evil is the existence of undeserved evil such as pain. But this too is answered, we see God use natural evil as a means of showing man the ways they have corrupted the world or to display his power over man as seen in the Book of Job. Overall the problem of evil in Genesis originates from man and it is unpreventable by God.

God does not create evil, but man makes him be bad in nature, which God creates and put it in the order (2.VIII). Augustine gives an argument about evil. This argument is presented as follows: God creates all things are good. It means that as long as all things exist, they are good. If evil exists, it means it is good. Therefore, it is contradictory. It can be concluded that evil is not a substance; it is a perversity of will be twisted away from the highest substance – God (7.XVI.22). Therefore, by means of evil, we live far away from God, happiness brings us near to God. For Augustine, the definition of happiness becomes easy because happiness only finds in the returning and living closely with God. Everyone is able to know this truth, but man will meet challenges in his return to God. God always presents to man, but man is free to be with God or rejects him. Augustine concludes that happiness is God, whoever does not know God is unhappy (5.IV.7).

Why there is evil exist? In the whole book of Confession, Augustine repented his evil behavior throughout his lifetime. For a devout theistic like Augustine, it is really confusing why a God that is good and powerful would make evil exist on the world. Augustine was puzzled by this question by a long time and he explored the origin of moral evil particularly in the Book Seven of his Confession, and come out that “And when I asked myself what wickedness was, I saw that it was not a substance but perversion of the will when it turns aside from you, O God, who are the supreme substance, and veers towards things of the lower order, being bowelled alive and becoming

The argument regarding relationships between God’s causality and human freedom still baffles many philosophers. While some believe that God’s will upon humankind generates a free will to act, others contend that for a man to act freely, God has to be taken out of the equation. In light of these seemingly contrasting points of view one cannot help but wonder about a man’s capacity to will. Humans should understand that will is the course of one’s acts according to one’s nature. Augustine says, “We have determined that the choice to follow and embrace one or the other lies with the will, and that only will can depose the mind from its stronghold of power.” (FCW 1.2, P.16) It is important to note that humans will themselves into sinning and there would be no such thing as sin if will did not exist. While humans have the right to their choices it would be absurd to refute the role of God in human’s will. Arguing in support of Augustine’s point of view, God’s nature does not abolish free will: therefore, I believe nothing can force the will to choose evil.

The problem of evil is a highly contested argument in the Philosophic community. It has been a point of contention between atheists - people whom do not believe in the existence of a God - and theists - people whom do believe in the existence of a God. The formalised version of the problem is that: If God exists then he must be the all-knowing – omniscient, all-caring – omnibenevolent – and all-powerful – omnipotent – creator of the world. But, because of all of the evil – anything that causes death and/or destruction and/or devastation – in the world then how can God be all of these things? And thus there is no being that is all of these things, thus there is no God. There are three main objections to this problem: that God’s methods are

Saint Augustine struggled with the concept of evil in the natural world while simultaneously converting to Christianity, much to his mother’s delight. Augustine began by looking for sound arguments against the Manichean school of thought, which he prescribed to for a short while himself. The Neo-Platonic philosophy eventually showed him the intellectual way toward this goal when Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, began to apply this philosophical viewpoint to Christianity. In the end, Augustine created a completely new Christian view of evil, a view that inspired theologians for centuries to come.

In sum, God does not impact the freedom of the human free will due to his foreknowledge; He retains the will’s ability to sin for the order of the universe and the possibility of redemption from sins; He utilizes Original Sin as a necessary struggle for human to use their free will to turn back to HIm, so that they proves the worth of their souls. Through this close examination of On the Free Choice of the Will, we are able to trace Augustine’s opinions on how and why God made human free will as it is now. Nevertheless, Augustine considers not enough the undeserved suffering caused by others’ sins, which will only be addressed by further research on the

God does not create the evil. Evil is created by humans, it is from our carelessness, greediness, and self-centeredness, that evil is created. But if we want free will perfection is something we have to give up. If we didn’t have it, we would be forced to love God. If we were forced to say it, does it mean that we actually love God? No, because we are being forced to say it. In a world of perfection, love might not exist. Until we have the option and choice to choose we cannot love how we are supposed to and follow God as he wants us too. Because of this “choice”, bad things happen and have to be done to the extreme. God lets us have that choice. He lets us decided whether we want to good or bad. The extreme evils in this world all must be here in order for us to have free will and to choose. Since there are two different kinds of evils in this world, there are moral evils like making immoral decisions like killing, murdering, rape, robbery, etc.

Augustine believes in moral evil but when it comes to natural evil he says that there is no such thing. “The heart of Augustine’s solution can be simply stated: Natural evil does not exist” (pg. 238). If the evil does not exist then there is no need to address that problem. He does say that evil is here but instead it is the lack of something good that is being blocked. “What we call evil is just a lack of the being that something should have. Evil is the prevention of good” (pg. 238). He does not deny that there is not evil in this world but instead explains that evil only stops something from being good. He says that the world does still have things that are evil but in reality, it is made up from our experiences and perceptions about that one thing.