St. Augustine and the Problem of Evil from a Christian Basis

Secondly, Augustine then questions Evodius on how he knows that our existence comes from God. His answer begs the question as he

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

Augustine’s different writings, primarily in his confessions, he demonstrates that faith and reason are simultaneously gained and understood. With the true form of one comes the truth of the other. This is somewhat evident when looking over Augustine’s life and his different religions. Near the start of Augustine’s search for great intellect, he first sought the Bible. Augustine read parts of the scripture and was expected to find something similar to the writing of Cicero: elegant and beautiful constructed Latin, which at the time, the Bible was not. He found the text and religion itself distasteful as he was unimpressed with the supposed role models of history. What Augustine failed to see at the time, something he later remarked on, was that the beauty of God’s word was not found simply in the way the text was written (though there are many psalms written in beautiful literary fashion) but in the life found within the message. Nevertheless, Augustine found no sustenance in the words he read, and he moved

This is joy grounded in you, O God, who are the truth, ‘my illumination, the salvation of my face, my God.’” Repeatedly examples of the paradoxical nature of the Christian God are presented in Saint Augustine’s Confessions. But the unquenchable thirst for answers to these paradoxes that Saint Augustine exhibits are merely illustrations of man’s longing for truth. Saint Augustine himself laments over the yearning he felt for truth. In fact, it was this desire that led him to the Manicheans. But if God is truth and truth leads to God then how did the pursuit of truth lead Augustine so far astray for so long? The answer lies in the wickedness of human nature; man spends all his life searching for truth, yet although his soul craves it, his mind longs to control and perverse it. Saint Augustine journeyed far and wide, and spent years digging through books and papers trying to find the truth his soul craved. But he continued to ignore and snub God because he wanted that truth on his own terms and not on the terms of a divine and supreme being. Often man denies the presence of a superior being even when the inner void and the truths of the

Augustine believed that the soul has a natural tendency to be constantly seeking happiness and love. If this quest leads the soul to expect complete fulfillment through temporal

“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

With god aware of the evil that humanity has created, Augustine’s explanation of how god has already forgiven and created a way for humanity to embrace the light provide spiritual reasoning for sins that are committed. As with the sacrifice of Jesus and offered redemption of the many sins that are committed reflect the all-knowing and forgiving nature of god. Through his personal experience Augustine’s mental state throughout his life until finding god is one of the factors for his conclusion to the problem and question. Putting this in perspective, to know the god has already forgiven through redemption and has already sacrificed for humanity, further prove key elements in his perfect state being that he is all loving and all knowing. Furthermore, to think god in the event of being merciless and vengeful or angered by humanity which causes him to inflicts evil onto the world by his will is not a valid reason due to the sacrifice and redemption which he has allowed to happen in restoring the good which his creation lacks.

A. The Trinitarian aspect of God's image appears in the mature works of Augustine. VII. Under neo-Platonic influence, the cognition of God in Augustine, as the Trinity, appears and develops independently of the faith. VIII.

One of the opening lines of his Confessions may provide a clue: “Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you” (21). This suggests that man possesses an innate instinct to seek God and spiritual enlightenment. It implies that man, as a product of God, will inherently desire knowledge of and a relationship with his creator. Augustine continues by saying: “The thought of [God] stirs [man] so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you” (21). This suggests that though man may struggle on earth, should he decide to turn to God he will experience peace and rest in the Lord. Here Augustine also states that unless man has found God, “he cannot be content,” implying that those who have not found God will feel a constant inner void.

Heavily based off the fact that we are far from perfect as human beings, Augustine shows us into his past and how he has learned from his mistakes. One idea that Augustine emphasized was the notion of love. Throughout his book, The Confessions, we find numerous mentions of the way he views this

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

As Augustine believes, “life eternal is the supreme good, death eternal the supreme

7.23). St. Augustine is only able to understand the true beauty of God for a brief second because he is weighed down by his body. His main limitation of the body is his sexual desires, which also represents the weakening of the will, derived from his mortality. St. Augustine is aware that he must transcend beyond his sexual desires in order to sustain the true vision of God, but cannot do so for an uninterrupted period of time. St. Augustine’s anagogical ascent as described in his Confessions, begins with him questioning his previous assumptions about the physical beauty of bodies. He questions the truth in these beliefs, and describes that “the unchangeable and authentic eternity of truth transcends my mutable mind” (Conf. 7.23). St. Augustine claims his judgements about the beauty of bodies are transient and are subject to change as his ideas develop. He states that he cannot possibly claim beauty to be one thing, because his idea of beauty and what is beautiful itself changes. There is only one inalterable definition of true beauty, which is God, and St. Augustine cannot label that beauty with his mind which is so prone to change and the deterioration of mortality. This leads him to view not the beauty of

The book expresses three main concerns. One is Augustine’s frank and detailed acknowledgment of his personal sinfulness and the power he came to recognize as God’s provident grace—protective, creative, salvific—in every moment of his life. He also wrote in order to confess his own Christian faith and clearly repudiate any supposed lingering connections on his part with Manichaeism. Finally, The Confessions are a heartfelt paean of praise and thanksgiving in honor of God’s glory.

At this point in his life, Augustine is recognized for doing many things for the Church as a priest, author, and defender of faith. As an author he wrote Confessions, his spiritual autobiography, and City of God, his great work describing the Christian philosophy throughout history. In this magnificent work,