The Augustinian Theodicy Of Augustine Of Hippo

As this man was inspired to learn the truth, he read a book called Hortensius and soon after joined the Manicheans. These people had elements of Christianity and elements of Buddhism but believed that all creations including flesh were evil. They believed all sex; even marriage including the birth of children was evil and sinful. Manicheans felt that the world was evil material full of darkness trying to find the spiritual world of light, as some would say, the power between good and evil. While being associated with the Manicheans, Augustine had the conception that evil was capable of being touched, like a material substance. But as he spoke with others and further looked into what evil means to exist, he abandoned the notion that evil is something tangible. He realized that evil does not exist in the physical world and therefore moved away from the Manichean religion.

         Peter Brown’s Augustine of Hippo is a dense, scholarly work outlining the entire life of the Catholic bishop.  The University of California Press in Berkeley, California published the work in 1967.  My version was the 1973 second paperback printing, found in the University library.  Its smallish, scholarly, serifed, typewritten font allows for a instant respect for the subject matter:  the words are at first imposing, but then revealing as their serious tone complements the complexity of the text.  The pages are studded with footnotes, filling out this work with evidence of Brown’s exhaustive research.  There is a three-page preface before the work, and, after the work, a

An omnibenevolent God created a man with the capacity to sin; as Augustine has addressed, the evil in man resides from his will. Augustine, however, does not address how evil stems also from the human nature of temptation that was a consequence of the original fall from Eden. Augustine touches on this theme when accounting for the origins of his sin, but he never fully declares it. “I loved to excuse my soul,” Augustine begins, “and to accuse something else inside me (I knew not what) but which was not I. But, assuredly, it was I, and it was my impiety that had divided me against myself” (62). Here, Augustine admits to denying his own human nature to sin, and blames it on something beyond his will, such as a result of creation. Bonner,

Hick gives readers an Irenaeus theodicy rather than and Augustinian theodicy (Hick 120). Hick begins his piece by addressing that human suffering and evil is the most effectual doubt to the belief God (Hick 120). The idea of a loving God seems too good to be true, and impossible given the hardship seen in the world everyday. The traditional dilemma is that with God being God, all loving and all good and all powerful, He wishes to eradicate any and all evil in the world and He has the capability to do so (Hick 121). With this idea, and the fact that there is still evil and suffering, it makes people believe that God cant be all loving and omnipotent simultaneously. Hick relates how Christianity Judaism are religions based on the Bible, a text where suffering and praises are documented. The pinnacle of evil, according to the Bible, is the crucifixion of Jesus, the rejection of God’s chosen Messiah and Son. This leads Hick to say that evil is in explicit conflict with God’s will and goodness (Hick 121). Hick addresses the Augustine theodicy, which is grounded in the assumption and belief that earth and the universe as a whole, by nature, is good. This theodicy also states that evil was not placed on Earth and in the Universe by God, but rather is a malformation of “something that is inherently valuable,” (Hick 122). The Augustine theodicy still acknowledges that evil exists, however it was not made with God’s hands and will (Hick 122). Theodicy “does not claim to explain, nor explain away every instance of evil in the human experience,”(Hick

“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

St. Augustine’s On Free Choice of the Will elaborates on the relationship between God, free will, and evil. During the very beginning of Book One, he asks the question, “isn’t God the cause of evil” (Cahn 357). From this question, it can be ascertained that he searches for a connection between God and evil (sins), which inferred in the writing to be connected though free will. He believes that God does not create evil, but rather that evil is simply the lack of good, since God is completely good and, therefore, cannot create evil. God not being the source of evil is then further elaborated through his explanation of a crime and how it is caused by inordinate desires and human abuse of good things (Cahn 360). By explaining

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

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

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 paper examines St. Augustine’s view on evil. St. Augustine believed that God made a perfect world, but that God's creatures turned away from God of their own free will and that is how evil originated in the world. Augustine assumes that evil cannot be properly said to exist at all, he argues that the evil, together with that suffering which is created as punishment for sin, originates in the free nature of the will of all creatures. According to Augustine, God has allowed evil to exist in the world because it does not conflict with his righteousness. He did not create evil but is also not a victim of it. He simply allows it to exist.

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

In this essay I will be discussing how St. Augustine ultimately solves the problem of evil, in a way that at times does go hand in hand with his religious views, however, at times contradicts what he is saying. In “ Confessions” Augustine who although does not in any way question the existence of God questions why God, someone who is all powerful, and all good still allowing people to suffer the way in which they are.

God is according to Augustine the single sovereign, who rules over everything, even the evil forces in the universe. This sovereignty is grounded in Augustine’s understanding that God created everything. This assumption ultimately solves the question why evil exists. It exists because God created it, just like he created everything else. Augustine suggests that everything God creates in inherently good. However, creatures can become “evil” because they are prone to corruption (Mann 44). Furthermore, rational beings have

In order to make sense of St. Augustine’s definition of evil as the absence of good, it is helpful to know how he came up with it. It is true that