The Two Kinds of Evil According to Augustine Essay

In the course of this essay I will argue that evil is not compatible with the existence of god. This means that evil and God cannot coexist because if god were present, the existence of evil would contradict all that god is believed to be. Abrahamic religions insist that God both created the world and that he preserves and maintains it. Christianity claims that God is all knowing and is boundless in his abilities. Religions claim that God is benevolent, and only wants the best for humanity and the universe, as his creations. If all of the above statements be true, then it is hard to understand why god would allow evil to thrive right from the beginning of time.

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,

If god was all good, all powerful and all knowing, he would not allow the existence of evil.

“Either we must say that God is not wholly good, and that he permits or is even the author of evil. Or we must say that God is not omnipotent, and although he is wholly good and would prevent evil if he could, he is powerless to stop it.” (Fitzgerald 340).

“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

In his essay, "The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: a Theodicy," Peter van Inwagen alleges a set of reasons that God may have for allowing evil to exist on earth. Inwagen proposes the following story – throughout which there is an implicit assumption that God is all-good (perfectly benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient) and deserving of all our love. God created humans in his own likeness and fit for His love. In order to enable humans to return this love, He had to give them the ability to freely choose. That is, Inwagen holds that the ability to love implies free will. By giving humans free will, God was taking a risk.

The final portion of the old questions asks “is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?” (Hume 198). It would seem logical that if God is omnipotent and omnimalevolent as Christians believe then he would be able and willing to stop all evil. Since there is clearly evil in this world, wouldn’t that mean that God is just evil and relishes in the suffering of humans? Of the three questions, this is the least logical. God could not be omnimalevolent and evil because, by definition, these two characteristics contrast. Someone could not be all good and evil at the same time.

Throughout his Confessions, Augustine's view of humans--our essential nature has interesting differences from the way in which others, in different time periods and in different civilizations, have seen humans.

Over the course of time, things that seem important now are bound to change. For example, before Augustine’s time, Christianity was just becoming legally recognized. Today, Christianity is one of the world’s most widely known religions. Augustine shows us that while most things do change, human nature is not one of them. Throughout his piece, Confessions, he describes to the reader how humans are born evil, and cannot change until they have the capacity to do so. Through reading this autobiography and Hsün Tzu’s piece, Man’s Nature Is Evil, as well as Mencius’s piece, Man’s Nature Is Good, it seems that Augustine agrees more with Hsün Tzu than Mencius. They both agreed on the ideas that all humans are born evil, they remain evil through

William Rowe defines gratuitous evil as an instance of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.(Rowe 335) In a world with so much evil it raises the questions If God is all powerful, all knowing and all good, how can he allow bad things to happen to good people? Can God even exist in a world with so such gratuitous evil? These are questions that has afflicted humanity for a very long time and has been the question to engross theologians for centuries. The existence of evil has been the most influential and powerful reason to disprove the existence of God. It is believed among many theist that God is the creator and caretaker

 Evil doesn 't necessarily have to be an action by a human; it can also be a result of a natural disaster such as: hurricanes, earthquakes, illness, etc. A hurricane can take away everything from thousands of humans. This causes the people to have no home, clothes, or food. This is also a form of evil, due to the suffering it causes. This is called natural evil. People can bring about moral evil upon themselves, although, they rarely can bring natural evil upon themselves. There is a distinct difference between the two, and one evil does not cause the other. The reason I point the

The problem of evil questions the nature of God and threatens his status as a figure worthy of worship. Surely human beings would not wish to worship a God that is neither all good nor all-powerful? The figure we call God is seen to be entirely perfect and flawless in every way. The problem of evil also questions God’s omniscience, in respects that he is all knowing. If God is omniscient then he must know the harm that evil does and the suffering it will cause. The attributes in question are the essence of the nature of God and without them he becomes more like a human than a God. If any of God’s characteristics are omitted, he

The problem of evil has been around since the beginning. How could God allow such suffering of his “chosen people”? God is supposedly all loving (omni-benevolent) and all powerful (omnipotent) and yet He allows His creations to live in a world of danger and pain. Two philosophers this class has discussed pertaining to this problem is B.C. Johnson and John Hick. Johnson provides the theists’ defense of God and he argues them. These include free will, moral urgency, the laws of nature, and God’s “higher morality”. Hick examines two types of theodicies – the Augustinian position and the Irenaeus position. These positions also deal with free will, virtue (or moral urgency), and the laws of nature. Johnson

To Augustine, an evil act is one that moves any member of creation towards exclusion from God’s universe. If a being with free will elects to move away from God for a temporal end, they are moving towards corruption or death and unleashing this force on the world around them. Once a body becomes in entirely corrupted it has no existence whatsoever, it is irrelevant to this reality and we can only imagine it based on the imprint left before it was no more. This is the ultimate death; complete exclusion from God’s universe and Augustine contrasts it with the ultimate Good, which is complete inclusion with God’s universe. Once something is outside of God’s universe, it is impossible for it have any effect. (7.13.1)

Explain how St. Augustine ultimately solves the “problem of evil” in a way that is compatible with his Christian faith. Be sure to refer in your answer to the two aspects of his solution that we discussed in class- the one centring on the nature of evil itself, the other on why we sin. Do you agree that the problem has been solved adequately? Defend your answer.