Augustine on The
Problem of Evil
The problem of evil has
plagued Christianity as perhaps one the most difficult questions to address.
This problem serves as a stumbling block to the unbeliever, as well as serves
as serving to confuse the Christian who often retreats to a compartmentalization
of faith and reason. Scripture does not teach faith and reason as being opposed
to each other, but rather that they are mutually reinforcing.
Christians sometimes
get over run by contemporary fideists, who respond to the battle between faith
and reasons, conceding that some things we can only “know” by faith alone
(which I would argue is not the prober definition for knowledge in the first
place). However, has it always been this way? Does the Church have a legacy for
pitting faith against reasons?
Various theologians
have written extensively and articulately on the subject, and it is the aim of
this essay to focus upon one of them. This essay will serve to show the impact
that Augustine had upon the philosophical understanding of the problem of evil
as well as his impact upon the Church.
Aurelius Augustinus
In 354, emerged on the
scene a North African child born to a couple committed to give their child the
best opportunities, especially education. He would later serve to inform the
conversations on Christian Theology and leave a legacy of positive impact on
the church. This child would later be known as St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo.
In the introduction to
his famous work, The Confessions,
John K Ryan summarizes the early Augustine as "a man who had great
emotional powers along with great powers of intellect and will, who had lived a
life of conscious depravity as a quasi-pagan."[1]As the convictions from the
Lord, which he later recognized as, grew louder and louder, Augustine sought
truth through various religions. He tried Manicheanism, a religion which taught
a type of dualism, specifically dualism between good and evil. Augustine had
originally sought out a religion which "claimed to appeal to reason and to
offer a rational solution to the problems of life,"[2] and he grew dissatisfied as
Manicheanism was found lacking in their reasonable defense of dualism.
In
a state of agony, Augustine began to read the New Testament. He was practically
instantly converted and was soon baptized. He recognized this conversion as of
both the intellect and of the will.[3] He
candidly penned his spiritual journey in The
Confessions, where one can read his famous phrase, “our heart is restless
until it rests in you."[4]
As
an extensive and eloquent writer on various subjects of theology, he has left
an impact on many. "Roman Catholicism draws upon [his] doctrine of the
church and Protestants upon his views of sin and grace.”[5] However, he did eventually
come back to the idea of dualism of which Manicheanism had taught. He
recognized the problem that evil presented upon Christianity. That is, the
threat it imposes upon the doctrine of the goodness of God. As a brilliant
philosopher, his writings have served later theologians, as well as the Church
at large, in answering what later became known as The Problem of Evil. "No philosopher has written better upon
[it]."[6]
Problem of evil
Augustine
was intimately acquainted with evil. He, “like Paul, he felt that two warriors,
a higher and a lower, were struggling in him for mastery.”[7] He even felt as if "his
power to do right was gone."[8] In
light of this, he came to refer to his conversion experience as an act of
irresistible grace on God’s part.
The argument which
leads to the problem of evil is deductive in form. That is, the conclusions
necessarily follows based on the truth of the premises. Its two premises say
that 1- God created everything, 2- evil is a thing, and the conclusion follows
which states that therefore, God created evil. (Premise one stems from the
Kalam Cosmological which proves that everything comes from God). However, in
response to the argument, Augustine reformulated the argument with two premises
which say that 1- If God is good, he only creates what is good and 2- Evil
exists, but it is certainly not good. The conclusion which follows asserts that
evil must be of a different kind that the other “things” which God created.
A
great influence upon Augustine was Plato. Indeed, he “had more influence on
Augustine more than any other Greek philosopher.”[9] Though Plato has a different
concept of God than Augustine, he knew that "the good is not the cause of
all things, but of the good only, and not the cause of evil.”[10]
Augustine drew heavily upon his influence when he explained that “all of
nature, therefore, is good, since the Creator of all nature is supremely good.
But nature is not supremely and immutably
good as is the Creator of it. Thus the good in created things, can be
diminished and augmented.”[11]
A contemporary symbol
which is typically used to represent a misunderstanding of the relationship
between good and evil is the Yin-Yang, which implies that there is a little bit
of good in evil, and a little bit of evil in good. Obviously this is not a
Christian symbol. However, Augustine would have agreed with the former
assertion. In Enchiridion he explains
that “if there were no good in what is evil, then the evil simply could not
be,”[12] and
in Confessions he claims that “evil is only the privation of a good, even
to the point of complete nonentity."[13]
Augustine’s argument
rests of the fact that God is good (see premise one of the second argument
above). This is an argument from natural theology, i.e., general revelation.
Augustine was able to infer from nature and morality the necessity of God’s
goodness. We have come to refer to this type of argument as a moral argument.
Moral arguments draw off of common human experience, that of moral
intuitiveness, to infer a source great source of these moral values.
Augustine advocated a
“formula” of humility, love, and knowledge of signs for the seeker of truth. He
meant signs to refer the means given by God to reveal himself.[14] Indeed, he understood any
truth derived from philosophical reflection as a sign by which God was
revealing himself. Augustine did not idolize autonomous reasons, however he did
realize that reasons can come alongside of faith to strengthen and uphold
it. It could also serve to expand one’s
theological understanding, as it serves as the bridge from more intuitively
obvious truths to those which must be deduced from other more foundational
concepts.
Conclusion
For these reason, Augustine has left
a legacy in the theological field for his philosophical convictions. “It was
[his] appropriation of Plato’s two-level view of reality that produced the
mysterious non-material God who exists outside of all space and time (e.g. is
infinite and eternal).”[15]
His conviction that reason and faith will never conflict, has assisted the
Church in strengthening its arguments for non-dualism, the problem of evil, the
goodness and infinite nature of God, as
well as various doctrines including that of the Church, sin, and grace.
We can learn from Augustine that the
problem of evil should not be the biggest problem for the church today. Indeed,
there are strong arguments which can be made in favor of Christianity in spite
of this seeming problem. In fact, it is contemporary fideism which is the
biggest problem for the church today. By separating faith and reason, the
church is opening itself up for attacks which it cannot defend against. Reason
is a means by which we can come to know truth about all of reality. It should never
be compartmentalized apart from our faith, as our faith is in regards to the
most important truth of all.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Augustine. The Confessions of St. Augustine. New York: Doubleday, 1960.
B. Hoon Woo,
“Augustine’s
Hermeneutics and Homiletics in De doctrina christiana,” Journal
of Christian Philosophy 17 (2013): 97–117.
Baillie,
John, John T. McNeill, and Henry P. Van Dusen. The Library of Christian Classics Vol VII. Augustine:
Confessions and Enchiridion. Philadelphia: Westminster,
1955.
Plato,
Republic. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2004.
Shelley,
Bruce L. Church History In Plain Language. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008.
Whitesell,
Faris Daniel. "The Problem of Evil as Treated By St. Augustine"
(1939). Master's Theses. Paper 423.
http://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses/423.
“Augustine,”
Great Philosophers, http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Augustine/augustine .html, accessed April 28th,
2014.
[1] John K Ryan, The
Confessions of Saint Augustine (New York: Doubleday, 1960), xvi.
[2] Ibid., xxi.
[3] Ibid., xxx.
[4] Augustine, The Confessions
of Saint Augustine, 1.
[5] Bruce L. Shelley, Church History In Plain Language
(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008), 125.
[6] John Ryan, The Confessions
of Saint Augustine, xxxii.
[7] Bruce Shelley, Church History In Plain Language, 125.
[8] Ibid., 129.
[9] Whitesell, Faris Daniel, "The Problem of Evil as
Treated By St. Augustine" (1939). Master's
Theses. Paper 423. http://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses/423, 20.
[10] Plato, Republic
(New York: Barnes and Noble, 2004), 66.
[11] Augustine. The Library of Christian Classics Vol VII. Augustine:
Confessions and Enchiridion. (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1955), 343 (emphasis my own).
[12] Ibid, 345.
[13] Augustine, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, 43.
[15] “Augustine,” Great Philosophers, http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Augustine/augustine.html,
accessed April 28th, 2014.
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