Faith and Knowledge

Augustine: The problem of Evil


Augustine of Hippo has probably done to shape the structure of orthodox Christian belief. He is still a highly influential person. From his earliest to his latest writings Augustine was continually turning to the problem of evil. He asked this issue for a long time, for it is not easy to respond. He had wandering in many years. The problem of evil is an issue that we have to encounter through our life as Augustine. It is worth to know this evil issue for understanding Scripture and God’s world.
The definition of dictionary: Evil is the bad (moral evil) or the harmful (natural evil). Natural evil, although distinct from moral evil, is not separate from it.   Evil is usually seen as the dualistic opposite of good. And also Augustine defines that evil ‘as privation of good stemming from misused freedom.’

There are many asks in his books, such as Confessions, City of God. His question is the origin of Evil. It had been bothering him for many years. He could not understand where it was begin. There is God who all-good, all-powerful, all-loving and all-knowing. He created all creation and he said it was good. Every creature is good. For God is good, He made it, So it cannot be otherwise. If so where does evil come from? It is his asks. He wanted to know eagerly. The Book seven of Confessions reveals that his thought, “I anxiously sought the answer to the question, ‘Where does evil come from?’ How great were the pangs of my overflowing heart, what inward groans I had, my God! Yet even then Your ears were open to me, though I did not know it. When in silence I vehemently sought an answer, those silent sorrows of my soul were strong cries to Your mercy.” 
The whole of Augustine’s theology was deeply influenced by Greek Platonic philosophy in its later form, called Neo-Platonism. In the new Platonism, Augustine learned that evil has no independent existence, that it is only the absence of good, that the world of real existence is the world of the spirit. It is in this light that he read the Bible, understood sin and grace, and viewed the Christian life.   I want to reveal the connection between Augustine and Neo-Platonism. Especially my aim is influence of Neo-Platonism into the problem of evil.


Augustine has a very interesting background. Augustine’s (354-430 A.D.) account of the problem of evil came in the end to embrace almost every area of his writing. His interest began in his youth and was possibly the major motivating force in the course of his long journey through a series of religious systems. He was not actually Christian, but he grew up in his faithful mother. He was well educated person who could read Latin. When he looked at the Scriptures, he couldn’t understand about the problem of evil. So his first choice for the solution was not the faith of his mother, Monica, but Manichaeism. He became a follower of the Manicheans for nine years while in his twenties. But he began to feel some intellectual dissatisfaction about the problem of evil. And then he left that false faith.

After that time, his concern was inclined to Christian faith. When he was in Milan, Italy, he met the powerful preacher bishop Ambrose in 384. He was influenced by Ambrose. Ambrose the bishop was influenced by New-Platonism. So Augustine also was influenced by Neo-Platonic books. He wrote that “…. thou didst procure for me, through one inflated with the most monstrous pride, certain books of the Platonists, translated from Greek into Latin.”   It seem that Marius Victorinus’ books who had been translated Plotinus’ book, maybe it was Enneads, into Latin several years before. Augustine clearly identifies the Egyptian gold with the Platonic books translated by Marius Victorinus.   It must be clear that, as he read it, that books influenced him fully. According this John Hick wrote that:
“Augustine’s answer was suggested to him by the Neo-Platonism to which he turned after renouncing Manichaeism and which, after his conversion to Christianity, still seemed to him of all human philosophies the closest to Christian truth.” 

The books of the Platonists provided him with a metaphysical framework of extraordinary depth and subtlety, a richly-textured tableau upon which the human condition could be plotted…. He credits the books of the Platonists with making it possible for him to conceive of a non-physical, spiritual reality.   And also the German theologian Johannes Brachtendorf wrote that:
“The Neo-Platonists taught Augustine in Milan the metaphysical truths about God, namely that he is immutable, immaterial, highest unity, and highest good.”  
And finally he could understand the rational basis of faith. Especially at that time he would read the Pauline Epistles. And the Platonists helped him understand the relation of an infinite God to a finite Creation, and to understand evil.


Neo-Platonism founded by Plotinus (205-270 A.D). Middle Platonism had begun the assimilation of Pythagorean, Aristotelian, and Stoic elements into Platonic thought. Plotinus created a new synthesis by shaping these strands into a coherent religious philosophy. Plotinus’s system begins with the One, the supreme transcendent principle which can be described only by negation. It is immaterial and impersonal. The One is the ground of all being and source of all values. Plotinus has a world view of the Hierarchical system. Out of the One, but without any change in the One, there proceeded by emanation Mind (nous), the World Soul and Nature. Evil is not an ontological reality in this system. Nothing is evil in its nature. Rather evil is non-being, but Plotinus did not mean by this unreal.   "The Kind opposed to all Form is Privation or Negation, and this necessarily refers to something other than itself, it is no Substantial-Existence: therefore if Evil is Privation or Negation it must be lodged in some Negation of Form: there will be no Self-Existent Evil." (Enneads, VIII, 10)
From the One’s creative overflow emanates a hierarchy of levels of being, tending towards multiplicity and inferiority and aspiring to return to the One. The first emanations are Mind and Soul, cosmic principles respectively of intelligence and animation. All being as such is good, even bare matter at the lower limit of the ‘great chain of being’. Evil is strictly non-being – a real possibility for those who turn away from the One.
In Plotinus’ metaphysical system the Supreme Being, the ultimate One, is in one of its aspects the Good, and evil has no place or part in it. In Enneads he writes: 
“If such be the Nature of Beings and of that which transcends all the realm of being, Evil cannot have any place among Beings or in the Beyond-Being; these are good. There remains, only if Evil exists at all, that it be situate in the realm of non-Being, that it be some mode, as it were, of the Non-Being that it have its seat in something in touch with Non-Being or to a certain degree communicate in Non-Being. By this Non-Being, of course, we are not to understand something that simply does not exist, but something of an utterly different order from Authentic-Being…. Some conception of it would be reached by thinking of measurelessness as opposed to measure, of the unbounded against bound, the unshaped against the principle of shape, the ever-needy against the self-sufficing: think of the ever- undefined, the never at rest, the all accepting but never sated, utter dearth.”   

Neo-Platonism offered an alternative to Manichaean dualism by claiming that evil exists not as authentic being but as a privation of good – the premise that became most essential in Augustine’s own writings in dealing with the problem of evil. Augustine’s Christian theology has also adopted the framework of Plotinus, especially in terms of hierarchical order:
“At the upper extreme is the eternal reality of God; temporal, material things, the objects of the senses, occupy the lower extreme; between the extremes are found the various gradations and orders of spirituality, one of which is the order exemplified by the human soul.” 
“All natures, then, inasmuch as they are, and have therefore a rank and species of their own, and a kind of internal harmony, are certainly good. And when they are in the places assigned to them by the order of their nature, they preserve such being as they have received.” (The city of God, Book 12, 5)
Augustine’s main question was “If all things have been created good by a good God, how is it that evil enters the world?” Neo-Platonism offers the recognition of God’s being and solve to problem of evil.
Augustine continuously has to address the question of the origin of evil. He claimed that :
“I appeared to myself to be going toward it, because I did not yet know that evil was nothing but a privation of good (that, indeed, it has no being).” (Confessions, 3. 7. 12)
For Augustine, God is regarded as the ultimate source and point of origin for all that comes below. God is the ultimate being and goodness. The whole creation is good, though capable of being corrupted. After his conversion he had to reorientation not only his life and beliefs but also of his thinking about the problem of evil. He accepted that God is wholly good, all-powerful and omniscience, he had to conclude that evil does not exist, for its existence would be incompatible with the existence of such a God. But it brings a new difficulty question. Evil does not exist but how can be such a powerful influence in the world. And he came to believe that it did so by limiting the freedom of the will. A will infected by evil can no longer choose the good, and so it is deeply inhabited.   Augustine attributes the origin of evil to the abuse of freedom with which God endowed rational beings. His answer to the above mentioned questions is very straight, “an evil will is the cause of all evils.” (On Free Will. 3.17.48) Man was created by God with a good will. Yet, this good will was free to become evil:
“The good will, then is a work of God, since man was created by God with a good will. On the contrary, the first bad will, which was present in man before any of his deeds, was rather a falling away from the work of God into man’s own works than a positive work itself; in fact, a fall into bad works, since they were “according to man” not “according to God.” Thus, this bad will or, what is the same, man is so far as his will is bad, is like a bad tree which brings forth these bad works like bad fruit.” (City of God 14.11)
For Augustine, free will implies the ability to do evil. It has possibilities to choose good or evil.: “For when the will abandons what is above itself, and turns to what is lower, it become evil – not because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked.” (City of God 12.6)
According to Augustine there was no evil in creation, but evil came into existence when the angel and the human misused his freewill. The cause of willing is a mystery that goes beyond human understanding. And nevertheless God’s foreknowledge and He knows all the consequences, why did not God prevent human from sinning? ‘Being able to sin’ did not mean that those first humans would sin. Augustine holds that having the possibility of sin is better than not having it. Creating human beings with the free will, which could lead them to sinning, was better than giving them the will, which could not sin. God wants to us to freely serve.
“It does not follow that, though there is for God a certain order of all causes, their must therefore be nothing depending on free exercise of our own free wills, for our wills themselves are included in that order of courses which is certain to God, and is embraced by his foreknowledge, for human wills are also causes of human actions; and he who foreknew all the causes of things would certainly among those causes not have been ignorant of our wills.” (City of God. 5.9)
Conclusion
Neo-Platonism is as like the gold which brought from Egypt. So Augustine wrote that:
“I had sought strenuously after that gold which thou didst allow thy people to take from Egypt, since wherever it was it was thine. And thou saidst unto the Athenians by the mouth of thy apostle that in thee “we live and move and have our being,” as one of their own poets had said. And truly these books came from there. But I did not set my mind on the idols of Egypt which they fashioned of gold, “changing the truth of God into a lie and worshiping and serving the creature more than the Creator.” (Confessions, 7. 9. 15)

Augustine wants to use the philosophy of the gentiles for God. He never used that wisdom to serve their idols but use for glorify God. He did not set his mind on the idols of philosophy wisdom. Through all of his effort, anguishes and wandering the flower of theology are in full bloom. The problem of evil is privation of good and it begins from misused freedom.

Christian Philosophy recommended Books

1. To examine the main thinkers in the history of philosophy.
2. To examine the interaction and influence of philosophy on our theological formulations.
3. To offer critical tools to evaluate thinkers of the past as well as future thinkers.


■ Diogenes, Allen, and Eric Springsted. Primary Readings in Philosophy for understanding Theology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992.
■ William Placher. Readings in the History of Christian Theology. Vols.1 and 2. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988.

■ Aristotle, The Basic Works of Aristotle (NY: Random House, 1941). ed., Richard McKeon.
■ Ayer, A. J., Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (NY: Random House, 1984).
■ Edwards, Paul, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (NY: Macmillan, 1967). 8 vols.
■ Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method (NY: Crossroad, 1982).
■ Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time (NY: Harper, 1962).
■ Hume, David, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (NY: Liberal Arts Press, 1955).
■ James, William, Essays in Pragmatism (NY: Hafner, 1948, 1955).
■ Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, Abridged and Translated by Norman Kemp Smith (NY: Random House, 1958).
■ Kierkegaard, Soren, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1941, 1968).
■ Leibniz, G. W., Selections (NY: Scribner’s, 1951).
■ Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (NY: Dover, 1959). 2 vols.
■ Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals (Garden City: Doubleday, 1956).
■ Pascal, Blaise, Pensees (NY: Dutton, 1956).
■ Plato, Plato: The Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1961).
■ Pojman, Louis P., Classics of Philosophy (texts, with introductions) (NY: Oxford University Press, 1998).
■ Russell, Bertrand, The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1961). Spinoza, Selections (NY: Scribner’s, 1930).
■ Wittgenstein L., Philosophical Investigations (NY: Macmillan, 1953, 1968).

Augustine’s Christian theology has also adopted the framework of Plotinus. For Augustine God is the ultimate of being and goodness. However, in one aspect regarding gradations of being Augustine significantly diverges from Plotinus, namely he does not hold matter to be evil. On the contrary, the whole creation, including the material world, is good, though capable of being corrupted. In fact, this is one of the central themes of Augustine’s thought: the whole creation is good.

 

The Problem of Evil


Theologian: Augustine of Hippo, Philosopher: Plotinus


1. Background

-Augustine failed to have the answer of the origin of evil from Cicero, Manichaeism.

-He tried to use the Neo-Platonic doctrine to explain the problem of evil.


2. Augustine’s explanation of the problem of Evil

a. The nature of evil; The evil is a privation of all good, so the evil is absolutely nothing.

b. The origin of evil: Augustine pointed that the free choice of the will is the reason of human being’s committing sin and suffering


3. The Premises to get to the solution

-‘God is all-good and all-powerful.

-The whole creation is good; “God created good creatures.” (Conf. 7, 5, 7)


4. Influence of Neo-Platonism on Augustine’s Theodicy

a. Understanding of God and evil in Neo-Platonism

-The Supreme Being, the ultimate One, is in one of its aspects the God; and evil has no place or part in it.àAugustine: The nature of evil; the evil is privation of all good, so the evil is absolutely nothing.

b. Hierarchical system of Plotinus and Augustine’s adoption:-Plotinus system begins with the One, the supreme transcendent principle, which is immaterial and impersonal. The One is the ground of all being and source of all values. à there proceeded by emanation Mind (nous)àthe next is the World Soul(psyche)àthe lowest level; Nature (Evangelical dictionary of theology, p. 821)

-Augustine: “all natures, then, inasmuch as they are, and have therefore a rank and species of their own, and a kind of internal harmony, are certainly good” (City of God)



5. Evaluation

- The “privation” theory is not satisfactory. If God created all and governs all things, the privations as well as the actualities are within his plan.

-Augustine rejects the ancient Platonic, neo-Platonic, Gnostic and Manichaean prejudice against matter and lays the foundation for Christian naturalism that rejoices in this world which God created in His bountiful goodness.



Genesis 1:31: “God saw all that had made, and it was very good” 

“But you had not yet ‘lightened my darkness’ (Psalms 17:29)”-Confession, 7. 1.2.

Doctrine of Scripture

1. The bible is the revelation of God.

‘Revelation is primarily the Word of God disclosed, which is essentially Jesus the Christ, the Word incarnate. And revelation is the Bible as “the word of God written.” ‘ (Grenz, p.511, Karl Barth’s definition)
‘God’s manifestation of himself to particular persons at definite times and places, enabling those persons to enter into a redemptive relationship with him’, it is special revelation. Why was special revelation needs? Because ‘the humans had lost the relationship of favor which they had with God prior the fall’.(Erickson, p.201) ‘The insufficiency of general revelation therefore required the special revelation. The special revelation, however, requires the general revelation as well. Without the general revelation, humans would not possess the concepts regarding God that enable them to know and understand the God of the special revelation. Special revelation builds on general revelation.’((Erickson, p.203)
According to Erickson (p.203~206), there are three styles of Special Revelation. 1) The personal nature of special revelation. A personal God presents himself to persons.(reveals his name to persons, personal covenants with individuals, personal experience with God) 2) The anthropic nature of Special Revelation. Revelation came in forms that are part of ordinary, everyday human experience.(especially incarnation, he came as a human) 3) The analogical nature of Special Revelation. It employs analogical language, which is midway between univocal and equivocal language.
 ‘The modalities that God uses include historical events, divine speech, and the incarnation of God in Christ.(the most complete modality)’(Erickson, p.200). Revelation is not propositional, but it is personal.


2. The bible is inspired by God.

‘By inspiration of Scripture we mean that supernatural influence of the Holy Spirit on the Scripture writers which rendered their writings an accurate record of the revelation or which resulted in what they wrote actually being the Word of God.’(Erickson, p.225)

3. The bible is inerrant.


4. The bible has the authority of God.

Doctrine of Theodicies: The Problem of Evil

Traditionally, the problem of evil is framed in a four step argument: 1) God is good. 2) A good God would not permit suffering or evil. 3) Yet suffering and evil are observed in the world. 4) Therefore a good God does not exist. (p. 224, McGrath)

Some approaches to theodicy rest on redefining the categories in which the dilemma is stated. Irenaeus of Lyons represents a major element within Greek patristic thought, which regards human nature as a potentiality, rather than a fully developed actuality.(John Hick developed this idea, he emphasized that human beings are created incomplete) But this approach seems merely to encourage acquiescence in the presence of evil in the world, without giving any moral direction or stimulus to resist and overcome it. (p. 224, McGrath)
For Augustine, creation and redemption were the work of on and the same God. God created the world good, meaning that it was free from the contamination of evil. Evil is a direct consequence of the misuse of human freedom. God created humanity with the freedom to choose god or evil. He located the origin of evil in satanic temptation. And the satan is a fallen angel, who was originally created good.
Karl Barth rejected a priori notions of omnipotence in favor of a belief in the triumph of God’s grace over unbelief, evil, and suffering. He describes evil as das Nichtige – a mysterious power of ”nothingness”, it is that which contradicts the will of God.
Alvin Plantinga, summarized that – free will is morally important. And if human beings were forced to do nothing but good, that would represent a denial of human free will. God must bring into being the best possible world that he is able to do. God must create a world with free will. It must therefore follow that God must create a world with free will. God is not responsible if human beings choose to do evil, since god is operating under self-imposed constraints that mean God will not compel human beings to do good. (p. 226, McGrath)

Augustine of Hippo who provided the definitive statement of a nondualist theology, which had such a major impact on western thought. – Everything that exists owes that existence to God.


There is no alternative source or origin of existence. Everything that exists was created good by a good God. The evil that exists within the world is not to be thought of as something positive and real, possessing its own distinct substance. Rather, it is to be thought of as a “lack of goodness”. He uses the image of a dormant seed as an analogy for this process. God embeds seeds(ratines seminales, seed bearing reasons) God created the world complete with a series of dormant powers, which were actualized at appropriate moments through divine providence.(p. 218, McGrath) God made all things simultaneously, while envisaging that the various kinds of living things make their appearance gradually over time-as they were meant to by their creator. The “seed” implies that the original creation contained within it the potentialities for all the living kinds that would subsequently emerge. (p. 219, McGrath)



The general Greek understanding of the origins of the world(platonist worldview) – God is to be thought of as an architect, who ordered pre-existent matter. This idea was taken up by Most Gnostic writers, who were here followed by a few early Christian theologians such as Theophilus of Antioch and Justin Martyr. They professed a belief of in pre-existent matter, which was shaped into the world in the act of creation. Creation was not “from nothing(ex nihilo)”; rather, it was to be seen as an act of construction. The existence of evil in the world was thus to be explained on the basis of the intractability of this pre-existent matter. (p. 219, McGrath)

But several major Christian writers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries argued that everything required to be created out of nothing.(Irenaeus, Tertullian ‘the world depended on God for its existence.’, Augustine)
The doctrine of God as creator has several major implications, 1) a distinction must be drawn between God and the creation, while at the same time to affirm that it is God’s creation. 2) Creation implies God’s authority over the world. The doctrine of creation leads to the idea of human stewardship of the creation.(it contrasted with a secular notion of human ownership) 3) the doctrine of God as creator implies the original goodness of creation.(Gen 1:10, 18, 21…) 4) Creation as recounted in the book of Gen. implies that human beings are created in the image of God.(p. 220-221, McGrath)
There are several models of God as creator. The 1st one is widely used by early Christian writers. Emanation was used to clarify the relation between God and the world. This image of creation suggests that the creation of the world can be regarded as an overflowing of the creative energy of God. There is a natural or organic connection between God and the creation. This model has two weaknesses, the image of a sun radiating light implies an involuntary emanation but the Christian tradition has emphasized that the act of creation rests upon a prior decision on the part of God to create, which this model cannot adequately express. Thus, the idea of a personal God, expressing a personality both in the very act of creation and the subsequent creation itself, is difficult to convey by this image. 2nd model is the ‘construction’. God as a master builder, deliberately constructing the world. The weakness is that this portrays creation as involving pre-existent matter. But it includes the fundamental theme of ordering. And the 3rd, Artistic expression. Many Christian writers speak of creation as the “handiwork of God,” comparing it to a work of art which is beautiful in itself, as well as expressing the personality of its creator.(Jonathan Edwards) this model also could easily lead to the idea of creation from pre-existent matter.(Sculptor) But this weaknesses has a possibility of thinking about creation from nothing; the author and the composer. (p. 221-222, McGrath)

Doctrine of Creation

“Establishment of order” is generally represented in two different ways. 1. Creation is associated with the image of a potter working clay into a recognizably ordered structure. 2. Creation concerns conflict with a series of chaotic forces.(dragon or another monster) (p. 217, McGrath)

The central issue relating to the doctrine of creation which had to be debated in the first period of Christian theology was that of dualism.(p. 217, McGrath) Irenaeus of Lyons opposed this idea, which argued for the existence of two gods: a supreme god(NT’s the redeemer God) and a lesser deity(OT’s God). First one is the source of the invisible spiritual world, and the other one is created the world visible, material things. Also, Manichaeism has a Gnostic worldview, it is strongly dualist. It sets up a fundamental tension between the spiritual realm(good) and the material realm.(evil) The dualist notion of a good realm of the invisible and spiritual, and an evil realm of the visible and material is excluded by the Council of Nicea(325).