Augustine: The problem of Evil
2/27/2014
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.
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.
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.
Labels:
Augustine,
NEOPLATONISM,
Plotinus,
the problem of evil
