AUGUSTINE ON EVIL
Saint Augustine was the
last great prophet of antiquity and the first great prophet of the Medieval
Period. Alister E. Macgrath in his book Historical
Theology asserts that, Augustine was the most influential Latin patristic
writer.[i] Since
his time as a student in Carthage one question engrossed Augustine: What was
the origin of evil?[ii] Augustine
lived in the era of the disintegration of the Roman Empire, his symbol of
strength and domination was collapsing before his very eyes, and his own life
was filled with turbulence, sorrow and loss. He lost his mother, his pillar of
strength and virtue. Saint Augustine in his book Confessions after the death his mother says, “ I closed her eyes,
and a great wave of sorrow surged into my heart. It would have overflowed in
tears if I had not made a strong effort of will and stemmed the flow, so that
the tears dried in my eyes.”[iii]
In order for his faith in God to be cemented and established he had to find the
reason why an eternally good God would create evil yet all his creation is
good.[iv]
Augustine’s quest for answers led him to many different philosophical schools
of thought. He is therefore identified as “a man of many conversions.”[v] Augustine’s
solution to these questions greatly impacted Western thought. Augustine
believed that evil is not ontological in nature. He believed that evil was not
a something but a nothing. He taught that evil was a lack of good or the
privation of good. Saint Augustine in his book Confessions asserts that, “I did not know that evil is nothing but
the removal of good until finally no good remains.”[vi] His
answers where greatly influenced mainly by two philosophies, Manicheism and
Neo-Platonism. Plato, Aurelius Ambrose, Marcus Cicero, and Saint Anthony also
influenced Augustine.
As a
young man at the age of eighteen Augustine became curious about the origins of
creation and evil.[vii]In
his quest for truth Augustine turned to Manicheism instead of God.[viii]Manicheism
was a dualistic religion almost similar to Gnosticism. The Manicheans did not
totally reject Christianity but borrowed from its teachings and augmented it
with their own theories.[ix]Manicheism
taught that evil had ontological status. They taught that in the beginning
there were two contradistinctive and antithetical substances described as Good
and Evil. Saint Augustine says, “This
belief was derived from the fundamental doctrine of Manicheism, which was that
in the beginning there were two independent principles described as Good and
Evil or Light and Darkness.”[x]Manicheism
was appealing to him because it offered him a more reasonable explanation of
evil. This was compounded by the fact that Augustine was only able to think of
God ontologically. Hence Manicheism won him over. Betty Radice the advisory
editor of the book Confessions sates that, “It seems incredible that a
man of Saint Augustine’s caliber could have been taken by these fantastic
theories, but the Manichees plausible explanation of the problem of evil and
his own inability to think of God except as a material being combined to win
him over.”[xi]Augustine
stayed with the Manichees for nearly ten years but he became skeptical of the
Manichean doctrine that led him to embrace Neo-Platonism. He was disappointed
when Faustus a leading figure in Manichean theology failed to solve his
problems and had proven to be helpless.[xii]
Prior
to Augustine’s conversion to Neo-Platonism he had embraced academic skepticism,
which believed that Socrates taught the uncertainty of every philosophical
claim to knowledge. [xiii]But
Augustine was not able to sustain such claims. When Augustine was twenty years
of Age he read Aristotle’s book on The Ten
Categories, which proved to be unbeneficial to him.[xiv]It
made him think that God could be reduced to ten categories of substance. These
teaching further confused Augustine because they made him to view God as mutable
and similar to substance.[xv]On
the other hand Plotinus taught that everything originates from an individual
predominant substance to which they are ordained to revert. [xvi]Neo-Platonism
monistic teaching was different from Manicheism dualism because it taught that
everything has the same origin.[xvii]
However Neo-Platonism places things in hierarchy whereby some things are nearer
to their source than others, just like waves of water in concentric circles
from a source of disturbance are at varying distances from the center. The
waves near the center are closer to the source than those at the end.[xviii]From
Neo-Platonism Augustine learned to conceptualize the spiritual nature of God.[xix]He
also began to understand evil was as a result of man’s misuse of free will.[xx]Augustine
states that, “By reading these books of the Platonists I had been prompted to
look for truth as something incorporeal, and I caught sight of your invisible
nature, as it is known through your creatures.”[xxi] Neo-Platonism
enabled him to conclude that God was the creator of the Soul of Man and that
God was superior to the Soul.[xxii]Neo-Platonism
also enabled him to believe that both God and the Soul are spiritual
substances.[xxiii]
Finally
Augustine concluded that evil is not a substance and that evil was the
privation of good. He also figured that everything God created is good
therefore evil cannot be a thing. Hence God did not create it. Augustine
declares that, “So we must conclude that if things are deprived of all good,
they cease altogether to be; and this means that as long as they are, they are
good. Therefore, whatever is, is good; and evil, the origin of which I was
trying to find, is not a substance, because if it were a substance, it would be
good.”[xxiv]
Augustine eventually converted to the Christian faith.[xxv]
[i] Alister E. McGrath, Historical
Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought, 2nd ed.
(Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 56.
[ii] Augustine, Penguin Classics,
trans. R S. Pine-Coffin, vol. L114, Confessions (Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1961), 137-138.
[iii]
Ibid, 200.
[iv]
Ibid, 138.
[vi] Augustine, Penguin Classics,
trans. R S. Pine-Coffin, vol. L114, Confessions (Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1961), 63.
[vii]
Ibid, 12.
[viii]
Ibid.
[ix]
Ibid, 13.
[x]
Ibid.
[xi]
Ibid, 14.
[xii]
Ibid.
[xiv] Augustine, Penguin Classics,
trans. R S. Pine-Coffin, vol. L114, Confessions ( (Mcgrath,
2013) (Augustine, 1961) (Capetz, 2003) Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1961), 88.
[xv]
Ibid.
[xvii]
Ibid.
[xviii]
Ibid.
[xix] Augustine, Penguin Classics,
trans. R S. Pine-Coffin, vol. L114, Confessions (Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1961), 14.
[xx]
Ibid.
[xxi]
Ibid, 144.
[xxii]
Ibid.
[xxiii]
Ibid.
[xxiv]
Ibid, 148.
[xxv]
Ibid, 178.
Bibliography
1.Augustine.
(1961). Confessions (Vol. L114). (B. Radice, Ed., & R.
Pine-Coffin, Trans.) Middlesex, Hamondsworth, UK: Penguin Classics.
2.Capetz, Paul. E. (2003). God A Brief History.Facets.Minneapolis, MN, USA:
Fortress Press.
3.Mcgrath, Alister. E. (2013). Historal Theology.
Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
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