Essay Networks

Augustine is unsuccessful in solving the problem of defining evil by using the idea of free will and unchangeable intermediate and inferior goods to argue that everything God Created is good and human beings alone are the cause of sin and evil. To understand Augustine’s argument for the existence of evil in a world created by a perfect God of only good things I will briefly examine Augustine’s reasoning for belief in God for which no clear evidence can be given. I will then go on to critique Augustine’s argument for the existence of evil in a world created by a perfect God.

In Augustine’s book ‘The Teacher”, Augustine illustrates a dialog he had with his young son in which he tries to convey the existence of the Christian God. Augustine’s arguments for the perfection of God and the world he created are based on the idea that he must believe in God to understand him. This is based on a quote from the Book of Isaiah in which the prophet states, “Unless ye believe ye shall not know.” (Isa. 7:9:LXX) (Aug. The Teacher pg. 31). This gives Augustine a logical basis for an illogical belief. It can be considered illogical to believe in a God for which no physical proof can be given, so by making the belief in such an entity come first, the arguments for existence can follow. Augustine argues a distinct difference between belief and knowledge. “What I know I also believe, but I do not know everything that I believe.” Augustine refers to a story about a great war, which he did not witness but he believes it happened. “I know how useful it is to believe many things of which knowledge is not possible.” (Aug. The Teacher pg. 31) Augustine extends the relationship between things, which are believed and known to include the meaning of words and phrases. According to Augustine we only believe we understand the words of other people as we believe we have the same definition of the words they are using, meaning the only true knowledge we posses is acquired through our own association of words to ‘real events’ or ‘real things’.

Hence for Augustine, for an individual ‘listener’ to understand the word of another person requires the ‘listener’ to listen to the “Truth which presides over our minds within us, though of course we may be bidden to listen by someone using words.” (Aug. The Teacher pg. 31) Augustine now places Christ or the wisdom of God as the ruling agent of human intellect.

Book II of Augustine’s Dialogue ‘On Free Will’ commences with Augustine having to prove to his friend Evodius that God does exist, and is the creator of heaven and earth. Augustine uses the ideas of truth and wisdom as examples of entities that exist but have no physical features, which are greater than the human intellect. “You admitted for your part that if I could show you something superior to our minds you would confess that it was God, provided nothing existed that was higher still. I accepted your admission and said it would be sufficient if I demonstrated that. If there is anything more excellent that wisdom, doubtless it, rather is, God. But if there is nothing more excellent, then truth itself is God.” (Aug. On Free Will pg. 49) Augustine seems to be saying that ‘truth’ is greater than the human intellect, and that God is truth. Augustine then says that we have received from “the holy discipline of Christ that there is the Father of Wisdom, remember that we also received in faith that there is one equal to the eternal Father, namely Wisdom who is begotten of him.” (Aug. On Free Will pg. 49). This statement creates a double meaning of God as both greater than wisdom and united with wisdom as one and the same. As wisdom is greater than the human intellect Augustine feels that, he has proved without a doubt the existence of God.

God may exist to the same extent that truth and wisdom exist, as ideas or concepts in our mind but not in reality. This argument manages to give evidence for the existence of God but not an omniscient and omni powerful creator. Truth and wisdom don’t exist in nature; they are entirely human ideas. Hence, God may exist but not in the form which Augustine requires him to exist for the basis of his argument.

Augustine is trying to show that all things in the world are good. Human free will is the aspect of creation which is most difficult to reconcile to Augustine’s vision of the world. Free will is what allows humans to commit sin. If free will is evil or has evil manifest as one of its functions, then evil must have been created by the creator of all things, God. He tells Evodius, “(w) hen I urged against your statement that without free choice men could not act rightly, and asserted instead that God gave it to that end, your replied that we should have been given free will just as we have been given justice which can only be used rightly. Your reply compelled us to travel the long circuitous route of discussion in order to prove that all good things, great and small, come from God alone.” (Aug. On On Free Will pg. 52) Augustine makes the weak link between justice and free will as gifts from God which can be used rightly or wrongly. This directly contradicts the definition of justice which is of proper action to begin with. Justice cannot be misused because justice is the measurement of proper action among humans. Someone may be able to act more or less justly, but they could not act in an evil way and still be just.

Augustine brings in the idea that good things can be used for evil purposes. He refers to a previous conversation in which it was decided “that body occupies by nature a lower rank in the scale of being than does soul; and that therefore soul is a greater good than body.”(Aug On Free Will pg. 53) Augustine wants to say that because the two separate beings of body and soul are connected they must be regulated by the same rules. “If then we find among the good things of the body some that a man can abuse, and yet cannot on that account say that they ought not have been given, since we admit that they are good, it should not be matter for surprise if in the soul too there are some good things which may be abused, but which because they are good, could only have been given by him from whom all good things come.” (Aug. On Free Will pg. 53)

Augustine refers to all the things which humans can do with good things to hurt or do wrong. He uses three examples, first of a man with no hands and how it would be said that that man lacks a great good, but that hands can be evil if they are used to perform cruel or base deeds. Second, he uses the example of a man with no feet and how it would be said that that man lacked a great good but that feet can be used to hurt another or to dishonor oneself. Third he uses the example of eyes, Augustine says that eyes are given a great place of dignity and that with them we are able to observe the beauty of Gods world, but that eyes too can be used to do wrong. Eyes can be the source of jealousy and lust. “Just as you approve theses good things which the body enjoys, and praise him who has given them, paying no attention to those who make bad use of them; even so ought you to confess that free will, without which no one can live aright, is a good thing divinely bestowed, and that those are to be condemned who make a bad use of it, rather than the suggest that he who gave it ought no tot have done so.” (53) Augustine’s hope is to show that if other goods can be misused then the good of free will must also be able to be abused.

Augustine is unsuccessful in proving that free will is to be numbered among good things. Augustine tries to say that as there are goods of the body which can be abused, so too can there be goods of the soul, namely free will, which can be abused in the same way. He tells Evodius that the hands do evil when they perform cruel or base actions, but this is no other than the free will of the individual motivating such actions. The hands are not at the base of the action and hence it can’t be said that a good is being abused, but only that the free will is abusing the rest of the soul or perhaps the entire self through the use of the hands.

Augustine wishes to maintain the existence of a God that created a world of only good things in a world of evident evil. Augustine divides all things in the world into three categories; eternal goods, intermediate goods, and temporal goods.

Eternal goods are the first and most important goods; they included God’s wisdom, truth, and law and the giving oneself to the community. Pursuing the benefit of others is an eternal good to the practice of God’s divine laws. These are the goods that should be pursued at all times.

Intermediate goods are human and other free wills. Free will is only a good when it is directed towards eternal goods. Augustine proposes that “will is therefore an intermediate good when it cleaves to the unchangeable good as something that is common property and not it’s own private preserve.”(54) Augustine seems to be arguing that not only does an individual have to push his will away from all temporal goods at the loss of the pursuit of eternal goods, but that we must never seek to advance ourselves in any way. Augustine argues that not only does the pursuit of eternal goods create a good free will for the soul, but also the pursuit of eternal goods brings, “the happy life, that is, the disposition of soul cleaving to the unchangeable good, is the proper and first good of man.” (54)

Temporal goods are all pleasurable things such as fame and fortune. Created perfectly by a perfect God, all of these things are good in them selves. “So it happens that the good things sought but sinners cannot in any way be bad, nor can free will be bad, for we found that it was to be numbered among the intermediate goods. What is bad is the turning away from the unchangeable good and it’s turning to changeable goods. That ‘aversion’ and ‘conversion’ is voluntary and not coerced. Therefore it is followed by the deserved and just penalty of unhappiness” (55)

Augustine is certain that the pursuit of temporal goods over eternal goods will bring unhappiness. This is contradictory of what humans observe in real life. If all those who acted unjustly, or those who simply perused base or temporal goods, suffered the penalty of unhappiness, then the question of the existence of evil in a world created by a perfect God to be good in all ways would not arise. If Gods justice was evident and plain to see it would be quite easy to believe that God was the omnipresent and omni powerful being which Augustine claims that he is. Augustine might be referring to a punishment after death, that all who act justly in this life will be rewarded in heaven and all those who spend their lives in pursuit of base goods will suffer in hell. If this is the conclusion he drawing he fails to make the link in the text.

Augustine seems to be demonizing the life which is led by the greatest proportion of society and making the only truly good people those who live a monastic life. He argues that “the will which turns form the unchangeable and common good and turn to it’s own private good or to anything exterior or in inferior, sins”. (Aug. On Free Will pg. 55) The philosopher is saying that the only pursuits a human can have are those followed by monks who have taken vows of charity, poverty, and chastity. Any attempt to accumulate wealth, weather through entrepreneurial activities or by simply having a job would be enough to turn the free will towards temporal goods and hence commit an evil act. “It turns to its private good, when it is eager to know what belongs to others and not to itself; to inferior things, when it loves bodily pleasure.”(Aug. On Free Will pg. 55) Augustine is also demonizing marriage, an institution of the church he is championing. If people cannot peruse any bodily pleasures, there will be little marriage and no copulation. This lack of relativity is an intrinsic barrier to the effectiveness of Augustine’s Theodicy.

The other most damaging criticism that can be made of Augustine’s Theodicy is his lack of origin for the free turning of the human will from eternal to temporal goods. “We cannot doubt that that movement of the will, that turning away from the Lord God, is sin; but surely we cannot say that God is the author of sin? God, then will not be the cause of that movement; but what will be its cause? If you ask this, and I answer that I do not know, probably you will be saddened. And yet that would be a true answer.” (Aug. On Free Will pg. 55) Hence on a closer examination of all things which are in the world, Augustine arrived at something which is not necessarily good in itself. Either free will has intrinsically evil characteristics which were given by God, or God is imperfect and has made an error in human nature which has allowed us to commit sin. In both scenarios Augustine’s house of cards has crumbled under its own weight. If evil exists, if only in the human free will, then God must have been its creator and hence God would not exist in the image Augustine had painted of him.

In conclusion Augustine does an excellent job trying to align the Platonic higherarchy of goods to the Christian Doctrine. The two are almost compatible. Augustine fails however to make a coherent argument for the existence of evil in a world created by God. This failure is evident in Augustine’s definition of free will and unchangeable, intermediate, and inferior goods.