DECLARATION

I, Jude Ugochukwu AGUNWA, declare that this Long Essay titled Evil in the World:
A Philosophical Search in the Perspective of St Augustine is my original work
achieved through my personal reading, scientific research method and critical reflection,
and with the supervision and approval of Rev. Fr. Dr. Roberto CASTIGLIONE SDB.
This work has not been submitted in full or part for any diploma or degree, in any College,
Institution or University.

I also declare that no part of this Long Essay is a production from any other source
published or unpublished, without due acknowledgement.

Ibadan, 5thMay, 2017

________________________ ____________________________

Jude Ugochukwu AGUNWA Rev. Fr. Dr. Roberto CASTIGLIONE

(Student) (Supervisor)

i
 DEDICATION
I sincerely dedicate this work first of all to All Mighty God who had led me
throughout my intellectual journey and who has made this work a possibility. I
dedicate this work also to my dearest mother who brought me into this world but did
not live to rip the fruit of her labour.

ii
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

It will be unjust for me to finish this work without showing appreciation to those people
who have in one way or another been a source of inspiration to me in this life and in the
course of this work. In this regard, I first acknowledge, with great pleasure, the Almighty
God, the Summum Bonum, who is the source of my being. In fact without Him this work
would have been unsuccessful. For this, I say, THANK YOU LORD.

Sequel to this, I am indebted to my parents Mr. and Mrs. Ignatius Agunwa whose influence
on me is enormous. To my brothers and sisters, uncles and relatives who have in one way
or another contributed in my academic journey. I thank you all for your unalloyed support
and prayers. Life without you all would have been like a house without a home. Ana m asi
ka Chineke gozie unu nke oma; ya gaziere unu na umu unuooooo! ...

In a very special way, my profound appreciation goes to my supervisor, Rev. Fr. Dr.
Roberto Castiglione, SDB, for his indefatigable effort in guiding me to the actualization
of this work. I pray that God may continue to strengthen you in your live endeavour.
Thank you so much, and remain blessed. I am also grateful to Miss. Mary Adeniji, the
Librarian of the institute who provided me with books at her disposal during my research
work.

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 ABSTRACT
The argument on the problem of evil has being a dominant argument within the
domain of philosophy of religion. The argument goes thus: If there is an omnipotent,
omniscient and omnibenevolent God, how and why is there evil and suffering present in
our world today? Augustine developed a theodicy to answer this question. He takes the
Genesis story of The Fall literally, and uses it to argue that God had intended the world to
be perfect. However, due to humans disobeying him, they have brought about evil in the
world. In Genesis 3 the story of Adam and Eve speaks of the serpent that convinced Eve to
pick from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which God had forbidden. She was
tempted by the serpent, and as a consequence, the state of perfection was ruined by human
sin and the delicate balance of the world was destroyed. This tells believers that it is not
God's fault, but humans', who gave in to temptation. Therefore, they can still hold belief in
the God of classical theism.

Augustine also believed that the sin of Adam is seminally present and passed on to all
humans. This is the so-called original sin. As a result humanity could no longer remain in
the paradise God had originally created. Augustine argues that evil is as a result of humans
abusing the gift of free will. Humans were created perfect, with the capacity to make
choices and decisions for evil as well as good. Human free will means that God would not
interfere to prevent humans from committing acts that were either evil in themselves, or
that brought about evil consequences. In fact, God could not have created man without free
will, because the call to participate in the love of God implies the possibility of free choice,
because to love cannot but be an act of freedom in the sense that man can choose to love
God or not to love him. Augustine further developed his argument by claiming that evil is
not a substantial being; therefore God cannot be responsible for its existence. He affirmed
that God made a good world but humans chose not to obey God, so the goodness of the
world was damaged. He now understood evil to be privatio boni, which means 'the
privation of good'. In other words, something becomes evil when it ceases to be what it is
meant to be, or stops doing what it is meant to be doing.

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 CONTENTS
DECLARATION ................................................................................................................................. i
DEDICATION ................................................................................................................................... ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENT ................................................................................................................... iii
ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................... iv
GENERAL INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1
0.1. Statement of the Problem ........................................................................................................ 2
0.2. Relevance of Study .................................................................................................................. 2
0.3. Delimitation and Scope ........................................................................................................... 3
0.4. Methodology............................................................................................................................ 2
CHAPTER ONE: THE CONCEPT OF EVIL BEFORE AUGUSTINE ........................................... 4
1.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 4
1.2. Socrates.................................................................................................................................... 4
1.3. Plato ......................................................................................................................................... 5
1.4. Aristotle ................................................................................................................................... 7
1.5 Plotinus ................................................................................................................................... 10
1.6 Proclus .................................................................................................................................... 12
1.7 Clement of Alexandria ........................................................................................................... 14
1.8 Origen ..................................................................................................................................... 15
1.9 Methodius of Olympus ........................................................................................................... 16
10. Irenaeus................................................................................................................................... 17
11. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 18
CHAPTER TWO: ST AUGUSTINE: A POSSIBLE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
IN THE WORLD ............................................................................................................................. 19
2.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 19
2.2. Augustine's Life and Works .................................................................................................. 19
2.2.1. Adolescence .................................................................................................................... 20
2.2.2. Student at Carthage......................................................................................................... 20
2.2.3. Augustine and the Manicheans ....................................................................................... 22
2.2.4. Augustine's Conversion and Death................................................................................. 22
2.2.5. Augustine's Works........................................................................................................... 23
A. Autobiographical Works...20

B. Philosophical Treatises in Dialogue.....20

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 C. Religious-Theological Works.......................................................................................21

D. Polemic-Theological Works.....21

E. Ethical and Ascetic Works....21

2.3 Augustine's Conception of God .............................................................................................. 26

2.4. Augustines Conception of Evil ............................................................................................ 27
2.4.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 27
2.4.2. Augustines Concept of Evil in General ......................................................................... 27
2.4.3. Types of Evil According to Augustine ............................................................................. 28
A. Moral Evil....................................................................................................................24
B. Physical Evil............24
2.4.4. Source of Evil in the World............................................................................................. 30
2.4.5. Human Freewill .............................................................................................................. 31
2.4.6. Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freewill ................................................................. 33
2.4.7. Augustines Solution to the Problem of Evil ................................................................... 36
2.4.8. Conclusions .................................................................................................................... 37
CHAPTER THREE: CONCEPT OF EVIL AFTER AUGUSTINE ................................................ 38
3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 38
3.2 Anselm.................................................................................................................................... 38
3.3 Thomas Aquinas ..................................................................................................................... 39
3.4 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz ..................................................................................................... 42
3.5. Fredrick Nietzsche ................................................................................................................. 43
3.5 Richard Swinburne ................................................................................................................. 43
3.6 Critics of Augustine ................................................................................................................ 45
3.6.1 J. L. Mackie ..................................................................................................................... 45
3.6.2 William Rowe................................................................................................................... 47
3.7 Comparison of Augustine vs. Modern and Contemporary Concept of Evil ........................... 48
3.8 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 49
GENERAL CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 50
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................ 52

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 GENERAL INTRODUCTION

The presence of evil in the world is clearly an undeniable fact of human experience.
We all suffer from evil in some way. Hence what we call evil must have an objective status
in the real world, otherwise we all are living in a state of profound illusion. If our statement
about evil in the world is true, as many of them certainly are, then the presence of evil in
reality cannot be a mere subjective illusion. The existence of evil raises a serious problem
for all theists. If one holds, as we do following Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and all
Christian thinkers, that God is good and omnipotent, and has created everything good, why
then is there evil in the world? Specifically, we are going to look into the problem of evil
according to Augustines perspective.1

This paper is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter we are going to discuss
and analyze the view of some thinkers who have come before Augustine and ventured into
the problem of evil, starting from the ancient philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,
Plotinus and Proclus. Among the Church Fathers, we are going to speak on Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, Methodius of Olympus and Ireaneus of Lyon. In the chapter two we
are going to vividly analyze Augustines concept of evil preceded by a historical overview
of his personality. Then in the chapter three we shall explain the concepts of evil that came
after Augustine. We chose to discuss: Anselm, Aquinas Leibniz and Swinburne because
they are the best representatives along the history of philosophers for whom the existence
of evil does not deny the existence of God. Also we thought it paramount to include
Nietzsche who seems to be so skeptical about the issue of evil in the world, in the sense
that he maintained that man should go beyond good and evil. We do not deny the
possibility of other critics, but we chose the ones of Mackie and Rowe, because after some
researches they explicitly criticized Augustines notion of evil in the world. In fact, both
are the most serious and controversial critics of Augustines notion of evil in the world.

1 Cf. Norris W. CLARKE, The One and Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics, Indiana:
University of Notre Dame, 2009, 275.

1
0.1.Statement of the Problem

The existence of evil in the world has been a controversial discourse within the
philosophy of religion. It is a problem to the theist thinker who professed a belief in the
existence of God who is all-powerful and all-good. It is a problem of the reconciliation of
the existence of God and evil in the world. These are three statements that cannot
apparently be true:
(1) God is all-powerful.
(2) God is all-good.
(3) Evil exists.

In fact if God is all-powerful as the theist claims, he could have prevented and stopped
evil from existing in his creation. If he is all-good and has created everything good, there
cannot be evil in the world, because a good God will never allow evil in his creation. With
this the atheists believed that since there is evil in the world, God does not exist. But
Augustine tried as much as possible to defend the existence of God saying that the fact of
evil in the world does not in any way negate the existence of God, because God is good
and has created all things good.

0.2. Relevance of Study

Following the fact that this paper embodies issues concerning the belief in the
existence of God and evil in the world, its relevance applies to all human beings. For we
humans who have the capacity of reasoning need to know why there is evil in the world;
since we believe in a God who is omnipotent and benevolent.

0.3. Methodology

The method that we have employed in this essay is basically the method of exposition
and critical analysis. This project is purely based on library research work is divided into
three chapters. The Chapter One opens with the literature review of the concept of evil
before Augustine, Chapter Two is an exposition of Augustines concept of evil. Chapter
Three would investigate into some concepts of evil after Augustine, as well as exposing
some of the criticisms that were brought forward against his notion of evil in the world.

2
0.4. Delimitation and Scope

Though there are numerous contributions in the form of philosophical postulations,

ideologies, theories and conceptions on evil, the Chapter one of this study is basically
limited to (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Methodius
Olympus and Iraeneus of Lyon) thinkers that have discussed the issue of evil before
Augustine. Then the Chapter Two is purely limited to Augustines concept of evil in the
world. And also in the Chapter three, we are limited to the ideas of Anselm, Aquinas,
Leibniz and Swinburne. In the light of this consideration; we have tried to make use of the
available works within our reach to make sure that this thesis is up to standard. However,
we are not claiming to have exhausted all that Augustine said concerning the evil in the
world.

3
 CHAPTER ONE

THE CONCEPT OF EVIL BEFORE AUGUSTINE

1.1. Introduction

Right from antiquity, the problem of evil has been a long discussed issue. Most of the
ancient philosophers have tried to investigate into the metaphysical existence of evil in the
world, how it fits into the scheme of things, and how it is compatible with divine
providence and the omnipotent nature of God. In this chapter, we are going to
interwovenly discuss the theory of evil according to some ancient and early medieval
thinkers. We will begin with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle who said that people do evil out
of ignorance. For him, it is only he who knows good can do good. After him, Plotinus
attributed the cause of evil to matter, saying that matter corrupts the soul, thereby privating
it of its goodness. And also Proclus came to make it clear that evil does not have a
substantial existence, rather it has a parasitic existence. Among the Church Fathers,
Clement of Alexandria said that evil arises out of ignorance, but still, man out of his
freedom of choice also chooses to do evil. Origen came after Clement, following his
footstep by saying that evil is caused by the freedom of choice in man, because man has
the power to choose between good and evil. This thought also influenced Methodius of
Olympus, who also attributed the cause of evil to the freedom of choice in man.

1.2. Socrates

The philosopher Socrates in the history of ancient philosophy was a notable thinker
who despite having based his philosophy in oral tradition is considered one of the
handfuls of philosophers who forever changed how philosophy itself was to be
conceived.2It is good to note that all the information we have about him are second-hand.
His trial and death at the hand of the Athenian Democracy and also most of his works were
made known through Plato his disciple. He lived from 469 to 399 B.C.E.3

2 Nails DEBRA, "Socrates", in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/archi

ves/spr2014/entries/socrates/ 30/03/2017.
3 Cf. Ibidem.

4
 Socrates tried to create a link between morality and virtue, by saying that knowledge
and virtue are one. Without knowledge, no virtue may be acquired rightly, because
according to him, a well-intentioned judge who is ignorant of the law and of
circumstances will not administer justice.4 He made it so explicit that since virtue has to
do with making soul as good as possible, it is first necessary to know what makes the soul
good.5Therefore, vice or evil arises as a result of absence of knowledge of the good.
Hence, just as knowledge is good, so is vice ignorance.6
Furthermore, in trying to lay more emphasis on the role ignorance plays in the evil the
men do, Socrates supposed that everyone naturally purses his or her own good. Being
virtuous is what our good is. Therefore, it follows that the wise person who knows what
temperance is, will be temperate. In other words, nobody chooses to do evil knowingly,
which implies that evil action is not an act of the will. Doing evil in this form is doing
involuntary act.7

1.3. Plato

Plato is one of those influential writers in the history of Western philosophy. He is an

Athenian citizen of high status. In his works he expresses his absorption in the political
events and intellectual journey of his time. He lived between the year 429 and 347 B.C.E.8
Although there is nowhere he dealt systematically with the problem of evil, his hint on evil
is found scattered in many of his writings. Plato, a great icon in philosophy, could not but
shape his scheme taking into consideration the perplexing problem of evil. No system of
philosophy which proposes to explain the mystery of existence can leave untouched the
undeniable imperfection in the fabric of our lives. This Plato did in his various dialogues,
although scattered as he drops hints applying to the matter of evil without throwing light
on the problem as a whole.

4 William F. LAWHEAD, The Voyage of Discovery: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy, 4th edition,

Singapore: Centage Learning Publication, 2007, 41.

5 Samuel Enoch STUMPF, Socrates to Sartre: A Historical Introduction of Philosophy, New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1982, 40.

6 Cf.Ibidem.
7 Cf. LAWHEAD, The Voyage of Discovery, 41.
8 Cf. Kraut, R ICHARD, "Plato", in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/ar

chives/spr2015/entries/plato/, 30/03/2017.

5
 He started his explanation on the problem of evil by first of all removing God from the
causes of evil in the world. We may vividly say that The Republic marks the starting point
for the investigation of Platos stance on the problem of evil. He started by justifying the
goodness of god9 in the face of numerous evils human-kind encounters. His rudimentary
theodicy is based on deductive reasoning, which goes thus: god is good and no good is
hurtful, and that which is not hurtful, hurts not. Therefore, god does no evil, and since he
does no evil, he can never be the cause of evil.10 In the light of this, Plato maintained that
god being good can only be the cause of all that is good. And this was in refutation of what
Homer said, according to whom the gods are the cause of good and evil.11
He went forward to say that it is only the evil of the nature of punishment that can be
attributed to god as the cause; because being a just god, he will always administer justice,
including punishing the evil doers.12In Platos investigation into the nature of virtuous and
vicious acts, he presented a systematic explanation by saying that:
Unjust actions caused injustice and the creation of institution of a natural order and
government of one by another in the part of the body and the creation of diseases is the
production of a state of things at violence with its natural order, and the creation of injustice,
the production of state of things at variance with natural order. So is virtue the health and
beauty and well-being of the soul, and the diseases and weakness and deformity of the same.13

Following the above, we can imply that good practices lead to virtue while evil
practices lead to vice. He also recognized the fact that some people commit evil out of
ignorance, although according to him, every man purses his own good, but of this good he
does not know the nature.14 And the ignorance of this nature, he says, leads man to
imperfection. For when we know the nature of good, we can perfect our being by doing the
good. He used the allegory of the cave to explain that the prisoners in a cave would
mistake the shadows for reality, because the truth would be for them nothing but the
shadows of the image on the cave wall, until they are liberated from the ignorance
enslaving them.15

9 Cf. The small letter g was used by Plato in describing the Supreme Being; which Augustine later

came to Christianize by making it the Christian God.

10 Cf. P LATO, The Republic, New York: Vintage Books, 1817, 379.

11 Cf. LAWHEAD, The Voyage of Discovery, 4.

12 Cf. P LATO, The Republic, 380.
13 Ibidem, 444.
14 Ibidem, 515.
15 Cf. Ibidem.

6
 This shows clearly that for Plato, ignorance or false knowledge plays an important role
in the evil that men do. False knowledge, Plato says, occurs when the passions influences
the reason to think that what appears to bring happiness will do so, although in reality it
cannot. And when the appetite overcomes the reason, the unity of the soul16 is therefore
affected.17 He held that the cause of this disunity of the soul or, in other words, the cause of
moral evil, is discovered in the very nature of the souls relation to the body. Plato says
that prior to the souls entrance into the body, the rational part of the soul initially had a
clear vision of the Forms, although concurrently the spirits and the appetites already have
an inclination to move down into the body, because it is simply the propensity of the
irrational part of the soul that is not perfect to be unruly and to pull the soul towards the
earth.18
Therefore, morality consists in the recovery of man's lost inner harmony; thereby
reversing the process by which the reason has been overcame by the appetites and stimuli
of the body. In other words, reason must regain its control over the irrational parts in order
for man to be morally upright.19

1.4. Aristotle

Aristotle was born in 384 B.C.E. in the Macedonian region of northeastern Greece in
the small city of Stagira. He went to Athens when he was at the age of seventeen to study
in Platos Academy, which was then a pre-eminent place of learning in the Greek world.
When he was in Lesbos, he married Pythias, the niece of Hermeias. He had a daughter,
Pythias, and a son, Nicomachus, who was named after his father and after whom his
Nicomachean Ethics is presumably named. He died in the year 322 B.C of natural causes.20

16 For Plato, the soul is composed of three parts that: the rational soul which is the thinking portion in
human being which discerns what is true and false. Secondly, the spirited soul, which has the function of
carrying out the dictate of reason in the practical life.And finally, the appetitive soul, which is related to our
emotions and
desires.Garth KEMERLING, Plato: The Republic, in The Philosophy Page, http://www.philosophypages.com
/hy/2g.htm, 30/03/2017.
17 Cf. STUMPF, Socrates to Sartre: A Historical Introduction of Philosophy, 63.
18 Ibidem.
19 Cf.Ibidem, 64.
20 Cf. Shields CHRISTOPHER, "Aristotle", in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanf

ord.edu/archives/win2016/entries/aristotle/, 30/03/2017.

7
 The Philosopher,21 in trying to elucidate the problem of moral evil, investigates into the
content of human action: how can we judge an action as being wrong or right? Which
action is good or evil? Hence, he tries to know from where moral evil arises. Are the moral
agents to be held responsible for their evil doing? Are they being determined to act in an
evil way by some external causes? He laid a foundation: every action of man aims at a
good and this good is happiness.22 People may have different concepts of happiness, some
people take happiness to be pleasure or honor, while some others identify it with health
when they are ill, and wealth when they are poor.23 But for Aristotle, happiness must be to
act in accordance with virtue. Therefore, the happy man lives and does well, whereby his
happiness is in possessing virtues. It is from virtuous activities that the good belonging to
the soul arises.24
Aristotle went further to say that ''a virtuous act is a habituated act; for men become
virtuous by exercising it''.25 For example, men become builders by building and lyre-
players by playing lyre; so also people become just by doing just acts. And in this way
according to him, ''every virtue is both produced and destroyed''.26 For it is from playing
lyre that both good and bad lyre-players are produced. In other words, men become bad or
good lyre-players as a result of playing well or badly. 27 From this explanation, we can
deduce that according to Aristotle, evil arises as contrary to virtue. Therefore, when people
do not live their lives well, they become evil.
Aristotle tries to explain from where and how moral evil arises. He continued by
investigating into the determinants of moral actions, that is, what makes an action good or
evil. To this end, he explained that moral evaluation of an action presupposes the
attribution of human agent. But according to him, in certain circumstances, this attribution
would not be appropriate, because responsible actions must be taken voluntarily. 28 In other
words, an action must be voluntary before an agent can take responsibility for it. This he

21 The Philosopher is a title attributed to Aristotle due to his enormous impact in the history of
philosophy. Just as Aquinas is called the Doctor of the Church, so also is Aristotle called The Philosopher.
22 Cf. ARISTOTLE, Nicomachean Ethics, , Bk I, Ch 2-3, 1094a, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, W.D.
ROSS (trans.), Richard MCKEON (ed.), New York: Modern Library, 200, 935-1112.
23 Cf.Ibidem, Bk I, Ch 3, 1094a.
24 Cf.Ibidem,Bk I, Ch 7, 1098b-1099a.
25 Cf. Ibidem,Bk II, Ch 1, 1103b.
26 Ibidem.
27 Cf.Ibidem.
28 Cf.Ibidem,Bk III, Ch 1, 1110a.

8
made unambiguous in the Nicomachean ethics saying that ''those things, then, are thought
involuntary, which take place under compulsion or owing to ignorance. And that is
compulsory of which the moving principle is outside, being a principle in which nothing is
contributed by the person acting, or feeling the passion''. 29 Following this, Aristotle tried to
explain that there are some evil actions that men do, that they are not to be held responsible
for, and which are those actions done involuntarily as being caused by external
compulsion and those done under ignorance. For instance, if someone grabs my arm and
uses it to hit the third person, I cannot reasonably be blamed morally for what my arm has
done. Another example could be the one relating to ignorance: if I swing my arm for
exercise and strike the third party who, unknown to me, is standing nearby, then again I
cannot be held responsible for striking that person, because the action was done out of
ignorance.

It is worth noting that the kind of ignorance Aristotle is speaking of, is the ignorance of
lack of awareness of relevant particulars. Nevertheless, if one does evil claiming to be
ignorant of the moral rule under which it is wrong to do so, it would not provide any
excuse for Aristotle.30 This he further explained by saying that ''a man may be ignorant of
who he is, what he is doing, what or whom he is acting on, and sometimes what he is doing
it with, and to what end and how he is doing it.''31 But upon all these, Aristotle maintained
that no one could be ignorant, unless the person has lost his sanity, and evidently he
couldn't be ignorant of himself either, because it is impossible for one not to know
oneself.32 In other words, those who are ignorant of anything in the law that they ought to
know and that is not difficult to know should be punished. And also it applies in the case of
anything else that moral agent are thought to be ignorant of through carelessness; for we
assume that it is in their power not be ignorant of them.33
However, Aristotle never failed to recognize the fact that human being has the power
to choose between good and bad. And it is by choosing, that one becomes good or evil.
This he coherently stated in the Nicomachean Ethics saying that, ''for choosing what is

29 Ibidem.
30 Cf. Garth KEMERHIN, Aristotle: Ethics and Virtues, in Philosophy Pages, http://www.philosphypag
es.com/hy/2s.htm, 23/07/2016.
31 ARISTOTLE, NicomacheanEthics,BkIII, Ch 1, 1111a.
32 Cf. Ibidem.
33 Cf. Ibidem,Bk III, Ch 5, 1114a.

9
good or bad we are men of some certain character. And we choose to get or avoid
something bad. And choice is praised for being related to the right object''. 34 He went
further to explain that the duty of a deliberate reasoning is to consider each of the many
actions that are within our power to perform, considering the extent to which each of them
would contribute to the achievement of the appropriate goal or end, therefore, making a
deliberate choice to act in the way that best fits that end. It implies that the acquisition of
virtue heavily depends on the exercise of intelligence.35
It is also worthy looking into what Aristotle said regarding natural evil and human
responsibility. He made it clear that some of the natural evils which he regarded as the evil
of the body are to be attributed to man as the cause, while some are not. For instance, no
one would blame a man, he said, for being blind from birth or by diseases, but rather pity
him, while everyone would blame a man who was blind by drunkenness or any other form
of self-indulgence, because it is in his power to prevent that evil of the body by choosing
not to be drunk.36

1.5. Plotinus

Plotinus was an ancient thinker born in Lycopolis, Egypt in 204 or 205 B.C.E. At the
age of 25 he had a growing interest in philosophy which led him to the school of
Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria. After ten years of studying Persian and Indian
philosophy, he became attached to the military expedition of Emperor Gordian III to Persia
in 243. The journey was terminated when Gordian was assassinated by his troops. This led
Plotinus to abandon his plans, now making his way to Rome in 245, where he later died in
270 or 271 B.C.E.37
According to Plotinus, the One is the highest Good; and being the highest Good, it is
the highest of all beings. The being of the One is so full of perfection that it overflows and
everything emanates from it. The first emanation from the One is the Nous, which can be
translated as the Intellect, which is eternal38. Then the following emanation is the Soul,

34 Ibidem,Bk III, Ch 2, 1112a.

35 Cf. KEMERHIN, Aristotle: Ethics and Virtues.
36 Cf.ARISTOTLE, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk III, Ch 5, 1114a.
37 Gerson, LLOYD, "Plotinus", in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/ar

chives/sum2014/entries/plotinus/, 30/03/2017.
38 Cf. LAWHEAD, The Voyage of Discovery, 108-109.

10
which has two parts: the higher part and the lower part. The higher part, according to
Plotinus, looks to the Intellect and remains untouched with what is beneath, while the
lower descends to degenerate into the sensible world. In other words, the lower part
identifies with Nature. Hence, from the Soul comes the realm of matter. However, for
Plotinus, matter is a non-being, and just as darkness is a privation of light, so matter is a
privation of all that is good.39 In other words, matter corrupts everything that it touches.
Although matter receives illumination from the Soul, it darkens the illumination and
weakens it; this makes matter the corrupting agent of the good nature of man. Therefore,
matter is the source of evil.40
In the Ennead, Plotinus made it clear that the contact of Soul with body is a fall into
the inferior and the lower part of the universe. Therefore, the more we focus on our body,
senses, and our individuality, the more we are caught buried in a cave, ignorantly engaged
with our own chain and alienated from the whole.41 In the light of this consideration, evil
then is not a reality that pulls us down. It is our own willfulness that turns us away from
God, the highest Good. Therefore, evil does not exist for the perfect souls that always turn
to the Intellect. Only those blinded by their possession and seduced by the material world
are affected by darkness and evil.42 He explicitly explained in the Ennead that the soul
itself submits to matter and engenders it and it becomes evil by the contact with matter.
The presence of matter is the cause of evil; therefore, it is its presence that brought about
the occasion of souls earthly life.43
Nevertheless, although the soul was corrupted by matter, which brought about its fall,
we are still part of the whole, because we can still be liberated from the corruption of the
body by staying away from bodily seductions and focusing on the Spirit, by going back
into ourselves. Just like someone making a statue which has to be beautiful cuts away here
and clears there till he has given his statue a beautiful face, so, we must cut away excess

39 Cf. Ibidem, 109.

40 Cf.Ibidem, 110.
41 Cf. Ibidem.
42 Cf.Ibidem.
43 Cf. P LOTINUS, The First Ennead, 336, in Motimer J. ADLER (gen. ed.), Great Books. Lucretus,

Epictetus, Marcu Aurelius, Plotinus, 2nd ed., Chicago: Encyclopedia Britanica, Inc., 1952, 301-376.

11
and straighten the crooked and clear the dark and make it bright and never stop working on
our statue until the divine glory of virtue shines on us.44

1.6. Proclus

Proclus was a thinker born in the year 412 B. C in Constantinople into a Lyceean
family. His family was still faithful to the old Hellenic religion in a society which was
already dominated by Christians. Being aware of his career Proclus devoted his life to
philosophy. He arrived in Athens in 431 after his studies at Alexandria where he joined
the Platonic school of Syrianus. After the death of his master, he became the leader of the
school. He died in the year 485 B.C.45
Proclus treatment of the existence of evil is considered purely at metaphysical level.
His task is to explicate how evil fits into the scheme of things, how is compatible with
divine providence, how it came about and its ontological status.46 According to him, every
being has a natural aim and a perfection it strives for. To become evil means to fail to
reach this perfection. In other words, it is a deviation from one's nature. Therefore, evil has
no positive existence of its own. It is a being, but an accidental perversion of something
good. Following this, no single reality can be evil in itself. All that exist is good in its
essence and strives to achieve goodness in its activity.47
He used the word parhypostasis to describe this particular mode of existence, that is,
an existence that has no proper antecedent cause, but arises accidentally in consequence of
an unfortunate interaction of a number of partial causes.48The reason for the occasional
failure of our activities is the existence of various components of which we consist. Each
being is drawn by its own desires. In On the Existence of Evil he says:

On the whole [] the body has share in evil, because there are various components in
it, and when these lose their mutual symmetry, each wishing to rule, diseases appear as
their parasite. And similarly, the soul shares in evil because in her too there are

44 Cf. LAWHEAD, The Voyage of Discovery, 110.

45 Carlos STEEL, Proclus, 40, Encyclopedia of Philosophy,VIII, Donald M. BORCHERT(gen. 2nd ed.),
Tarmington Hill: Thompson Gale, 2006,: 40-44.
46 Cf. RadekCHLUP, Proclus Theory of Evil: An Ethical Perspective, 27, in Platonic Tradition, 3,

(2009), 26-57.
47 Cf. Ibidem, 28.
48 Cf.bidem.

12
 different kinds of life [] when these starts to fight, each pursuing its own interest,
evil creeps in as a result of the strife.49
In the light of the above consideration, no single component of realty is evil, rather it is
in relation between various components that evil may appear. We can use the soul as an
example, which all parts are good and useful, but can only reach their proper perfection
when they cooperate with the right hierarchy; which is when reason controls the irrational
parts. But when reason is overpowered by the irrational parts, evil arises.50
Proclus went further to say that there is a similarity between natural and moral evil, for
which he used the words bodily and psychic evil. According to him, both are beings in
the form of parasitic existence.51 It is also very important that we lay emphasis on the
ontological difference between this bodily and psychic evil. Let us vividly recall that for
Proclus the existence of all evil is in form of parasitic existence. Taking a tree for example,
its evil consist in a failure to develop its normal form properly; for instance, its inability to
grow normally and bear fruit as a result of drought or sickness. The cause of this failure is
never as a result of the tree's inner weakness or insufficient effort, but rather of some wider
cosmic context in which the tree is set. In other words, its failure is the outcome of the
conflict between the tree's body and other bodies surrounding it. Therefore, if a body fails
to reach its proper aim, it is not evil in a strong evaluative sense, but merely in the sense
being a necessary by-product of imperfection of all bodily reality.52 But in the case of
moral evil, unlike the bodily evil, which is unavoidable, man has the power to resist it
because of his freedom of choice.53
In addendum to Proclus theory of evil, we can say that he recognized the fact that
the bodily and psychic evils are characterized by their parasitic existence. Evil (suffered) in
the body according to him is unavoidable because it results from a cosmic corporeal
interaction that no partial being can ever have control of. Psychic or moral evil instead he
recognized to depend on human choices. Therefore, it is independent of external
circumstances, but depending on the soul's ability to move to the right direction.

49 Jan OPSOMER, Carlos STEEL, Proclus: On The Existence of Evil, London: Duckworth, 2003, 50-59.
50 Cf. CHLUP, Proclus Theory of Evil: An Ethical Perspective, 28-29.
51 Cf. Ibidem, 35.
52 Cf. Ibidem, 36-37.
53 Cf. Ibidem, 37.

13
1.7. Clement of Alexandria

Titus Flavius Clemens was born within the middle of the second century. Many
scholars have said that he was born in Athens maybe because of his ability to speak quality
classical Greek. He was told of having wealthy parents who are of high social standard.
Clement of Alexandria traveled to many countries like: Greece, Italy, and Palestine before
settling in Egypt. In 202 C.E, when the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus began
persecuting Christians more severely and closed the catechetical school at Alexandria,
Clement was forced to leave for Asia Minor. He died sometime before 215.54
Clement, one of the first Church Fathers opined that evil arises from being unable to
determine what is right to be done or from being unable to do it. In other words, one falls
into deter either not knowing or through inability to leap across through feebleness of the
body.55 He went further to say that the application to the training of ourselves, and
subjection to the commandments, is in our power. Therefore, when we do not train
ourselves by allowing lust to overrule us, we sin.56 In other words, so far as we have
freedom of choice, we can decide whether to do or not to do evil. But when we have the
power to prevent evil and we do not prevent it, we become the cause of the evil done. As
Clement may put that, "to take fever is involuntary, but when one takes fever through his
own fault, from excess we blame him".57 In the light of this, in no respect is God the cause
of evil.
He went further to say that in as much as evil is involuntary, no one prefers evil as evil,
but it is because of the pleasure that is in it, and taking it to be good, considers it desirable.
Such being the case, the capacity to free ourselves from ignorance and from evil depends
on us.58 It is the highest and most perfect good, "when one is able to lead back anyone from
the practice of evil to virtue and well doing",59 because the fear of God is the departure
from evil. To restrain oneself from doing good is the work of vice, but to keep away from

54 New World Encyclopedia contributors, "Clement of Alexandria," in New World Encyclopedia, http://

www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Clement_of_Alexandria&oldid/=1003578, 30/03/2017.
55 Cf. CLEMENT, TheStromata, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers. Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus,

Clement OF Alexandria, II, Alexander ROBERT James DONALDSON (eds.), Edinburg: Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1994, 362.
56 Cf. Ibidem.
57 Ibidem, 319.
58 Cf. Ibidem.
59 Ibidem, 339.

14
wrong is the beginning of salvation.60 Evil is the opposite of good, as what is just is
opposite to what is unjust. Therefore, evil things are to be abstained from, not for their own
sake, but for the sake of the body, because the core of the body is exercised for the sake of
the soul.61
Questions like why do we suffer if God really cares for His people and why do God
allow people to suffer injustice or evil from others are being posed to contradict the
Divine Providence. This was well explained by Clement in his Stromata, where he says
that: "the injustice of others does not affect the providence of God. For the judge must be
master of his own opinion not pulled by strings like inanimate machines set in motion
only by external cause. Accordingly, he judged in respect to his judgment, as well also in
accordance with choice of things desirable".62 This explains well that human being,
although created by God, is not determined by God, because of the freedom of choice God
has given him. So, God does not prevent human being from inflicting evil on one another.
Nonetheless, evil does not contradict the omnipotent nature of God, that is, his ability to
prevent men from harming others. But because of the highest gift which is the freedom of
choice he has given to man, he cannot but allow him to choose freely.

1.8. Origen

Origen was a Christian thinker who was born in Alexandria into a Christian family. He
was a member of the catechetical school at Alexandria where he later became the head of
the school. He taught in the catechetical school until 231A.D. when the conflict that arose
between him and his bishop forced him to leave for Caesarea in Palestine, where he taught
until his death in 253 A.D.63
Origen, who was also influenced by Clement of Alexandria, stated that it is within our
power to devote ourselves either to a life worthy of praise or to the one worthy of blame.64
The nature of reason, which is in man, has within itself the power of distinguishing

60 Cf. Ibidem, 440.

61 Cf. Ibidem,413.
62 Ibidem, 425.
63 Robert M. GRANT, Origen, 39, in Donal M. B ORCHERT(gen. 2nd ed.),Encyclopedia of

Philosophy,VII, Tarmington Hill: Thompson Gale, 2006, 39-40.

64 Cf. ORIGEN of Alexandria, ThePrincipiis, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers.Tertullian, Minucius Felix,

Commodianus, Origen, II, Frederick CROMBIE (trans.), Alexander ROBERT James DONALDSON (eds.),
Edinburg: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994, 302.

15
between good and evil, and while distinguishing, it possesses the faculty of selecting what
it has approved to be good and what is evil to avoid.65 With this we can say that the fall of
man was not as the result of inherent imperfection in man, but as a result of the misuse of
the freedom of choice he has.66
It is worth noting that Origen recognized freedom in reason, which is the ability to
recognize and embrace the good, He further states that irrationality is ignorance; the
absence of conception of good.67 Therefore, the ignorant person cannot be held
responsible for his ignorance, unless his laziness has made him not to apply himself to the
cultivation of reason.68 Following this, we could say that some people do evil out of
ignorance.
Therefore, the ignorant should not be punished, but remedied through education,
because, according to Origen, punishment brings no remedy. Instead, it leads to a deeper
ignorance and evil. He went further to say that the knowledge of God is enough to remove
all sins and ignorance from the soul. And the soul who has seen God, he argues, will not
fall into ignorance again, for God is inspiring and worthy of eternal contemplation.69

1.9. Methodius of Olympus

Methodius was a great scientific opponent of Origen. Very few reports have been
made concern his life and death. Even what is available of him seems to be problematic.
His date of birth is still unknown, but he was recorded to have died a martyr, probably in
311 A.D.70 Methodius in his own theory of evil said it emphatically that God is not the
author of evil, because matter is without evil quality, unlike Plotinus, who said that matter
is the one that causes evil to the soul. Therefore, the existence of evil is by accident and not
a substantial reality. For man is not spoken of as murderer, unless by committing murder
he receives the derived name of murderer. The same applies to other evils. In other words,

65 Cf. Ibidem, 303.

66 Cf. James FIESER Bradley DOWDEN, Origen of Alexandria, in Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/origen-or-alexandria/, 12/7/2016.
67 Ibidem.
68 Cf. Ibidem.
69 Cf. Ibidem.
70 Cf. J.P. KIRSCH, St. Methodius of Olympus, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.

org/cathen/10243a.htm, 30/03/2017.

16
evil is not a substantial entity, but by practicing any evil the person comes to be called
evil.71
Consequently, it can be said that a man is evil in consequence of his actions: he is said
to be evil because he is the doer of evil. In other words, it is from his action that a man
receives the title of evil. Since evil is produced by man, therefore, man is the author of
evil.72 Methodius maintained that he who acts is not evil in accordance with his evil doing,
because there is nothing evil by nature. Rather, it is by use that evil thing become such.
Man according to him possess freewill. Therefore he has the power of choosing or not
choosing and of obeying and not obeying God (for this was the meaning of the gift of
freewill). Man after his creation received a commandment from God: evil arises as a
disobedience to divine command.73
Nevertheless, for Methodius, God does not give command to man in order to deprive
him of his freedom, but he gives command so that man may enjoy better things, which is
the consequence of obeying God. Man was made with freewill. There was no already
existing evil, but the power of obeying and disobeying God is its only cause. Therefore,
evil arises as a result of disobeying the commandment of God.74

10. Irenaeus

Saint Irenaeus was born in Lyon, of Greek parents probably around 120 A.D and 140
A.D. He was a leading theologian of the 2nd Century. He was the bishop of Lugdunum
(Lyon). He wrote his work Against Heresies in about 180 A.D, which was a refutation of
Gnosticism. It was assumed that he must have died around the end of 2nd Century.75
Ireaneans believed that humans were not created in a perfect state, but rather in a
continuous process of creation and development from morally immature creatures to

71 Cf. METHODIUS of OLYMPUS, On Freewill, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers.GregoryThaumaturgas,

Dioysius the Great, Julius Africanus, Methodius, Arnobius, II, William R. CLARK. (trans.), Alexander
ROBERT James DONALDSON, Edinburg: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994, 360.
72 Cf. Ibidem.
73 Cf. Ibidem, 362.
74 Cf. Ibidem, 363.
75 Cf. J GAUR A LENNOZ, Irenaeus, 381, in Jacob E. S AFIA(gen. 15nd ed.),The New Encyclopedia

Britanica,VI, Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1998, 380-381.

17
morally perfected ones.76 Therefore, Adam stood at the beginning of a long process of
development; he had been created as a personal being in the image of God, but yet to be
created into the finite likeness of God. His fall, he maintained, therefore, is not seen as
disastrously transforming and totally ruining mans situation but rather as delaying his
advance from the image to likeness of his maker. Thus, man is viewed as neither falling
from a greater height of original righteousness to so profound a depth of total depravity.
Rather he fails in the early state of his spiritual development and now needs greater help
than he otherwise would have required.77

11.Conclusion

Looking at the position of the thinkers we can find out that there are some recurring
elements as causes of evil. Socrates said that knowing is doing: everyone desires what is
good, and evil arises because people do not know that the act is evil. We find this also in
the works of Plato and Aristotle. But Plotinus, Proclus, together with the Church Fathers,
said that even though ignorance plays a role in the evil that men do, man still possesses the
power of choosing between good and evil, because God has given man the freedom of
choice. Therefore, evil does not have its own existence, but it consists in a privation of
good, as Plotinus puts it. It is therefore, a parasite that eats off the good in something as
Proclus later came to assert.
In other words, the source of evil can never be found in God who is all-good, because
evil is contrary to good. Therefore, we cannot say that God is the cause of evil in the
world. Although some of these thinkers before Augustine have tried as much as they could
to reconcile the existence of evil and the goodness of God, Augustine will through a more
complete theodicy give us a more elaborated insight on the issue of issue of evil in the
world.

76 Cf. David C. CRAMER, John Hick, in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

http://www.iep.utm.edu/hick/, 11/08/2016.
77 Cf. John HICK, Evil, The Problem Of, 474, in Donald M. BORCHERT (gen. ed.),Encyclopedia of

Philosophy, III, New York: Thompson Gale, 2006, 471-477.

18
 CHAPTER TWO

ST AUGUSTINE: A POSSIBLE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM

OF EVIL IN THE WORLD

2.1. Introduction

In this chapter, we are going to elucidate Augustines idea with regards to the
existence of evil in the world, especially its existence amidst the existence of an all-
powerful, all-knowing and all-good God. Evil, as we will see below, is a privation of good,
according to Augustine, and moral evil he explicitly said arises as a result of the misuse of
human freewill. Before we proceed properly with Augustine's concept of evil in the world,
we shall first of all give a brief breakdown of his life history in order to get ourselves
acquainted with the internal and external influences that structured his way of thinking.

2.2. Augustine's Life and Works

Augustine's life right from his childhood to adult has been a life of perplexity. Being
born into a family where the father is a pagan and the mother a Christian, he lived a life of
doubt as far as the truth is concerned. Although his mother tried so much to bring him
close to God, he still lived a life of immorality. But thanks to the persistent prayers and
words of Monica, his mother, and the sermons of Bishop Ambrose, he converted to
Christianity and finally was brought close to God.
He was born on the 13th of November, 354 A.D at Tagaste, an important village of the
fertile province of Numidia in the North Africa, not far from Hippo regius.78 His father
Patricus was not a Christian until baptized on his death bed in 372, but his mother was a
devoted believer coming from a Christian family. Her ambitions for her gifted son were
divided between high and well-grounded hopes for his secular success and moral standard,
and that one day she would see him a Christian, which in fact later came to be.79

78 Cf. Philip SCHAFF (ed.), Prolegomena: St Augustines his Life and Works, 3, in A Selected Library

of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, I, Edinburg: WM.B. Eerdmans Publishers,
1994, 1-27.
79 Cf. AUGUSTINE, Confessions, Henry CHADWICK (trans.), New York: Oxford University Press, 1991,

xiii.

19
2.2.1. Adolescence

At one time in Augustine's adolescence he used to find satisfaction in hellish pleasures.

He ran wild in the shadowy jungle of erotic adventures. The single desire that dominated
him was the search to love and to be loved. The bubbling impulses of puberty befogged
and obscured his heart so that he could not see the difference between love's serenity and
lust's darkness. In other words, confusions of two things boiled within him. It seized hold
of his youthful weakness sweeping him through the precipitous rocks of desire submerged
in a wild pool of vice.80 During his sixteenth year of life, there was an interruption in his
studies. He was recalled from Madauros, the nearby town where he had first lived away
from his home town, to learn literature and oratory.81 Still within his sixteenth year,
idleness interposed because of his familys lack of fund. He was on holiday from all
schooling and lived with his parents. The turns of lust rose above Augustine's head, and
there was no hand to root them out. Indeed, when at the bath house his father saw that he
was already showing signs of virility and strings of adolescence, he was overjoyed to
suppose that he would soon be having grand children.82
At that time funds were gathered in preparation for a more distance absence at
Carthage, for which his father had more enthusiasm than cash, since he was a citizen of
Tagaste with very modest resources.83

2.2.2. Student at Carthage

Augustine went to Carthage and all around him hissed a cauldron of illicit loves. As
yet he had never being in love and he longed to love, and from a subconscious poverty of
mind, he hated the thought of being less inwardly destitute. In other words, all that he
wanted at that time was to love and be loved. Thereby he was looking for a woman that
would satisfy his desires, as he writes in his Confessions:

I sought an object for my love, I was in love with love, and I hated safety and a path free of
snares. My hunger was internal, deprived of inward food that is you, my God, so my soul was

80 Cf. Ibidem, 24-25.

81 Cf. Ibidem, 26.
82 Cf. Ibidem, 26-27.
83 Cf. Ibidem.

20
 in rotten health. In an ulcerous condition in thrust itself to outward things, miserably avoid to
be scratched by contact with the world of the senses.84

His studies at Carthage which were deemed respectable, had the objective of leading
him to distinction as an advocate in the law courts where ones reputation is high in
proportion to one's success in deceiving people. He was already top of his class in the
retors school and he was pleased with conceit.85 At a time Augustine wanted to distinguish
himself as an orator for a damnable and conceited purpose, namely, delight in human
vanity. Following the usual curriculum of the school, he had already come across a book
by certain Cicero, whose language almost everyone admired. This book contains an
exhortation to study philosophy, and is entitled Hortentius. It was this book that changed
the feelings of Augustine.86 The one that delighted him most in Cicero's exhortation to
philosophy was the advice not to study a sect of knowledge, but to seek, pursue and
strongly embrace wisdom in itself wherever found.87 He later dropped this book of Cicero
and decided to give attention to the Holy Scriptures and find out what they were like. 88 He
started by reading the Latin Bible. Its style, especially in the Old Testament, was often
painful to the admirers of Ciceros and Virgils beautiful styles. Before Jerome's revision
of the Latin bible produced during the years 383-405 A.D, the old Latin bible composed
by second century missionaries in Italy and Africa was colloquial and at times obscure to
the point of being barbaric. Augustine found out that once he had put it down, it was
always hard for him to pick it up again. Moreover, he was offended by the polygamy of the
Old Testament patriarchs and the different genealogies of Jesus in the Gospel of Mathew
and Luke.89 Due to this, he was drawn to the philosophy of Mani.90

84 Ibidem, 35.
85 Cf. Ibidem, 38.
86 Cf. Ibidem, 39.
87 Cf. Ibidem, 39-40.
88 Cf. Ibidem.

89 Cf. Ibidem, xiii-xiv.

90 Mani was a Mesopotamian Gnostic of the third century whose religion was zealously propagated by

underground missionary work, despite fierce prohibition from the imperial government. The religion of
Mani's followers was called in Latin Manichaeism. Manicheans express disgust at the physical world and
especially at human reproductive system. According to them, procreation imprisoned divine souls in matter,
which is inherently hostile to goodness and light. Manicheos had a vegetarian diet and forbade wine. There
were two classes: the Elects who were strictly obliged to be celibate, and Hearers, who allowed wives to
concubines as long as they avoid procreating children, whether by contraceptive acts or by confirming
intercourse to the safe period of monthly cycle. Manichean propaganda was combative against the Orthodox
Catholic Church, which granted married Christians to be in good standing, and admitted to the lectionary the

21
2.2.3. Augustine and the Manicheans

Central to Manicheans belief was their answer to the origin of evil, namely that God is
good but not omnipotent, and though resistant to evil, not strong enough to defeat it. What
was abhorrent to Manicheans was to make the creator supremely good and powerful, since
that must end by making him responsible for the evil in his creation. 91 However, those who
joined them learnt a fantastic mythology designed to explain the eternal polarity of good
and evil. Eclipses were explained by saying that the sun and the moon were veiling their
sight from the dreadful cosmic battles.
The more Augustine learnt about astronomy, the greater the tension in his adherence
to the Manicheans faith grew up. He later rejected the teachings of the Manicheans when
he came across the Enneads of Plotinus, where he learnt that evil exists as a privation of
good.92

2.2.4. Augustine's Conversion and Death

At this time the bishopric in Milan was administered by Ambrose, a priest most
acceptable to God, and eminent among the best of men. As Augustine stood among the
people in the church, he used to listen in eager suspense to the frequent sermons of the
preacher of the word of God. When he was still a youth at Carthage, he had being carried
away by the errors of the Manicheans, and therefore was more eager than others to hear
whether anything would be said for or against this error. Thanks to Ambroses talks, little
by little Augustine was led on by divine compassion until the error was driven totally from
his soul.93
After this fruitful sermon of Bishop Ambrose, an ardent desire was awakened in
Augustine to perfect himself in religion, and so with the coming of the holy day of Easter,
he received the Sacrament of Baptism. During his last illness, which led to his death, he

Old Testament stories of Moses the murderer, David the adulterer, Joseph the monopolist. Baptism and
Eucharist were held in contempt by Mani on the ground that Catholics ascribed to these Sacraments a
holiness which Manicheans discerned in everything. Mani strongly denied the historical reality of crucifixion
of Jesus. For him the cross was a symbol of suffering of humanity. For more detail on Manichean religion see
AUGUSTINE, Confessions, Henry CHADWICK (trans.), New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, xiv.
91 Cf.Ibidem.
92 Cf.Ibidem, xv.
93 Cf. Roger PEARSE, Possidius: Life of St Augustine, in The Tertulian Fathers, http://www.tertulian.o

r/fathers/possidius_life_of_augustine_02_text.htm, 20/07/2016.

22
commanded that the shortest penitential psalm be copied for him, and during the days of
his sickness, as he lay on his bed he would look at these sheets as they hung upon the wall
and read them, and he wept freely and constantly. And that his attention may not be
interrupted by anyone, he asked of people who were present that no one should come in to
him, except only at the hours in which the physicians came to examine him or when
nourishment was brought to him. This accordingly, was observed and done, and he had all
the time free for prayers. With all the members of his body intact, with sight and hearing
unimpaired, while his companions stood and watched him praying, he slept in the Lord. He
died at the age of seventy six leaving the church a fully sufficient body of clergies and
monasteries of men and women with their continents oversees together with library and
books containing treatises of his own and other holy men.94

2.2.5. Augustine's Works

The numerous writings of Augustine, the composition of which extended through forty
years are a mine of Christian knowledge and experience. The writings before his
conversion, a treatise on the 'Beauty' (De Pulchro et Apto), the orations and the eulogies
which he delivered as rhetorician at Carthage, Rome, and Milan, are lost. Augustine the
professor of eloquence, the heathen philosopher, the Manichean heretic, the skeptic and
free thinker is known to us only from his regrets and recantations in the Confessions and
other works. His literary career commences in his retreat at Cassiciacum, where he
prepared himself for a public profession of his faith.95 The following is a classified view of
his most important works.

A). Autobiographical Works

Among his main works, there are the Confessions and Retractations; the former
acknowledging his sins, the latter retracting his theoretical errors. The Confessions are the
most edifying product of his pen, indeed we may say, the most edifying book in the
patristic literature. Certainly no autobiography is superior to it in true humility, spiritual

94 Cf. Ibidem.
95 Cf. SCHAFF ,The Confessions and Letters of St Augustine with a Sketch of his Life and Works, 10-
11.

23
depth and universal interest.96 Augustine composed the Confessions about the year 397, ten
years after his conversion. The first nine books contain in the form of continuous prayer
and confession before God, a general sketch of his early life, of his conversion and of his
return to Africa in the thirty-fourth year of his age. The last three books and a part of the
tenth are devoted to speculative philosophy. They treat partly in tacit opposition to
Manichaeism, of the metaphysical question of the possibility of knowing God and the
nature of time and space. They also give the interpretation of the mosaic cosmogony in the
style of allegorical exegesis usual with the Fathers but foreign, to our age.97 To this same
class should be added the letters of Augustine. The Benedictine editors in the second
volume listed two hundred and seventy letters in chronological order, from A.D 386 to
A.D. 429. These letters sometimes treat very minutely of all important questions of his
time, and give us an insight of his cares, his official fidelity, his large heart, and his effort
to become like Paul.98

B). Philosophical Treatise in Dialogue

Among the philosophical treatises there are: Contra Academicos Libri Tres, written
within 386 A.D, in which he thought against the Skepticism and Probabilism of the New
Academy the doctrine according to which we can never reach the truth, but can at best
attain only probability; De Vita Beata (388), in which he makes true blessedness to consist
in perfect knowledge of God; De Ordine, in which he writes on the relation of evil with
the divine order of the world (386); Soliloquia (387), which is in the form of communion
with his own soul concerning God, the highest good, the knowledge of truth and
immortality; De Immortalitate Anima (387-389) ;Deity of the soul; De Musica Librivi
(387-389);De Magistro (389), in which he was in dialogue with his son Adeodatus, a pious
and promising boy who died soon after his return to Africa.99
His latter works, especially De Trinitate and De Civitate Dei, are full of profound
speculations. Before his conversion, he followed other systems of philosophy: first, the
Manicheans, then the Platonism. After his conversion he embraced the Christian

96 Cf. Ibidem.
97 Cf. Ibidem, 12.
98 Cf.Ibidem, 12-13.
99 Cf. Ibidem.

24
philosophy, which is based on the divine revelation of the Scripture, and which was called
the hand maid of theology and religion. But concurrently he prepared the way for Catholic
ecclesiastical philosophy, which rests on the authority of the Church and became complete
in the Scholasticism of the Middle Age.100

C). Religious-Theological Works

Among Augustine's theological works there are: De Utilitate Credendi, which was
against the Gnostics exaltation of knowledge, De Fideret Symbolo, a discourse which
though only presbyter, he delivered on the Apostle's creed before the Council at Hippo at
the request of the Bishops in 393, De Doctrina Christiana IV Libri, and a brief
compendium of the doctrine of faith and morals, which he wrote in 421.101

D). Polemic-Theological Works

These are the most copious source of the history of Christian doctrine in the Patristic
age. Different heresies are reviewed in the book De Haresibus ad Quodvaltdeum, which
was written between 428 and 430 to a friend and deacon in Carthage, and it gives a survey
of eighty-eight heresies, from the Simonians to the Pelagians. In the work De Vera
Religione (390), Augustine proposed to show that the true religion is to be found not with
the heretics and schismatics, but only in the Catholic Church of that time.102

E). Ethical and Ascetic Works

Among these belong three hundred and ninety-nine sermons (mostly very short): De
Scripturis (on the text of the Scripture), De Tempore (festival sermons), De Santis (in
memory of Apostles, martyrs and saints), De Diversis (on various occasions), etc. Some of
these sermons were dictated by Augustine himself, while some were taken down by
hearers. Also he put down various moral treatises, like: De Continentia (395), De
Mendiaco (395), against deception which is not to be confounded with the similar work,
Contra Mendicium, written against the fraud-theory of the Priscilliarists, written in 420; De
Agone Christiana (396), De Opera Monachorum (against monastic idleness) (400), De

100 Cf. Ibidem, 14.

101 Cf.Ibidem, 15.
102 Cf.Ibidem.

25
Virginitate (401), De Fide et Operibus (413), DePatientia (418), De Cura pro Mortius
Gerenda, which he wrote to Paulinus of Nola (421).103Augustine wrote many other works
which we may not continue to mention due to the limit of our paper.

2.3 Augustine's Conception of God

Augustine believed that God belongs to the objects that are first and subsequently
understood,104 because he thought that God is the author and sovereign ruler of the world.105
As it was generally held by traditional theism, God is the creator of heaven and earth, and
all that occurs in the universe takes place under his providence, that is, under God's
sovereign guidance and control.106 In trying to comprehend the person of God, Augustine
discovered that his mind is imperfect, since it was capable of error. At the same time, he
had experience of knowing certain truths that were eternal. He was able to compare the
experience of contemplating truth with the experience of having pleasure and sensations.
Of these two experiences he found out that the activities of the mind could provide more
lasting profound peace. When he considered the technical question of how it was that his
finite human mind was able of attaining knowledge beyond the capacity of his mind, he
concluded that the knowledge could not have come from finite things outside of him.
Hence, since the knowledge was superior and eternal and could not come from his limited
mind, he was led to believe that the immutable truths must have their source in God whom
he believed to be the most perfect of all beings.107
According to him, God is the highest being and not just any kind of being. He went
further in his Confessions, to describe God as all-good and all powerful, as he writes:

For who is the Lord but the Lord; or who is God but our God? Most High, utterly good, utterly
powerful, most omnipotent, most merciful and most just, deeply hidden yet most intimately
present, perfection of both beauty and strength, incomparable, immutable and yet changing all
things, never new, never old, making everything new and leading the proud to be old without
their knowledge; always active, always in repose, gathering everything to yourself but not in
need, supporting and filling and protecting, creating and nurturing and bringing to maturity,

103 Cf.Ibidem, 18.

104 Cf.R.A MARKUS, Augustine St, 391, in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, I, Donald M. BORCHERT,
(gen ed.), New York: Thompson Gale, 2006, 389-401.
105 Cf.Ibidem, 397.

106 Cf. McCANN J. HUGH, Divine Providence, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.sta

nford.edu/entries/providence-divine/, 10/08/2016.
107 Cf. AUGUSTINE, Confessions, 229-242.

26
 searching even though to you nothing is lacking, (...) you are jealous in a way without anxiety,
you repent without the pain of regret, you are wrathful and remain tranquil, you will a change
without any change in your design.108

Following the above description and attributes of God given by St Augustine, God is
the Supreme Good. Therefore, everything created by him must also be good. But the
problem is that everything is not transparently good along with the stories of intense
human cruelty. This is what we call the problem of evil. This problem had been a
disturbing issue in the philosophy of religion. It was this problem that Augustine rose to
give a solution to by defending the existence of a good God amidst the problem of evil in
the world.

2.4. Augustines Conception of Evil

2.4.1. Introduction

Within the previous chapter, we have been able to highlight the ideas of some thinkers
that came before Augustine with regards to the existence of evil in the world. Now we are
going to presents Augustines concept of evil as a possible answer to the question of evil in
the world.

2.4.2. Augustines Concept of Evil in General

Augustine started by saying that God created all things perfect, both humans and
animals, but due to mans turning away from the highest good (God), he failed from the
original righteousness. As a result, suffering and pain came into the world. Therefore,
according to Augustine, evil does not have its own existence, but exists as a privation of
good. He went further to give an Aesthetic conception of evil. According to this view,
what appears to be evil when seen in a limited context is sometimes wholly good from the
view point of God who sees timelessly, but due to our human nature we take these things
to be evil because it opposes our pleasure at that particular time.109
Therefore, all nature then are good simply because they exist and each has its own
measure of being, its own beauty, even in a way its own peace. And when each is in the
place assigned by the order of nature, it best preserves the full measure of being that was

108 AUGUSTINE, Confessions, 5.

109 Cf. Ibidem.

27
given to it.110 What makes evil possible is the fact that no created nature can be immutable.
Every nature is indeed made by God, the supreme and immutable good who made all
things good, but by choosing to sin such nature brings evil upon itself. The very sinning
however bears witness to the fact that the nature itself as it comes from the hand of God is
good. For unless the nature in itself was a really great good though not good in the
measure that the creator is good then the falling away from God into the creatures own
darkness, would not be a misfortune for the nature.111 In other words, sin is to a nature what
blindness is to an eye. The blindness is a defect which is a witness to the fact that the eye
was created to see the light and hence, the very lack of sight is the proof that the eye was
meant more than any other part of the body to be the one particularly capable of seeing the
light. If not for this capacity, there would be no reason to think of blindness as a
misfortune. Therefore, the very sin that deprived this nature of happiness in God and left it
miserable is the very proof of how good that nature was as it came from the hand of God.112
To this end Augustine maintained that every actual entity is good. Nothing evil exists in
itself, but as an evil aspect of some actual entity.113

2.4.3. Types of Evil According to Augustine

Before Augustines conversion to Christianity, he conceived of God as supremely

good-being, who is incorruptible, inviolable and immutable. At the same time he was
aware of the existence of evil in the created world; the evil that can be divided into two
major classes. Firstly, the evil that causes suffering, like hardship, pain and death; this is
called physical evil. Secondly, evil done by human beings moral acts. Wicked acts of men
imply souls characterized by such vices as pride, envy, greed and lust. This is precisely
called moral evil.

110 Cf. AUGUSTINE, The City of God, Gerald G. WALSH (trans.), Vernon J. B OURKE (ed.), New York:

Double Day, 1958, 250.

111 Cf. Ibidem, 508.
112 Cf. Ibidem.
113 Cf. Stanley HAUERWAS, Seeing Darkness, Hearing Silence: Augustines Account of Evil, in

Naming Evil, Judging Evil, (ed.) Ruth W. GRAND, London: University of Chicago Press, 2006, 38.

28
A). Moral Evil

The search for the cause of moral evil in the world has been Augustines primary
motivation into philosophy, because his adolescence and youthful age were engulfed with
lust and promiscuity. He decided to search for a new paradigm of life and to find out why
there is a lot of evil in the life of people. This quest led him into the hand of the
Manicheans who told him of the light and darkness principles which causes good and evil
in the life of people respectively. Making use of the Neo-Platonic philosopher Plotinus, he
latter discarded the theory and recognized moral evil as a privation of some good due in
action produced by free responsible moral agents.114

B). Physical Evil

When Augustine speaks of physical evil in the City of God he says: I must now turn
to those calamities which are the only thing our accusers have no wish to endure. Such are
hunger, disease, natural disasters.115All these evils that Augustine mentioned do not make
men evil, because they cannot have control over them, owing to the reason that they
naturally occur.116Nonetheless, Augustine traced the origin of these natural evils on which
man has not control over, to the fall of the first man, saying that when Adam was created,
he was living in a state of grace, a state of eternal happiness, but immediately he
abandoned the will of God and turned to his own will, he fail into damnation. Therefore,
suffering and pain, which were the consequences of his fall, came upon him. This
Augustine explained very well in On the Free Choice of the Will saying that: When the
first man was damned, his happiness was not revoked so far as to deprive him of his ability
to have children. From his descendant, a lovely adornment of this world was able to come
about. Yet, it was not fair that he beget offspring better than he was himself.117This
directly implies that the sin of Adam is seminally present in us and that is why we
experience all this suffering which the first man experienced as a consequence of his fall.
This ushers us into the full discussion of where evil in the world has its origin; whether evil

114 Cf. CLARKE, The One and Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics, 282.
115 Cf. AUGUSTINE, The City of God, 78.
116 Cf. Pantaleon IROEGBU, Kpim of Predicament: Causes of Evil and Suffering; God, Demon, or Man?,

Ibadan: Hope Publication, 2006, 36.

117 AUGUSTINE, On the Free Choice of the Will, Peter K ING (trans and ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge

University press, 2010, Bk III, 3.20.55.18.

29
is a part of Gods creation or it does have it source somewhere else, in other words, tracing
the source of evil in the world.

2.4.4. Source of Evil in the World

Even before Augustines conversion he had always conceived God as all-good and
incomparably better than all things. God being good he believe created everything good;
why then is there evil, and what is its origin? And how has it crept into the creation? What
is the root and what is the seed? Or is it nothing at all? Why then do we fear and beware of
that which is nothing?118 After all this thought, Augustine could not still figure out where
evil emerged from. Could it be that it was from some sort of evil matter out of which God
made this creation and did not change into good? But if that was the case, Augustine
wondered, how was it that an omnipotent God was unable to change matter wholly so that
nothing evil remained in it? Why did God not reduce to nothing the material that was evil
and provide good matter from which to create all things? For he would not be omnipotent
if he could not create something good. This thought Augustine pondered in his heart,
weighed down with grown anxiety concerning the fear of death and his failure to find the
truth.119Yet he had no explicit grasp of the cause of evil. But whatever it might be, he saw it
as something to be investigated. After his conversion, Augustine made his intellectual
investigation into the origin of evil without anxiety. He finally discovered that what the
Manicheans said was not the truth, as he writes in his Confessions: With all my mind I
fled from them, because in my inquiry into the origin of evil, I saw then to be fully of
malice, in that they taught more acceptable that your substance suffers evil than their own
substance actually does evil.120 Still on his effort to prove that all that God created is good,
it was clear to him that it is only if a being is good that it will be subject to corruption; for
if it was not good at all, there would not be anything in it to be corrupted. Therefore, all
things corrupted are deprived of something good. This made evil a privation of good. In
other words, so far as a being is, it is naturally good.121To this end, there cannot be any
nature in which there is no good.

118 Cf. AUGUSTINE, Confessions, 111-120.

119 Cf. Ibidem. 116
120 Ibidem, 113.
121 Cf. Ibidem, 115-116

30
 After all these convictions, Augustine was still left with the problem of how it could be
that evil people refuse ascent to the supreme good, so that it becomes just for them to be
punished; who places in them this plant of bitterness, since they were wholly made good
by the most loving God? If devil is responsible, where did the devil come from? And if he
himself by his own perverse will, turned from a good angel into a devil, where came that
bad will in him to make him devil in as much as he had been wholly made a good angel by
the most good God?122This particularly led Augustine into the investigation of what a good
and bad will is all about. Good will, he said, is a will by which we seek to live rightly and
honorably, and to attain the highest wisdom. To this end, he believes that it lies in our will
to enjoy or to lack such a great genuine good; for when anyone has a goodwill he surely
has something to put far ahead of all earthly kingdoms and all bodily pleasures. 123
Therefore, moral evil arises out of humans wrong use of the will.

2.4.5. Human Freewill

Augustine did not completely agree with Plato that ignorance is the sole cause of evil.
The overriding fact is that in daily conduct people understand praise and blame only
because they already understand that they have an obligation to do what is praise-worthy
and abstain from what is blame-worthy. Augustine maintained that under these
circumstances, mans predicament is not that he is ignorant, but that he stands in the
presence of alternatives. He must choose to turn towards God or away from God, making
sin the product of the will.124 As he says in his Confession: Where upon I tried to
understand what I have heard that freewill is the cause of our suffering evil, so, when I
willed to do or not to do something, I was very certain that I and no other person did will
and not will, and that was the cause of my sin as I perceived. 125 In the light of this
consideration, Augustine believed that the key to moral actions is found in the agents
possession and exercise of the will the psychological faculty of choice and volition, the
existence of which he demonstrates in On the Free Choice of the Will saying that, although
God alone is completely free, angels and human beings also have freewill. Just as our mind

122 Cf. Ibidem, 114.

123 AUGUSTINE, On the Free Choice of the Will, Bk I, 1.12.26.86.
124 Cf. STUMPF, Socrates to Sartre: A Historical Introduction of Philosophy 142.
125 AUGUSTINE, Confessions, 113.

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can transcend the mere sensible world and rise to the contemplation of eternal truth, so too
our wills can transcend the natural order and are able to resist all external influences.126
He spells out his basic conception of the will in three theses. First, he holds that we are
responsible for acts done out of free choice. As early as On the Free Choice of the Will, he
holds that freedom is a necessary condition for the ascription of moral responsibility.
Secondly, the will, he said, is completely self-determining. Therefore, the freedom
involved in the free choice must be a radical freedom so that nothing whatsoever can
determine its choice including its own nature. Thirdly, he further said that we are
responsible for not having a good will since it is in our power to have one as we have
previously explained. This he proves in two stages: firstly, he shows that a mind that is
properly in order (with reason in control) can easily have a good will. Secondly, he
maintained that even a disordered mind, that is, the one that is not entirely in control of
itself, is able to have a good will, because it is in every mans power to have a
goodwill.127To this end, every human being is capable of having a good will because we
have the freedom to choose bad or good acts. So, even the so-called bad person is capable
of being good by choosing good acts.128
Even Soren Kierkegaard understands evil as a result of a self-determined will, whose
strength and integration is derived from its rebellion against the Good. Therefore, evil is a
position an individual takes before God. In this case, evil becomes a powerful force,
arising both in and through human existence; a force each individual must confront within
himself. This choice of evil is not a matter of keeping or breaking rules and regulations,
but is concerned with whether one relates to God in humility or in pride.129But the question
now is why did God give man the freedom of choice since it is only through it that he can
sin? This question Augustine answered coherently using three propositional statements in
Book 2 of On the Free Choice of the Will, where he says:

[1] If a person is something good and could act rightly only because he willed to, then he
ought to have freewill, without which he could not act rightly. We should not believe that
because a person also sins through it, God gave it to him for this purpose. The fact that a

126 Cf. AUGUSTINE, On the Free Choice of the Will, xvii-xix.

127 Cf. Ibidem.
128 Cf. Ibidem.
129 Cf. ROBERTS, Kierkegaards Analysis of Radical Evil, x.

32
 person cannot live rightly without it is therefore a sufficient reason why it should have been
given to him.

[2] Freewill can also be understood to have been given for this reason: if anyone uses it in
order to sin, the divinity redresses him (for it). This would happen unjustly if freewill had been
given not only for living rightly but also for sinning. How would God justly redress someone
who made use of his freewill for the purpose for which it was given? Now, however, when
God punishes the sinner, what does he seem to be saying: but why did you not make use of
freewill for the purpose for which I gave it to you, that is, for acting rightly?

[3] If human beings lacked free choice of the will, how could there be the good in accordance
with justice itself is praised in condemning sin and honoring right deeds? For what does not
come about through the will would neither be sinning nor living rightly. Consequently,
penalty and rewards would be unjust if human beings did not have freewill. Hence, God ought
to have given freewill to human beings.130

Following the above explanation of Augustine, we can find out that God cannot but
give human beings freewill because it is only through it that humans can receive a just
reward of living rightly, in the sense that they have been able to choose good instead of
evil. Therefore, man has to act according to his nature, which is, participating in the
goodness of God who created him.
Despite Augustines freewill defense, there is still a challenge that arises, how to
justify the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freewill? In fact God as all-
knowing has foreseen that man will sin out of the freewill that was given to him, and since
all that God had foreknown must always come to pass, it follows that man sinned by
necessity.

2.4.6. Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freewill

In On the Free Choice of the Will Evodius asked a stunning question: how can it be, if
God foreknows everything that will happen in the future, we still do not sin by necessity?
Augustine immediately recognized the perplexity that troubles him and tried to develop it
further. Applying his expansion to the sample case of Adam, we get this philosophical
conundrum:

(1) If God foreknows that Adam will sin, then it is necessary that Adam sin.
(2) If it is necessary that Adam sin, Adam does not sin of his own freewill.
(3) If Adam does not sin of his own freewill, then he is not to be blame worthy for his sin.
(4) But Adam is blamed worthy for his sin.131

130 AUGUSTINE, On the Free Choice of the Will, Bk II, 2.1.3.5-2.1.3.7.

131 Gareth B. MATHEWS, Augustine, Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 2005, 96.

33
 This is a classic skeptical argument in the philosophy of religion. It seems to force us
to either give up the claim that God is omniscient and he foreknows that Adam will sin, or
give up the assumption that Adam is blame worthy. Cicero made a similar attempt to deny
the foreknowledge of God. By it, he denied the all knowledge of what is in the future in
God. He made every effort to prove that there can be no foreknowledge whether in God or
in man. Ciceros main reason of denying foreknowledge, was to save freewill and reject
the necessity of fate. His point was that once any foreknowledge of the future is admitted,
it is logically impossible to deny fate.132 In the City of God Augustine tried to examine this
fear of foreknowledge that led Cicero to attempt denying it in his detestable disputation.
He argues that:

If all things in the future are foreknown, each event will occur in the order in which it is
foreknown that it will occur. But if things happen in this order, then order of things are known
for certain in the mind of God who foreknows them. But if the order of event is known for
certain, then the order of causes is known for certain since nothing can happen without a
preceding efficient cause. If this is so, nothing is left to our own power, and there is no choice
in our will. Once we admit this, all human life becomes topsy-turvy; laws are made in vain,
there is no point in reproaches, no in pain, there is no ground in justice for rewarding the good
or punishing the wicked.133

Following the above, Ciceros motive for rejecting the foreknowledge of God, was to
avoid unworthy, absurd, and dangerous implications for human society. It seems to him
that both power of choice and foreknowledge could not exist together; if one stands, the
other falls. If we chose foreknowledge, we lose free choice and vice versa.
The solution that Augustine gave concerning the issue of divine foreknowledge and
human freewill was that it does not follow that there is nothing in our will because God
foreknew what was going to be in our will, for if he foreknows this, something must be in
our mind to be chosen and that is foreseen by God. Furthermore, if in foreknowing what
would be in our will, he foreknows something and not a non entity, it follows
instantaneously that there is something in our will, even if God foreknows it. Therefore, he
maintained that we are in no way compelled or forced either to preserve Gods
foreknowledge by abolishing our freewill, or to safeguard our freewill by blasphemously

132 Cf. AUGUSTINE, The City of God, 104.

133 Ibidem, 105.

34
denying the divine foreknowledge; which is tantamount to denying the existence of God,
because we could not have had a God who is not omniscient.134
Therefore, God does not just have foreknowledge of what Adam did, but also
foreknowledge of what he did with his own freewill. Hence, instead of Gods
foreknowledge being a threat to Adams freewill, it can actually guaranty it. In other
words, even though God foreknows that Adam will sin, it does not follow that Adam did
not will something with his own will. Therefore, he still has power to his own will despite
Gods foreknowledge.
Early in the Book 3 of On the Free Choice of the Will, Evodius135 made a sensible but a
potentially troubling point. Unless, he said, the movement of ones will towards its object
were voluntary and within ones power, one would not be praise-worthy when one turns to
higher object, or blame-worthy when one turns to the lower objects.136In addition to the
point made by Evodius, Augustine made a distinction between a stone and human being
saying that stones move themselves out of necessity, but human beings have in themselves
the power to control their movement, in the sense that they can choose to turn or move
towards the changing and temporal goods, or to turn towards the unchanging and eternal
good. Thus, human beings are praise or blame-worthy since they are not acting out of
necessity.137 This he further explained saying that:
We ourselves cannot deny that we have power except when what we will is not present to us.
Yet when we will [] the will is present to those who will, or is there anything in our power
other than what is present to those who will? Hence, our will would not be a will it were not in
our power. Therefore, God has foreknowledge of our power. Hence, our power is not taken
from us due to his foreknowledge.138

From the above we can comprehend that Augustine maintained that a God who is
equipped with justice and foreknowledge would never redress what he foresaw would
happen. And that his foreknowledge that man would sin did not influence the free choice
of man. Just as we do not force past things to happen by our memory, so too God does not
force future things that he foresaw to happen. And just as we remember some of the things

134 Cf. Ibidem, 98.

135 Evodius was a friend to Augustine who served also as his interlocutor in his book: On the Free
Choice of the Will.
136 Cf. MATHEWS, Augustine, 96.
137 Cf. AUGUSTINE, On the Free Choice of the Will, Bk III, 3.1.2.9-3.1.3.11.
138 Ibidem, Bk III, 3.38.32-3.3.8.35.

35
we have not done, yet have not done all things we remember, so, too God foreknows all
things that of which he is the author, yet he is not the author of all the things that he
foresees.139 Therefore, Adam did not only has the power to do his will but also has the
power to achieve what he wills.
Augustines further attempt to explicate the fact that one has the power to achieve his
own will made him use the analogy of happiness. Even though it is God who makes one
happy, Gods foreknowledge of ones future happiness does not rob him of his own will to
happiness. In other words, Gods foreknowledge does not eradicate our power to will and
to achieve what we had willed.
Moreover, the evil that men perpetrate are the purposeful act of the will, because they
still have the alternative of remaining in their perfect state of goodness. Due to the desire
for temporal happiness man chose to do his own will rather than the will of God, which has
as consequence brought about evil in the world.

2.4.7. Augustines Solution to the Problem of Evil

In the history of intellectual investigation, it is always easy to find faults, but hard to
give solutions. So many philosophers and writers have stated the problem of evil without
giving the solution to it. Augustine in his time did not just state or explain the problem of
evil, but also gave a solution; a way to return to our original state. In doing that, he
supposed that people do evil when they choose to love and pursue the temporal good rather
than the eternal good which is God himself. As he writes:

If objects are not interchangeable, if things cannot substitute for a person, neither can any
finite or person substitute for God, yet all men confidently expect that they can achieve true
happiness by loving objects, others persons, and themselves. When these are loved for the
sake of ultimate happiness; mans love is disordered. And disordered love produces all kinds
of evil in human behavior, because it does not take long for disordered love to produce
disordered person and disordered person produces disordered community.140

Therefore, to love God is then the indispensible requirement to eternal happiness, because
only God can satisfy that peculiar need in man that is precisely the need of the infinite
happiness. Although perfect and infinite happiness, Augustine believed, cannot be

139 Cf. Ibidem, Bk III, 3.4.11.40.

140 STUMPF, Socrates to Sartre: A Historical Introduction of Philosophy, 142.

36
achieved in this world, but with the grace of God, together with our effort, it will be
attained in heaven after life.

2.4.8. Conclusions

In this chapter, we have tried to explain Augustines concept of evil and its remedy.
Evil in the world is a reality because it exists, but it does not have a substantial existence.
Instead, it exists as an accident or, in a more comprehendible term, as a privation of good
of which the source of existence can be traced to the misuse of human freewill. Despite all
this, Augustine made us to understand that there is still hope for us to go back to our
original state, that is, by obedience to the will of God, which can only be possible by our
immense effort and the help of the grace of God.

37
 CHAPTER THREE

CONCEPT OF EVIL AFTER AUGUSTINE

3.1 Introduction

In the previous chapters, we have tried, as much as we can, to analyze the movement
of philosophical inquiry on the problem of evil in the world. We analyzed expediently
some ancient philosophers approach to the solution of evil and also defended Augustine's
stance; which has a comprehensive approach towards solving the problem of evil in the
world. According to him, evil is a privation of good, which has its source in the misuse of
human freedom of the will.
In this last chapter, we thought it paramount to elucidate and give analysis of some
concepts of evil that came after Augustine, as well as pointing out some criticisms that
have risen from Augustine's freewill defense. We chose some of these thinkers, because
their ideas are in consonant with that of Augustine.

3.2 Anselm

Anselm was a medieval thinker born in the year 1033 A.D near Aosta. It was at the age
of twenty-three that Anselm left home. He later went to Normandy in 1059,where the
Benedictine abbey at Bec captured his interest, whose famous school was under the
direction of Lanfranc, the abbey's prior.141 It was under the leadership of Lanfranc who
was a teacher of wide reputation that the school at Bec had become a notable place and
center of learning, most especially in the area of dialectics. Later in 1060 Anselm entered
the abbey as a novice. Due to the spiritual and intellectual gift he had, he experienced a
rapid intellectual and spiritual growth. In 1093 Anselm was elected as the Archbishop of
Canterbury. He died on 21 April 1109. After his death, he was canonized a saint by the
Church in 1494, and also declared a Doctor of the Church in 1720.142
Anselm in his effort to analyze the menace of moral evil in the world, following
Augustines line of thought, made it clear that humans have freewill, and due to that they

141 Williams, THOMAS, "Saint Anselm", in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanfo
rd.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/anselm/, 30/4/2017.
142 Cf. Ibidem.

38
have the opportunity to choose between alternatives. According to him, moral dilemmas
arise when we are faced with the choice between happiness and justice, between individual
self-interest and impersonal fairness.143 Each one is a genuine good to the individual
agent, and the conflict between them is real. According to Anselm, morality demands that
we favor justice over happiness in such conflicts, because wrong doing is expressed as the
choice of happiness over justice.144
Following Augustine, Anselm argued that many things can happen against ones will,
but it is impossible to will against ones will, since that will require both willing something
and willing to will it. To this end, he maintained that we have the power to achieve
whatever we will, because we are presented with the alternatives of choosing between
good and evil. Therefore, the responsibility of our evil doing rests on our shoulders.145 In
the light of this consideration, Anselm maintained that man sins out of freewill because he
has the choice of doing that which is good, but he decided to do otherwise.

3.3 Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas was a medieval thinker born at Roccasecca, midway between Rome
and Naples, Italy about (1225 AD). He was entrusted to the Benedictine monks of Monte
Cassino, a few miles from his birth place. It was there that he made his first studies. At the
age of fourteen, he entered the University of Naples. It was at Naples that he was
introduced to the works of Aristotle which influenced his thought. He died on March 7,
1274, at the Cistercian Monastery of Fassanuova.146
In Aquinas notion of evil, the Latin word malum makes more inclusive sense than evil
does for us. He is not concentrating only on the incredible wicked deeds. He is concerned
with what we might call badness across the board or undesirable in general.147 According
to him, that God is the source of all beings must be demonstrated in a way that every

143 Peter KING, Anselm, St, 218, in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, I, Donald M. BORCHERT (gen. ed.),
New York: Thompson Gale, 2006, 214-219.
144 Cf. Ibidem.
145 Cf. Ibidem.
146 Edward J. GRATSCH, Aquinas Summa: An Introduction and Interpretation, Bangalore: Theological

Publication, 1985, x.
147 Cf. Thomas AQUINAS, On Evil, Richard REGAN(trans.), Brain DAVIES (ed.), New York: Oxford

University Press, 2003, 14.

39
being derived its being from Him,148 who is all good. And since all real being comes from
God as its creative source, it is in some degree a participation in the basic perfection of the
goodness of God. To this end, it is impossible that any being as real being should be
intrinsically evil, because goodness is the transcendental quality of beings. As such, in its
positivity as real being it must be a good worthy of being valued for what it is.149 Therefore,
God is not the cause of evil, which rather comes from many partial deficiencies of
good.150God being the infinite, absolute and the subsistent Being, who is all-powerful and
all-good, has created the finite beings things in the world, both living and none living
things, which cannot but be good naturally. This means that God can never be thought of
being the cause of evil in the world because evil can never exist from where there is the
perfect good. Furthermore, Aquinas notion of evil has been fully explained by Brain
Davies in this way:

Following Aristotle, Aquinas distinguishes between the use of is in sentences like John is
blind and John is. He takes the first use to signify that a predicate (is blind) can be attached to
a name (John) so as to result in a true statement. He takes the second use to signify that John is
a genuine name a word which labels something in the real word, something which has what
Aquinas calls esse. In the light of this consideration, Aquinas goes on to maintain that, since
God is the source of all beings which has esse, God cannot be thought as causing evil to be.
For evil is not anything actual [...] It is what we may talk of things as being only in the sense
that we may speak of people being blind, or as Aquinas typically puts it, it is the absence of
good that ought to be present. There are holes in the walls, but holes have no independent
existence. There are holes in the walls only because there are walls with something missing.
There are blind people. But blindness has no independent existence. There are blind people
because there are people who cannot see. In a similar way so Aquinas holds that, evil has no
independent existence. It is there only in the sense that something is missing. And, so Aquinas
thinks, what is not there cannot be thought of as made to be by the source of being of things. It
cannot be thought to be made by God.151

Following this we shall find out that evil did not just appeared from nowhere; it is
there because something which supposed to be there is missing. Therefore evil does not
have its own manner of existence, in other words, it is a privation of good.

148 Thomas AQUINAS, Summa Contra Gentile: Book Two, Creation, James F. ANDERSON(trans.),

Indiana: Hanova House Publication, 1956, Ch 15, 1.

149 Cf. CLARKE, The One and Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics, 271.

150 Cf. Frederick COPLESTON, A History of Philosophy: Medieval Philosophy, II, London: Tower

Building, 1950, 99.

151 AQUINAS, On Evil, 20-21.

40
 Aquinas distinguishes between what he calls malum poenae which is literally
translated as evil of penalty, and malum culpa, literally translated as evil of fault.152
Considering the first expression, he is referring to natural or physical evil natural
disasters, sickness and the like. But the second expression refers to moral evil or evil in
human action.
For Thomas Aquinas, when we are confronted by natural evil which he calls evil
suffered, we look for a natural explanation.153 For instance, if John is sick we shall try to
discover what (in the world) can be the cause of his sickness. May be he has eaten what is
not conducive for his body which has resulted to disorder in his state of health.
He also made it clear that there are some things of the nature that we condemn to be
evil, but to some aspect they are good. For example, fire, when consumes houses or get
people burnt is evil, but that same fire is good when people uses it to cook or uses it to
warm themselves when there is cold. Hence, all nature then are good simply because they
exist, and therefore each has its own measure of being, its own beauty, all founded on their
being.154
But when we come to moral evil, Aquinas hardly thought of evil done as benefiting
something. He maintained that those who wrong others inflict harm on their victims and in
doing so, are bad or evil in themselves.155 For him evil done often involves a kind of
success in every human act the end goal is always for the sake of achieving success
which is always good for the character. Take for example, a robber who went to rob in the
bank, having succeeded, he thanks God because he has achieved his own good, meanwhile
he has inflicted injury on the owners of the money in the bank. However in Aquinas view,
the agents of evil done are fundamentally failing to be good and the evil in their action is
nothing but such failure.156
Following Augustines line of thought Aquinas maintained that all creatures are good,
which they derived from the participation in the goodness of God, insofar as they have
being. But insofar they have deviated from that good, they are evil. In other words, evil is
the privation of good. The sinner for instance is good insofar as he has existence. Therefore

152Cf. Ibidem.
153Cf.Ibidem, 22.
154 Cf. AUGUSTINE, City of God, Vernon J. BOURKE, (ed.), London: Double Day,1958, 250.
155 Cf. AQUINAS, On Evil, 23.
156Cf. Ibidem.

41
no creature considered as an existing being is evil. Even the devil is good insofar as he
exists, for he holds his existence from God.157 Therefore, for Aquinas when acting people
fail to do what they ought to do, they fail to be what they ought to be.

3.4 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Leibniz a 17th century modern philosopher was born in Leipzig on July 1, 1646. He
was of a Lutheran family and also belonged to the educated elites on both sides. His father
Friedrich Leibniz was a jurist and also lectured moral philosophy at the University of
Leipzig. It was in 1661 that Leibniz began his formal university education at the University
of Leipzig. His philosophical education was Scholastic in its nature, though he was also
exposed to elements of Renaissance humanism. He died November 14, 1716.158
In Philosophers Confession, Leibniz discusses at length of the problem of evil. This is
a problem that, together with a group of other related problems, would engage his attention
for the next forty years. How can evil in the world be reconciled with the existence of an
infinitely powerful, just, and good Supreme Being? Leibniz maintained that the goodness
of God is a sufficient reason to create a world that is the best possible, and evil is a
necessary part of such world. In other words, God causes evil for he creates the best series
of things, including many things that are when considered in themselves bad or sinful. But
he nevertheless maintained that God takes no delight in the existence of evil, and hence, he
is not properly thought to have willed it.159
Leibniz distinguishes between Gods antecedent and consequent will. God, he said,
wills each possible thing in proportion to its perfection. But some possible things are not in
consonant with others, so, not all Gods antecedent willing can be realized. To this end,
Gods consequent will, that is, final and decisive will, is the existence of that series of
things that realize as much perfection as possible.

157 Cf. COPLESTON, A History of Philosophy, 99.

158 Cf. Look, C. BRANDON, "Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz", in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, h
ttps://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/leibniz/, 30/4/2017.
159 Cf. Christia MERCER, Leibniz, 263, in Encyclopedia of Philosophy,V, Donald M. B ORCHERT (gen.

ed.), New York: Thompson Gale, 2006, 249-279.

42
3.5. Fredrick Nietzsche

Nietzsche was a German philosopher born on 15th October 1844, in Rcken (near
Leipzig), where his father was a Lutheran minister. Most of his works was in philosophy.
It was actually the work of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Albert Lange that inspired
his philosophical ideas. He lived until 1900, when he died of a stroke complicated by
pneumonia.160

Nietzsche in his view on evil believed that man should go beyond good and evil. In
fact he is one of the most celebrated evil-skeptics. In other words, he believed that we
should abandon the concept of evil, because it is dangerous and problematic and it has
negative effect on human potential and vitality by promoting the weak and suppressing the
strong, whiles other moral concept such as right, wrong, good and bad are worthy
keeping.161 He contended that the powerless and weak created the concept of evil to take
revenge against their oppressors. He believed that the concept of good and evil contributes
to an unhealthy view of life which judges relief from suffering as more valuable than
creative self-expression and accomplishment. For this reason, Nietzsche supposed that we
have to move beyond the judgment of good and evil.162

3.5 Richard Swinburne

Richard Swinburne was born in 1934 into a family of non-Christian believers. He was
awarded an open scholarship to study classics at Exeter College in 1952, Oxford. It was
after a period of military service, that he went to Oxford as an undergraduate in 1954
together with the conviction that for him to be a Christian was the most important thing in
his life. He obtained B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, with a special
concentration in philosophy in 1957.163

160 Cf. Anderson, R. LANIER, "Friedrich Nietzsche", in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https:/
/plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/nietzsche/, 11/04/2017.
161 Cf. Calder, TODD,, Concept of Evil, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.e

du/entries/concept-evil/, 11/08/2016.
162 Cf.Ibidem.

163 Cf. Julian GOTOBED, Richard Swinburne, in Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia

of Western Theology, http://people.bu.edu//wwwildman/bce/swimburne.htm,,30/4/2017.

43
 In explaining the nature of evil in the world, Swinburne prefers using the word bad
instead of evil, when talking about the actions of agents and their characters, and also
when talking more generally about states of affair. State of affairs is an expression that he
uses in a widest sense to include things that happen to people as well as intentional actions
they perform. He further understands moral evil as including all bad states caused
deliberately, but because believed to be good. It includes the pain one deliberately inflicts
on another, the pains of diseases which one negligently allowed another to contract by
allowing him come in contact with an animal which suffers from that. Natural evil thus
includes, according to him, all the traits of suffering which diseases and accident
unpreventable by man bring in peoples life. It also includes the bad desires we finds in
ourselves: the temptations to have than our fair share of the world, and to lie and deceive
for the sake of our reputation.164
He also made emphasis on the issue of freewill, saying that it is good for an agent to
have very serious libertarian freewill in that it involves freedom to act in a way not fully
determined by causes. It involves freedom to choose between good and bad, including the
wrong, because it would seem logically impossible for God to give agents this freedom
without the probability of them making some wrong choices.165Swinburne maintained that
it was through the misuse of this freewill that evil came into the world, in the sense that in
making choices man made the wrong choice which as a consequence brought evil into the
world.166
He further explained in his theodicy saying that the problem of evil does not arise if
one denies the omnipotence or the perfect goodness of God.167In other words, it is only he
who believes that God is powerful and all good, that is disturbed because of the evil in the
world, in the sense that evil could never has come from God who is all Good. Therefore, it
is only those who believe in the omnipotent nature of God that faces the problem of evil in
the world. For him, human beings participate in the goodness of God. Therefore, the bad or
evil in human beings consists in moving away from its nature of goodness. In other words,
nothing that exists is called bad in so far as it is an entity, but rather in so far as it lacks

164 Cf. Richard SWINBURNE, Providence and the Problem of Evil, New York: Clarendon Press, 1998,
10.
165 Cf. Ibidem, 133.
166 Cf. Ibidem, 42.
167 Cf. Ibidem, 36.

44
some goodness. For instance, an eye is said to be bad in so far it lacks the power of
sight.168

3.6 Critics of Augustine

The Augustinian theodicy has experienced so many criticisms starting from the
medieval era to this contemporary epoch, especially the criticism of the eschatological
aspect of Augustinian theodicy, which has been expressed as a dilemma. If God desires to
save all his human creatures but he is unable to do so, he is limited in power. If on the
other hand he does not desire to save all, but created some for damnation, he is limited in
goodness. In other words, the doctrine of eternal damnation stands as an obstacle in the
way of Christian theodicy.169
Following the fact that this paper is not meant to be exhaustive, we do not deny the
possibility of other critics, these two controversial critics of Augustine: J. L. Mackie and
William Rowe, who have tried to reduce to absurdity Augustine's freewill defense of the
compatibility of God's omnipotence, foreknowledge and the existence of evil in the world
have been chosen in this instance, because they are the most serious and controversial
critics with regards to Augustines notion of evil.

3.6.1 J. L. Mackie

According to Mackie, the problem of evil is a problem only for someone who believes
that there is a God who is both omnipotent and wholly good.170The problem is stated by
Mackie as follows: God is omnipotent, God is wholly good, and yet evil exists.171For
him, there seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, such that if
any two of them were true, the third would be false. But at the same time, all three are
essential parts of most theological positions. For him, this contradiction, however, does
not arise immediately. To show it, we need some additional premises or perhaps some
quasi-logical rules connecting the terms good, evil and omnipotent. These additional

168 Ibidem, 37.

169 Cf. HICK, Evil, in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 474.
170 Cf. J.L. MACKIE, Evil and Omnipotence, 200, in Mind, New Series, 64, (2009), 254, 200-212.
171 Ibidem.

45
principles are: good is opposed to evil in such a way that a good thing always eliminates
evil as far as it can.172From this, it follow that a good omnipotent being eliminates evil
completely, and then the proposition that a good omnipotent thing exists together with evil
is impossible.173
Augustine affirms that evil is not to be ascribed to God as the cause, but to the
independent action of human beings, who is supposed to have been endowed with the
freedom of the will. But according to Mackie, there is incoherence in the notion of the
freedom of the will. He questioned the assumption that second-order evils are logically
necessary accompaniment of freedom. He writes: if God had made men such that in there
free choices they sometimes prefer what is good and sometimes what is bad or evil, why
could he not have made men such that they always freely chooses the good?.174He
maintained that if there is no logical impossibility in man's freely choosing the good on one
or several occasions, there cannot be a logical impossibility in his freely choosing the good
on every occasion. To this end, he supposes that God is not then faced with a choice
between making innocent people and making beings that in acting freely, would sometimes
go wrong. There was open to him, obviously, better possibility of making beings who
would act freely, but always go right. Clearly he maintained that God's failure to avail
himself of this possibility is inconsistent with his being both omnipotent and wholly
good.175
Mackie takes this criticism to be sufficient to refute the solution that God is not the
cause of evil. Furthermore, he maintained that there is still a fundamental difficulty in the
notion of omnipotent God creating men with freewill. If men's will are really free, this
must mean that even God cannot control them. That is, God is no longer
omnipotent.176Following Mackies argument, it implies that there is no God for him,
because if there is God there will be no evil in the world, and if there is God and evil exist,
God will be the cause of evil because he has the power to prevent it but did not.
Nevertheless, this criticism of Mackie still fails because when freewill is given to man,
it is for him to choose between alternatives. So, for God to create human beings who only

172 Ibidem, 200-201

173 Cf. Ibidem.
174 Ibidem, 209.
175 Cf.Ibidem.
176 Cf.Ibidem, 210.

46
chooses what is good would imply to determine the action of man. And also as we have
previously explained; if a person who is good by his nature could act rightly according to
his nature only because he willed to, then he ought to have freewill, because it is through it
that he chooses between good and evil. It should also be noted that although man sins
through his freewill, God did not give him freewill for that purpose, but for him to chose
rightly. That is why God would punish or redress anyone who sins. Mackie should also
have noted that the freewill that God gave to man does not mean that God cannot control
him, because a creature can never be more powerful than its creator.

3.6.2 William Rowe

In On Free Choice of the Will (De Libero Arbitirio), Book III, as well as in the City of
God (De Civitate Dei), Book V, Augustine briefly dealt with the perennial controversy
about the compatibility of Gods foreknowledge and human freewill. Rowe, in his article,
Augustine on Foreknowledge and Freewill, as presented by Ann Pang, criticized
Augustines defense of the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freewill,
saying that it completely fails. So, basing on the fact that Rowes criticism is on the
Augustines position on divine foreknowledge and human freewill, this discourse will limit
itself to merely Gods foreknowledge; it will not discourse the subject of Gods grace or
Gods omnipotence.
Rowe has two main criticisms of Augustine. To begin with his first objection, Rowe
quotes the following texts in De Libero Arbitrio:
(Evodius).. I have a deep desire to know how it can be that God knows all things beforehand,
that, nevertheless, we do not sin by necessity. Whoever says that anything can happen
otherwise than as God has foreknown it, is attempting to destroy the divine foreknowledge
with most insensate impiety []. Since God foreknew that man would sin that which God
foreknew must necessarily come to pass. How then is the will free, when there is apparently
this unavoidable necessity?
(Augustine).. Your trouble is this, you wonder how it can be that this two propositions are not
contradictory and incompatible, namely, that God has foreknowledge of all future events, and
that we sin voluntarily and not by necessity. For if, you say, God foreknows that a man will
sin, he must necessarily sin. But if there is necessity, there is no voluntary choice in sinning,
but rather, fixed and unavoidable necessity. You are afraid that by reasoning, the conclusion
may be reached either that Gods foreknowledge of the future must be impiously denied, or if
that cannot be denied, that sin is committed not voluntarily but by necessity must be accepted.
Isnt that your difficulty?

47
 (Evodius)..Exactly.177

Ann Pang vividly presented the Evodius argument as Rowe reconstructed:

God has foreknowledge of all future events.
Hence, if a man is going to sin, God foreknows that he will sin.
Whatever God foreknows must necessarily happen.
Hence, if God foreknows that man will sin, he must necessarily sin.
But if such a man must necessarily sin, there is no voluntary choice in his sinning.
Therefore, such a man does not have freewill.178

Following this reconstruction, as presented by Ann Pang, Rowes belief is that if God
has the foreknowledge of future events, it means that mans action is already
predetermined, because whatever God foreknows must surely come to past. In other words,
man does not have freewill. To this end, Rowe rejected the fact that God has the
foreknowledge of the future, which is tantamount to rejecting the existence of God, in fact
Rowe never believed in the existence of God.
But Rowes argument in itself is problematic. First, he often says that he thinks that
Augustines argument is based on the belief that even though a man necessarily wills to
sin, he nevertheless freely wills to sin. Rowe, however, is wrong in his assumption.
Throughout De Libero Arbitirio, Augustine never used the phrase, a man necessarily wills
to sin. The only place he does use it is in restating Evodius argument or in positing a
hypothetical assertion to which he plans to object. Therefore, Augustine firmly and
explicitly rejects the use of such phrase and idea that a person may necessarily will or will
in a necessary way when necessity is taken in a strict and absolute sense. For him,
necessity taken in such a sense is not compatible with willing, and so these two terms
should not be used to form a compound idea.179

3.7 Comparison of Augustine vs. Modern and Contemporary Concept of Evil

Augustine in the Medieval time has given us a solution to the problem of evil in the
world. Despite his comprehensive view, there are still some thinkers who disagree with
him, or in a more understandable sentence gave a different opinion with regards to evil in
the world. Nevertheless, there are still some thinkers who share the same view with him. In

177 Ann A. PANG, Augustine on Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freewill, 418, in Revue Des
Etudes Augustiniennes, 50, (1994), 2,417-431.
178 Ibidem.
179 Cf.Ibidem, 420-421.

48
other words, there are points of convergence and divergence between Augustine and
modern and contemporary thinkers regarding the issue of evil in the world.
Leibniz, a modern philosopher, gave a similar view with Augustine in saying that God
does not will evil, and to that end he is not thought to be the cause of evil. But he later
diverged from the opinion of Augustine, in the sense that he opined that God created the
best possible world and evil is part of this creation; he did not realize that it is a
contradiction to say that God created evil but did not will it by just mere distinguishing
antecedent and consequent will. Augustine in his own view made it so categorical that God
never created evil, neither by antecedent willing, nor by consequential willing, but evil
came into the world as a result of the misuse of human freewill.
In the contemporary era Swinburne supported Augustine in saying that moral evil
arises as a result of deliberate wrong choice of human beings, which they themselves
conceived to be good. Therefore, by abandoning eternal good to choose the temporal one,
man sins.

3.8 Conclusion

In this last chapter, we have been able to expose some concepts of evil after Augustine
and criticisms that were held against Augustines notion of evil in the world. With the
comparison we have made so far, we can vividly notice that there are similarities and
differences between Augustine and modern and contemporary concept of evil. We also
showed that despite the fact that Augustines notion of evil have experienced many
criticisms, there are still thinkers who have made strong positive contribution on it in the
persons of Anselm and Aquinas.

49
 GENERAL CONCLUSION

In this work we have tried at least to a greater extent to analyze the problem of evil in
the world in the light of Augustines concept. First of all, we started by exposing the
concept of evil before Augustine, starting from the ancient thinkers like Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle who maintained that moral evil exist as a result of mans ignorance, because he
who knows the good, does it. Plotinus and Proclus came and presented a quite unique view
saying that evil is a privation of good that supposed to be present, as a consequence of
emanation from the One. Moral evil exist as a result of souls contact with matter. In the
medieval era the Church Fathers also made it clear that freedom of choice plays an
important role in the evil the men do. In other words, man within his own self has the
power to choose the good and avoid evil.
Augustine in his concept of evil did not just state the problem of evil in the world; he
as well gave a solution to it. Following the line of Plotinus and Proclus, he first stated that
evil is a privation of good. In other words, evil does not exist on its own; it exists because
something is lacking. Then in his own view as a Christian theologian, he took the First
Fall which was the first act of disobedience to the command of God, with philosophical
significant for the issue. He in fact saw in it an exercise of freewill; which was misused
because it necessitated the disobedient to the command of God. In other words, t was due
to the freewill that God gave to man that he was able to choose to do evil instead of the
good, thereby doing his own will, and abandoning the will of God. Therefore, due to this
wrong choice of man evil came into the world as a consequence of that disobedience
making wrong exercise of freewill precisely the immediate foundation of moral evil in the
world. He went forward to give us a solution saying that we can still come back to our
original state by channeling our love to the eternal good, which is God himself, in other
words, doing the will of God.
We also went further to expose some concepts of evil after Augustine, as well as
exposing some criticisms that were held against Augustines concept of evil; starting with
Mackie who argued that God is supposed to have created man in a way that he freely
chooses to do good, since God has the power to prevent evil but did not, therefore, God is
the cause of evil. And Rowe who in his article Augustine on Foreknowledge and Human

50
Freewill maintained that since God foreknows that man will sin, it follows that man
sinned out of necessity and not of his own freewill.
With all these explanations, I vividly believe that we have exposed to a greater extent
Augustines idea of evil in the world as a response to question of why is there evil in the
world? Nevertheless, we do not claim to have exposed in totality Augustines concept of
evil,nor to have exhausted the issue of evil as presented by other philosophers.

51
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