St Augustine (354 – 430CE) based his arguments on the Bible, especially the accounts of the creation and the fall in Genesis. His influential theodicy rests upon two major assumptions; evil did not come from God since God’s creation was faultless and perfect, and evil came from elsewhere and God is justified in allowing it to stay. Augustine started from the assumption that God is wholly good and that God created a world free from faults. Following the teaching in Genesis 1, Augustine emphasised that ‘All God has made pleased Him’; suffering and evil were therefore unknown. He made the logical point that it is not possible for God to be responsible for evil since evil is ‘not a substance’. Instead, evil refers to what is lacking in a thing; it is a ‘privation of good’. Augustine used the analogy of blindness, which is not an entity in itself but an absence of sight. If God cannot have created evil, Augustine traced its origin to those areas within the world that have free will; specifically, angels and human beings. These abused God’s gift of freedom and chose wilfully to turn their attention away from God, the supreme good, and to idolise instead ‘lesser goods’. In keeping with the story of the fall in Genesis 3, he argued that the desire for power proved too much for Adam and Eve, who were tempted by Satan, a fallen angel, to break God’s command and to eat the forbidden fruit. Having explained the origin of evil, Augustine went…
The Irenaean theodicy is a theory used to help justify the problem of evil. The problem of evil raises questions as to whether there is a God as he is supposed to be omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient. If God was all loving, all powerful and all knowing then why is there evil and suffering in the world?…
Augustine viewed human nature in only one way: good and evil. Augustine lived in an era when the pillar of strength and stability, the Roman Empire, was being shattered, and his own life, too was filled with turmoil and loss. To believe in God, he had to find an answer to why, if God is all-powerful and purely good, he still allowed suffering to exist. Augustine believed that evil existed because all men on earth was granted, at birth, the power of free will. He states that God enables humans to freely choose their actions and deeds, and through our own action and choices evil is established. Even natural evils, such as disease, are indirectly related to…
Entwistle examines different worldviews as they pertain to both disciplines. Worldviews are defined within the text as, “a set of presuppositions, which we hold consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently about the basic make-ups of the world” (Entwistle, 2010). Every worldview is different; it is created basically off of your life experiences along with your beliefs. Four themes were discussed in the text. The four themes, creation, fall, redemption and consummation were said to enhance the Christian worldview (Entwistle, 2010). Creation explains what it means to be humans and the world that we exist in. The fall describes the first human beings rebellion against God and the division it created. Redemption tells of our gift of forgiveness of our sins and justification from God through his son Christ. Consummation connects all three themes and is the “starting point for integration” (Entwistle, 2010).…
Genesis chapters 1-11 depicts four great events that explains the creation of the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. The creation and the fall of man. It explains how sin enters into human nature and man loses his relationship with the creator. It tells how God judges man because of sin, although sending a great flood to destroy His creation, He preserves a remnant because of His compassion for what He had created. In this essay I will explain my worldview on how these events have impacted the natural world, human identity, human relationships and civilization.…
Hick talks briefly about how man creates its own evils, by its inhumanities and ignorance. He states that stemming from that comes oppression, poverty, and war. Then he goes on the explain their is also natural evils such as earthquakes, tornadoes, and floods. If man was created by God as a fully functional creature, and world is a place that is our paradise to live in. How could it be plausible for an all loving God to have the natural and moral evils to be seeded in his creation, therefor he could not be all-loving. This theory also has the basis of free will, the fact that we can chose the path that we want to take in the face of temptation.…
The Problem of Evil is one of the most renowned arguments that provides the objection to the existence of God. According to this argument, if God exists and is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, then there would be no evil in the world. However, the world is full of instances of evil and suffering, consequently indicating that an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good God does not exist. Within the context of this argument, evil can be defined as “ a state of affairs that creates pain, suffering or harm” (Nichols et al. 132). Evil can be categorized into two types: moral evil, which refers to harm done by human beings to one another, and natural evil, which refers to harm done to humans as a result of nature’s operation. In response…
A theodicy is a philosophical study, which attempts to satisfy the problem of the existence of evil and suffering alongside the existence of the God of Classical Theism, a God who is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) tries to justify the righteousness of God; Augustine’s theodicy heavily refers and relates to key biblical passages. Therefore his theodicy is an attempt to solve the problem of suffering. Augustine uses the story of the Fall in Genesis 1:27 to argue that God intended for the world to be a perfect place but due to Adam and Eve committing the Original Sin they consequently bought evil into the world. Evil is therefore not from…
This paper examines St. Augustine’s view on evil. St. Augustine believed that God made a perfect world, but that God's creatures turned away from God of their own free will and that is how evil originated in the world. Augustine assumes that evil cannot be properly said to exist at all, he argues that the evil, together with that suffering which is created as punishment for sin, originates in the free nature of the will of all creatures. According to Augustine, God has allowed evil to exist in the world because it does not conflict with his righteousness. He did not create evil but is also not a victim of it. He simply allows it to exist.…
P4: Evil is not due to God but to man’s misuse of the free will that God gave him (McCloskey & Hick, 332 &347).…
In order to express my own theodicy, I will discuss the forms of evil in the world and their various manifestations as well as whether or not creation as a whole is a “good” expression of the creator God. I will also discuss how eschatology affects our view of evil and God’s part in allowing or interfering with evil. Finally, I will discuss which theodicy I find most complete and why, as well as some of the strengths and weaknesses of my own theodicy.…
Here John Wick confronts the classic Christian teaching rejection of evil by introducing Augustine’s theory. Augustine holds the conviction that the universe is inherently good, but if so, where does evil originate? In Augustine’s theory, he suggests that every matter that God creates is in some form of good, however God did not place disorder or distortion of good in the universe. This is what he means that “evil represents the going wrong of something which in itself is good”: while matter is born good, the perception of good varies resulting the outcome of perceived evil. In a social situation, what I perceive as good, others may perceive as off. Every matter is good, until I distort the value of…
________. The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity. London: Cornell University Press, 1977.…
The age-old problem of the existence of evil and the question of free will is not just a modern-day exercise for theologians. Aquinas addressed these issues in his day and age and author Timothy Renick, in Aquinas for Armchair Theologians, provides a quite excellent explanation of how Aquinas attempted to answer the fore-mentioned issues. This paper will review Renick’s endeavor to enlighten us on how Thomas Aquinas’ answers to evil and free will are foundational to theology. The first question Renick addresses is the one of evil’s existence. To understand Aquinas, one must hold the Biblical account of Genesis as true.…
The theory itself fundamentally states that “one can come to see God’s goodness through experiencing evil” (Kellenberger, 338), not simply believing that the good is always there, but believing that evil is required to fully experience the goodness. This theory, to me, makes the most sense as a response to evil – at least in terms of a pious individual looking to remain comforted by God’s will. The question posed at the outset of this paper, “Does such belief make sense as a response to the problem of evil?” is completely subjective depending on what one is looking to achieve through responding to it at all. For example, an individual whose goal through their spirituality is to please God and remain in his good graces would find solace in the mirror of evil theory, as it provides an out for anyone suffering from God’s apparent evil – because in the end, that evil is required to see the good. The original idea that one simply accepts evil would not work in the favour of this individual, as it would leave them guessing and without any understanding as to why they are suffering in the first…