The Philosophy Book

72

GOD IS NOT

THE PARENT

OF EVILS

ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO (354–430 CE)

IN CONTEXT

BRANCH

Ethics

APPROACH

Christian Platonism

BEFORE

c.400 BCE In Gorgias, Plato

argues that evil is not a thing,

but an absence of something.

3rd century CE Plotinus

revives Plato’s view of

good and evil.

AFTER

c.520 Boethius uses an

Augustinian theory of evil in

The Consolation of Philosophy.

c.1130 Pierre Abelard rejects

the idea that there are not

evil things.

1525 Martin Luther, the

German priest who inspired

the Protestant reformation,

publishes On the Bondage

of the Will, arguing that the

human will is not free.

A

ugustine was especially

interested in the problem

of evil. If God is entirely

good and all-powerful, why is there

evil in the world? For Christians

such as Augustine, as well as for

adherents of Judaism and Islam, this

was, and remains, a central question.

This is because it makes an obvious

fact about the world—that it

contains evil—into an argument

against the existence of God.

Augustine is able to answer

one aspect of the problem quite

easily. He believes that although

God created everything that exists,

he did not create evil, because evil is

not a thing, but a lack or deficiency

of something. For example, the evil

suffered by a blind man is that he is

without sight; the evil in a thief is

that he lacks honesty. Augustine

borrowed this way of thinking from

Plato and his followers.

An essential freedom

But Augustine still needs to explain

why God should have created the

world in such a way as to allow

there to be these natural and moral

evils, or deficiencies. His answer

revolves around the idea that

humans are rational beings. He

argues that in order for God to

Humans are

rational beings.

This means they must

be able to choose

between good or evil.

Humans can therefore

act badly or well.

In order to be

rational, humans must

havefree will.

God is not the

parent of evils.