Saint Augustine's Doctrine of Evil

1963 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-276
Author(s):  
Robert M. Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Metaphysical Question ◽  
The Will ◽  
Dynamic Link ◽  
Will Of God

This essay will attempt to make some systematic clarity out of the thought of St. Augustine in reference to his conception of evil. The problem of evil is one which confronted St. Augustine at every point of his intellectual development; it is everywhere either to be openly seen or to be perceived lurking just beneath the surface of the question at issue. This assertion, however, needs some qualification as will become evident as the essay develops. The essay will attempt to show that the problem of evil for St. Augustine resolves itself into the problem of the will. This problem is, for Augustine, clearly at the base of man's moral dilemmas. The question of the will of God is at the root of the theological-philosophical doctrines of creation and natural order. The problem of the will comes to the fore as the metaphysical question par excellence; bound up with the question of the motivation of the will (or more particularly here, the question of the ‘cause’ of the defection of the human will) is the arch-problem of the introduction of a dynamic link into the movement from an unmoved Creator to a changing creation. An attempt will be made to point out the bearing of the more overtly theological questions of grace and predestination upon the questions of the will, evil and creation. Of a piece with these concepts is that of the Augustinian epistemology.

Tindal, Matthew (1657–1733)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Loup Seban
Keyword(s):  
Natural Order ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Universal Law ◽  
Will Of God

Matthew Tindal was one of the last and most learned exponents of English deism. His most famous work is Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730), a comprehensive apology for natural religion. In it, he argued that God’s law is imprinted on the nature of all things, including the human soul, and is accessible to reason. Revealed religion merely restates this universal law – the will of God – in a different form. Religion enables us to act in accordance with this natural order, and its end is happiness. However, Tindal was scathingly critical of the clergy, and cast doubt on the reliability of the Bible. Although Tindal’s work was severely criticized by William Law, it exerted a considerable influence on the English and Continental Enlightenment.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Han-luen Kantzer Komline
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
Hybrid Methodology ◽  
The Way

This chapter introduces the most significant debates surrounding Augustine’s understanding of the will (uoluntas), the hybrid methodology employed in this work, and the thesis that Augustine articulates a theologically differentiated notion of will. Is Augustine’s notion of will original in the history of Western philosophy? Can his affirmation of free will be sustained given his approach to the problem of evil, foreknowledge, predestination, and grace? How does the concept of free will fit, or fail to fit, within the larger scope of Augustine’s thought? Traditional questions in the literature are adumbrated along the way to show the fruitfulness of a theological account.

Why is there so much evil?

2014 ◽  
Vol 111 (3) ◽  
pp. 238-243
Author(s):  
William Hasker
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Good And Evil

The problem of evil is one that perplexes both believers and non-believers. The best approach to the problem is to see evil and suffering as the outcome of general policies God has adopted in creating and governing the world—policies which on the whole are good and beneficial, but which in specific cases lead to suffering for humans and other sentient creatures. Chief among these policies are the policy of allowing human beings to exercise free will in choosing between good and evil, and the policy of creating and sustaining a world of nature that operates according to its inherent laws, with divine interventions into the natural order comparatively infrequent. This approach benefits persons suffering from various evils by releasing them from an often fruitless search for “God’s reasons” for the evil in question, and enabling them to focus on the grace and strength given by Christ to live courageously in spite of their suffering.

Free will and the problem of evil

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES CAIN
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Will

According to the free-will defence, the exercise of free will by creatures is of such value that God is willing to allow the existence of evil which comes from the misuse of free will. A well-known objection holds that the exercise of free will is compatible with determinism and thus, if God exists, God could have predetermined exactly how the will would be exercised; God could even have predetermined that free will would be exercised sinlessly. Thus, it is held, the free-will defence cannot be used as a partial account of why God should have allowed evil to exist. I investigate this objection using Kripke's apparatus for treating modalities and natural kinds to explore the nature of the incompatibilism required by the free-will defence. I show why the objection fails even if the standard arguments for compatibilism are acceptable. This is because the modality involved in the incompatibilism needed by the free-will defence differs from the modality involved in the compatibilism that is supported by standard compatibilist arguments. Finally, an argument is sketched for a variety of incompatibilism of the kind needed by the free-will defence.

Schopenhauer on Law and Justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 310-327
Author(s):  
Raymond B. Marcin
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Common ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
Theory Of Law

This chapter explores Schopenhauer’s jurisprudence in the context of his writings on law and justice. Consistent with the will-and-representation dualism in the grounding of his overall approach to philosophy, Schopenhauer’s analyses of law and justice are quite separate from each other and decidedly dualist. Schopenhauer sees law as operating at the level of the world as representation; it simply regulates behavior for the common good. Consequently, his theory of law fits nicely within the philosophy of pragmatism that has lately become influential in some contemporary schools of jurisprudence. Schopenhauer sees justice as operating at the level of the world as will, the deep-down level of true reality that is all but foreclosed to our perceptions. In exploring the concept of justice, Schopenhauer sees what he refers to as “eternal justice” as being at the heart of the Problem of Evil that has beset philosophers and theologians for centuries. But he sees the virtue of justice, built on understandings of human solidarity that flow from the deep-down level of true reality, as the cure. His theory of justice thereby fits nicely within the idealist and communitarian philosophies that have lately become influential in some contemporary schools of jurisprudence.

Psychology and the problem of evil

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashok Nagpal ◽  
Ankur Prahlad Betageri
Keyword(s):  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Problem Of Evil

The Problem of Evil and Replies to Some Important Responses

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-131
Author(s):  
Bruce Russell
Keyword(s):  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Strong Argument ◽  
Parallel Argument ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Argument From Evil

I begin by distinguishing four different versions of the argument from evil that start from four different moral premises that in various ways link the existence of God to the absence of suffering. The version of the argument from evil that I defend starts from the premise that if God exists, he would not allow excessive, unnecessary suffering. The argument continues by denying the consequent of this conditional to conclude that God does not exist. I defend the argument against Skeptical Theists who say we are in no position to judge that there is excessive, unnecessary suffering by arguing that this defense has absurd consequences. It allows Young Earthers to construct a parallel argument that concludes that we are in no position to judge that God did not create the earth recently. In the last section I consider whether theists can turn the argument from evil on its head by arguing that God exists. I first criticize Alvin Plantinga’s theory of warrant that one might try to use to argue for God’s existence. I then criticize Richard Swinburne’s Bayesian argument to the same conclusion. I conclude that my version of the argument from evil is a strong argument against the existence of God and that several important responses to it do not defeat it.

The Argument from Evil and God’s Contingent Ethics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark C. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Argument From Evil

This Introduction raises the problem of divine ethics and how it bears on the problem of evil (or ‘argument from evil’). It notes the importance of distinguishing among three conceptions of God: God as maximally great being (as ‘an Anselmian being’), God as that being who is supremely worthy of worship, and God as that being who is fully worthy of allegiance. This book treats the first conception to be the most explanatorily basic, and thus it is the sole focus of inquiry for most of the book (Chapters 1 through 6); the second and third conceptions are considered in the second part of the book (Chapters 7 through 9).

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