Augustine's Free Will As the Cause of Evil Term Paper

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philosophy of St. Augustine on "Free will as the cause of all evil." The paper will analyze this philosophy as compared to the thinking of other philosophers.

Augustine's "Free Will as the Cause of Evil"

Augustine believed that evil is not something positive and God is not the cause of evil, because evil is not a thing. His whole answer on the problem of evil is related to God. He believed that God did not will moral evil in any sense but only permitted it for the greater good that could not be obtained by preventing it. That is why he made man free. He also believes God did not will physical evil for its own sake.

Free Will the Cause of Evil"

The problem of evil can be phrased in several ways. One approach addresses the origin of evil, prompting the syllogism i.e. A series of statements that form a reasoned argument: 1) God created all things; 2) evil is a thing; 3) therefore, God created evil. If the first two premises are true, the conclusion is inescapable. This formulation, if sustained, is devastating. God would not be good if He knowingly created evil.

Augustine realized that the solution was tied to the question: What is evil? The argument above depends on the idea that evil is a thing. But what if evil is not a thing in that sense? Then evil did not need creating. If so, our search for the source of evil will take us in another direction

Augustine approached the problem from a different angle.

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He asked: Do we have any convincing evidence that a good God exists? If independent evidence leads us to conclude that God exists and is good, then He would be incapable of creating evil. Something else, then, must be its source. This left Augustine to speculate about the cause of evil in the universe. The cause can certainly not be God, who is supremely good and has created only good things. He then comes to the conclusion that the cause of evil is nothing other than the free will of human beings used for evil purposes. However, at times it seemed to Augustine that he often did evil things ostensibly against his own will. How can we account for that? The answer is that this inability to do the good he wills is nothing other than a penalty for sins that he freely committed. As he puts it:

Free will is the cause of our doing evil and [God's] just judgment the cause of our suffering it." [7.3-7.4]

If Augustine's approach is fair, it prompts a pair of syllogisms that lead to a different conclusion. First: 1) All things that God created are good; 2) evil is not good; 3) therefore, evil was not created by God. Second: 1) God created every thing; 2) God did not create evil; 3) therefore, evil is not a thing.

The key to success here is the truthfulness of two premises. If Augustine can offer evidence through natural theology….....

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