The Problem of Evil; A Criticism of the Augustinian Point of View (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III UNDE EST MALUM? We now have a right, according to Augustine's own order of procedure, to ask " Whence is evil ?" Now that we know what it is that we seek we may with reason search for its origin. REJECTS EVIL PRINCIPLE OF MANICHUS. Manicheism had taught Augustine that evil arose from a principle contrary to God. Evil as a substance, was in rebellion against God at the instigation of this evil principle. God could only resist this rebelling evil substance and conquer it by blending part of his own nature and substance with it, and thus suffer contamination in a part of his being.1 Thus Augustine brought from this experience of his youth ideas and conceptions which might readily have led him to place the origin of evil in some eternal principle, unoriginated and independent of God. But Augustine's mind could not be satisfied with this dualism. It seemed sacrilegious to him that Manichaeus should advocate that God's nature suffered contamination rather than to think that evil was committed by man.2 The thought that man sinned when the nature of evil in him prevailed over the nature of God 1 De Continentia 14. 2 Conf. VII. 4. seemed ridiculous.8 He characterizes the Manichean tenets regarding the origin of evil as impious follies and blasphemous fancies.4 Augustine was a monist. The word " unity " possessed a charm for him. Our failure to see the harmony of nature and the universe is what leads us to regard the natural phenomena which operate in utter disregard of man's welfare, as the work of some evil principle. Augustine did not minimize the evils of life. He could set them in array as forcefully as any modern pessimist but when he sought for their origin he was not willing to recognize an essential rift in the universe. God is the sole Author and ...