If you want to read 3528 words be my guest. This is the essay I spoke about before where I got 88%, at a uni where rarely anyone gets over 85. My lecturer, who disagreed with alot of what I said, told me it is the fourth highest mark he has ever given in his career, so I was pretty surprised, I actually swore out loud when I realised what the mark was.
Note: I've actually recently developed a skeptical argument (it's probably been thought of before) which isn't in this essay (I developed it after I wrote it), so if you want to hear it let me know.
Are the Philosophical Concepts of God and Evil, According to St. Augustine, Compatible? Andre Iannucci
The problem of evil has long been debated amongst various philosophical, theological and social circles. Simply put, the problem of evil suggests that the reality of evil and an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God are incompatible. One of the most prominent objectors to this problem is St. Augustine. This paper will analyse Augustine’s three main defences of the reality of evil, whilst entertaining the thoughts of other thinkers, medieval and modern, in an attempt to establish whether in fact Augustine’s philosophical concepts of God and evil are compatible.
Although minor details may differ between individual arguments, the general skeptical argument appears to be the same. The problem of evil challenges the compatibility of God and evil; many thinkers find it difficult to accept the existence of a good god, considering the ever-present evil in the world. This argument is displayed in its simplest form by Donald A. Crosby, who concludes that the existence of a god who will resolve things in the end is a myth. A God that resolves is a good god, yet Crosby claims that the concept is false; if he did exist, he would be held accountable for evils, which are not in small measure, and being responsible for evil, when possessing the capacity to reason is not good . In a perhaps more comical context, Martin Cohen, in his 101 Philosophy Problems, delivers a very parallel argument; posing the complication of why the world is so corrupted when we are supposedly in the company of a good God . J. L. Mackie states-
In its simplest form the problem is this: God is omnipotent, God is wholly good, yet evils exists. There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions: the theologian, it seems, at once must adhere and cannot consistently adhere to all three .
Mackie argues that good is opposed to evil. He professes that a good thing will always eliminate evil as far as it can, and that an omnipotent being is restricted by no limits in what it can do. It follows then, that a good omnipotent being would eliminate evil completely, though this is not the case in theism. Again, on a similar note, William Rowe provides a brief series of predicates attempting to argue against the existence of a personal God -
1. There exists instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally as bad or worse.
2. An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally as bad or worse.
3. There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being .
Rowe argues that the second premise aligns with our basic moral principles, therefore is not debatable. The controversial premise for Rowe is the first one. He concedes that it is possible that all suffering that is ‘permitted’ could be permitted for the preservation of some greater good, although feels that one has reason to assert that there are in fact instances of pointless suffering . To extend to other thinkers would serve no further purpose, for their arguments would be relatively parallel, but one can certainly acknowledge the plausibility of the claim.
Before we entertain the scholarship of Augustine, we must first briefly establish a definition of evil. It appears that perhaps the most prominent depiction of evil is that it is an absence of being, a corruption of one’s nature. This is alluded to by Augustine, amongst other places, in his The Catholic and Manichean Ways of Life, where he states “you will see that evil is that which falls away from essence and tend to non-being” . Aquinas also comments on moral evil, claiming that God causes only the being of all that can be properly considered to be existing. On this ground, Aquinas concludes that evil is not created, for evil is not an existence, but the absence of such, but is a reality nonetheless . This is similar to the definition of evil that Augustine provides, that it is wrong to think of evil as an active principle, and that evil should be understood as ‘non-being’ .
The skeptic may object to this definition of evil, on the grounds that it has no sufficient base and that it conveniently favours a defence of the theistic God. These objections are not warranted, for the notion of evil as an absence of being is easily defendable. Naturally, anything that is an outright necessity for not only being itself, but for the flourishing of that being, is certainly a good. Not only that, but the manifestation of an evil would prove to be of great detriment to humanity, threatening its existence in its entirety. Had it been an opposite of good, evil would serve some necessary purpose, similar to how north and south magnetic forces compliment each other. Instead, evil only serves as an unnecessary corruption, a potential to undo the flourishing that God constructed. It is on these grounds that Augustine and Aquinas are justified in asserting that evil is in fact an absence of the good.
Gareth Matthews is considered to be one of the leading authorities on Augustine. In addressing Augustine’s defence of the reality of evil, Matthews concludes the following nine premises-
1. God is omnipotent
2. God is omnibenevolent
3. There is evil.
4. If there were a being that is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent, there would be no evil.
5. Conceivably, it is not the case that 4.
6. It is conceivable that there would be evil even if there existed an omnibenevolent and omnipotent being.
7. Even an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being might have a sufficient reason to allow evil to exist.
8. Any possible world in which there are human beings with free will is better than any possible world in which human beings lack free will.
9. It is conceivable that there is no possible world in which there are human beings with free will and no evil .
The first three premises constitute the Consistency Problem of Evil itself, and the fourth premise is the conclusion drawn by the skeptic. Matthews argues that this immediate conclusion is not warranted, for 4 is not an empirical truth, but rather an assumption, however probable. Subsequently, he argues 5 and 6; that is conceivable that evil and an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being are compatible, for such a being may have a sufficient reason to allow evil to exist .
In the Republic, Socrates argues 7 on the grounds that God is not responsible for evil. He proposes that since God is good, He is not as most people claim, the cause of everything that happens to human beings but of only a few things, for good things are fewer than bad ones in our lives. He alone is responsible for the good things, but we must find some other cause for the bad ones, not a God. Augustine cannot accept this is as justification for 7, for he believes that God created all matter from nothing; therefore must have arisen from that very matter willed into existence by God .
Similarly, Socrates’ position conflicts with Herbet McCabe’s portrayal of the theistic God. According to McCabe, God cannot interfere with the universe, not because He has not the power, but because He has too much; to interfere you have to be an alternative to, or alongside, what you are interfering with. If God is the cause of everything, there is nothing He is alongside. The notion that God is not responsible for all existences (in this case evil) is to put God alongside the universe, compromising His nature as being itself. McCabe believes that the notion of personal God has arisen in two different ways. The first is that people consider God to be a designer, in that they have an image of God as an artist or technician. McCabe feels this idea could be useful but ultimately misleading. The second way is that people find it absurd to label God impersonal. McCabe finds it improbable that God is impersonal because what is impersonal and non-intelligible in principle will always obey us if only we know the trick. He also dislikes the idea of God as a great impersonal life force, stating that these forces achieve nothing in their activities unless wielded in a context. Subsequently, he feels that because we refer to God as our creator, there has been a goal achieved, therefore it seems we cannot think of Him as impersonal. Despite this, McCabe is quick to subdue ideas of God forming intentions or making up His mind. To do this would be to confuse being personal with personality, which would be an error, for functions of personality are associated only with physical beings .
To support 7, Augustine instead employs what is now known as the Free Will Defence. The Free Will Defence posits that moral evil is a result of God bestowing free will on humanity. He considers a stray horse to be better than a stone, for the stone cannot be astray, just as he considers that which sins better than that which cannot sin. Whilst the nature of free will results in the potential to evil, it also intensifies the goodness of virtuous acts, and on these grounds Augustine concludes 8 and 9 . In favour of Augustine’s Free Will Defence is C. S. Lewis. Lewis similarly argues that not even omnipotence could create a society of free souls without creating the possibility, not necessity, of evil. He states that if God were to intervene with the practices of man and prevent such evil from occurring, the universe would eventually become meaningless, for nothing important would depend on man’s choices .
However, the free will explanation cannot be so simple. Peter Abelard considers sinning to be an educated consent to the bad will- “And so vice is that by which we are made prone to sin, that is, are inclined to consent to what is not fitting so that either we do it or forsake it” . This raises an interesting question, for there are a number of variables in free will. The frequency of the bad wills, and the intensity of temptations and vice are all variables which are not set ‘by default’, they are ordered by God in a particular way for a particular purpose. In fact, the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that humans are in fact “inclined to sin” . Moral evil may be a result of free will, but the intensity of that evil is a result of the architecture of that free will, an architecture which God is responsible for. Even if the skeptic concedes that free will is an adequate reason for evil, they may still pose the question of why the variables are set to such degrees, or more specifically, why they were not to lesser degrees.
The Free Will Defence also begs the question of whether God is good in creating beings of free-will, at the expense of peace (absence of suffering). One must also question God’s motives in creating free-will. Because God is the one and only self-necessary existence, the creation of other beings was never a necessity. At the point before creation, the only being God could relate to was Himself, therefore creation was a means to His end. According to Christian theology, God gave humans free-will so that they could chose to love Him. If suffering is a result of free-will, and free-will was bestowed upon us so we could choose to love God, one then wonders how good an action it was to allow suffering, in order to gratify His desire for love.
Augustine provides a second defence of evil, labeled the ‘Imperfection Solution’ by Matthews. Augustine argues that because God is the supreme good, He cannot create an entity distinct from Himself. As a result, any being that He creates will be imperfect, resulting in evil . I am inclined to believe that subscription to the Imperfection Solution is not immediately warranted, for several questions arise. The term ‘imperfection’ is slightly vague; it can refer to either limitation or corruption, which have different meanings. To elaborate, there is a distinction between the ‘perfecting’ of being, and the ‘perfection’ of being. The distinction assumes that there are various levels of perfection within the universe, and that they are measured by an objective standard (how similar those beings are to God).
Before we continue, this assumption must be briefly defended. The existence of levels of perfections is evidenced by the existence of various levels of superiority. These various levels of superiority are evidenced by the fact that there three are general types of beings: those which are purely means to an end, those which are created as means to an end, but flourish as ends in themselves, and that which is purely an end in itself. Beings which lack the capacity to commit moral goods and evils are purely means to ends; their goal is to contribute to an ecosystem or a natural cycle, and their individual goals or purposes cannot be altered by them themselves, only those who govern them. Humans, like all other beings, were created for a specific purpose, so they are a means to an end, but flourish as ends in themselves, for their moral capacities allow them to alter their desires and what they contribute towards - a capacity they would not posses if they were not intended to flourish as ends in themselves. Despite this capacity, humans cannot alter what true human flourishing is, only their ideal of it, so in a second way they are also means to an end. Finally, God, being self-necessary in nature, is purely an end in Himself. What is evidenced here is that certain beings relate to other beings in varying manners, suggesting there are degrees of superiority and perfection; for if all beings were equal all beings would be ends in themselves, requiring them all to have the same fundamental nature, which is not the case.
Now that the premise of varying degrees of perfection has been defended, we shall return to the distinction between the ‘perfecting’ and the ‘perfection’ of being. The ‘perfecting’ of being refers to the goal of a being to avoid a corruption of its nature. Failure to do so results in imperfection through corruption, which is how evil occurs. However, if a being perfects its nature, then it commits no evil. We see that the Imperfection solution may be potentially flawed because if all beings were created with perfect natures, there would be no evil, for the imperfection of beings only necessitates levels of perfection, not imperfection as a corruption of their natures.
Augustine’s third defence is referred to by Matthews as the “Necessary Contrast Solution”. The argument is that evils arise from incompatibilities of sorts, in that what is good for one being is of detriment to another. Augustine is not arguing that there could be no good without evil. Perhaps this point is supposed to compliment the Imperfection Solution. Since any creature will be less than perfect, the only way for creation to be beautiful will be for its privations to be ordered in a certain way. Thus an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being could not create a perfect creation. The most such a being could do is to create a world in which imperfections are ordered in such a way as to highlight the good. . McCabe offers a similar argument. McCabe does not defend God on the grounds that He is not omnipotent, that there is no evidence of evil, or that humans are solely responsible for it. He accepts that God is wholly omnipotent and that He made a world full of evil which were not put there by humans independently of God . He doesn’t attribute evil to free will, for he defines freedom not as independence from God, for we are always dependant on Him, but by means of “independence from other creatures” . However, he is similar to Augustine in that he employs an example of a lion and lamb, arguing that what is good for the lion results in what is destructive for the lamb .
St. Thomas Aquinas also provides a defence compatible with the Necessary Contrast Solution. Aquinas, in response to the question of whether evil is found in things, answers that the perfection of the universe requires that there should be inequality in things, so that every grade of goodness can be acknowledged. He continues to state that one grade of goodness is that of the good which cannot fail. Another grade of goodness is that of the good which can fail in goodness, and that this ground is found in existence itself. Subsequently there are those things which will permanently remain incorruptible, amongst those which are subject to corruption. As a result, the perfection of the universe requires there be some that are subject to corruption, and that at times they do fail to avoid this corruption .
However, Augustine’s position is complicated (and perhaps compromised) by his commentary on Heaven. He argues that those of us who make it to Heaven will be unable to delight in sin. He considers this not a suppression of the free will, but a freedom from sin. According to this claim, it is in fact possible to have free will whilst being unable to sin. Matthews himself concedes that this is perhaps a contradiction, for assuming that humans can have free will without evil defeats 9 and subsequently 8 .
This final claim potentially jeopardises the pillars of all three defences. The Free Will Defence is compromised in the sense that evil can be avoided whilst retaining free will, the Imperfection Solution is compromised in that imperfection is a reality whilst evil is avoided, and finally, the Necessary Contrast Solution is compromised in that if imperfection do not result in evils, there are no contrasts that need result in evil as well. Augustine defends this position by arguing that the physical world allows for humans to achieve merit, and that once the transition to Heaven or Hell is complete, one’s being remains permanently perfected or corrupted .
Augustine’s rebuttal is sound but for one possible hole. In ascending to Heaven and retaining a permanent state of perfection, it can perhaps be argued that the human essence is being compromised. In terms of the objective levels of perfection, what distinguished humans from other beings was that they could corrupt their natures on their own accord. This is what in fact made humans flourish as ends in themselves- they could alter what they desired and what it was they would contribute to. It can be argued then, that Augustine’s depiction of Heaven relegates humans to means to ends, for they can no longer alter what they contribute to. Similarly, earlier on in the paper C. S. Lewis argued that if man could not commit evil, his actions would be of little significance, and it appears this to be the case in Augustine’s Heaven as well.
As we dawn on the conclusion of this paper, there are various reflections that Augustine entices the reader into partaking. As a sweeping generalisation, Augustine’s defences are relatively sound, including his counter to his alleged Heaven contradiction, but for a few flaws. However, what stands out the most, is the apparent lack of certainty of the answer, not just of Augustine, but of all theistic scholars in general. The fact that several theistic scholars such as Augustine commit themselves to multiple answers suggests that their conclusions are not self-evident. In truth, it appears that the theist is seeking premises for a conclusion, rather than the other way around. Despite this, the apparent abundance of logic and merit in Augustine’s arguments leaves me to believe that his concepts of God and evil are in fact compatible.
Bibliography
Bacz, J. “C.S Lewis: The Problem of Pain.” The Newman Rambler (Spring 1999)
Cohen, M. 101Philosophy Problems
Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2005
Crosby, D. A. Living with Ambiguity: Religious Naturalism and the Menace of Evil (Suny Press, 2008) (Google Books)
Davies, B. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. Great Clarendon Street: Oxford University Press. 2004
Luscombe, D. E. Peter Abelard’s Ethics. Oxford, Clarendon Press. 1971.
Matthews, G. Augustine. 350 Main Street, Malden: Blackwell Publishing. 2005.
McCabe, H. God Matters. 11 Work Road, NY: Continuum, 2005.
Saint Augustine The Catholic and Manichean Ways of Life. Washington, The Catholic University of America Press. 1966.
Saint Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, book XI, ch. 22, Cambridge: CUP.
St Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica, 1a. Q. 48, Articles 1 & 2
