Augustine's theodicy

Intro

The problem of evil is traditionally defined as an inconsistent triad which is expressed: that if God were omnibenevolent and omnipotent, he would want to and be able to abolish evil, yet evil still exists: therefore, how is it possible that these three claims could all be true?
St Augustine of Hippo was a Christian bishop who lived in the 4^th century. His theodicy is a very traditional theodicy and is known as a soul deciding theodicy because he believed in a final judgement before God and the existence of Heaven and Hell.
A theodicy is a technical term given to an attempt to justify the existence of a benevolent and omnipotent God in the face of evil.

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Augustine claimed that evil was resultant from the fall of mankind; their disobedience leads to a shift in the natural world, and it fell from it’s original state of perfection because of their disobedience. Their sin was so catastrophic that it corrupted the natural world. So both moral and natural evil can be traced back to the fall and the concept of original sin.
It is unjust that we should bear the blame for the actions of someone else. For example, we don’t punish an entire family for a crime of one of their members. It seems inconvincible that a just and loving God should punish us for a sin that we had no say over. It seems deeply unfair.
Augustine believed that we inherited the original sin, however modern biology tells us that sin and guilt cannot be genetically inherited. So, the whole concept of the original sin is incoherent and disputed by biology and genetics.

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. Evolution tells us that the world was not created perfectly in the beginning how genesis stated. The scientific theory of evolution questions the genesis accounts of the beginning of the world. How can we believe Augustine’s claim that God’s original creation was completely perfect, when modern theory iof evolution suggests this is not true?
Under Darwin’s theory of evolution things are actually becoming more and more perfect over time. Evolutionary theory contradicts Augustine’s theodicy because Darwinism asserts that life on earth has continually been developing from an earlier state of chaos and becoming more perfect over time.
Atheists, like Dawkins would say that the theory of evolution disproves the genesis creation story and is wrong to read them literally like Augustine does.
It could also be argued that Evolution has empirical evidence therefore should be taken more seriously than Genesis which does not.

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Augustine’s theodicy uses a form of the free will defence and absolves God from Blame. God is not the creator of evil and disobedient angels and humans are.
He sees evil as a privatio boni, an absence of Good, evil is actually a privation or lack of something which ought to be there
without free will our existence would become meaningless, mechanical and robotic. It would not be a genuine existence at all if God simple pre-programmed us to do good on every occasion. We would be slaves or puppets and there would be no such thing as genuine goodness.
Modwen Christian thinkers like john hick and Richard Swinburne have both argued that free will is a valuable gift and that God was justified in giving us this gift.

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if an omniscient God had prior knowledge of The Fall, isn’t God partially responsible for it? why create humans and angels that would rebel so easily and so badly? In a perfect world men and angels would have no reason to sin. if creation was made perfect it could not go wrong, the notion of perfect entails the inability to go wrong.
Augustine argued some angels fell because they were given less grace than others, why would God give some angels more grace then others? If God gave us the gift of free will in the first place, the he is partly responsible for how we use it. when humans abuse their free will. Innocent people suffer. Some have suggested that the cost of free will is simply too high and it wasn’t worth it.
If, as Augustine thinks God had made hell as a place to send the wicked, then he had built into the universe not only imperfection but a place of suffering and torment, a place of eternal suffering that is neither good or make the inhabitants good.

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Augustine’s free will defence is inconsistent as in Book I he supports freedom of the will, arguing that the responsibility for an action lies with the person not God.
But then, in Book III, Augustine writes about the ignorance of humans, saying we cannot overcome our wretched conditions.
This implies that the free-will defence is not justifiable. If we are ignorant then it is impossible to say that we make genuine informed choices. Is it right to punish people for ignorance they could do nothing about?
Aristotle argued that to be truly responsible for an action, we need full knowledge and full consent. We must act with awareness by our own choice. Without these we cannot be justly punished.

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Augustine’s theodicy is soul deciding makes it successful, as in the presence of suffering people show their true colours. In a world without trials and tribulations we wouldn’t test and prove the strength of our souls.
This can be supported by biblical texts such as the book of Job, where God allows Satan to cause Job suffering, to prove he has full faith in God.
Suffering allows God to differentiate Christians, so he can see those with true strong faith, allowing the good to be sorted from the bad.
Some may suggest without evil in the world we cannot not show our positive qualities such as courage, generosity and kindness, suffering and difficulty forged out these qualities.

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