SAINT AUGUSTINE: EVIL AND ETHICS

1. Saint Augustine was particularly interested in the “problem of evil.” Epicurus had already stated: “If God can, knows and wants to put an end to evil, why does evil exist?” This fundamental fact becomes an argument against the existence of God, still used today by atheists, agnostics and critics of religions.
2. The philosophical responses to this argument that attempt to rationally demonstrate the coherence of the existence of evil in the world and God are called Theodicy.
3. Augustine gave various answers to this question based on free will and the essence of God:
   Saint Augustine believes that God created everything good. Evil is not a positive entity, therefore it cannot “be,” as the Manicheans claimed, because according to Augustine, evil is the absence or deficiency of good and not a reality in itself. St. Augustine takes this idea from Plato and his followers, where evil is not an entity, but rather ignorance.
4. For St. Augustine the word “evil” is the absence of something. It has no intrinsic properties. Evil is a restriction of the ‘system’ itself. It is an internal dynamic restriction of the world. Augustine’s argument tells us that when we feel that there is no meaning in our life there is a void, and that evil is caused by our own decisions.
5. The only way to get away from evil is to fill ourselves with plenitude. If God is this substance or source of primordial reality, then evil is the deprivation of the substance by our own decisions. Which means that evil does not exist substantially but exists through the deprivation of good or of God.
6. Augustine argues that human beings are rational entities. Rationality consists of the ability to evaluate options through reasoning, and therefore, God had to respect their freedom by nature, which includes being able to choose between good and evil. God had to leave Adam and Eve free to disobey him, which is exactly what happened according to the Bible. This is precisely what is known as the defense of “free will.”
7. For Augustine, God allowed natural evils because they are just punishment for sin, and although animals and babies do not sin, they deserve divine punishment, children being “heirs” of original sin.
8. Augustine suggests that we look at the world as something beautiful. Although evil exists, it contributes to a “general good” greater than the absence of it, just as musical dissonances can make a melody more beautiful.
9. This is the foundation of Augustinian ethics. The concept of love is central to Christian theological doctrine that alludes to the thematic core related to the figure of Christ. The concept of Love in Saint Augustine is so preponderant that it has been the subject of study by notable figures who have dealt with human thought.
10. For St. Augustine, love is a precious pearl, and if you do not possess it, all other things are useless, and if you possess it, everything else is superfluous. “Love and do what you want: if you are silent, be silent out of love; if you shout, shout out of love; if you correct, correct out of love; if you forgive, forgive out of love. Let there be within you the root of charity; from this root nothing but good can spring forth.”
11. Augustine also formulated his own version of the biblical quote “love your neighbor as yourself” in the following way: “Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum.” Which translated means “with love for humanity and hatred of sins,” often quoted as “love the sinner but not the sin.” Augustine directed many clerics under his authority in Hippo to free slaves “as an act of piety.”
12. St. Augustine also said: “You made us for Yourself, Lord, and our hearts will be restless until they rest in You.” For him, God created human beings for Him, and for this reason human beings will not be fulfilled until they rest in God.
13. As for other Fathers of the Church, for Augustine of Hippo social ethics implies the condemnation of the injustice of wealth and the imperative of solidarity with the disadvantaged. Riches are unjust either because “you acquired them unjustly or because they themselves are injustice, for you have and another does not, you live in abundance and another in misery.”

Jaume González-Agàpito