Augustine raises the following questions in his Confessions (pp. 113--114): How can an all-good God create and sustain a world in which there's so much evil? What's the cause of evil? He describes himself as having once accepted the position of the Manicheans, according to whom there's an all-evil anti-God responsible for evil in addition to an all-good God responsible for good. By the time of the Confessions, however, Augustine disagrees with this view.
Please answer the following two questions: (i) What led Augustine to change his mind on this issue? (ii) What position does he eventually adopt regarding the nature of evil?
(Please remember to keep your response brief so others can easily engage with it)
https://ryanfb.github.io/loebolus-data/L026.pdf
pdf to the text above.
also here are 2 examples of the response that i want. the numbers are just to number the examples. not the answer to (i) and then (ii)
- The catalyst that led Augustine to change his mind on the issue was consideration of the questions that Plato raised in his texts. These readings forced Augustine to consider the actual source of evil and the nature of God. With regards to God, Augustine came to the conclusion thanks to Platonic books that the beings capable of good are by nature corruptible, since the potential exists for good to wither away and turn into evil. Furthermore, Augustine adopts the position that if God is all incorruptible, then he must be the ultimate source of good, or the form of the good as Plato would follow. Since this form of the good is divine, Augustine eventually comes to believe that evil or corruption of the good that occurs in bodies and souls occurs due to an absence of acknowledgement or privation of the form of good that exists in God; therefore belief in the all good God and striving to abide by what is meant by the form of the good is an attempt to escape evil.
- Augustine's exposure to the Platonist books is what allowed him to convert to Christianity and therefore change his mind regarding the issue of how an all-good God could create and sustain a world in which there is so much evil.Augustine is able to refute the position of the Manicheans by taking up the view that the reason why we have so much trouble with this concept is because the Creator is incorruptible, thus we cannot understand because we, as humans, are corruptible. God, he says, is a perfect immaterial being. He is not only the greatest substance, He is the most real substance. Conversely, evil is not a substance nor is it real, rather evil is a turning away from God and a turning to lower things. Evil is a privation, a lack of a reality, a lack of goodness, therefore a lack of God.