Augustinian Theodicy

Critically evaluate St Augustine’s attempt to resolve the logical problem of evil. (40)

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The logical problem of evil was most famously expressed by David Hume when he wrote “Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent…”  The existence of evil seems to demonstrate that Christian faith rests on what Hume called “an inconsistent triad” of beliefs, namely that God exists and is omnipotent, God exists and is omnibenevolent and that Evil exists.  While writing many centuries before Hume, St Augustine repeatedly responded to this same problem and developed a complex, multi-layered theodicy.  While St. Augustine is best remembered for his free will defence, he also proposed that evil is a lack of good (privatio boni) and so not a positive part of God’s creation and reasoned that God allowing there to be privations of good is justified with reference to the principle of plenitude, in that they facilitate diversity in nature which is awe-inspiring and beautiful, pointing to the glory of God and the need to worship Him. Nevertheless, and despite the sophistication and importance of St. Augustine’s attempt to resolve the logical problem of evil, his attempt was not successful.

Focussing first on the free-will defence argument, St Augustine argued that evil results from the human misuse of free-will and is therefore our fault, not God’s.  God, being omnibenevolent, is beholden to create the best possible world and this, St Augustine reasons, contains free beings who can choose the good, rather than achieving it by design.  However, the freedom to choose the good necessarily entails the freedom to choose to sin, causing suffering to ourselves, other people and indeed the whole of creation as God, again being omnibenevolent and so just, is beholden to ensure that evil actions have evil results in order to deter people from choosing them again.  When human beings chose to sin, first corporately at the Fall in Genesis 3 in which all humanity was “seminally present” in Adam, and then as individuals, evil and suffering entered the world not by God’s design, but as a logically necessary consequence of God creating the best possible world. This argument is fraught with difficulties however.  Firstly, as JL Mackie asked in his famous essay “Evil and Omnipotence”, why could not an omnipotent God create a world containing free beings who always chose to do what is right?  Omnipotence suggests that ability to do anything, even (as Descartes reasoned) what seems logically impossible to us, such as making 2+2=5.  Secondly, even if (as St Thomas Aquinas argued) God’s creative action is timelessly simple and cannot, therefore, contain logical contradictions, why shouldn’t an omnipotent God create free beings whose poor choices have less severe consequences than they do in our world.  Is the holocaust a logically necessary consequence of God’s creation of the best possible world?  If it is, the meaning of omnipotence – and of best in the context of possible worlds – seems to be very far indeed from any meaning we can understand. Thirdly, such omnipotence and such a “best” possible world seems incompatible with God’s omnibenevolence; wouldn’t a good God have been better not to create at all than to have created a world in which the holocaust (and perhaps even worse examples of human depravity yet to come) was a logically necessary feature. Fourthly and finally, the whole idea of human beings having free will is inconsistent with the notion of divine omnipotence.  Ass Boethius acknowledged in the Consolations of Philosophy Book V, Omnipotence is usually understood to entail omniscience and, if God knows what we will choose before we choose it, our freedom is not meaningful.  Given that God has both the power to step in to prevent the consequences of our poor choices and the goodness that demands that he should, divine omniscience negates the free-will defence and means that this aspect of St. Augustine’s attempt to resolve the logical problem of evil is unsuccessful.

Moving on to consider St. Augustine’s suggestion that evil is “privatio boni” and therefore not a part of God’s creation for Him to be responsible for.  While defining evil as a privation has been popular through the history of the Church with Philosophers – St Thomas Aquinas also defined evil in this way – as John Hick pointed out, it is deeply unconvincing in a pastoral context.  To those afflicted by suffering saying that child cancer is not a positive part of God’s creation but only results from a justified instance of a lack of good things seems deeply inappropriate as well as being unconvincing.  Medicine has moved on since the 5th Century and we now know that much sickness is not caused by a lack of health but by pathogens which have a very real existence.  Why did an all-powerful, all-good God create coronaviruses, whose only purpose seems to be to infect beings in order to multiply themselves, whatever suffering that causes?  The standard response to this, pointing out that we are criticising God’s creation on the basis of our own perspective, not God’s, falls foul of the central Christian belief that God created the natural world for human beings.  If aspects of creation make it impossible for human beings to do as God commanded, “be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it…” (Genesis 1:28) then this demands an explanation.  If God, being omnipotent and willing human beings to be good, created a world in which the conflicting purposes of organisms naturally and inevitably results in suffering then there is indeed a logical problem.  It is simply not possible to deny the existence of evil or reduce it to a lack of good when “nature is red in tooth and claw”.  In this respect as well, therefore, St. Augustine’s attempt to resolve the logical problem of evil is unsuccessful.

Moving on to St. Augustine’s claim that God allowing evil and the suffering it causes is justified with reference to the Principle of Plenitude, this aspect of his Theodicy is also unsuccessful.  St. Augustine claimed that God is justified in creating, even when creation necessarily involved privations (evil), each of which would cause intense suffering, because of the beauty of creation, which would point towards and express God’s own glory.  For St. Augustine, part of God’s goodness is the need to express his nature creatively, yet this implies a limitation on God.  If God is omnipotent, then why should God have the need to express his nature creatively… and even more so if that creative self-expression would inevitably lead to privations on the scale of the holocaust.  St Augustine also reasons that God’s creative self-expression, including its necessary privations, is justified because it points the human mind to the existence and glory of God.  Yet again, this implies that God has a need to be known, acknowledged, worshipped and glorified in a way that seems to undermine His omnipotence.  If God is omnipotent He must also be omniscient which, as St. Thomas Aquinas argues in Summa Theologica 1,14,2, includes having perfect self-knowledge such as that “God understands Himself through Himself”. If God knows himself perfectly, then why would he have any need to be known, acknowledged, worshipped and glorified by any created being?  In this respect as well, therefore, St. Augustine’s attempt to resolve the logical problem of evil is unsuccessful.

Of course, St Augustine’s theodicy has been enormously influential.  Today Alvin Plantinga’s “God, Freedom and Evil” draws heavily on all aspects of the Augustinian tradition to provide a way for believers to defend themselves against the “defeaters” levelled at faith by atheists.  Plantinga has adapted Augustine’s arguments to address common criticisms, such as by developing his argument for transworld depravity to show that suffering will result from God’s creation of free beings in any possible world without ever having to be part of God’s intention for any world. Nevertheless, despite the continued popularity of the Augustinian-type theodicy, it remains deeply problematic.  Plantinga’s argument still depends on God being both omnipotent and having to create free beings the consequences of whose actions cannot be limited.  He still reasons that God can be both omnipotent and omniscient and not be responsible for the consequences of human choices. He does not so much defeat Mackie’s criticisms of the Augustinian theodicy as deny them. 

In conclusion, St Augustine’s attempt to resolve the logical problem of evil is unsuccessful at every level.  His free will defence fails to reconcile God’s omnipotence with His omnibenevolence, his re-definition of evil as privatio boni fails to do justice to the real experience of evil and its effects in the world and his Principle of Plenitude implies that God, being omnipotent, is still limited.  Despite the fact that St. Augustine’s theodicy continues to inspire writers like Alvin Plantinga, philosophers of religion should look elsewhere if they want to make progress towards a resolution of the logical problem of evil.

Critically evaluate St Augustine’s theodicy.

/ vardycharlotte / 8 Comments

St Augustine is often blamed for bringing the problems of evil and suffering to the forefront in Christianity.  Certainly, responding to the problems was a major theme in his writings – as well they might be given his own experiences of persecution.  Yet in fact the tension between the Christian concept of God and the existence of evil and suffering in the world He created was apparent well before St Augustine was born.  The Nicene Creed (325AD) affirmed the omnipotence of “the Father Almighty” and the full divinity of Jesus Christ.  The doctrine of the Trinity, developed in response to Christological controversies such as Arianism, made the logical problems of Evil & suffering inescapable for Christians. St Augustine is best understood as the first very substantial, systematic attempt to resolve these problems on behalf of the orthodox Church.   Of course, the logical problem of evil was well-known to Greek Philosophy.  Epicurus wrote “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.  Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”  Later, David Hume claimed that Christian belief rests upon an “inconsistent triad” of beliefs and JL Mackie went further, claiming that the co-beliefs God exists and is omnipotent and omniscient, God exists and is omnibenevolent and Evil exists are “positively irrational.”  St Augustine attempted to defend God in several different ways.  In the 1990s American Philosopher Robert Adams listed four separate ways to approach theodicy and it is fair to say that Augustine tried all of them.  Given the constraints of time, this critical evaluation will focus on the three best-known of Augustine’s approaches, namely his definition of evil as “privatio boni”, his free-will defence and his doctrine of original sin.  In relation to these, it seems that St Augustine’s theodicy was rationally successful (at least when taken as a whole) it ultimately yielded a pastorally unsatisfying God.

St Augustine sought an answer to the problems of evil and suffering for a long time.  Unconvinced by the efforts of Christian leaders he engaged with Manichaeism and then the writings of the Platonists before eventually returning to Christianity.  It is fitting, therefore, that St Augustine’s most important theodicy is rooted in Greek Philosophy, which defined goodness in terms of actuality and fulfilment of purpose and evil in terms of potentiality and falling short of purpose. For St Augustine, evil is privatio boni and has no existence in itself.  Evil is parasitical and can only affect things that in themselves are good.  The extent to which something fulfils its nature and God’s purpose is good and the extent to which it falls short and retains potential it is evil.  All created things move, change and are contingent on other things therefore all are affected by evil to some extent.  God is the only wholly good being, unaffected by evil because, being outside time and space, fully actual and necessary, God cannot fall short and has no potential.  In this world-view, the problem of evil shifts from being about why God created evil things to why God created anything when its existence would necessarily entail being affected by evil to some extent.  This, Augustine answers by arguing that God cannot be held responsible for creating something which has no existence in itself and by arguing that the goodness in creation greatly outweighs the evil within it.  Of course, the first point is semantics and the second is a subjective judgement.  For Christians affected by horrendous evils – whether natural or moral – neither explanation is likely to be pastorally satisfying.  People do not pray to a wholly simple, necessary being… and it is difficult to square the Bible with such a being either.  Put bluntly, the parent of a terminally ill child is not going to be comforted by St Augustine’s “privatio boni” theodicy, however philosophically brilliant it might be.  This shows that St Augustine’s theodicy, although rationally successful, yielded a pastorally unsatisfying God.

St Augustine’s Free Will Defence is probably the best known of his theodicies.  The work of Alvin Plantinga has re-awakened scholarly interest in it in recent decades.  Free-will is intuitively appealing and fits beautifully with the Biblical narrative, which seeks to blame human beings for the horrors visited on them by the creation God supposedly controls and to use this as a reason to worship Him.  Nevertheless, this theodicy remains philosophically unconvincing. As JL Mackie pointed out in his famous essay “Evil and Omnipotence”, the God of the Free Will defence is limited and far from being the omnipotent being that the Creeds claim He must be.  It seems that God either CANNOT or WILL NOT create a world in which significantly free beings always choose to do right and is subservient to the laws of logic. St. Augustine (and later Plantinga) assumes incompatibilism without arguing for it.   If as St Luke and St Matthew affirm “anything is possible with God”, why can’t he create free beings AND determine (or at least limit) the outcomes?  Christian Philosophers of Religion have tried to extricate St Augustine from this mess.  St Thomas Aquinas and later Descartes both tried to argue that God is limited by logic only within this-world and that (for all we know) our omnipotent God could have created a different world in which free beings are compatible with determined outcomes.  We can only infer from the existence of this world that it must at least be part of what Richard Swinburne called the best-possible-world type – because an omnipotent God would only create such – and be satisfied on this basis that the best possible world must contain evil & suffering, that it must be better than it would be without it…  This line of argument is philosophically inadequate because it is circular.  This world suggests that God cannot be omnipotent but because God is omnipotent we must accept that this world is the best possible.  Not very convincing, at least when the Free-Will Defence is taken in isolation. 

In addition, St Augustine extended His free-will defence argument to a broader critique of Human Nature which sought to show that human beings deserve whatever natural – or moral – punishment they receive in this world.  For Augustine, the story of the Fall in Genesis 2-3 suggests that human beings fell from grace not individually but collectively and that we all inherit sin from Adam because we were all “seminally present” in him when He betrayed God in Eden.  St Augustine did not invent the idea of original sin, but he used it as a major part of his theodicy and as his main way of explaining apparently innocent suffering such as infant mortality.  For St Augustine there is no such thing as innocent suffering.  God is just and justly punishes the guilty – including infants who bear the stain of original sin.  Christ’s atoning sacrifice and the sacrament of baptism offers evidence that God is good and offers those who believe a chance to be redeemed and saved to eternal life.  For St. Augustine, God’s justice and God’s mercy is amply defended through his Doctrine of Original Sin.  Nevertheless, St Augustine’s approach is pastorally unsatisfying.  Why would a good God punish an unbaptised baby with all the horrors of cancer or starvation to satisfy His vengeance for the sin of Adam… in eating an apple?  Can St Augustine – who generally approached Biblical interpretation with such humility – really have taken the ancient and troubling story of the fall so very literally?  It is not surprising that atheists find this argument distasteful and even ridiculous.  Muslims and Jews reject Augustine’s approach and uphold the innocence of infants, despite Augustine’s claims to have seen evidence of their corruption in twins fighting over their mother’s milk.  Again St Augustine’s theodicy, although arguably rationally successful as a whole, yields a pastorally unsatisfying God.

Clearly, St Augustine’s theodicies are more convincing when taken together than when examined in isolation.  The philosophical strength of seeing evil as privatio boni does something to offset the shortcomings of the free-will defence and the pastoral strength of free-will tempers the doctrine of original sin, yet the fact that St Augustine had to have so many attempts at defending God against charges of creating or allowing evil suggests that he himself remained unconvinced.  In the Enchiridion, written towards the end of St Augustine’s life c.420AD, Augustine confronted the reality of the situation, writing “Nothing, therefore, happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen. He either allows it to happen or he actually causes it to happen.”  It seems that St Augustine was not unaware of the shortcomings of his own theodicies and he had to fall back on faith and prayer in the end.

In conclusion, although St Augustine’s theodicy was rationally successful (at least when taken as a whole) it ultimately yielded a pastorally unsatisfying God.  Christians have struggled with this ever since.  There is no way to acquit God of all charges when it comes to having created or at least allowed evil and suffering, and the only possible response is to pray for understanding and continued faith.  This is the message at the heart of the book of Job.  As Holocaust-survivor Elie Weisel remarked,

“I was there when they put God on trial… at the end they used the word “chayev” rather than guilty.  It means “he owes us something”.  Then we went to pray.”