Augustine also said that god can’t be blamed for creating evil himself that occurs in the world. As he said that in fact evil comes from angels and human beings who chose deliberately to deny and disobey what God had taught them, by turning away from him and what he had wished for mankind.
Augustine believed that every human being was an offshoot of Adam and hence that every single person in the world is guilty of evil, this is as it was Adam who committed ultimate sin in the Garden of Eden. Augustine believed very strongly that evil should be punished. Therefore it was Augustine’s theodicy that said that natural evil in the world is a fitting punishment for moral wickedness. He strongly believed that evil is solely a result of human rebellion. He also argued God knew this would happen, as it is God who is omniscient. Just as he had previously seen the dispute between the angels which had lead to Satan being removed from the Heaven. Hence, Augustine argued that consequently God is right not to stop evil and suffering in the world. So it backs up the view that Augustine’s believed God to have, which is that if we as human beings get ourselves into mess then it must be us that gets ourselves out of the mess. This assumption that Augustine had is from Genesis.
Emphasized in Augustine’s theodicy is the fact that, after God had made the world and looked at it “all God saw pleased him” (reference to Genesis). Hence according to Augustine evil was therefore unknown. Augustine when looking at evil traced the origin of evil back to those entitled to free will (angels and human beings). Augustine said that God gave his creations free will as a gift but that mankind had abused this gift given to them and that they had often used the gift to turn away from God.
However, Augustine’s theodicy and his own personal views on the subject of evil did not go with out being criticised. For instance, Alvin Platinga believed that for Augustine theodicy to be possible then the existence of angels has to be also possible. And we do not have ways of demonstrating existence of angels.
Another challenge to Augustine’s theory of evil is the world of science. Augustine states and talks of a perfect world created by God, that is then harmed by both humans and angels misusing free will. However the findings of many scientists mainly geologists have made it clear that the earth developed very slowly over a period of four billion years.
To conclude, over time people such as schleirmacher, have all asked the question. Why a “perfect world” in which Augustine talks of could go so wrong and have just so many flaws?
