However, this does not quite explain evil because it does not answer the question of why God allowed Satan to tempt Adam and Eve into Sin. Satan, disguised as a serpent in the Garden of Eden, was an imperfection of the world, yet the Theodicy claims that the world was made perfect. The problem of why the world malfunctions, why the snake that tempted Adam and Eve into Original Sin existed, has not been solved.
Augustine’s reply to this is that the malfunctions are from the choices made by angels and humans. Angels fell away from God tempting Adam and Eve into the Original Sin. All subsequent evil is a result of this. Natural evil, such as floods and earthquakes, are fitting punishments for breaking away from God because human action destroyed the natural order.
However, an objection to this asks why the descendants of Adam and Eve are being punished for sins they themselves did not commit. The idea of all the extreme evils in the world being a punishment for the Original Sin, committed thousands of years ago, seems unfair and excessive.
The reply to this objection is that everyone was seminally present in Adam and therefore everyone is guilty. People must live with the choices that Adam and Eve made. Salvation however, is possible, through Jesus Christ showing that God is merciful and just.
However suffering is unevenly distributed in the world. If everyone is equally guilty, people must be deserving of the same amount of punishment. Also, even if some people are saved though Christ, there are many who are not. An objection to this is that the theodicy seems to imply that these people are expendable.
Another objection to the Augustinian Theodicy is from Friedrich Schliermarcher. God created the first humans with free will, these humans were perfectly good. The world around the first humans was perfectly good, which begs the question as to why humans would fall from being perfectly good, into sin, thereby creating evil. There is no logical reason as to why humans would spontaneously turn away from God when given the choice between good and evil. Augustine’s assertion that a perfect world went wrong is like saying that evil came out of nothing. This is logically impossible.
Evolution is also a huge problem for the Augustinian Theodicy. The Theodicy has perfect beings falling into sin and evil while evolution maintains the reverse. Evolution maintains that humans evolved from basic and primitive animals and has scientific evidence of our ape-like ancestors to prove it. Also, Augustine claims that natural evil is part of humanity’s punishment but geologists know that volcanoes and earthquakes took place long before humans evolved.
Anthony Flew raised the objection that free will does not necessarily involve misuse. God could have created free being that would always choose what was morally right. Even though it is possible to argue that this would not be genuine free will, God’s omnipotence surely means that that this could be accomplished somehow.
The Augustinian Theodicy has strengths in that it values free will and maintains that evil was not part of God’s original creation. Evil therefore stems from the freedom of humans, not from God. However because of its clash with evolution, The Augustinian Theodicy could be considered outdated, even obsolete. Also, the problem with the premise that God created the world ex nihilo, out of nothing, is that the theodicy claims the world was faultless but evil came from the world. This is a logical contradiction. Ultimately evil must be attributed to God because either the world was not perfect to begin with or God allowed it to go wrong. In that respect, the Theodicy is problematic and does not reconcile the traditional attributes of theism, an omnipotent and benevolent God, with the problem of evil.
