Augustine's philosophy. In Augustines thinking all moral and natural (evil) comes from moral choices.

Augustine also influenced a philosopher called, Herbert McCabe. McCabe argued a similar argument to Augustine’s, which was that badness and evil are about not living up to expectations – something lacks a quality it should have been. However Augustine had to reject the idea that power opposed God as that would go against the traditional Christian view of god being ‘omnipotent’ (God would have a rival).

Augustine theodicy was largely based on that people are not doing wrong when they torture someone as an example, however they are failing at what they should be doing as humans, and that therefore makes them wrong (or evil). So if you say that a human being is evil, or their actions are evil, you are saying that the way they behave does not match the expectations about how a human being should behave. In Augustine’s thinking all moral and natural (evil) comes from moral choices. If you choose to do something such as robbing a bank, you lack the quality of respecting others and their property, making it wrong, not however if you are, for example, not able to breath under water like a fish as it you are absent of the ability to do so.

Many of Augustine’s ideas about the origin of evil are influenced by philosophy from later followers Plato (a school of thoughts called Middle Platonism) and ideas drawn from the bible, mainly from genesis, he believed that every human being was an related to Adam and that is why 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’.