...Evil, Christianity, and Saint Augustine Sammy Hoag Philosophy 202 Dr. Ryan Murphy December 2015 What is evil? This ‘problem of evil’ and the existence of evil have plagued the minds of people throughout the centuries. It has been one on the most sought after inquiries and one of the most vexing challenges to Christianity, in explaining the existence of God. Many philosophers and thinkers, both secular and Christian, have endeavored to solve this problem. One of the most notable of whom is Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430). He is perhaps one of the most influential philosophers in the history of the Christian Church. Augustine spent much of his life trying to solve this ‘problem of evil’ and it proved to be quite an undertaking. This paper will explore the problem of evil and argue how Saint Augustine solidified the ways in which philosophy and religion, specifically Christianity, coincide through his work on the concepts of the problem of and the origin of evil. Understanding the problem of evil is essential to everyone because it affects the manner in which life is lived. Whether defending a belief in God or trying to share those beliefs with others everyone will encounter the problem of evil at some point. According to Ed Miller and Jon Jensen, authors of Questions that Matter:...
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...Augustine’s Theology against Pelagianism by Mark S. Castlebury HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY I CHHI 520 Professor John M. Landers 09 May 2014 ABSTRACT This paper will examine Augustine’s response to the doctrinal challenges presented in the heresy of Pelagianism concerning grace and original sin. Augustine’s writings against Pelagius serve as our primary source for understanding his response. It is expected to find that Augustine responded in a biblically orthodox manner showing the true nature of man while defending the doctrines of grace and original sin. CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii Pelagianism 1 THE BACKGROUND OF PELAGIUS 2 THE WRITINGS OF PELAGIUS 3 THE TEACHINGS OF PELAGIUS 6 AUGUSTINE 7 AUGUSTINE’S BACKGROUND 7 ORIGINAL SIN 8 TRANSMISSION OF SIN 9 THE GRACE OF GOD 10 CONCLUSION 10 BIBLIOGRAPHY 11 Pelagianism The Heresy of Pelagianism began in the fifth-century and was named after the British monk Pelagius. He is well known even today for his views on original sin and freedom of the will. A definition provided by William Shed in his work Dogmatic Theology states that, “Pelagius affirmed the freedom of the will, which for him meant that a person always has the ability to choose good as well as evil. That is, for Pelagius the power of contrary choice is essential to free moral agency. According to Pelagius, a person is always ‘able to sin and able not to sin’ (posse peccare et posse non peccare). Naturally, such a view of freedom carries implications for the...
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...The existence of evil is one of the world’s most vexing challenges. Most Christians agree on the existence of an omnipotent God, however like Augustine, we struggle to understand how evil comes into being. Evil corrupts our free will and enables us to sin, but if God is all-powerful and all good, how can he allow this to happen? “Whence comes evil? Was there a certain evil matter out of which he made these things? Did he form and fashion it, but yet leave within it something that he would not convert into good? Why would he do it? Was he powerless to turn and change all this matter so that no evil would remain in it, even though he is all powerful?” As these questions found their way into Augustine’s mind, they also manage to exist and remain unanswered for most people today. However Augustine addresses these questions by justifying evil in this world with God’s creation of free will. By granting us free will God makes us responsible for our wrongdoings, as a result of this we can knowingly choose either right or wrong. In the infamous biblical passage on the creation of original sin, God accommodates men by giving Adam and Eve all the necessities of life: partnership, water, food and land. However, despite God’s warning Eve chose to eat the fruit from the tree of life. The serpent persuades Eve who later convinces Adam to eat from the tree. From this persuasion and act from men, original sin is born. Men are now born with a predisposition to sin; in other words, they can knowingly...
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...St. Augustine’s Criticism on Plato and Platonism St. Augustine is one of the towering figures of medieval philosophy. Augustine had a huge influence on the modern period with people including Descartes and Malebranche. One of the main focal points in his life comes in 387 AD, when his conversion to Christianity takes place. In Augustine’s conversion to Christianity, he evolved a different approach to thinking. When Augustine writes about the Manicheans, he tends to focus on their materialism, substantive dualism, and their identification of the human soul as a particle of the Light. These three key qualifications from Platonism provide Augustine with a philosophical framework for both the medieval and modern periods. In the Confessions, Augustine gives his most extensive discussion of the books of the Platonists. In the Confessions, he makes clear that his previous thinking was dominated by common- sense materialism. It was the books of the Platonists that first made it possible for him to conceive the possibility of a non-physical substance. It did provide him however with a non- Manichean solution to the problem of the origin of evil. In addition, the books of the Platonists provided him with a framework where he plotted the human condition. According to Augustine the framework for Platonists can account for the difficulties with which life brings about to us, in the same aspect it offers a theory that the highest ethical goal is happiness and personal well- being. In...
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...Aside from the physical problems Saint Augustine can influence common people from, he also can relate with the question and the doubting God. In Confessions Book Seven, III Augustine says: But I asked further: “Who made me? Was it not my God, who is not only Good but Goodness itself? What root reason is there for my willing evil and failing to will good, which would make it just for me to be punished? Who was it that set and ingrafted in me this root of bitterness, since I was wholly made by my most loving God? Asking questions such as these, questions that are high level of understanding but still common enough for most people to ask, make Saint Augustine incredibly easy to connect to. People that have something or someone to connect to are...
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...University of Sharjah International Relations Political Theory Ideas on States and Justice in the thought of Augustine and Rousseau Essay Assignment By: May Ramez Mahrat Supervised by: Dr. Jeremy Kleidosty Arguments and philosophical explanations for what justifies power and states, inspired by the European Enlightenment thought, has headed closer toward reasoning and further from faith. The thought of Rousseau and Saint Augustine is a clear representation of the two poles of reason and faith in political thought. Rousseau, outlining the basis of his social contract on the natural goodness of human beings and putting sovereignty in the hand s of people, differs widely from Augustine who addresses the state as an “essential evil” put to discipline men who are sinners by nature. The political arguments of these two philosophers, who lived in two different ages, represent a different kind of Enlightenment for the both ages that they lived in. This essay will discuss Rousseau’s and Augustine’s regards to state, justice and property and will examine the effects of their thoughts on modern politics. Augustine and Rousseau in Comparison Wrapping his political and social beliefs with virtuous, deist and theological Christian discourse, Augustine, the Christian bishop, presents a leap in the Western thought at a time close to the beginning of the middle ages. His political views in his writings are interpreted differently by various scholars as he rarely expresses direct...
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...world. He created the earth, air, stars, trees and animals. He created the Heaven above, the Angels, and every spiritual being. God looked at these things and said that they were good. However, if all that God created was good, from where does un-good or evil originate from? Were we exposed to evil when the original sin occurred? St. Augustine was one of the most respected thinkers in Christianity. In Book VII the Confessions, Augustine reflects on the existence of evil and the problem it faces. For evil to exist, the Creator, God, must have granted it, its existence. This contradicts the Christian view that God is purely good. For a long time, Augustine thought evil must not exists or that God is not entirely good. Original sin. Always asked questions God had to create evil Evil, Augustine entire religious life was based on evil, and how God could create it if he is good. Evil is a major theme in the Confessions, and the City of God. When Augustine was young, he could not wrap his mind around believing in an all good God that also created evil. However, God gave people free will. We can make our own choices. Our choices may be perceived as evil but it is just the lack of goodness in our decisions. The problem with evil and God is the challenge of how an all-powerful and all-loving God can allow his creation to suffer, without helping then and putting an end to their suffering. This challenge is an often quoted reason for being unable to believe in God for it is argued...
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...Jean Leon Iragena Dr. MacMaster IDST 1128-02 Spring Project March 24, 2011 The Truth behind Free Will: Luther vs. Erasmus The notion of free will is one of the most complex notions to define and to understand; it is defined differently according to one’s interpretation of the scriptures, especially the Bible. Both Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus, influenced by their faith and beliefs, write respectively against and for free will. Both try to adequately answer the questions: Does man have free will? If yes, why and how? If not, how? Possible answers to these questions given by both authors and some scholars who write against or for each one of these opponents’ arguments highlight, especially, the differences in the conception of man’s free will. Luther and his supporters view free will as an imaginary or impossible and dangerous thing to have; Erasmus and his supporters defend that the existence of man’s free will is irrefutable for it is in human nature itself as the Bible says it. In spite of some of Luther’s good ideas that prove man’s absence of free will and Erasmus’ excellent interpretation of the Bible, neither of them fully responds to the human yearning of knowing the concept of free will. After a thorough and wise analysis of the defense and abnegation of man’s free will of these authors, I find it impossible to fully deny or prove the existence of man’s free will. It is important to take into...
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...Review: The Impact of St. Augustine's Life LIBERTY THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY THE IMPACT OF ST. AUGUSTINE’S LIFE A Paper Submitted To Dr. John Landers Liberty Theological Seminary In Partial Fulfillment Of The Requirements For The Course CHHI 520 CHHI-520 HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH I By Dutch Nelson Liberty ID #: L24440559 Lynchburg, Virginia October 7, 2012 Table of Contents Cover Page 1 Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 The Life of Augustine 3 Madaurus 366-370 3 Thagaste 370-371 4 Carthage 371-383 4 Italy 383-387 4 Thagaste 387-390 5 Hippo 390-430 5 Augustine as a Writer 5 Augustine as a Scholar 6 Augustine as a Pagan 7 Augustine and Marriage 8 Augustine’s Journey to Christiainity 9 Augustine as a Christian 10 Augustine as Saint 11 Conclusion 12 Bibliography 14 Introduction Spiritual leaders exemplify themselves by the way they live and the way they impact the lives of others. This normally determines how their congregation and those who hear their word and see their deeds view them. Augustine’s life has not been totally perfect. He like other humans has erred in some way. However, he has had a positive impact on a number of theologians and philosophers (Smith 2008, 1). This paper looks at his life over his 76 years on earth and seeks to provide evidence that Augustine’s life can be used as an example in the preparation of spiritual leaders. The Life of Augustine Augustine’s life dates from 354 to 430...
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...ultimately responsible for everything including evil as stated inIsa.45:7 "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and createevil: I the Lord do all these things". In the Bible, the story of Jobillustrates that according to specific Christian beliefs, all have sinnedand fallen short of the perfection of God (Romans 3:23), and because we arenot perfect and commit sin, the punishment is mortality. Many religious andphilosophical traditions agree that evil behavior itself is a transgressionthat results from the imperfect human condition. The doctrine of originalsin, as articulated by Saint Augustine's interpretation of Saint Paul,provides that the fall caused a fundamental change in human nature, so thatall descendants of Adam are born in sin, "For all have sinned and fall shortof the glory of God" and can only be redeemed by divine grace. Sacrifice wasthe only means by which humanity could be redeemed after the Fall andbecause "God so loved the world that he sent his only son (Jesus Christ whowas without sin and died on the cross as the ultimate redemption for the sinof humankind) that whoever believes in him should not perish, but haveeverlasting life".Evil has also been an important aspect to the existence of free willand human agency. Others argue that evil itself is ultimately based in anignorance of truth (i.e. human value, sanctity, divinity). A variety ofEnlightenment thinkers have alleged the opposite, by suggesting that evil islearned as a consequence of tyrannical...
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...did not pass along our one of the most famous historic of philosophy Socrates and St. Augustine in their latest compositions. They say that the “Sin” is a thing that harms one’s life in abstract way. Basically Socrates in the “Apology” understands Sin just like an abandon during your self-development therefore he used to say “If you ever do not know anything about knowledge and afterwards just forget it and let it go” so this is a sin. On the other hand the Sin in Confessions by Saint Augustine is a new attempt, he proposes as sin, things which makes you proud. Since both characters have their own thoughts on something, and this understanding makes them really different. For example they both say about sins however they understand different things as a sin. These most incredible Greek philosophers such as St. Augustine and Socrates with ambiguous ideas disputed about what the Sin is. Moreover they have different views on how to look to Sin with different directions. St. Augustine’s book which is called Confession is autobiographic since it was written according his life, and after reading the Confession we can deduce that what were his understandings about sin in his different life ages. Moreover we can find out, how a sinful life he had and how could overcome his sinful life. The main point is that, he continued doing sinful actions even being acknowledged about sin. He liked doing sinful things; he was getting a pleasure when he was doing something which...
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..................... 3 2. SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF LOVE........................................................................... 6 3. HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF LOVE....................................................................... 9 3.1 ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY: PLATO ..................................................................... 11 3.2 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY: SAINT AUGUSTINE............................................................ 18 3.3 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: FREUD ................................................................................. 27 4. COMPARATIVE EVALUATION............................................................................ 37 CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................. 40 REFERENCES................................................................................................................ 43 Introduction The starting point of this paper is the question: “What is love?”, or, in other words, how can we understand or even define the concept of love? To clarify this question we have to approach the problem systematically. Love is no natural kind, nor is it a substance of an abstract kind. It seems to be an empirical phenomenon, since...
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...Ethics In Human Resource Management Alisha Wood Saint Augustine’s University Ethics and Human Resource Management Wikipedia, defines ethics as: "…a study of values and customs of a person or a group. It covers the analysis and employment ofconcepts such as right and wrong, good and evil, and responsibility." Wikipedia, defines utilitarianism as: “…ethical doctrine of greatest good. The ethical doctrine that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the criterion of the virtue of action The complexities of business and our human/social society makes corporate ethics a very interesting study. To a practicing manager in the working world today, this becomes critically important, especially if they don’t get it! And many obviously have not and still do not. The questions are really simple to ask - yet hard to answer: What does good business today really mean? What does ethics have to do, if anything, with good business? What impact can the human resource function have on either? Within business, what is my responsibility as a human resource professional? Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is known as one of the areas that has drawn many attentions in the business environment over the last twenty years. Carroll (1991) argued that corporation should be addressed not only from economic and legal perspectives but also from ethical and philanthropic perspectives; the idea of CSR’s pyramid is then derived. Furthermore, the efficiency theory...
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...CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN A POSTMODERN WORLD The Rise of Postmodernity Since Federico de Onis’s use of the term ‘postmodernismo’ to describe the Spanish and Latin-American poetry of 1905-1914 which had reacted against the ‘excess’ of modernism in 1934, (Rose 1991: 171) “Postmodernism” became very popular. It has been used in the fields of art (Christo-Bakargiev 1987), architecture (Pevsner 1967), literature (Hassan 1971), video, economics, films (James 1991), ideology (Larrain 1994: 90-118), theology (Tilley at al 1995), and philosophy (Griffin et al 1993). In trying to understand ‘postmodern’, we have to understand ‘modern’ first. According to Rose (1991: 1), there are many related yet different meanings associated with the term ‘modern’. First of all, Arnold J. Toynbee understands modern as referring to the historical phenomenon of The most significant of the conclusions that suggest themselves is that the word ‘modern’ in the term ‘Modern Western Civilization’, can, without inaccuracy, be given a more precise and concrete connotation by being translated ‘middle class’. Western communities became ‘modern’ in the accepted Modern Western meaning of the word, just as soon as they had succeeded in producing a bourgeoisie that was both numerous enough and competent enough to become the predominant element in society. We think of the new chapter of Western history that opened at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as being ‘modern’ par excellence because...
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...WRITING ASSIGNMENT 1 1. To what did the Latin religio refer? a) The Latin word L. religionem (nom. Religio) is defined as “a respect for what is scared, reverence for the gods”, and according to the text refers to the fear or awe a person feels in the presence of a spirit or a god. 2. Taoism and Confucianism are nontheistic religions, that is, religions for which belief in God or gods is nonessential. While gods are not alien to either Taoism or Confucianism, belief in/of gods is not central to either tradition. What are a couple of other religions that can be called nontheistic religions? a) A few additional examples of some nontheistic religions are Agnosticism, Atheism, Buddhism, Secular Humanism and Scientology. 3. What is Paul Tillich's definition for religion, and why do Hopfe and Woodward consider its development too broad? a) Paul Tillich defines religion as, “that which is of ultimate concern”. Hopfe and Woodward consider the development of Tillich’s definition of religion too broad for a world religions course because a philosophical exploration of Tillich’s definition of religion, yields many an individuals personal belief of what is of ultimate concern hardly lending to the general understanding of popular or mainstream religions they hope to accomplish in this text. 4. Explain E. B. Tylor's theory concerning the origin and evolution of religion. What is animism, and to what, "ultimately" and "finally," did Tylor think it evolved? a) E.B. Tylor’s theory...
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