Augustine Case

Augustine

"I loved the happy life but I feared to find it in Your house and so I ran from it even as I sought after it. I thought that I would be miserable if I were kept from a woman's arms. I did not believe that a cure for this disease lay in Your mercy; I had no experience of such a cure. I believed that continence was within a man's own powers, though I was unaware of such a power within me. I was a fool and did not know - as it is written [in Scripture] - that no man can be continent unless You grant it to him. And this You surely would have given to me if, with inward groanings, I had knocked at your ears and with a firm faith had cast my many cares upon You."

(from The Confessions, Book 6, Chapter 11, circa 397-400 A.D.)

Augustine was born in A.D. 354 in the town of Thagaste in Algeria. His father was a pagan and his mother was a devout Christian. Augustine was educated as a rhetorician in the former North African cities of Tagaste, Madaura, and Carthage. Augustine died in A.D. 430 identifying himself as the supreme "doctor of grace." Augustine is, arguably, the greatest theologian-philosopher of all time.

Some elements of Platonism can be seen in Augustine's teaching. His view of the world is Platonic, there is the outer and the inner world, the lower and the higher, the sensible and the intelligible, and the carnal and the spiritual. To become wise requires a movement of the mind inwards and upwards to God, an opening of the mind to truth which provided the mental vision that has been purified by faith. His theme of the divine in the world and in man is more biblical than Platonic, which allowed him to regard the material world with a reverence that would be impossible for a Platonist. His doctrine of evil as no-thing, a privation, is different from both Platonic thought and Manichaeism.

A philosophical question faces Christians, and in fact all theists, that challenges the belief in God. To theists, God is an omnipotent, perfect God. He is good. Theists accept this, and embrace it, for how else can they worship God and give their lives to Him unless He is good? However, in this world, everything is consumed by evil. If God is the author of all things in this world, and he is good, theists must then ask themselves what is evil and where it came from.

Augustine sets up an argument in his Confessions that attempts to define evil, and in doing so, he explains its existence. To follow this argument, it is important to realize that Augustine accepts some basic precepts regarding God and His creation. To begin with, God is the author of everything. Augustine says, "nothing that exists could exist without You" (1.2). God is the creator and source of all things. " . . . When He made the world He did not go away and leave it. By Him it was created and in Him exists" (4.12).