Natural suffering is not chosen
Privation and free will do not straightforwardly explain earthquakes, disease or severe suffering experienced by those who did not cause it.
Late antique philosophy · 354–430
Augustine
Augustine explains evil as a corruption of good produced by disordered willing, not as a rival substance created by God.
Augustine of Hippo was a North African Christian bishop, theologian and philosopher born in Thagaste in Roman Numidia. His writings on will, time, memory, evil, grace and political community profoundly shaped Latin Christian and medieval thought.
EthicsAgencyMind
The question he enters
The question Augustine enters
If everything that exists comes from a good creator, what kind of thing can evil be?
The central move
Treat evil as a failure of good
Augustine denies that evil is a positive substance competing with God. Evil is privation: damage, disorder or the absence of a good that ought to be present. Moral evil arises when created wills turn from higher goods towards lower goods in the wrong order.
Key ideas
Terms that carry the argument.
- Privation of good
- Evil is a lack, corruption or disorder in something that is good insofar as it exists.
- Disordered love
- Moral failure occurs when finite goods are loved in the wrong order or as if they were ultimate.
- Free will
- Created agents can turn away from the good, making moral evil attributable to misuse of will rather than divine creation.
- Interior self
- Memory, attention and self-examination disclose a divided will and a depth not captured by outward behaviour alone.
Where the view strains
Objections and limits.
Foreknowledge and grace complicate freedom
Divine knowledge, providence and dependence on grace create pressure on the claim that created agents are fully responsible for turning away.
Sources and routes
Read the work. Follow the argument.
Primary texts
Where to meet the position.
- Project GutenbergConfessionsWebAn inquiry into memory, desire, time, conversion and the divided will.English translation by E. B. Pusey. · Readable online with downloadable ebook formats from the catalogue page. Checked Aug 2026.
- Christian Classics Ethereal LibraryCity of GodWeb · PDF · EPUBHistory, political order, earthly peace and the contrast between rival orientations of love.City of God in volume 2 of the first series of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, in a historical English translation. · Free readable HTML with PDF, EPUB and other download options supplied by CCEL. Checked Aug 2026.
- Cambridge CoreOn Free Choice of the WillWebFree will, moral evil, divine justice and the source of wrongdoing.Cambridge Core chapter record for Peter King's translation in Augustine: On the Free Choice of the Will, On Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings (2010). · Publisher abstract and bibliographic record; complete access may require purchase or an institutional subscription. Checked Aug 2026.
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