Regarding evil, I posted this a while back in another thread:
Tell me what is wrong with what Augustine thought on the subject:
"Where is evil then, and whence, and how crept it in hither? What is its root, and what its seed? Or hath it no being?"[1] To this Augustine answered: "Evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name 'evil.'"[2]
Augustine observed that evil always injures, and such injury is a deprivation of good. If there were no deprivation, there would be no injury. Since all things were made with goodness, evil must be the privation of goodness: "All which is corrupted is deprived of good."[3]
The diminution of the property of goodness is what's called evil. Good has substantial being; evil does not. It is like a moral hole, a nothingness that results when goodness is removed. Just as a shadow is no more than a "hole" in light, evil is a hole in goodness.
To say that something is evil, then, is a shorthand way of saying it either lacks goodness, or is a lower order of goodness than what ought to have been. But the question remains: "Whence and how crept it in hither?"
Augustine observed that evil could not be chosen because there is no evil thing to choose. One can only turn away from the good, that is from a greater good to a lesser good (in Augustine's hierarchy) since all things are good. "For when the will abandons what is above itself, and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil--not because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked."[4]
Evil, then, is the act itself of choosing the lesser good. To Augustine the source of evil is in the free will of persons: "And I strained to perceive what I now heard, that free-will was the cause of our doing ill."[5] Evil was a "perversion of the will, turned aside from...God" to lesser things.[6]
from article by Greg Koukl http://www.str.org/articles/-on...waWYfkrJhE
Tell me what is wrong with what Augustine thought on the subject:
"Where is evil then, and whence, and how crept it in hither? What is its root, and what its seed? Or hath it no being?"[1] To this Augustine answered: "Evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name 'evil.'"[2]
Augustine observed that evil always injures, and such injury is a deprivation of good. If there were no deprivation, there would be no injury. Since all things were made with goodness, evil must be the privation of goodness: "All which is corrupted is deprived of good."[3]
The diminution of the property of goodness is what's called evil. Good has substantial being; evil does not. It is like a moral hole, a nothingness that results when goodness is removed. Just as a shadow is no more than a "hole" in light, evil is a hole in goodness.
To say that something is evil, then, is a shorthand way of saying it either lacks goodness, or is a lower order of goodness than what ought to have been. But the question remains: "Whence and how crept it in hither?"
Augustine observed that evil could not be chosen because there is no evil thing to choose. One can only turn away from the good, that is from a greater good to a lesser good (in Augustine's hierarchy) since all things are good. "For when the will abandons what is above itself, and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil--not because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked."[4]
Evil, then, is the act itself of choosing the lesser good. To Augustine the source of evil is in the free will of persons: "And I strained to perceive what I now heard, that free-will was the cause of our doing ill."[5] Evil was a "perversion of the will, turned aside from...God" to lesser things.[6]
from article by Greg Koukl http://www.str.org/articles/-on...waWYfkrJhE
