Saint Augustine: Sin, Free Will, and the Nature of Evil
The Problem of Freedom
We have, therefore, the problem of freedom: hombre (man) is in sin because he has sinned. For sin, man may be guilty, man has been free. Once fallen into sin, man cannot save himself; he needs faith. The problem of faith is given by God; it is a grace that God gives to whom He designs. Man is under original sin only. This grace is another reason for the long dispute between Christian factions. The problem was debated if original sin is transmitted to all men inexorably, and if God decides beforehand who will be given grace and who will not. The logical conclusion seems to be are men free to be saved or condemned? Augustine defends the following thesis:
- On the one hand, he defends his peculiar doctrine of predestination, according to which God knows from eternity who will be condemned and who will remain free. However, Augustine explained, God offers the possibility of salvation to men, but they freely reject it.
- Saint Augustine distinguishes between free will and freedom. Free will is the capacity of man, a capacity that may lead to choosing good or evil. Now, since man is a fallen being, he is in evil; he uses his free will for evil. Freedom allows man to choose good, and this capacity is geared to what Augustine calls good.
- The problem of how original sin can be explained is solved using traducianism, although he does not discard the creationist argument.
The Problem of Evil
A problem of great concern to Augustine was the origin of evil. This took him in his youth to adhere to the Manichaean view, in which there are two principles governing the cosmos: a good principle and an evil principle. Once converted to Christianity, he used the Plotinian conception of evil as non-being to explain how a good God, author of everything, can allow evil to exist. Evil would not be created by God since it is not substantial but an absence of good. However, he does not identify sensitive evil with matter. He distinguishes between:
- Moral evil (sin), which is the result of ill will, a perversion of wanting, consisting of putting the sensible before God.
- Physical evil (diseases), which is a consequence of moral evil.
Cultural and Philosophical Context
In the cultural field, the extension of the Roman Empire facilitated the relationship between various cultural environments. The cultural center of the time was in Alexandria, where Hellenistic Greek thought and Jewish tradition converged. But the ancient world was in its final stage: Roman culture was exhausted and still nourished by a Greek culture that was not capable of renewal. Moreover, the Greek language began to lose ground, and the sciences were in remarkable decline. After the fall of Rome, the role of “church” became prominent. Saint Augustine lived through the councils where the intellectuals of the time (the Fathers of the Church) tried to lay the ideological foundations of what would be the Christian world.
Philosophically speaking, after Aristotle and Plato, the philosophical schools were reduced to:
- Epicureanism: For Epicurus, life must be geared to happiness that is wisely administered in pleasure (Hedonism), together with the removal of pain.
- Stoicism: Happiness is given by the unflappable attitude to fate. Everything is determined and must be accepted. Who governs the destination is the law of the Logos or universal reason.
- Neoplatonism: Plotinus defends a conception in which everything emanates from the One. The happiness of man consists in the ascent to the One. At the end of that upward path is ecstasy, which involves the release from the sensible world and full happiness.
Christianity emerged in this context, not as a philosophical doctrine but as a religion. Philosophy brought to Christianity its terminology (adapted to Christian tenets), and Christianity gave philosophy a new vision of reality (creation, divine filiation, non-circularity of history, etc.).