ST ALOYSIUS COLLEGE
AS LEVEL PHILOSOPHY

Theodicy and Free Will in Augustine

I. Problem of Evil (Theodicy) and its Relation to the Problem of Free Will

A. Why is there evil if God is all powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), and just/benevolent? (Why do bad things happen to good people?) If God is all-powerful and omniscient and creates or permits evil, how can God be just? If God is just and all-knowing and evil exists, then does God have the power to prevent evil?

B. If God is omniscient and all powerful, how can humans have free will? If God knows that humans will sin, why does God permit it or as Creator allow the possibility of sin? If there is a series of causes that bring about our actions and God knows this series of causes, then does it make sense to say we actually choose to do anything at all? (free will problem)

C. The first two problems are connected because of omniscience. If God knows that humans will sin, why does God permit it or as Creator allow the possibility of sin?

II. Augustine's Solutions

A. God did not create evil. Human beings were created good. Evil is the absence of good. Evil is disordered/misdirected love. Original sin is misdirected love. Humans made what was good evil by turning contingent things into the supreme good - wanted to be God. Sin = pride. Will to love is misdirected - disordered. Human freedom (given as a gift by God) makes humans responsible for evil in the world. God bestows powers, but not wicked wills.

B. Because God had foreknowledge, he knew that man's will would be misdirected and that evil would thereby occur; but he also knew that through his grace good could be brought from evil. God comprehends all time. Thus the evil in each human present is redeemed.

C. Augustine says, "we assert both that God knows all things before they come to pass, and that we do by our free will whatsoever we know and feel to be done by us only because we will it." He embraces both God’s prescience and free will.

There are certain necessities such as human death that are not under our control, but "it is manifest that our wills by which we live uprightly or wickedly are not under such a necessity."

God can know all things without undermining free-will, because the free wills themselves are causes. God knows about these causes. God's knowledge of a thing gives it a "being" - existence and its nature. God's knowledge of human free will means it exists and makes it free - God knows it as free not determined. Freedom does not mean uncaused, but means self-caused. God knows that people will sin, not that they will be forced to sin. “For our wills themselves are included in that order of causes which is certain to God, and is embraced by His foreknowledge, for human wills are also causes of human actions; and He who foreknew all the causes of things would certainly among those causes not have been ignorant of our will.”

"For a man does not therefore sin because God foreknew that he would sin. Nay, it cannot be doubted but that it is the man himself who sins when he does sin, because He, whose foreknowledge is infallible, foreknew not that fate, or fortune, or something else would sin, but that the man himself would sin, who, if he wills not, sins not. But if he shall not will to sin, even this did God foreknow.”