This blog post explores Augustine’s explanation of why an omniscient and omnipotent God allowed free will to lead to evil.
Evil Created by Free Will
From his youth, when he was deeply immersed in Manichaeism, through his conversion to Christianity, Augustine constantly grappled with the problem of evil in this world. Given God’s supreme goodness and omnipotence, the existence of evil was inevitably a contradiction. Why does evil exist in this world created by God, who is “goodness” itself? And why does an omnipotent God allow evil to persist? These questions tormented Augustine incessantly. Eventually, he found an answer to the existence of evil through the concept of Plotinus, a leading Neoplatonist, who posited that “evil is a lack of good.” According to Plotinus, evil is not an active entity but merely an accidental phenomenon. This phenomenon arises from a deficiency in the perfection or nature that natural things should inherently possess. In other words, God created the world and the beings within it as good, but as deficiencies arose in the natural nature of these beings, humans were unable to attain their original good nature, and this deficiency is precisely what constitutes evil. Therefore, since God is not the direct cause of this deficiency—that is, of evil—the conclusion is that God bears no responsibility for it.
If God is not the direct cause of evil, the next question that arises is what the direct cause of evil is. Augustine explains this through the concept of “creation ex nihilo.” According to him, since natural things were created by God out of “nothing,” they possess a tendency to return to nothingness whenever God’s power does not reach them. In other words, because created beings depend on God’s power, they are necessarily finite and imperfect. Therefore, when a created being’s connection with God is severed, it lacks a good nature and tends toward evil.
Why, then, do created beings drift away from God, and why does God’s power cease to reach them? Augustine found the cause of this in human free will. Human beings are beings who have been gifted with reason, which allows them to reach an understanding of God’s reality and the world through inner illumination from God. However, if humans turn away from this immutable principle—that is, from the inner illumination of God and the true truth discoverable through it—and rely solely on the senses or on human judgment devoid of divine illumination, they immediately fall into the darkness of error. In other words, by trusting in their own abilities or pursuing curiosity, humans become fixated on the external world of objects; as a result, they suffer from the weakness of forgetfulness and become unable to understand the path leading to the spirituality of the soul and righteous conduct. It is precisely human free will that makes it possible to shift the direction of one’s attention at such times. In other words, God has granted humans free will, and human evil is caused voluntarily by humans themselves. Ultimately, evil or corruption is not a specific object but the very act of shifting direction through free will. Furthermore, the responsibility for errors in judgment and the resulting misguided choices lies not with God but with each individual.
At this point, I believe further discussion is needed regarding the question, “If that is the case, why did God grant humans free will?” According to Augustine’s argument, if there were no free exercise of human will, neither evil nor sin would exist. Furthermore, if God is omniscient and omnipotent, He would have foreseen that granting humans free will would simultaneously open the possibility for the existence of evil. If, despite this, God granted humans free will—that is, if He foresaw evil but did not prevent it—this inevitably leads back to the question: “Why does God allow evil to exist?”
Meanwhile, Augustine explains evil by dividing it into two categories. The first type of evil mentioned so far is that committed by moral agents. His unique philosophy is revealed in the second type of evil: he viewed evil as a “punishment” imposed by God in response to human sin. In other words, the soul turning its gaze away from the supreme to the inferior—that is, being ruled by greed—is essentially a minor punishment. Therefore, sin itself possesses a punitive nature, and because of this punishment, humans are dragged hither and thither, pursuing material elements such as the body as if they were the truth. At this point, I cannot help but point out that “it appears as though God, who is the Supreme Good Himself, has bestowed evil upon humanity.” That is, if being subject to the dominion of greed is a punishment, and if that punishment was imposed by God, this leads to the conclusion that God imposed greed upon humanity. Thus, Augustine’s argument regarding evil leaves a sense of regret, revealing a limitation that Christian thought has ultimately failed to overcome.
True Happiness
Augustine set the criterion for distinguishing happiness from unhappiness as “whether it can be lost against one’s will.” In his view, things like wealth and honor can be lost against one’s will and therefore cannot be enjoyed with peace of mind. Consequently, the object we must pursue to be happy must, above all, be eternal and have an essential connection with us. He believed that only God satisfies all these conditions, and stated that if one can possess God, one becomes truly happy. However, since God is not a possession, He cannot be grasped or stored in a material sense. How, then, can one possess God? Augustine believed that to possess God, one must seek Him within oneself. Therefore, to possess God means to possess the wisdom of the mind. If the mind possesses proper moderation, holds onto true truth, and participates in it, one immediately comes to possess God. Augustine viewed those who pursue this true truth and the wisdom of the mind as truly happy people.
Here, the question that arises again is how true truth can exist within the finite and imperfect human mind. Augustine explains this by stating that the truths perceived by the human mind are revealed to us through the illumination of God, who is “Truth Itself,” the source of all truth. In other words, we need the light of God to grasp the objects of unchanging rational cognition. And through this inner illumination from God, we are able to reach an understanding of God’s reality and the created world. Consequently, humans are beings who can only be truly happy through God’s grace.
If we set aside the aspect of “God” in Augustine’s discussion of happiness, the idea that humans must pursue something eternal—rather than something that can be lost—in order to achieve happiness, and that this eternal something resides within the human interior, specifically in the wisdom of the mind, can be connected to the Buddhist philosophy that “the mind itself is Buddha.” It is interesting to note that these great philosophers, transcending religion, emphasized that the way to escape the suffering of reality and pursue happiness lies not in the external world but within the self.
The Ethics of Love
Augustine viewed ethical actions as stemming from the human “will” to “love” wisdom and truth. Therefore, he is often referred to as a representative of “voluntarism.” However, what we will focus on here is not the will, but love.
Since Augustine viewed “love” as the core of ethics, his ethics is generally referred to as the “ethics of love.” According to him, no matter how good the outcome of an action may be, if the agent acted with a different purpose and without love, the action cannot be considered ethical. Therefore, for Augustine, love is a necessary condition for ethical action.
Augustine divides this love into two types based on the attitude with which a person loves. First, he calls loving a thing for its own sake “enjoyment,” and loving a thing as a means to an end “use.” Through this distinction, he separates objects to be enjoyed from those to be used, arguing that things of lower value should be used as means to enjoy higher-value things, while things of higher value should be enjoyed for their own sake. For him, as a theologian, the highest purpose was, of course, God. That is, God is the object to be enjoyed as an end in itself. In this way, he argued that lower, external “things” are used for the sake of the higher “body,” the body is used for the sake of the higher “soul,” and the soul exists to enjoy the highest “God.” Augustine believed that if love did not follow this order, it could lead to the corruption of the soul. In other words, if creatures come to love their own selves more than God, the supreme good—that is, if the order or hierarchy of love is inverted—evil or corruption could arise, akin to turning one’s back on the divine light mentioned earlier. Augustine’s standard of love is determined by the value hierarchy known as the “order of being.” Ultimately, we must love the body more than external things, the soul more than the body, and God more than the soul; failing to do so leads to evil. Here, we can see that Augustine valued the inner self of human beings over external objects, and that he viewed the spirit as a higher concept than the body even within the human being itself. Accordingly, if one detaches oneself from the physical and the secular to purify the soul, and above all loves God, one will be able to understand the transcendent mystery of God.
The Just City
Augustine stated that all humanity is brothers and sisters, viewing us as bound by blood because we all descend from a single ancestor. In other words, all humans are descendants of Adam and Eve. However, while sharing the same ancestor, humans possess different natures. Augustine divided humanity into two types: the “old man” and the “new man.” Here, the old man is one who lives bound to the flesh; he is the external man, the man of the earth. In contrast, the new man is one born of the Holy Spirit of God; he is the internal man, the man of heaven. These two groups form communities based on their similarities and their preferences: the gathering of the old men is called the earthly city, while the gathering of the new men is called the heavenly city.
Here, the “earthly kingdom” or “earthly city” that Augustine speaks of does not necessarily refer to the state. Nor can it be said that he viewed the existence of the state itself negatively. Rather, Augustine believed that the state was necessary because it is connected to the nature of humans as social beings. Therefore, what was problematic for him was not the state itself, but a state that realized “justice.” He emphasized the importance of a just state, stating that a state without justice is no different from a band of robbers. So, what does he mean by justice? Augustine defines justice as giving to each person their due share. According to him, when God created all things, He provided enough wealth for every human being to live in abundance. However, an imbalance arose when some people monopolized these resources. Therefore, the justice he envisions is one in which everything is distributed fairly to everyone, enabling all to live a truly human life. However, looking at the entire history of the world, it is difficult to find a nation on earth where such justice has been realized. This is because humans pursue freedom no matter how much they are oppressed, and this freedom inevitably leads to greed. Therefore, Augustine believed that true justice comes from God, and that it can only be realized in the City of Heaven. In other words, true justice consists of all people sharing what God has given and praising Him, and the City of Heaven is the place where those who live in this way gather. In the City of Heaven, people form a community of sharing, nourished by the love God has given, so no one needs to perform arduous labor, and it is a society where everyone can enjoy eternal rest.
Thus, Augustine believed that justice could not be realized on earth. This reveals a skeptical attitude toward human reason. He viewed humans as too free to realize a just state, and consequently, as greedy. However, as we have seen earlier, if humans are beings capable of attaining true truth with the help of divine illumination, should justice not also be realizable on earth? In other words, if imperfect humans require the illumination of a perfect God to reach the truth, and if justice can be realized only in the heavenly city, this seems to suggest that the “illumination” God bestows upon us may be imperfect. Ultimately, it is regrettable that Augustine reached this conclusion primarily to emphasize the role of the Church rather than the capabilities of the individual and, by extension, the state.
