Augustine's Problem Of Evil

Augustine lived right before the medieval period and sought happiness and to gain more wisdom. Augustine lived his life following Christianity, even though he was skeptic for a short period in his life. He became skeptic over the problem of evil, which states that God is all knowing, all good, and all-powerful but it raises the issue of why evil exists. Augustine was distraught over this issue, he found comfort in the Manichaeism solution to evil, which mentions the soul is all-good and seeks to escape the evilness of the body. After returning to Christianity he sought out happiness through knowledge and believes that God is connected to truth. Additionally, Augustine believes in two types of evil, being moral evil and natural evil. But he believes that natural evil does not truly exist. He had so much passion in his work and he was humble for all of his accomplishments by stating, “… if he had contributed anything of value, it was due entirely to the grace of god.” (p. 181). …show more content…
Christianity could not bring an answer to this problem, but it was the Manichaeism who comfort Augustine with their solution to this issue. Augustine states that it is the body that is evil and the soul is good and I can relate to this to some extent. I believe that a high being created the soul out of pure goodness, but the body has it’s own self-will that creates evil. I relate this to being like what a firearm instructor does because a firearm instructor teaches someone how to use a weapon, but it is up to that individual for what they are going to use that weapon for. They can either use it for good, like self-protection or they can use it for evil, like committing a robbery. Similarly, the evil in the world can be seen as a side effect of good and that evil is created to keep the world