Saint Augustine's Political Writings Essay

Submitted By avrilhowe
Words: 1936
Pages: 8
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September 30, 2013
Dear Augustine,

I am writing you in hopes that I may better understand your purpose and principles regarding various themes that arise in both your Confessions and your Political Writings. Over the next few weeks, I hope to articulate my impressions of your thoughts regarding political and social theory in the subjects of gender roles, happiness and misery, and peace and justice. However, through this letter I hope to address your beliefs regarding good and evil—the origins as well as its manifestations in the world and in politics.

Initially in your spiritual journey, you describe your difficulty in conceptualizing God as more than a “bodily substance,” (C. 104) because it was difficult for you to imagine something that was not conceived of the earth—as you have never witnessed such a being in other circumstances. It is in this similar sense that you describe your questions regarding the origins of evil. You describe your understanding of God by calling Him infinite, and thus explain that He fills the finite space of His creation. Your logic follows that because God is good, and God is omnipresent—inhabiting all of his creations, then in this logic evil cannot exist. However, in the earthly sense, it is readily apparent that evil is present. On page 148, book VII of your Confessions, you explain that all things are composed of “good.” However, if dishonest elements were made wholly of goodness, they would not be bad—which of course is untrue. You explain that if “corrupted” things did not possess some good, there would not be any aspects of them that “could become corrupt,” describing good and evil in a finite perspective. Therefore, if something does not consist of any goodness, it “ceases altogether to be.” In my reading to this point in your confessions, I conclude that while searching for the source of evil in the world you determined that in your opinion nothing that is created by God is evil—because everything created by Him gives glory and praise to God. Evil is thus defined as the absence of goodness.
However, evil is not simply this. Although evil is not a “thing” in the conventional sense—as all “things” are created by God and thus are good, but instead a varying level of hierarchy within God’s creation. You explain that for God, “evil does not exist,” but rather, evil is a man-made interpretation of God’s creations. As an example, you describe the sky riddled with clouds and storms. Although in man’s eyes he may wish for clearer, “better” skies—the sky “suits the earth to which in belongs” (C. 149). This explanation is grounded on the principle that things that man may not view as ideal, may actually have no “evil” origins at all—if they are in abidance with God’s will. You state that wickedness is a “perversion of the will when it turns aside from you” (C. 150). In other words, wickedness is the transformation of God’s creations from his intended purpose toward the “lowest order,” or away from the light of God. Additionally, it seemed to me that you came to believe that the sum of all things created by God—of all creation, were greater than the “higher order” alone. In my interpretations, this explanation displayed that evil originated not from God directly, but rather, through the free will He granted his creations.
In the first chapter of your political writings, you speak of a similar origin of evil—yet in practice. As man is a creation of God, you state, “No man is evil by nature…but whosoever is evil is evil by vice.” Here, you identify that because no man is evil from origin, those who become evil do so through their wicked actions—and therefore become evil due to their turn from God’s original will. Wicked actions are those which lack the goodness that acts willed by God contain.
In your political writings, you also discuss the importance of motive in actions, and how they determine the goodness or wickedness in what one does. Through the metaphor of a mother inflicting
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