Consequently, no nature—except a non-existent one—can be contrary to the nature which is supreme and which created whatever other natures have being. In other words, nonentity stands in opposition to that which is. Therefore, there is no being opposed to God who is Supreme Being and Source of all beings without exception. (Augustine 247)
“No one can doubt that God is almighty,” Philosophy began.
“Certainly not, unless he is mad,” I answered.
“But nothing is impossible for one who is almighty.”
“Nothing.”
“Then can God do evil?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then evil is nothing, since God, who can do all things, cannot do evil.”
(Boethius 64)
My reading of Saint Augustine has been guided by a kind of tension, which seems prevalent in his work. As with many great works of philosophy, the work of Augustine can be read as a kind of reaction; a work, taking place in view of some antagonism toward an already existing position. It shall be maintained in the examination that follows that Augustine is engaged in an attack against the heresy of the Manichaeans, as such, he is careful not to posit evil as a being in itself but rather a kind of defect, or rather an absence of good. It is the case that evil occurs in an act of will, in the turning away from the good, from God, toward the ‘affairs of man.’ The quotes provided at the beginning of this examination, seem to offer themselves as a kind of trajectory, a path, which might lead us toward a greater understanding of the nature, or perhaps non-nature, of Augustinian evil. How can evil be nothing? And yet, at the same time, have being, or be said to exist? In the works of Saint Augustine we are, as it were, presented with a life dedicated to working within the space opened up by this seemingly paradoxical state of affairs. Augustine can be counted amongst the great synthesizers of the western tradition; his struggle, is of no small consequence, rather, we might take him to be announcing a kind of marriage between Platonism and Christianity. As with all marriages there is a great deal of unresolved tension, as Augustine himself readily admits: “In some places, Plato is on the side of the true religion which our faith accepts and defends. At other times he seems opposed.”(Augustine 149) If God is equated with the Platonic notion of the good, explicitly so in the work of Boethius,[1] then how can we account for the presence of evil in the world?
Augustine’ s treatment of evil can be understood as a reaction against the position of the Manichaeans; a position Augustine himself had previously shared. The Manichaeans posit a kind of dualism, which they maintain has been since the beginning, the light of the soul against darkness of the body; a principle of good opposed to a principle of evil; each possessing the property of being in itself. While Augustine accepts the soul/body distinction, his dualism is of a different type. For Augustine, the mind body dualism is not a relation between equals as demonstrated in his affirmation that “bodies are subject to wills,” or, even further, “all bodies are subject to the will of God.” (Augustine 108) It is, therefore, the case that the body is subject to the will, our will, although, we are, as it were, carnal beings. However, the body, as well as our own will, is subject to the will of God. Augustine’s dualism resides in the distinction between the Will and our will, which seem to rule over our bodies as such. For Augustine, the body is not an evil in itself, but rather a good created out of nothing by the Creator God. This distinction is paramount in Augustine’s treatment of evil and the key to his criticism of the Manichaeans. If evil is not a being, than only I can be responsible for the sins I commit, they are not the result of some principle of evil existing in the world. There is no battle between opposed Supreme Beings, but rather a single omnipotent Being who is wholly good.
"All things which He has made are good because made by Him, but they are subject to change because they were made, not out of Him, but out of nothing" (Augustine 245).
God is, therefore, the only unchangeable good with all lesser goods subject to the movements of change.
We might ask then, as Augustine does, how is it that evil can result from good? It seems necessary first to uncover the notion of Augustinian evil, and examine how it comes about. As the quote at the onset of the examination points out evil is, properly understood, nothing. How then are we to understand evil except in relation to the good, to God Himself? It is necessarily the case, if we follow Augustine’s argument, that by knowing, or recognizing evil we demonstrate that we are good, that we know the good as the good is all there is. Evil is nothing more than an absence of goodness, a certain lack, or defect in the pursuit of the good, of God. If God is the cause of everything, and everything is good, evil is a defection from Gods perfection. Evil, therefore, is not part of a causal chain, as Augustine puts it, rather it results from the turning, from the falling away from God, from perfection toward something else. However, as Augustine states it:
"No one is punished for natural defects, but only for deliberate faults. And even for a vice to develop, by force of habit and overindulgence, into a strong natural defect, the vice must have begun in the will" (Augustine 248).
The will, therefore, is the faculty, which turns away from God. How is it that our will can turn from the eternal, from the absolute toward something else?
How is this falling away accomplished? If we have been attentive, we will have noticed the duality inherent in the embodied Augustinian will. The will seems to be caught between the eternal Will of God, and the body, which is without will altogether. Augustine maintains that evil is nothing in itself, rather, it can only be understood relative to the good, the good in the body and the good in the will. For if evil is harmful, or hurtful it can only be so for something that is good in itself prior to the evil transgression.
"How, I ask, can good be the cause of evil? For when the will, abandoning what is above it, turns itself to something lower, it becomes evil because the very turning itself and not the thing to which it turns is evil" (Augustine 253).
The turning therefore is the evil, the turning, which turns towards “something which has no will.” Evil, resides in this turning away from the eternal, the infinite unchanging Will of God, toward the finite, the mutable the fleshy existence of man. The turning turns away from god and towards the self, the embodied self in the world. The will, wills it to be so; because the will, wills the lesser being; because “there is an act of willing; there is none if we do not want one.” A choice is necessarily our choice, a choice to will, or not to will. Turning away from the absolute Will of God toward the finite “affairs of man” is not a necessary choice but a voluntary one. What makes the will evil, therefore, is not a cause in a causal chain, rather, it is the turning of the will toward a lesser being. “The will does not fall into sin; it falls sinfully.”
The turn, turns toward that which emerged from nothing, therefore, in turning it turns away from Being and toward being and approaches the nothingness from which God created man. Only god can be satisfied in himself as the perfect good Creator he can never be apart from himself. Man, in turning toward himself, turns away from God, and makes manifest the defect, or ignorance, which enabled him to turn. All this enables Augustine to refute the Manichaean notion of good vs evil as beings in counter distinction. Rather than posit an antagonistic dualism Augustine rather posits the good as the only true being, making evil a mere relative absence of good. This move necessitates a split in the will itself, a will, which must choose to will or to fall away from the Will which it knows to be true and good. “ To possess Him is to be happy; to lose Him is to be in misery.” (Augustine 245)
[1] Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy, New York: Dover, 2002. p 58.
