4. Augustine's Privation of Good

Watch this lesson on YouTube, or listen to it here.    

Access the slide deck here. 

1) Intro

A)   Augustine of Hippo (354-430)

B) Remember, God does not need us to defend him or justify him. We are simply trying to understand.

C) This class is a part of the logical problem of evil. This is about thinking about God’s nature, not deeply wrestling with my own present suffering.

D)   Overview

1) Augustine tried to answer the problem of evil by defining evil. The main point is that evil is not a thing in and of itself.

2) Sources

(a)   Augustine, Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love

(i) Especially chapters 11-14 (link)

(b)   Confessions of Saint Augustine

(i) Book 7, chapters 11-13 (link)

(In this section, I will say the same thing multiple time in different way to try to explain the point.)

1) Evil is a “privation of the good (privation boni).”

A)   Summary

1) Everything God created is “good.”

2) Evil does not have a nature of its own.

3) Evil is not a substance, or entity, or a distinct feature of reality created by God.

B) Evil is a lack, corruption, or a distortion of a good thing that already exists.

1) Illustrations:

(a)   Darkness and light. Darkness is not a “thing” you can create; it is simply what you have when light is absent.

(b)   Silence is the absence of sound.

(c)   Cold is the absence of heat.

2) Evil is parasitic.

(a)   e.g. You cannot have a hole in a shirt without a shirt to put the hole in.

(b)   In order to have evil, you must have something good to corrupt in the first place.

(c)   Evil cannot exist on its own. It must inhere (exist) within a good substance that it deforms.

(d)   Evil is “a bad good thing.” It is a good created thing (being) that has been ruined. Evil is a ruined, or spoiled good thing.

3) More illustrations:

(a)   Consider a man with a limp. The ability to walk is a good thing created by God. The limp is now a new power or substance that God made. It is a failure of the leg to function as it was designed.

(b)   Rust is a chemical reaction that corrupts metal. The metal is a good thing. The rust is not a positive entity in itself, but a corruption of the metal’s structure and form.

(c)   Blindness is not a positive thing. God created sight, and blindness is the absence (for whatever reason) of the good thing that God made. It is broken in some way for some reason.

C) Evil is a defect, not an effect.

1) Evil has a “deficient cause” rather than an “efficient cause.”

2) To look for the cause of evil is like “wishing to see darkness or hear silence.”

3) Evil happens when a good and freewill creature turns away from the Supreme Good (i.e. God) to an inferior good (i.e. the self).

D)   Evil is disordered love: Moral evil is not choosing an evil thing (since all of God’s creation is good), but choosing a good thing in a evil way or in the wrong order.

2) Biblical arguments for the privation of good:

A)   Gen. 1:1-3

B) Gen. 2:16-17 – “…in the day you eat from it you shall surely die.”

1) Gen. 3:22-23 – Humanity was driven away from the presence of God and the tree of life.

2) God created good things, but man had to leave those good things.

C) Rom. 8:19-22

1) v. 20 – “For the creation was subjected to futility…” (vanity, emptiness, pointlessness, meaninglessness)

2) v. 21 – “…the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption…”

D)   1 Jn. 3:4 – Sin is lawlessness.

1) Evil is a failure to reach a standard, rather than a positive substance.

2) Imagine God, and God’s will as the center of a bullseye. Everything away from that bullseye is wrong, not because it was created wrong, but because it is not God or his will.

E) Rom. 3:23 – “…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

F) 2 Thess. 1:9. This is even true about hell. It is away from the presence of God.

G)   Summary: This explanation says that God did not create evil. God created good, and his good creation was corrupted or distorted.

3) There are some practical things that come from this way of thinking.

A)   Within the context of this class and the problem of evil and suffering, this is theory is a way to say that God did not make evil. God is not responsible for the evil and suffering that we see in this world. What God made was and is good, but freewill agents (i.e. angels and humans) have corrupted his perfect creation.

B) Illustration: Sex.

1) Sex is a good thing created by God (Gen. 2:24-25; Prov. 5:18-19; 1 Tim. 4:1-5).

2) But Titus 1:15.

3) A deprivation of sex within marriage is not good (1 Cor. 7:3-5).

4) Sex outside of marriage is not good. This is called fornication or adultery depending upon the circumstances.

5) Sex between two people of the same sex is not good.

6) The point is this. God made something that was good. The evil in our world exists because the good thing that God made has been corrupted and used in a way that it was not intended to be used.

C) Satan’s role is not to create, but to distort.

1) This is why understanding him as a liar is so important (Gen. 3:4; Jn. 8:44).

D)   Evil does not rival good. It is privation, or distortion of good.

4) Biblical arguments against this theory:

A)   There does seem to be an active presence of evil.

B) God seems to have a more direct hand in the existence of “bad states” than the privation theory allows for. He is not simply using the evil in the world for his good, but participating in it’s existence.

C) The curses in Gen. 3 are active things.

1) v. 15 – “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring…”

2) v. 16 – “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing…”

3) v. 17 – “…cursed is the ground because of you…”

D)   Is. 45:5-7. v. 7 – “I make well-being and create calamity.” (KJV – “I make peace and create evil.”)

E) Amos 3:3-6. v. 6b – “Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?”

F) Lam. 3:37-39

G)   Mic. 1:12

H)   Aside from these, God is all-knowing, and the crucifixion was foreknown before creation, and God still created the world knowing what would come of it, even if he did not create evil directly. Maybe he did not directly create evil, but he allowed it within his perfect creation. We will need to talk more about this later.

1) Job 1:6-12

2) Satan can be directly blamed for the evil that happened to Job.

3) But God provoked the situation and allowed it.

5) Conclusion

A)   Maybe the privation of good theory does not fully explain all evil, but it is a useful way to understand some evil.

B) Evil is like a ladder with a missing wrung.

1) The ladder is a good thing.

2) The danger and evil is the empty space where the wrung should be.

3) The gap does not have life of its own, but it is real enough to cause a fatal fall.

4) The most important thing for us to know is not how the missing wrung came to be missing, but that God has filled the gap and put it back together for us through his Son, Jesus.