Where does evil come from, if God is good and created everything that exists? This question trapped Saint Augustine for years. The answer he found changed the history of thought: evil is not a thing, it is the absence of a due good.
The problem that held him back
Before converting, Augustine was a Manichaean. Manichaeism explained evil in an intuitive way: there are two eternal principles, light and darkness, good and evil, in permanent war. Evil would be a substance, a dark matter. The advantage of this idea is to free God from guilt for evil; the price is that God ceases to be all-powerful, sharing the throne with an eternal rival.
The answer: deprivation, not substance
Reading the Neoplatonists and maturing his faith, Augustine saw the way out. Evil has no being of its own: it is privatio boni, deprivation of a good. Just as blindness is not an object, but the lack of vision, and the hole is not a thing, but the absence of matter, evil is the lack of a perfection that should exist.
From this follows a luminous statement: everything that exists, while it exists, is good. Corruption can only attack what is good, because there is only something that can corrupt where there was good. There are not two eternal forces: there is good, and its faults.
The moral evil
And the evil we committed? It comes from the will that goes astray: a beloved good in the wrong order, as in the theft of pears. Evil is not love for nothing, it is disordered love.
This turnaround is one of the six great arguments of Confessions, a work read in the context of ancient church history.
In-depth study
Church History Course, with Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Bitencourt
In-depth reading of the work of Daniel Rops, where Augustine's conversion and the world that formed him appear in full.
Discover the courseFrequently asked questions
What does evil mean as the absence of good?
It means that evil is not a created thing or substance, but the lack of a good that should be present. Blindness is the absence of vision, not an object; evil is privation (privatio boni).
Why was this idea important to Augustine?
Because it solves the problem that tied him to Manichaeism. If evil is not a substance, God did not create it and there are not two eternal principles at war. Everything that exists, while it exists, is good.
What is the Manichaeism that Augustine abandoned?
A doctrine that explained evil as an eternal principle, a dark substance in struggle with light. Augustine followed her for years, and left her when he understood evil as a deprivation, not a thing.
Continue: Confessions: summary and analysis · The robbery of the pears · What is time, according to Augustine
Source class (YouTube): Confissões, de Santo Agostinho (NousCast)