Why Does Evil Exist? (St. Augustine) - a podcast by Dre Carlan

Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com

Material referenced:

“...evil is nothing but the removal of good until finally no good remains.”
-Confessions, Book III, Ch. 7


“...’evil’ is merely a name for the privation of good.”
-City of God, Book XI, Ch. 22


“For you evil does not exist, and not only for you but for the whole of your creation as well, because there is nothing outside it which could invade it and break down the order which you have imposed on it. Yet in the separate parts of your creation there are some things which we think of as evil because they are at variance with other things.”
-Confessions, Book VII, Ch. 13


“But God, who is supremely good in his creation of natures that are good, is also completely just in his employment of evil choices in his design, so that whereas such evil choices make a wrong use of good natures, God turns evil choices to good use. Thus when the Devil, who was good as God created him, became bad by his own choice, God caused him to be cast down to a lower station and to become a derision to the angels of God; and this means that the Devil’s temptations prove to be for the benefit of God’s saints, though the Devil longs to injure them thereby.”
-City of God, Book XI, Ch. 17


“The truth is that one should not try to find an efficient cause for a wrong choice. It is not a matter of efficiency, but of deficiency; the evil will itself is not effective but defective. For to defect from him who is the Supreme Existence, to something of less reality, this is to begin to have an evil will. To try to discover the causes of such defection — deficient, not efficient causes — is like trying to see darkness or to hear silence. Yet we are familiar with darkness and silence, and we can only be aware of them by means of eyes and ears, but this is not by perception but by absence of perception.”
-City of God, Book XII, Ch. 7

Further episodes of The Summit Study Hall

Further podcasts by Dre Carlan

Website of Dre Carlan