Explain How Augustine Justified the Existence of Natural Evil

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Evil has been seen as a problem for thousands of years. Epicurus stated “is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? He is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? He is malevolent. Is God both able and willing? Then whence commeth the evil. If he is neither able nor willing then why call him god?” This is called the inconsistent triad; if God has all these Omni qualities then why does evil still remain on earth? Augustine’s soul deciding theodicy was the demonstration that God is not responsible for the existence of evil. A theodicy is a Greek term which means to justify God and that is what Augustine tried to do. Augustine stated that there is no such thing or substance as Evil but the idea of evil stems from the absence of goodness and our human free will which is central to being truly good. God created all things ex nihilo, from nothing, so it is impossible for evil to exist as a substance. Augustine said that “Evil stemmed from the free fallible choices of beings…in the pre-history of time,” referring to the free will of Adam and Eve and the Fallen Angels. He believed that you can be saved from evil as long as you choose to be saved, he thought that we all could see the good act yet still go against it because we have free will to do whatever we want. Therefore Augustine said that Evil only existed due to having the ability of Free Will, and not due to God. All Evil is seen as a sin, moral evil, or a punishment for sin, natural evil, and the sin we receive now is the result of the original sin from Adam and Eve and the damnation of the earth and Lucifer the fallen angel. This is because we were all seminally present in the loins of Adam meaning when we are born we have sin and through baptism we wash away our sins. Lucifer defied God, when he made the humans Lucifer refused to bow down to the amazing creation he had made, this then led to the

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