Algunas notas del texto de William E. Mann Sobre agustín y el mal.
WILLIAM E. MANN Augustine on evil and original sin*
Before his conversion to Christianity, Augustine conceived of God as a supremely good being who is “incorruptible, inviolable, and immutable” (Conf. 7.1.1). At the same time, he was aware of the existence of evil in the world, evil that can be divided into two major classes. First, physical objects have limitations and defects. In particular, the limitations of living things result in hardship, pain, illness, and death. Secondly, there are people who behave wickedly and whose souls are characterized by such vices as pride, envy, greed, and lust.
It would seem that a supremely good God would prevent or eradicate as much evil as he possibly could. The problem of evil, then, is to see whether and how it might be both that God exists and that evil exists. (p. 40)
With his conversion to Christianity Augustine came to think that a proper
solution to the problem of evil must depart radically from the Manichaeans in its conceptions of God and evil. Augustine came to think that God is a spiritual, not a corporeal, being. Augustine thus rejects Manichaeism’s materialistic dualism but embraces a different dualism between corporeal and spiritual beings, with God, angels, and human souls falling into the latter class.
God’s incorporeal nature is not sufficient to dispel Manichaeism, for a persis- tent Manichaean might hold that there is still an ultimate, invincible source of evil, be it corporeal or incorporeal. This alternative is denied by Augustine’s insistence that God is rightfully sovereign over all other beings. Even if the attrib- utes of incorruptibility, inviolability, and immutability do not preclude their multiple instantiation in antagonistic forces, sovereignty does: no being can be supremely sovereign if there is another being over which it cannot prevail.
God’s sovereignty over all other things is grounded in the fact that he created them. Two features of Augustine’s account of creation are especially important to his resolution of the problem of evil: that God creates ex nihilo, out of nothing, and that everything that God creates is good. (p. 41)
It is not evident that Augustine thinks that if God decides to create, then God must create the best world that he can. Creation is indeed very good (De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber 1.3, echoing Genesis 1.31), created out of the “full- ness of [God’s] goodness” (Conf. 13.2.2; 13.4.5). Augustine adds that God will not create a thing unless he knows that it is good (De civ. Dei 11.21). At the same time, however, Augustine offers the following observations. No created being had a claim against God to be created (Conf. 13.2.2–3). If Augustine endorses the more general thesis that no being, actual or possible, had such a claim, then it follows that God would have wronged no actual being in omitting to create it and that God has wronged no potential but non-actual being in omitting to create it. God did not create out of any need, nor to perfect any deficiency in himself (Conf. 13.4.5). God thus knowingly creates a good world, but Augustine’s remarks do not entail the Timaeus thesis that this world is as good a world as God could create. Perhaps naively, perhaps slyly, Augustine charac- terizes Plato’s doctrine simply as the doctrine that the most accurate explanation for the world’s creation is that good works are made by a good God (De civ. Dei 11.21). Aquinas would later distinguish between a world’s being composed of the best possible parts and a world’s having the best possible order among its parts, even if the parts themselves are not the best. Aquinas argued that the created world must be as good as possible in terms of the order imposed on it by God, but that it need not be populated by the best possible components.1 I have not found Aquinas’ distinction in Augustine’s writings. If Augustine does regard the created world as best in either of Aquinas’ senses, that regard is not a prom- inent part of his philosophy.
But Augustine does insist that every creature is good insofar as it exists (De nat. boni c. Man. 1). How then, is there evil? (p 43)
No creature, then, is evil, in spite of the fact that some creatures are worse than others (De nat. boni c. Man. 14). The word “evil,” when predicated of creatures, refers to a privation, an absence of goodness where goodness might have been (Conf. 3.7.12). If we are audacious enough to enquire why God allows such pri- vations to occur, we are apt to be reminded of the following points. First, crea- tures have a natural tendency towards mutability and corruption, an unavoidable liability of their having been created ex nihilo. Secondly, we are subject to per- spectival prejudices, failing to see how local privations, especially the ones that affect us, contribute to the good of the whole. The distinctive twist that Augustine puts on this now-familiar point is that for him the assessment of the
good of the whole is more diachronic than synchronic. One who laments the passing away of particular ephemeral things should realize that to wish that they might last forever is to wish that not they but some other kind of being existed. Moreover, their passing away ushers in new, good creatures. Finally, there is order and beauty to be found in this very dynamic passage, analogous to the way in which speech is made possible by the coming to be and passing away of pho- nemes, or music by the sequential production of notes (De lib. arb. 3.9.24–25; 3.15.42–43). Thirdly, “God owes nothing to anyone” (ibid. 3.16.45). On the con- trary, anything that exists owes its entire existence to God’s grace.
But “evil” is sometimes predicated of the choices and actions of creatures pos- sessing reason. The second stage of Augustine’s treatment of the problem of evil begins here, presupposing, however, the results of the first stage.
4. As I have said, therefore, sin is not a desire for naturally evil things, but an abandonment of better things. And this itself is evil, not that nature which the sinner uses evilly. For evil is to use a good evilly. (De nat. boni c. Man. 36)
5. But perhaps you are going to ask: since the will is moved when it turns away from an immutable good to a mutable good, from whence does this movement arise? It [the movement] is actually evil, even though a free will is to be counted among the good things, since without it no one can live rightly. For if that movement, that is, the will’s turning away from the Lord God, is without doubt a sin, how can we say that God is the author of the sin? Thus that move- ment will not be from God. From whence then will it come? If I respond thus to your querying – that I do not know – perhaps you will be disappointed – but nevertheless I would respond truly. For that which is nothing cannot be known. (De lib. arb. 2.20.54) (p 44-45)
Pride is also the initial evil impulse behind the fall of Adam and Eve (De Gen. ad litt. 11.5.7; De civ. Dei 14.13). The Devil’s tempting of Adam and Eve did not coerce their fall, for if the temptation had been coercive, then their punishment would be unjust. Adam and Eve voluntarily succumbed to the temptation because of their prideful fascination with the thought that they would become like God. Augustine takes this similarity between the two cases to warrant the claim that sin entered the created world through pride. At the same time he is careful to insist that pride is not a component in all sins; as he points out, some sins are committed in ignorance or desperation (De natura et gratia 29.33).4
Adam and Eve’s fall ushered into the world original sin, which is not an event but rather a condition (De pecc. merit. et remis. 1.9.9–1.12.15). It is the condi- tion imposed by God as punishment on Adam and Eve for disobedience. According to Augustine the condition includes dispossession from a naturally perfect environment, the loss of natural immortality and the acquisition of sus- ceptibility to physical pain, fatigue, disease, aging, and rebellious bodily disor- ders, especially sexual lust (De Gen. ad litt. 11.32.42; De civ. Dei 14.16–19). The condition is not only pathological, it is inherited, infecting every descendant of Adam and Eve. The condition is innate, not acquired; as Augustine puts it, it is transmitted by propagation, not imitation (De pecc. merit. et remis. 1.9.9–1.12.15). Augustine’s view, then, is that our first ancestors squandered their patrimony and our inheritance and – as if that were not bad enough – thereby contracted a suite of infirmities that is passed on to all their progeny. (p. 47)
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