St. Augustine made some very important philosophical contributions to defend the philosophy of Christianity. One of these contributions concerned the philosophical problem of evil. Up until St. Augustine's time, philosophers questioned the idea proposed by Christians that evil generated in a world created by a perfectly good God. The problem is easy enough to understand, yet slightly more complicated to solve. St. Augustine raised some fairly good propositions to offer an explanation for this question. Although the problem of evil has been answered for the most part, there are still many who disbelieve St. Augustine's interpretation of the dispute. To me, this is in good reason; the problem of evil is inherent to understanding the big picture that Christianity has to offer, and as such, it is not something that can be easily solved.
Augustine first tried to offer the idea that evil is the result of an alternative force that exists outside of God's Creation, and which serves as a nemesis to God.
Gods and sodas
Louis Comfort Tiffany, Window of St. Augustine, in...
Saint Augustine of Hippo, a seminal thinker on the...Very quickly Augustine discovered the problem with this solution; Christianity states that God is the sole Creator of the world and everything that exists in and outside of it. Obviously this does offer a little bit of a problem in itself, so Augustine moves on to attempt another observation. Augustine then attempts to claim - with the help of Platonic theory - that evil is not real and therefore was not created by God. I completely disagree with this statement; if God had no intention of evil appearing in his Creation, no bad would exist and there would be no reason to doubt God's existence. The problem to me in this solution is that if we had no reason to doubt the presence of God, to in effect see and more importantly feel Him through...