3.2 theodicy detention (add after cards before made)

Question 1

What are the strengths of Augustine’s theodicy? (add the ones from powerpoint when revising)

Answer 1

• creates nuance through bridging the gap between God & humans; Augustine acknowledges angels who were created as immortal, free beings - as a level of creation between God & humans, existing alongside God in the heavens
• he quotes scripture: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!”
• he understands that at some point humans become mortal & makes the argument this was a result of the original sin of humans & through this & further sins God’s creation was corrupted & the natural goodness of the world disappeared; sin has perpetuated from this point onwards
• Augustine notes how original sin was passed on: “[This lust] is the daughter of sin, as it were; and whenever it yields assent to the commission of shameful deeds; it becomes also the mother or many sins. Now from the concupiscence whatever comes into being by natural birth is bound by original sin
• Augustine explains that moral evil is the voluntary turning away of free beings from good
• Augustine acknowledges Jesus’s atonement to save humans from sin & is a part of Augustine’s theology of ‘grace’: grace is what fills the gap between human moral weakness & the certainty of hell
• God’s decision about who is destined for heaven or hell - predestination - is not based on his omniscient foreknowledge but upon his wisdom, which is outside human knowledge
• he makes an educated hypothesis on natural disasters by explaining that the disharmony between nature & human beings is because of the misuse of free will

Question 2

What are the weaknesses of Augustine’s theodicy? (add the ones from powerpoint when revising)

Answer 2

• his theological perspective that Satan used his free will to corrupt other angels, to corrupt Adam & Eve, & also to corrupt the natural order of the earth & he believes that in this the punishment for disobedience was the introduction of death; this doesn’t come across as realistic
• he gives a muddled description of natural evil; that natural evil is Satan using his free will to corrupt the earth’s natural order, & God then using natural disasters as punishment for human moral evil
• Augustine wrongly insists that all suffering is the ‘deserved’ consequence of human & angelic sin, & creates a world that is at a distance from God; in this way, all humans, including newborn babies, deserve to suffer, because the sin of Adam is inherited seminally through sex; however contextually the motives of death were not as advanced at his time so may have been seen as a more accurate causation