Augustine handout #1—On Free Choice of the Will
1. Is God the cause of evil?
Answer; If you know or believe God is good—and it would be wrong to think otherwise—
He does not do evil. Again, if we admit God is just—and it would be wicked also to deny
this—He both rewards the good and punishes the bad. Now these punishments are evils to
those who suffer them. Consequently, if no one is punished unjustly—as we must
necessarily believe, since we believe everything is ruled by God’s providence—God is
certainly not the cause of the first kind of evil, but He is the cause of the second ki nd.
Response: God is not the cause of evil. Evodius asked that if God was evil. There are two
kinds of evil, one, of doing evil and the other, of suffering evil. If all suffering is fair,
while the suffering evil is the cause of god. I think that interpretation is a little narrow.
For example, Cain killed Abel. This example shows that the reason is God, is not it?
Also, the cause of evildoing is not the God. Evil people are the authors of their evildoing.
2. Did we learn how to evil?
Answer: Perhaps because he turns away from, because he abandons, his teaching, which is
the same as his learning. But however that may be, it is undoubtedly clear that since
teaching is a good thing, and teaching and learning go together, evil cannot possibly be
learnt. If it were learnt, it would be part of teaching, and so teaching would not be a good.
But you yourself grant that it is. Therefore evil is not learnt, and it is useless to ask from
whom we learn to do evil. If evil is learnt, we learn what ought to be avoided, not what
ought to be done. Hence to do wrong is nothing else than to disobey teaching.
Response: Evil cannot possibly be learnt, because learning is good. Evildoing is merely
a departure from learning.; all understanding is good, and the uncomprehending is not
to learn, so every scholar is to be good.
3. What is the source of our evildoing? Can we trace back our sins to God? —If the
sins come from our souls, and our souls come from God, so our sins indirectly
come from God?
Answer: (1) So if anyone wants to find the cause of our learning anything, he really wants
to find the cause of our doing good. Give up, then, your wish to discover a teacher of evil.
If he is evil, he is not a teacher; if he is a teacher, he is not evil. (2) You are inquiring into
a problem which deeply interested me when I was quite a young man; it troubled me so
much that I was worn out and driven right into heresy. So low did I fall, and such was the
mass of empty fables which overwhelmed me, that, if God had not helped me because I
longed to find the truth, I could not have escaped, or recovered the primary freedom to
search. As I made great efforts to solve this problem, I will explain it to you in the way I
finally worked it out. God will help us, and make us understand what we believe. We can
be sure that we trading in the path pointed out by the Prophet who says: Unless you
believe you will not understand.”
Response: Through the analysis of adultery, murder and sacrilegious behavior, Augustine
pointed out that “Making the adultery became evil is lust.” It is clear now that nothing but
lust dominates in every kind of evildoing. Fear is contrary to the direction of greed.
Sometimes murder is to escape the fear of life, and the latter seems to be a good deed. For
example, slaves want to get rid of their masters and murder their masters, but in this fear
there is, in fact, a lust for something else, that is, love for what they cannot have. Lust is
the love of things one can lose against one’s will.
4. What is evildoing?
Answer: Your problem is to find the cause of our wrongdoing, and therefore we must first
discuss what doing wrong means. Explain your view about this… Well, possibly passion is
the evil in adultery…It is plain that nothing else than passion is the principal element in
this whole matter of wrongdoing… Have you persuaded yourself that such a crime ought
not to be punished, before considering whether the slave wished to be freed from fear of
his master in order to indulge his own passion? The desire to live without fear is common
both to all good and to all evil men…
Response: Evildoing is the action that is prohibited by law and regulations. And when
the temptation of desire is contrary to the order of reason, it is to do evil. We are
agreed that evil deeds are always evil simply because they are done through passion,
