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The free will and the evil in Saint Augustine

The free will and the evil in Saint Augustine

Bellei, Ricardo J.,

Buzinaro, Délcio Marques

Mirabilia – Journal of Ancient and Medieval History, Vol. 11,  Jan-Jun (2010)

Abstract

Saint Augustine (354-340). One of the greatest exponents of the Christian philosophy is inserted in a reality where the Christianity has just become his official doctrine of the Roman Empire and still hasn’t got solid basis of his doctrines. A time of arising heresies. In some cases, the own saint himself had important role in the combat such as the Manichaeism and the pelagianismo. Against the Manichaeism which confirmed that the good (spirit) and the evil (something solid) were enemy eternal forces, that were in struggle – Augustine develops his system to solve the evil problem, fully unlinking Good, (the supreme God and creator of everything) from such reality and nothing that the blame of the evil presence in the world, thus, the moral evil or the sin. The physical evil would be, however, an unfolding of the sin.

Click here to read this Portuguese article from Mirabilia

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