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B.G. Prusak’s “An Analysis of Augustine’s Argument in 
Confessions That Evil Does Not Exist”: A Response

JONATHAN P. YATES

Villanova University 
jonathan.yates@villanova.edu

[The Son] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all crea-
tion. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on 
earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or 
authorities--all things have been created through Him and for Him. 
He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

Col. 1:15-17 (NASB)

Prusak’s analysis of and commentary upon Augustine’s argument  
regarding the non-existence of evil is as thoughtful as it is brief.  
Indeed, Prusak is to be lauded for the skill and acumen he employs 
in boiling down the dominant issue of Book VII of the Confessions to 
a nine-pointed analysis and, still more impressively, in calling Augus-
tine’s argument into question in such an abbreviated space. In what 
follows, however, I will attempt to show that, despite his skill and acu-
men, neither Prusak’s analysis nor his conclusion is thorough enough 
to compel us to follow him in what I take to be his major assertion, 
viz. that Augustine’s conceptions regarding the nature of creation and 
the nature of evil are both something less than fully compelling. After 
a brief introductory section which comments on Prusak’s paragraph 
of prolegomena, my formal response to his sections of analysis and 
observations will be presented. That response will be comprised of four 
disparate but nevertheless connected summary points, each of which, 
in turn, will be accompanied by a brief explanation.  

Prusak’s five-sentence prolegomena is clear and concise. Indeed, if 
it has a flaw it is that it is too concise. That is, while none of these 
sentences can be said to be inaccurate in se, several of them could use 
further qualification. First and foremost of these is the idea that the 
“bedrock belief ” that “creation is good” is “[p]erhaps … the Augus-

mailto:jonathan.yates@villanova.edu


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tinian belief.” While I am more than comfortable with any view that 
asserts that this is a fundamental “augustinian” or, more accurately, a 
fundamental Judeo-Christian belief, it would be more accurate and, 
in fact, more helpful for the issue at hand, to say that the existence of 
a single, immutable, incorruptible, and good God is the Augustinian 
belief.1 Pushing the discussion back this one step—since it obviously 
remains an essential, if only secondary, “augustinian” belief that the 
one God who possesses the aforementioned attributes is the One who 
is solely and uniquely responsible for the good creation—is necessary 
because it more accurately frames the discussion in its proper theologi-
cal and metaphysical terms.2 Along these same lines, allow me to note 
at the outset that any reader of the Confessions or, indeed, of (most of ) 
what posterity has preserved from Augustine, does well to keep “on the 
table” at all times the impact that the Manichaeans and their (largely) 
Gnostic and thoroughly dualist creation mythology had upon Augus-
tine. 

Prusak’s next sentence needs no such alteration. On the contrary, the 
sentiment it contains can only be supplemented by noting that not a 
few contemporary scholars of Augustine’s thought have drawn very 
similar conclusions. Easily one of the best of these is John rist who 
writes: “‘Unde malum?’ … and its more fearsome associate ‘Whence 
did moral evil arise?’ … was the most important and more enduring 
challenge to Augustine throughout his life” (1994, 261).3   

The prolegomena’s fourth sentence would also benefit from the inser-
tion of a qualifying phrase: strictly speaking, Augustine does not deny 
that “evil exists”; on the contrary, he clearly and frequently recognizes 
that many things include evil within themselves as part of what they 
truly are in this post-lapsarian world and, just as importantly, as we 
encounter and experience them in our daily lives. Augustine’s actual 
claim is that evil has no independent or metaphysical existence in our 
universe precisely because it was created by the God who possesses all 
of the attributes mentioned above.4 In other words, Augustine is keenly 
aware that evil or, more precisely still, partially evil things do exist. His 
broader claim is that evil can only exist by latching onto and embed-
ding itself within something else; indeed, like any common parasite, in 
his view evil can only subsist if and when it is “hosted” by the already 



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corrupted nature of an otherwise and originally wholly good thing.5 
For Augustine, it can be said to follow logically from this that it is 
actually evil itself which is absurd precisely because it is fundamentally 
self-defeating: for the Bishop of Hippo, “[e]vil is … absurd … for to 
the extent that it succeeds it can only destroy that upon which it lives” 
(Hick 1966, 54).6 

Having offered these brief comments and qualifications to Prusak’s 
framing of the issue, I will now move on to my response proper. As 
mentioned above, that response will be confined to four major points. 

1. Augustine’s argument is thoroughly traditional.

While it is demonstrably true that Augustine augmented and other-
wise refined what he inherited from his predecessors, the fact remains 
that he was neither the first Late Antique thinker nor the first Christian 
to respond to these questions as he did. In fact, much of his viewpoint 
and argumentation surrounding the problem had been firmly estab-
lished in both Neoplatonic and Christian circles for at least a century 
and a half before he began to compose his Confessions.7 Such a position 
was especially commonplace in Christian milieus that were consciously 
attempting to harmonize the Jewish revelation of omnipotent mono-
theism and (broadly conceived) Platonic metaphysics and ontology.8 
And, so far as we know, Augustine’s first profound encounter with such 
a milieu came in Milan and during the period in which he was sitting 
under Bishop Ambrose’s teaching.9 

To cite just one example of a non-“augustinian” text that pre-dates 
Augustine’s conversion, notice the numerous ways in which both the 
categories and the terminology of Athanasius, the fourth-century pro-
Nicene Bishop of Alexandria, parallel those employed decades later by 
Augustine. Especially noteworthy is the degree to which the following 
excerpt from Athanasius’s De Incarnatione includes the ideas for which 
Prusak takes Augustine to task—including presuppositions about the 
goodness of creation, humanity’s creation ex nihilo, the linkage between 
corruption and existence, and, most importantly, the idea that “evil” is, 
in some sense,10 connected to “non-being”:

[W]e know that, because there is Mind behind the universe, it did 
not originate itself; because God is infinite, not finite, it was not made 



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from pre-existent matter, but out of nothing and out of non-existence 
absolute and utter God brought it into being through the Word. He 
says as much in Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens 
and the earth …” (Gen. 1:1) For God is good—or rather, of all good-
ness He is Fountainhead […] But since the will of man could turn 
either way, God secured this grace that He had given by making it 
conditional from the first upon two things—namely, a law and a place. 
He set them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a single prohi-
bition [… however,] having turned from the contemplation of God 
to evil of their own devising, [they] had come inevitably under the 
law of death. Instead of remaining in the state in which God had cre-
ated them, they were in process of becoming corrupted entirely, and 
death had them completely under its dominion. For the transgression 
of the commandment was making them turn back again according to 
their nature; and as they had at the beginning come into being out 
of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through 
corruption, to non-existence again. The presence and love of the Word 
had called them into being; inevitably, therefore, when they lost the 
knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who 
exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good. By na-
ture, of course, man is mortal, since he was made from nothing; but he 
bears also the Likeness of Him Who is, and if he preserves that Like-
ness through constant contemplation, then his nature is deprived of 
its power and he remains incorrupt. So is it affirmed in Wisdom: “The 
keeping of His laws is the assurance of incorruption.” 

(Wisd. of Sol. 6:18)11

As important as the tradition or, more specifically, what he under-
stood to be the catholic tradition was to Augustine, it is just as eas-
ily shown that, with respect to this question, Scripture was at least as 
central to his thought. That is to say that, while it is all but impossible 
to divorce Augustine’s attitude toward and reading of Scripture from 
the community and the tradition which he joined when he commit-
ted himself to catholic Christianity, it remains true that in arguing for 
the source and nature of evil as he did, Augustine was also consciously 
defending both the letter and the spirit of (significant parts of ) the 
Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament as he now understood 
them. In addition to Genesis 1, the import of which Prusak clearly 



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acknowledges in his critique, Augustine, once he came to fully accept 
the authority of the Jewish scriptural tradition, would have recognized 
the need to incorporate the claims and implications of passages from 
the Psalms and the Prophets such as Psalm 24:1-2; 74:12-17; 89:6-19; 
90:1-6; 95:1-5; Isaiah 40:1-31 and 44:24-25—just to name a few of 
the more prominent. Texts germane to this issue are still more numer-
ous and more prominent in the later and, hence, significantly more 
Hellenized New Testament. In addition to the text from Colossians 
used as this article’s epigraph, relevant passages include: Matthew 
7:15-20; John 1:1-3; romans 1:19-21; 8:18-39; 11:36; 1 Corinthians 
8:5-6; Ephesians 1:10; 1 Timothy 4:1-5; Hebrews 1:2-4; James 1:17; 
and revelation 4:11. This list could be easily extended.[12]      

While Augustine nowhere betrays any hesitancy with respect to 
these necessary presuppositions, it remains true that they did markedly  
restrict the number of “moves” or “ways forward” that were open to 
him as a committed catholic Christian. 

2. Augustine’s argument as found in Book VII of the Confes-
sions is neither the first nor the most detailed locus within his 
oeuvre which makes this argument. 

While it certainly is an important and interesting passage with respect 
to Augustine’s views on the source, nature, and effects of evil, Confes-
sions VII is by no means the only portion of Augustine’s extant works 
that merits study and reflection when assessing the coherence and the 
validity of his arguments. Chronologically speaking, there are at least 
four significant portions of his oeuvre that predate the Confessions; 
likewise, there are numerous germane passages in compositions from 
the last two decades of his life that emerged as he battled the implica-
tions that he understood to be latent within the Pelagians’ teachings.13 
These “anti-Pelagian” texts should in no wise be regarded as accidental 
or as texts Augustine included in these works “in passing.” On the 
contrary, it was the Pelagians in general and Julian of Aeclanum in 
particular who resurrected and reformulated the charge that Augustine 
had in thought—if not in actual allegiance—remained a Manichaean 
all along. What is truly remarkable about all of these passages is the 
degree of consistency that they exhibit. That is, even if one compares a 



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pre-Confessions text in which Augustine discusses his views on evil with 
one composed in response to Julian of Aeclanum in the 420s, one is 
immediately struck by their profound degree of overlap and similari-
ty—especially in the language that is used. Given this, the reflective 
reader of Augustine might well conclude that for more than forty-five 
years neither Augustine nor his contemporary readers (including both 
supporters and opponents) were able to detect significant flaws in or 
substantial problems with his original argument’s power and coher-
ence. This, of course, is another way of saying that, if Augustine’s pre-
suppositions are granted, it must be significant that the closest any 
of Augustine’s contemporaries could come to indicting his argument 
regarding the nature of evil is when Julian, who so adamantly opposed 
Augustine’s theology and vision of the world, had to resort to accus-
ing Augustine of remaining a “closet Manichaean,” the very position 
which Augustine’s argument about the nature of evil was specifically 
adopted to overcome and refute.    

3. Augustine’s argument, while firmly committed to both plau-
sibility and rationality, is first and foremost a Christian ar-
gument that, when necessary, prioritizes faith and revelation 
over rationality and logic. 

Although the comment comes in a context in which dilemmas related 
to the nature of grace are being discussed, James O’donnell’s charac-
terization of Augustine’s methodology is at least as applicable to the 
questions that surround the nature and source(s) of evil: 

Augustine does not have a simple, comprehensive solution acceptable 
to all for these dilemmas. His principle, as in the question of original 
sin, is to cling to what he knows for certain, to attempt to provide 
explanations for difficulties, but then to stand with what he knows by 
faith even when logical difficulties remain. Here, as always, revelation 
and experience are everything for Augustine; the arguments of the dia-
lecticians have no authority. (O’donnell 1985, 76)

An exceedingly clear illustration of this principle of prioritization in 
general and of revelation over logic can be highlighted if one makes 
reference to the Latin text of Confessions VII, xii, 18, the very passage 
upon which Prusak’s critique of Augustine would have us focus. In 



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Latin, that paragraph’s first clause runs:

Et manifestatum est mihi quoniam bona sunt quae corrumpuntur, …

This clause might literally be rendered: “And it was revealed to me that 
good (things) are things that could be corrupted.”14 In rex Warner’s 
translation, i.e., the version that Prusak references, this clause runs: 
“And it became clear to me that things which are subject to corruption 
are good” (Augustine 1963, 140).15 As Prusak recognizes, this clause 
begins a sentence that contains several elements—both explicit and 
implicit—that are crucial to Augustine’s argument and general orien-
tation. However, Prusak’s comments do not extend to what is clearly 
a crucial term of the aforementioned clause and, indeed, the one that, 
in my view, sets the tone for much, if not for all, of what immediately 
follows: manifestatum est. This term, which is a passive form of the 
verb manifesto, may, depending upon the context in which it is used, 
be legitimately translated as “to manifest,” “to show clearly,” “to make 
clear,” or “to reveal”—to list just a few of the most obvious possibilities. 
Given both the term’s typical usage in the Confessions, which O’donnell 
correctly observes to be “always of truth and usually of divine indica-
tion” (1992, 448),16 and the immediately preceding context, i.e., VII, 
xi, 17, which is a brief meditation on the necessary contingency of all 
created things upon the God who alone “unchangeably abides [incom-
mutabiliter manet]” and which contains a four-link catena of passages 
from both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament that is clearly 
designed to highlight their common assertion that it is necessary for 
the believer to “abide” in God, it seems easy to justify a translation that 
makes explicit a claim that is only implicit in Augustine. 

Also notable here is the fact that precisely this same phrase, albeit 
coupled together with the past tense of the verb “to see” [uidi], occurs 
again some fifteen lines later in this same paragraph. This time the 
“revelatory” nuance of the verb is yet more obvious in that: (1) it is 
part of sentence that addressed God directly; and (2) it is immediately 
followed by an expansionist gloss on Gen 1 and that chapter’s claims 
regarding God’s activity: 

Itaque uidi et manifestatum est mihi quia omnia boni tu fecisti et prorsus 
nullae substantiae sunt quas tu non fecisiti. 



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Warner renders this as, “So I saw plainly and clearly that you have 
made all things good, nor are there any substances at all which you 
have not made” (Augustine 1963, 141).17 Given the immediate con-
text, however, something along these lines seems significantly better:  
“And thus I saw, and it was revealed to me that You have made all good 
things and there are absolutely no substances (in existence) which you 
have not made.”18

Now, if it is granted that Augustine’s prioritization of revelation over 
rationality is an acceptable and legitimate way for a Christian theolo-
gian to proceed, then it also becomes necessary to inquire as to whether 
or not Augustine’s theologizing is, in this particular case, sensible or, at 
least, not irrational. This very question has been asked by more than a 
few contemporary philosophers and logicians, not all of whom are in 
sympathy with either Augustine’s presuppositions or his conclusions. 
Nevertheless, at least one has concluded that:

whether or not we can share Augustine’s faith that it will be revealed to 
us some day that the distribution of good and evil in this life reflects 
wholly just judgments on God’s part, this does provide a possible an-
swer to the problem of evil. That is, although one might not believe it, 
or one might rebel against it, there is nothing necessarily self-contradicto-
ry in the answer. (Griffin 1976, 199; italics added)   

Like Paul and many of the Christians who had preceded him, Augus-
tine was or, at least, had become, content with the hope that the full 
uindicatio of both his God, his God’s attributes, and his faith in that 
God could only fully and finally be made manifest at a still-future time 
that He Himself would bring about, that is, in God’s own eschaton.  

4. To reject Augustine’s argument places one under the onus 
of several significant theological and philosophical implica-
tions. 

Critique tout court is easy; “constructive” critique is among the most 
difficult of all intellectual endeavors—especially if by “constructive” 
one means critique that is  required to (a) be fair; (b) replace faulty 
axioms and assumptions; (c) correct the errors that it highlights; and 
(d) move the discussion forward. And, if constructive critique is almost 
always a challenge, it is infinitely more so when the views under scru-



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tiny are derivative from a mind as powerful as was Augustine’s. 
For the sake of space, I will not endeavor to discuss each of the above 

requirements in detail. However, space does permit me to observe 
that, in connection with “b” above, if Prusak in fact rejects Augustine’s 
thoroughly traditional argument, such a rejection behooves Prusak to  
explain how and with what he will replace it. More explicitly, it would 
seem that Prusak must reckon with the possibility that his rejection 
almost certainly necessitates that he abandon traditional monotheism 
and, by extension, traditional Christianity. This is due to the afore-
mentioned fact that traditional Christianity has always declared its 
God to be eternally existent, eternally self-generating, wholly good, 
and wholly immutable. Broadly considered, it would seem that any-
one who rejects a generally “augustinian” answer to this question is left 
with just four options: (a) atheism; (b) metaphysical dualism; (c) het-
erodox/non-traditional Christianity; or (d) coherently explaining how 
evil can metaphysically exist in a universe created and sustained by an 
all-powerful, wholly good, and wholly immutable God by means other 
than those employed by the “augustinian” argument and the broader 
tradition that it was so frequently employed to defend. Incidentally, 
“d” is, at least to my knowledge, de facto “off the table” given the fact 
that, thus far, it is a goal that no one, anywhere, at any time has been 
able to achieve.

Epilogue: King Lear’s “augustinianism.”

Finally, if I may, I would like to offer the briefest of responses to Pru-
sak’s question “Is Shakespeare Augustinian [in King Lear]?” Given the 
foregoing pages, it should be obvious that I believe that the plot and 
the action of King Lear both assume and are set in a universe that is 
very “augustinian.” However, the foregoing should also make it plain 
that, as a man whose Christianity was formed in the late sixteenth-
century and whose tradition was both rooted in biblical language and 
conversant—if something less than completely comfortable—with the 
classical Greek philosophical tradition, Shakespeare, like Augustine, 
could hardly be expected to have done otherwise.   



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Notes

1. For more on the significance of this and other assumptions for Augustine’s view, 
see below. Consider also Conf. VII, vii, 11 where Augustine confesses his reli-
ance upon several presuppositions that God allowed him to hold onto—despite 
the fact that he could find “no solution” to the problem of evil and, indeed, 
had yet to (re-)convert to catholic Christianity. These presuppositions included:  
(1) that God exists; (2) that God is immutable; (3) that God cares for humanity. 
Finally, note the pithy remarks of O’donnell in his commentary on Conf. III,vii,12  
regarding why this question emerged with such particular acuity in Late Antiq-
uity: “It is insistence on the goodness of God that makes the question a pressing 
one” (O’donnell 1992, 186).

2. Although a full exposition of its significance would take us too far afield from the 
purpose of this essay, it is more than noteworthy that the chapters and paragraphs 
that precede Augustine’s detailed discussion of the nature of evil in Book VII are 
laden with assertions—both Scriptural and non-Scriptural—about God’s nature 
and attributes. See, e.g., ii, 3; iii, 4; iii, 5; iv, 6; and v, 7 on God’s incorruptibility, 
immutability, supreme goodness, omniscience, and omnipotence. Also crucial 
is the placement of a catena of Scripture—including Exodos 3:14 and its all- 
important claim, stemming from God Himself, that “I am who I am”—in the 
two paragraphs immediately prior to Augustine’s discussion of the nature of evil 
that begins at VII, xii, 18. Cf. also Griffin 1976, 201:  “For Augustine, the evil 
will is the one thing in the universe that God did not create. […] The will as 
such is … created. But God does not create its evil volitions; in fact, these evil 
volitions have no efficient cause at all, but only a deficient cause. Only upon this 
basis could Augustine simultaneously reject Manichaean dualism and yet avoid 
suggesting that his own monotheistic God was responsible for the world’s evil.”

3. Also important here are the facts that Augustine made reference to this problem 
consistently throughout the years 386–430 and that, by Augustine’s own admission, 
this complex of problems was something that had preoccupied him even in the 
years before he converted to “orthodox” Christianity. See, e.g., Conf. III, vii, 12.

4. See also Cress 1989, 112–113: “Augustine knew perfectly well that evil is indeed 
lively, vivid, obscenely powerful.” And “in declaring evil to be non-being, Augus-
tine is neither metaphysically obtuse nor morally perverse about his account of 
the nature of evil.”



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5. This important and necessary distinction is made quite eloquently by G.r. Evans 
in Augustine on Evil (1982, 75), where she notes that, for Augustine, although 
“[n]o body is simultaneously black and white, … something may be simulta-
neously good and evil; indeed, since evil cannot exist except by borrowing the 
existence of the good in which it inheres, there can be no evil unless there is 
simultaneously good and evil. If there is no good for evil to diminish, it is not 
there at all.”

6. See also Note 7, below.  Moreover, given that (one of ) the primary attribute(s) of 
evil is that of destruction, it also follows that it could neither have always existed 
nor exist forever—either in eternity past or in eternity future: like a “consumer-
ist” economy, if the resources which evil consumes for its own sustenance are 
finite, it must eventually “consume” itself out of existence.

7. This statement should not be taken as a claim that it is within Neoplatonism that 
positions similar to Augustine’s can first be detected. On the contrary, related 
ideas, claims, and concepts can also be found in Plato, Epicurus, and Aristotle. 
For Aristotle’s important but very brief and somewhat cryptic remarks, see The 
Nicomachean Ethics IV, 5, where he notes that “evil destroys even itself, and if it 
is complete, becomes unbearable.” For this translation, see Aristotle 1998, 97; for 
the Greek text, see NE 1126a12 (Aristotle 1894, 81). In context, Aristotle’s chief 
concern in this passage is anger and, specifically, explaining how patience (praotēs) 
is the mean between irascibility (orgilotēs) and excessive passivity or lack of spirit 
(aogēsia). For an interesting and explicit incorporation of this passage into an 
highly “augustinian” argument about the source and nature of evil, see Aquinas, 
ST Ia,49,3 where he writes: “[T]he Philosopher says that ‘if the wholly evil could 
be, it would destroy itself ’; because all good being destroyed (which it need be for 
something to be wholly evil), evil itself would be taken away (subtrahitur), since 
its subject is good.” Thomas’s Latin version of the aforementioned line from the 
Ethics reads: “si malum integrum sit, seipsum destruet.” For this English translation 
see Aquinas 1992, 36; for the Latin, see Aquinas 1967, 142.

8. This trend is most easily seen in authors, like Origen and Athanasius, who either 
originated in Alexandria, Egypt or were especially appreciative of Alexandrian 
theological methodology, like the Cappadocian fathers. For clear precursors to 
Augustine’s arguments, see, e.g., Origen, De Principiis II, 9, 2; Basil the Great, 
Hexameron, hom. 2, par. 4; Gregory of Nyssa, Catechism, 7; and Athanasius’s 
Contra Gentes, 7. See references (below) for editions of these works.  For still more 



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references, see Cress 1989, 123 and n.4.

9. For the details of this relationship as seen from Augustine’s point of view, see esp. 
Confessiones V, xiii, 23 ff. and the early chapters of Book VI. An equally impressive 
but much later passage that is germane to the question of Augustine’s intellectual 
debt to Ambrose on this and similar questions—albeit again one that is wholly 
from Augustine’s perspective—is Contra Iulianum I, 8, 36–39, 46 where, in a 
discussion with Julian about Augustine’s relationship to the Manichaeans, Augus-
tine specifically and repeatedly notes that it is “the catholic faith (catholica fides)” 
(as opposed to reason tout court) in general and the catholic faith as taught by 
Ambrose of Milan, whom Augustine specifically refers to here as “that teacher of 
mine (ille doctor meus),” in particular that provided him with both the incentive 
and the means to break with the Manichaeans once and for all. For an argument in  
favour of the idea that Augustine would have heard the ideas contained within  
Ambrose’s “book (liber)” entitled Isaac and the Soul, which discusses in some  
detail Ambrose’s defense of the idea that evil is merely a deprivation of the 
good, as he listened to Ambrose preach in Milan in 386, see Sertillanges 1948, 
124–125. For the claim that, in turn, it was Basil the Great who served as  
Ambrose’s primary source for his articulation, see Journet 1963, 33–34 (cited in 
Cress 1989, 123 and n.4).

10. Athanasius’s precise language here is potentially important for the discussion at 
hand. Though too complex to pursue in great depth here, note that, as he makes 
the all-important equation between “evil” and “non-being,” he says that “evil  
[ta kaka]” is “non-being [ouk onta].” This choice of phrase may take on anoth-
er level of significance when one realizes that, in some modern philosophers’ 
ontological discussions (e.g., Paul Tillich), the two ways of negating in Greek,  
mē (mh\) and ouk (ou0k), are deemed significant precisely because they help dis-
tinguish between “absolute non-being”—in the case of ouk—and, in the case of 
mē—“to the parasitic sort of non-being that is said to inhere in being.” Obvi-
ously, if one regards this distinction as valid, it becomes significant insofar as 
the “augustinian” position would seem to require that Athanasius use mē here, 
something that he clearly does not do. How precisely to account for Athanasius’s 
use of ouk, at least in this context, is a question that might benefit from further 
study. What seems beyond question is that this distinction would not have been 
grammatically necessary in this case in either classical or koiné Greek. For the 
aforementioned quotation from Cress, see 1989, 124 and n.15; cf. also 112–113 
as well as Hick 1966, 46–49, esp. 48.



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11. This work’s formal English title is The Incarnation of the Word of God. I have 
quoted an English translation (Athanasius 1944) by an anonymous member of 
the C.S.M.V. S.Th. religious order. For the Greek text, as well as an alternate 
English translastion see Athanasius 1971, 140–145.

12. For an interesting formal response to the claim that crucial aspects of the  
“augustinian” privation theory of evil is without biblical precedent, see Cress 
1989, 120–121.

13. See Note 9 (above). Augustinian compositions that address the problem of evil 
and that pre-date the Confessions include: De ordine I, 1–3, II, 23–24, and II, 
46–47 (386); Soliloquia I, 2, 2 (386/387); De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de 
moribus Manichaeorum II, v, 7 (387/389); De libero arbitrio uoluntatis I, i, 1–I, 
iv, 10 and III, xii–xiii, 36–III, xxi, 59 (388–395). Texts that are roughly con-
temporary include: De natura boni (399), which offers an excellent example of 
a text in which Augustine offers a significantly more detailed argument than 
he does in the Confessions.  Germane texts that were composed in the so-called  
“anti-Pelagian” period of 411–430 include: De natura et gratia 19, 21–20, 22 
(415); Contra aduersarium legis et prophetarum I, 5, 7 (421); Contra Iulianum I, 
8, 36–39, 46 (421/422); Enchiridion 10–12 (423–424); Contra Iulianum opus 
imperfectum III, 206 (428–430) and, perhaps most famously, De ciuitate dei XI, 
17–23 and XIV, 5–11 (Book XI was not completed before 417; Book XIV prob-
ably did not appear before 420).

14. A published example of a similarly literal translation is readily available from 
Philip Burton, who renders the phrase in question as, “It was revealed to me also 
that it is good things that are corrupted” (Augustine 2001, 149).

15. H. Chadwick translates the passage as follows: “It was obvious to me that things 
which are liable to corruption are good” (Augustine 1991, 124). While by no 
means inaccurate, in my view, this rendering, much like Warner’s, obscures both 
the potential significance and the probable source of the insight that, for Augus-
tine, clearly made such a profound difference in his ability to find rest and peace 
in the face of these obviously difficult problems.

16. Though I clearly concur with O’donnell’s etymological insight, I just as clearly 
depart from (and am puzzled by) his claim that “[h]ere the development that 
follows the first ‘manifestatum’ is purely Plotinian, with no scriptural overtones.” 
This is particularly true in light of the observations made already in my text and 
in O’donnell’s own comments on the immediately subsequent paragraph, i.e., 



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VII, xiii, 19, that “the context is now (?) made as scriptural as possible.” To raise 
just one objection: Why should we assume that, here, Augustine would even 
want to toggle so neatly between his reliance upon Scripture and the assistance 
he and the broader Christian tradition have received from Neoplatonism? Surely 
the real point throughout these paragraphs is to demonstrate, as so much of the 
previous Judeo-Christian tradition had attempted to do, that the two streams 
were compatible. In other words, to me, it seems better to recognize that this 
entire section’s Neoplatonism is only exceeded by its reliance upon the Bible and 
the catholic tradition.

17. Interestingly, Chadwick (see also Note 15, above) slightly modifies his translation 
of “manifestatum est” from “It was obvious to me” to “and it was made clear to 
me” (Augustine 1991, 124).

18. It is again helpful to compare this to Burton’s published translation: “Thus I saw 
and thus it was revealed to me that it is you who have made all good things, and 
that there are no substances at all that you have not made” (2001, 150).

Recommended Reading

The following secondary materials, most of which are cited in the text 
of this article, are useful for beginning to study Augustine’s account 
of evil. The list is highly selective, both in respect to the sheer amount 
of material that has been published on the topic and in that it only 
includes works published in English.

Burns 1988
Cress 1989
Evans 1982
Griffin 1976
Hick 1966, especially 43-95
Mann 1982
rist 1994, especially 97–112, 129–135, 256–266, and 321–327.
Tilley 1991, especially 113–140.
Torchia 2006



Notes, Insights and Flashes 91

© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2009

References

Aquinas, Thomas, Saint

1992 No Evil Comes from God. In The Problem of Evil: Selected Readings, ed. 
Michael L. Peterson, 31–38. Notre dame, IN: University of Notre dame 
Press.

1967 Summa Theologiae, Volume 8: Creation, Variety and Evil, ed. Thomas Gilby, 
OP. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode / New York: McGraw-Hill Book 
Company.

Aristotle

1894 Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea, Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxonien-
sis. Ed. I. Bywater. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1998 The Nichomachean Ethics. Trans. david ross, updated by J.L. Ackrill and 
J.O. Urmson. Oxford World’s Classics.

Athanasius, Saint

1944 The Incarnation of the Word of God. (Translated by an anonymous mem-
ber of the Community of Saint Mary the Virgin.) New York: Macmil-
lan. http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/athanasius/incarnation/
incarnation.c.htm

1971 Athanasius Contra Gentes and de Incarnatione. Trans. r. Thomson. Ox-
ford: The Clarendon Press.

Augustine, Saint
a. Confessions
1963 Confessions. Trans. rex Warner. New York: Signet.
1991 Confessions. Trans. H. Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1992 Confessions I (Latin text). Ed. James J. O’donnell. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
2001 The Confessions (Everyman’s Library 128). Trans. Philip Burton. New York: 

Alfred A. knopf.
b. Other works
With the exception of Contra Iulianum, all of the following works of Augustine 

can be found in one of the following series:
CCL = Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina. Turnhout: Brepols, 1953–. 
CSEL = Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Vienna: Tempsky, 1865.
De Ordine = CSEL 63, 121–185
Soliloquia = CSEL 89, 3–98



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De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum = CSEL 90, 3–156
De libero arbitrio uoluntatis = CSEL 74, 3–154
De natura boni = CSEL 25/2, 855–889
De natura et gratia = CSEL 60, 233–299
Contra aduersarium legis et prophetarum = CCSL 49, 35–131
Contra Iulianum = Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina, vol. 44. Ed. 

J.P. Migne, cols. 641–874.  Paris: J.P. Migne, 1904.
Enchiridion = CCSL 46, 49–114
Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum (Books I-III only) = CSEL 85/1, 3–506
De ciuitate dei = CCSL 47, 1–314 and CCSL 48, 321–866

Basil the Great

1968. Hexameron, hom.2. In Vol. 26 of Sources Chrétiennes. Ed. S. Giet, 138–187. 
Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf.

Burns, J. Patout

1988 Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil. Journal of Religious Ethics 16: 
9–27.

Cress, donald A.

1989 Augustine’s Privation Account of Evil: A defense. Augustinian Studies 20: 
109–128. 

Evans, G.r.

1982 Augustine on Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gregory of Nyssa

2000 Discours catéchétique (Catechism). Vol. 453 of Sources Chrétiennes, edited by 
r. Winling. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf.

Griffin, david r.

1976  Augustine and the denial of Genuine Evil. In God, Power, and Evil: A 
Process Theodicy. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.  reprinted in M.L. 
Peterson, ed., The Problem of Evil: Selected Readings. Library of religious 
Philosophy, 8. Notre dame, IN: University of Notre dame Press.

Hick, John 

1966 Evil and the God of Love. London: Macmillan. 



Notes, Insights and Flashes 93

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Journet, C. 

1963 The Meaning of Evil, trans. Michael Barry. New York: P.J. kennedy. 

Mann, William E. 

1982 Augustine on Evil and Original Sin. In The Cambridge Companion to  
Augustine, edited by Eleonore Stump and Norman kretzmann, 40–48. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

O’donnell, James J. 

1985 Augustine (Twayne’s World Authors Series 759).  Edited by Philip Levine. 
Boston: G.k. Hall.

1992 Confessions II: Commentary on Books 1–7. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

Origen

1978 De Principiis, Books I and II. Vol. 252 of Sources Chrétiennes, ed. H. 
Crouzel and M. Simonetti. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf.

rist, John

1994 Augustine, Ancient Thought Baptized. Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press.

Sertillanges, A.d. 

1948 Le problème du mal, Vol. 1: L’histoire. Paris: Aubier.

Tilley, Terrence W.

1991 The Evils of Theodicy. Washington, dC: Georgetown University Press.

Torchia, Joseph

2006 Creation, Finitude, and the Mutable Will: Augustine on the 
Origin of Moral Evil. Irish Theological Quarterly 71: 47–66. 
doi:10.1177/0021140006072563

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021140006072563



