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A Reply to My Critic

BErNArd G. PrUSAk

Villanova University 
bernard.g.prusak@villanova.edu

Jonathan Yates’s response to my analysis of Augustine’s argument is 
a pleasure to read; I am tickled that my little analysis—composed to 
make sense for myself of a text that many of us at Villanova regularly 
teach to undergraduates—has elicited a response of such impressive 
historical and theological learning. Yates’s opening sentence, of course, 
may be read in two ways. Either he is saying that my analysis is very 
thoughtful just as it is very brief, or he is saying that my analysis is as 
little thoughtful as it is brief. As my colleague is a gentleman as well as a 
scholar, I suppose that he intends the first reading, though I am happy 
and grateful for the possibility of the second.

I acknowledge: 1) that what is at question is, put precisely, whether 
evil has independent or metaphysical existence; 2) that Augustine’s  
argument is traditional, with antecedents in Platonic thought; 3) that 
Augustine elaborates much the same argument elsewhere in his œuvre; 
4) that Augustine appeals to revelation in the course of his argument; 
and 5) that rejecting the privation theory of evil raises big questions. 
It should be noted, however, that what I reject in my analysis is that 
Augustine’s argument for this theory is logically compelling. My refer-
ence to Shakespeare’s King Lear suggests that there may be other rea-
sons, born of the kind of reflection that literature permits, to make our 
own some version of the privation theory, or in any event the theses, 
distinct from this theory, that good has primacy over evil and that evil 
ultimately tends toward non-being.1

Yet I am puzzled that Yates does not take issue with my analysis of the 
logic of Augustine’s argument. The weak link in Augustine’s argument 
is his unspoken premise that it is better for things to be incorrupt-
ible than to be corruptible. Yates does not claim that this link is more 
defensible than I estimate it to be. Yates would prefer to translate the 
clause “Et manifestatum est mihi quoniam bona sunt corrumpuntur” as, 

mailto:bernard.g.prusak@villanova.edu


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“And it was revealed to me that good [things] are things that could be 
corrupted.” Fine—but what good does this do for Augustine’s argu-
ment? Should we also take it as revealed that to be incorruptible is in 
all cases better than to be corruptible?

Yates is surely right that Augustine “prioritizes faith and revelation 
over rationality and logic”—so long as we take this claim aright. As 
James J. O’donnell nicely puts it (quoted by Yates), Augustine’s prac-
tice is “to cling to what he knows for certain, to attempt to provide 
explanations for difficulties, and to stand with what he knows by faith 
even when logical difficulties remain.” Surely many thoughtful people 
of faith, to this day, do the same. Yet Yates gives this “prioritization” a 
peculiar twist. He goes on to speak of the “prioritization…of revelation 
over logic” (the terms “faith” and “rationality” dropping away), seem-
ing to suggest, if I understand correctly, that the believer may at times 
dispense with logic and its pesky demands of validity and soundness. 
Surely this is not right. Instead, to speak with O’donnell again, the 
person of good faith, so to speak, who “knows by faith” should recog-
nize “logical difficulties” when they remain. Otherwise that faith is at 
risk of decaying into bad faith.2

Finally, I must reckon with the possibility, I am told, that my rejec-
tion of Augustine’s argument might necessitate, almost certainly, that I 
abandon traditional monotheism and, by extension, traditional Chris-
tianity. Two remarks as I near the abyss: 1) A lot is riding here on what 
is packed into the adjective “traditional.” does not the tradition—does 
not Augustine himself—bear witness to evil as a problem to which 
all our answers, if there is an answer other than the cross, must be 
themselves problematic?3 (Is there an obvious answer in Job?) Further, 
whether God is omnipotent is ambiguous in the Hebrew Scriptures 
(think of J’s God in Genesis); are theologians who have speculated 
that creation puts bounds on God’s power (or, perhaps more precisely, 
that in creating God freely undertook a limitation of divine power) 
orthodox/traditional or heterodox/non-traditional? 2) It seems that 
my colleague would have me agree that the choices come down to 
Augustine’s argument, on the one hand, or atheism, metaphysical  
dualism, heterodoxy, or metaphysical feats beyond me, on the other. 
To which I succumb to the temptation to reply: Are there not more 



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things in heaven and earth, and in the Hebrew-Christian tradition, 
than are dreamt of in Augustine’s philosophy, at least as we have it in 
book 7 of the Confessions?

Notes

1. I take this language from Crosby (2007, 505). As Crosby nicely explains, the 
privation theory aligns good with being and evil with non-being.

2. See for a lively discussion of bad faith chapter 4 of keller 2008, “Against patriot-
ism” (71–93). Compare Crosby 2007, 490, on “why it is important to get clear 
about the mode of being proper to evil.”

3. See Lee 2007 and Crosby 2007 for a recent disputation of the privation theory 
by two philosophers claiming to stand in the philosophia perennis. Lee replies here 
to an earlier paper of Crosby’s. Interestingly, in his reply to Lee, Crosby adduces 
“the two evil daughters of king Lear, regan and Goneril,” as examples of “con-
tentful evil” that cannot be understood in terms of privation. See Crosby (2007, 
494–495).

References

Crosby, John F.

2007 doubts about the Privation Theory That Will Not Go Away: response to 
Patrick Lee. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 81(3): 489–505.

keller, Simon

2007 The Limits of Loyalty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lee, Patrick

2007 Evil As Such Is a Privation: A reply to John Crosby. American Catholic 
Philosophical Quarterly 81(3): 469–488.




