QuestionsDoes God exist?Evil is not a thing: privation and free will
Does God exist?TheismThe problem of evil

Evil is not a thing: privation and free will

Augustine of Hippo 354 · 430Believe to understand: God in the innermost self.
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What it claims

God did not create evil, and he has a good reason to permit it: the existence of evil does not contradict an all-powerful and perfectly good God.

Why

Whatever exists is good; evil is a lack of good, coming from the free will turning away from the higher good.

The same idea through history
Plotin270Evil has no being of its own: it is lack, privation of good. Augustine takes the idea from the Platonists (Confessions VII).
In short

"Evil is not a thing: privation and free will" is an argument by Augustine of Hippo (Confessions VII · On Free Choice · Enchiridion, 11 and 105) on the question "Does God exist?" (answer: theism). Its claim: God did not create evil, and he has a good reason to permit it: the existence of evil does not contradict an all-powerful and perfectly good God. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the conclusion does follow from its 7 premises. AskPhilosophy presents 5 objections, 5 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Confessions VII · On Free Choice · Enchiridion, 11 and 105
Valid

The classic Christian answer to the problem of evil. As a young man, Augustine believed with the Manichaeans that evil is a real force, God's rival. He came out of it with two ideas: evil is not a thing but a lack of good; and the evil we do comes from our freedom. He does not prove that God exists: he wants to show that evil does not prove the opposite.

P1Everything that exists comes from God, and everything that exists is good, at least insofar as it exists.
P2So evil is not a thing God created: it is a lack of good, as illness is a lack of health or darkness a lack of light.
P3The evil we do comes from our will, which turns away from the higher good towards lower goods. Each wrongdoer is the author of his own faults.
P4Free will is a good: without it, no one could act rightly. A horse that strays is better than a stone that does not.
P5Human beings had first to receive a freedom able to choose good or evil, so that the good chosen would be rewarded and the evil punished. The freedom that can no longer sin, better still, comes afterwards, in heaven.
P6The evil we suffer is either the just punishment of a fault or a part of the world's order whose usefulness escapes us.
P7If evil comes from a misused good and the evil suffered serves justice or order, God may permit it: he is not its author, and he can draw good out of evil.
Therefore God did not create evil, and he has a good reason to permit it: the existence of evil does not contradict an all-powerful and perfectly good God.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Valid, and every premise is in his texts. The weight rests on two points. P5: Augustine himself grants that free beings can never sin (the faithful angels, the blessed in heaven); so why did God not create us that way from the start? His answer: good chosen when evil could have been chosen has a value of its own. That is where Mackie (1955) strikes. P6: every evil suffered would be a just punishment or have a hidden use; that is where Hume and the objection from natural evil strike. The argument does not prove that God exists: it answers in advance the problem of evil as Hume would state it, by denying its hidden premise "whoever can and wants to prevent evil always does". This is called a theodicy: Augustine does not just say God might have a reason, he says which one.
Analogy. Parents teaching their child to ride a bike know he may fall. They could prevent it by banning the bike or holding it forever. But then the child would never really ride alone. The whole question is: is an all-powerful God in the same situation as these parents?

Objections

5

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

O
Objection anticipated by Augustine 397 · attacks premise 3

If God, who is goodness itself, made me entirely, where does my will to do evil come from? Saying that evil comes from the will only pushes the question back.

Augustin replies
Augustin
One must not look for an "efficient" cause of the evil will, for it is not an action but a failing: turning away from what is highest. Looking for its cause is like wanting to see darkness or hear silence.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Augustine answers that the evil will has no efficient cause, since it is a defect and not an action. Some readers see an illumination in this, others a way of leaving the question open: if God made a will able to fail, why does it fail? An open point.
T
The Manichaeans (natural evil) attacks premise 6

Fire, cold, wild beasts cause suffering without anyone having chosen evil: human freedom does not explain that kind of evil (today we would say: an earthquake, an epidemic). For the Manichaeans, it proves that an evil principle, God's rival, has a share in the world.

Augustin replies
Augustin
These things are good in their nature and in their place; they harm only our body, which became frail and mortal as a punishment for sin, and used well, even poisons become remedies. When their usefulness escapes us, we must look for it, and believe it is hidden, rather than blame God's work.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Augustine answers that these things are good in their nature and that their harmfulness comes from our frailty, a consequence of the fault. The core disagreement is natural evil: do earthquakes, diseases and animal suffering really come from a human fault or from a hidden usefulness? This thread is taken up in Hume's argument from evil (McCloskey, Plantinga). An open point.
Objection anticipated by Augustine, revived by J. L. Mackie (1955) 395 · attacks premise 5

God could have created us free and yet always resolved to choose the good. Augustine himself says the blessed in heaven will be free without being able to will evil: if that is possible up there, why not from the start? Mackie concludes that God, if he existed, should have created such beings.

Augustin replies
Augustin
God forced no one to sin: he only gave the power to choose. And such beings exist: free angels who have never sinned and never will. But a world that also contains lower free creatures, able to fall, is richer than one containing only the highest.
Alvin Plantinga 1974
Plantinga answers Mackie that a world where everyone always freely chooses the good is possible in itself, but does not depend on God alone. It may be that every person God could create would do wrong at least once: God then could not create free beings without evil. The rest of the debate (Adams, natural evil) is in Hume's argument from evil.
see the argument
The debate goes on (our summary) Mackie would reply that Augustine explains why such beings exist, not why humans are not among them.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Augustine answers that God also created free beings who do not sin, and that the richness of the world requires creatures able to fall. In Mackie's spirit, one can object that this does not explain why humans are not among them. Plantinga answers that creating free beings who never sin may not depend on God alone; the modern debate then turned on this answer and on natural evil (see Hume's argument). The core disagreement remains the nature of freedom.
Hume (Philo, in the Dialogues) 1779 · attacks premise 6

A God who knows all the secret springs of the world could, by small invisible interventions, turn aside diseases, storms and accidents, and make the world happy. Saying their usefulness is "hidden" is making an assumption nothing supports.

a defender replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1779, after the author's death (430).
Richard Swinburne defender of the argument · 1998
Swinburne argues that a good God should not constantly intervene to prevent sufferings. In his view, natural evils give humans knowledge of how to harm or help, and so real responsibility for their choices: a world where God removed all evils would be one where our choices would matter little (Providence and the Problem of Evil, 1998).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Hume asks why a God who knows all the springs of the world does not turn evils aside by small invisible interventions; Swinburne answers that constant intervention would deprive human choices of their weight. The core disagreement: does a world where actions have real consequences truly require so much suffering? An open point: no widely accepted answer.
Schopenhauer (pain is positive) 1851 · attacks premise 2

Pain is not a mere lack: it makes itself felt, it is the most real thing there is. Saying evil is "nothing" is absurd to anyone who suffers. A toothache is not an absence.

Augustin replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Augustin What Augustine had already written
Augustine does not say suffering is unreal: he says it is not a thing in its own right. Pain bears witness to a good that has been lost and a good that remains: without a still-good being, there would be no one to suffer the loss.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Schopenhauer and Augustine are not quite speaking of the same thing: one describes what is felt (pain makes itself felt), the other says what evil is (the lack of a good). The core disagreement: does a privation felt strongly remain a mere lack? An open point.
What today's voices say
Defend it
Alex O'ConnorA summary of a podcast conversation says he explains the view that evil is a privation of good and treats it as a serious position.
Bishop Robert BarronHe defends the reply that God permits some evils to bring out a greater good, and points to Job.
William Lane CraigAnswering a questioner, he says God did not create evil, because evil is not a positive thing that exists.
Criticize it
Peter SingerOriginal sin cannot explain suffering: animals suffer too, and they are not descended from Adam and Eve. He calls the reply an appalling moral view.
In the same family · The problem of evil
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The worst of all possible worldsArthur Schopenhauer
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The problem of evilDavid Hume · debate over 7 levels
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Providence after LisbonJean-Jacques Rousseau
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Why do good people suffer? Fire tests goldSeneca
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Three kinds of evil, and a world that does not exist for man aloneMoses Maimonides · 1190 · debate over 3 levels
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Lisbon: against "all is well"Voltaire
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The fawn in the fire: evil makes God improbableWilliam L. Rowe · 1979
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Freedom has a price: evil does not contradict GodAlvin Plantinga · 1965 · debate over 4 levels
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Eternal punishment for the faults of one life: the problem of hellMarilyn McCord Adams · 1975 · debate over 3 levels
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Pain, God's megaphoneC. S. Lewis · 1940
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