Categories
- Art (356)
- Other (3,632)
- Philosophy (2,814)
- Psychology (4,018)
- Society (1,010)
Recent Questions
- Why did everyone start to hate the Russians if the U.S. did the same thing in Afghanistan, Iraq?
- What needs to be corrected in the management of Russia first?
- Why did Blaise Pascal become a religious man at the end of his life?
- How do I know if a guy likes you?
- When they say "one generation", how many do they mean?
More precisely, this is the theodicy of Augustine the Blessed, which Thomas shared. Most of the theodicies of Western Christianity are indeed variants of Augustine's theodicy, as confirmed, for example, by the theologian and philosopher John Hick in the classic book Evil and the God of Love (1966). At the same time, Hick himself developed and perfected an alternative theodicy of Irenaeus of Lyons, according to which evil objectively exists. Professor Charles Matthews, defending the Augustinian tradition of looking at evil in his book Evil and the Augustinian Tradition (2001), emphasizes that modern thinkers try to distance themselves from it. However, thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Reinhold Niebuhr are Augustinians.
The logic here is as follows: God is simple because the Absolute is indivisible, God is Good because He is perfect in everything. If God is perfect, then everything else is imperfect,incomplete, subject to passions and sin. Thus, we can speak of perfection only in comparison with imperfection,and of good only in comparison with evil. Evil, in some ways, is natural to imperfect humanity. Getting closer to God by practicing perfection has been talked about and written about since ancient times, as well as about the origin of evil.There are many variants of the origin of evil,but mostly, leading versions of the origin of “nothing” and from nature itself,as its antipode,”corrupted by sin”.Even natural disasters are seen as a transfer of concentrated evil energy to living, perfect nature.It is quite clear that it is man who is able to see evil in nature, because nature is indifferent .It is the person who gives such estimates, counting his loss .It is a person who is able to connect good and evil with God,to expect help from Him, or to evaluate what happened as punishment.The believer unambiguously evaluates the presence of God as Good, good,and pain, despair, and death are associated with His absence.However, there are other considerations:First, God is omniscient,”knowing how many hairs you have on your head.”Therefore, the advice of Orthodox saints not to ask God for anything,since he” knows everything about you ” – is fully shared by all believers.Secondly, Christ is Good and Good himself, but he cried out “Father”on the crossWhy did you leave me?”that did not detract from His perfection and did not inculcate sin,that is,good is not a reason for protection from death,shame, disease and evil. And except for Enoch and Elijah, who are known to us, none of the saints escaped this.Rather, on the contrary, from Christ and the saints-the Old Testament Job, the Apostle Paul-comes the victory of man over evil, even when God does not intervene ,when a person does not see any good around,is alone.Resume:Such versions of theodicy are unpopular among Orthodox Christians,where evil is rather personified.This view is characteristic of Catholics, and it develops there in various variations from Augustine, Leibniz, and Malebranche to echoes in Russian theology, such as Berdyaev's.
Let's start by saying that theology should be called the view of Western Christianity, the essence of Catholicism…especially Thomas Aquinas, Anselm of Canterbury and others like them wanted to give the faith props in the form of logical justifications for the fact that in principle lies beyond the limits of reason (remember Tertulian-I believe because it is absurd), in fact, on this basis, in fact, the paths of the Western and Eastern churches diverged. In Augustine and Thomas, evil is emasculated, a kind of liability, a consequence of a logical error…well, there is no good, well, it means evil.Scholasticism in a word, casuistry…well, like darkness, lack of light, oratorical reception, nothing more… Evil is active, evil captures human souls through sin, evil is an act.Eastern Christianity is ethically more demanding.