theodicy - an attempt to justify the goodness of god given the fact of evil.
Heresy - an opinion/practice at variance with established teaching. Eg of a religion or church.
St Augustine: was a super influential christian thinker. Was not always christian, was 'manichaen'. Participated in WOF (also regarded as a 'perversion of plato'). Believed physical matter was evil and spiritual things were good. They had different origins and gods.
Manichaean: the task of the believer was to liberate good spirit from wicked matter, led to lots of suicide. In practice it meant the denial of all things material.
Manichaean was a sub part of Gnosticism: belief that physical matter is evil, and that the creator of it is inferior to the true god. Salvation comes from escaping physical to go to spiritual.
Gnosticism: if god is god he cannot have created matter. Jesus if the son of god could not have a human body. But if god is not evil we need another explanation for evil - dualism. COUNTER - surely if god is evil rather than 2 beings, ockhams razor.
Augustine had 3 theodicies: original perfection; the fall and free will.
Original Perfection: after his conversion to christianity, augustine said that the universe was made good. (genesis). God makes things good in their own way. A stone is good but only in the ways a stone can be good Eg building. Goodness of a human is not the same as the goodness of a stone. Only god is truly good in all ways.
Original perfection: if god makes all things good, there is a scale of good. Some things will be better than others based on their capabilities. Augustine concludes that evil must be the going wrong of something made good.
Original perfection: evil is the going wrong of something good. A sinful person is more good than a puppet, as they are more human. The possesion of being human is more good than not having them.
Original Perfection Criticism: if god is omnipotent why does the good go wrong. - even if we have free will why is evil a concept in the first place.
The fall - there are two 'falls': the fall of angels and the fall of man
The fall of angels: angels, led by lucifer, chose to reject god. They introduced the evil of denying god, and fell into hell. (NOTE: angels in islam have no free will, in christianity they do)
Fall of man: adam and eve chose to reject gods command by eating the forbidden fruit. They were punished with expulsion from the garden of eden.
The falls lead to a 'soul deciding theodicy' - we have the choice to obey god. Evil is either the result of sin/punishment for sin. We are punished because of an ancient idea that the whole of human kind were present in the loins of adam. 'homonculi'
The falls and soul deciding theodicy: natural evil is the result of the disorder brought by the falls, god does not stop loving us, despite our wickedness and offers redemption through the work of Jesus.
Free Will: augustines said we can know good and not do it (voluntas); free choice is essential to being truly good. Genuine love for god must be freely given.
Free Will: augustine thinks a world with evils that follow from free will is better than one without free will.
"Privation" - evil is not a thing by a lack of goodness. God cannot be blamed for evilas he cannot create a lack of something.
Augustine suggests that as god is not responsible for evil, it would be just if he punished us in hell but god is all loving so he gave us jesus.
Augustine is soul deciding (those who choose to believe go heaven etc)