Confessions by Saint Augustine
Week 8: Book VII — The Platonists, the Problem of Evil, and the Vision of God
Read Book VII of The Confessions of Saint Augustine. Key themes: the Platonist books, the problem of evil, free will, and Augustine's momentary vision of God.
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This is Augustine's most philosophically dense chapter, but at its heart is a simple and shattering discovery: that evil is not a substance but a privation — an absence of good — and that God, who is Being itself, is untainted by it.
Discussion Questions
7 questions1.Augustine has been unable to conceive of God as anything other than a vast material body spread through space. He knows intellectually that God must be incorporeal, but cannot imagine what that means. How does this limitation distort his entire search for truth? Have you ever found that a wrong mental image of God distorted your relationship with Him?
2.He encounters "certain books of the Platonists" — likely Plotinus — and finds in them echoes of John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." But he also notices what is missing: the Incarnation, the humility of Christ, the grace for sinners. What can philosophy give us, and what can it never give us?
3.Augustine's breakthrough on evil is one of the great moments in Western intellectual history: "That evil then which I sought, whence it is, is not any substance: for were it a substance, it should be good." He concludes that evil is the perversion of the will — the turning of good things toward wrong ends. How does this framework help explain the kind of "gratuitous" sin we saw in the pear theft?
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