The Fountainhead: St. Augustine — Evil as privation of good stemming from misused freedom

Abstract

ST. AUGUSTINE (A.D. 354–430) has probably done more than any other writer after St. Paul to shape the structure of orthodox Christian belief — more even than such epoch-making figures as Thomas Aquinas or the Protestant Reformers; for Augustine’s influence was exerted at an earlier and more plastic stage in the growth of the Christian mind and neither scholasticism nor Protestantism has significantly altered the grand design of his picture of God and the universe, or his conception of the drama of man’s creation, fall, and redemption. Not that Augustine’s teachings were novel. But it was his historic achievement to bring the diverse elements of Christian thought together to make an immensely powerful impact upon the intellect and imagination of the West. It is therefore with Augustine that we begin this study, though with glances back to Plotinus, through whom he absorbed so much from the surrounding thought-world of Neo-Platonism.