Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: reaching disagreement
- I PRELIMINARIES: EVIL AND THE AUGUSTINIAN TRADITION
- 1 Modernity and evil
- 2 The Augustinian tradition and its discontents
- II GENEALOGY: REMEMBERING THE AUGUSTINIAN TRADITION
- III THE CHALLENGE OF THE AUGUSTINIAN TRADITION TO EVIL
- Conclusion: realizing incomprehension, discerning mystery
- Works cited
- Index
2 - The Augustinian tradition and its discontents
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: reaching disagreement
- I PRELIMINARIES: EVIL AND THE AUGUSTINIAN TRADITION
- 1 Modernity and evil
- 2 The Augustinian tradition and its discontents
- II GENEALOGY: REMEMBERING THE AUGUSTINIAN TRADITION
- III THE CHALLENGE OF THE AUGUSTINIAN TRADITION TO EVIL
- Conclusion: realizing incomprehension, discerning mystery
- Works cited
- Index
Summary
But all these grave objections cannot obscure the greatness of the perception that God works in us “to will and to accomplish,” that we have nothing that we have not received, and that dependence on God is good, and is our possession. It is easy to show that in every single objectionable theory formulated by Augustine, there lurks a true phase of Christian self-criticism, which is only defective because it projects into history, or is made the foundation on which to construct a “history.” Is not the doctrine of predestination an expression of the confession: “He who would boast, let him boast in the Lord”? Is not the doctrine of original sin based on the thought that behind all separate sins there resides sin as want of love, joy, and divine peace? Does it not express the just view that we feel ourselves guilty of all evil, even where we are shown that we have no guilt?
Adolph von Harnack 1899, V. 221As chapter one argued that modernity has a hard time coming to grips with the challenge of evil, we should begin this chapter by acknowledging that, even before modernity, Christian thought has had its own diffculties with evil.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Evil and the Augustinian Tradition , pp. 59 - 104Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001