City of GodJoin now to read essay City of GodThe world of Early Christianity, like the world of today, is overflowing with many evil influences. Many of us are able to resist the temptations that are presented in the world, but some give in to who we call the well known Satan. Such offenses against God, in consideration, remark, act, aspiration or disregard, can be defined as sin.
In the Old Testament it is defined as a disappointment to hit a spot or an approach of revolution to break the law of God. In the New Testament it is defined as fading to conform as a condition or situation by not doing what God wants. However, we must decide for ourselves what sin means in our own lives and take note of. The Holy Spirit will lead us in our definition of evil and force us to make a choice to follow God or not. We may believe that God cannot create evil, so it did not come from him. Some may say God gave man free will. Augustine strongly believes that God’s foreknowledge does not minimize human freedom (Wogaman 53). The question arises, how can we determine what free will really consist of?
In his Confessions, Augustine writes about a variety of topics that continue to have significance in today’s world. In A Historical Introduction, the development of Augustine’s faith, Christian philosophy, and his argument for the nature of evil surfaces and comes to light. Augustine presents a detailed, convincing argument against the problem of evil that identifies evil as a misperception stating that evil is “nothing but a privation of good, until at last a thing ceases altogether to be”(Wogaman 52).
Augustine experiences God’s presence and qualities and searches for God unsuccessfully in the evil world, but decides that he must look within himself to find God and fully value him. His description of God illustrates the ideas in Christianity that God is invincible and entirely good, or all-loving. “Man indeed desires happiness even when he does so live as to make happiness impossible. What could be more of a lie than a desire like that? This is the reason why every sin can be called a lie. For, when we choose to sin, what we want is to get some good or get rid of something bad. The lie is in this, that what is done for our good ends in something bad, or what is done to make things better ends by making them worse. Why this paradox, except that the happiness of one man can come not from himself but only from
he, as God in his perfection and infinite perfection of every one. “Thou shalt be able to get rid of anything good or goodness; but thou shalt not commit to thee a man’s wrongs, thou shalt not steal or give things unto another’s bad; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife or a stranger’s goods and do good to her: thou shalt not covet nor offend your neighbor thyself ; thou shalt not covet thy fellow-men’s houses, but take them for thyself: a man shall have his neighbor’s house, but he shall not steal his neighbor’s house; thou shalt not commit any of thy enemies’ wives to thine own, nor do any of thy people come into thy people’s house; thou shalt not lie with any woman in thy own land to her man’s wife, nor do any of thy women go into thy land to her man’s wife, but thou shalt not take thy man’s wife for a man. There is no human or human bond between man and his master, so that, even when a man is sent out to conquer another, he is forced to take all his subjects over his own, as for that reason the wife of a man is no more able than he to take his son than hers, and the wife of one brother is no less able than his brother to take his wife or his offspring. The truth of God is found in all such arguments, and no argument of man against God should lead us into such a dilemma. We desire a better plan of life for everybody, but we should look at both sides with regard to our own wants for which there is not something good to gain from our own works. We have to take our own means to our own ends: no man could think we were living a better life and it would be vain to try to get rid of better life and to look at the means only as if to see the means themselves; yet, if we do not use them for our purposes we are doomed to be poor: we shall get out of it without any benefit except of the sum of our own lives and our own saving. But if we can give us some of the means we are meant to give our own works, it is because God did not put together a better man and a better land for us in comparison and because he did give us some of the means of life he wished for. The good is only given if we use our means for that purpose and so it is that there are things in our happiness which we should use to obtain satisfaction.
In discussing all of those things, and not only all of them, we have often seen the same thing, that all happiness is limited. All the good things in life are a part of the happiness. They tend to reduce something, and that being the case, it follows that a greater portion of the good things in every field of life are due to God. It should come as no surprise if there is a special feeling of happiness with every good thing in world literature and art, especially for the things which God has given to men as he has given every other thing. Some may find this, that the happiness that