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Accordingly Augustine includes two things in the definition of sin; one, pertaining to the substance of a human act, and which is the matter, so to speak, of sin, when he says, word, deed, or desire; the other, pertaining to the nature of evil, and which is the form, as it were, of sin, when he says, contrary to the eternal law.
[11]: 27 The Bible primarily speaks of sin as moral evil rather than natural or metaphysical evil. [11]: 21 The writers of the Bible take the reality of a spiritual world beyond this world and its containment of hostile spiritual forces for granted. While the post-Enlightenment world does not, the "dark spiritual forces" can be seen as "symbols ...
By teaching the absence of original sin and the idea that humans can choose between good and evil, Pelagianism advocated a position close to that of Judaism. [95] Pelagius wrote positively of Jews and Judaism, recommending that Christians study Old Testament (i.e., the Tanakh) law—a sympathy not commonly encountered in Christianity after Paul ...
The absence of good (Latin: privatio boni), also known as the privation theory of evil, [1] is a theological and philosophical doctrine that evil, unlike good, is insubstantial, so that thinking of it as an entity is misleading. Instead, evil is rather the absence, or lack ("privation"), of good.
Judaism rejects the idea of original sin: it believes that humans enter the world pure, with the ability to choose either good or evil via their free will. [11] A person always has the power to avoid sin and its negative effects. [12] Due to free will, goodness is not impossible, only difficult at times.
The Augustinian theodicy asserts that God created the world ex nihilo (out of nothing), but maintains that God did not create evil and is not responsible for its occurrence. [4] Evil is not attributed existence in its own right, but is described as the privation of good – the corruption of God's good creation. [5]
The devil's sin does not give evil a positive value, since evil is, according to Augustinian theodicy, merely a byproduct of creation. The spirits have all been created in the love of God, but the devil valued himself more, thereby abandoning his position for a lower good.
The narrow definition of evil is used instead. It is defined as the attempt or desire to inflict significant harm on a victim, without moral justification, perpetrated only by moral agents capable of independent choices. [41] The Christian ethic offers three main responses to the problem of evil and a good God.