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Confessions is generally considered one of Augustine's most important texts. It is widely seen as the first Western autobiography ever written [ citation needed ] ( Ovid had invented the genre at the start of the first century AD with his Tristia ) and was an influential model for Christian writers throughout the Middle Ages .
Augustine's Acts or Disputation Against Fortunatus the Manichaean, which partly touches on the problem of evil, records a public debate between Augustine and the Manichaean teacher Fortunatus. Fortunatus criticised Augustine's theodicy by proposing that if God gave free will to the human soul, then he must be implicated in human sin (a problem ...
Augustine of Hippo (/ ɔː ˈ ɡ ʌ s t ɪ n / aw-GUST-in, US also / ˈ ɔː ɡ ə s t iː n / AW-gə-steen; [22] Latin: Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), [23] also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Africa.
De libero arbitrio voluntatis (On Free Choice of the Will), often shortened to De libero arbitrio, is a book by Augustine of Hippo which seeks to resolve the problem of evil in Christianity by asserting that free will is the cause of all suffering. The first of its three volumes was completed in 388; the second and third were written between ...
In Confessions, Augustine wrote that his previous work was dominated by materialism and that reading the works of Plato enabled him to consider the existence of a non-physical substance. This helped him develop a response to the problem of evil from a theological (and non-Manichean) perspective, [10]
Nevertheless, a candid historical and philosophical assertion about human nature—that it contains both good and evil, both selflessness and selfishness—seems unpalatable to many 21st century ...
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.
Even if the earthly rule of the Empire was imperiled, it was the City of God that would ultimately triumph. Augustine's focus was Heaven, a theme of many Christian works of Late Antiquity. Despite Christianity's designation as the official religion of the Empire, Augustine declared