Augustine says that lust is the  source of evil and that our will is the cause. It isn't just lust that is the source of evil. It's the end at which the lust is to achieve. You can have a lust for things that are good, knowledge, wisdom, and peace for example. Even desire for a temporal thing in itself is not bad when it leads to something eternal. Food for your sustenance and money for shelter or education would be examples of that. It's when the desire for the temporal is an end in itself or above and beyond satisfying our needs. When the desire for the temporal overshadows things that are eternal then you have lust. In essence lust would be a good desire gone bad or the lack of goodness in our desire all together. Lust is the source, the fuel so to speak. We however are the vehicle that the lust fuels. It would be like a finely tuned racecar roaring in neutral at its top rpm's. It's not going to go anywhere unless we make. In order for it to get anywhere we'd still need to engage the gears and press the pedals. We would have to will it into motion. Regardless if the vehicle were to move or not it's using up fuel. For Augustine this is why lusting after something temporal even though you have not done it is just as bad as if you had. The energy could have been applied towards aligning you with God's eternal law instead of being wasted. Augustine says each of us is endowed with free choice and a good will. We were given both of these not only so that we would know what was good but also so that we would willingly do it. Augustine tells us a man can only live rightly when he wills to do so. So our free will was not given to us so that we may sin or indulge our desires but expressly for the purpose of affording us the ability through our will to live rightly.

Using Augustine's theology God created all that is and God did not create anything that was not good. Augustine would say that since God doesn't create evil and evil exist it must be men that create or cause it. This is where Augustine and I differ. NIV Colossians 1:16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. Now if God created such a thing as evil we have a problem within our framework. If millions of individual men can create by themselves with out the benefit of being omnipotent or omniscient, to keep it in check I'd say we have an even bigger problem than in the former situation. Augustine has given men the power to create metaphysical things. Now men don't create things like that. For example a man can create a beautiful thing. The man didn't create beauty but yet the item is beautiful. It is the same with love. Men and women can experience love but neither of them creates it. Men do not create love or beauty or any other metaphysical thing they are simply able to share and experience it because it already exists. Even when men create paintings, music, devices and contraptions they are using things that already exist to form these. We already stated that God doesn't create evil and only creates that which is good. We've also now said that men do not have the power to create such metaphysical things. We now have created a situation where neither God nor man creates evil yet it still exist. How can this be? I'll use my example of hot and cold. Scientifically there is no such thing as cold. Cold is just a state describing the absence of heat. You cannot logically create such a thing as cold. Wherever there is not heat it is cold. If you want to make something cold it must either loose on its own or have its heat taken away. Goodness and evil are the same way. Wherever there is not heat it is cold likewise wherever there is not good there is evil. Using the same principle the only way you can make something not evil would be by introducing and maintaining through education some form of God's eternal law things that are good. In the same manner the only way you could make something that is good evil would be to remove that good that is in it. For the duration we can say that evil is lack of being in accordance with what is found by us in various forms what we interpret to be as God's eternal law, which is good. This merely explains what evil is. It still leaves the question of how it occurs. 

Aside from what evil is or is not supposed to be I'd agree with Augustine. There isn't a whole lot that we do outside of fulfilling some kind of desire. All of our desires are not bad. Some of them are even prerequisites to us meeting and fulfilling other desires. So what is it that makes our desires evil or separates our desires from those of the beast? When an animal lies in hiding waiting to pounce on and kill an unsuspecting prey we do not say it is evil. When a hyena steals food from the lion we do not say it is evil. When animals are in heat and mate we do not say they are evil. Now if a man were to do all or any of these things we'd surely call him evil. Even if a beast should maul or kill a man and we have to kill the beast we'd not say that the beast was evil. How is it then that beast can do these same things and not be evil but a man who did as such would be? In the same fashion we do not say when a beast has done or not done something to aid or prosper an animal other than itself that it is good but if I man were to do something in that regard we would. A few things are necessary for an act to be evil. The first two things are knowledge and intent. You could argue that beast have knowledge because they are receiving and processing stimuli. My cat knows if it jumps on the table I'll squirt it with water to make it get off. It doesn't get off or not get on in the first place because it wants to make me happy or it because it's the right thing to do. It simply wishes to seek pleasure and avoid pain and does whatever it can to achieve that. You could also argue that it has intent because it has a desire and whether it is actually met or not it seeks to fulfill it. When a beast comes upon a trap or any of the things just previously mentioned it doesn't stop to consider what it is. It sees what it has a desire for and seeks to fulfill its desire. Unless it foresees pain instead of pleasure it will seek to fulfill its desire. Now men are not like this. We indulge and abstain from desires that could lead to either pain or pleasure. It would be safe to say we have many of the same desires as beast do. Desire for food, sex, and shelter/safety yet we do not fulfill these in the same manner that the beast do. What is it that separates us from the beast? What separates us from the beast is our ability to reason and our will. We have natural desires built into us that we are biologically predispositioned to fulfill. We also though have a higher nature our reasoning, which was given to us, so that we may do good. The wild beast isn't able to do evil nor is it able to do good because it lacks this. Functioning together our reason and will act almost as a sort of filtering system so that we may serve the purpose of both our free will and reason, which is to do good and be in compliance with things that are good and God's eternal law. As I've stated previously there really is no substance evil just conditions or states that we call evil to describe them at that time. Jesus said in Mathew 15 it's not what goes into a man that makes him unclean but what goes out. Most people read this and naturally assume something unclean is what comes out. One could interpret this as what has gone out, which would be things that are eternal and good that make one unclean. Evil is simply what we will call it when things are not good or not in compliance with things eternal. So evil occurs when having knowledge and intent we reason and willfully put into action or thought deeds outside of what is deemed by God's eternal law to be good.

Counter Argument: If everything that God created was good and God can only create good how did men first sin. Augustine says we are able to sin even though we have the ability to reason and free will because we are tainted by original sin. That leaves the question of what was the original and first sinner tainted with? If we are naturally instilled with a good will and the desire for good how did evil ever enter the world? Since Adam didn't receive knowledge of good and evil until after he ate the fruit how can he be faulted? How could he do evil? Adam eating before he had knowledge of good and evil would lead us to believe that we are full of all kinds of desire and naturally predisposed to fulfill all of them. This being the case it would not be fair for God to fault us because He gave us these desires and even on the sixth day looked at all that He made and said that it was good. Using Christian ethics one could explain this away and blame it on the devil. Let's say that we do blame this on the devil knowing that he to was one that fell we still have the question of how evil entered the picture. What needs to be answered is how when all of this was created good and man not having yet the knowledge of good and evil that a man could sin or for it even be possible for him to do evil. If it is our desire that is the source of evil why were we given something that could be a source for evil? Wouldn't it have been better for us to be given something that was just a source for good. If not just for good at least not also be a source for evil. If it is our will that acts upon these desires and brings them into the world is it even good to begin with. Even if our desire was evil how could we have a will that would enact upon it and call it good? Each being on the planet only gives birth and produces things after it's kind. How can something that is good birth something that is evil? It would seem that the ability to do any of this is not good at all. If lust is the source of evil and will the cause why were we given both? Wouldn't it have been better to have one and not the other or none at all? 


Counter Response: If we were not given free will we could not do evil but we also could not will what is good. If you did not have the ability to choose or that choice to make you could do neither. If we just had a free will but no desires what would we act upon? If we had no free will but just desires we would be like the beast. Now how many men would choose to be like that? This is where how I defined what evil is comes in to play. Augustine said if one is not foolish one is wise and if you were not wise you were foolish. By the same token if it is not good it is evil and if it is not evil it is good. Many Christians or those who subscribe to the same tenants that Augustine does never pause a moment to consider how Adam is the cause of sin entering the world and the cause of original sin when Eve clearly partook of the fruit first. When we have answered that we see why Adam received the blame instead of Eve. If you look closely Eve was not present when Adam was given the command and that could explain why she misquoted. It also says she was beguiled or deceived Adam on the other hand was not. Now let's look again at what how evil occurs. Evil occurs when having knowledge and intent we reason and willfully put into action or thought deeds outside of what is deemed by God's eternal law to be good. .Adam would not need to know what evil or good was. By not doing evil he was automatically doing what was good. Since he did have knowledge of this command from God we see that his sin didn't lie in doing evil but in not doing what is deemed by God's eternal law to be good.

 

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