Do you subscribe to Luke's idea that evil is only a privation of good?
Luke's appeal to Augustine, doesn't answer the question I've posed to him on numerous occasions, though he thinks it does.
He refers to Augustines teaching of evil as the "privatio boni ('privation of good'), or that which occurs when a being renounces its proper role in the order and structure of creation."
Augustine's teaching that 'sickness and wounds are nothing but the privation of health', works when it comes to sickness, and may apply to other aspects of life. However, this doesn't answer where evil (or the ability for things to become corrupted), first begin? It tells us the condition of a person who does evil, but it doesn't tell us how and where the evil intent originates. Who first thought of the idea to molest a child, for example? There had to be a first time, right? Where did that intent originate and how?
Augustine does indeed provide an answer to that question, but his views of privation only address apart of the answer. So, what does Augustine teach?
"Well as far as Augustine is concerned, evil entered the world as a result of the wrong choices of free beings (free in the sense that there was no external force necessitating them to do wrong). In other words, corruption occurred as a result of freewill."
Now, this view of freewill may be argued to be more in line with the "compatibilistic" model of freedom (but that is in question) which is defined as, "someone is free if they are acting in accordance with their desire/intent." In other words, the compatiblists thinks someone is FREE if that someone is doing what they want. But, notice the KEY point left out by the compatiblists? What is the ORIGEN of the intent which makes the agent WANT to do what they end up doing?
So, once again the question remains. Who originated the intent to molest? Did God think of it first, like an author of a book does and write it into the nature of His made up characters? Or did the idea originate in the free moral agent?
Don't expect an answer to this question anytime soon because to do so forces the Calvinist to either admit God is the author of evil or that man is able to originate an intent (thus validating the concept of libertarian freewill, which Augustine appears to do at times in his writings.)
