Augustine On The Free Choice Of The Will Summary

Augustine’s “On the Free Choice of the Will”, depicts a dialogue between Evodius (the interlocutor) and Augustine himself. In this dialogue, Evodius and Augustine delve into an argument regarding the author or source of evil in the world. Initially Evodius questions Augustine if God is the author of evil and Augustine’s standpoint on this statement is based from a theoretical and existential angle: Evil doesn’t exist because it’s simply the privation or lack of good. Augustine points out that God gave us free will and if we think that God is good then is blasphemous to think that he is the author of evil, given that God punishes evildoers and rewards the good. With this in mind, Evodius then assumes that perhaps some people sin because they learned how to sin and if they learn how to sin he would like to know, who they learned it from? Augustine explains to Evodius that the lack of knowledge could be one of the sources of evil in the world because if we understand what’s good then we wouldn’t do evil things. As a result, God is responsible for everything good in the world and anything that represents evil things is simply the absence of the good.
I personally believe that Augustine laid it out to Evodius in the best possible way, given that Augustine answer all the questions based on his own experience and knowledge. Augustine clearly pointed out to Evodius that God helped him escape from his cave when he was going through very difficult times. Furthermore, Augustine believes that there are two sources of sins; one of them is our own thinking and the other one is allowing others to persuade us to do so. He concluded that both sources are voluntary and we all have the free will to