Evil Is Real, and It Is Nothing
A Biblical-Augustinian Fusion Against Humanistic Distortion
Scripture Does Not Speak Softly About Evil
The Bible never treats evil as illusion, metaphor, or mere perspective. From the opening chapters of Genesis, evil stands as a concrete, objective force that corrupts and destroys. “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5). This is not hyperbole; it is divine diagnosis.
Jeremiah doubles down: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Paul personalizes the struggle: “I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me” (Romans 7:21). And in the cosmic realm, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12).
Evil binds, blinds, and kills—objectively, relentlessly, and from within.
Augustine Defines Evil by What It Is Not
Augustine never denies this horror; he defines it with surgical precision. “Evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name ‘evil’” (Enchiridion 11). It is privatio boni; the corruption, diminution, or absence of due good. Sin is not a created thing but the will’s perverse turning from the immutable Good (God) to mutable goods (City of God XII.6).
Like rust on iron, cancer in flesh, or darkness in a room, evil has no independent existence; it only spoils. Yet Augustine does not say, “It’s just a lack, so relax.” He says the lack destroys. The absence of health is death. The absence of light is blindness. The absence of God is hell. This is not minimization; it is clarity.
Ontology and Phenomenology Are Not Enemies
We must distinguish without dividing.
Ontology asks: What is evil in itself? Answer: nothing—non ens.
Phenomenology asks: What does evil do in the world? Answer: everything destructive.
These are not rivals; they are complementary lenses on the same reality. Consider a hole in a ship’s hull. Ontologically, it is the absence of wood; mere privation. Phenomenologically, it floods the hold, drowns the crew, and sinks the vessel. The hole is “nothing,” but the consequence is catastrophic. So it is with sin: a turning from life (John 10:10) produces death (James 1:15). Privation explains the mechanism; Scripture reveals the devastation. Together, they form a seamless whole.
Augustine Himself Saw Evil as a Binding Power
Far from softening Scripture, Augustine intensifies it. He describes sin as slavery; “Whoever sins is a slave to sin” (John 8:34; cf. On the Spirit and the Letter). He names Satan as a real, fallen angel who “masquerades as an angel of light” (City of God XI; 2 Corinthians 11:14). He calls the will’s defection the root of all misery: “The malice of sin is so great that it turns away from the highest good and clings to mutable goods… and thus becomes not only evil, but miserable” (On Free Choice II.19). Augustine lived the bondage: “I was bound not by an iron imposed by someone else, but by my own iron will” (Confessions VIII.5). His theodicy does not dilute evil’s power; it traces it to its source: the proud heart that would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven.
Humanism Turns Privation into an Excuse
Here the plague enters: humanism. Enlightenment rationalism and modern therapeutic culture hear “evil is absence” and conclude, “Then it’s not that serious.” They relocate evil from the heart to the system, from the will to the environment. Rousseau blames society; Freud blames childhood; social justice blames structures. The imago Dei is flattened into innate dignity, detachable from covenant. The Fall becomes a developmental hiccup, not a cosmic rupture. Kant’s “radical evil” is a propensity correctable by moral effort. Grace is sidelined; self-improvement reigns. This is Pelagianism reborn; humanity as tragic hero, not willful rebel. Privation, once a scalpel exposing pride, becomes a pillow softening judgment. The doctrine is not rejected; it is reframed to serve human autonomy.
Humanism’s Core Sin: Demanding God Answer to Human Reason
At the heart of humanism lies a deeper inversion: reality, tragedy, and God Himself must be accountable to human rationale. Meaning is not received from the Creator; it is constructed by the creature. The Enlightenment crowned reason as the final court: God must justify evil on terms the human mind can grasp, or be deemed unjust. Tragedy becomes an indictment of divine competence rather than a call to creaturely humility. This is the serpent’s whisper reborn; “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5); now cloaked in epistemology. The creature sits in judgment over the Creator, demanding that the infinite conform to finite comprehension. Augustine would call this superbia in its purest form: the will not only turning from God, but reversing the roles.
A Real-World Tragedy: A Fatal Single-Car Accident
Imagine a quiet Tuesday evening. A 28-year-old father leaves work and drives home on a familiar road. Thirty minutes later, his car is found wrapped around a tree. No skid marks. No witnesses. No alcohol. No mechanical failure reported. The investigation yields nothing, no cause, no explanation. Only grief.
Humanistic Privation Lens: The tragedy is an absence of safety protocols, driver education, or road design. Evil is the lack of systemic safeguards. But deeper, the lack of meaning is the true evil. If no reason is found, God (or the universe) has failed to provide coherence. The grieving family is told to “find their own closure,” to impose narrative on chaos. Reality owes them an answer. That demand comes from moral judgement or a personal need for control.
Augustinian Privation Lens: The tragedy is a corruption; a rupture in the order of a good creation. The driver, like all image-bearers, lived in a world marred by the Fall. Though no specific sin is known, the event manifests the general defect introduced in Eden: mortality, fragility, and the groaning of creation (Romans 8:22). Evil is not “nothing happened” but something broke; the harmony between creature and Creator. The absence is not of guardrails but of shalom. Grief is valid, but it points beyond policy or explanation to the need for restoration only God can give. We do not demand answers; we fall silent before mystery (City of God XI.22).
The difference is profound: humanism demands answers and reforms; Augustine demands humility and hope.
The Merger Demands a Cruciform Lens
True Augustinianism, fused with Scripture, yields one verdict: Evil is real because it destroys real goods. It has no being of its own, yet it wields power through rebellion. It is not God’s rival (Isaiah 45:7), but it is humanity’s ruin.
Like a virus, it has no life, only the ability to hijack and kill. Like a shadow, it exists only where light is blocked. The heart is the factory (Confessions X.8); the will is the switch; pride is the spark. Only Christ’s re-creative grace can restore what was lost: “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
The cross does not explain evil; it defeats it. The empty tomb does not debate privation; it reverses it.
Christ Meets the Need of Augustinian Theodicy
For Augustine, the root of creation’s problem is prideful defection; the will’s turning from God (superbia). This is not mere mistake but rebellion, fracturing the soul, the body, and the cosmos. The accident, though unexplained, is a symptom of this fracture: death entered through sin (Romans 5:12), and now “the whole creation has been groaning” (Romans 8:22).
Scripture’s answer is Christ, the Second Adam, who “though he was rich, yet for your sake became poor” (2 Corinthians 8:9); not to fix systems, but to redeem rebels. He does not patch the hole; He rebuilds the ship. He does not treat the symptom; He cures the disease.
Humanism distorts this by making Christ a moral example or therapeutic coach; “Follow Jesus to be your best self.” It turns the cross into inspiration, not substitution. Humanism seeks to ensure its subject is magnified to the position of arbiter of reality. All events and God himself must adhere to the demands of human rationale. Christ must provide resolution, because he is obligated to meet the demands of the human mind. Humanism cries, “I must be satisfied and my expectations met”. It puts my requirements above God’s in a way that not only exemplifies the fall but demonstrates its effect.
But recapturing Augustine’s core; privation as corruption, grace as re-creation, humility before sovereignty; extricates this distortion. It gives a theodicy robust enough for the unexplained accident: Evil is real, but not final. Christ has entered the privation, borne the defect, and risen to restore the good. In Him, tragedy is not meaningless; it is swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54).
The Plague Is Pride, Not Privation
Humanism is the infection that corrupts both doctrines. It crowns the creature and demands God justify Himself before the bar of human reason. It preaches “be better” while ignoring “be born again” (John 3:3). A purified Augustinian theodicy bows the knee, confesses the heart’s factory of iniquity (Confessions X.8), and flees to the One who “disarmed the powers and authorities” by making a public spectacle of them on the cross (Colossians 2:15).
Evil is real. It is in all of us. And only grace can kill it.
QUESTIONS
How has your understanding of evil, whether as a force, a flaw, or a failure, been shaped more by cultural narratives (e.g., psychology, social justice, or moral development) than by Scripture and Augustine’s doctrine of privation, and what implications does that have for how you interpret tragedy?
In moments of unexplained suffering, do you find yourself demanding coherence from God or submitting to mystery, and how might Augustine’s distinction between ontology and phenomenology help you hold together the reality of evil and the sovereignty of God?
To what extent do you treat Christ’s work as therapeutic inspiration rather than ontological re-creation, and how might reclaiming the Augustinian view of grace as the reversal of privation reshape your understanding of redemption and human identity?