Philosophy and the Sacred — The Great Monotheisms, Augustine, Aquinas

Week 4 · Week 4: Philosophy and the Sacred — The Great Monotheisms, Augustine, Aquinas · Ch. 3: Ancient Philosophy, Ch. 4: The Rationalists · Download .docx

Objectives

Name the three great monotheisms and their shared claim
Explain Augustine's privation theory of evil and his account of restless desire
Summarize Aquinas' Five Ways in plain language
Describe the scholastic method (question, objections, reply) and apply it

Key terms

Monotheism: Belief in one God — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Revelation: Knowledge said to come from God through scripture or prophets, not from reason alone.
Augustine: Bishop of Hippo (354–430); 'believe in order to understand.'
Privation: Augustine's account of evil as an absence or corruption of good, not a created thing.
Aquinas: Dominican friar (1225–1274); joined Aristotle to Christian theology.
Scholastic method: State the strongest objections first, then answer them.
The Five Ways: Aquinas' five arguments for God's existence: motion, cause, contingency, degree, design.
First mover: The Five Ways' first argument: whatever moves is moved by another; the chain needs a start.
Contingent: Possibly non-existent — the opposite of necessary.
Necessary being: A being that must exist — it cannot not-exist.
Argument from design: The fifth Way: order and purpose in nature point to an intelligent orderer.
Confessions: Augustine's autobiography written as a prayer — the first great inward-looking book in the West.

The concept

Faith, Reason, and the Problem of Evil

The three great monotheisms — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — each hold that one God created the world and reveals moral law through scripture. Medieval Christian philosophy asks whether faith and reason agree or conflict. Augustine answers: believe in order to understand (crede ut intelligas). Aquinas answers: reason can prove God exists; revelation tells us what reason alone cannot reach. Both thinkers use philosophy inside their theological commitments, not as an alternative to them.

Augustine: The Restless Heart and the Problem of Evil

The Confessions opens with the line 'Our heart is restless until it rests in you.' Augustine means this literally: every human desire — for love, success, beauty, knowledge — leaves the heart unsatisfied until it finds God. This is his theological anthropology: humans are made with a gap that only God fills. But if God is good and made everything, where does evil come from? Augustine's answer: evil is not a thing God made. It is a privation — an absence or corruption of good. Darkness is the absence of light, not a substance; illness is the absence of health, not a created object. Evil is like this. It enters through the free choices of creatures who turn away from good. The pear theft in the Confessions is Augustine's evidence: he stole pears he did not want, purely for the thrill of transgressing, showing that the will can choose evil for its own sake.

Aquinas: Five Arguments for God

Writing in the scholastic style — question, objections, reply, answers to each objection — Aquinas argues that reason can demonstrate God's existence five ways. (1) Motion: whatever changes is changed by something else; the chain cannot be infinite; there must be an unmoved first mover. (2) Efficient cause: causes cannot regress infinitely; there must be a first cause. (3) Contingency: things that might not exist require a necessary being to account for their existence. (4) Degrees: things have more or less goodness; a highest standard must exist. (5) Design: natural things consistently act toward ends; this requires an intelligent director. Aquinas identifies each first-in-the-chain with God. These arguments draw on Aristotle's physics and metaphysics, adapted to Christian theology.

Worked examples

Example 1: Example 1 — Applying the privation theory: A student asks: if God made everything, why is there suffering? Augustine's privation answer: suffering is not a thing God created; it is what happens when bodily or social health (which are goods) is reduced or absent. Pain from illness is the absence of health. Loneliness is the absence of community. The challenge to this view: can the absence of something cause real harm? Augustine says yes — a hole in a bridge is just an absence of material, but it causes real damage.

Example 2: Example 2 — Running the first Way: Premise 1: Everything that is in motion is moved by something else. Premise 2: The chain of movers cannot be infinite. Conclusion: There must be a first mover that is not itself moved. Apply it: your hand moves a pen; your muscles move your hand; nerve signals move your muscles; brain activity generates nerve signals; what started the whole chain? Aquinas says this chain cannot go back forever — at some point something must move without being moved. He calls that the first mover.

Common mistakes

Confusing Augustine's privation theory with the idea that evil is an illusion — Augustine takes evil seriously as real harm; he only denies that it is a substance God created.
Thinking Aquinas' Five Ways prove everything Christianity teaches — the Five Ways only argue for the existence of something that could be called God (first mover, necessary being, etc.); they do not prove the Trinity or the Incarnation.
Thinking the scholastic method is just giving both sides — it requires stating the strongest objections first, then answering each one specifically; it is not a survey of opinions.
Confusing the third and fifth Ways — contingency (third Way) concerns whether things must exist; design (fifth Way) concerns whether nature's purposive order requires an intelligent director.
Assuming Augustine's 'believe in order to understand' means faith replaces reason — Augustine uses extensive philosophical argument; his point is that faith creates the openness that allows reason to grasp theological truths.

Self-check

Try each one before you look. A miss here costs nothing and tells you exactly what to reread.

1. What are the three great monotheisms and what single claim do they share?

2. What does Augustine mean by the privation theory of evil?

3. Explain Aquinas' third Way in plain language.

4. What is the scholastic method and why does it begin with objections?

5. Why does Augustine use the pear theft as evidence in the Confessions?

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