Evil as a Privation of Good

by Augustine of Hippo
translated by Albert C. Outler (1955)

from Confessions, Book 7, Chapters 11-13 (~400 AD)

CHAPTER XI

And I viewed all the other things that are beneath thee, and I realized that
they are neither wholly real nor wholly unreal. They are real in so far as they
come from thee; but they are unreal in so far as they are not what thou art.
For that is truly real which remains immutable. It is good, then, for me to
hold fast to God, for if I do not remain in him, neither shall I abide in myself;
but he, remaining in himself, renews all things. And thou art the Lord my
God, since thou standest in no need of my goodness.

CHAPTER XII

And it was made clear to me that all things are good even if they are
corrupted. They could not be corrupted if they were supremely good; but
unless they were good they could not be corrupted. If they were supremely
good, they would be incorruptible; if they were not good at all, there would
be nothing in them to be corrupted. For corruption harms; but unless it
could diminish goodness, it could not harm. Either, then, corruption does
not harm—which cannot be—or, as is certain, all that is corrupted is thereby
deprived of good. But if they are deprived of all good, they will cease to be.
For if they are at all and cannot be at all corrupted, they will become better,
because they will remain incorruptible. Now what can be more monstrous
than to maintain that by losing all good they have become better? If, then,
they are deprived of all good, they will cease to exist. So long as they are,
therefore, they are good. Therefore, whatsoever is, is good. Evil, then, the
origin of which I had been seeking, has no substance at all; for if it were a
substance, it would be good. For either it would be an incorruptible
substance and so a supreme good, or a corruptible substance, which could
not be corrupted unless it were good. I understood, therefore, and it was
made clear to me that thou madest all things good, nor is there any
substance at all not made by thee. And because all that thou madest is not
equal, each by itself is good, and the sum of all of them is very good, for our
God made all things very good.

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CHAPTER XIII

To thee there is no such thing as evil, and even in thy whole creation taken
as a whole, there is not; because there is nothing from beyond it that can
burst in and destroy the order which thou hast appointed for it. But in the
parts of creation, some things, because they do not harmonize with others,
are considered evil. Yet those same things harmonize with others and are
good, and in themselves are good. …

from Enchiridion, Chapters 3-4 (~420 AD)

CHAPTER III. God the Creator of All; and the Goodness of All Creation

… For the Christian, it is enough to believe that the cause of all created
things, whether in heaven or on earth, whether visible or invisible, is nothing
other than the goodness of the Creator, who is the one and the true
God. Further, the Christian believes that nothing exists save God himself and
what comes from him; and he believes that God is triune, i.e., the Father,
and the Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from
the same Father, but one and the same Spirit of the Father and the Son.

By this Trinity, supremely and equally and immutably good, were all things
created. But they were not created supremely, equally, nor immutably good.
Still, each single created thing is good, and taken as a whole they are very
good, because together they constitute a universe of admirable beauty.

In this universe, even what is called evil, when it is rightly ordered and kept
in its place, commends the good more eminently, since good things yield
greater pleasure and praise when compared to the bad things. For the
Omnipotent God, whom even the heathen acknowledge as the Supreme
Power over all, would not allow any evil in his works, unless in his
omnipotence and goodness, as the Supreme Good, he is able to bring forth
good out of evil. What, after all, is anything we call evil except the privation
of good? In animal bodies, for instance, sickness and wounds are nothing
but the privation of health. When a cure is effected, the evils which were
present (i.e., the sickness and the wounds) do not retreat and go elsewhere.
Rather, they simply do not exist any more. For such evil is not a substance;
the wound or the disease is a defect of the bodily substance which, as a
substance, is good. Evil, then, is an accident, i.e., a privation of that good
which is called health. Thus, whatever defects there are in a soul are

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privations of a natural good. When a cure takes place, they are not
transferred elsewhere but, since they are no longer present in the state of
health, they no longer exist at all.

CHAPTER IV. The Problem of Evil

All of nature, therefore, is good, since the Creator of all nature is supremely
good. But nature is not supremely and immutably good as is the Creator of
it. Thus the good in created things can be diminished and augmented. For
good to be diminished is evil; still, however much it is diminished, something
must remain of its original nature as long as it exists at all. For no matter
what kind or however insignificant a thing may be, the good which is its
"nature" cannot be destroyed without the thing itself being destroyed.
There is good reason, therefore, to praise an uncorrupted thing, and if it
were indeed an incorruptible thing which could not be destroyed, it would
doubtless be all the more worthy of praise. When, however, a thing is
corrupted, its corruption is an evil because it is, by just so much, a privation
of the good. Where there is no privation of the good, there is no evil. Where
there is evil, there is a corresponding diminution of the good. As long, then,
as a thing is being corrupted, there is good in it of which it is being deprived;
and in this process, if something of its being remains that cannot be further
corrupted, this will then be an incorruptible entity, and to this great good it
will have come through the process of corruption. But even if the corruption
is not arrested, it still does not cease having some good of which it cannot
be further deprived. If, however, the corruption comes to be total and entire,
there is no good left either, because it is no longer an entity at all. Wherefore
corruption cannot consume the good without also consuming the thing
itself. Every actual entity is therefore good; a greater good if it cannot be
corrupted, a lesser good if it can be. Yet only the foolish and unknowing can
deny that it is still good even when corrupted. Whenever a thing is
consumed by corruption, not even the corruption remains, for it is nothing
in itself, having no subsistent being in which to exist.

From this it follows that there is nothing to be called evil if there is nothing
good. A good that wholly lacks an evil aspect is entirely good. Where there
is some evil in a thing, its good is defective or defectible. Thus there can be
no evil where there is no good. This leads us to a surprising conclusion: that,
since every being, in so far as it is a being, is good, if we then say that a
defective thing is bad, it would seem to mean that we are saying that what
is evil is good, that only what is good is ever evil and that there is no evil

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apart from something good. This is because every actual entity is good.
Nothing evil exists in itself, but only as an evil aspect of some actual entity.
Therefore, there can be nothing evil except something good. Absurd as this
sounds, nevertheless the logical connections of the argument compel us to
it as inevitable. At the same time, we must take warning lest we incur the
prophetic judgment which reads: "Woe to those who call evil good and
good evil: who call darkness light and light darkness; who call the bitter
sweet and the sweet bitter." Moreover the Lord himself saith: "An evil man
brings forth evil out of the evil treasure of his heart." What, then, is an evil
man but an evil entity, since man is an entity? Now, if a man is something
good because he is an entity, what, then, is a bad man except an evil good?
When, however, we distinguish between these two concepts, we find that
the bad man is not bad because he is a man, nor is he good because he is
wicked. Rather, he is a good entity in so far as he is a man, evil in so far as
he is wicked. Therefore, if anyone says that simply to be a man is evil, or that
to be a wicked man is good, he rightly falls under the prophetic judgment:
"Woe to him who calls evil good and good evil." For this amounts to finding
fault with God's work, because man is an entity of God's creation. It also
means that we are praising the defects in this particular man because he is
a wicked person. Thus, every entity, even if it is a defective one, in so far as
it is an entity, is good. In so far as it is defective, it is evil.

Actually, then, in these two contraries we call evil and good, the rule of the
logicians fails to apply. No weather is both dark and bright at the same time;
no food or drink is both sweet and sour at the same time; no body is, at the
same time and place, both white and black, nor deformed and well-formed
at the same time. This principle is found to apply in almost all disjunctions:
two contraries cannot coexist in a single thing. Nevertheless, while no one
maintains that good and evil are not contraries, they can not only coexist,
but the evil cannot exist at all without the good, or in a thing that is not a
good. On the other hand, the good can exist without evil. For a man or an
angel could exist and yet not be wicked, whereas there cannot be
wickedness except in a man or an angel. It is good to be a man, good to be
an angel; but evil to be wicked. These two contraries are thus coexistent, so
that if there were no good in what is evil, then the evil simply could not be,
since it can have no mode in which to exist, nor any source from which
corruption springs, unless it be something corruptible. Unless this
something is good, it cannot be corrupted, because corruption is nothing
more than the deprivation of the good. Evils, therefore, have their source in
the good, and unless they are parasitic on something good, they are not

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anything at all. There is no other source whence an evil thing can come to
be. If this is the case, then, in so far as a thing is an entity, it is unquestionably
good. If it is an incorruptible entity, it is a great good. But even if it is a
corruptible entity, it still has no mode of existence except as an aspect of
something that is good. Only by corrupting something good can corruption
inflict injury.

But when we say that evil has its source in the good, do not suppose that
this denies our Lord's judgment: "A good tree cannot bear evil fruit." This
cannot be, even as the Truth himself declareth: "Men do not gather grapes
from thorns," since thorns cannot bear grapes. Nevertheless, from good soil
we can see both vines and thorns spring up. Likewise, just as a bad tree does
not grow good fruit, so also an evil will does not produce good deeds. From
a human nature, which is good in itself, there can spring forth either a good
or an evil will. There was no other place from whence evil could have arisen
in the first place except from the nature—good in itself—of an angel or a
man. This is what our Lord himself most clearly shows in the passage about
the trees and the fruits, for he said: "Make the tree good and the fruits will
be good, or make the tree bad and its fruits will be bad." This is warning
enough that bad fruit cannot grow on a good tree nor good fruit on a bad
one. Yet from that same earth to which he was referring, both sorts of trees
can grow.