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The Struggle Against Evil: Insights From St. Augustine

The Struggle Against Evil: Insights From St. Augustine

Last updated on: March 26, 2026 at 1:56 am by Henry Karlson

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The Struggle Against Evil: Insights From St. Augustine 2026-03-26T01:56:21-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Attributed to Gerard Seghers: St. Augustine / Wikimedia Commons

St. Augustine, in his exploration on evil, came to understand that evil does not exist in and of itself, that it is merely the privation or corruption of some good. The corrupting power and influence of evil grows the more it is acted upon, destroying its host, even as it has its host hurt various other goods around them. If it is not stopped, evil will continue to corrupt and destroy until all that is good is brought to an end. Those who embrace evil follow its destructive nature, destroying good after good; the more they embrace evil, the more destructive they will become, until, at last, they will seek the destruction of all things, including themselves. While Augustine pointed out the way evil corrupts that which is good, including people, he understood there was no pure evil. Everyone has some good in them, as well life is good, something to be protected. One of the problems with those who embrace the path evil put them upon is that they end up denying the goodness of all things, and with it, they end up thinking that some life, if not all life, is evil.

Augustine, by dealing with the question of evil, desired to overcome the dualistic understanding of good and evil which he possessed as a Manichaean. That dualism not only established the existence of two rival principles, one good and one evil, but, like all Gnostic traditions, it viewed the material world as being created by the evil principle (or god) and that material bodies served as prisons for the good spirits which resided in them. This is why they viewed the human body to be evil. Augustine would struggle with this, and perhaps his Manichaean past would always influence him in his moral reflections, including those dealing with the body. However, he would fight against those influences, and in doing so, he would eventually see the body is not a problem, because it was a good thing made by God. To him, the problem would be the way we use our bodies. That is, the issue is our disposition; do we allow ourselves to become imbalanced and focused more material being than our holistic existence with a spiritual side? As long as are focus was unholistic in its embrace of the material world, our disposition will get us into trouble:

There is no life which is not of God, for God is supreme life and the fount of life. No life is evil as life but only as it tends to death. Life knows no death save wickedness [nequitia] which derives its name from nothingness [ne quidquam]. For this reason wicked men are called men of no worth. A life, therefore, which by voluntary defect falls away from him who made it, whose essence it enjoyed, and, contrary to the law of God, seeks to enjoy bodily objects which God made to be inferior to it, tends to nothingness. This is wickedness, but not because the body as such is nothing.[1]

It is easy to see Augustine is struggling in this text. He knew he had to get beyond his Gnostic past. He knew he had to accept the good which is found in and with the body, but he also found the body to be a source of temptation. It would be easy to treat the body in practically the same way as the Gnostics if he were not careful. That is why caution must be made lest those who try to resist the temptations they see coming from the body end up denying the body itself, and thus a good which they should affirm. When they do that, they fall into temptation and embrace a perspective evil would have them follow.

Since life is good, all those who possess life have some good in them. This is why, even when we find people doing extremely wicked things, there remains something in in them which we can and should love:

Love all men with your whole heart, and do whatever you wish. Love those who are just because they are good, and pray that they will ever become better. Love also those who are wicked because they are men, and hate the fact that they are evil. Moreover, always desire that God in His goodness may convert them to good works.[2]

We should do what we can to help people become better. Those who have been corrupted by temptation, convinced to do evil, especially if they have formed bad habits which are hard to overcome, need our love and help, not only to see where they have gone astray, but also to see that there is hope for them, that they can fight (with our help) their temptations and bad habits, slowly becoming liberated from them. As they do so, they, and will, will begin to see them for who they really are, for the person God made them to be. Our love for them, therefore, is not in and with the false self, but their true self, the good which they have neglected and ignored. And, until they do so, because that good is there, however hidden, there is always hope that they can change. Sadly, that will not always happen; there will be some so trapped by the evil which has corrupted them and hindered their will, they will resist reform, and if what they are doing is harmful to others, they might have to be stopped (in as just and merciful way as possible). If that happens, we still must affirm the good within them, because when we deny it, we slowly find ourselves embracing the same path they embraced. For we will have denied some good, beginning, then, to deny the goodness found in the world around us. Then, the more we do this, the more we will begin to think the evil we see, which is all we will see, needs to be eliminated from existence. To stop this, to stop ourselves, it is important, therefore, to remember, as Augustine teaches us, that all life is good, that no life as life is evil in and of itself, because when we remember this, we will see what we cannot and must not follow the path of destruction, the path which uses our desire for the good to be used by evil to lead us onto the path of evil itself.

[1] St. Augustine, “Of True Religion,” in Augustine: Earlier Writings. trans. John H.S. Burleigh (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953), 235.

[2] St. Caesarius of Arles, Sermons Volume I (1-80). Trans. Mary Magdeleine Mueller, OSF (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1956), 175 [Sermon 35].

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