St.Augustines Theodicy and St.Irenaeus theodicy as a weak response to

Augustine’s theodicy is greatly influenced by the creation stories of the Old Testament (Genesis 1-3). While thinking about Augustine’s theodicy it is worth bearing in mind that he interpreted the Genesis story as a literal account of the origins of the world and also as a mythological story that communicated values and meaning. While most Christians today would not suggest that the Genesis story is literally true, they still value the ideas Augustine puts forward in his theodicy. Augustine’s theodicy is basically- God is perfect and creates perfection (garden of Eden), God gave us free will which we in turn misuse which in turn leads to the fall of man and therefore evil comes into the world. So now the whole world is evil and corrupted, Natural Evil is then a result of this corruption. Everyone after the fall shares in the sins of Adam- Original Sin, until Jesus saves us by dying for our sins on the cross. In the book of Romans (5:12) it says ‘Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death shall spread to all because all have sinned.’ Therefore humanity is responsible for evil. But some may say that God gave us free will in the first place and if God is all knowing then He knew the fall would happen and therefore he is not all loving or all powerful as he knew evil would come into the world and yet did nothing about it. Vardy comes up with an analogy that works with St.Augustine’s theodicy- the story about the prince and the peasant, a rich prince falls in love with a peasant but knows that if he went up to her clad in his rich fine cottons and silks then she would not truly love him but love what he has. So the prince disguises himself as another peasant and ‘woos’ ... ...so a story of a girl who is beaten and beaten by her parents but does not know why because she is so young. Ivan would say that having free will is ‘still not worth it’ On the other hand some believe that Irenaeus’ Theodicy is effective. They may say that the theory works well with evolution, in the sense that the world was bad and it must be made into perfection. They say that we were once imperfect and have since improved and evolved but this would happen through suffering and therefore it is possible to tie the two theories together. Having to suffer in order to achiever the virtues seems sensible and logical as many sportsmen will know that pain shows that your working hard, this also ties in with the aesthetic principle. Personally I believe that the Irenaeun Theodicy is weak and feeble as there is just too much evil in the world in comparison to the good.