Free Will solution to the Problem of Evil
..., by believing that God has a good reason for allowing evil in the world. This brings us to the question: Does God have a good reason for allowing evil in the world? Augustine thinks so. Augustine’s solution to the problem of evil is free will. I agree with this solution. Augustine states that human evil comes from lust or disordered love. Every human in the world has disordered desires and they will to act on those desires. Therefore, we come to the conclusion that free will must be the source of human evil. Why, then, did God allow us to have free will? By giving us free will, God allows us to make both right and wrong decisions. If we did not have free will, the decisions we make would be neither right nor wrong, because we would have no choice. We are only able to act rightly if we will to do so. Therefore, we see that free will is needed for us to do the right thing. When humans do evil, they are punished by God. If this evil was not done voluntarily, it could not be justly punished. So, why does God allow us to use our free will for evil? We can only trust that God knew what He was doing when he made us capable of using our free will for evil, and we must trust that on the authority of Scripture. Isaiah 7:9 proclaims, “Unless ye believe, ye shall not understand.” Now we come to the next question. Is it just that the rest of the world is cursed with this fate of always sinning simply because Adam and Eve sinned? Augustine states that it is the will of man that causes a person to do evil and not the nature of man. We are usually inclined to believe that doing evil is simply in the nature of man, however, there is One who proves this to be untrue. Jesus came to earth and became completely human. Part of being human is having free will. Jesus could have chosen ...