A Little History of Philosophy (Little Histories)

by Nigel Warburton

So God is powerful enough to prevent all evil. But the fact that evil exists is still not directly due to God. Moral evil is a result of our choices. Augustine believed that it was also partly a result of Adam and Eve's choices. Like many Christians of his time, he was convinced that things went terribly wrong in the Garden of Eden as described in the first book of the Bible, Genesis. When Eve and then Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge and so betrayed God, they brought sin into the world. This sin, called Original Sin, was not just something that affected their lives. Absolutely every human being pays the price. Augustine believed that Original Sin gets passed on to each new generation by the act of sexual reproduction. Even a child from its earliest moments bears traces of this sin. Original Sin makes us more likely to sin ourselves.