THAT SAID, I wish there was more lament in Augustine. While in principle Augustine refuses to give evil the comfort of an explanation, he constantly fends off intellectual options that would either make evil an illusion or make God blameworthy. As a result, he is sometimes given to painting schemes that, even if he refuses to name a cause, almost give evil a place—either as a tendency that stems from our creatureliness22 or as the shadow of creation’s tapestry that makes the whole all the more beautiful.23 As a result, evil becomes something of an abstraction for Augustine, a generic, vague
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