42. De ordine 1.1.1 (CCL 29:89); trans. Russell, FOTC 5:239–40 (modified). (continued)
Evil Within the Aesthetics
of the Universe
In this early work, Augustine suggests a preliminary and partial answer for the problem of evil: that we do not see the big picture, we do not see how the dark things of this world fit in with the large-scale beauty of God's creation and providence. This is an aesthetic answer, in a sense. It is also an insufficient one, as Augustine knew, but it would remain one thread of his broader response to the question of evil. In later chapters, we will see others: evil as "nothing" (drawn from reading the Neoplatonists); evil as misused human freedom (in his debate with the Manichees); evil as narcissistic selfishness, a self-willed turning away from God ( from his meditation on the book of Genesis); suffering and death as the legacy of original sin (in his debate with the Pelagians). From On Order, Book 1:
(1.2) But who is so blind in their mind that they will hesitate to attribute to divine power and divine arrangement whatever rationality there is in bodily movements, that is, any beyond human organization and human will? Unless, perhaps, we have to listen to empty opinions, for instance, that the minutely measured and subtly fitted organic parts of every animal, especially the tiniest, are the result of mere chance? or that what one admits not to be the work of chance cannot in any way be the effect of design? or that what we find marvelous in each and every thing throughout the natural universe arranged in an artistry surpassing the utmost capability of human power does not belong to the hidden control of divine majesty? Yet this point is suggestive of a further line of questioning: that parts of a tiny flea are marvelously framed and fitted together, while human life, meanwhile, gets spun round, utterly unstable, and surges up and down amid waves of innumerable troubles. But given this, if one had such a near-sighted view of an inlaid mosaic that one's eye was not able to take in anything bigger than a single tessera, one might accuse the artisan of lacking any sense of artistic order or composition. What [from very close range] one presumes to be a haphazard scatter of various tiny colored stones can hinder one from discerning and contemplating in a lucid light how this mosaic emblem comes together as a single integral face of beauty. Something very similar to this is found in the case of people poorly instructed, who are unable, because of a weakness of their spirit, to grasp and to examine the universal coherence and universal harmony of things. They think that the whole universe is disarranged when something displeases them and that one thing becomes magnified by their perception.43
43. De ordine 1.1.2 (CCL 29:89–90); my trans., based on Russell, FOTC 5:240. On this and other sides of Augustine's theory, see G. R. Evans, Augustine on Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).