Commentary

This chapter offers commentary on books one and two of St. Augustine's On Order. In a series of short discussions, the penultimate of which ends badly, book one manages to convey several important teachings. The most important of these is that there is an order of things, a fact that can be affirmed simply by recognizing that nothing can happen without a cause. God is the Ultimate Orderer or Uncaused Causer responsible for this order. Moreover, God can arrange things in such a way that even evils which He did not cause are justly contained by order. Book one did not, however, fully answer two questions: the containment of evils by order and the commencement of evil. Book two, on the other hand, answers the first question more fully and offers guidelines for answering the second. Evils are contained in order precisely because a limit (modus) is placed on the amount of damage they can do, while their destructive qualities are co-opted by God (the summus modus) to have a just effect as punishments on the evil itself. Such is the case even though God Himself is in no way responsible for evil.

Introduction

This chapter presents an overview of St. Augustine's On Order. By the autumn of A.D. 386, when Augustine wrote On Order, Christianity had gained decisive victories over the polytheistic cults of ancient Greece and Rome; but with that victory came new dilemmas. The Judeo-Christian teaching concerning its Lord gives rise to the problem of theodicy, the reconciliation of God and justice. On Order is the only work by Augustine exclusively devoted to the topic, and although this dialogue is by no means the first instance of a Christian author reflecting on the moral evils of humans and angels as well as “natural evils” such as disease and natural catastrophes, it is arguably the first full and explicit Christian work on the subject. On the other hand, depending on one's definitions, On Order may not qualify as “theodicy” at all but as a “defense,” for it does not aspire to the more ambitious goal of specifying what reasons God has for allowing evil to exist.

Book Two

1. After an interval of just a few days, Alypius came. The sunrise was utterly brilliant, and the splendor of the sky and a pleasant temperature (insofar as that is possible in those places during the winter) beckoned us to descend upon the meadow, which we used quite often and with some familiarity....