Augustine on Reasons for Suffering

In 410 AD, Alaric and the Visigoths sacked Rome, sending shockwaves around the world. It was a symbol of the decline of the Western World, shattering the invulnerability of the impenetrable Rome, the “eternal city”.

For Christians, this was particularly confusing. Christianity had just been declared the state religion of the Roman Empire by Emperor Theodosius just a few decades earlier, in 380 AD. The status of Rome kind of seemed to be tied to the status of Christianity.

Why is God allowing his people to suffer? For Augustine in Hippo (northern Africa), this raised all sorts of questions regarding the question of suffering, especially for those who trust God and do good.

Maybe you can resonate with this. Why does God allow his people to suffer through pandemics, wars and natural disasters? Has he given up on us?

In response to the sacking of Rome, Augustine wrote his monumental work City of God. With this book, he was aiming to comfort and guide a population feeling disillusioned with God’s apparent failure to protect them. Furthermore, the Pagans had been arguing that this had happened because Rome had abandoned their old deities.  In City of God, Augustine argues that Christians shouldn’t freak out because their ultimate home and reward are in the City of God, not the city of man.

In chapter 9 of book 1, Augustine gives five reasons as to why God allows people suffer. Here they are:

1. Personal Culpability

"The fact is that everyone, however exemplary, yields to some promptings of concupiscence [our inclination toward sin]: if not to monstrous crimes, abysmal villainy, and abominable impiety, at least to some sins, however rarely or—if frequently—however venially [that is, a “smaller” sin]." [1]

Though some may do lots of “good”, the reality is that everyone has sinned (e.g., Rom 3:9). Sin has consequences. This doesn’t mean that stealing and eating the Freddo Frog on your colleague’s desk is directly responsible for the outbreak of a global catastrophe. But when you have a globe covered in people who fail to love God and love people, the general order of things has been corrupted, and consequences will follow.  

2. Neglecting Correcting

 "For the most part, we hesitate to instruct, to admonish, and, as occasion demands, to correct, and even to reprehend them. This we do either because the effort wearies us, or we fear offending them, or we avoid antagonizing them lest they thwart or harm us in those temporal matters where our cupidity [desire for wealth] ever seeks to acquire or our faint hearts fear to lose." [2]

It’s not always that we have directly committed “sins”. Sometimes, instead of sins of commission, we sin by omission. Here, Augustine argues that Christians may suffer because we neglect to correct. We see that things are not the way they should be, but we’re too lazy or fearful to do anything about it.

3. Turning a Blind Eye

 "Thus, good men shun the wicked and hence will not share in their damnation beyond the grave. Nevertheless, because they wink at their worse sins and fear to frown even on their minor transgressions, the good must in justice suffer temporal afflictions in common with the rest—even though they will escape the eternal." [3]

By neglecting to correct, we tacitly approve of the wickedness around us. For this reason, Augustine says that we face a kind of temporal judgment, though we escape eternal judgment.  

4. Attachment to the Earthly Life

 “Both are scourged, not because both lead a bad life, but because both love an earthly life; not, indeed, to the same extent, but yet both together—a life which the good should think little of in order that the bad, by being admonished and reformed, may attain to eternal life.”[4]

Here, Augustine argues that we suffer because we love the sweet things of the earthly life too much. According to Augustine, God uses suffering to reform us, so that we may understand how much greater the eternal life on offer is, and thus think less of the good things in this earthly life. Suffering can help put things in perspective, as we compare the earthly and temporal with the heavenly and eternal.  

5. Testing and Strengthening Faith

 "Finally, there is another reason, well known to Job, why even good men must drink the bitter cup of temporal adversity: in order that the human spirit may test its mettle [ability to cope with difficulty] and come to know whether it loves God with the virtue of religion and for His own sake." [5]

Augustine here argues that God uses human suffering to test and strengthen our love for God, similar to the story of Job.  Endurance through difficult times proves both to ourselves and to others the depth of our commitment to God.

Notes

[1] Augustine of Hippo, City of God. Translated by Demetrius B. Zema and Gerald G. Walsh S.J. The Fathers of the Church. Washington D. C.: CUA, 1962, §1.9, p30.

[2] Augustine, City of God, §1.9, p30.

[3] Augustine, City of God, §1.9, p30.

[4] Augustine, City of God, §1.9, p32.

[5] Augustine, City of God, §1.9, p33.