my point of view on Augustine's theory

Augustine and Evil

Saint Augustine was both a Platonist and a Christian. (More precisely, the Bishop of Hippo was most influenced by Plotinus, the founder of Neo-Platonism, but that is a technicality to ignore in an essay this brief.) As a Christian, Augustine accepted the following argument:

All things were created by God. So, all things are good, since God, being perfectly good, only creates that which is good.

But this left Augustine with the philosophical question: Where does evil come from? If all things were originally created wholly good by an all-good God, then how does evil get any foothold in reality? How does evil rear its ugly head in a primeval sea of goodness initially created by an all-good God?

The solution Augustine eventually reached, his famous theory of the "privatio boni," was inspired by his Platonism. As a philosopher in agreement with Plato on many things, Augustine identified being with goodness. To have