Augustine, Manichaeism, and the Good

Download or read book Augustine, Manichaeism, and the Good written by Kam-Lun Edwin Lee and published by Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 1999 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars long recognize the important contribution of Manichaeism to the thinking of St. Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo (354-430). This book is an attempt to magnify how that influence shapes the theme of Good and Evil. The focus of this investigation is Augustine's earlier writings, composed prior to A.D. 400. Although written from a historical perspective, this work has implication to systematic theology on the predestination issue. It concludes that the concept of determinism, in Augustine's notion of predestination, is not a simple biblical derivation. Instead, the concept emerges from his wrestling with the Manichaean cosmological concern when dealing with the question of personal evil.