The Student Room Group
Augustine blames moral evil on free-will abuse - evil entered the world when we rebelled against God (fall etc) and, as you say, natural evil then followed from this.

One of the main weaknesses of Irenaen theodicy is that it doesn't really account for natural evil. The following is a sentence from one of my essays last year, that kind of gets around it: "In Irenaean theodicy, then, God is again exonerated from any responsibility for evil (as moral is again due to human freewill, and natural is the cause of much of our development in struggling against it), and he is also given a solid reason (as well as negation of free-will) not to intervene, since ..." Basically there's no discussion of the cause of natural evil, but it is justified in that we develop towards perfection through struggling against it. And there's the updated-Irenaen arguments that claim certain positive human traits (compassion, courage, etc.) can only arise in the face of adversity, so again it is really a "good thing". :rolleyes:

You're not doing Edexcel are you? Because if so PLEASE check out other threads before you start multiple new ones. I am hinting about this one, really :smile:

ZarathustraX