OK,

I MAY have an idea about a proposed outline...here's my first attempt

-I want to say that Augustine is wrong in a certain respect because Augustinian thinking about sin and evil remove the goodness completely from human nature. Since we are made from nothing, human nature basically is nothing. While this makes sense when taken to its extreme, it's still a little strange. How can we talk about any sort of goodness at all if it's all grace? Augustine seems to change his mind about the effectiveness of grace and the effectiveness of free will later in his life.

-I want to say that Augustine's change in thinking happened because of battles between the Manicheans (which the original thesis of evil is founded) and the Pelagians (where it gets a bit too practical and not exactly solved, either) and that he could never quite resolve the problem because the Pelagians were asking a question about the human being and its nature, and this has to do with Augustine's thinking on how he thinks original sin is transmitted.

-From this I want to glean that every evil for Augustine is a moral evil, and that this means that evil is a justified concept for Augustine, and an explainable one. I think I need to look up some stuff on Augustine and theodicy, here, since I am wondering whether or not people would consider Augustine proto-theodicy, or perhaps even having a theodicy of his own. This seems strange to me, (my gut instinct tells me) but I'm not sure.

-As well, I want to say that Augustine makes sin a moral concept, and evil a theological concept. This is what will actually require an argument, the rest is merely historical interpretation of philosophical disputes and texts. This would be my one thought, if it can be called that, dealing with the problems and ramifications of how every form of sin is a form of moral evil. Other than that, I don't think I need much.

So, maybe my thesis will look like this:

-stages of Augustine's thinking, rely on texts that point out the changes in his thought (that article in the bookmarks should help.) This needs to be precise, and therefore briefer than what I think.

-Augustine on evil from a Biblical(Starting with the Garden of Eden, but moving elsewhere), theological (the Garden of Eden), moral (lying, for example) point of view.

-From the moral stage, we can see that every form of evil is a moral form of evil, and that this means evil itself is explainable only theologically, since evil requires first origins, which Augustine locates in the Myth of the Fall (Might need to look at Ricoeur again, here). Sin, however, is the human problem of badly willing, and this makes sin a moral problem, not a theological one. By shifting the grounds like this, it is easy to make the link that every form of evil is a form of moral evil, since the explanation of why evil happens, has a moral cause, but that every form of sin, um......um.....ok, I started at my computer screen for about 7 minutes blankly. We'll figure this part out in a bit. Back to writing and reading.