ABSTRACT
This chapter construes the substantialist grammar underlying Augustinian ontology and hamartiology. For the purpose of this study, the author shall limit his discussions to aspects of this grammar that are relevant to Barth’s critical adaptation thereof. In particular, the author shall offer an outline of Augustine’s substantialist ontology and meontological understanding of sin. The chapter begins with an elucidation of the classical roots and Platonist background of Augustine’s ontology, which he baptises, as it were, with his distinctively Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. It then offers an account of Augustine’s hamartiology, delineating his understandings of what evil is and whence evil: sin as moral evil is the corruption of nature and privation of good, and it arose from our ancestor’s original sin, which placed humankind within the bondage of the will.
