Iroxymoronic
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- Oct 24, 2012
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Praise the Lord ! I shout exaltations to be amongst a community of fellow Believers! First post hello to all!
I have been reading a lot of Augustine recently, and have been developing a look at sin with the Augustinian perspective. I would love the insight of fellow Christians here as to the shortcomings in my musings thus far (as our imperfect, sinful, human nature is always wont to result in...*sigh*). Thank you all!
St. Augustine’s view on sin is most aptly described by referencing Romans 1:21 which states "for they exchanged the truth of God for lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen." For him, sin is a perverted imitation of god, a corrupted attempt to imitate god—a turning away from the divine authority for corporeal pleasure and the following of biological imperatives. In the first book of the Confessions, Augustine clarifies that his sin laid in his pursuit of “pleasure, nobility, and truth not in God but in the beings he had created, myself and others†(I.20). His bad faith laid in his turning away from the higher calling of God and choosing instead to pursue the calling of his own debased, human nature. The obvious conclusion Augustine makes will be reached, that is that sin is an attempt to pervert and create our own instantiations of God-like authority acting upon and manipulating our reality while ignoring the real authority that exists in Him. However, Augustine’s view of sin will be proved to not only be contradictory, but disingenuous.
Perhaps the most prominent example of sin as it is a corrupted recreation of God’s power comes in the second book in the story of the pear tree from which he stole. The first thing we must notice is the similarity to the Genesis story of Adam and Eve who stole the forbidden fruit—fruit which was not theirs—and committed the first sin in human history. He says “the malice of the act was base and I loved it-- that is to say I loved my own undoing, I loved the evil in me-- not the thing for which I did the evil, simply the evil: my soul was depraved, and hurled itself down from security in You into utter destructionâ€(II.4). The sin he committed was not one out of hunger, his consumption of the fruit was not the sin—the sin laid in his willing to overturn the correct order and instill his own order, possessing that which he wanted but was not his to possess. The ‘depravitiy’ which he refers to is the sinful state of corruption in which he resides; he loves pursuing his own moral and eternal downfall yet is completely blind to it and it is the glory of being blind which is “the very limit of human blindness†(III.3). This blindness to God causes ignorance to the truth which he should know and this depravity makes him pursue a lower truth. This blindness causes an illusion of freedom, what he calls “a sham liberty, and through the greedy desire to have more (at the risk of losing all) love our own private good more than You, who are the common good of all†(III.8). Due to the blindness of our corrupted nature to God we tend to fall “in love with…runaway liberty†(III.11).
What is the reason for this blindness? In the beginning of human existence, “the primeval righteousness of the first human beings consisted in obeying God'' (On the Merits II.37; Fathers of the Church). The soul of early man was well-ordered to the right purpose, which is to serve God. As a result of this correct ordering men ``were pleasing to God, and God was pleasing to them'' (Ibid. II.36; Fathers of the Church). This all held true until Eve and Adam rose to the serpent’s challenge to be their own gods, create their own sense of order. Augustine believes that Adam’s punishment for the original sin was for his intellect to “receive part only of the whole as its just limit,†due to this limited perspective we are likely to sin because “every part is defective that is not in harmony with the whole†(Confessions III.15). Originally, “man’s nature…was created at first faultless and without any sin†(On Nature and Grace III.1; Fathers of the Church) however after the occurrence of original sin “it most fully appears that by reason of sin the human race has brought upon itself not spiritual death merely, but the death of the body also'' (On the Merits I.4). Augustine wishes to demonstrate that sin is inherently intertwined with the mortality of our human nature. Genesis 2:17 states “from that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die.†Later, in Genesis 2:17, man is told “you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return.†Augustine takes this to be proof that man’s mortality only was in occurrence after mankind’s fall from grace: “if Adam had not sinned, he would not have been divested of his body, but would have been clothed upon with immortality and incorruption.†(On Nature and Grace II.1). As a result of his now mortal condition, man’s “flesh suffers, and grows old and dies†(Ibid.).
(CONT)
I have been reading a lot of Augustine recently, and have been developing a look at sin with the Augustinian perspective. I would love the insight of fellow Christians here as to the shortcomings in my musings thus far (as our imperfect, sinful, human nature is always wont to result in...*sigh*). Thank you all!
St. Augustine’s view on sin is most aptly described by referencing Romans 1:21 which states "for they exchanged the truth of God for lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen." For him, sin is a perverted imitation of god, a corrupted attempt to imitate god—a turning away from the divine authority for corporeal pleasure and the following of biological imperatives. In the first book of the Confessions, Augustine clarifies that his sin laid in his pursuit of “pleasure, nobility, and truth not in God but in the beings he had created, myself and others†(I.20). His bad faith laid in his turning away from the higher calling of God and choosing instead to pursue the calling of his own debased, human nature. The obvious conclusion Augustine makes will be reached, that is that sin is an attempt to pervert and create our own instantiations of God-like authority acting upon and manipulating our reality while ignoring the real authority that exists in Him. However, Augustine’s view of sin will be proved to not only be contradictory, but disingenuous.
Perhaps the most prominent example of sin as it is a corrupted recreation of God’s power comes in the second book in the story of the pear tree from which he stole. The first thing we must notice is the similarity to the Genesis story of Adam and Eve who stole the forbidden fruit—fruit which was not theirs—and committed the first sin in human history. He says “the malice of the act was base and I loved it-- that is to say I loved my own undoing, I loved the evil in me-- not the thing for which I did the evil, simply the evil: my soul was depraved, and hurled itself down from security in You into utter destructionâ€(II.4). The sin he committed was not one out of hunger, his consumption of the fruit was not the sin—the sin laid in his willing to overturn the correct order and instill his own order, possessing that which he wanted but was not his to possess. The ‘depravitiy’ which he refers to is the sinful state of corruption in which he resides; he loves pursuing his own moral and eternal downfall yet is completely blind to it and it is the glory of being blind which is “the very limit of human blindness†(III.3). This blindness to God causes ignorance to the truth which he should know and this depravity makes him pursue a lower truth. This blindness causes an illusion of freedom, what he calls “a sham liberty, and through the greedy desire to have more (at the risk of losing all) love our own private good more than You, who are the common good of all†(III.8). Due to the blindness of our corrupted nature to God we tend to fall “in love with…runaway liberty†(III.11).
What is the reason for this blindness? In the beginning of human existence, “the primeval righteousness of the first human beings consisted in obeying God'' (On the Merits II.37; Fathers of the Church). The soul of early man was well-ordered to the right purpose, which is to serve God. As a result of this correct ordering men ``were pleasing to God, and God was pleasing to them'' (Ibid. II.36; Fathers of the Church). This all held true until Eve and Adam rose to the serpent’s challenge to be their own gods, create their own sense of order. Augustine believes that Adam’s punishment for the original sin was for his intellect to “receive part only of the whole as its just limit,†due to this limited perspective we are likely to sin because “every part is defective that is not in harmony with the whole†(Confessions III.15). Originally, “man’s nature…was created at first faultless and without any sin†(On Nature and Grace III.1; Fathers of the Church) however after the occurrence of original sin “it most fully appears that by reason of sin the human race has brought upon itself not spiritual death merely, but the death of the body also'' (On the Merits I.4). Augustine wishes to demonstrate that sin is inherently intertwined with the mortality of our human nature. Genesis 2:17 states “from that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die.†Later, in Genesis 2:17, man is told “you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return.†Augustine takes this to be proof that man’s mortality only was in occurrence after mankind’s fall from grace: “if Adam had not sinned, he would not have been divested of his body, but would have been clothed upon with immortality and incorruption.†(On Nature and Grace II.1). As a result of his now mortal condition, man’s “flesh suffers, and grows old and dies†(Ibid.).
(CONT)