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Augustine on Human Nature - Coggle Diagram
Augustine on Human Nature
Augustine on the fall and original sin
Before the fall, Adam and Eve were not sinful – they were friends and had no lust
Adam and Eve’s disobedience of God caused a corruption in human nature called original sin
This caused all future humans to be born with an
irresistible
temptation to sin
Concupiscence – when your bodily/sinful desires take over and overwhelm your reason
Original sin also caused an imbalance of cupiditas (self-love) and caritas (selfless love of others) – so that we have too much selfish love of ourselves and of earthly possessions compared to selfless love of others
Augustine
gave the example of stealing a pear as a child, not to eat but just for the pleasure of sinning. This shows how there is something uniquely corrupted about human nature – we can desire to sin just for its own sake
Although we are born with irresistible temptation to sin,
Augustine
still believes that we have free will. This is because
Augustine
thinks that when concupiscence takes over and we helplessly sin, we nonetheless still go along with the sin, in some sense we still choose it. When we sin, it isn’t that our will is being controlled by something external – we actually want and will the sin, when we sin
Counter
Modern science shows that
Augustine
is wrong – the fall didn’t happen, we evolved
Genetic diversity shows that it’s not possible for all of humanity to have come from just two people. So, there was no Adam and Eve
So, it makes no sense to say that human nature became cursed because of their actions when they are just fictional characters
Evaluation
Some defend original sin from this criticism, arguing that even if
Augustine
was wrong about the particular details by which original sin came about, we can still empirically observe that it exists
C K Chesterson
argued you can see original sin ‘in the street’
However – this defence fails because modern sociological evidence shows that humanity has improved in its rate of violence & crime, and thus sin.
Stephen Pinker
studied the history of violence and showed it has declined in modern society
This proves that original sin cannot exist, because if we really had an irresistible temptation to sin, we could not have morally improved, yet we have
Evil actions are better explained by social conditioning, or what
Pelagius
called being ‘educated in evil’
Freud
could explain
Augustine’s
‘pear’ story. Socialisation forces us to feel frustrated over repressing our instincts to the point where rebelling against social control can feel good in itself
Pelagius
travelled from Ireland to
Augustine’s
part of the world, and noted that people in Rome were much more sinful than he was used to, which proves this sociological point that it is culture and upbringing which causes sinful behaviour. Believing it is nature is really just an excuse
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Augustine's views on grace and predestination
Augustine
thinks original sin damns us to hell
By ourselves, because we are corrupted, we can never be or do good enough to deserve getting into heaven
It is only if God grants us his gift of grace that we could ever get to heaven
Grace is God’s gift of inner sanctification which allows us to be saved
Augustine
thinks that it is only with God’s grace that humans can persevere in faith in Jesus. This is a requirement of salvation since accepting and being thankful for Jesus’ sacrifice is required to be saved by it
God grants us grace before we are even born – since there’s nothing an originally sinful person could do to merit or deserve it
God either grants us grace, predestining us for heaven, or he doesn’t and our original sin damns us to hell
Counter
It’s not fair or loving to condemn people to hell for the actions of their ancestors
Pelagius:
We had nothing to do with Adam and Eve’s disobedience – so how is it fair to punish us with hell for their actions?
Predestination is not something a loving God would enforce
Evaluation
Augustine
might have gone too far to say we are guilty for Adam and Eve’s actions. However he could still be right that we deserve punishment on earth and in the afterlife for being sinful beings
However, this still fails because it’s not a person’s fault that they are born with original sin and cursed to be a sinful being
A loving God could not think a child deserves to die of cancer and go to hell
We can’t deserve hell for something out of our control
So,
Augustine’s
theology still suggests an indefensible view of moral responsibility, which is inconsistent with an all-loving God
Pelagius' critique of Augustine as unbiblical
Pelagius
pointed out that if
Augustine
was right about original sin – then we are too cursed and corrupted to ever be or do good actions
However – the Bible is full of Jesus & God’s commands – commanding us to do and be good
It makes no sense for God to command us to be good if we were really unable to be good
So, we must be able to be good – so,
Augustine
must be wrong in his claim that human nature is corrupted by original sin
Pelagius
suggests
Augustine
is calling God ignorant – since if God commanded good actions but we were unable to be good, then God would be ‘unmindful’ of our cursed state. God cannot be ignorant or unmindful, so we must not be in a cursed originally sinful state
Pelagius
concludes that human nature involves God’s gift of free will, which must be free from original sin
Counter
Augustine
responded that actually we can do good – but only if we are granted God’s grace. With God’s grace, we are saved and predestined for heaven but we are also given the power to be and do good
So, those of us who have grace will be able to follow the commands in the Bible
So it does make sense for God to command goodness in the Bible – since those with grace will be able to follow those commands (though those without grace won’t be able to)
Evaluation
Augustine
is suggesting that Jesus’s moral teachings were only really suited for the minority of his audience which had been predestined for heaven and was thus capable of following his teachings
However this doesn’t really fit with the impression Jesus gave
He didn’t seem targeted in his moral preaching. The sermon on the mount, for example, was given to large crowds of people
Jesus intentionally spent time with tax collectors and sinners – saying:
“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance”
(Luke 5:31-32)
Jesus is clearly saying he’s here to help the sinners – but that implies that they can be helped, that they aren’t doomed by their original sin to be predestined for hell like
Augustine
though
Jesus is clearly specifying that those who are already righteous, who have already presumably received grace, are not his target audience – but
Augustine
was saying they were
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