Augustine's Teaching on Human Nature

Question 1

What were Augustine’s teachings on human relationships like pre-fall?

Answer 1

• Genesis 3
• Concordia (harmony)
• obedience to God
• duties of stewardship towards other animals.
• human will, the body and reason cooperated fully with each-other.
• Caritas (state of friendship)
• sexual relations that did not involve lust

Question 2

Augustine’s teachings on the Effects of Original Sin on Human Nature and Societies

Answer 2

• seminally transmitted ‘loins of Adam’
• Concupiscence (human selfishness)
• lack of free will
• Akrasia (divided will)

Question 3

St Paul on Akrasia

Answer 3

“Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but is sin living in me that does it”

Question 4

St Augustine Effects of Sin on Will

Answer 4

• the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the the flesh
• lust dominates over the soul and the will- CONCORDIA disrupted by CONCUPISCENCE
• body craves power, money and sex

Question 5

Augustine and Sin as an Ontological condition

Answer 5

• we live in the loins of Adam
• Adam’s successors in “collective Alienation”
• John 3:6 “flesh gives birth to flesh, but the spirit gives birth to spirit”

Question 6

Arguments against Augustine

Answer 6

• Julian, Bishop of Eclanum, disagreed with Augustine’s language of sex being a transmitter of sin.
  * shows hatred, not love, of God’s creation
  * seems to deny significance of God-given Free Will

Augustine’s Defence:

• sex = source of social and personal tension
• Augustine was more sympathetic to women than some of his contemporaries
• influential on the Catholic Church

Question 7

Augustine’s teaching on God’s Grace

Answer 7

• the tainted will can only be overcome through God’s grace
• God elects a limited number of whom he knows will freely answer his love and be restored to paradise.
• these elect are aided by the Holy Spirit

Question 8

Challenge’s to Augustine’s teaching on God’s Grace

Answer 8

• Humanitarian Principle: humans get on better when each rational person considers the rational interests of others
• Autonomous reasoning must be enough to save us without God’s Grace
• Evolutionary Biology- Dawkins
• Modern Views more optimistic
• Jean-Paul Sartre: there is no ‘essential human nature’

Question 9

Exam Question:

“Augustine’s views on Human Nature are absurd and dangerous” Discuss.

Answer 9

Definition and Context:
idea that there’s an essential, flawed human nature that can only be saved through God’s Grace.and sacrifice of Christ. - described as sad-masochistic by Dawkins

Parameters and opposition:
evolutionary biology
undermines God’s love and creation