Christianity - Augustine on human nature

Question 1

who was Anders Breivik?

Answer 1

• carried out a series of attacks and mass murders in 2011.
• killed 8 people by setting off a van bomb
• followed by the shooting/murder of 69 young people
• motives was to cleanse Europe of non European elements
• imprisoned for life

Question 2

who was Maximillian Kolbe?

Answer 2

• 1941, three inmates escaped from Auschwitz concentration camp
• deputy camp commander selected 10 men to be starved to death in underground bunker
• one of the men cried out that he had a wife and children
• Maximillian Kolbe offered himself in exchange for the mans life

Question 3

who was Jean - Jacques Rousseau and what did he argue?

Answer 3

• French philosopher
• argued that humans are essentially generous and only act otherwise when situation and circumstance cause them to act otherwise
• famously said that, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains”
• the metaphor of the chains describe how the human competition for land, resources and power have resulted in loss of freedom
• the purpose of life is to cut free from these chains and appreciate one another a lot more

Question 4

who is Thomas Hobbes and what did he argue?

Answer 4

• English philosopher
• he thought that in a state of nature, humans are not naturally co-operative but selfish and brutish (animal like)
• in one vital respect, humans are different from animals, the human power of reason is enough to realise that if they co-operate with each other, life becomes much more tolerable
  “the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”

Question 5

what is meant by Manicheism?

Answer 5

• a form of esoteric Christianity which believes that suffering and evil in the world are not caused by God but by a lower power (Satan).
• humans have 2 souls: a higher, and a lower, which desire God and evil respectively.
• Augustine was interested in the problem of evil

Question 6

what is Platonism?

Answer 6

• followers of Plato
• they believed that the soul can ascend to merge with the One (or God) where it encounters truth, wisdom and happiness.
• solved the problem of evil: evil is not s separate power, but the absence of Good
• Augustine did not find this spiritually or emotionally satisfying: he still experienced an inner conflict
• he then converted into christianity

Question 7

who was Pelagius?

Answer 7

• Christian monk who did not believe that original sin caused universal guilt which only God could remove
• the Pelagians argued that humans have sufficient free will to overcome personal sin
• they argued that:
• Adams sin only harmed himself, not the human race
• children are born in the same state as Adam before his fall
• even before the coming of Christ there were men who lived without sinning

Question 8

describe human will before the fall

Answer 8

• the fall: the moment described in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve rebelled against God and were punished by being expelled from Eden (paradise). After the fall, humans are in disharmony with God and nature
• in genesis 1-3, here we are given accounts of the creation of man and women, their tie in the garden of Eden, relationship with each other, the natural world and God
• until the fall, humans enjoyed a time of harmony
• harmony is expressed in the obedience of Adam and Eve to God
• it is also, according to Augustine, a time when the human body, will and reason are in complete co-operation with each other

Question 9

the will as love

Answer 9

• the will is God given, created with humans ex nihilo (from nothing) and choose to do good or evil, to believe in God or reject him
• the will determines the kind of person we are
• Above all, the will is synonymous with love - a kind of force or weight pulling us in various directions
• therefore, the will is driven by cupiditas (self-love) and caritas (generous love)
• cupiditas and caritas are both necessary elements of the will, in order for a person to love his neighbour, he must also love himself; this in return leads to the love of God

Question 10

sex and friendship

Answer 10

• Augustine argued that in paradise, Adam and Eve were not only married, but married as friends
• Augustine argued that as God had commanded Adam and Eve to be “fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) then friendship between men and women also included reproduction as well as the pleasure of sex
• nevertheless, sex is always secondary to friendship ; friendship being the highest expression of human existence
• therefore, sex when required would occur without lust and Adam could summon an erection at will; the will was in complete harmony and in control of the body
• even after the fall, friendship continues to express Caritas as Amor Dei (love of God)
• Augustine wrote in one of his letters, “There is nothing truly enjoyable without a friend”
• the solution for true friendship is only possible for those who love Christ

Question 11

the human will after the fall - pride and disobedience

Answer 11

• key problem which faced Augustine was what caused humans to reject their perfect relationship with the world and God
• the answer is pride
• Augustine interpreted Adam and Eves decision to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge in Eden to be a sign of their desire to be like God, knowing good and evil and having its powers
• pride means that they can never again enjoy their harmonious relationship with God and with each other because cupiditas has now been separated from caritas
• ## but how could the idea of wanting Gods knowledge and disobeying Gods command enter the minds of Adam and eve in the first place? Augustine’s answer is based on the tradition that Satan was originally an angel who through pride fell from grace and tried to rule the earth, in Eden he takes on the form of the serpent and out of envy he plants the idea of disobedience into eves mind

Question 12

the divided will

Answer 12

• Augustine argued that the divided soul or will had now become divided
• although it was still rational enough to what is morally good, the damage to it in the fall meant that despite willing to do good it is weakened by desires and does the opposite
• This is the paradoxical state of the will that St Paul describes in his letter to the romans 7:15
  “I do not understand my own actions”
  “but sin that dwells within me”
  ancient philosophers called this problem akrasia
  akrasia- weakness of will

Question 13

human will after the fall, what is meant by concupiscence?

Answer 13

concupiscence - sexual lust but can also be referred to all kinds of uncontrolled desires
- in his fallen state, man is no longe4r able to control his libido (sex drive)
- the soul is completely dominated by concupiscence
- the body cannot be sinful as it is created in the image of God, but now that the will is weak and divided, concupiscence dominates human existence
- concupiscence is most clearly experienced in friendships

Question 14

the human will after the fall: original sin

Answer 14

-in the post-lapsarian (the world after the fall of Adam and Eve) world the effects of Adams sin can be seen in the continued rebellious state of the will
- everywhere one looks the effects of the fall on human nature can be seen
- man has spontaneous erections, wet dreams and loss of rational control during sexual orgasm
- the presence of concupiscence illustrates the lack of control that the rational soul has over sin

Question 15

what is meant by Double death and transmission of sin?

Answer 15

• chief characteristic of original sin is that it is passed on from the first or original moment to all generations
• Augustine describes Original sin in the following ways:

double death: the first death is caused by Adams rebellious will which kills the relationship of friendship between humans and God. This is symbolised as Adam and Eves embarrassment of their nakedness in front of God
-the second death is the mortal state of every human and is Gods punishment for the first disobedience

transmission of sin: the original act of disobedience is transmitted by a “chain of disasters”
- just as a bad tree bears rotten fruit, so Adams children also bear his rebellious nature
- every act of sexual intercourse is tainted by concupiscence , so that every human is “born in sin”, therefore all humans are tainted with the original sin of Adam

Question 16

human will after the fall: free will and predestination

Answer 16

• as a young scholar, Augustine believed that humans do have free will
• he argued along Platonist lines that living the virtuous is possible; sin and evil are merely the failure to do good
• he then no longer accepted the Platonist view that reason is sufficient to live a good life - he now concluded that sex drive, ignorance and death were punishments for human rebellion, no amount of human reasoning could ever overcome
• his insight was that humans do not voluntarily choose to sin but are inevitably prone to sin whether they will it or not
• the souls of humans are chained down by sin
• Augustines sense of sin is so powerful that even living a chaste life as a monk, will never be free from concupiscence
• God only knows who is deserving of grace to be rewarded with heaven
  without Gods grace, no one would be saved from the effects of Original Sin

Question 17

humans after the fall: grace

Answer 17

grace: Gods generous, undeserved and free act of love for the world
- human nature offers a possibility that with a little bit more effort, we could achieve the harmonious relationship with God which would lead to summum bonum (the greatest good)
question posed by St Paul: “who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24)
- there is only one answer and that is God
- through Gods generous love, the damaged will can be healed and the human relationship with God restored
- the wound is healed through Gods grace

Question 18

interpreting Augustine today: the fall and original sin

Answer 18

the fall as a symbol of a persons spiritual journey
- for many, the symbols of the fall and redemption are positive symbols of the spiritual and psychological life
- many Christians today consider creation, the fall and redemption as the history of each persons individual life
- the fall might be interpreted as generally as an imaginative story about humans and their relationship with the world

Question 19

what does Dawkins believe about original sin?

Answer 19

belief about Original Sin is irrational and dangerous
- Richard Dawkins finds the whole Christian notion of the fall and Original sin as not only entirely contrary to evolutionary biology but also absurd and dangerous
- blames a great deal of human suffering and conflict on the “Original Sin” tradition which Augustine created
- believes that Augustine is “barking mad” for even proposing such an idea
Dawkins argue that:
-it is absurd to imagine the corruption of all humans rests on two individuals. As evolutionary biology considers that humans emerged from less sophisticated animal forms, who did not have the kind of consciousness which enabled them to make an active decision to rebel, then a literal belief of Adam and Eve makes no sense
-even a symbolic account of the fall does not rid Christianity of its unhealthy obsession with sin, guilt, violence and repressed sexuality
-the idea that God should wish to restore human nature by killing Jesus on the cross is sadomasochistic and irrational

Question 20

the challenge of the humanitarian principle

Answer 20

humanitarian principle: proposes that humans get on better when each person takes into account the interests of others
- Dawkins views are shared and developed by the psychologist Steven Pinker
- Pinker argues that religion in general and Christianity in particular has been responsible for violence and suffering of humanity until post-enlightenment
- the humanitarian principle makes the simple but significant proposal that humans get on better when each person takes into account the interests of others
- pinker argues that for the last two hundred years since the humanitarian principle has become established as evidently right, the West has seen the rapid decline of capital punishment, wars of religion, abuse of women etc

Question 21

sin and collective responsibility

Answer 21

• Reinhold Niebuhr argued that although the post- enlightenment thinkers have made it unfashionable to talk about sin, failure to understand sin leads colossal mistakes being made by society and those in power
• his argument is simply that the rationalism of western philosophy and politics has failed
• by rationalizing and rejecting the traditional notion of sin, humans fail to realise that no action can ever be entirely good, this causes greater injustices and more suffering

Question 22

what does Neibuhr believe about original sin?

Answer 22

• Neibuhr accuses both religious and non religious leaders of ignorance if they think that the power of reason and belief is enough to bring about just and fair societies
• the solution is for the human ego to understand its own nature fully by coming into a proper relationship with God
  human nature cannot be easily defined as either good or evil
  3 paradoxes
• Original sin is both “inevitable but not necessary”
• sin is apparent in evil as well as good acts. Evil people can do kind things, good people still selfishly desire self-affirmation
• at an individual level, good people may do good things but when acting as part of a group they do not

Question 23

Sex and human nature

Answer 23

just how significant is the sex drive for understanding human nature?
- many argue that it is Augustine’s fault that for hundreds of years, western societies have felt guilt about sex
Sigmund Freud - psychologist and athiest
- argued that the libido (sex drive) is a vital and natural element of human development
- rejected any notion that humans fell from grace and were punished by God for their guilt, but doesnt completely dismiss Augustine’s Psychological insights
- Freud noted that the psychological problems by is patients could almost always be traced back to an original historical event in their early life- usually in childhood
- Freud shares Augustine’s notion that human personality is not chosen by the individual but is the result of history and environment
-however, Freud suggested remedy for neurosis and feelings of guilt is very different from Augustine
- for Augustine, hope and redemption for the human condition lay only in God’s grace , but for Freud, the cure for neuroses is through psychoanalysis
-psychoanalysis involves recalling (through dreams and free association) the events which have caused a particular trauma and helping a person to live a happy life
- Freud considered that belief in God only increases a sense of guilt
- most Christians today do not consider that sexual intercourse is purely for procreation, nor do they think that sexual pleasure is a sign of sin and loss of control as Augustine so often illustrated, nor do they think that sexual intercourse by necessity passes on universal guilt
-Although Freud is often criticised today, his ideas have been instrumental in questioning and adapting Augustine’s teaching on sex and human nature