[0:00]Hi everyone, it's Amy here from the blog. I think, therefore I teach. Welcome to your next Christian thought installment. This one is going to be on St. Augustine and what he argues about our human nature. Right, let's get going.
[0:22]Augustine's teachings then on human nature. First thing I get my students to do is I get them to write down everything that they can remember from St. Augustine, specifically we've come across him in quite a lot of detail in problem of evil, but also any other places that they have learned things about him, and then we summarize on the board. And so the question was, who really was St. Augustine? The first thing I get my students to do is I get them to research St. Augustine, who he was before he became a saint and what made him so memorable. And then I see if they find out about how much of a prolific writer he actually was. He did 93 formal pieces of work, many letters and speeches including discussions of theological matters, and one of the earliest known autobiographies called Confessions. I bet it was a top ten hit. He combined philosophical thought with his own honest reflections, very popular and influential shaper of Christian thought. He is a key name. You can't really study Christianity, Catholicism without coming across St. Augustine somewhere. Before St. Augustine then was Emperor Constantine. Christianity has not always been popular. It was often the cause of death for a lot of people. Under the emperors of Rome being a Christian was punishable by death as it was considered as treason against their views of the time.
[1:50]This all changed though under the rule of Emperor Constantine. The things that they used to do to Christians was horrific, feeding them to lions, many crucifixions. And so this all changed under the ruling of Constantine. Constantine adopted Christianity in AD 312, giving it a different status in the Roman Empire. Christians gained positions of power and of wealth. So they went from being persecuted and punished to being rulers within the nation. Constantine, however, did not insist on people becoming Christians. Instead he promoted religious tolerance. This links into your second year when we do about pluralism. He wanted people to have faith, wanted them to follow what they believed in. So it was the religion of the country, but he did not enforce it on people. He did not punish people like we've seen before him if they did not turn to Christianity. So what's the timeline then for Augustine? He was born in North Africa, which is part of the Roman Empire. He grew up in an environment of religious and philosophical pluralism that Constantine had established. Augustine's mother Monica was a devout Christian, shaping a lot of Augustine's beliefs. She's in bold there because she really does have significant impact on the man that we know today. Even though he was from a poor background, Augustine showed promise at an early age, so his parents sent him to school. So this again was not something common at the time, but they made sure because he showed so much promise that they were going to send him to an educational environment. He loved rhetoric, which is similar to philosophy and debating, and loved the student life even more. His talents soon became noticed and he taught in Carthage, which is now present day Tunisia, Rome and Milan. So he enjoyed his education, but he also enjoyed the party life, so to speak. Um, so he enjoyed the student life as well. So he was quite a character. Who were the early influences then on St. Augustine's ideas? The Manichees were a group Augustine followed as a young man. The Manichees believed: The world was in a cosmic battle of good and evil.
[4:10]They believed people had two different souls, one good and one evil, and these were a constant internal struggle. The soul is part of the kingdom of light but trapped in the kingdom of darkness because of the appetites of the body. Does this sound familiar? And then I get to ask my students, who does this sound similar to? Well, of course, it's Plato. Plato believed that our soul is trapped in the body and wants to go to the world of forms. You can make a nice synoptic link there. And he also looked to role models, especially Jesus for guidance. However, Mother Monica was not pleased with this. She did not like him following the Manichees. She did not believe that this emphasized enough of Christianity within his beliefs. He then moved on to Plotinus, who was a Neoplatonist, and he's seen in the famous picture of the Academy of Plato and Aristotle together. For Plotinus: there is only the Form of the Good. He directly went against Manichees views that there is good and evil. He was negative about the body, so again, very similar to Plato in this sense. People should treat their own characters like a sculptor with a statue, carefully reviewing all angles and chiseling away at parts which were not quite right. This again has essence of Aristotle in there as well. Augustine realized that evil is not a substance but a turning away from goodness. This links into his ideas of problem of evil and where evil comes from, how evil is an absence of God, is also created by God, but is a privatio boni, the idea of it's, um, it's a lack of something. And so therefore, he came to the conclusion that the Manichees were wrong.
[5:55]But when did things significantly start to change? Augustine was still not completely happy with the ideas of Plotinus. He questioned that if Plotinus was correct and human intellect could understand the nature of goodness, then there would be no need for Jesus and his guidance. And so Augustine went to hear the preachings of the Bishop of Milan, who became known as St. Ambrose, who influenced Augustine to renew his interest in Christianity. It was a combination of St. Ambrose preaching and St. Paul's letter to the Romans that Augustine came to the conclusion that: Humans cannot find truth through reason alone. They need the Grace of God, and they need to turn away from bodily pleasures in order to concentrate on spiritual life. Mother Monica was much happier with this. Those three things that he learned from St. Ambrose and St. Paul are key to really understanding St. Augustine and what influenced his future teachings.
[6:54]If I can't do it, so neither can you. So where did Augustine change from being this student loving educational person that liked rhetoric and debate, a man that was influenced now at this point by Christianity and the importance of Jesus? When did it then become a man that believed that women were temptresses that evil is within all of us, that we're going to burn in hell? Where did this come from? So at the age of 32 Augustine became a priest then a bishop, this was more under duress than actually wanting these positions due to the will of his congregation. So obviously when you become a bishop, the people that follow you also have positions of power and authority. So they really wanted to push and promote him to get into these positions so that his congregation would be recognized, and I imagine his mother was there as well in his ear. And Augustine never looked back. Well, maybe a little bit. At the time of his conversion back to Christianity, he had a mistress whom he lived with and a child. He'd been with her for roughly about 12 years. It was a significant portion of his life that he'd been with this mistress. But once converted, his mother told him to give up his mistress and marry someone else.
[8:12]And so this caused a lot of distress for Augustine. He could not marry the mistress for whatever reason it was, she maybe had was married to somebody else. Um, and he was told to marry, and so his mother said he has to marry someone. And so, it's believed that his mother had propositioned a much younger woman to him. I think potentially she was around the age of about 14, so she was much much younger than him. Um, because again at the time, um, women often were married at a young age. So this was not something that was completely outrageous, but he said, no.
[8:43]He is not interested in marrying anybody. He does not want to marry someone much younger, so he'd rather not get married at all. And so, even though he had enjoyed many years of fine living and sexual freedom, in later life Augustine became certain that such freedoms were a barrier to spirituality and others therefore should be restricted from them. Augustine did not share Constantine's tolerance either of other religious and philosophical views. Instead, once in a position of influence, he ordered the destruction of non-Christian places of worship. He also persecuted heretics, those with different views on Christianity to himself. I think he should have just been allowed to keep his mistress. So he went from being this fun loving, sexually open man to believing that it was a barrier to spirituality, that women were going to lead us astray, that not only, um, should we promote pluralism, and that actually instead we should destroy and persecute anybody that does not speak of Christianity. So he really went from one extreme to another.
[9:50]So at this point I get my students to using the text books to help them to look at the, to create a picture board of the different stages of the Fall. The Fall obviously is in book two of Genesis. So you can use book two in Genesis instead. And it's basically Adam and Eve. The before the before the eating of the apple or the eating of the fruit and then after. So to put to do the stages of the Fall, and it should be familiar because we've covered it a few times before, especially around problem of evil. And getting them to focus on human nature, the Fall or the epistemic distance, the Fall from Grace, original sin, um, right up to human nature before and after the Fall. Now, this is where you might get questions in the exam. It is important that you know his background. It is important that you know where, uh, the influences of Constantine, the Manichees, and the Plotinus, and the importance of his mother, and how this influenced him through his development. But this is now what you will potentially get questions asked in the exam. So before and after the Fall, before the Fall, this is Adam and Eve, they live in a spirit of loving friendship, Concordia, easy, comfortable, understanding relationship, and also in harmony with living creatures. God made Adam and Eve exactly as he wanted. He made them with free will, which was chief characteristics of being made in the image of God and Imago Dei. God commanded them to be fruitful and multiply, enjoy a sexual relationship, but not lust, as lust was a later punishment for Eve. Either she would lust after her man that that wouldn't necessarily show the same interest. They were happy being naked, and there was just a complete and utter state of perfection. However, Eve had to take the apple or the fruit. Eve had to be tempted by the snake, give it to Adam. Adam then ate it, and so they broke the first covenant. The first covenant made between made between man and God. The first covenant which was do not eat from the tree of good and evil. Do not eat fruit from that tree. Leave the tree alone. And Adam promised they would leave the tree alone. They then broke that promise and that covenant. So it's not that they actually ate the fruit that was the big deal. It's the fact they broke a promise they'd made to God. The existence of evil cannot be from God, who is truly perfect, like the Form of the Good. And again, very much linking with his ideas of problem of evil. It's an absence of good. God cannot create an absence of good. The absence of good came when they broke the covenant and broke the promise they made to God. Evil is here entirely because of misuse of human free will. We are all tainted with sin through Adam and Eve, therefore attracted to material goods. So because we are the bloodline of Adam and Eve, I see my students can remember that word. Um, we have the bloodline of Adam and Eve. I see my students can remember that word. We are seminarily present, if you can't remember, um, and that because of that, we are we we are have all inherited from Adam and Eve this tainted sin, this evil nature within our free will, that we are attracted to material goods, material possessions. Unlike the Manichees idea of good and evil, there is only one power, God. There is nothing we can do by ourselves to become free from sin. We can only be saved by the grace of God. And this is going to come up later. It's all about love. Augustine saw human will as being driven by love, which after the Fall could pull a person in right direction or the wrong one. Our fallen human nature inevitably leads people to do wrong though. And there are two types of love, one is right and one is wrong and see if you can guess which one is which. Cupiditas then is love of impermanent, changeable earthly things, the love of self and selfish needs, egocentric, egotistical, narcissistic love. People who choose this are ignorant and often unhappy because they have subjected themselves to laws of the world which are the human laws of social life. Caritas on the other hand is the Latin equivalent of the Greek word Agape, generous love of others, expression of God's wills and eternal law, dispatched through virtues, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice, and it leads to spiritual happiness. So, obviously, the focus for Augustine was on Caritas, not Cupiditas. Caritas was the love before the Fall. Cupiditas was the love after the Fall, and we are tempted and often legistra by Cupiditas. We always go to that one first, according to Augustine, because again, we are tainted and sinful. Um, you've got a few nice links there, this idea of expression of God's will of eternal law, that links nicely in with Aquinas's hierarchy of law in natural law with eternal law being the mind of God at the top. So there's a nice little link there, if you wish. And obviously, Agape links in with situation ethics. Original Sin, original meaning first, the first sin. Humanity's sinful nature after the Fall = Adam and Eve chose the path of Cupiditas and future generations have all inherited original sin, meaning that all humans are sinful by nature and are born that way because they have inherited it from Adam. Who knew sperm could do that?
[15:17]Carry the sin of generations from a thousands of years ago. Um, what you've got to question at this stage is, and this is something I often think and ask my students is, Adam and Eve were right at the beginning of the Bible, the beginning of the creation of man. Jesus came a long time after that, and one interpretation of Jesus dying on the cross was he died for the sins of everybody to wipe clear the sins of everybody. So how are we then born with sin, if Jesus wiped the sin clear clean, and how are babies born sinful? But then this is where the idea of baptism comes in. Then again, you're meant to be baptized as a baby in order to to get rid of that original sin. So, once more if we've cleansed the original sin, why is it then following us throughout our life? So it's just some questions that you could discuss within an essay. So we are all now in a state of ignorance, an inevitable consequence of chasing Cupiditas. And in fairness, Augustine isn't wrong. We are creatures of material possessions. We do chase bigger and better. People are beyond rescue by their own efforts. We cannot be helped. We cannot help ourselves or each other. We can only be saved from sin by God's grace through Christ. We have to turn to Christ, and then hope that God's grace, God's loving nature that shines upon us, will save us. Save us from sin, which is eternal damnation in hell. If people could achieve goodness through their own efforts, then Jesus' sacrifice is unnecessary, that if we can get there on our own without Jesus, then Jesus dying would mean nothing. But then Jesus dying was meant to eradicate the sin, so it still seems that he died for nothing in that sense. He saw the human will after the Fall as being divided: people still had the God given ability to reason and to recognize right from wrong, but they have corrupted this, so that they always inclined to do wrong and be selfish and lustful. So basically, after the Fall, we have a choice, right and wrong. We have reason to work it out, but we most often go down the wrong selfish, lustful rather than the right path towards God and Christ, um, and God's grace. And so I get my students to see if they can remember who this is completely opposite to. And the answer is, of course, Aquinas. Aquinas believes when you do natural law, the idea of the Synderesis Rule, that do good and avoid evil. Aquinas believes that we are tempted by bad things, but we most often go towards what's right and what's good. So Aquinas is completely the opposite to Augustine. And again, you could mention that and discuss that in an essay.
[17:49]Augustine and the Pear! As a child Augustine stole a pear from someone else's garden, even though he was not hungry and had plenty of good food in his own home. He stole it simply of the pleasure of stealing. Hmm. He talks about this in his book Confessions. That's why the book is called Confessions. That's the front cover of his book. Now, whether this story is true or not, he used it in his autobiography, the image is often used in the front cover, as I've said, to demonstrate that sin has become part of human nature, something displayed in even children because don't forget, we are born this way. Am I convinced he actually stole a pear? Hmm, not so much. It still made it into his book, though, so we'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Do I think stealing a pear therefore means that the whole of humanity is sinful? Again, a bit of a stretch. It's a bit of a leap, isn't it, that one person stealing because of their human nature is bad means that all human nature is bad and we're all going to do things like this. Again, I'm not so sure. Augustine on Men, Women and Sexuality. Oh, Augustine. Augustine argued that humanity is sinful. All right, Augustine, we get it. We're sinful, we get it. We're at the mercy of concupiscence. This is sexual desire, lust for material things, which are distractions from loving and obeying God. Does anyone see a pattern happening here? Augustine seems obsessed with this idea of love, sexual desire, material possessions. Again, I think it's all because he wasn't allowed his mistress, who he'd been quite happy with for many, many years. So he went completely celibate and now it clearly is all he can think about. He encouraged married couples with enough children to take a vow of celibacy, just like him. Because at the end of the day, you should only be having sex to procreate. Once you've had enough procreation and enough children, you need to now be celibate and no longer have sex at all. Augustine now Bishop of Hippo in modern day Algeria never lived to extremes, enjoying good meals and conversations but never indulgent. Also remaining pure of will, not allowing women to visit his house, not even his sister. What's he going to do to his sister? But he wanted to remain pure of will. So that means that no women could visit his house. There was no temptation there, because at the end of the day, don't forget women like Eve, they're to tempt you. Even your own sister. Augustine was a lot more sympathetic towards women, compared with other thinkers of his time. He did not see women as weaker or evil because of the sin of Eve, because we're all created equal in God's image and Imago Dei. So he doesn't see us as inherently weaker or evil. Well, thanks, Augustine. That's nice.
[21:03]But he did believe that women, whilst not inferior, do take passive roles in the house and men are the decision makers. It was a punishment of Eve that your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. Now, one must follow political authority and keep focused on the destination, which is the City of God. This heavenly society or Ecclesia is the perfect way to live. This is achieved in the afterlife through the Grace of God.
[21:44]Now hopping back to that previous point about women being inferior, men are the decision makers, I've got to ask the question, if men are so good at decision making, then why didn't Adam turn around to Eve right back at the beginning and go, no, Eve, put the apple down, put the fruit down. I am not eating it. No. Instead, he just took it and ate it. So if men are that good at decision making, you would think that this whole mess wouldn't have happened in the first place, but it didn't. Um, something I discuss with my second years as well when we do gender and society is, the chances are, even if Adam had taken the apple and given it to Eve, and Eve was the first to eat it, again, women would have been seen as the the bad ones. So I think however they would flip the story, whether it was Eve that took the apple or Adam, I think women would have ended up being the, uh, not inferior, but the ones that men need to take the decision making and women the passive roles. Augustine's teachings on grace. This is really important. The idea of God's grace comes throughout this course. So you'll cover it when you do Bonhoeffer and moral action later on in your first year Christian thought. So this idea is very important. Only way for humanity and God to live harmoniously again is through God's grace. He didn't come up with God's grace. This is a teaching that he promoted and backed. God's grace is the generous giving of God's love, even though we don't deserve it, according to Augustine. God's grace is the only thing that can save people from eternal punishment for their sinful nature. Rejects that human reason or acts of kindness earn a place in heaven, cannot be earned, but elected by God. So again, you don't have to do good things, you don't have to give to charities. It's a nice if you do, but it will not earn you a place in heaven. You don't talk inistically. And human reason, unlike Aquinas who believes in human reason is a gift, he believes that human reason again leads you down the wrong path. Instead of the grace of God is found through Jesus. Like many thinkers, the Summon Bonum is an aspect of God, seen through such things as evil being a lack of goodness, distancing us away from supreme goodness of God. So some people can't talks about the some bottom as well, but it's the idea that you can only find God's love and mercy through turning to Jesus Christ.
[24:05]Evaluation then, the strengths, very influential. Whatever you think about Augustine, he is a significant factor within Christian theology. Especially on human nature, sin and temptation. Augustine is realistic about human temptation, using his own experiences. Taking the pair. And his own weaknesses to highlight issues. And in fairness, he isn't wrong. We are tempted as human beings. Recognition of human imperfection leads to moral progress, so the idea that we learn from our mistakes to move forward. Hobbes also agrees with Augustine that humans by nature are selfish and only work for their own interests. However, the whole argument is based on Genesis, the Fall, which many Christians believe is not literal, not propositional, not historically accurate. It's a myth, it's a story with a meaning. It's a story to be read to teach you things, not that something that is literally true, that we are literally seminarily present. Adam and Eve and therefore inherited original sin.
[25:03]Many people accept evolution and natural selection, not the ideas of being punished because of our ancestors' actions. It's also unattractive. It's unjust, and it's difficult to reconcile Augustine's ideas with a loving and forgiving God. God's loving and forgiving and still punishing us for what Adam and Eve did. Seems a bit of a grudge to me. Is it forgiving to be eternally punished for Adam and Eve's one mistake? They made one mistake, she took the fruit. They were punished, they were banished from paradise. They were women were given lustful natures after men, painful births. Men were given that they had to work the land. Is that not enough punishment? But oh, no. On top of it, we are all punished for it because of the bloodline. And is it fair that the only redemption is through God's grace and pre-elected decision? That you're either saved or damned, no matter what you do. Either God's grace will shine upon you or not. Is there any point then in trying to be good? Is there any point in trying to be good? If you if you don't know which way God's grace might fall. This is the idea that you could follow Christ and be a good Christian, and God's grace still might not choose you for eternal salvation. Isn't sexual desire healthy and not sinful? Should it be seen as something shameful and impure? So a lot of the views that we have towards women historically or the ideas towards sexual desire, um, is because of influences like St. Augustine. And at the end of the day, we're moving out towards seeing that sexual desire is actually very healthy and that it's not a sinful thing. And so therefore this idea that married couples have had enough children should stop having sex. That's not really a view that is is healthy. Um, when relationships and sex is about closeness, compassion, um, trust, etc. not just about the actual act itself. Um, Rousseau says argues that people in general are good and want to defend the weak and promote societal equality. So this is the idea that he's arguing and defending humankind saying, no, we are good. And we do want to promote societal equality. It's a really nice argument if you find someone that you think is just done something that is just inherently good for no other reason, a selfish, a selfless good deed. There's many, many examples of people that have done the most amazing things. Use them as an example to back it up to say that actually there are people in this world that are, many, many people in this world that are good. I remember one of the clips that I show my students, um, when I do criminology for James Bulger. And it's the the story of James Bulger's mother, and James Bulger was obviously a toddler that was killed by two ten-year-olds years ago. And she talks about all the letters of love that she receives, and she says that it might have been the act of two, two evil people that did that to her child. But then she gets thousands upon thousands upon thousands of letters, messages, gifts to her, and she says that there's more good in the world than there is bad. And that's what Rousseau there is arguing, is that there is more good than bad. We are not all inclined to do bad things and steal pears like Augustine argues. Locke also argues that people are born tabula rasa, which is blank slate. We're not born with sin. We are born blank slates as humans. Final thing I get my students to do then is just to consider and write down their answers to these questions. In what ways can Augustine's teachings on a historical Fall and original sin be seen as wrong? Is Augustine right that sin means that humans can never be morally good? Do you think Augustine's view of human nature is pessimistic or optimistic? And do you think there is a distinctive human nature? Again, the idea of we choose wrong over right, good, um, evil over good. So excuse me, don't forget to always consider both sides of the argument. Right, thank you very much for watching everybody. I hope you found that useful. I really do enjoy this topic. It's one of my favorite topics is St. Augustine. Um, I, if you have any questions or anything, um, please drop them below and I'll see you all next time. And don't forget to subscribe as well, folks. Right, bye for now, everyone. Bye.
