Augustinianism

Augustinian Ethics [2]

Augustine's Early Views on Sin and Human Happiness

I. The Problem of Human Sinfulness

We have seen that for Augustine the aim of all human action is to attain happiness. Our ultimate happiness, however, comes by maintaining the correct order of loves---that is by loving God for his own sake and all other things for the sake of God.

Seems simple enough, doesn't it? And yet how do we account for the fact that so many people in this world are so wretchedly unhappy? The answer, of course, must be that we freely choose not to love in the correct (e.g., ordered) way. Disordered love---or lust---according to Augustine is the root of all sin and the cause of all our misery in this life.

In the text, Freedom of the Will, Augustine goes on to ask what the cause of human sinfulness is. The answer, as we shall see, is that the cause must lie completely within ourselves:

Freedom of the Will

Book I

I. EVODIUS: Please tell me whether or not God is the cause of evil of evil.

AUGUSTINE: I'll answer you, if you will make it clear what kind of evil you are talking about. For we typically use the word 'evil' in two senses: first, the evil that a person has done, and, second, the evil he has suffered.

EVODIUS: I want to know about both kinds of evil.

AUGUSTINE: If you know or believe that God is good (and we should not think otherwise) he cannot be evil. On the other hand, if we believe that God is just (and to deny that is sacrilegious), then we must also believe that he gives rewards to the good just as he gives punishments to the wicked. Of course these punishments are evil to those who suffer them. Therefore if no one is punished unjustly (and this we must believe, since we believe that the universe is governed by divine providence) God is not the author of the evil a man does though he is the author of the evil a man suffers.

EVODIUS: Is there then some other cause of the kind of evil which we do not attribute to the action of God?

AUGUSTINE: There certainly is, for we cannot say that such evil happened unless someone caused it. But if you ask who that is I cannot tell you, for there is no one single author. Rather, every evil man is the cause of his own evil deeds. If you doubt this, consider what we have just said: evil deeds are punished by the just God. They would not be justly punished if the had not been performed voluntarily.

BOOK III

AUGUSTINE: I'm sure you recall that in Book One we agreed that nothing can make the mind a slave to inordinate desire except its own will. For the will cannot be forced into such sin by anything superior or equal to it, since that would be unjust; or by anything inferior to it, since that is impossible. Only one possibility remains: the movement by which the will turns from enjoying the Creator to enjoying his creatures belongs to the will itself. So if that movement deserves blame (and you said it was ridiculous to entertain doubts on that score), then it is not natural, but voluntary.

This movement of the will is similar to the downward movement of a stone in that it belongs to the will just as that downward movement belongs to the stone. But the two movements are dissimilar in this respect: the stone has no power to check its downward movement, but the soul is not moved to abandon higher things and love inferior things unless it wills to do so. And so the movement of the stone is natural, but the movement of the soul is voluntary. If someone were to say that a stone is sinning because its weight carries it downward, I would not merely say that he was more senseless than the stone itself; I would consider him completely insane. But we accuse a soul of sin when we are convinced that it has abandoned higher things and chosen to enjoy inferior things. Now we admit that this movement belongs to the will alone, and that it is voluntary and therefore blameworthy; and the only useful teaching on this topic is that which condemns and checks this movement and thus serves to rescue our wills from their fall into temporal goods and turn them toward the enjoyment of the eternal good. Therefore, what need is there to ask about the source of the movement by which the will turns away from the unchangeable good toward changeable good?

EVODIUS: I see that what you are saying is true, and in a way I understand it. There is nothing I feel so firmly and so intimately as that I have a will by which I am moved to enjoy something. If the will by which I choose or refuse things is not mine, then I don't know what I can call mine. So if I use my will to do something evil, whom can I hold responsible but myself? For a good God made me, and I can do nothing good except through my will; therefore, it is quite clear that the will was given to me by a good God so that I might do good. If the movement of the will by which it turns this way or that were not voluntary and under its own control, a person would not deserve praise for turning to higher things or blame for turning to lower things , as if swinging on the hinge of the will. Furthermore, there would be no point in admonishing people to forget about lower things and strive for what is eternal, so that they might refuse to live badly but instead will to live rightly. And anyone who does not think that we ought to admonish people in this way deserves to be banished from the human race.

In Freedom of the Will, then, Augustine argues that if the will was compelled to sin, then human beings could not be blamed for sinful acts that they commit. God's punishment of sinners would therefore be unjust. But God cannot be unjust and therefore our acts of sin must be performed completely voluntarily. This position is neatly summed up by Augustine in another text that he wrote early on his his philosophical career, On True Religion:

If the defect we call sin overtook a man against his will, like a fever, the penalty which follows the sinner and is called condemnation would rightly seem to be unjust. But in fact sin is so much a voluntary evil that it is not sin at all unless it is voluntary. This is so obvious that no one denies it, either of the handful of the learned or of the mass of the unlearned . We must either say that no sin has been committed or confess that it has been willingly committed. No one can rightly deny that a soul has sinned who admits that it can be corrected by penitence, that the penitent should be pardoned, or that he who continues in sin is condemned by the just law of God. Lastly if it is not by the exercise of will that we do wrong, no one at all is to be censured or warned. If you take away censure and warning the Christian law and the whole discipline of religion is necessarily abolished. Therefore, it is by the will that sin is committed, I cannot see that it can be doubted that souls have free choice in willing. God judged that men would serve him better if they served him freely. That could not be so if they served him by necessity and not by free will.

It would seem, then, that during his early years as a philosopher and theologian, Augustine did not waver from his conviction that (1) the human will has been created free by God, (2) that this will can choose to do what is good or evil (to love in an ordered or disordered way), and therefore (3) each human being bears full responsibility for his or her actions in life and (4) any punishment that we receive from God for the commission of sinful acts is completely just.

II. Human Sinfulness Illustrated: The Pear Theft

In 396 AD, Augustine had reached his maturity as a thinker. In an attempt to reflect on numerous topics in Christian theology using his own life as an illustration, Augustine wrote his most famous work, The Confessions. In the following selection from this work, Augustine tries to reflect upon the origins of human sinfulness using what seems to be an innocuous event from his childhood---the theft of some pears from a neighbor's orchard. While this event might seem insignificant to the modern reader, Augustine believes that it represents a perfect illustration of the mechanism of human sinfulness:

Confessions II

The Pear Theft

9. Theft is punished by your law, O Lord, and by the law written in men's hearts, which not even ingrained wickedness can erase. For what thief will tolerate another thief stealing from him? Even a rich thief will not tolerate a poor thief who is driven to theft by want. Yet I had a desire to commit robbery, and did so, compelled to it by neither hunger nor poverty, but through a contempt for well-doing and a strong impulse to iniquity. For I pilfered something which I already had in sufficient measure, and of much better quality. I did not desire to enjoy what I stole, but only the theft and the sin itself.

There was a pear tree close to our own vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was not tempting either for its color or for its flavor. Late one night--having prolonged our games in the streets until then, as our bad habit was--a group of young scoundrels, and I among them, went to shake and rob this tree. We carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden. Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart--which you pitied even in that bottomless pit. Behold, now let my heart confess to you what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error--not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself.

The Root of Human Sinfulness

10. Now there is a kind of loveliness in all beautiful bodies, and in gold and silver and all things. The sense of touch has its own power to please and the other senses find their proper objects in physical sensation. Worldly honor also has its own glory, and so do the powers to command and to overcome: and from these there springs up the desire for revenge. Yet, in seeking these pleasures, we must not depart from thee, O Lord, nor deviate from thy law. The life which we live here has its own peculiar attractiveness because it has a certain measure of comeliness of its own and a harmony with all these inferior values. The bond of human friendship has a sweetness of its own, binding many souls together as one. Yet because of these values, sin is committed, because we have an inordinate preference for these goods of a lower order and neglect the better and the higher good--neglecting you, O our Lord God, and your truth and your law. For these inferior values have their delights, but not at all equal to my God, who has made them all. For in him do the righteous delight and he is the sweetness of the upright in heart.

11. When, therefore, we inquire why a crime was committed, we do not accept the explanation unless it appears that there was the desire to obtain some of those values which we designate inferior, or else a fear of losing them. For truly they are beautiful and lovely, though in comparison with the superior and celestial goods they are abject and contemptible. A man has murdered another man--what was his motive? Either he desired his wife or his property or else he would steal to support himself; or else he was afraid of losing something to him; or else, having been injured, he was burning to be revenged. Would a man commit murder without a motive, taking delight simply in the act of murder? Who would believe such a thing?...

Explaining the Pear Theft

12. What was it in you, O theft of mine, that I, poor wretch, doted on--you deed of darkness--in that sixteenth year of my age? Beautiful you were not, for you were a theft. But are you anything at all, so that I could analyze the case with you? Those pears that we stole were fair to the sight because they were your creation, O Beauty beyond compare, O Creator of all, O you good God--God the highest good and my true good. Those pears were truly pleasant to the sight, but it was not for them that my miserable soul lusted, for I had an abundance of better pears. I stole those simply that I might steal, for, having stolen them, I threw them away. My sole gratification in them was my own sin, which I was pleased to enjoy; for, if any one of these pears entered my mouth, the only good flavor it had was my sin in eating it. And now, O Lord my God, I ask what it was in that theft of mine that caused me such delight; for behold it had no beauty of its own--certainly not the sort of beauty that exists in justice and wisdom, nor such as is in the mind, memory senses, and the animal life of man; nor yet the kind that is the glory and beauty of the stars in their courses; nor the beauty of the earth, or the sea--teeming with spawning life, replacing in birth that which dies and decays. Indeed, it did not have that false and shadowy beauty which attends the deceptions of vice.

13. For thus we see pride wearing the mask of high-spiritedness, although only you, O God, are high above all. Ambition seeks honor and glory, whereas only you should be honored above all, and glorified forever. The powerful man seeks to be feared, because of his cruelty; but who ought really to be feared but God only? What can be forced away or withdrawn out of his power--when or where or whither or by whom? The enticements of the wanton claim the name of love; and yet nothing is more enticing than your love, nor is anything loved more healthfully than your truth, bright and beautiful above all. Curiosity prompts a desire for knowledge, whereas it is only you who know all things supremely. Indeed, ignorance and foolishness themselves go masked under the names of simplicity and innocence; yet there is no being that has true simplicity like yours, and none is innocent as you are....

14. Thus the soul commits fornication when she is turned from you, and seeks apart from you what she cannot find pure and untainted until she returns to you. All things thus imitate you--but pervertedly--when they separate themselves far from you and raise themselves up against you. But, even in this act of perverse imitation, they acknowledge you to be the Creator of all nature, and recognize that there is no place where they can altogether separate themselves from you.

What was it, then, that I loved in that theft? And wherein was I imitating my Lord, even in a corrupted and perverted way? Did I wish, if only by gesture, to rebel against your law, even though I had no power to do so actually--so that, even as a captive, I might produce a sort of counterfeit liberty, by doing with impunity deeds that were forbidden, in a deluded sense of omnipotence? Behold this servant of yours, fleeing from his Lord and following a shadow! O rottenness! O monstrousness of life and abyss of death! Could I find pleasure only in what was unlawful, and only because it was unlawful?

III. The Penalty For Sin

By now it should be clear that our happiness as human being comes from maintaining the correct order of loves. Sin, which perverts this order, then, must necessarily lead us to misery. In the text, Of True Religion, Augustine describes the process whereby human beings eventually become enslaved by the very lower goods that they lust after:

Every corporeal creature, when possessed by a soul that loves God, is a good thing of the lowest order, and beautiful in its own way, for it is held together by form and species. If it is loved by a soul that neglects God, not even so is it evil in itself. But the sin of so loving it brings a penalty to him who so loves it. It involves him in miseries, and feeds him with fallacious pleasures which neither abide nor satisfy, but beget torturing sorrows. Time in all the beauty of it changefulness holds on its appointed course, and the thing desired escapes him who loved it. It torments him by passing beyond his power to sense it, and disturbs his mind with errors. For it makes him suppose that the material object which the flesh had wrongly delighted in, and which he had known through the uncertain senses, was the primal form, when in fact it was the lowest form of all; so that, shadowy phantasms. If he does not hold fact to the whole discipline of divine providence but imagines he does, and tries to resist the flesh, he merely reaches the images of visible things. He vainly excogitates vast spaces of light exactly like ordinary light which he sees has fixed limits here, and promises himself a future habitation there. He does not know that he is still entangled in the lust of the eye, and that he is carrying this world with him in his endeavor to go beyond it. He thinks he has reached another world simply by falsely imagining the bright part of this world infinitely extended. One could do the same not only with light but also with water, wine, honey, gold, silver, even with the flesh, blood and bones and animals, and other like things. There is no bodily object seen singly which cannot in thought be infinitely multiplied, and there is nothing which, as we see it, occupies a small space, which cannot by the same faculty of imagination be infinitely extended. It is very easy to execrate the flesh, but very difficult not to be carnally minded.

In his Confessions, Augustine illustrates the price that human beings must pay for their disordered acts of love by examining yet another important event from his early life--- the death of his friend. Remember: there is nothing wrong with loving other human beings. Augustine's problem, is that he loves his friend for his own sake rather than for the sake of God, and, therefore, engages in a kind of idolatrous love. The end result of such disordered love must be misery:

Confessions IV

The Death of Augustine's Friend

7. In those years, when I first began to teach rhetoric in my native town, I had acquired a very dear friend, from association in our studies, of mine own age, and, like myself, just rising up into the flower of youth. He had grown up with me from childhood, and we had been both school-fellows and play-fellows. But he was not then my friend, nor, indeed, afterwards, as true friendship is; for true it is not but in such as you bind together, cleaving unto you by that love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. But yet it was too sweet, being ripened by the fervor of similar studies. For, from the true a faith (which he, as a youth, had not soundly and thoroughly become master of), I had turned him aside towards those superstitious and pernicious fables which my mother mourned in me. With me this man's mind now erred, nor could my soul exist without him. But behold, you were close behind your fugitives -- at once God of vengeance and Fountain of mercies, who turns us to yourself by wondrous means. You remove that man from this life when he had scarcely completed one whole year's friendship, a friendship sweeter to me than any I had known in my life.

8. "Who can show forth all your praise" which he has experienced in himself alone? What was it that you did then, O my God, and how unsearchable are the depths of your judgments! For when, sore sick of a fever, he long lay unconscious in a death-sweat, and all despaired of his recovery, he was baptized without his knowledge; myself meanwhile little caring, presuming that his soul would retain rather what it had imbibed from me, than what was done to his unconscious body. Far different, however, was it, for he was revived and restored. Straightway, as soon as I could talk to him (which I could as soon as he was able, for I never left him, and we hung too much upon each other), I attempted to jest with him, as if he also would jest with me at that baptism which he had received when mind and senses were in abeyance, but had now learnt that he had received. But he shuddered at me, as if I were his enemy; and, with a remarkable and unexpected freedom, admonished me, if I desired to continue his friend, to desist from speaking to him in such a way. I, confounded and confused, concealed all my emotions, till he should get well, and his health be strong enough to allow me to deal with him as I wished. But he was withdrawn from my frenzy, that with Thee he might be preserved for my comfort. A few days after, during my absence, he had a return of the fever, and died.

The Effects of Disordered Love

9. At this sorrow my heart was utterly darkened, and whatever I looked upon was death. My native country was a torture to me, and my father's house a wondrous unhappiness; and whatsoever I had participated in with him, wanting him, turned into a frightful torture. Mine eyes sought him everywhere, but he was not granted them; and I hated all places because he was not in them; nor could they now say to me, "Behold; he is coming," as they did when he was alive and absent. I became a great puzzle to myself, and asked my soul why she was so sad, and why she so exceedingly disquieted me; but she knew not what to answer me. And if I said, "Place your hope in God," she very properly obeyed me not; because that most dear friend whom she had lost was, being man, both truer and better than that phantasms she was bid to hope in. Naught but tears were sweet to me, and they succeeded my friend in the dearest of my affections.

12. O madness, which knows not how to love men as men should be loved! O foolish man that I then was, enduring with so much impatience the lot of man So I fretted, sighed, wept, tormented myself, and took neither rest nor advice. For I bore about with me a rent and polluted soul, impatient of being borne by me, and where to repose it I found not. Not in pleasant groves, not in sport or song, not in fragrant spots, nor in magnificent feasts, nor in the pleasures of the bed and the couch, nor, finally, in books and songs did it find repose. All things looked terrible, even the very light itself; and whatsoever was not what he was, was repulsive and hateful, except groans and tears, for in those alone found I a little repose. But when my soul was withdrawn from them, a heavy burden of misery weighed me down. To you, O Lord, should it have been raised, for you to lighten and avert it. This I knew, but was neither willing nor able; all the more since, in my thoughts of you, you were not any solid or substantial thing to me. For you were not Thyself, but an empty phantasm and my error was my god. If I attempted to discharge my burden thereon, that it might find rest, it sank into emptiness, and came rushing down again upon me, and I remained to myself an unhappy spot, where I could neither stay nor depart from. For whither could my heart fly from my heart? Whither could I fly from mine own self? Whither not follow myself? And yet fled I from my country; for so should my eyes look less for him where they were not accustomed to see him. And thus I left the town of Thagaste, and came to Carthage.

Beginning the Healing Process

13. Times lose no time, nor do they idly roll through our senses. They work strange operations on the mind? Behold, they came and went from day to day, and by coming and going they disseminated in my mind other ideas and other remembrances, and by little and little patched me up again with the former kind of delights, unto which that sorrow of mine yielded. But yet there succeeded, not certainly other sorrows, yet the causes of other sorrows. For whence had that former sorrow so easily penetrated to the quick, but that I had poured out my soul upon the dust, in loving one who must die as if he were never to die? But what revived and refreshed me especially was the consolations of other friends, with whom I did love what instead of Thee I loved. And this was a monstrous fable and protracted lie, by whose adulterous contact our soul, which lay itching in our ears, was being polluted. But that fable would not die to me so oft as any of my friends died. There were other things in them which did more lay hold of my mind, -- to discourse and jest with them; to indulge in an interchange of kindnesses; to read together pleasant books; together to trifle, and together to be earnest; to differ at times without ill-humor, as a man would do with his own self; and even by the infrequency of these differences to give zest to our more frequent consentings; sometimes teaching, sometimes being taught; longing for the absent with impatience, and welcoming the coming with joy. These and similar expressions, emanating from the hearts of those who loved and were beloved in return, by the countenance, the tongue, the eyes, and a thousand pleasing movements, were! so much fuel to melt our souls together, and out of many to make but one.

The Correct Love for Friends

14. This is it that is loved in friends; and so loved that a man's conscience accuses itself if he love not him by whom he is beloved, or love not again him that loves him, expecting nothing from him but indications of his love. Hence that mourning if one die, and gloom of sorrow, that steeping of the heart in tears, all sweetness turned into bitterness, and upon the loss of the life of the dying, the death of the living. Blessed be he who loves you, and his friend in you, and his enemy for your sake. For he alone loses none dear to him to whom all are dear in Him who cannot be lost. And who is this but our God, the God that created heaven and earth, and fills them, because by filling them He created them? No one looses you but he who leaves you, and if he does try to do that, where can he go, where can he flee?...Does he not encounter your law everywhere, in his own punishment? Your law is truth, as you yourself are truth.

superstitious and pernicious fables: Augustine here is describing the Manichaean religion. Augustine had left the Catholic Church when he was 18 in order to join the heretical sect and convinced many of his closest friends---including the lad mentioned in this story-- to do the same. Needles to say, Augustine's mother, Monica, who was a devout Catholic, was horrified that her son had become a heretic and would spend the next 14 years trying to persuade him to return to the Church.

IV. Summary of Augustine's Early Views on Happiness

What we have seen in the above texts, all of which were written fairly early on in Augustine's career, is that Augustine is convinced that all human beings are born with complete freedom of the will, and can choose to love in an ordered or disordered way. Disordered love, as we have also seen, is the root of all evil and sin according to Augustine. Because we have been created by God as free beings, Augustine believes that we bare full responsibility for all of our actions, and, if we sin by choosing to love in a disordered way, we are fully deserving of any punishment that we receive as a result of our sin.

Because Augustine believes that our life here on earth is but a preparation for a future existence in heaven with God, he makes the distinction between temporal and eternal rewards / punishments that are the consequences of our free acts.

If we choose to sin by loving created things (food, sex, our family and friends, for example) with no reference to God, we will find that our love for these things brings us no real satisfaction, but rather become sources of misery for us. The reason for this is simple: our happiness in life can only come from a good that is truly capable of satisfying our longings, and union with God is the only thing that can accomplish this end. Our life of sin here and now, furthermore, promises us an eternal separation from God in the next life, which is a just and fitting punishment for our neglect of God in this life.

If, on the other hand, we choose to follow the teachings of the Church and to love created things in an order way---always for the sake of God---then we will experience union with God in this life and will posses a good that is capable of bringing us true happiness. This temporal happiness for Augustine is but a glimpse of the even more wonderful bliss that awaits the virtuous in the next life when they will experience eternal union with God.

FREE WILL
ordered love (caritas)		disordered love (cupiditas)
earthly union w/ God	eternal union w/ God	earthly alienation from God	eternal alienation from God
temporal happiness	eternal happiness	temporal punishment	eternal punishment

In a nutshell, you sin and you pay now and for all eternity; be good and you will experience happiness in this life as well as in the next:

Still sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? And yet, as we shall see, later on in his life Augustine grew increasingly dissatisfied with the very simplicity of his own approach to happiness. The reason for this is that this early approach presumes, following Socrates and most of the classical authors that we have studied in this course, that human being are capable of knowing the good and doing the good if they so choose. We all know people, however, who know darn well what the good is but who choose to do what is evil anyway; we also know people who know what the good is and want desperately to do it, but who seem compelled to do what is wrong (think about alcoholics, for example). It was precisely these sorts of problems that forced Augustine the Bishop to radically alter his understanding of happiness and, in doing so, changed forever the entire course of Christian ethics.