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St. Augustine: True Confessions Books I to IX. Concept of sin The Confessions presents St. Augustine's deepest understanding of sin. He explores the realm of human sin by delving deep into the roots of humanity like the sins of Adam, and even those of a newly born child, who, from the frame of reference of any average human is the most pure speck of human life. The Confessions expounds the profound observation that St.
Augustine makes on the dynamics of sin. The human condition of anterior bondage in evil ensures that the natural desire for truth and the good binds itself into a lie and hatred for God and self. Paradoxically, the natural necessity to seek the true and the good, its indelible memory of God, invincibly binds humans in their inherited and lived possession of lies and hatred. Confession, their only possible cure is rendered impossible. The anterior bondage and sin operates, then, at three levels in the Confessions. Originally sin is autobiographically anterior as the first level of sin in an individuals life.
Finally, it is primordial anterior; it is the root of moral impotence and sin as their fundamental cause and meaning. With reference to the sins committed by an infant, at first St. Augustine is perplexed that he cannot remember his infant sins and so he cannot confess them in front of God. So he turns to Job and confesses from that time.
His first confession is that from his first moment of life, he is subject to sin and evil, - for in thy sight there is none free from sin, not even the infant who has lived but a day upon this earth (B 1, Ch. 7, 11). Next, he confesses more specifically about his sins. He first confesses about his greed as a young child who wails for his mothers breast milk. He suddenly stops himself and contemplates and anticipates the objection that infant greed is not really sin. He thinks along the tracks that, such greed may be ridiculed in adulthood but not he talks about how people root out these ways of behavior, as they grow old. So he concludes the argument with the fact that no man who is removing bad would knowingly cast out good.
From his argument, Augustine shows that his sinful infant condition is severe. But then he slowly reasons out and learns that the sin in the infancy is not truly sin. An infant is indeed innocent and this innocence arises from the helplessness of an infants body than the quality of its mind. This point he reiterates by giving us more vivid examples of infant sins that delineate the inherent innocence in them. Author notices, herein lay my sin, that it was not in him, but in his creatures (B. 1, Ch. 19, 31). He introduces an example of an infant that is mad with anger as he watches another infant that the breast of his mother.
This may not be considered innocence in normal terms but it has indeed a strange sense of innocence in the sense that, the baby has to fend for the milk for his sole survival. Augustine then moves on to talk about his early childhood where he recollects the pear-theft. Unlike a lot of the other accounts, the theft of the pear didnt even have an apparent good (in relation to a crying infant for its survival. ) Augustine feels that it might have been the act of sin that made the experience sweet at the time: I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself (B. 2, Ch. 4, 9). Even though there was nothing in the act that would have immensely interested him, he feels that it might have been that thrill of acting against Gods will that lead him to do it.
But he quickly tells himself that he was indeed fooling himself the whole time about being outside the bounds of Gods will. Man cannot really act against Gods will. Then he concludes saying; it might have been sole idea of obtaining companionship with the all the young people involved in the theft that prompted him to do it also. Augustine then moves on to talk about how his want of companionship lead him to commit more sins in early adulthood. He discusses, in particular, the account of all the offerings of love that were strewn about him in Carthage. Augustine confesses that he was not yet in love, but he was in love with the idea of being in love.
And he hated himself from deep inside for not feeling the need more forcefully (of love. ) The real reason for his feeling of emptiness arose from the fact that he had not yet embraced God and had not felt his love. This self-love which really is self-hatred sprung from the absence of God in his soul. He still did not embrace God and that deepened the crevice in his soul, which caused even more self-hatred. Author concludes that finally sins men commit against themselves, they also committing impiety against their own souls (B. 3, Ch. 8, 16).
From infancy to adulthood, Augustine slowly traces his sins and in confessing these sins he develops a very concrete relationship between the soul and the body. Augustine refutes the traditional concept that there are two opposing minds in conflict, one good half and the bad half. Augustine's reason for his disagreement is that, he believes that this conflict in our mind and nature is due to numerous wills that arise at the same time. According to Augustine, these wills are in conflict until one is picked out particularly and then the mind along with all its wills becomes at one. Hence, there is never any struggle between good and evil or body and mind.
It is always a struggle between the mind together with soul against itself. Therefore, he concludes that the soul is root cause of evil: evil is not a substance at all and that our soul is not that supreme and unchangeable good (B. 4, Ch. 15, 25). The soul uses the body to lust against the Holy Spirit and to disregard the norms of the spirit. Keeping this fact in mind, Augustine, further talks about his views and confessions on lustful living. In Book 8 Augustine expands about the nature of lustful living that he was engaged in. This account present pride as a cause of the enslavement of the will and humility as the only source of efficacious healing.
In order to provide a detailed analysis for a cure for the split mind, Augustine talks about Ponticianus, who tells Augustine about his two courtesan friends who were filled with anger, shame and indignation against their carnal ambition for status in court upon knowing Gods words. According to Augustine, this is the kind of humility that heals a corrupt soul and hence purifies the body. Augustine reiterates the fact that oneness in body and soul is attained through purification of the soul, which is the root cause of all evil. References: The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Colliers Books, London, 1961 Translated by Edward B. Pusey, D. D.
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