Finding in Augustine’s Confessions the Unavoidability of Human Sinfulness

The Confessions of St. Augustine is strikingly modern in the presentation of its stance on human sinfulness, and its reconciliation with the Christian dogma of human souls. In the narrative, Augustine seems to imply that human agency is characterized both by freedom to sin and then by the inability of not falling into the temptation of sin. According to Augustine, freedom is part of human nature, and is given by God. Therefore, sin is a result of deliberate choice made by a morally responsible agent; consequentially, this explains divine punishment and reward. Sin, as developed in Confessions is a combination of different facets of human will: Augustine implies that sin is the result of the corruption of good by evil and the turning away from God towards lesser, temporal, ephemeral goods. Nevertheless, this definition seems to exclude sin committed when the moral agent is unaware that the choice made will result in a sinful deed. Hence, this precedes the question, why does Augustine believe that humans can be sinful even when they are unaware of their sin? In Confessions Augustine uses his own life to exemplify a claim on the ampler issue of sin and its reconciliation with a God that is in essence good. For Augustine, pride, concupiscence, an absence of obvious role models, intentionality, habit, and ignorance, all characterize the sinful nature of individuals, and most specifically indicate that although an individual may be unaware of extent of their own sinfulness, he maintains that sin persists.

The mainstream reading of how Augustine approaches the issue of sin is the belief that he attributes the nature of all sin to pride alone; however, in order to answer the aforementioned question, one must analyze the role of ignorance in being sinful. Augustine accesses ignorance or the notion of “not knowing” as insufficient for a rational individual to excuse his sin. In fact, it is clear for Augustine that ignorance automatically leads to deception—both in showing a weakness that the devil can prey upon, and also in deceiving one’s own self that one’s own actions are not sinful. Augustine explains that ignorance is a corruption of the mind because the individual has lost knowledge or “negligently failed to acquire it.”[1] Since the mind is regarded as where the temporal good resides in a person, the corruption of this good leads to sin. The negligence in failing to acquire knowledge on the clear distinction between good and evil, creates in the individual an “absence of the fullness of goodness and reality which the nature itself and the divine order demand.”[2] Moreover, it is clear in Book II of Confessions that Augustine is set on the blameworthiness of ignorance, and the narration of the pear tree theft in adolescence echo this. Augustine demonstrates that the sin was done for the sake of being socially accepted in the companionship of fellow adolescents. However, he proceeds by scolding his younger self by being deceived that the good of companionship would justify the sin of theft.[3]

Augustine understands that there is a clear deception in believing that trivial occurrences such as adolescent banter do not count as sin: “I want to call back to my mind my past impurities and the carnal corruptions of my soul…all that time when I lost myself in the distractions of the many.” (Augustine, II-I) These distractions are significant insofar that he recognizes his sin in his adolescence. Moreover, Augustine seems to make a significant rhetorical comparison between his own sin in the pear orchard and Adam’s sin in the garden of Eden, in Book II. Both instances were an apparently trivial matter, clearly forbidden by God, with no specific purpose, and “nothing but the associative tie with others as motive.”[4] This comparison is significant because it challenges the notion that lesser sins are overlooked by God, and are thus “inconsiderable” because they do not do much harm. Yet, “like Adam, [Augustine] was falling into the devil’s trap of thinking a minor rebellion against God trivial because the stolen things were inconsiderable. But God is not inconsiderable.”[5] In fact, the bottom line Augustine draws is that individuals can be unaware of the impact of the sin they are committing, but they remain nonetheless sinful. He understands that the gravity of a sinful deed is not measured by the “puniness of the thing prohibited but by the immensity of the God who prohibits.”[6]

Hence, by ascertaining that individuals can be sinful although unaware of their sin, Augustine explains that sinfulness is a natural result of freedom of will and the intentionality connected to human nature’s agency. Augustine understands that “the very essence of human nature is its intentionality.”[7] Whether an individual is aware of the extent of sinfulness in their act or not, the intention that moves the act is enough to justify Augustine’s thesis that humans are sinful. It is evident for Augustine that where there is no free exercise of will, there is also no sin[8]—this then explains the divine system of reward and punishment, but also of repentance and forgiveness. It is in fact Ambrose who teaches him in Book VII that “evil is an individual’s bad choice or the punishment suffered for having made such a choice (Book VII, 3-5).”[9] The underlying comment is that even though individuals are unaware of their sin, they are still making a choice, albeit a wrong one. Freedom means that the individual can “maintain the fullness of love given by God or initiate [his] own corruption,”[10] by choosing to commit a deed that in retrospect is clearly sinful. In essence, it is about the freedom to choose. “If the wrong ‘choice’, that is inconsistent with the order of the created world an object is made,”[11] it creates a vicious, downward spiral. It is especially clear for Augustine that the greatest example of all was not his own adolescent banter, but Adam and Eve’s fall from the garden of Eden. It seems that “Adam’s fall was due to a misplaced chivalry. […] Adam made a deliberate choice, out of his solidarity with Eve”[12]—just as Augustine had chosen to commit to stealing from the pear orchard in solidarity with his companions.

Moreover, to reinforce the thesis that individuals make intentional choices to sin whether they know or not of sin, Augustine in Book I recounts the experience of seeing an infant act with jealousy and envy. Some analysis suggest that “Augustine found the roots of all experience in what is, properly speaking, pre-experience.”[13]In Book I, the passage describing the greedy baby that looks with envy on his brother sucking the milk out of their mother’s breast, is one in which Augustine imagines his own experience as a baby. Even the infant is not innocent, as Augustine states, because he makes the choice of being jealous of an object desired even though he supposedly is conscious that he will be nurtured, and that the origin of his vitality will not be taken away from him: “I myself have seen a baby who was envious; it could not yet speak, but it grew pale and looked bitterly at another baby sharing its milk (I, 7).” To interpret Augustine’s harsh criticism of a baby, it seems that “a ‘choice’ [is being made] by the infant, motivated by anxiety…to grasp at objects without discrimination [for] their beneficial effect.”[14] This analysis would support Augustine’s claim that individuals are naturally rational creatures, which would imply that they are born with intentionality. Yet, it is highly unlikely that this is true, as rational minds develop: the baby was probably not conscious even of ideas of time, let alone ideas of sin. Nevertheless, the act of being envious is a sin, from an exterior perspective—or at least Augustine’s.

While the example provided in Book I is somewhat debatable, the idea of intentionality is one that informs many passages in Augustine’s Confessions. Moreover, this develops in the notion that “anxious grasping at objects in the anxiety that something will be missed [is] conscupentia.”[15] One might even argue that Augustine’s entire first half of his work, which relies on memory and the scolding of his younger self, is an example of conscupentia. Augustine saw in the behavior of the newborn infant “the form of all future concupiscence.”[16]In fact, as a result of a prior choice to sin in infancy, Augustine maintains that his later sinfulness was unavoidable, as those early sins had gone unrecognized and unpunished, resulting in the pear orchard theft (which he stated he would not have were he to have been alone) and later his uncontrollable sexual desires. This anxiety that something will be missed, and its related relentless drive to own the object desired, starts in infancy and develops unchecked and unpunished, into adult greediness for power.[17]

It seems as though Augustine infers the necessity of returning to our own infancy and reversing the ‘choice’ of “a deficit pattern of behavior,”[18] in order to reverse the vicious cycle of concupiscence. Concupiscence, is, according to Augustine, the force that governs adult life “from the anxiety-motivated response of the infant to the adult struggle for sex, power, and possessions.”[19] Moreover, it is clear throughout Confessions, that Augustine kept returning to this intermix of lust, anxiety, and greed to influence the framework through which he described his life prior to his conversion. However, concupiscence, by virtue of its definition in Confessions, does not have to occur with the agent’s full awareness of sin. Hence, this does not undermine Augustine implication that individuals can be sinful without being aware that they are sinning. In fact, if concupiscence influences an individual’s entire life, it can be so intertwined in his decision-making process that he is utterly unaware of the sin he is committing. Yet, this does not take away that the individual is in fact sinful.

Alas, it is impossible to analyze the effects of concupiscence without considering the role of pride among the primary moving forces of sin. Individuals can be sinful without being aware of their sin, even in pride, which can be a sin individuals are trapped in because they do not recognize it as such or create excuses for their own proud behavior. In Confessions Augustine repeatedly asserts that “pride is the root of evil”, because it is a voluntary or involuntary separation of the self from God, resulting in claims of “moral self-sufficiency, to religious superiority and to political domination.”[20] Augustine states that the corruption of our good, God-generated souls, comes from turning from higher to lower goods: “from God to the self, to another created spirit or to a bodily good.”[21] Pride is the obvious root of this evil dissonance between the self and the higher good—whether individuals are aware or not of their proud behavior. Moreover, Augustine, as he evaluates his past banter and more serious sins of the flesh’s weakness, he realizes in every case that he had made a calculated choice,[22] even if at the time he sinned was unaware of sinning. Unwillingly, the mind is able to turn from God’s principles of goodness and rely on its senses to understand and interpret the world. The idea that the mind can understand the world better without the help of God is clearly an instance of a mind that is proud: “if the mind turns to its inherent power to judge, it immediately falls into the darkness of error and opinion.”[23]

An issue that deserves attention is that of the absence of appropriate role models, that Augustine refers to in Books I, II, and VI. Augustine considers himself as deprived of adequate male models[24], and possibly of models in general, although he praises extensively Monica in Book IX on her deathbed. “Considering the kind of men who were set up as models for me to imitate, it is no wonder that I was swept away into emptiness and that I went out of your presence, my God (I, 18),” he states quite unfairly. In terms of growing up unaware of sin, Augustine seems to put the blame on an absent, ambitious, concupiscent father, and an overbearing mother, whose superstitious kind of “in-your-face” Catholicism must have had influence on his later decisions. The absence of tangible role models creates an environment for Augustine in which he is unaware of his sins because they are not rectified by a paternal figure; instead they are encouraged, out of his father ambition for his son. It is only in later reevaluation of his younger years that Augustine recognizes the presence of God speaking through Monica. Augustine states: “I thought you [God] were silent and that it was my mother who was speaking, but you were not silent, you spoke to me through her, and in despising her, I was despising you (II, 3).” Hence, Augustine was unaware of his sinning—yet continued to sin—even though he recognizes later that God divine intervention was through his mother. Inherently, the problem is not entirely the recognition of sin, but the allocation of respect and authority: Augustine does not recognize his mother as a moral authority and thus does not recognize the warnings against his sin, leading himself to be deceived and continue in his path of excused sinning.

It is clear that Augustine sees the impact of a disordered will, which allows for sin to occur even if unaware: the disordered will can in fact be a result of the false belief of an absence of role models, as previously explained. Augustine recognizes that “from a disordered will came concupiscence, and serving concupiscence became a habit, and the unresisted habit became a necessity. These were the links—so I call them a chain—holding me in a hard slavery (VIII, 5).” Being unaware of the sin one is committing creates a habitual cycle in which the sin is unrecognized and unpunished, which will lead to the sin being committed again. An interpretation suggests that after we first sin, sinning is then done involuntarily and we are ourselves “the authors of the condition in which we cannot help but sin.”[25]Augustine would describe it as not being able not to sin, so that “sin, after the first instance, is not avoidable.”[26] This first instance most probably refers to the first sin of Adam and Eve. In the garden of Eden, the first humans had the ability to sin or not to sin, but by sinning they cursed humanity with the inability to escape from sinning. Therefore, even if individuals are unaware that they sin, they are still sinful. Before agents form a habit out of sinning, they have the freedom to choose to act or not to act,”[27] yet deciding in principle to sin creates “an inertial effect which Augustine calls ‘deadness’.”[28]

The only power that will reverse humanity’s condition is that of God’s grace, as the overcoming of this inertia and deadness cannot be achieved by conscious choice.[29] God’s grace, according to Augustine, is the only force that pushes individuals to not sin. Moreover, whether an individual recognizes that he is sinning or not, does not exclude him from being sinful. The reversal of this condition is not possible through human intention; however, avoiding sin can be possible both by the grace of God and by the recognition of one’s sin, as Augustine suggests throughout the Confessions.

*****

Bibliography

Augustine. Confessions. Trans. Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2008.

Babcock, William S. “Augustine on Sin and Moral Agency.” The Journal of Religious Ethics 16, no. 1 (1988): 28-55

Burns, J. Patout. "Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil." The Journal of Religious Ethics 16, no.1 (1988): 9-27

Miles, Margaret R. “Infancy, Parenting, and Nourishment in Augustine’s ‘Confessions’.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 50, no. 3 (1982): 349-364

Wills, Garry. “Augustine’s Pears and the Nature of Sin.” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the

Classics 10, no. 1 (2002): 57-66

Footnotes

[1] Patout J. Burns, "Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil," 14

[2] Patout J. Burns, "Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil," 12

[3] Garry Wills, “Augustine’s Pears and the Nature of Sin,” 59

[4] Garry Wills, “Augustine’s Pears and the Nature of Sin,” 64

[5] Garry Wills, “Augustine’s Pears and the Nature of Sin,” 63

[6] Garry Wills, “Augustine’s Pears and the Nature of Sin,” 63

[7] Margaret R. Miles, “Infancy, Parenting, and Nourishment in Augustine’s ‘Confessions’,” 354

[8] William S. Babcock, “Augustine on Sin and Moral Agency,” 32

[9] Patout J. Burns, "Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil," 11

[10] Patout J. Burns, "Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil," 15

[11] Margaret R. Miles, “Infancy, Parenting, and Nourishment in Augustine’s ‘Confessions’,” 355

[12] Garry Wills, “Augustine’s Pears and the Nature of Sin,” 61

[13] Margaret R. Miles, “Infancy, Parenting, and Nourishment in Augustine’s ‘Confessions’,” 352

[14] Margaret R. Miles, “Infancy, Parenting, and Nourishment in Augustine’s ‘Confessions’,” 352

[15] Margaret R. Miles, “Infancy, Parenting, and Nourishment in Augustine’s ‘Confessions’,” 352

[16] Margaret R. Miles, “Infancy, Parenting, and Nourishment in Augustine’s ‘Confessions’,” 352

[17] Margaret R. Miles, “Infancy, Parenting, and Nourishment in Augustine’s ‘Confessions’,” 353

[18] Margaret R. Miles, “Infancy, Parenting, and Nourishment in Augustine’s ‘Confessions’,” 359

[19] Margaret R. Miles, “Infancy, Parenting, and Nourishment in Augustine’s ‘Confessions’,” 352

[20] Patout J. Burns, "Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil," 24

[21] Patout J. Burns, "Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil," 15

[22] Garry Wills, “Augustine’s Pears and the Nature of Sin,” 63

[23] Patout J. Burns, "Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil," 14

[24] Margaret R. Miles, “Infancy, Parenting, and Nourishment in Augustine’s ‘Confessions’,” 354

[25] William S. Babcock, “Augustine on Sin and Moral Agency,” 40

[26] William S. Babcock, “Augustine on Sin and Moral Agency,” 48

[27] William S. Babcock, “Augustine on Sin and Moral Agency,” 40

[28] Margaret R. Miles, “Infancy, Parenting, and Nourishment in Augustine’s ‘Confessions’,” 355

[29] Margaret R. Miles, “Infancy, Parenting, and Nourishment in Augustine’s ‘Confessions’,” 355