Five elements of Augustine’s theory of Original Sin

source: https://www.academia.edu/1958072/St._Augustines_Doctrine_of_Original_Sin?auto=download

The five elements of the doctrine of original sin are as follows:

(1) The source of original sin is a primal sin in the garden of Eden.

“Adam . . . sinned because he willed to sin. . . . But original sin is something else . . . the newborn contract it without any will of their own” (C.Jul.imp.V.40).

(2) All human beings share in this sin because of our solidarity with Adam, the originator of the human race. The results of the primal sin are twofold.

We were all in that one man, seeing that we all were that one man who fell into sin.  We did not yet possess forms individually created and assigned to us for us to live in them as individuals; but there already existed the seminal nature from which we were to be begotten. . . . when this was vitiated through sin . . . man could not be born of man in any other condition (Civ.Dei XIII.14)

Some sort of invisible and intangible power is located in the secrets of nature where the natural laws of propagation are concealed, and on account of this power as many as were going to be able to be begotten from that one man by the succession of generations are certainly not untruthfully said tohave been in the loins of the father. They were there . . . though unknow-ingly and unwillingly, because they did not yet exist as persons who couldhave known and willed this (C.Jul.imp.VI.22)

Our solidarity in sin is not merely social, it is ontological (something to do with our very essence). Before we could make choices—before we were able to act on our own in any way—we were harmed in the first Adam and constituted as sinners, just as infants are made saints by baptism into the death of the second Adam, being healed by the great physician without any prior action on their part.

(3) From birth, all human beings have an inherited sin (original sin itself), which comes in two forms: common guilt, and a constitutional fault of disordered desire and ignorance.

“The guilt from our origin was contracted by birth” (C.Jul.imp.V.29).

In speaking this way, Augustine relies on the solidarity thesis, claiming that since we all were in Adam when Adam sinned, the guilt for his sin is ours from the moment of birth. The guilt of Adam’s sin remains in us as a stain, until and unless it is forgiven in baptism,even when the one who personally committed the sin—Adam—has died (C.Jul.imp.IV.96, 116

(4) In addition, Augustine holds that the human race suffers a penalty because of sin—human powers are weakened, and we will experience death.

Even the elect, before they receive the medicine of Christ, are part of the massa damnata (the mass of the damned)

They, however, are retrieved out of this mass of perdition by the grace of God, and saved. Others are not so fortunate, and Augustine—while affirming that God is not unjust in saving only a few, given the fact that all are lost in this sinfulmass—is often at a loss to explain why they are not saved (C.ep.Pel.IV.4.16; Corrept. 8.17; Spir. et litt.34.60).

He does suggest that some are damned as away of showing divine justice, and highlighting divine mercy, by contrast, but time after time he also exclaims, “O the depth . . . !” (invoking Romans 11:33–36), “and the mystery of divine wisdom and love”.

Since the sense in which human beings are “in” Adam is already obscure, it is not hard to see how a theory of common guilt might become an imputation theory: the notion of a solidarity in the essence of our being simply has to be replaced by that of a legal solidarity. At times, Augustine speaks of original sin in a manner very like an imputation theory. For instance, he says:

“The injustice of the first man is imputed to little ones when they are born so that they are subject to punishment, just as the righteousness of the second man is imputed to little ones who are reborn” (C.Jul.imp.I.57; cf. DNC I.33.38).

As we have seen, Augustine defends original sin by pointing to the involuntary nature of infant baptism, where the parents stand in for the child; the implication is that Adam stood in for all of us when he sinned in the garden. Yet Augustine’s understanding of imputation, and “standing in for,” is not forensic, and thus he did not develop this line of thought in the way Calvin did (See Calvin’s Institutes, II.1.6–9).

(5) Finally, Augustine speculates about how both sin and penalty are transmitted from generation to generation. Carnalconcupiscence is lustful desire for things forbidden, and thus, the desire for sin (C.Jul.imp.IV.69). Put otherwise, it is the law of sin (Pecc.Mer.II.4.4),or “disobedience coming from ourselves and against ourselves” (nupt.et conc.II.9.22), and as such the sin that is the penalty of sin mentioned above.

Thus, carnal concupiscence is disordered desire.Because he uses the descriptor “carnal,” Augustine has sometimes been read as, implicitly or explicitly, blaming the body for sin (see Clark 1986;Pagels 1988, chap. 6). However, to believe this is to misunderstand what Augustine means when he speaks of the carnal or the fleshly.

He makes it clear early on that the weakness of our post-fall existence resides in both the flesh and the soul (Gr.et pecc.or.1.12.13). Moreover, Augustine notes, Scripture often refers to the whole human being by the term “flesh” (An.et.or.I.18.31).According to his psychology, the flesh cannot desire without the soul, so when he speaks of the flesh desiring, he means that the soul desires in a carnal manner (Perf.Just.8.19). This is no different, Augustine claims, than when we say the flesh hears—obviously we mean that the soul hears by means of the ear (Gn.Litt.X.12.20). Even pains are really an experience of the soul (Civ.Dei XXI.3; Gn.Litt.VII.19.25).

As Augustine explains in his commentary onThe Literal Meaning of Genesis:

The cause of carnal concupiscence is not in the soul alone, much less in the flesh alone. It comes from both sources: from the soul, because without itno pleasure is felt; from the flesh, because without it carnal pleasure is not felt. Hence, when St. Paul speaks of the desires of the flesh against the spirit, he undoubtedly means the carnal pleasure which the spirit experiences from the flesh and with the flesh as opposed to the pleasures which the spirit alone experiences ( Gn.Litt.X.12.20)