Augustine vs. The Stoics

Let's try to ignore for a time the ugly and lunatic caperings of our politicians, including those of the elderly bully at the head of our government's Executive Branch.  [Is there anything more pathetic than an elderly bully?]  Instead let's consider some of the attacks made by the querulous Bishop of Hippo against the ancient Stoic philosophers.

Augustine, considered by some a saint, is a very significant figure, but I maintain was a very peculiar person.  I've noted several times in this blog that I think he was a kind of exhibitionist, flaunting his sins supposedly for our benefit, to demonstrate that even so great a sinner may be saved by Jesus.  Thus his life serves to demonstrate how desirable it is to be a Christian.  On the other hand, it's possible his conceit was that he was so great a man, so worthy of God's blessing, that he was saved even though he sinned so extensively.  In any case, this belief that Christianity provides salvation is the basis for for his claim it's superior to Stoicism, or at least that one of his arguments against Stoicism on which I'd like to focus.

Of course, the long-standing argument that the Stoic Sage held out by the Stoics as their ideal cannot exist is employed by Augustine.  He and others maintain that no human being could be as serene, detached, and so in control of human emotions as the Sage.  But it isn't clear that the Stoics thought the Sage to be anything but an unapproachable ideal we should seek to imitate.  If so, the fact that the Stoics used the Sage as a standard of thought and conduct should no more condemn Stoicism than Christianity should be condemned because  Christians are urged to imitate Christ, as suggested by Thomas a Kempis.  No Christian could be as good as Jesus, obviously, but it doesn't follow Christians shouldn't try to be like him to the extent possible.

Augustine also, however, thought the Stoics were prideful; guilty of Pride, one of the seven deadly sins.  That's because the Stoics dared to believe it was possible for humans to achieve happiness without the assistance and intervention of a personal god.  Without grace, in other words.

The Bishop of Hippo essentially created the cruel concept of Original Sin.  He proclaimed if he did not originate the pernicious belief that humans were tainted by the sin committed by Adam and Eve when they were persuaded to eat of the Tree of Knowledge despite the fact that God had told them not to do so.  For that sin, they were cast out of the Garden of Eden and condemned to die, to labor, to bear children, but to not merely do what human beings do to survive and thrive.  All human beings thereafter were sinful by nature.  They sinned merely be existing.  They need not do anything wrong.

Because we're naughty by nature, as it were, only God could absolve us of Original Sin and any subsequent sins, and did so through the sacrifice of Jesus as to the First Sin and by bestowing grace as to all others.

As Augustine rather proudly stated in his Confessions, because he was a great sinner he could not be happy, could not be wise, until Jesus saved him.  Not even the great Augustine could achieve what the Stoics said was achievable without divine assistance.  If Augustine required divine assistance, all others must require it as well.   So, the Stoics must be sinfully prideful for even making that claim.

Just as the doctrine of absolution serves to encourage sin or assuage our concerns when we act wrongfully, as I suggested in a prior post, so the doctrines of Original Sin and Grace serves to discourage our efforts to control our own conduct and achieve happiness or equanimity through the use of our reason and development of our character.  Each doctrine in essence renders us helpless to help ourselves, and yet promises that we will flourish and be saved if only we don't try to help ourselves but rely on God to do so on our request for forgiveness or assistance.  

Perhaps belief in a personal god necessarily requires that we take a dim view of the world and our place in it.