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.

The Vatican Just Says No

There once was a species called human,

Who thought God cared what they were doin',

But the truth is He said that "For me, they've been dead,

Since the Garden of Eden stopped bloomin'."

That's just a limerick of my creation which I thought up not long ago in a different context, but it seems appropriate in light of the Vatican's announcement that it can't "bless" homosexual unions.  I was going to write that it seems appropriate so near to St. Patrick's day, but a gnawing sense of doubt combined with a quick search of the Internet reveals that the limerick didn't necessarily have its origins in Ireland, though there is an Irish city which bears the name. 

I've noted before that our religions are not unnaturally, but still unreasonably, based on the assumption that if there is a God, that God is fascinated, perhaps even obsessed, with humanity.  Given the vastness of the universe, this seems unlikely.  To maintain that we're God's sole or greatest concern is preposterous, as we're mere specks on a speck among an unimaginably large host of specks which make up what God is said to have created.

Even more unreasonable (I think) is the belief that God is particularly concerned with our sexual conduct.  Any God which lays down rules governing who we have sex with and how we have sex is a very small, petty, and peculiar God indeed.  It follows that those of us who believe there are such rules and seek to enforce them are even smaller, more petty and peculiar.

And so we come to this latest declaration by the Vatican, endorsed, we're told, by the Pontifex Maximus himself.  The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church welcomes those who are gay ("homosexually inclined" is the wording used, I think) in a kind of grudging fashion, according to the declaration, but no union of gays may be blessed because only the sacramental may be blessed.  The most relevant sacrament is marriage and marriage, as we know, may only be between a male and a female.  Thus, no blessed gay unions and as sex is inappropriate outside of marriage, all gay sex is inappropriate as well, and may never be appropriate.  

This comes from having a Busybody God, a name I've used in the past in this blog.  But as you may guess from the limerick at the top of this post, I find myself curious regarding why such a God--the kind that is worshipped by the Abrahamic religions--would care what we do, if we accept the doctrine of Original Sin.

Under that doctrine, we're at the least tainted by the sin committed by eating of the Tree of Knowledge by our ancestors, the first humans, which caused them to be expelled from the Garden of Eden.  There are several versions of the doctrine of Original Sin.  The most draconian of them has us damned from birth.  We may nonetheless be saved if God chooses through the medium of Grace, but that's in God's sole discretion.  Then there is the version that proposes that we're cleansed of the sin by baptism.  Another version is that Jesus saved us from Original Sin through his sacrifice.  There may be more versions, I just don't know.  But even the kinder, gentler versions I know of provide that all of us are born with the proclivity to sin as a result of the first (notably heterosexual) humans.

So, we're either damned or damnable from the moment we are born.  If that's the case, though, why does God even bother to peer at us suspiciously, and why did he bother to dream up and impose the many regulations it's claimed he imposed on us after the Garden of Eden was shut down?  He would have written us off after the Original Sin was committed, I would think, as we all would be sinners of necessity thereafter.  Can it be the case that he decided in the first century C.E. that we may in one manner or another avoid the curse of Original Sin, and so appeared among us and induced us to create the sacrament of baptism sometime later?  What changed his mind?  Why are those who lived before then damned without recourse?  Why would he be so interested in what we do given that it's more likely than not that were going to sin anyway, being inherently inclined to sin?

The problems which arise from belief in such a personal God so fascinated with us aren't merely limited to those that result from the fact such a view is incredible, therefore.  They include those that arise when the doctrine which is inferred from that view is made and applied.

 

In Praise of Pelagius

Pictured above (supposedly) are Pelagius, founder of the Pelagian heresy, and Augustine of Hippo; one a heretic and one a saint.  Sadly, I'm not sure which is Pelagius and which is Augustine.

We don't know much about the life of Pelagius but for the fact that he was a monk, and was considered to be British, or Irish, or Scottish depending on the record on which you rely.  He and Augustine were contemporaries, both born in the 4th century C.E. or A.D., whichever you prefer, both dying in the 5th century.  Augustine, of course, became a bishop.

While we don't know much about the life of Pelagius, we know far too much of the life of Augustine, or so I think.  We know much of Augustine's life because he thoughtfully told us of it, in great detail, in his Confessions.  That work describes his sinful, profligate ways before his fittingly dramatic conversion to Christianity and attendant salvation, but also includes prayers of thanksgiving and speculations on whatever theological or philosophical issues caught his fancy.

Presumably, Augustine's Confessions served as a model for the Confessions of the similarly self-regarding Rousseau, who also carefully cataloged his misdeeds for our benefit though not, it seems, for any religious reasons.  Nevertheless, Rousseau was also saved, but not by God, and his misdeeds were evidently rendered tolerable when he became the Rousseau he thought we should know and admire.

Both Augustine and Rousseau were apparently the kind of men who relished describing their sins.  Perhaps Augustine flaunted his sinfulness in part due to his acceptance and it may be said creation of the doctrine of Original Sin, that peculiar belief that all of humanity is, forever, tainted by the sin of Adam and Eve and so damned unless redeemed by God's grace, which is in God's gift.  This is not a doctrine Pelagius was willing to accept, but which the Church ultimately did accept.  Thus, Pelagius became a heretic and Augustine a saint.

Unfortunately, the writings of Pelagius were lost, or more probably were destroyed after his condemnation.  So we know them only through the writings of those who thought he should be condemned.  It seems though that Pelagius thought human nature to be untouched by the sin of Adam and Eve.  As a consequence, humans had the capacity to be good and to renounce evil, and didn't require the gift of God's grace to do so.  Immorality was a matter of will, or lack of will to do good.  People could do good deeds without the intervention of God.  Human will in itself, as created by God, was sufficient to assure a sinless life.  God may help us, inspire us to do good, but he doesn't cause us to do good by granting us his grace.

For Pelagius and his followers, the notion that human nature is prone to sinfulness from birth excuses immoral conduct.  It serves as an explanation of our evil deeds as the result of something beyond our control; we're naturally bad because Adam and Eve did what they did or failed to do what they failed to do.  How are we to be blamed for doing what we have to do by our nature, i.e. for not being able to do the impossible?

I find it interesting that, for me at least, certain Christian heresies seem so much more sensible, so much more edifying, so much more ennobling than orthodox Christian doctrine.  Pelagianism is one of those heresies, as it teaches that we're responsible for our own conduct and are not damned by the actions of mythological forbears, a damnation which seems extraordinarily vengeful coming from the God of the universe.  The Arian heresy which avoids the problems encountered by insisting Jesus was wholly God and wholly man at the same time, consubstantial with the Father, is to me another of those heresies.

I also find it interesting that Pelagianism seems similar in various ways to the teachings of the pagan philosophers, and to the teachings of the Stoics in particular.  Pelagius thought that as creature of God we cannot be inherently sinful and debased; the Stoics thought us good, not evil, and partakers in the divine.  The Stoics emphasized our ability to act for the good, "in accordance with nature", nature itself being good, and that bad conduct is the result of a failure in our use of reason, resulting from our desires and fears as to things beyond our control.  Pelagius and his followers taught we could be good by the exercise of our own will.  According to the Stoics, no God or gods were needed in order for us to act in accord with nature.  God's grace wasn't necessary to a good life according to Pelagius.

Christianity borrowed freely from the pagan philosophers in various ways.  What was it about Pelagianism that merited its condemnation by the Church, and still merits its condemnation?  It seems that it's felt that Pelagianism doesn't accept that we're ultimately dependent on God's mercy and indulgence to be saved, and incapable of determining what is good by ourselves.  It seems an unworthy basis on which to condemn a doctrine that makes us responsible for our own actions rather than damns us for purported actions taken long, long ago, and credits us with the ability to discern what is good and reject what is evil.