Augustine and Original Sin

Written at the request of his dear friend Laurence (c. 421), Augustine’s Enchiridion¹ on Faith, Hope, and Love steps through the “creed” and the Lord’s Prayer,² outlining the basics of the Christian faith. It is essentially a concise primer on systematic theology, in which Augustine discusses the major contours of the history of salvation (creation, fall, and redemption), and many related themes. While it is impossible to summarize the Enchiridion in this brief space, in what follows I will trace a major theme that resurfaces throughout the work, namely, Augustine’s novel idea of original sin, and its consequences for human free will. I argue that despite being enormously influential, Augustine’s understanding of original sin enjoys scant biblical support.

After a brief introduction, a discussion of the inherent goodness of creation, and a fascinating analysis of evil as “the removal of good,”³ Augustine addresses human evil. Based on his reading of texts such as Romans 5:12, he constructs a doctrine of original sin, according to which all humans after Adam and Eve are born in a state of guilt before God. Through his sin, Adam “bound … his progeny … by the penalty of death and condemnation. As a result, any offspring born of him and the wife through whom he had sinned … would contract original sin.”⁴ Adam’s sin is thus imparted to us like a disease; we contract origin-al sin by way of our origin—simply by being born.⁵

Augustine puts original sin to theological work in a variety of ways. For one, it explains the practice of infant baptism common in his context. Since human nature has been corrupted by sin,⁶ humans are born “bound by the chains of damnation because of their origin in Adam.”⁷ Infant baptism is thus a purifying re-birth, cleansing us from this inherited effect of sin.⁸

Another consequence of original sin is that humanity’s power of free choice is lessened. Augustine is deeply pessimistic about our capacity for choosing good apart from God’s help: “What good can one who is ruined do, except insofar as he is set free from his ruin? Can he perhaps do good by the free choice of his own will? This too must not be thought, for it was by evil use of his power of free choice that man ruined both that power and himself.”⁹ Augustine’s pessimism is understandable when we consider his dispute with Pelagius around this time, who believed that all humans have the inherent God-given power to choose good and evil. As a result, Pelagius hardly emphasized God’s role in salvation, and God’s grace was greatly diminished. On the contrary, Augustine argues that we are only “truly made free when God makes us,” and “this he does … by his grace.”¹⁰ We are never without need of God’s active help. God “makes the good will of man ready for his help and helps the will he has made ready.”¹¹

While Augustine’s emphasis on God’s initiative in the process of salvation solved Pelagius’s error, it created a problem: if our salvation is utterly dependent on God’s choice to give us mercy, then why would God not choose to save everyone? Augustine therefore spends considerable space discussing 1 Timothy 2:4, which says that God wills everyone to be saved.¹² One explanation for why not everyone is saved, common in Augustine’s time, drew attention to God’s non-coerciveness and human freedom: “When it is asked why not all are saved, the reply usually given is that it is because they themselves do not wish to be saved.”¹³ Indeed, the earlier church father Irenaeus had taken precisely this line, citing among other texts Matthew 23:37, in which Jesus laments, “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”¹⁴ However, for Augustine, this is not satisfactory, for God “does everything that he wills.”¹⁵ This includes even changing our wills: “Who is so irreligious and foolish as to say that God cannot turn to good any of the evil wills of men he wishes, when and where he wishes?”¹⁶ The reason all are not saved, then, must be because God does not want it: “he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses (Rom 9:18).”¹⁷ Citing many similar statements in Romans 9, Augustine concludes that “grace alone distinguishes the redeemed from the lost.”¹⁸

By way of critique, while Augustine’s emphasis on God’s will and sovereign choice is to be granted in light of his reaction to Pelagius, we might ask whether his negative language about those God does not choose is ­sufficiently pastorally sensitive. Not only does he believe that all humans are guilty by default, and that God does not choose to save everyone, but he goes even further than this, asserting that “many more are not saved” than saved; indeed, they constitute a great “mass of perdition” (massa damnata).¹⁹ Further, he states that “so great is this punishment that none of the torments that we know can be compared with it if it is eternal, however many centuries they may last.”²⁰ Surely anyone who really ponders this will find the thought unbearable.

In Augustine’s defense, however, in his sphere of the empire, few were true Christians, and so his pessimism about the number of the saved is understandable.²¹ Further, Augustine is certainly aware of the pastoral issues his view creates. He admits that in his day, “some people, or rather most people, feel human sympathy concerning the eternal punishment and the unending, unremitting suffering of the damned, and so do not believe that it will happen.”²² Or, rather, they do not deny there is a punishment, but “soften” it, believing it “can be brought to an end.”²³ Perhaps, then, the best we can say in Augustine’s defense here is that while his theology is admittedly pessimistic at this point, he at least offers a mitigating glimmer of hope. He acknowledges that his contemporaries have different views “concerning varieties of punishment or alleviation or interruption of suffering,” and concedes to “let them think, if they so wish, that the pains of the damned are mitigated to an extent at certain intervals of time.”²⁴

In my view, a stronger critique has to do with the sparse biblical support for Augustine’s idea of original sin in the first place, which depends heavily upon his reading of a single verse (Rom 5:12). This is worsened by the fact that Augustine’s Bible, the Latin Vulgate, contained a mistranslation of the key phrase in this verse.²⁵ In Augustine’s copy, the Greek preposition ἐπί (“upon”) was rendered by in, and the masculine θάνατος (“death”) by the feminine mors, so that the masculine relative pronoun (“who/which”) now referred to Adam, not death. Augustine’s text thus read, “in whom [Adam] all sinned,” yielding the idea that we have all sinned in Adam.²⁶ This is perhaps the most consequential Bible mistranslation in the history of Christian thought.

In fairness to Augustine, however, and in closing, it must be admitted that the central facet of his theology—our absolute dependence on God for salvation²⁷—can be supported independently of original sin in Romans 5:12—for instance, by his reading of Romans 9. Further, Augustine also cites in support of original sin texts such as Psalm 51:5, and he wrote several commentaries on Genesis. In the end, then, perhaps finding original sin in Romans 5:12 is not so essential to Augustine’s theology after all. As later theologians such as Luther and Calvin attest, Augustine’s view of humanity’s irrepressible and perennial bent towards sin, and thus of our universal and deep need of God’s grace, can be found, not only throughout the entire biblical narrative, but throughout virtually all of human history. It is this emphasis on our profound dependence on God, more than original sin per se, that should rightly be called Augustine’s greatest legacy.

[1] Greek: “handbook.”

[2] Augustine, Enchiridion 7, in On Christian Belief, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Bruce Harbert, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2005). Unless otherwise noted, translations are from this edition.

[3] Augustine, Enchiridion 11.

[4] Augustine, Enchiridion 26. Cf. Enchiridion 119, where he speaks of “guilt … contracted by being born.”

[5] Thus, contrary to common misconception, original sin here is not “original” in the sense of being the first sin per se, but because of how we contract it: by way of our origin (Latin: origo). Cf. On Christian Belief, 289n47.

[6] “human nature was changed and came under the necessity of death,” Enchiridion 46.

[7] Augustine, Enchiridion 98.

[8] Augustine, Enchiridion 45, 51, 64, 98, 119.

[9] Augustine, Enchiridion 30.

[10] Augustine, Enchiridion 31.

[11] Augustine, Enchiridion 32. The former would later be called prevenient grace (Latin: “coming before”).

[12] Enchiridion 97-103. His exegesis of the meaning of “all” in §103 is esp. incisive (1 Tim 2:1-2; Lk 11:41).

[13] Augustine, Enchiridion 97.

[14] Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.37.2. Quotation from the New Revised Standard Version.

[15] Augustine, Enchiridion 102. Augustine is here quoting Ps 115:3.

[16] Augustine, Enchiridion 98.

[17] Augustine, Enchiridion 98. Later theologians will distinguish between God’s moral and decreed will.

[18] Augustine, Enchiridion 99. On Augustine’s views of predestination, see Enchiridion 62, 98, 100.

[19] Augustine, Enchiridion 97, 92. Cf. Enchiridion 27, 89, 92, 99, 107. Augustine in some places uses massa damnata (e.g., 27), and in others massa perditionis (e.g., 92, 99, and 107); they seem to be interchangeable phrases.

[20] Augustine, Enchiridion 112.

[21] “The restrictive view of the number of the redeemed is probably to be understood in light of the relatively small number of baptized and true Christians that Augustine saw in his time” On Christian Belief, 328n168.

[22] Augustine, Enchiridion 112.

[23] Augustine, Enchiridion 112.

[24] Augustine, Enchiridion 113, 112.

[25] Bruce Harbert and Michael Fiedrowicz, On Christian Belief, 289n48.

[26] By contrast, the Greek has, woodenly, “upon which [death] all sinned” (ἐφ’ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον).

[27] “What I might call the entire face or countenance of the sacred scriptures is found by those who look well at it to warn us in its profound and saving mysteries that the one who boasts should boast in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31),” Enchiridion 98.