Issue Of The Attraction Of Sin: St. Augustine’s "Confessions"
Throughout civilization, the line of human morality has been increasingly distorted due to the manipulation and attraction of evil within human free will. Observing the heart of oneself illuminates the serious struggle between knowing good and consequently acting on in it accordingly. Therefore, the attraction of sin is not in the desired goal or achievement of the action but instead originates from the act itself. St. Augustine proves this aspect of human nature through his recollection of the Pear Tree incident within The Confessions and he uses the themes of “original sin”, peer pressure and the state of human nature as evidence of this important revelation.
For Augustine, the ultimate horror within the sinful life of a human is the absolute aimless motive behind the sin itself. An extensive amount of The Confessions refers back to this story and how there was no actual reason for stealing the Pears in the first place as they were “neither attractive in color, nor in taste, ” (II. iv. 9). This is the essence of Augustine’s argument to which greater satisfaction is received in stealing the so-called forbidden fruit. Digging deeper into this concept, we see that Augustine will later come to realize that he takes less satisfaction in the blessings of God but instead the overall divine love of God when he finally converts. The Pears are merely a vehicle to satisfy his physical desires or desires of a non-material nature such as fulfilling the peer-pressure forced on him by his friends. Augustine blames the pleasure he received from the robbery on the act itself for the most part, but he also contemplates the issue of peer pressure and the dangers of bad friends. Augustine states: “Alone I would not have committed that crime, in which my pleasure lay not in what I was stealing but in the act of theft. But had I been alone, it would have given me absolutely no pleasure, nor would I have committed it. Friendship can be a dangerous enemy, a seduction of the mind lying beyond reach of investigation…as soon as the words are spoken ‘Let us go and do it’, one is ashamed not to be shameless!”
Interestingly, Augustine confesses that he wouldn’t have stolen the pears if he was alone but caved under the pressure. The idea of quality companionship is essential to the remaining text of the confessions as Augustine wrote specifically on the importance of love and the type of love that we as humans have the responsibility to show to others and those who are close to us. Referencing the book of Romans, Augustine describes true friendship as a bond that can only be formed by the love which is “poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us. ” This is extremely important for Augustine as this type of love became his foundation for human interaction. The topic of friendship brings up another major theme within the confessions which is the idea of grief and the issue of materialism separating us from God. Augustine unfortunately suffers the loss of a very close friend and responds by thoroughly contemplating the issue of the grief he faces. His worldview was corrupted by the lens of grief through which he experienced the world and “everything on which I set my gaze was death”. Augustine figures that if he only had more faith in God, the grief would have eased substantially but because of his attachment to his friend, his misery was almost unbearable. Augustine refers to the friendship he had, within a materialistic concept one where he felt devoted to worldly desires more than God which is ultimately futile. The culmination of this lesson lies in the idea that sorrow is the permanent state of the soul without God because there is nothing eternal or divine to rely on. In other words, Augustine concludes that without God, there is no hope, “for wherever the human soul turns itself, other than to you, it is fixed in sorrows”.
Augustine preached that as humans, we are inherently weak and truly need God as our hope for our future. As humans we constantly wrestle with the conflicting desires of our heart and this weakness Augustine argues, originates from Adam and Eve as the result of the original sin. He states, “it was not I that brought this about ‘but sin dwelt in me’, sin resulting from the punishment of a more freely chosen sin because I was a son of Adam”. Augustine presents this idea that humans, even before they are born, are inherently sinful as a result of the genealogical sin that affects everyone that has and will ever live. Because of Adam, we no longer had the freedom he had before the fall and therefore humanity suffers. Most importantly, Augustine elaborates on the constant conflict within himself as he came closer to his conversion of Catholicism. Augustine says he was “bound not by an iron imposed by anyone else but by the iron of my own choice. The enemy had a grip on my will and so made a chain for me to hold me a prisoner”.
Very important is Augustine’s Neoplatonic idea of the “enemy. ” It is this idea whereby God emanates out of mind and rationality, proceeding out further from this unchangeable source to soul and from there to the material world. Evil is therefore not a thing but instead the corruption and distance something or someone has fallen from God. Again the core of Augustine’s inner battle originates from the evils of materialism metaphorically enslaving him and tempting him to choose wrong. Despite this inward conflict, Augustine believes God wants us to return to him, illustrating God’s grace and how He is willing to pull us back to Himself.
Augustine’s analysis of human nature and the enticing yet conflicting essence of sin have remained paramount for theological foundations for centuries. His account of moral conduct and the struggle of perceiving what is right and actively choosing to do good, is the daily struggle for every human being. Unfortunately, the thrill from committing an act of sin can sometimes outweigh our moral character and drive us to act accordingly. Yet it is through Augustine’s struggle and temptation with the enemy that demonstrates one is never too far from God to be saved, especially when it comes to forbidden fruit.
