By Gary Topping–
No doubt to the relief of my readers, let me assure them that most of these thoughts are those of St. Augustine, not me, and that I will subject them only minimally to my own garage-sale theologizing. But we celebrated the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord this week, and since baptism is about remission of our inherited guilt for the original sin of Adam, the progenitor of our human race, I’ve been thinking about original sin and reading what St. Augustine had to say about it in his City of God.
In Augustine’s view, God’s requirement that Adam and Eve stay away from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was absolutely the easiest commandment He could have imposed. He wasn’t asking them to DO anything; he was just telling them to stay away from that tree. It was much easier, even, than “don’t step on my blue suede shoes”! And yet they chose not even to do that.
The consequences were dire: more than just one act of disobedience, it corrupted their human nature. Augustine puts it in a marvelous little Latin epigram which is impossible to translate into English with the same economy and thus with the same punch: “ut, quoniam noluit quod potuit, quod no potest velit.” My lame translation: “inasmuch as he did not wish to do what he could, now he cannot do what he wishes.”
What does this mean? It means that while living a moral life is not impossible, it is an uphill struggle. Although we still have a propensity to do good things, we now also have a propensity to do not-so-good things. Some people, to be sure, find it possible to overcome that latter propensity and to live a thoroughly moral life. Those are people we call saints. Most of the rest of us find it possible to attain that level of perfection only for limited periods of time before succumbing to that darker propensity and committing sin.
But it seems to me there is a good side to this. Understanding that our human nature is fallen enables us to live with a requirement of perfection without losing our minds. It’s not that we expect to commit sin; it’s just that when we do, it’s not a huge surprise, and fortunately the Church has given us ways to get our lives back on track. For venial sins, those that in themselves will not send us to Hell, we can just ask God for forgiveness and resolve to do better. For mortal sins, we have the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where we confess our sins to God in the presence of a priest, who then can offer us absolution. And more than that, the priest always gives us advice on ways in which we can overcome our darker propensity and avoid falling into sin again. As one of my friends used to put it, it’s the best counseling you can get anywhere—and it’s free!
Thanks Gary, very well said. I wonder why “the less good” has so much appeal? It would be easy to answer with something that has to do with self interest. But even if self interest is taken out of the equation we still have a propensity to act out in a destructive way. Else-wise what would be the appeal of graffiti or gossip or a hundred other things that produce evil without any benefit coming to the perpetrator. I really doubt that the serpent’s seductive promise that mankind could be like God if only they would take a bite of the apple served as the primary motive. I think the simple and quite gratuitous appeal of disobedience was sufficient. In that sense mankind had already fallen even before Eve sank her teeth into that red delicious.