A Sinful Doctrine?: Sexuality and Gender in Augustine’s Doctrine of Original Sin: Part 1

{Theologian General’s Warning: This doctrine [of original sin] has been identified by certain members of the theological community as a contributor to the oppression and marginalization of women, and therefore as an inhibitor of the flourishing of creation as a whole. Should you continue to make use of this doctrine, please be aware of its threat to your own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others, and/or revise it accordingly.}

Abstract
This two-part essay explores and critiques the views of sex, desire and gender presupposed in and perpetuated by the doctrine of original sin, as formulated by Augustine, and works toward a confession of sin’s ubiquity that is both sensitive to the insights and appropriate to the needs of our time.

Part One, Sin: A Sexually Transmitted Disease, provides a detailed analysis of the main themes comprising the doctrine of original sin, and argues that the sin qua non of Augustine’s doctrine, the idea of “inherited sin,” or original sin itself, is woven together with a negative view of sexual desire and sexual intercourse – a view that resonates more with Greek philosophy than with the thought-world of the biblical narrative. Part one concludes with the claim that Augustine believed sin to be an STD (sexually transmitted disease), and argues that if Christians are to continue to confess that sin is both unavoidable and universal, we must thematize sin’s transmission throughout the generations (and throughout the cosmos) in a way that honors the brokenness of human sexuality without negating its fundamental goodness.
Part Two, Redeeming (Original) Sin: Towards a (Re)new(ed) Confession of the Ubiquity of Sin for Our Time, the more provocative portion of the study, examines key feminist critiques of various aspects of Augustine’s doctrine, and highlights feminist theologians’ claims that the traditional view of original sin has “made hell for,” in other words, perpetuated gross injustice against, women. Part two concludes with the thesis that feminist insights are an essential part of the project of revitalizing and renewing the confession of the ubiquity of sin in our time; one that takes more seriously the biblical notion of societal evil(s), that is more sympathetic to the different ways men and women experience sin as both victims and agents, and that honors the dignity and promotes the flourishing of all creatures in God’s creation.

Certainly nothing jolts us more rudely than this doctrine [of original sin], and yet, but for this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all, we remain incomprehensible to ourselves.

–Blaise Pascal, “Pensees”

Everything is broken.

–Bob Dylan, “World Gone Wrong”

Part One
Sin: A Sexually Transmitted Disease

 

The Making of a Doctrine

Pre-Augustinian Roots
Doing theology can be—and I would argue, should be—quite a wild ride! If one finds that it isn’t, then, like sex, it might have less to do with the act itself and more to do with the way it’s being done. What philosophical categories give shape to a particular theological construction? What were the political, social, and ecclesial issues that occasioned its formulation? How did the doctrine come to be accepted or rejected, and by whom? If rejected, where does it get revived in a later point in history? If accepted, how does it change throughout its history? Who were the primary influences of a particular theologian? What assumptions going into a doctrine were witting and/or unwitting, and which of these are necessary or ancillary to its formulation? What becomes of a doctrine if the assumptions no longer square with assumptions held today? All these questions, and more, are the questions of historical theology, and all could be pursued with respect to Augustine’s doctrine of original sin. All are important, as together they form a crucial moment in constructive theology, which takes up the (more creative) task of giving doctrinal expression to our deepest confessional faiths and hopes in our own (historical) day and in our own (cultural) way.

One of the heavily debated questions surrounding the doctrine of original sin is whether it is more accurate to speak of Augustine as its “inventor,” or to speak of him as the key “systematizer” of a pre-existing or fairly well formed doctrine? My hunch is that the truth lies somewhere in between; a hunch that is supported by Church historian J. N. D. Kelly’s statement that “though falling short of [what would later be referred to as] Augustinianism,” there was in the thinking and writing of the early Church Fathers an “outline of a real theory of original sin.”[1] This sentiment is also echoed in Jesse Couenhoven’s comment that while “the theologians that preceded Augustine certainly did not develop anything like a detailed or consistent doctrine of original sin,” their writings do contain “hints of such a doctrine.”[2]

F. R. Tennant took up the task of tracing this “outline” and these “hints” in what has become one of the definitive works on the topic, The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin.[3]After nearly three-hundred and fifty pages exploring the history and development of thinking concerning the Fall and human sin in Judaistic, Pauline and Patristic sources leading up to the Augustinian formulation, Tennant concludes that “the development of the highly complicated doctrine of Original Sin was less an outcome of strict exegesis than due to the exercise of speculation: speculation working, indeed, on the lines laid down in Scripture, but applied to such materials as current science and philosophy were able to afford.”[4]

Tennant acknowledges that Paul was the “connecting link” between Jewish and Christian teaching on the Fall, and that Paul’s thinking was in fact “derived from Jewish schools.” However, lest one think that there is a direct and unambiguous line between Paul and the Augustinian doctrine, Tennant suggests that Paul’s “brief statements” on the Fall and original sin were not even contained in the latter ecclesiastical formulations.[5] While Tennant’s emphasis on the discontinuity between Paul and the Fathers seems to minimize both what Paul did have to say on the matter, and the Fathers’ attempt to be faithful to the Scriptures, it does highlight the distance that always exists between the biblical text and Christian doctrine, as well as the particular distance that characterized the theological reflections and formulations of the first few centuries of the Church.

Tennant cites Irenaeus (AD 135-199 est.) as the first “constructive theologian,” and the one “in whom a Christian doctrine of the Fall first appears.”[6]It was Irenaeus’ doctrine of Recapitulation[7] that allowed him to establish the connection between the “first parent(s)” and “sinful humanity”—the connection that would be his lasting contribution to the doctrine of original sin. Though Irenaeus preferred the poetic language of “mystical union” to describe the solidarity between Adam and humanity, Tertullian (AD 160-220 est.), whom Tennant regards as the key figure between Irenaeus and Augustine (AD 354-430), explicated the connection between sinful Adam and fallen humanity through a very concrete theory of propagation; one, no doubt, very much dependent upon his Stoic influences. The Stoic structure of Tertullian’s theory of propagation aside, what it supported and served—a very concrete notion of humanity’s “participation” in the first sin and her consequent “inherited taint”—would be his legacy to the Augustinian formulation.

Tennant goes on to suggest that after Tertullian (and Origen) “little development was needed, save in the elaboration of details and the thinking out of consequences, to carry speculation…onward to the point attained by Augustine.”[8] While Tertullian was very influential in the West, it seems to me that Tennant both overstates the development of his views on sin, and minimizes other important influences on Augustine’s formulation of the doctrine. Such influences include; the work of other theologians standing between Tertullian and Augustine (e.g. Cyprian, Hilary, Ambrose),[9] the Pelagian debates as the backdrop for much of Augustine’s thinking,[10] and Augustine’s own unique contribution to the doctrine.[11]

I believe Couenhoven provides a more helpful approach. He makes a distinction between Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, which is “comprised of a number of parts,” and original sin itself, which “consists of inherited sin.” Further, it is the notion of inherited sin that forms the “conceptual core” of Augustine’s larger doctrine. This allows Couenhoven to argue that it is possible to ascribe to (1) primal sin, (2) a doctrine of solidarity with Adam, (3) the universal negative consequences of sin, and (4) and some sort of theory about how these consequences are transmitted, “without being committed to a doctrine of inherited sin, and thus without being committed to Augustine’s doctrine of original sin.”[12] Couenhoven places the majority of Augustine’s predecessors and contemporaries, including, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Ambrose and Jerome, in this camp. However, he argues that what Augustine “added to those early views to make a clear doctrine of original sin is his insistence that all who follow from Adam by ordinary generation are complicit with Adam’s sin and are born in a vitiated state that is sinful in and of itself, before they commit any personal sins.”[13] This acknowledgment of what Augustine “added” makes for quite a helpful way of tracing the continuity and discontinuity between Augustine and his predecessors, and for accounting for Augustine as both “the great systematizer” of the thinking of others and as a creative “constructive theologian” in his own right.[14]

Post-Augustinian History
It did not take long for Augustine’s doctrine of original sin to become the official teaching of the (Western) Church. In fact, Henry Rondet argues that with regard to original sin there is “not much point in singling out the inheritors of the Augustinian tradition.” It simply became “the norm in the West for many centuries…its echo [being] found in various documents of the Church’s magisterium.”[15] Following his mentor’s early lead (Ambrose), Augustine became the key figure in the Pelagian controversies and the one whose arguments drew them to a close. Church leaders in the sixth century took it upon themselves to forestall any future doubts concerning the legitimacy and sufficiency of the objections raised against Pelagius, and the outcome of the Pelagian debates of the fifth century. It was at the II Council of Orange, held in Gaul in 529, that the Church canonized the doctrine of original sin, as summarized and developed by Augustine.[16] The rest, shall we say, is (Church) history! The formulation at the council of Orange was so definitive that, over a thousand years later, the council of Trent simply adopted the cannons of Orange, with minor variations, into its own decrees. And little needs to be said, of course, regarding the significance of Augustine’s thematization for the work of the Reformers, Luther, and Calvin. Thus, while it certainly has Pre-Augustinian roots and Post-Augustinian shoots, nonetheless, being its trunk, Augustine is rightly thought of as the “Father” of the doctrine of original sin.[17]

Augustine’s Mature Doctrine

Given the unique and foundational role Augustine’s doctrine has played in the history of Christian theological reflection and Church practice, one might think that everything that could be said regarding the doctrine has been said and no need for further comment exists. This would be, however, a mistake. Not only has the number of scholarly assessments of Augustine’s doctrine in the past fifty years or so been surprisingly small, but I would argue that its theological and practical impact makes the study of its original formulation and historical journey all the more significant. Feminist theologians have loudly voiced this view, and have been the theologians taking the lead in studies of original sin. They have been on the cutting edge in large part because they have been attuned to the way this doctrine has made for blessing and curse throughout its history—the latter largely surrounding the (problematic) attitudes towards sexuality, sex and gender woven into and accompanying the doctrine, and the negative impact this has had on woman (and all creation, really).

A common assumption is that Augustine’s doctrine is relatively straightforward. In many ways this is true. In a nutshell, and nutshells are quite popular these days, you might say original sin explicates and indicates the (extreme) “depth” (inevitability) and “breadth” (universality) of sin. Asking a handful of people for their understanding of the meaning of original sin is likely to generate such responses as; “we sin because we are sinners,” “all people are in need of forgiveness,” “we are sinners before we sin,” “no one is without sin.” All of these are insightful, and very helpful. Any response that somehow gets at the “condition of sin” as the cause of the “act(s) of sin,” and/or that emphasizes the “universality of sin” and therefore the “universal need for redemption,” goes a long way in catching the spirit of Augustine’s doctrine and the reason for its construction.

However, part of the criteria of good theology, I believe, is that it be both simple and communicable and intricate and provocative. Much of the genius of Augustine’s theology, and part of the reason for his wide-ranging and long-lasting impact is due to the fact that he was able to fulfill these criteria in his thinking, teaching, preaching, and writing. While the statement, “we sin because we are sinners,” honors Augustine’s eloquent simplicity, we must also honor Augustine’s richness and complexity. This includes the recognition of the fact that his formulation of the doctrine left many of his own questions unanswered, which, of course, puts much of our own common understanding (i.e. nutshells) in question. It also raises many more questions as we struggle with its meaning (for us), and attempt to thematize sin in our own historical moment in ways that enable us to name (social and personal) evil rightly, heed the call to justice, and pursue shalom, or comprehensive flourishing, in all its facets.[18]

Attempting to exegete Augustine’s doctrine is a difficult task, and all the more when trying to do so in a way that is of heuristic benefit. As mentioned above, Couenhoven has very helpfully elucidated Augustine’s mature doctrine of original sin by speaking of it as a “handful of doctrines” with a “conceptual core”; the notion of inherited sin, or what he calls “original sin itself.” He describes this doctrine as consisting of “five elements”: (1) The source of original sin is a primal sin since the Garden of Eden. (2) All human beings share in this sin because of our solidarity with Adam, the progenitor of the human race, the results of which are twofold, both inherited sin and the penalty for sin. (3) From birth, all human beings have an inherited sin (original sin itself), which comes in two forms; “common guilt,” and the “constitutional fault(s)” of disordered desire and ignorance. (4) The human race also suffers a penalty because of sin; human powers are weakened, and we experience death. (5) Lastly, both original sin and the penalty for sin are transmitted from generation to generation through intercourse at conception.[19]

This account provides clarity, while also testifying to how complex Augustine’s doctrine truly is. In the attempt to do some justice to the richness of the doctrine, and in order to provide sufficient background to contextualize and understand the feminist critique of Augustine, it is important to give each element of the doctrine more specific attention.

The Primal Sin
Augustine differentiates between peccatum originis originans (the originating original sin), and peccatum originatum (the condition of original sin). This very important distinction between the first sin and its effects is demonstrated in Augustine’s claim that “Adam…sinned because he willed to sin…but original sin is something else…the newborn contract it without any will of their own.”[20] This is the genesis of Couenhoven’s distinction between Adam’s “primal sin,” often associated with the Fall, and its effects on the rest of humanity, “original sin,” proper.[21] Augustine’s quote also suggests a difference in the conditions of possibility for humanity before and after the primal sin. While in the primal sin Adam “willed” (or chose) to sin—implying that the Fall was not necessary but a matter of choice—after the primal sin humanity receives its effects without any choice of their own. This is further explained in the Augustinian formulation that before the Fall humanity was “able to sin and able not to sin” (posse peccare), after the Fall humanity is “not able not to sin” (non posse non peccare),[22] and in the resurrection humanity is “not able to sin” (non posse peccare).[23]

Augustine is clear that the biblical creation accounts emphasize the goodness of creation through and through! He took this to mean, among other things, that God gave humanity good wills (the language of “original righteousness” is appropriate here), provided them with the grace to love God in return, and though mortal by nature were given the gift of immortality.[24] Life was so blessed[25] in creation that Augustine argued, contrary to the views of many of his predecessors and contemporaries, that Adam could have only disobeyed God if he had already become proud in his heart.[26] For Augustine, the evil will precedes the evil act.[27] The problem lay within, and the problem is pride, which quite literally for Augustine, “comes before the fall.”

Once again, this in no way means that creation was deficient or that the first parents were prone to sin. Augustine refuses to speculate on an efficient cause for the primal sin of pride. Rejecting the views that locate the origin of evil either in God himself (monism) or in a flaw in the structure creation (dualism), Augustine simply confesses that the first parents’ sin was both culpable (not necessary) and inexplicable (not rational). This is the basis for Augustine’s theory of evil as privation.[28] Put simply, evil has no origin because it has no rightful place in a good creation.

Solidarity with Adam
Augustine’s first way of relating the primal sin to our sin is through his understanding of humanity’s solidarity with Adam. The second is through his theory of (sexual) transmission, which will be discussed subsequently under its own subheading. Augustine’s views on humanity’s solidarity with Adam are crucial for his doctrine of original sin because it establishes both the relationship between the primal sin and its effects, and a way of conceiving humanity’s participation in the primal sin. How could it be said that those living now actually participated in an event that took place aeons ago? Augustine’s answer is that we participated in the first sin because we first participated in the first human being. Augustine writes:

We were all in that one man, seeing that we all were that one man who fell into sin…We did not yet possess forms individually created and assigned to us for us to live in them as individuals; but there already existed the seminal nature from which we were to be begotten…when this was vitiated through sin…man could not be born of man in any other condition.[29]

Augustine seems to distinguish between a common life of souls prior to (or possibly simultaneously with) the individual lives we experience in our bodies. To what extent this is closer to (or derived from) either a Platonic notion of the pre-existence of the soul, or Irenaeus’ more creational notion of the mystical solidarity of humanity is of course a matter of debate.[30] Attempting to do justice to the Pauline formulation, “as in Adam…so in Christ,” Augustine’s view of human solidarity with Christ parallels his view of human solidarity in Adam, though not directly so. Solidarity with Adam is physical and is rooted in the past. This is not so for solidarity with Christ, which is spiritual (and possibly futural, or eschatological?). Nevertheless, as with Adam, the soul is both individual and sharing in Christ simultaneously.

Augustine’s account of human solidarity with Adam is ambiguous at best. At one point, writing to his opponent Julian, in what appears to be a moment of exasperation, he even writes: “[I]f you cannot understand this, believe it.”[31] However, he does make a further suggestion:

Some sort of invisible and intangible power is located in the secrets of nature where the natural laws of propagation are concealed, and on account of this power as many as were going to be able to be begotten from that one man by the succession of generations are certainly not untruthfully said to have been in the loins of the father. They were there…though unknowingly and unwillingly, because they did not yet exist as persons who could have known and willed this.[32]

To speak of solidarity with Adam in seminal terms, or existing in his seed, hints at his (sexual) theory of transmission. This too is ambiguous, but it does reveal the grooves in which he is thinking. As Couenhoven writes: “However it occurs—and, perhaps because of his confidence that this is what Scripture teaches, or perhaps because human solidarity was taken for granted by many of his contemporaries, he does not seem too concerned about the metaphysical details.”[33]It is simply a confessional matter. “The apostle (Paul) exclaims: ‘By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so it passed upon all men, in which all have sinned.’”[34]Thus, Augustine concludes: “all men are understood to have sinned in that first ‘man,’ because all men were in him when he sinned.”[35]Augustine’s account is striking! Prior to our birth, before any ability to act or choose, we participated with Adam in the primal sin. Thus, in our conception we suffer Adam’s condition, being constituted (guilty and denatured) as sinners before any particular act of sin.

Inherited Sin
The discussion of solidarity with Adam has already gone a long way in explaining Augustine’s notion of inherited sin. However, given that this was referred to as the “conceptual core” of Augustine’s doctrine, more needs to be said. Even if one assumes the general thesis that “all sin now because all were [sinning, or had sinned] in Adam” in some particular fashion, there are still important distinctions and decisions to be made with regard to a host of questions and issues.[36] For example, the Pelagians embraced this thesis as well. However, they took it to mean that all sin now because all are weakened by Adam’s sin, and therefore more vulnerable to temptation.

Augustine agrees that moral weakness is part of sin’s inheritance, which explains all sorts of particular sins that sinners unnecessarily commit. However, for Augustine, inherited sin consists of more than moral weakness alone. Having participated in Adam’s sin, humanity receives Adam’s inheritance, and is therefore guilty of, and structured towards, fundamental rebellion against God before any ability or opportunity to act on his or her own. This expresses the radical nature of sin in the Augustinian perspective, radical in that it maintains that sin cuts to the very “root” (radix) of human existence.

Still, more needs to be said concerning just what it is, specifically, that constitutes inherited sin. In other words, what specifically is inherited sin? Augustine speaks about inherited sin, or what we might call “original sin,” proper, in two ways. These can be referred to as the participatory account of humanity’s “common guilt,” and the ontological account of humanity’s “constitutional fault.”[37] With regard to the former, in speaking of “the guilt of our origin which was contracted at birth,”[38]Augustine suggests that the sin of Adam hangs over us and lies in us as a stain that remains with/in us until forgiven in baptism. Augustine’s participatory account of common guilt is the explanation for his rather stark discussions of the “mass of perdition” (massa damnata).[39] Quite to the point, because humanity sinned together in Adam, all humanity is guilty and condemned together as one mass. For Augustine, this includes even the elect, who are then plucked out of the massa damnata by God’s grace alone.[40]

In addition to common guilt from our (possibly pre-existent) participation in Adam, a participation that is neither willing nor conscious, Augustine also talks about original sin as an inherited “constitutional fault,” a disordering of our fundamental nature (structure) and orientation (direction). Further, this fault in human nature consists of “ignorance” and “disordered desire/love,” both of which Augustine considered punishment for sin and sin itself.[41]But is this punishment just? Augustine contends that the corrupted state would not be just punishment unless humanity was first (commonly) guilty of the primal sin. Here, the solidarity thesis, establishing common participatory guilt, grounds the justness of the punishment of the constitutional fault(s). Ignorance and disordered desire are “the disobedience coming from ourselves and against ourselves in a perfectly just turnabout because of our disobedience.”[42] Thus, once again, the account of solidarity, vague though it is, plays a central role in Augustine’s doctrine.

To summarize: the common guilt that results from (participation in) the primal sin is neither sin’s punishment, nor a further sin, but rather the lasting stain on humanity. This stain of (common) guilt, however, establishes the justness of the constitutional fault(s) of ignorance and disordered desire, both of which are considered by Augustine, in fact, to be both sin’s punishment and sin itself.

While Augustine has less to say about ignorance than disordered desire he is clear that it is still both sin and a punishment for sin, speaking of it as the “blindness of heart [that is] itself a sin by which one does not believe in God.”[43] As Augustine’s language suggests, ignorance is more radical than simply weakened rational capacity. Moral ignorance and epistemic ignorance are interrelated for Augustine, and result from the “hardness of heart” that suggests a fundamental lack of faith.[44] Witting sin is more serious than unwitting sin, but sins of ignorance are still a matter of culpability and deserving of punishment. Further, ignorance seems to be the cause of many subsequent sins that are not necessary themselves. “We admit that human beings also have those sins which are committed not by necessity, but by will, sins which are only sins and from which one is free to hold back.”[45] These might be thought of as the sins that make for sinful habits, or develop into habitual sin. All sin fits into this category from a Pelagian perspective, and Augustine accounts for this kind, however, it is simply not a radical enough view of the problem of our inheritance.

Of ignorance and disordered desire, the latter is the most severe and seems to be the cause of the former. Augustine defines sin as “perversity and lack of order, that is, a turning away from the Creator who is more excellent, and a turning to the creatures which are inferior to him,”[46]and virtue as “rightly ordered love.”[47] It makes sense then that Augustine would speak of the very root of our inherited fault, the corruption of our nature, as a fundamental dis-orientation (away from the creator) and a dis-ordering of our loves/desires (toward an aspect of creation). The term Augustine uses that captures these dimensions is “carnal concupiscence.”[48] It is important here that carnal (“fleshly”) is not juxtaposed to spiritual in a body/soul dichotomy. Augustine used “flesh” and “spirit” to speak of two directions of the heart, or orientations of the entire person (body and soul). Thus, one could speak of “fleshly desires” and “spiritual desires,” but both are matters of orientation of the whole person, leading down paths of either justice/righteousness that make for blessing/life or paths of injustice/unrighteousness that make for curse/death. Furthermore, carnal concupiscence is a problem of both the body and the soul, because, according to the solidarity theory, “each child is in Adam body and soul.”[49] Augustine guards against the view that any aspect of the person survives the Fall without corruption by maintaining that “the cause of the carnal concupiscence is not in the soul alone, much less in the flesh alone. It comes from both sources: from the soul, because without it no pleasure is felt; from the flesh, because without it carnal pleasure is not felt.”[50]

But is our inherited constitutional fault of disordered desire/love sin in itself, that is, culpable and blameworthy evil, or is it simply a lamentable though not culpable condition that makes us prone to sin culpably thereafter? Augustine’s argument against those who hold to the latter is ambiguous at best,[51] but that does not keep him from criticizing those who “draw these subtle distinctions.”[52]Augustine is clear: “The concupiscence of the flesh is indeed blameworthy and defective and is nothing but the desire for sin.”[53] Elsewhere, he also writes of “concupiscence, that is, the sin dwelling in our flesh.”[54] Saying that carnal concupiscence is both sin and worthy of guilt, and the cause of further sin and guilt can summarize Augustine’s view.

The distinction between sin and guilt brings up the question of forgiveness. What does it mean to be forgiven of sin (as carnal concupiscence)? And, precisely, what is the effect of forgiveness upon carnal concupiscence? Is the extent or nature of carnal concupiscence different in the life of the baptized than the non-baptized? “Concupiscence of the flesh is not forgiven in baptism in such a way that it no longer exists, but in such a way that it is not counted as sin.”[55] This seems to suggest that while the guilt of carnal concupiscence is forgiven in baptism, carnal concupiscence itself remains a fact of existence. Augustine can be confusing here:

[E]ven if it is called sin, it bears that name, not because it is a sin, but because it was produced by a sin…this concupiscence of the flesh is itself forgiven in baptism to that, though it is contracted by those who are born, it does not harm to those who are reborn…since its guilt contracted by birth has been forgiven by rebirth. For this reason it is not longer a sin, though it is called a sin.[56]

Augustine may have been clearer by saying, “it is no longer a (guilty) sin, though it is (rightly still) called a sin.” He clarifies elsewhere: “[T]his is what it means to be without sin: not to be guilty of sin.”[57]

Lest this sound too dismal, Augustine seems to suggest forgiveness has a further effect on carnal concupiscence. Augustine read the tenth commandment quite starkly as, “You shall not desire.” Once again it is important to discern whether Augustine is speaking of desire itself, or improper desire(s). The latter is recommended, though Augustine’s lack of clarity here is no gift to his interpreters and continues to be a source of confusion. Though because of inherited sin it is impossible to fulfill the commandment “Do not desire (wrongly),” Augustine does believe it is possible to obey the Pauline command “not to follow such desires”:

Against this sin those who are placed under grace carry on a war, not with the hope that sin will no longer be in their body as long as it is mortal…but with the hope that it will not reign. And sin does not reign when its desires are not obeyed, that is, the cravings by which it lusts after allurements according to the flesh against the spirit. Hence, St. Paul did not say, “Let not sin be your mortal body” (for he knew that the attraction of sin, which he calls sin, is there since our nature has been corrupted by the original transgression): but he said, Let not sin reign in your mortal body to make you obey its lusts.[58]

The removal of guilt from carnal concupiscence actually has an effect on carnal concupiscence. Forgiveness makes way for regeneration, re-ordering disordered desire, though never completely. The “war” that grace initiates and enables between proper and improper desires is not without great struggle, as Augustine knew all too well.[59]

The Penalty for Sin
Though related, of course, the “penalty for sin” refers to something different than the inherited fault(s) of common guilt and carnal concupiscence. Though inherited sin is indeed a penalty for the primal sin in a certain sense, it should be distinguished from the penalty for sin as such. While the inherited condition is both punishment for sin and sin itself, the penalties for sin are proper punishment for sin but are not themselves sin (full). Once again, this distinction was significant for Augustine’s debates with the Pelagians, because their view of sin would properly fit into Augustine’s category of the penalty for sin. As something that can provide the reason and occasion for sin, but does not necessarily lead to sin, the penalty for sin is not properly regarded as sin itself. This is not to say, however, that Augustine did not consider the penalties for sin a serious matter.

Augustine’s most common example of the penalty for sin is mortality.[60] Though Adam and Eve were created mortal, they were meant to receive the gift of immortality. Augustine’s understanding of the penalty of death, then, is more rightly thought of as the revoking or withholding of the gift of immortality. Though baptized humans are still mortal, and will therefore die, the gift of eternal life is restored when resurrected humanity is non posse peccare. Augustine often speaks of the results of the penalty for sin in terms of human “weakness.” Though he sometimes uses this to speak of the specific weakness of being divided between competing desires,[61] it also applies more broadly to the loss of beauty, the vulnerability to disease, and the lack of self-understanding that is humanity’s common lot. Augustine takes these facts of existence as support for his belief that we live under the penalty for sin.[62]

The Transmission of Sin
Following Couenhoven, I have already described inherited sin as “original sin itself,” and as the “conceptual core” of Augustine’s broader doctrine. I also spoke of the solidarity thesis as Augustine’s first means of establishing the crucial relationship between the primal sin and inherited sin, which, once again, includes both common guilt and the constitutional fault(s) of ignorance and concupiscence. The second, most significant, complex, and potentially problematic way Augustine thematized this connection is through his transmission theory.

Augustine’s reading of Psalm 51 had a profound effect on his thinking about sin, particularly his understanding of sin’s (sexual) transmission. He takes verse 5: “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me,” to mean that sin is transmitted by means of sexual intercourse and received in conception.[63] This reading was of assistance to him in his argument against the Pelagian view that sin was transmitted by imitation, but it is not without its problems. Not only is it questionable exegesis, but the view it supports is questionable as well, raising questions about Augustine’s view of sexuality and how exactly this sexual transmission takes place. The feminist critiques I will outline later in this essay target these questions specifically, and in a way that I believe is quite fruitful.

The reason Augustine’s transmission theory raises so many questions is due in part to the prior ambiguity in his solidarity thesis, as well as to his ambivalence concerning divergent theories of the origin of the soul.[64]I mentioned earlier that Tertullian’s stoic influences made him dissatisfied with Irenaeus’ more poetic language of “mystical solidarity,” leading him in the direction of a much more concrete, and arguably more blunt, understanding of human participation in Adam. Tertullian held to a “traducianist” theory of the soul’s origin, believing the soul to be material, and that both the soul and the body are produced in the moment of conception. In this way the first parents, in a very materialist fashion, literally set the conditions for all their progeny. Adam’s material is passed on to all humanity, and all that we are was previously in Adam. Augustine appreciated the work Tertullian’s conclusions would do for him. However, Augustine’s belief in the immateriality of the soul, and his commitment to the view that body and soul alike, both irreducible to a common material, were inheritors of sin, made him unable to reconcile himself with the traducianist thesis.[65] It seems that Augustine held to a view of the sexual transmission of sin very much like Tertullian’s, while both rejecting the theoretical scaffolding Tertullian’s view was built upon, and without proposing an alternative theory of the soul’s origin. The extent to which this may or may not be a legitimate move for Augustine is a crucial part of the assessment of his doctrine.

The “creationist” theory, the more common view in Augustine’s day, maintained that it was only the body that was produced in sexual intercourse. The immaterial soul was created directly by God and fused with or into the body at conception. While Augustine never found this theory to be against the clear teaching of Scripture, he did have doubts about its legitimacy, not least because this was the view of the soul’s origin the Pelagians used to argue against original sin. Augustine’s concerns revolved around its implications for maintaining the justness of God. If God creates fallen souls then God himself is directly responsible for the transmission of original sin. Yet, if God creates good souls (the Pelagian position) and infuses them into fallen bodies, then by putting good souls in a context where their corruption is certain God seems to be acting unjustly. In addition, this would mean that original sin was dependent upon the body (to tarnish the soul), something that went against both his view that body and soul were responsible inheritors of original sin, and his view that only an already weakened soul would be unable to maintain the proper ordering of bodily desires.[66]

Given that Augustine could not embrace either traducianism or creationism as such, and lacking an alternative theory of the origin of soul, he tends to fall back on the view that the (corrupted) body is a burden on the soul because it is produced through sexual intercourse. On close inspection this falls prey to Augustine’s critiques of both traducianism and creationism. However, Augustine could be sure that bodies were produced as a result of sexual intercourse, and wanting to avoid either the charge that God creates fallen souls, or that the body was primarily responsible for sin, he places the burden on the act of sex (or the desire involved in sex) itself, which corrupts the body in conception and leads to the burdening of the soul.

Augustine should not necessarily be criticized for avoiding the question, and the available options, of the soul’s origin. While it does make his doctrine less clear than it might be, with the emphasis on sexual transmission Augustine simply felt it was a question that could be bypassed. The question of the soul’s origin was significant for Augustine only in so far as it served to help him establish the more properly theological problem of common guilt. However, as Ronnie Rombs argues: “Since Augustine will ultimately explain original guilt on the basis that it is inherited [sexually] from Adam, that we are guilty because of our [biological] relation to Adam, the theory of the preexistence of the soul and its fall as well as the larger question of the soul’s origin in general lose any theological significance they once held.”[67]

More forensic notions of sin’s imputation do not require a sexual transmission. Sin is simply imputed (by God) to all humanity because Adam was humanity’s (legal) representative. However, Augustine does not believe that such a view does justice to the belief that “in Adam we (actually) all sinned.” His solidarity thesis is an attempt to do justice to this, but it seems to require a corresponding sexual transmission theory to work properly. That is to say, we could only be “in Adam” if we were truly “in his seed.” Augustine writes: “[T]hey all sinned then in Adam, when they were still all that one man in virtue of that power implanted in his nature by which he was able to beget them.”[68] Thus, sexuality matters, and takes center stage in Augustine’s account of solidarity with Adam and the actual transmission of Adam’s sinful inheritance.

More specifically, it is the sexual desire in intercourse that plays the corruptive role, begetting sin to conception. Augustine claims, “those who are born from the union of bodies are under the power of the devil, before they are reborn…because they are born through that concupiscence by which the flesh has desires opposed to the spirit.”[69] This seems to suggest that the desire (“concupiscence”) at play in sexual intercourse (“the union of bodies”) is necessarily disordered (“flesh…opposed to the spirit”). Furthermore, because all children are the products of this form of (carnal) concupiscence they inherit the fault of their parents (“under the power of the devil”). In this way, sexual desire moves beyond being Augustine’s choice example of (the effect of) carnal concupiscence and also becomes its cause. Referring to sexual desire as both the cause and effect of carnal concupiscence is quite a radical move. Put simply, the reason the constitutional fault gets transmitted to all humanity is because every human being is a product of an act rooted in sexual desire. Every child is a sinner because every child is conceived in (an act of) sin. For Augustine, original sin is an STD!

Conclusion

Aside from the suggestions that Augustine was more of a creative theologian than he is often given the credit of being, and that the most helpful way to conceive of his doctrine of original sin is as a “handful of doctrines” with a “conceptual core,” part one of this study has been predominately descriptive. It is important to have a good handle on the doctrine and its history before exploring the particular feminist critiques of the views of sex, desire and gender at play in the various threads of Augustine’s doctrine. Though such an analysis is reserved for part two of this study, it is likely the reader is already aware of where I believe some of the problem areas exist. Briefly highlighting one particular problem might help to draw part one to a close while gesturing to the significance of the task taken up in part two.

Augustine’s use of both his personal experience with sexual struggles, and the categories and thought-forms of his day, in his doctrinal construction is not problematic in itself. Revelation always comes through creation and both experience and philosophy are good potential sources of guidance to us as we find our way in God’s world. However, it does seem that his highly negative view of sexuality owes more to certain dualistic strains within Greek philosophy than to the creation affirming thrust of the Scriptures where all that God created, including genitals, desire and sexual pleasure are emphatically pronounced, “Good!” Augustine’s doctrine could stand to be more biblical in this respect. Further, by making something seemingly unbiblical an essential, not ancillary, aspect of a Christian confession that in broad terms we want to affirm, Augustine has left us with a difficult task. How might we retain the Augustinian insight that “sex matters!” when it comes to thinking about the inevitability and universality of sin, while holding onto the view that human sexuality is fundamentally good, and therefore something to be enjoyed as a good gift of God? Must sex always be an original curse to future generations and never an original blessing? What might a more creation affirming, and therefore sexually affirming, doctrine of original sin look like? What might serve as an adequate transmission theory in this endeavor? These, among others, are questions that will be explored in part two of this study, as we move toward fashioning a (re)new(ed) confession of sin’s ubiquity for our time.

– – –