How did the thoughts of Augustine on original sin become a doctrine of the Church despite Pelagius’ sensible and logical arguments that echo today’s ideas of scientific realism?
By 417, the city of Rome was divided between the supporters and opponents of Pelagius. This fight even led to riots in the streets. In 415, two councils of bishops held in Palestine declared Pelagius correct but two councils of African bishops led by Augustine and his colleagues condemned him and persuaded Pope Innocent I (401-417) to take their side. Innocent’s successor, Pope Zosimus (417-418), at first supported Pelagius; but after vehement protests from Augustine and other African bishops, reversed himself and excommunicated Pelagius.
As the fight against Pelagius was going on, Augustine and his co-African bishops openly canvassed for the Roman Emperor's support in the matter. “Augustine’s friend and fellow African bishop Alypius brought eighty Numidian stallions as bribes to the imperial court and successfully lobbied there against Pelagius” [Pagels]. The result was that in 418 after the pope excommunicated Pelagius, the Emperor condemned the newly declared heretic and ordered him fined and expelled from office and exiled along with his supporters, many of whom were monks, priests, and bishops!
The perplexing question is: why Catholic Christianity adopted Augustine’s paradoxical, preposterous and idiosyncratic views as part of its belief system?
1. Beliefs such as those of Augustine validate the Church’s authority. If human condition is a disease, Catholic Christianity alone, acting as a physician, can offer spiritual medication and discipline that can cure it.
2. Augustine’s theology attributing suffering to sin serves as a means of ‘social control’. This explanation assumes a manipulative religious authority that invents guilt in order to ‘dupe a gullible majority into accepting an otherwise abhorrent discipline’. Many people need to find reasons for their sufferings. Augustine’s theory met such a need; hence the idea of original sin survived for the next 1600 years.
According to Kenneth Humphreys, Augustine’s ideas about original sin were used as techniques to control human beings. This was done by linking guilt with sex. With that technique, the Christian Church rose to its height in power, causing Western civilization to crumble into the mystical Dark Ages as human well-being and happiness sank to the lowest level in recorded history.
The history of Christian oppression of individual life, rights, values, happiness, pleasure, and sexuality began with the acceptance of Augustine’s theories.
According to Augustine, sin entered the world with Adam. But how can that be since Adam never existed (the figure is an archetypal man, symbolizing 'humanity')? Rather, sin entered the world through the perverted minds of theologians like Augustine!
Augustine (known as the 'Great Sinner' after the candor of his Confessions) was obsessed with the lust of procreation – undoubtedly a reflection of his own dysfunctional sexuality. Wildly promiscuous in his early life, he had abandoned two mistresses, one with his child, and the illicit affairs had filled him with guilt. In later years, he did not trust himself to be left alone with a woman.
In Augustine's judgment – and subsequently, that of the Church – sexual desire and gratification ("lust") had to be controlled, limited and confined. Libido was stigmatized as a sin, detracting us from God. In contrast, celibacy, chastity, and virginity were lauded as being far closer to the perfection of God and were to be the choices of preference. Centuries of misery – sexual and psychological – were the consequence as millions became celibates or fought their own nature.
Thanks to St Augustine and the Church, guilt over the most natural of human proclivities was inculcated into generation after generation of humanity – an irrational and morbid guilt no less present among "believers" in the twenty-first century as it was in the fourth and fifth centuries.
Humphreys continues: With a blend of 'eternal bliss' on the one hand and a 'satanic pit' on the other, the Church mercilessly exploited the fears, credulity, and hopes of humanity. Through centuries, the Church secured not only almost limitless regal patronage but also endowments, estates, and legacies from the wealthy, convinced that they were buying a place in Heaven.
The Council of Trent (1545-63) gave the official stamp to the idea that original sin was transferred from generation to generation by propagation - which means during the sexual act that led to conception. This formalized the notion of original sin as part of Roman Catholic doctrine.
Even as late as 1968 Pope Paul VI held on to the doctrine of original sin: "We, therefore, hold, with the Council of Trent, that original sin is transmitted with human nature 'not by imitation but by propagation' and that it is thus 'proper to everyone'."
[Imitation is the idea that original sin is passed on by copying the sinful tendencies of others.]
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