Augustine and the Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture

By

Seth Farber

(Excerpt from Eternal Day, Regina Orthodox Press (800-636-2470), 1998. Used with author’s permission)

Although St. Augustine's influence on Latin Christianity was unparalleled for centuries, the Catholic Church in the 5th century rejected a central tenet of his theology: predestination to damnation. Instead, they promised that those who conformed to the Church's rules would be saved.

Nevertheless there was a recrudescence of Augustinianism in the Catholic Church beginning in the 15th century, and later more significantly with the Protestant Reformation. Jean Delumeau writes that "Augustinian pessimism gained both its strongest coloring and widest audience during the period highlighted by this study, the years 1400 to 1700 .... It is no exaggeration to assert the debate over original sin and its diverse by-products—problems of grace, free will or servitude, and predestination—came to be one of the prime obsessions of Western civilization, a concern of all people, from the theologians to the most modest peasants."120 Delumeau notes that many of these Augustinians were even more extremely pessimistic than Augustine himself, for he at least acknowledged some of the noble traits that human beings still possessed.

Delumeau describes the "collective guilt complex" stemming from Augustine, which he argues dominated Western culture between the 13th and 18th centuries: "A terrible God, more a judge than a father, despite the mercy with which He was almost accidentally credited; a divine justice connected to vengeance; the conviction that, despite Redemption, there would remain only a chosen few, all humanity having deserved hellfire because of Original Sin; the certainty that each sin is both insult and injury to God; the rejection of any amusement or concession to human nature, since these remove one from salvation.”121

With the displacement of Christ's optimistic ontology by Augustine's pessimistic ontology, the original Judeo-Christian expectation of cosmic redemption, of the divine victory over the forces of evil, of the eventual realization of the Kingdom of God on earth was almost entirely obscured.

Luther: the Regenerate Augustinian

Both Luther and Calvin were staunch admirers of Augustine, believing that his legacy had been besmirched by the Catholic Church. Their theologies were consequently based on a reassertion of Augustinian anthropology.

It is well known that Luther's apostasy from Roman Catholicism and his development of the concept of "justification by faith" was the denouement of his unsuccessful struggle as an Augustinian monk to attain to a sense of sinlessness, in which he could be assured that he had attained the favor of God. Despite all the austerities Luther imposed upon himself, he was ultimately left with a sense of his own depravity. From this he deduced that man was inherently depraved and as a result could do nothing by his own works to earn the forgiveness of God.

Shortly before Luther's conversion he prayed, "With what tongue shall I address such Majesty, seeing that all men ought to tremble in the presence of even an earthly prince? Who am I that I should lift up mine eyes or raise my hands to the divine Majesty? ... And shall I, a miserable little pygmy, say 'I want this, I ask for that?' For I am dust and ashes and full of sin.”122

Like Augustine, Luther believed that man incurred ,both the guilt for Adam's sin in paradise and the disease of that sin as it was passed on through the act of procreation. He wrote, "I am a sinner, not because I have committed adultery nor because I have had Uriah murdered, but I have committed adultery and murder because I was born indeed conceived and formed in the womb, as a sinner....So we are not sinners because we commit this or that sin, but we commit them because we are sinners first That is, a bad tree and a bad seed also bring forth bad fruits, and from a bad root only a bad tree can grow." The image of God that Adam had borne in his soul was replaced by "'the image of the devil."123 This entailed a "corruption of the whole nature and of all the powers of man ... a corruption which infects the mind, intellect, heart and will."124 (Lutherans after Luther, were reluctant to construe corruption as pervasively as their teacher had.)

But even worse than the corruption of sin itself is the wrath of God that it incurred, bringing as it did the curse of God and the punishment of death. Since God was eternal and omnipotent, "His fury or wrath toward self-satisfied sinners is also immeasurable and infinite."125 This divine "justice" created "horrible torments of the heart and fury of conscience."126 In these torments or "terrors of the conscience that feels God's wrath against our sins and looks for forgiveness of sins and deliverance from sin,”127 it was worse than useless to lay claim to merit by doing good deeds in an attempt to win God's favor.

Luther struggled with Paul's phrase in the Epistle to the Romans that "the just shall live by His faith." He was relieved of his torments one day when an epiphany occurred to him: "Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors, into paradise."128

Luther had originally grasped God as a wrathful judge, but the good news that he now realized was that God had expended his punitive justice on Christ, that by His death Christ had taken upon Himself the guilt of man, thereby satisfying God's punitive justice.129 This is what Luther means by justification: that human beings’ sins are forgiven. However, they remain in the bondage of sin. God forgives sinners and reckons them as "righteous" for Christ's sake. Thus the righteousness granted to the sinner is not one produced by himself but an "alien" righteousness belonging to Jesus Christ. It is a righteousness "outside of" man; it is not a quality of man's heart.130  In order to receive this justification human beings must believe in Jesus Christ. Although God justifies the individual, he remains throughout his life a sinner. Therefore Luther described him as "'righteous and a sinner at the same time [simul justus et peccator].”131

Luther's position parallels Augustine's: Although man is acquitted of the guilt for Adam’s crime, he remains a sinner and damnable before God. Luther does believe that subsequent to justification God works to "sanctify the believer," so that after death he will be worthy of entering into communion with Christ.

There were tendencies in Luther's thought that were not as entirely pessimistic. Thus, although he asserted frequently that the image of God in man had been completely destroyed,132 in several passages he writes of a relic that remains. The relic consists wholly in man's "natural" abilities, in his difference from animals, which gives him the power to govern things.133 Thus Luther writes that we have "the blunted and as it were dead relics of their [Adam's and Eve's] knowledge.134 The image in the sense of goodness and justice was totally destroyed.135 Sin, however, does not destroy human beings' capacity to be grasped by God's grace; otherwise salvation would be impossible.

Like Augustine, Luther denied that God willed the salvation of all human beings, and he asserted that he “saved so few and damned so many.”136 Luther's explanation for this is similar to that of Augustine: By not granting salvation to all, God shows us that His grace can not be taken for granted. By rejecting so many He shows us that His mercy is a free act of His will. Luther assures us that we have no rights in relation to God; on the contrary, He has every right to do what He wants. He owes us nothing. Like Augustine, Luther conceived God as a majestic sovereign, to whose arbitrary fiat human beings—at least those who are predestined to be saved—ought to succumb in fear, in reverence, and in gratitude.

Luther asserted that original sin had completely abnegated freedom of the will, which was now entirely in bondage to sin, and "not free to strive toward whatever is declared good.”137 He stated that man "neither does the good nor is capable of it in the absence of grace."138 Luther's opponents accused him of forbidding good works. He responded that he had only denied both that good works would contribute to man's salvation, and that they were a product of man's free will. On the other hand, he did not deny that good works were a product of grace and faith.

Good deeds that are done by those who are not baptized are not really good at all. Thus, speaking of the Jews, Luther said, "Men truly sin even when they perform good works apart from the Holy Spirit."139 Thus all of man's moral aspirations and accomplishments, apart from Christianity, are stigmatized by Luther as corrupt and worthless in the sight of God. Luther acknowledges that human beings possess "heroic virtues" and that we can find copious evidence in society of "civil righteousness." Yet he maintains that this righteousness is honored only by men and not by God, and that it constitutes a kind of false front for "the truth in our inward being" is missing.140

This concept is a product of Luther's rendering of original sin. As long as original sin exists in the human being—as long as the consequences are not mitigated by grace—even the most altruistic and noble deeds of human beings are really manifestations of the crime and the disease of original sin. Luther wrote, "Our weakness lies not in our works but in our nature; our person, nature, and entire being are corrupted through Adam’s fall .... There is simply nothing in us which is not sinful."141 Only God can liberate humankind from this condition. (Of course He restricts this liberation to the elect.)