on sin 論原罪

奧古斯丁

i have already said, in previous books, that god had two purposes in deriving all men from one man. his first purpose was to give unity to the human race by the likeness of nature. his second purpose was to bind mankind by the bond of peace, through blood relationship, into one harmonious whole. i have said further that no member of this race would ever have died had not the first two (adam and eve)---one created from nothing and the second from the first---merited this death by disobedience. the sin which they committed was so great that it impaired all human nature---in this sense, that the nature has been transmitted to posterity with a propensity to sin and a necessity to die....

when a man lives “according to man”---and not “according to god”---he is like the devil....

when man lives according to himself, that is to say, according to human ways and not according to god’s will, then surely he lives according to falsehood. man himself, of course, is not a lie, since god who is his author and creator could not be the author and creator of a lie. rather, man has been so constituted in truth that he was meant to live not according to himself but to him who made him---that is, he was meant to do the will of god rather than his own. it is a lie not to live as a man was created to live.

man indeed desires happiness even when he does so live as to make happiness impossible.... the happiness of man can come not from himself but only from god, and that to live according to oneself is to sin, and to sin is to lose god....

moreover, our first parents (adam and eve) only fell openly into the sin of disobedience because, secretly, they had begun to be guilty. actually, their bad deed could not have been done had not bad will preceded it; what is more, the root of their bad will was nothing else than pride. for, “pride is the beginning of all sin.”---and what is pride but an appetite for inordinate exaltation? now, exaltation is inordinate when the soul cuts itself off from the very source (god) to which it should keep close and somehow makes itself and becomes an end to itself. this takes place when the soul becomes inordinately pleased with itself, and such self-pleasing occurs when the soul falls away from the unchangeable good which ought to please the soul far more than the soul can please itself. now, this falling a way is the soul’s own doing, for, if the will had merely remained firm in the love of that higher immutable good which lighted its mind into knowledge and warmed its will into love, it would not have turned away in search of satisfaction in itself and, by so doing, have lost that light and warmth. and thus eve would not have believed that the serpent’s lie was true, nor would adam have preferred the will of his wife to the will of god....

this life of ours---if a life so full of such great ills can properly be called a life---bears witness to the fact that, from its very start, the race of mortal men has been a race condemned. think, first, of that dreadful abyss of ignorance from which all error flows and so engulfs the sons of adam in a darksome pool that no one can escape without the toll of toils and tears and fears. then, take our very love for all those things that prove so vain and poisonous and breed so many heartaches, troubles, griefs, and fears; such insane joys in discord, strife, and war; such wrath and plots of enemies, deceivers, sycophants; such fraud and theft and robbery; such perfidy and pride, envy and ambition, homicide and murder, cruelty and savagery, lawlessness and lust; all the shameless passions of the impure---fornication and adultery, incest and unnatural sins, rape and countless other uncleannesses too nasty to be mentioned; the sins against religion---sacrilege and heresy, blasphemy and perjury; the iniquities against our neighbors---calumnies and cheating, lies and false witness, violence to persons and property; the injustices of the courts and the innumerable other miseries and maladies that fill the world, yet escape attention.

it is true that it is wicked men who do such things, but the source of all such sins is that radical canker (sinfulness) in the mind and will that is innate in every son of adam....

yet, for all this blight of ignorance and folly, fallen man has not been left without some ministries of providence, nor has god, in his anger, shut up his mercies. there are still within the reach of man himself, if only he will pay the price of toil and trouble, the twin resources of law and education. with the one, he can make war on human passion; with the other, he can keep the light of learning lit even in the darkness of our native ignorance....

from this all but hell of unhappiness here on earth, nothing can save us but the grace of jesus christ, who is our saviour, lord and god. in fact, the very meaning of the name, jesus, is saviour, and when we say “save”, we mean, especially, that he saves us from passing from the misery of this mortal life to a still more miserable condition, which is not so much a life as death....