Augustine reasons that due to Fall, where Adam and Eve performed world’s first sin, an original sin was created. Original sin is created at conception and many early Christians believed that the man’s sperm contains the tainted passage of sin. Therefore, Jesus is history’s only pure human because Mary was sown with the holy seed of God. When God initially made the first humans, he “created man in his own image,” thus, pure and holy. (Genesis 1:27). Augustine supports this point, by saying God “made man, but [He] did not make sin in him” (27). Humans, not God, created sin and it has since been passed on.
When confessing the sins of his youth, Augustine states that he cannot remember his infancy and must rely on the stories told by others. Once he is adult, he can observe other babies and he sees that “not even a child who has lived only one day on earth” is free from sin (27). Babies constantly wail and cry for their desires: hunger, sleep, attention; thus, they are consumed with greed and yearning for their worldly wishes. Because of this, Augustine believes that children are born filled with jealously and are corrupted (28). Augustine introduces a very interesting view on the birth of a human: “…I was born into this life which leads to death – or should I say, this death which leads to life? (25). At conception and throughout infancy, a child has been born into a sinful, guilty state, and only through acceptance of Jesus Christ can be reborn into eternal life.
An extensive amount of scripture contradicts Augustine’s beliefs of a sinful infancy. In Matthew 19:13-14, Jesus says that children “belong to the kingdom,” which can be interpreted that children have salvation and are worthy of eternal life. Additionally, Jesus also encourages that believers must “become more like children” to be precious enough to earn the grace of God (Matthew 18:3). To receive God’s grace, one must give up their cynical ways and become the epitome of a newborn baby: unblemished, immaculate, and innocent as a lamb. It is a neurological and psychological fact that babies are born with no intelligence, just the instincts to survive. They are entirely hopeless without their caretaker. Their brain is underdeveloped and does not contain the capacity for language or reason yet. When an infant’s body is aching with hunger, they are limited from communication and must wail and cry for food, otherwise they would not survive.
Perhaps, this is what Jesus hopes for in Luke 18:22: “Sell everything you have…and you will have treasure in heaven.” To become stripped of all the world’s materials, one must become truly desperate to desire for God’s love. So, like Augustine believes, although babies are riddled with sin from the point of conception, their dependency on their caretaker portrays the essence of a genuine vulnerability. Christians should emulate infants by becoming deprived of possessions and idols and literally need God’s love to survive.
Hmm, this is an interesting blog post. I do wonder, however, how Jesus is supposedly the only pure human because his creation did not involve male sperm when both Adam and Eve's creation did not involve sperm as well. And if one holds that sin is passed on through the necessities of reproduction, why is it that God created all the animals and plants with such abilities? Lastly, and something that I have yet to understand, if people are created in the image of God, is God capable of sin?
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, I very much agree with you that the reason for people to become completely deprived of possessions and emotional ties in reality (according to this type of theology), is so that they may form a deeper bond with the god idea.
I think that God is certainly capable of sin. There are many instances throughout the Bible that supports this belief. In Genesis, God is greatly disappointed with all the evil in the world. The human race he had created became murderous and failed to praise Him. God chose the faithful and hardworking Noah and allowed him, his family, and many animals survive while He killed the rest of His creations. This proves that God is capable of sin; he was extremely unhappy with the state of his creations and decided to start anew. He knew what He did was evil, and he established a covenant with Noah promising he would never destroy the earth with water again. Later, in Hebrews, God realizes that he is unhappy with the Jewish race, his “chosen people,” and decides to create a new covenant: humans no longer had to live the ways of the Old Testament and could now have eternal life through Jesus Christ. The Old Testament declared that humans were separated from God by sin and could now have a relationship with Him through Christ’s grace. This proves that God accepts the fact that perhaps he made a mistake favoring the Jewish people. While this isn’t entirely sinful, it proves that God is not perfect and is able to accept that fact and attempt to make things right.
ReplyDeleteAt one point in this post you start to talk about the preciousness and holiness of the newborn baby. I think that this is not only referring to literal babies but newborns in Christ too, as in recently new to Christianity or having just accepted Christ. I think that in many cases it is good to not know everything about God. I think that by not knowing everything about God, our faith in him can grow stronger. I think that as we learned about science and math and became more and more knowledgeable, people lost sight and focus of their faith, and began to find other explanations for our creations. I think that allowing faith to answer certain questions, and to leave some questions unanswered, your relationship with God can grow stronger because you are more open to God revealing certain truths to you.
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