Augustine and 'pre-fall' life for mankind

It is amazing how much one can see, when rereading texts in middle age, which escaped one during the early adult years. I'm developing quite a warm affection for Augustine of Hippo. I see a burnt idealist - one very keen to glorify God for how grace worked in his own life, but saddled with the natural discouragement of later years.

I am here recording a response I gave in relation to a question about life before the fall. Since Augustine is known to all too many people as if he merely thought sex was evil and women wicked (a most narrow and unjust portrayal), my comments here are to be understood as having responded to this concern on the part of the 'questioners.'

Augustinian thought dominated that about the fall (which I do not see as literal). I know I am greatly over-simplifying, but Irenaeus stressed the immaturity of mankind, and immaturity (in himself or as a concept!) was a trait for which Augustine had no tolerance. In his Confessions, Augustine, looking back and seeing how divine providence worked in his life, is spot on about our human weakness in his story of the pears... but not able to make some allowance for that he was barely more than a child. As a young philosopher, he had a great preoccupation with evil (which would endure), yet who, however brilliant or learned, has true wisdom in the early adult years?

In a nutshell, as a Manichean Augustine saw dualism (where creation itself is evil and not the work of the true God) as an explanation for evil. Though his break with Manichean thought was initially scientific, Augustine equally saw dualism, whatever answers it seemed to give for the existence of evil, as compromising divine omnipotence (which indeed would be true.)

The idea of the fall was hardly original with Augustine, but we need to remember that (though the God of whom Augustine wrote in 'The Trinity' is quite lovely) Augustine never knew when to stop when he was refuting heresies. I always had the impression that he was so intent on not compromising omnipotence that he had to make everything in creation conform to a logic where the divine hand directed even the evil and weakness we humans concoct. (For a time, he thought grace was irresistible... that wavered a bit when North Africa and the Roman Empire was crumbling in his sight.)

I'm refraining from giving a full history here, but I do think this is a key point in how Augustine 'crafted the details' of the fall. Augustine had an image of mankind as endowed with intellect, memory, and will, but as having had control over and use of these faculties, before the fall, to an extent we could never know afterward. The sin of Adam was more serious than any one of those to follow, because, working with Augustine's reasoning, Adam, unlike us, would have had capabilities (intellectual, control of the will) that are unmatched, and also would have seen the results of his actions, however far-reaching.

The references to sex in Augustine's treatment of the fall are, I believe, very heavily flavoured by the circumstances of his own conversion. However, a part of it has to do with the control I mentioned. Augustine would have seen mankind as having control of emotions, arousal, and so forth before the fall. Sexual arousal and the actions to follow would have been chosen freely - there would be no sudden erections (Augustine mentions this lack of control specifically as related to the fall), nor ill-advised sexual relationships which were damaging or which one later regretted. It was not sex itself which was the divine punishment... Augustine, of all people, hardly would have pictured a state of Paradise without it...

In some thought that was popular amongst Augustine's contemporaries (and recall that Christianity came into its own during a period when Gnosticism, wherein all matter was evil, was popular - and indeed could seem to answer questions Christianity left hanging), it indeed was assumed that, with mankind's nature being fallen, asceticism meant becoming an angel - no body. Now, that was not going to be achieved, but denial of physical needs (of any kind, not only sexual) was a quest for the angelic state, in which one supposedly could approach the state before the fall. (Augustine was moderate compared to many others of his day!) There also were exegetical treatments in which God's having clothed Adam and Eve in skins before their expulsion from the garden was taken to mean that they would have had no human flesh, as we know it, had they not fallen.

Yet is it not appealing to imagine a 'pre fall state'? No evil, no suffering, no illness... minds of brilliance we cannot imagine, emotions under our control... Augustine, whose dualism originally one needs to recall, could square God's perfection and omnipotence with a world that was 'good.' Not only sin but all sorrow and pain as mankind's fault - and as an affliction God sent only in response to the sin - could be seen (if one wished!) as the inevitable action of a still loving Father. I've always found Augustine's explanation of evil as the 'absence of good' rather inadequate, but it fits neatly into his thought.

Augustine's largest problem, when he was refuting heresies, was two-fold. First, he was so intent on demolishing the others' point of view that he ended up chasing his own tail. (Unbaptised babies' being condemned is gruesome, for example.) Second, though he knew well that much of what is divine is beyond our comprehension, let alone explanation, he tried so to set forth details that an explanation, for example, intended not to compromise omnipotence could turn God into rather a vengeful tyrant.

I think that those new to theology need to be reminded (in relation to all classic writings) that systematic theology and 'texts' were rather a late development. Many documents, particularly those from the first five centuries of the Church, were composed specifically to refute heresies of the time. They therefore should not be taken to mean that a subject was the theologian's sole preoccupation.