Pride and Sin in the
Augustinian Tradition
Augustine
argues that pride is the root of every sin. In Book XII, chapter 6 of City of God, pride is identified as the cause for the evil angels’
misery; in Book XIV, chapter 13, writing of the first human sin, Augustine
similarly asks, “could anything but pride have been the start of the evil
will?”[1] In both sections, Augustine employs the
logic behind Ecclus. 10:13: “the beginning of all sin is pride.”[2] Fallen angels and the first humans both
turn their gaze inwards, towards themselves, and in doing so they demonstrate a
longing for “a perverse kind exaltation.”[3] Instead of fixing their gaze upon the
immutable God, these creatures – created ex
nihilo[4]
– seek a change within themselves.
This prideful desire is the beginning of the evil will and quickly leads
to the first evil act of disobedience.
Conversely, then, the sign of obedience is humility, and it is humility
which in actuality exalts. For
Augustine, this is because, “devout humility makes the mind subject to what is
superior. Nothing is superior to
God; and that is why humility exalts the mind by making it subject to God.”[5] This dichotomy between humility and
pride are defining characteristics of Augustine’s two cities. Love of God is the first prize in the heavenly
city, while those abiding in the temporal city seek only to love themselves.[6]
Augustine’s
understanding of pride establishes what becomes a classic theological
formulation of sin. The notion
that pride caused the original rebellion against God can be traced from
Augustine, through theologians like Thomas Aquinas,[7]
and well into twentieth century theology.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for example, works from the same Ecclus. 10:13-14
passage in his 1939 book Life Together
to argue that “the spirit and flesh of human beings are inflamed by pride, for
it is precisely in their wickedness that human beings want to be like God.”[8] Like Augustine before him, Bonhoeffer
claims that confession of our inherently selfish pride only comes through
identifying with the humiliation of the cross of Jesus Christ. This theological tradition certainly
has its merits; it seems quite clear that pride plays a crucial role in
humankind’s rejection of God.
However, recent feminist theology offers a needed critique of the simple
notion of equating “pride” with “sin.”
A Necessary Critique
Bonhoeffer
scholar Lisa Dahill points to the abuse and exploitation of women as a warning
against a simplistic insistence that one must always humble oneself to overcome
any and all sin. She recounts the
story of Shirley, who attended a lecture at her church that explained how
Bonhoeffer’s concept of loving one’s enemy involved complete and utter
surrender to the “other,” even to the point of surrendering one’s life. Afterwards, Shirley remarked to the lecturer,
“if I had been hearing this theology thirty years ago, I would be dead right
now.”[9] Bonhoeffer’s specific historical and
contextual theological expositions on the necessity of self-denial had been
universalized by the lecturer to suggest that someone like Shirley, who one
night found herself being strangled by a male aggressor, could only overcome
the evil through selfless humiliation.
Fortunately that night, Shirley forcefully exerted herself and was able
to flee to safety. Dahill’s point
is that Bonhoeffer’s (and thus Augustine’s) unchallenged notions of the
relation between selfhood, pride, and sin need to be reassessed, particularly
taking into account the experience and theology of those outside a tradition
that is so often dominated by Western males.
It
would not be historically and theologically fair to assert that the entirety of
Bonhoeffer’s and Augustine’s understanding of sin can be reduced to pride. Certainly both theologians argue that
pride ushered in the first acts of sin, and they both frame their argument
around the claim in Ecclus. 10:13 that the root of all sin is pride. However, William Mann points out that
Augustine “is careful to insist that pride is not a component in all
sins.” Some sins, for example,
“are committed in ignorance or desperation.”[10] Mann cites Augustine’s De natura et gratia in offering this
clarification. In City of God, on the other hand, Augustine
does not seem to find it necessary to explore conceptions of sin beyond the
inherent connection with pride.
And it is this exposition in City
of God that serves, at least in part, to establish a dominant and lasting theological
understanding of sin.
Context is the Root
of Application
Bonhoeffer certainly relies on this
Augustinian tradition of interpretation, but Dahill is right to insist on the
necessity of critical contextualization in the appropriation of Bonhoeffer’s
theology, especially around the issue of selfhood. She argues that such a claim “is consistent with
Bonhoeffer's own lifelong insistence that truth is never abstract, absolute, or
fixed, but requires prayerful, concrete discernment in every new context within
the flow of highly complex social-historical circumstances.”[11] Contemporary theology would then do
well to appropriate the likes of Augustine and Bonhoeffer’s claim that pride is
the root of all sin with careful nuance.
Application of this theology must be met with deliberate awareness of
the potentially disastrous consequences that an unfettered equation of “pride”
with “sin” could wreak on the life of someone like Shirley.
[1] Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (Penguin
Classics, 2003), 571.
[2] Augustine, City of God, 477. The translator renders the verse as “pride
is the start of every kind of sin” in the second instance, 571.
[3] Augustine, City of God, 571.
[4] For Augustine, that God
creates ex nihilo – out of nothing –
is decisive in explaining how sin could have entered the world through God’s
good creation: “But only a nature created out of nothing could have been
distorted by a fault.
Consequently, although the will derives its existence, as a nature, from
its creation by God, its falling away from its true being is due to its
creation out of nothing.” See
Augustine, City of God, 572. William Mann explains that Augustine’s
concept of good creation ex nihilo is
especially important to Augustine’s work in resolving the problem of evil. See Mann, “Augustine on Evil and
Original Sin,” in The Cambridge Companion
to Augustine, eds. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 41-42.
[5] Augustine, City of God, 572.
[6] Augustine, City of God, 573.
[7] The editor references
Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, 2a-2ae, q.
162, a. 7 and Augustine to illustrate the trajectory of this doctrine in
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together,
volume 5 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works,
English edition, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 111.
[8] Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 111.
[9] Lisa Dahill, “Reading from
the Underside of Selfhood: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation,” Journal of Lutheran Ethics 3, no. 8
(August 2003), para. 3, http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Journal-of-Lutheran-Ethics/Issues/August-2003/Readings-from-the-Underside-of-Selfhood-Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-and-Spiritual-Formation.aspx
(accessed April 17, 2012).
[10] Mann, “Augustine on Evil
and Original Sin,” 47.
[11] Dahill, “Reading from the
Underside of Selfhood,” para. 6.
