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On the Condemnation of Augustine of Hippo By the Druid Finn Introduction History
has often celebrated Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) as the great doctor of the
Western Church, a brilliant mind who gave form to Christian doctrine. Yet
brilliance is not innocence. Augustine should also be remembered — indeed
condemned — as the architect of a theology that deliberately misread its
sources in order to bind humanity under a burden of guilt, thereby
consolidating the power of an emerging ecclesiastical empire. His
manipulation of Genesis 2 and 3, following a precedent already set by Saul of
Tarsus, created the perfect ideological instrument of subjection: the absolute
power over humans of the doctrine of original sin. Genesis 2 & 3: The Text and Its Ambiguity The
Hebrew narrative, indeed myth, of Eden does not speak of sin, let alone of a
transmittable corruption. It tells a story of: ·
two trees, life and knowledge, ambiguously both
described as “in the midst of the garden”; ·
a serpent, a figure of ambivalent wisdom, not yet
the Devil of later tradition; ·
a woman who eats and gives to her partner; ·
a man who simply “ate what she gave him.” ·
Shocked observation of their natural state; ·
2 exits from the garden; They are,
in fact, elements of a passage rather than a crime story. What follows is not
cosmic damnation but awakening: awareness of nakedness, the pain of
mortality, and the loss, indeed freedom from divine protection. When the
Elohim (i.e. the gods) ‘send forth’ then ‘expel’ the couple, their stated
fear is not that humans have sinned, but that they have seized immortality by
eating of the Tree of Life and become “like one of us.” The myth is about
containment, not about guilt. Saul of Tarsus: The First Misreader It was
Saul, known as Paul, who first twisted the Eden story into a universal
condemnation. Saul too sought absolute power of his charges. In Romans 5:12
he declared: “Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin,
and so death spread to all men.” Romans 5.12 cannot be found in Genesis
2&3. With this false claim, a myth of awakening became a doctrine of
fallenness, of corruption. Humanity, but not the rest of creation, was recast
as guilty, corrupt unto hell, from birth, enslaved to sin, needing redemption
through Christ. Paul’s deliberately misleading interpretation was not
exegetical discovery but theological invention: a means of making the gospel
absolute and exclusive, binding all to his new cult of the Anointed (i.e.
Christ). Augustine: The Perfecter of Subjection Augustine,
centuries later, took Paul’s fantastic aberration of and sharpened it into an
iron chain. He taught that: ·
Adam’s act was deliberate rebellion; not simple
eating; ·
human nature itself was corrupted in Adam; ·
guilt was biologically transmitted through the
sexual act; ·
infants, all unbaptised humans, such as later on
the South American Indios) were damned to everlasting hell if not baptised. This
doctrine was neither demanded by nor the logical conclusion of the Genesis
text. It was malicious fantasy superimposed upon it. Augustine deliberately
ignored the textual ambiguities — the uncertain identity of the tree, the
absence of the word “sin,” the Adam’s naming of the woman as ‘chavvah’
(meaning: life), the Elohim’s anxiety over human life — because they did not
serve his purpose, namely providing the leaders of the Christian cult with
absolute power over its charges. What was
that purpose? Control. By declaring all humanity corrupt onto hell at birth,
Augustine ensured that no one could escape the Church’s mediation, not even
the ‘righteous’ ss Jesus had initially declared. Baptism, confession,
Eucharist, and the hierarchy of priests became indispensable. He created, in
effect, the perfect technology of subjection: the guilt-ridden conscience,
forever dependent on institutional grace. The Political Function of Original Sin Augustine
was not merely a bishop; he was a political actor in a world where the Christian
Church was becoming Rome’s ideological arm. Original sin dovetailed with
imperial needs for absolute control: ·
it universalised guilt, ·
it justified obedience, ·
it guaranteed the absolute authority of bishops
and priests as custodians of grace. The
doctrine of ‘Original Sin’ was a masterpiece of social engineering, clothed
in theological language. It made human freedom suspect and obedience holy. It
reduced human beings to serfs of the Church, incapable of standing alone. The Counter-Reading: Original Goodness Set
against Augustine’s disastrous misreading is another possibility, one
glimpsed by Pelagius in his protest and developed in our time by voices such
as the modern druid mystic, Finn. The Eden story is a Passage Story, not
about guilt but about emergence: humans entering into life, knowledge, and
precarious freedom. The woman, named Chavvah — “Life” — is not the mother of
sin but the mother of living. Her act of giving birth is the gift of
existence itself, of fragile continuity in the face of divine jealousy. This is original
goodness: the affirmation that to emerge, to exist at all, is good. There
is no inherited guilt, no cosmic condemnation, no corruption through
birth, only the ongoing struggle of
emergents to live, adapt, and continue. Conclusion Augustine’s
legacy, celebrated by the Church, deserves absolute condemnation. He should
be expelled from the Christian Church for lying, just as Tertullian was. He
deliberately misread Genesis as Paul had done before him, not out of error
but out of political calculation. By transmuting a myth of life into a
doctrine of sin, he forged the shackles of universal guilt. In doing so, he
gave rulers and priests the keys to human subjection. The result was not
truth, but the longest-running system of spiritual control and physical
exploitation in Western history. Against
this, the modern druid’s word stands as liberation: emergence is good, life
is good, existence itself is original goodness. Augustine should be
remembered not as saint and doctor, but as the consummate ideologue, indeed
psychopath of control — and condemned as such. |