[Music] first meet my friend augustine aka augustine or aka gus for much of his life augustine was a bishop in hippo a north african port town he's best known today for having written the first spiritual autobiography the confessions which tells the story of his journey toward christianity as a young up-and-coming star in the roman intellectual and academic world as a young man augustine struggled with both moral and intellectual hang-ups which prevented him from embracing the christian faith of his mother monica morally he writes of youthful and fairly innocent escapades like the time he and his
buddies ransacked a neighbor's pear tree for no apparent reason but mostly he struggled with sexual lust in what's probably the most relatable prayer ever written by a church father he writes god grant me chastity but not yet intellectually augustine struggled to understand the nature of sin and evil he thought evil must be some substantial force in the universe opposed to god and to goodness but if this was the case where did it come from and what can be done about it eventually he came to the realization that if god created everything that exists then everything
that exists must be good god could not have created evil evil then he reasoned must be the absence or privation of goodness rather than something positively existing in opposition to god sin then is not the desire for evil itself but rather the desire for something good but in a disordered way the human will affected by sin augustine would say is not turned toward goodness as it should be but is rather curved in on itself unfortunately a will curved in on itself lacks the power to set itself straight we need grace and salvation in other words
we need god to draw us back toward himself and this is what happens in the christian's life when the holy spirit enables her to experience the grace of christ augustine famously described the church not as a museum of saints but as a hospital for sinners though augustine believed that grace could turn our hearts back to god he still taught that sin once habituated can still wreak a lot of havoc to imagine this i want you to think of a group of soldiers having been separated and dispersed in a remote jungle without any communication these soldiers
continue to fight the enemy even though the war is already over and their sides been defeated it's a bit like this with sin even in the life of the committed christian according to augustine sin remains as a defeated and yet still deadly enemy you can see some of these themes in augustine's teachings about sex and marriage augustine defended sex and marriage as definely intended creational goods which would have had a place in human life even apart from our fallen to sin he rejected the notion common in his day that sex is a result of sin
and is therefore evil sex according to augustine is integrally connected to procreation one of the three main goods or goals of marriage the other two being sanctification and the union between husband and wife nevertheless while these things are good they are not unaffected by sin sex even within marriage always involves what he calls concupiscence or inordinate desire for pleasure in a way that augustine speculates it would not have apart from the fall therefore though marriage is allowed celibacy is to be preferred the theme of sin and grace also pervades augustine's other famous work the city
of god in which augustine offers a sweeping theological interpretation of history and especially of the sack of rome which occurred during augustine's lifetime in this work he argues that there are ultimately two cities or peoples each united in the object of its love the earthly city united in love of self to the exclusion of god and the city of god united in its love of god to the exclusion of the self at the present time these two cities are intermixed and the city of god though its true citizenship is in heaven sojourns or travels within
the earthly city working for its peace and order augustine argues that christians should assume responsibility for the public good but should not equate god's kingdom with roman rule the church transcends empires but even imperial powers can be a means for loving our neighbors speaking of love augustine was deeply attuned to the role love plays in our moral psychology he describes us humans as bundles of loves and he argues that it's love and desire that drive us as much if not more than any of our beliefs and knowledge using an analogy from ancient physics he writes
fire tends upwards and a stone tends downwards they are propelled by their own weights they seek their own places oil poured under the water is raised above the water water poured upon oil sinks under the oil they are propelled by their own weights and they seek their own places out of order they are restless restored to order they are at rest my weight is my love by it i am born wherever i am born so augustine gives us a distinct way of understanding the nature of sin and evil an emphasis on divine grace and a
distinct way of understanding human motivation and action he sees the world and human beings as deeply good and deeply flawed at the same time and he believes that the nature of the moral life is a process for putting disordered loves back in order in demonstrating love of neighbor through our worldly callings
