That Naughty Bishop of Hippo: Disfunctional Theological Innovations of St. Augustine

Copyright 1990 by John R. Mabry

Even after fifteen hundred years, the mention of St. Augustine elicites strong reactions from people. From most, admiration, but there is a growing consensus that much of what is wrong in Western culture can be traced back to the severe neurosis of this most singular of the pre-medieval philosophers. A brilliant syncretist, Augustine succeeded Origen as the prime interpreter of neo-Platonic rhetoric in the Christian context, making creative Hellenistic leaps that rivaled even those of St. Paul. Brilliant though the leaps may be, they also considerably skewed the Christian vision. Orthodox scholar Fr. Michael Azkoul lists some of the good bishop's theological innovations that he (and a good many others) condemn: "...predestination and irresistible grace and...original sin; ...also his theory of Ideas and suspicious doctrine of creation; his crypto-Nestorian christology; his false mystagogy and understanding of Old Testament theophanies; his unorthodox ecclesiology; his philosophical conceptions of the soul; ...his speculations on purgatory, the beatific vision, his questionable view of deification; his anthropology and peculiar teaching on sex."1 This is by no means an exhaustive list, and many of the items listed by Fr. Azkoul are beyond the scope of this paper. What we intend to consider are those doctrines which have had the most profound and destructive effects on Western culture, i.e. neo-Platonism and its attendant duality, free will, sexuality and women, original sin and theocratic politics.

Neo-Platonism

Raised by a pagan father and a Christian mother, Augustine found the doctrines of the Manichaeans very attractive, as it seemed more logical and sophisticated than the Christianity of his childhood, but soon he found the teachings of Mani to be wanting, and discovered the writings of Plato and Plotinus. "Let Thales depart with his water," Augustine writes, "Anaximenes with the air, the Stoics with their fire, Epicurus with his atoms."2 Plato, for him, was the tops. Neo-Platonism freed him from his materialism, and convinced him of the reality of an unseen world. Thus, having been moved by the sermons of St. Ambrose, he turned to the writings of St. Paul and began to view Christianity in a new light. Frederick Copleston, S.J. writes, "If neo-Platonism suggested to him the idea of the contemplation of spiritual things, of wisdom in the intellectual sense, the New Testament showed him that it was also necessary to lead a life in accordance with wisdom."3 According to Bertrand Russell, Augustine was impressed that "Plato saw that God is not any bodily thing, but that all things have their being from God, and from something immutable...He found in the Platonists the metaphysical doctrine of the Logos, but not the doctrine of the Incarnation and the consequent doctrine of human salvation."4

He also adapted the neo-Platonist concept of a hierarchical universe to the Christian mythos. "All natures are placed on three levels: God is at the top; the human soul stands in the middle; all bodies are on the lowest level. God is wholly immutable."5 Knowledge, also, is organized on a hierarchical model. The lowest level of knowledge, sensation, is common to humanity and the beasts. The highest, the sole property of humankind, is the contemplation of the Ideals, or Wisdom. In between there is what Copleston calls a "Kind of half-way house," where corporeal reality is compared and identified with the incorporeal.6

In Augustine's universe the world of forms took the shape of the mind of God, in which God is able to contemplate all of his finite potential in an infinite way. As Augustine describes it, "Creatures tend indeed to not-being, but as long as they are, they possess some form, and this is a reflection of the Form which can neither decline nor pass away. Thus the order and unity of Nature proclaims the unity of the Creator, just as the goodness of creatures, their positive reality, reveals the goodness of God and the order and stability of the universe manifest the wisdom of God. On the other hand, God, as 'the self-existent, eternal and immutable Being, is infinite, and, as infinite, incomprehensible'."7

Time and Predestination

The divine ideas themselves Augustine describes as "certain archetypal forms or stable and unchangeable reasons of things, which were not themselves formed but are contained in the divine mind eternally and are always the same. They neither arise nor pass away, but whatever arises and passes away is formed according to them."8

Time itself, then, in Augustine's universe is part of the material order and was nonexistent prior to the Creation. God resides in what Alan Watts has called "the Eternal Now," having neither beginning nor end, to whom time is present all at once. Bertrand Russell, though disagreeing with Augustine, considers this innovation to be "a great advance on anything to be found on the subject in Greek philosophy."9 Says the Saint himself, "God is Himself in no interval nor extension of place, but in His immutable and pre-eminent might is both interior to everything because all things are in Him and exterior to everything because He is above all things. So too He is in no interval nor extension of time, but in His immutable eternity is older than all things because He is before all things and younger than all things because the same He is after all things."10

This sounds like wonderful, mystical, even panentheistic theology, but as M.D. Chenu makes clear, "Time, to Augustine, "is a wound through which our life pours out. Decrepitude is the inevitable concomitant of man's existence. Man does not really exist except by and in the immutable eternity which awaits him. In this obscure drama the world is not his home, and his history is only a temporary scaffolding."11 As Azkoul describes it, he began to teach that "whatever happened in time happened with an unalterable purpose. One thing proceeds from another as a necessary conclusion from its premise. In retrospect, one can see that the past is what it is by necessity, with no options; likewise, the present rises from it and the future from the circumstances of the present."12

Not everyone is happy about Augustine's syncretism, to understate the matter. Among the Orthodox, it was stated in an eleventh century synod that "Anathema [are] those who devote themselves to Greek studies and instead of merely employing them as a part of their education, adopt the foolish doctrines of the ancients and accept them as truth. Anathema to those who firmly believe such doctrines and recommend them to others, whether secretly or overtly."13

Fr. Azkoul believes that Augustine's need to reconcile Platonism and Christianity, or in other words, "faith" and "reason" was rooted in a deep-seated insecurity, and served to comfort himself regarding his salvation. "Augustine," he writes, "had indeed adopted 'the foolish doctrines of the ancients and accepted them as truth.' Hellenism was part of his thinking to the very end of his life."14 The result of Augustine's doctrine of time was a grim form of predestination that was to root itself permanently in the Western psyche and surfaced in full force a thousand years later in the work of John Calvin.

Free Will

This line of thinking led Augustine to reinterpret the Genesis myth of Creation. As Elaine Pagels points out, what the Jews and early Christians had read for centuries as "a story of human freedom became, in his hands, a story of human bondage."15 Instead of being a story about the gift of moral freedom, as St. John Chrysostom proclaimed, Augustine taught that "Adam's sin not only caused our mortality but cost us our moral freedom, irreversibly corrupted our experience of sexuality...and made us incapable of genuine political freedom."16 Augustine then reinterpreted the Pauline epistles through the lens of his theological innovations. Pagels calls the former interpretation of the myth "the heart of the Christian gospel,"17 that the "proclamation of autexousia-the moral freedom to rule oneself-as virtually synonymous with 'the gospel.'"18

In Augustine's version, which quickly became the accepted position of the church, Adam and Eve were created with free will, the choice between good and evil. They chose evil when they disobeyed God's command not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and in that very moment, they were corrupted through and through, to their very souls. The result of this is that neither they nor their heirs were ever able to choose good again, of their own volition. Holiness, therefore, could only be had by a gift of Divine Grace. The gift of grace, however, is given to only a few, and with no observable system of distribution. Salvation, to Augustine was a dice game, and as Russell points out, "St. Augustine enumerate the sins committed by infants at the breast, and does not shrink form the conclusion that infants who died unbaptized go to hell. The elect go to heaven because God chooses to make them the objects of His mercy: they are virtuous because they are elect, not elect because they are virtuous."19 Therefore, Augustine insists that all of the church's members may enjoy the Mysteries of the Sacraments, but only a few actually receive their benefit. "Election is absolutely gratuitous, indifferent to foreseen merits, preceding any good action and wholly subordinated to God's arbitrary Will. With no respect to context, he extracted passages from Romans and other epistles in order to prove his contention."20

Previous to this, Paul was perceived as meaning that the will's incapacity to act autonomously was applicable only to the unbaptized. But Augustine, try as he might, could not reconcile this. Azkoul asks, "How is God good, how merciful and just, if His decision to save or reprobate is based on His secret Council wholly insensitive to human choices?"21

The effects of the fall were not limited to humanity, but were cosmic in scale. According to Pagels, "Augustine insists that through an act of will Adam and Eve [changed] the structure of the universe; that their single, willful act permanently corrupted human nature as well as nature in general. Once harmonious, perfect, and free, now, through Adam's choice, is ravaged by mortality and desire, while all suffering, from crop failure, miscarriage, fever, and insanity to paralysis and cancer, is evidence of the moral and spiritual deterioration that Eve and Adam introduced..."22

Augustine was not without his contemporary critics, however. A Welshman named Palegius challenged his view, believing that free will was still operative for the human race, and that a person was able to live so as to be worthy of heaven. Unfortunately for Palegius, theological pluralism was not a fifth century standard, and he was excommunicated for his common sense. Augustine insisted that his theology did not contradict free will. He claims that even in Christ a person is not delivered from Adam's curse. He might be relieved of Original Sin, but not its consequence, guilt; a burden inherited by infants upon their entry into the world regardless of their baptism.23

Sexuality

The immediately noticeable effect of the fall, for our first parents, was that their bodies no longer took orders from their brains. As Augustine puts it, "After Adam and Eve disobeyed...they felt for the first time a movement of disobedience in their flesh, as punishment in kind for their own disobedience to God... The soul, which had taken a perverse delight in its own liberty and disdain to serve God, was now deprived of its original mastery over the body."24 This doctrine came about as a result of Augustine's own personal sexual incontinence. Since lust was wont to violently overtake the saint, and since his "members" marched to their own drum, Augustine felt himself to be a victim, a captive, a slave to sin. Augustine uses inductive reasoning to make his case to the world. What he calls "this diabolical excitement of the genitals" must be common to all men, (women we will examine later). Were it not for the "easy out" of marriage, "people would have intercourse indiscriminately, like dogs."25 (A hilarious side note is that, in his wild youth, he knew that what he was doing was wrong, and would pray that God would "Give me chastity, but not yet."26

This teaching was in direct contradiction to the Apostolic fathers. Clement of Alexandria, in fact, criticized celibates "who say that they are 'imitating the Lord' who never married, nor had any possessions in the world, and who boast that they understand the gospel better than anyone else."27

Many of Augustine's contemporaries disagreed with his interpretations, as well. One such dissenter, Jovinian, objected and attempted to prove by biblical authority that celibates were no holier than married folk. Augustine replied that "the fecundity of a married woman was not comparable in value to the fecundity of the virgin, who produced souls for Christ," and many others supported this view.28 Once again, disagreeing with the Bishop of Hippo was proved a dangerous undertaking, and eventually Jovinian too was excommunicated.

According to feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Reuther, Augustine considered the blessings given to marriage as recorded in scripture to apply only under the dispensation of the Old Covenant, that of God with the Jews.29 This view was supported by Clement, who believed that legitimate procreation is a blessing applicable throughout time,30 although he would probably have conceded that recreational sex, even for married folk, was sin.

Women

Augustine's dim view of sex extended its corruption to women. He writes "I feel that nothing so casts down the manly mind from its heavenly heights as the fondling of woman and those bodily contacts which belong to the married state."31 Good Christians are exhorted by him to simultaneously love a woman's personality, yet "to hate in her the corruptible and mortal conjugal connection, sexual intercourse and all that pertains to her as a wife."32 Women do not even bear the image of God, according to Augustine, unless they are joined to a man.33

Women are, of course, therefore subordinate in all ways to men. This was the standard view, but few took it to Augustine's inhuman extremes. Pagels points out that in Julian's view, "Man's rule over woman forms part of the order of nature, 'an institution of nature, not a punishment for sin'."34 Augustine even teaches that a woman has no personal rights over her own body, but "must surrender her body to her husband on command, receiving from such use no personal pleasure, but allowing herself to be used solely as an instrument of procreation."35 "Even in paradise," Reuther writes, "the male would have 'used' the woman without sensual feeling, just as he moves his hand or foot, dispassionately, and totally under control of the rational will. There would have been no uncontrolled rush of disordered affection and spontaneous tumescence of the male sexual organ. But the male would have sowed his seed in the woman with he same objectivity as a farmer sows seed in field."36 Reuther elsewhere notes that Augustine's views on sex won him new accusations of promoting Manichaeist teachings, which he refuted claiming that the abominable means ultimately achieve a good end in the blessing of birth. (Ironically, the good bishop also maintained that prostitutes are necessities, much like a sewer in a palace. If you take away the sewer, the palace becomes filthy!37

Original Sin

The result of Augustine's take on Eden was his concept of Original Sin, for which, though he claims biblical authority, many scholars, now and then, believe him to be solely responsible for its manufacture. Sexual desire, for him was proof of, and according to Pagels, punishment for, universal Original Sin.38 Augustine reasoned that Original Sin must be hereditary, otherwise there was no explanation for why babies had to endure suffering. To deny this was to deny that there was justice in the universe. "You must explain," he writes, "why such great innocence is sometimes born blind or deaf. If nothing deserving punishment passes from parents to infants, who could bear to see the image of God sometimes born retarded, since this afflicts the soul itself? Consider the plain facts; consider why some infants suffer form a demon."39 Thus, in a world where there are no easy answers, Augustine felt justified to invent his own. Augustine, in fact, believed babies to be so infected, that until they were baptized he conceived of them as the very limbs of Satan!40

"If infants are not sinners," Augustine asked Palegius, another Christian whom Augustine had excommunicated for questioning his views, "Why then are they baptized?" Palegius' poetic response was that the intention of baptism was for "...spiritual illumination, adoption to divine sonship, citizenship in the heavenly Jerusalem, admission to the fellowship of Christ and possession of the Kingdom of God"-an ennobling response, and very like what a modern catechism might say.41

Ironically, though it is the woman who is corruption personified, it is through the male issue that the Original Sin is actually transmitted: it is the semen which is the bearer of death. In creating a new creature, it is the woman who provides the body, from her substance, and the man who gives the soul, which is already corrupt. This theory is called Traducianism.42 Fr. Azkoul points out, however, that "Augustine was unhappy with Traducianism, because it implied a material conception of the soul, a conception wholly uncongenial to his Platonism which...presents the soul as completely spiritual."43 He feared, however, that if the theory were discounted there would be no justification for infant baptism (excepting Palegius' reasoning), for "if God injected the created soul directly into the body, then, the guilt of Adam's sin could not pass from parent to child."44

As in his own time, many, if not most clerical opinions in the majority of traditions now reject Augustine's explanation. "We do not inherit the 'guilt' of Adam," Azkoul firmly states, "Human beings are victims of Adam's sin, not the bearers of it. We inherit not his sin, but the propensity to sin." Fr. Matthew Fox asks us "What trust is lost in oneself, in one's body, in the cosmos, when children are instructed that they came into the world as blotches on God's creation?"45

Augustine's proof text proves to be even more of an embarrassment. He uses Romans 5:12, "Wherefore, in as much as one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; annd so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." saying that Paul claims that death is visited upon humanity because of Adam, "in whom all sinned." In the Greek, this prepositional phrase reads ef w, which is properly translated "in as much as," or "because" not "in whom."46

Augustine is clearly out of line with the prior teachings of the Church, and is refuted by Christians of his own time and ours alike. Elaine Pagels notes that his theory contradicts two key beliefs of the Christian faith: the goodness of God's creation and the freedom of the human will. Even those who accept the idea of inherited sin believe that baptism eradicates this defect completely, so that we can say with Didymus the Blind "now we are found once more such as we were when we were first made: sinless and masters of ourselves."47

Duality

Although Augustine professed to have denounced his former beliefs in the doctrines of Mani and wrote copious refutations of his heresies, the profound dualism espoused by his former teacher did not depart him. This became troublesome for Augustine, not only in the theory of Traducianism noted above, but in his conception of the Incarnation itself. Augustine could not conceive that the Spirit of Christ could actually join itself to the corrupt nature of the flesh. As he says, "For as the soul makes use of the body in a single person to form a man, so God makes use of a man in a single person to form Christ. In the former person, there is a mingling of soul and body; in the latter, a mingling of God and man... when the Word of God unites to the soul which has a body, taking thereby both soul and body at once... it ought to be easier to intermingle two incorporeal things rather than one incorporeal and the other corporeal."48 So, in Augustine's view, the soul was the middle man which enabled Jesus to be united in body and Spirit without the one having to be joined to the other (positively Gnostic!).

Most of us today would agree with Chenu that "It is not only the soul that thinks, nor only the body that senses; it is the man [sic] who thinks, wills, loves, senses, acts, works. Body and soul are not real subjects each of which has in itself the capacity to be or to act in its own sphere, merely conditioned by the other."49 But this holistic view of humankind was unthinkable for Augustine. Matthew Fox believes that if there is such a thing as Original Sin, that sin is not Adam's disobedience in the garden, but is in fact dualism itself. For, according to him, it is dualism which "divides and thereby conquers, pitting one's thoughts against one's feelings, one's body against one's spirit, one's political vocation against one's personal needs, people against earth, animals and nature in general."50 Representing the Creation tradition, Julian gives us the elements of an integrated Christian faith in what he calls the five praises: "the praise of Creation; the praise of marriage; the praise of the law; the praise of the saints; the praise of the will."51

Communal vs. Individual Sin

It was during the intertestamental period that a significant shift in Jewish theology began to rear its head, one which would be seized by Augustine and used to promote a dysfunctionally introverted spirituality: the displacement of the emphasis of communal sin in favor of an individual variety. In classical Jewish theology, Israel sinned and was restored to favor as a people, not primarily as individuals. But since the Church could not sin, the trend in a new "individualized" salvation was adopted by Augustine as the model. Bertrand Russell notes that sin is connected with self-importance.52 This smacks of a perverse, inverted narcissism, of which Stendahl says Augustine "turned in on himself, infatuated and absorbed by the question not of when God will send deliverance in the history of salvation, but how God is working in the innermost individual soul."53 The church had always proclaimed herself to be the refuge of all, not merely of the few. But, as addressed above in the section on free will, Augustine followed the lead of his teachers Plato, Plotinos, and Mani in proclaiming an elitist salvation reserved for "the elect" whom God himself chooses independent of human vice or virtue.

And it is in this primary shift of focus that Augustine misses completely the cosmological ramifications of the gospel. "Too much guilt," writes Fox, "too much introspection, too much preoccupation with law, sin, and grace rendered Augustine, and the theology that was to prevail in his name for sixteen centuries in the West, oblivious of what the Eastern Christian church celebrates as theosis, the divinization of the cosmos."54 Leo Scheffczyk in his study Creation and Providence charges that "the harmony which St. Augustine established at the level of ontological thought was achieved at the expense of the scriptural concept of Creation as part of the economy of salvation."55 Augustine would have us not look beyond ourselves for our experience of God, but only inward. He simply ignores the cosmological ramifications of the Fall and redemption in favor of a model which would support his neo-platonist cosmology. Julian responds to this view by saying that calling the Earth "'cursed in [Adam's] works' expresses the viewpoint of a person who is spiritually dying...this lie cannot injure nature, nor the earth, in this curse, but only his own person, and his own will."56 Azkoul notes that only Platonists seem to see creation as a "problem."57

Politics

It might be that Augustine's ideas would not have met such widespread acceptance had it not been for the changing political climate. Before the emperor Constantine's conversion, the gospel's message of radical freedom provided profound meaning for those Christians who felt persecuted by pagan society and traditions. Christianity gave to people a cosmic context compared to which the material realities of Roman life seemed insignificant and imprisoning. But once the empire embraced the Christian faith, suddenly the radical freedom was no longer so radical, and the truly devout had to search out other lifestyles which would fill this hole in their faith life. Many went to the desert to live out their days before God in silent reverence. But this was not the way for everybody, and thus it is that Augustine's theories made sense out of the new political situation. Elaine Pagels explains it thus: "What Augustine says, in simplest terms, is this: human beings cannot be trusted to govern themselves, because our very nature-indeed, all of nature-has become corrupt as the result of Adam's sin. In the late fourth and the fifth century...Augustine's theory of human depravity-and correspondingly, the political means to control it-replaced the previous ideology of human freedom."58

Thus, when Rome was under Pagan rule, it was maintained by evil means, such as injustice and violence, but now that it is Christian, it will be a truly just and moral state, which will produce moral men and women.59 In the prior arrangement, the state religion was under control of the state. But under Christianity, the state was under control of the Church.60

The shift in power, not surprisingly, was attended by a shift in behavior on the part of the Church. When the Donatists complained of the Church using imperial forces to enforce the will of its hierarchy, Augustine increasingly turned to force through everything from the denial of civil rights, fines, penalties, to exile and physical coercion. As Pagels writes, "By insisting that humanity, ravaged by sin, now lies helplessly in need of outside intervention, Augustine's theory could not only validate secular power but justify as well the imposition of church authority-by force if necessary-as essential for human salvation."61

Conclusion

Although it is obvious that Augustine occasionally contradicted himself, especially in the comparison of his early with his later works, as Fr. Azkoul says, each of his doctrinal errors "is consistent with all his others, stemming from principles which allowed him to elaborate a peculiar and coherent body of religious opinion. His theology, cosmology, christology, mystagogy, historiosophy, etc. are interwoven."62 Augustine searched the scriptures relentlessly to find support for his theories, which in his imagination had become the Catholic Tradition. Reuter notes that in searching for support for predestination, Augustine did not adopt the theory after patient and careful study, but in "the fury of the dialectical hunt."63 Reuter goes on to observe that Augustine so changed the face of Western Christendom that he prepared it for division with the East.64 Azkoul's book The Influence of Augustine of Hippo on the Orthodox Church, so often quoted here, is a monumental refutation of Augustine's heresies that the Orthodox tradition could not, and cannot, embrace. Azkoul quotes one Orthodox saint as saying "We can only thank God that the doctrine of the Eastern Church was formulated outside the sphere of Augustinianism, which we must consider as alien to us.65

The political, global and psychological dilemmas of our time are not those of Augustine's, and his formulations are no longer applicable in our society. Even in his own time there were those who believed him to be in grave error. His rival Julian believed his inventions to be "false, many foolish, and many are sacrilegious."66 Augustine was fond of saying that his Platonist God "is never disturbed by any passions." Matthew Fox believes that this tells us a lot more about Augustine than about God.67

Endnotes

1 Azkoul, Michael The Influence of Augustine of Hippo on the Orthodox Church (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), p. 7.

2 Russell, Bertrand, quoting Augustine A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945), p. 358.

3 Copleston, Frederick, S.J. A History of Philosophy, Volume II (New York: Image, 1962), pp. 42-43.

4 Russell, Bertrand A History..., pp. 351, 358.

5 Bourke, Vernon, ed. The Essential Augustine (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1964), p.43.

6 Copleston, p. 57.

7 Copleston, quoting Augustine, p. 72.

8 Ibid., p. 73.

9 Russell, A History....p. 354.

10 Copleston, quoting Augustine, p. 72.

11 Chenu, M.D. Faith and Theology (New York: MacMillan, 1968), p. 126.

12 Azkoul, p. 185.

13 Ibid., p. 139.

14 Ibid., p. 139.

15 Pagels, Elaine Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988) p. xxvi.

16 Ibid., p. xxvi.

17 Ibid., p. 126.

18 Ibid., p. 99.

19 Russell, Bertrand; Al Seckel, ed. On God and Religion (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1986), p. 274.

20 Azkoul, p. 190.

21 Ibid., p. 207.

22 Pagels, p. 133-4.

23 Azkoul, p. 203.

24 Pagels, quoting Augustine, p. 110.

25 Ibid., p. 140.

26 Russell, History..., p. 348.

27 Pagels, p. 21.

28 McLaughlin, Eleanor Commo "Equality of Souls, Inequality of Sexes: Woman in Medieval Theology" from Religion and Sexism, Rosemary Radford Reuther, ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1974), p. 231.

29 Reuther, Rosemary Radford "Patristic Spirituality and the Experience of Women in the Early Church" from Western Spirituality, Matthew Fox, ed., p. 149.

30 Pagels, p. 27.

31 Reuther, p. 149.

32 Reuther, Rosemary Radford "Virginal Feminism in the Fathers of the Church" from Religion and Sexism, Rosemary Radford Reuther, ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1974), p. 161.

33 Reuther, "Patristic Spirituality..." p. 148.

34 Pagels, 137.

35 Reuther, "Virginal..." p. 164.

36 Reuther, "Patristic..." p. 147.

37 O'Faolain, Julia and Lauro Marines, eds. Not in God's Image (New York: Harper, 1973), p. 291.

38 Pagels, p. xviii.

39 Ibid., p. 135.

40 Russell, History..., p. 365.

41 Azkoul, p. 198

42 Ibid., p. 184.

43 Ibid., p. 184.

44 Ibid., p. 184.

45 Fox, p. 58.

46 St. Paul, Romans 5:12 from The Zondervan Parallel New Testament in Greek and English (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975), p. 455.

47 Pagels, p. 131.

48 Azkoul, quoting Augustine, p. 229.

49 Chenu, p. 49.

50 Fox, p. 54.

51 Pagels, p. 136.

52 Russell, History..., p. 346.

53 Fox, p. 209.

54 Ibid., p. 76.

55 Scheffcyk, Leo Creation and Providence (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), p. 103.

56 Pagels, p. 138.

57 Azkoul, p. 247.

58 Pagels, p. 145.

59 Copleston, pps. 87, 89.

60 Russell, History..., p. 362.

61 Pagels, pps. 124-5.

62 Azkoul, p. 221.

63 Ibid., p. 196.

64 Ibid., p. 10.

65 Ibid., p. 3.

66 Pagels, 136.

67 Fox, p. 63.