OK, for those of us who share Hannah Arendt's view of Saint Augustine's understanding of "Original Sin" and "Love" today may have to be a day devoted to a sit down with Baxter and Ivan for a discussion on what "concupiscence" means and why Mathew claimed that Jesus thought lustful gazing was the equivalent of committing adultery in the heart, a verse in the New Testament that put the white meat on the bones of many a monastic order.
But first we have to meet the challenges of the question : "Why do professional groups demand an adherence to their own jargon and why do Theologians insist on using so many long, impossible to retain words that hardly anyone understands without constant reference to an unabridged dictionary." The answer to that question is from Proverbs 25:26 "A righteous man falling down before the wicked is as a troubled fountain, and a corrupt spring." In short "Muddying the Waters."
It wasn't the commandment to "go forth and multiply" that put the sin into Original Sin. It was "disorderly desire" or concupiscence, otherwise known as out of control lusting, and the thing was the Unmoved Mover had given specific instructions to observe the rules for living in Eden. Certainly Eve was very much at fault, but Adam should have known better than to give in to a disorderly desire. And worse, we're talking the Holy Trinity here, it was almost as though one leg of the milking stool had failed to love God with all his heart, soul and mind. Hugely disappointing for all involved. And we could go on to talk about success stories like the the ten year struggle the desert hermit Saint Anthony of Egypt had with perversions, sexual longings, female demons, but some of those accounts might threaten our own immortal souls.
Instead we should broach the subject of how John Calvin, who died when he was 54 in 1564, managed concupiscence. And here you can get the feeling that Calvin was dutiful son of a respectable middle class family who was inches away from being a 16th Century beatnik, waiting to be called to useful service. His inward looking moments are really all about him and how he shouldn't allow his own access to the afterlife interfere too much with his intellectual life. His early years were spent in France in a flux of ideas that included a Catholic establishment bothered by waves from the Protestant reformation which washed new exciting ideas ashore, some more heretical than others. Calvin's father had initially wanted him to be a priest, but was persuaded that if he became a lawyer he'd earn more money, and here too, in the world of lawyers there were exciting moves being made one of which was referred to as "humanism" which put the onus on the classics as a source of legal precedents. Inevitably young Calvin chose a wrong side, he'd supported the opinions of a man who was burned at the stake, and he had to go into hiding.
Calvinism was a contribution to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century. It was all over the place, disputes, heresies, power struggles but as the world entered the 17th Century the Protestant movements had settled into the academically rather dull business of raising money and ministering to the flock. And here, I'm afraid to say we have to talk about the "Five Points of Calvinism" so that we might get a sense of what Max Weber called the Iron Cage into which the Calvinist Protestant Ethic herded much of Western Society, including most of North America.
Point One for Calvin was : Total Depravity and Utterly Perverse. We are all completely hopeless when it comes to sin, we were born concupiscent, disorderly lusting, disorderly desiring, our absolute sinfulness didn't go away and never would. The next three points are convoluted attempts to explain the extent to which we could do anything about our depravity. The answer was was not much. You couldn't just ask Calvin, or the Holy Spirit or the Father for forgiveness. It was all somewhat predestined, you didn't have a lot to do with your fate, effort grades were recommended but fundamentally it was down to how the other two legs of the the milking stool were feeling about how you were representing yourself in your contribution to The Trinity. Frankly if you weren't the right sort then bye-bye-birdie. Part Five was about the Perseverance of Saints and how they couldn't really help but be Saints and sit up there with the Father himself, so your chances of achieving such an election were beyond remote.
And Yes! The Five Points of Calvin did very little to bring home a sense of well-being unless you were actively working on your appearance as a devoted member of the congregation. You couldn't spend your incomings on dance clubs, fancy shoes, or anything that suggested you were being disorderly in your desires, and god forbid you pine a little for your neighbor's ox. No, you put all those endless hours into maintaining the appearance of a dour, unhappy, hard working citizen who saved his resources in a sensible, possibly interest earning place for a rainy day in the vague hope that one day you'd know happiness
Max Weber had a mental breakdown in the 1880's, he organized hospitals in the First World War, he supported democratization of Germany, he died in Munich of Influenza in 1920 when he was 56 years old. His sociology argued for a rational interpretation of human behavior and his analysis of the effects Calvin's thinking, particularly Calvin's Five Points, had on the rapid progress of Capitalism via the Industrial Revolution. He wrote a book called "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism."
The central argument in this book was that the general anxiety produced by the Protestant reformations with their assertions that "There is not hope in us" had robbed people of any reasonable chance of forgiveness. As result the Calvinist motivation to be good had turned secular and an upright citizen, to become a mover and shaker in the world, henceforward had to judge his or her own worth and future security by their worldly success.
