The City of God I,9: Why Bad Things Happen to Good People

So, I am reading Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans. Since I kind of want to do political theology based on the early Church, it is more or less mandatory reading, isn't it? I'll be posting down the things that strike me as interesting, mostly for future reference. I have only read parts of it before, even though Augustine was a kind of first love to me as a undergraduate.

Augustine's argument here is simply that everybody do commit some sins, so everybody deserves the bad things that happen to them. He qualifies this a bit later on, but what strikes me about this is how very "western" this kind of thinking in, perhaps even Augustinian. Augustine refers to the difference between laymen and ascetics. Even those that have chosen "a higher order of life" do commit the sin of not rebuking other peoples crimes.

This, I would argue, is an idea that is not very likely to show up in the eastern fathers. First of all, they would not actually refer to sin to answer the question, they would say that God lets bad things happen to people in order to make it possible for them to improve their way of life. "Without temptations, no one could ever be saved". (Isaac of Nineveh)

Secondly, at least among eastern ascetics, to argue that people should pay more attentions to other people's sins would be very unusual. In fact, I think that would be considered a very grave temptation!

Fighting Demons

Having addressed sin and original sin, I now move on to much less solid ground. While sin in its different forms is something most theologians have some thoughts about, the demons is much more elusive. It seems that there have always been people who believe that demons are some evil monsters that have a personal will and intelligence. It is not difficult to find such people today. Interestingly enough these are not the ones that really use this symbol in their understanding of the world. This is most obvious when studying the ascetic movement within Christianity during the fourth to sixth centuries.

The most well-known text from this period is probably the esteemed bishop Athanasios biography of Antony the Great. In this we see Antony do battle with myriads of demons. They have bodies (although different from ours) and they talk, fly and attack. Antony fights them by beating them at games of logic and with great courage.

However, when we turn to the letters of Antony, where we (probably) hear Antony himself (see Rubenson’s great study on these letters), a very different picture emerges. There is still a lot of talk about demons, but the demons that Antony teaches about are not flying monsters. Instead he uses the word demon almost interchangeably with the word passion. There is a demon/passion of pride, fornication, slander and so on. In other words, for Antony demons represent forces that tempt the individual to give up his quest for communion with God. Another genius ascetic, Evagrios of Pontos, talks of demons in much the same way.

Demons, then, have a similar role in Christian theology as original sin: both describe the forces outside the individual that have an impact on the individuals freedom and identity. The difference is in the way one uses these symbols. While original sin is a description of a situation one cannot do much about, demons are there to be fought!

When reading the ascetics discussions on the war against the demons a pattern emerges. The various demons usually have a common goal. Not, as one could suspect, to drive the ascetic to sin, but what they are attacking is the ascetics faith in the self-understanding as an ascetic. The demons all try to make the ascetic give up an return to society.

While I am slightly optimistic about the possibility to use the symbol original sin in a constructive way today, it is probably impossible to use the symbol demons with a wider audience. It is just to difficult to get images from The Exorcist and similar popular notions out of people’s heads! It is a real pity, because I think this kind of language is really useful.

Who haven’t felt that we are up against some inhuman forces when we try to address how the media works, how large corporations function, how university administration… You know what I mean. There is also the notion that demons possess people and make them do things they would not do otherwise. This is exactly what happens when normal human beings make choices to run down profit-making factories and move the production to third world sweat shops, because “the market demands it”. There are dark forces at work.

So, how do you fight demons? Well, the key is truth. It will, as you know, set us free. The thing demons do is they interfere with our senses (this is why the ancients always pointed out the danger of believing the senses). They make us believe that, for example, the global system called “the market” is something that exists by itself and that its rules are somehow “natural” and not made up by people. To fight such demons we must look deeper into the structures of reality. Only this way can we expose them for the liars they are.

The ascetic fathers also recommended asceticism as preparation for the battle. Now, asceticism is about putting distance between oneself and the things that affect us, to help us see clearer. It is about stepping back and looking at the bigger picture.

But in order to fight the demons of our time, we need ascetic practices suitable for our time.