“Lord, make me chaste — but not yet.” St. Augustine

One guy writes a few theological essays and 1,500 years later and we're still arguing about sex?

Original Sin, Augustine, and the Long Hangover

My friend Shellie Enteen recently sent me down a fascinating rabbit hole about the origins of the concept of original sin. And let me tell you… it’s the kind of rabbit hole that makes you want to pour a virtual espresso martini and start asking uncomfortable questions.

So here’s the spicy historical nugget.

The doctrine of original sin — the idea that humans are born already morally compromised because of Adam and Eve — wasn’t really formalized until the 400s by the theologian St. Augustine.

The same Augustine whose name eventually ended up attached to St. Augustine, Florida, a city built during one of those classic empire-on-the-move moments that I'm writing about right now. It's sexy, scandalous, and very human.

Augustine didn’t invent the story of the Fall. Genesis was already written. But he did something extremely powerful: he turned the Fall into a system.

A cosmic explanation for why humans are messy, desirous, unruly creatures who "need" discipline, hierarchy, and redemption.

Augustine, a former horn dog, I said what I said placed particular emphasis on sexual desire as evidence of humanity’s "fallen" state.

Which raises an awkward cocktail-party question:

If Western civilization spent 1,500 years being told that desire itself was a symptom of corruption (even though birds and bees do it...)

How much of that story is still running quietly in the background of our romantic lives today?

You notice:

Why passion gets tangled up with shame.Why control masquerades as virtue.Why women’s bodies have historically been treated like theological crime scenes.Why entire political movements seem oddly preoccupied with regulating intimacy.

I’m not saying Augustine caused all of this. Because it's been a largely global phenomenon.

But if you’re looking for one of the places where the West’s long, complicated relationship with desire, guilt, power, and morality really got its intellectual scaffolding…

Well, you might want to start in the 5th century.

Preferably with an espresso martini, a frustrated horn dog, and maybe a slightly wicked question:

How much of our modern drama — romantic, political, and otherwise — is still echoing that ancient argument about the Fall?

Because, you know, there's nothing much to see or talk about these days. ~

What do you think?

Love,

Lori Randall Stradtman