 Welcome to The Spiritual Masters, a podcast from Tan Books and Tan Direction in which we look at the greatest and holiest writers from Catholic history. Join us as we explore the life and times in which they lived, an overview and study of their greatest works, and how we as Catholics can look to these masters as models for our own holiness on our journey to heaven. Okay, welcome back everybody and thank you Dr. Paul Thigpen for returning in our series, ongoing series of The Spiritual Masters and focusing on St. Augustine of Hippo. And I forgot our last episode to begin with a prayer, shame on me, but let's begin with a very short prayer that you could lead us to seek St. Augustine's intercession so that we can better understand the heresies that he fought and so that we can live a holy life like he did. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. St. Augustine, thank you for the great gifts you've given us. Thank you for your witness, for your model of holiness, for your insights. And that way I ask you to ask the Father on our behalf and with us to grant us those insights as a great depth and to transform our lives by what we learn. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Paul, I think it was Hilaer Bellach who had a book called Something About Survivals and New Arrivals, and I think that was the title of it. But his point was that the same old heresies keep raising their ugly head. They just keep coming back and certain great saints have to battle, you know, bat them down. And so Augustine, boy, you know, after I read this massive biography on him that you recommended, I felt sorry for the guy. I mean, he was, he just wanted to be a good pastor to his flock and he wanted to write good sermons. But the heretics wouldn't leave him alone. They would not leave this guy alone. So in this episode, we're going to focus on the three main heresies that occupied a lot of his life. And we're just going to try to give our listeners a sense of what these things were. So the first is Manichaeism. The second is Donatism, which I actually enjoy talking about more than the others. And Pelagianism is the third. So, but first, Paul, you're a doctorate in theology. You've written dozens of books. You know, what is a heresy? Because, you know, I'm a creative thinker and my mind can do speculative theology and we can wander around and conversations. Two guys like you and me sitting around talking over dinner. We can conjure up all kinds of things. How do you know when you, when you become a heretic and say, oops, went too far? So what's, what's heresy? Well, it's interesting. I think someone once defined heresy as a piece of the truth that parades as if it's the whole truth. And I think that, you know, there's some insight in that. It's certainly not a formal definition. Yeah, I've heard every heresy has a grain of truth. But this is, but the assumption is kind of what happens is often is you, there's some truth in the Christian faith and then someone locks onto it and runs with it far, you know, far too far without consideration for the rest of the faith. And that's easy enough to do with the scripture in particular. If you focus on certain scriptures and you don't, the church tells us that we have to read them in light of other passages that are related, that you have to read them in context. And so what I would say, you know, you have material heresy and formal heresy, material heresy is where you are believing something that is contrary to the faith as it's been given to us from Christ, the apostles, and that the church has made clear. So it's the matter of heresy, but we may not even realize. So I remember, you know, someone talking to me asked, what do you think the Trinity is? And they said, I think it's kind of like, well, God showing three faces and, you know, he's only, it's just one God, but just like I'm a mother and I'm also a daughter and I'm also a sister. And I would just say, oh, no, that's the motorless heresy. She was, at that point, she was a material heretic. She didn't know who she was. Formal heresy, formal heretic is someone who presents an idea. And then the church and then the church responds and says, no, that's not according to the faith that we have received from the apostles. And you persist in it. Yeah. So now you're stubborn. Now it's intentional. I mean, I'm sure I've speculated and said things the wrong way and thought something the wrong way. I mean, if you're spending a lot of time in theological or philosophical circles, how can you not? But but the, you know, I love books. I think you have put this in some of your books and I've put it in some of mine. It's like, there's a statement. If I say anything in this work, that is contrary to Holy Mother Church, then I retract it and I'll obey her 100%. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, there have been. I think you've written that. Sure. I'm trying to remember which book it was, but the most reasonable. Okay, so that's the spirit of, you know, someone who's trying to be a good son or daughter of the church and these the formal heretics are saying they're the ones that they get called on it and they say, Nope, I'm the authority here, not the church. So that's the, so that's a great distinction material versus formal heretics. And sometimes it takes time for the church to respond. So the early centuries of the church, we knew from scripture and the apostolic tradition that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were somehow all God, but are they just three names, you know, three faces for the same? Are they three distinct gods? Or are they like that? It took the church into the Council of Nicaea 325 to actually kind of lay all that out. And then you get questions about the nature of Christ. And this is important, you know, in some of the heresies we're talking about that. How do you, if he's God and he's man, how do you get those two together? And people were throwing out different ideas. But each one of the church would have to kind of come back and say, you know, nice drive, but no gold, you know, don't get a cigar with that one. And then with the council finally to define what it means that Christ had was two natures in one person. And so you get people like Origen, who's very speculative, it's a consensory theologian. He's not St. Origen because eventually his speculation speculations went so far into things like reincarnation and stuff that the church had to later condemn. But he was a, he was a subtle church. He loved the church. And if in his own day, the church had said this, you're going too far with this, that I'm sure he would have said that I can't. Yeah, he would have asked kind of drives me nuts. Sometimes frankly, Paul, because, you know, I sometimes I feel like a guy like that's robbed of canonization, those early guys. I mean, what do you expect? They had a little bit of philosophy. They had fragments of scripture at their disposal, and then they're trying to shape like all notions of truth. I mean, of course, they're going to run afoul. I mean, if I was living back there, I might have believed in reincarnation. Who knows? I mean, he's just thinking he had no guidance. I mean, it was remarkable how much he shaped up, you know, his own thoughts without guidance. And I say that so that not because I want to, you know, be real sympathetic to the heretics, but at least some sympathy that there were some folks trying to solve some of the same theological issues that Augustine was. Yeah, but origin never would have been, I don't think, would have been like one of those formal heretics. Oh, no, that's what I'm saying. Yes, what you're saying. Yeah. But some of these guys did, you know, persist. Oh, the ones we're going to talk about. Yeah. Yeah, they were the real deal, you know. So the first one is Manichaeism. Can we kind of jump into that and talk to us about Manichaeism and kind of how it's a new version of narcissism, but walk us through that because anyone who knows about Augustine at all knows that he was a Maniche. He talks about it extensively in the Confessions. So where does this come from? What's the deal with Manichaeism? What was the attraction? What was the allure? And what specifically was the heretical, you know, point about it? To sum up is hard. He had a very money was the name of the man who founded it. He was in the third century, so century before he was an Iranian. Well, he thought he was born in Babylon. I don't know. I saw somewhere that he was Iranian, but I don't know. It was part of the purge. The purge. Like a prison influencer. But anyway, meaning I just meant he. Yeah, the point is, he's not from Italy. Yeah, right. He was, you know, more East. And again, so early, you're talking about just a couple hundred years after the life of our Lord, that lots of ideas were still kind of bubbling up and coming in into Christian circles. So he was part, apparently, of a somewhat Christian group, like a Jewish Christian group, that at that point was probably already varying off from the apostolic tradition. But he actually saw himself as a prophet that God had spoken to him and chosen him to do these things. So that's, you know, problem number one, that kind of self-appointed prophet deluded. That tends to happen. You get guys like Joseph Smith or all of a sudden when, you know, the angel Gabriel or Muhammad, you end up with these guys who start getting these extensive prophecies. It's usually a good indication there might be a problem. That's right. I've never gotten a burning bush. Have you? I don't know. I can tell you a good story sometimes. So with Bonnie, he begins just launching out into this elaborate mythology. And he's, he would be grouped in the larger category called narcissism from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. And that was kind of like the New Age movement today, which itself is gnostic really, that had so many branches and varieties that it's really hard to peg the whole thing. But the themes in that were that salvation, happiness comes through knowledge. And so more than moral conversion, just kind of knowledge. If you know the right things, you can be safe by that. And how's that New Agey today? Because that's a fascinating point. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you have, if you know the right things to do with crystals, if you know the right charms or spells, or if you just know what is really going on with Atlanta, is it just like Wicca or is that different? I'd say Wicca is different in certain ways, especially if it's Wiccans who believe that there is a Satan that they're dealing with. But, but just the general thing, I mean, you even get versions of the Christian sciences version of it, the kind of of Gnosticism anyway has Gnostic roots, where it's knowledge that saves you. The Scientology of that kind of group? It isn't a way. If you know these certain things, you have the emeters to kind of figure, tell you certain, to get certain readings. But anyway, the point is just that the Gnostic movement early on had an independence, an existence independent of Christianity. It, the Gnostics tended to, first of all, they drew a lot from Eastern religion. Often they were kind of pantheists. There's only one mind, kind of like when Hinduism, the one Whirlsoul or something, they would have different names for it. In fact, they would adopt the names of the religion that they were infiltrating. But that it was, it was dualist in several ways. First, that, that matter and spirit were so different. And that matter itself is inherently evil. That was usually part of it. So this world we're in, even our bodies, it's all evil and only pure spirit is good. So with some of the Gnostics, you can kind of see a little bit of point there. I mean, our bodies get us in trouble. So yeah, yeah, but they take it too far. So you get some kind, some of the Gnostics ended up being, as I said, more like pantheists, the Whirlsoul, the one, the one they usually call that you get that same thing in the dynasty. And that we are trapped here that we're actually little pieces of that one mind, that one soul broken off, trapped and imprisoned in the world of matter. And we salvation for us is by getting the right knowledge of who we really are, we'll be able to escape all this and get back to the one merge into it, kind of like drops of water in the ocean. That's those are the over overlying themes and Gnosticism and they would infiltrate a Christian community. They would attend the meetings. They learned the scriptures. And then especially they kind of scout out the ones who might be more vulnerable to being convinced otherwise. And they pull them aside and say, you know, this stuff is good, but there's actually a secret tradition, a cult secret tradition of what St. Paul really meant in these passages. And if you come with me, we'll teach you that is something most these guys don't even know. So it appealed to your pride. It would appeal to your curiosity. They did the same thing to Judaism. They were there were Jewish groups that they would infiltrate. And there's a whole Gnostic tradition within Judaism. So it's the Manichees were a little different in that money ended up teaching that there were actually two gods. So his dualism also had to do with God. You call it dualistic cosmology, right? Yeah, yeah. And so not just God, but but yeah. So you've got the the God of evil pure evil and the God of good. And there's a place at which they kind of touch each other, they're infinite, the other directions, but they butt up against each other. And there's conflict between them. And mythology got really, really complicated that that there was some some part of these these original forces then led to Adam and Eve being created, but they were really created evil. And anyway, so what it got down to was that you've got a principle of evil, basically a God principle of good. And we're trapped in the middle. And we have got to somehow get out of the evil, which is material world and get back to the spiritual world. Yeah. And but they would use Christian terms and Christian imagery and stuff, but put to teach things that were totally contrary to the faith and strong and power in really extreme ways. What do you think Augustine found attraction about this? Because he became a man of key of something like teenagers or somewhere in there. It goes back to we said in earlier episodes here that he his lifelong struggle was to understand why evil, why is evil in the world and where does it come from? And the man keys promise that they would give you basically a simple rational answer to that. And then you could point to it and say, that's that's where he comes from. So I mean, but if the body's evil, then why did Augustine find himself happily with a concubine as a man of key? I mean, wouldn't that kind of inconsistent? Or did they allow that? Well, what you get with it's one of the ironies of of nasty attitudes is that if the body is evil and doesn't count for anything only the spirit does, you can take that two directions. One is, then do as little with the body, don't have sex, don't have marriage, can't eat meat, any of those things because you're just kind of feeding the material part of the evil part. The other is it's all indifferent. It doesn't it's it's not going to last. It's not your ultimate goal or reality. So you can do whatever you want to convenient. Exactly. Exactly. So just to say then this was just one version of the nasty. Yeah, belief. But it is, I like to call nostrils and the zombie heresy. Because again and again, just when it looks like it's finally died out, pops up again somewhere. So later on in Europe, in Eastern Europe, the Bogomiles, in Italy, the Cathari and France, the Abigensians. What were they? I know, I know that term, but I can't remember what Abigensian what will what were they and who battled them? And what was that whole deal about? Yeah, they were. It was a revival of last ago ideas. And I think you even say manatee ideas, ideas in France and beyond that some St. Thomas had to write. In fact, he was writing against the manatees a lot of times. Yeah, St. Thomas Aquinas, right? I guess the manatees is a great story. I just got to tell it real quick. So St. Thomas is sitting at a banquet with St. Louis, the king in France. He wanted them there and St. Thomas is you know, he definitely liked the social events like that. But while everybody else is just music and all the other stuff that go on in the eating, he's sitting there thinking about his next writing. He was going to write and it's about the manatees. It's bad like it. The Abigensians are the manatees. The yeah, but the yeah, Abigensians but also the Catharion Italy. But so he said they're writing and all caught up in that. And all of a sudden he's he gets this revelation and he bangs on the table and says and that, real well, that will finish the manatees and everything stops. All the people stop. You know, that's insulting to the king. You don't dare do that in the king's banquet. But King Louis being a saint himself, you know, he says, instead of getting upset, he says, go get that man a scribe, you know, scribe, come here and write down what you think. Right. And then continue the part. You know, after before he loses it. So anyway, but that just tells you that even even then later on with the Abigensians, they were thinking of those manatees. Oh, really? Okay. Wow. They really still thought of them as that. Wow. I'm fascinating. Yeah. Okay. Very good. So Augustine started the, you know, a defense on them and maybe Thomas Aquinas finished it. That's kind of cool, you know, but but they still keep coming up. I heard recently that there was Albingensians up in the mountains of North Carolina somewhere. I'm like, I don't even know what that means, but interesting nonetheless. And then again, really, a modern New Age, the theosophical movement in the 1800s, even Swedenborg, in some ways, that it's all it's all basically non-stated. Yeah. Christian science. So let's talk a little bit about the man when the manatees are, you know, their view of Christ. So the since materials bad, the virgin birth was obscene to them. Jesus was not fully man. His torture and death were they were for appearance only. They had no salvific value. I mean, so this is going, this is not just like a theology of God in heaven. It's like there's a good God and a bad God, like, you know, the force in Star Wars or something. There's like the good force and bad forces. They actually it really impacted people's view of the Blessed Mother of Jesus, the Incarnation. Sacraments. Sacraments. Yeah. So it's a really big thing. And but but but Augustine, you know, found his way out of that. And he became kind of, I guess, was that was manateeism eventually outlawed by the Roman Empire? Was that? Do I remember that right? It gets really complicated being outlawed. But then, you know, they fought back. It came back. So yeah. So but he kind of he kind of moved on from manateeism, like his middle by his middle ages, he he was kind of done. He didn't focus as much on manateeism. The whole his whole life, he had to move on to Donatism and Pallagianism, I think. And he but he did write about I think he probably felt a moral obligation. He had actually helped convert friends to manateeism when he was a manatee and others and had by his influence probably to bring a lot of people in. So he felt some obligation. I've got to now make it really clear not only that I'm not manatee, but this is why it's not true. Right. Right. And so he got, I think you mentioned before that he was accused later in life still of manateeism, because he was still so open to talking about the temptations that he still has as an older man and how he still struggles with evil. And you know, and so I think some people use that to say he still a manatee. Is that sound familiar? Yeah, yeah, that he would that original because his notion of original sin was somehow manatee. Okay, because that there's if there's some inherent evil and just being right. Yeah. Okay. So when we get to Pallagianism, it's probably the Pallagians that accused him of still being a manatee. Yes. Okay. So we'll get to there. But let's move on. That was the first major heresy of manateeism. Can we move on to donatism? So you want to start with that with a diacletian persecution is this is a great story to me, but let it rip. So that collision, the Emperor, his persecution of Christianity had been others. And during that time, one of the things that the the Cree's would against the church would say is that we want all your sacred books, because they wanted to collect them and burn them. And they knew how important they were to the Christians. And so they would go church to church and say to the the priest, turn over your books. And some of them did. And some of them didn't, probably most of them didn't. But you had some who did. I think probably their thinking was, okay, on a scale of things, I can get more copies of this. If I refuse to, they'll probably not just kill me, but burn the church down all those things. So I'll just give them that because we can get more. And I'm just speculating. Yeah. But for for some folks that that really was serious matter, the it's, they were called the traditories, those who turn over books from the word first handing over those who hand over the books. And let's just pause there. I love this when I learned that it comes from the word trade traditories or however you said it. And when you trade something, you're exchanging, you're bartering, you're handing over this for that. So that's where we get the word trade. And then and then also if you're a traitor, a traitor, like you've betrayed your country or whatever. And so these guys had betrayed the church, betrayed Christ, so they were traitors. Well even Jesus is called the traitor because he handed Jesus hand and Jesus because he handed Jesus over and in tradition, the word tradition, you hand down the truth. You know, so it's, I don't know, I just found this when I was reading about this that word trade all of a sudden it made sense. I didn't, I didn't have in my head, Paul, the connection between being a traitor and physically trading goods and tradition. But it's all the same root word. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. So there's some who did the persecutions finally over. And you have people who had some of the priests who had handed over the books, but also just late people who rather than being persecuted, apostasized with the burn incense, the emperor or whatever it might have been at that point. And persecution is over. And understandably, all these people come back to the door of the church and say, forgive us. And we ask God to forgive us. We just weren't strong enough where we did what we thought we could do. And when that happens, you have within the church there, understandably, some people who say, no, you can't, we can't let you back in. I mean, you had people who had lost their family members, you know, who would rather than being salutaries, had died, given up their lives. And now these people who got off easier and want to come back in the church and everything's, you know, it's understandable, you know, from an emotional level, how hard it would be. Yeah. And you had some who were taking the position that the church doesn't even have the authority to forgive somebody of apostasy. God can do it, but you can't let them back in the church. And and so it became such an important issue, especially when you had the Catholic church did say, yes, we can have them back. They won't have to be a season of tenants and things. But of course, we have the authority to forgive them and we'll bring them in. But when one of those priests was on to be a bishop, and then he is consecrating priests, the purists, so to speak, the ones who say there's no way, say those priests, there's not valid consecration, it's not a valid ordination. And that bishop, you know, what he's doing is invalid. And all the sacraments we're receiving are false, you know, they're invalid. And that's that's some serious stuff. Now the name, though, Donatus comes from a guy named Donatus. Donatism comes from Donatus. Yeah. And he was a, if I recall right, so you had one of these Tritotary bishops and a rival bishop kind of who came up. He was very quickly replaced by a guy named Donatus as a bishop. So there was a major schism, I guess, in this wherever this was. And so the people who were following the bishop Donatus really believed that the people following the other guy were experiencing invalid sacraments that I guess that Tritotary had, you know, excommunicated himself. His sacraments were probably invalid. Anybody he ordained was going to be an invalid, you know, priest. So. And it starts itself, the Gallic Church was stained, was not holy anymore. It had, you know, a mixture of evil and good. Well, that's where we get the name Donatism. It was because this group that was following Donatus. And so that hit Augustine pretty hard. You know, they had like a they had like this very extensive repentance process. And they just hated the notion that you could just go to confession and get it right back in. But it seems to me that this is a particularly interesting issue for us, Paul, because our age, just like every age, we have sinful priests, we have sinful bishops. Can you imagine if what the Donatus believed that like, essentially, I'm oversimplifying it, but that the validity of the sacraments was dependent upon the character of the priest. And with the implication. Yeah. Yeah. And so can you imagine if that was the case? You know, so thank God we can receive sacraments from sinful men. You know, well, when I was I think I've been mentioned in an earlier episode, it was when I was reading his treatise against the Donatus by Augustine that I'm reading and I'm saying, I'm still Protestant, I'm saying, yeah, you tell him, Augustine, that's right. That's right. That's that's true. That's really true. That's a sin against charity. It's a sin against unity. It's all those things. And I put the book down and said, oh, my Lord, I am a Donatus. I'm basically a Protestant who is part of a movement that separated from the Catholic Church because they thought the church was not pure. And and that that was a big, you know, important step in my conversion. That's that's a hard thing. I mean, one of the major arguments that people, you know, throw against the church is look at the crusades or look at, you know, look at the abuse cases or whatever thing they want to throw out. And it's just, you know, but for me being raised in this understanding, having a very sacramental life, my entire life, what's your point? I mean, there's sinful men in the church. What's your point? You know, I mean, so I have no problem accepting that Judas was a Bishop. He was just a bad one. You know, I mean, I don't have a problem accepting that. And so why should I have a problem accepting? I don't have a problem accepting that that Peter denied Christ three times. I don't have a problem accepting that. I mean, do I think his ordination of people after him was invalid? No. I mean, so, so this is a, this is a, for me, it's kind of a hard, a hard one to accept. It's easy for me to accept the hostility towards wimpy bishops that handed over stuff, wimpy priests that kind of sold out or whatever it may be. But I mean, I just fully expect the sacraments to be delivered to me from fallible men. And what's interesting is that Donisus got aggressive, they became violent. So what is this walking contradiction, you know? Well, you know, and that's an important thing to remember, just like in Ireland, people will say, oh, you know, the religious, the fighting, the violence between the Catholics and Protestants that used to be without realizing that there was a lot of political stuff in that. It wasn't just about religion. That's a good point. And that was a similar thing that you, in North Africa, you had people with resentment kind of towards the Romans and their stuff and tribal stuff going on. And so it became really a political movement. So they started, they tried to assassinate Augustine twice when he was on the road, twice he got away. And but they would, they would kill bishops, they would kill priests, they'd go after the Catholic churches, they'd beat up individual Catholics in a town. And I'm sure there was those reprisals, you know, by the Catholics against them. But it was because it had political tones to it as well. And who were the, who were the rival authorities in the town? You've got a Catholic bishop, you've got a Catholic bishop. So the Christian there? Oh, it's probably very political. Yeah, this is an interesting point we talk about the other day, but one of the things I learned in reading a substantial biography on him is a bishop of that time had certain civil authorities, because people would come to him and say, hey, I have a dispute with my brother or my dad's will or my dad's estate. You know, help me settle this dispute. And he would. So, you know, it's not like he was a government official, but the state let the church handle a lot of affairs. So if you got two bishops in town settling certain things that are not just theological issues, you can see it's going to become a political rivalry for sure. So the third, anything else on Dante's mind? Well, just so, of course, he had to write it right against him to try to correct that. But, but even if the heresy had been so blatant that way, he had to deal with it because it was violent because they were attacking his priests, his bishops, his people and tried to kill him. Wow. Wow. That's amazing. I mean, a dramatic lifestyle he lived, you know. So, all right, does that bring us to Pelagianism? The third one? I guess so. So Pelagius, a layman, 355 to 420. A layman, that's kind of an interesting thing. And he sounds like you think that all these things come from clerics, but this, this one didn't. But this one seems to me to have occupied more of his life than any of the others. And I think it's because it's a harder theological issue that he's grappling with. Grace and nature is just hard to deal with. I think this heresy probably shaped more of the Catholic doctrine that we get from Augustine than the others. Maybe I'm overstating that, but that's kind of my, so why don't you start just who is Pelagius and what's Pelagianism and we'll go from there? Well, he was British, had gone to Rome and was teaching in Rome. So that was his influence. Once he got going, which was much more prominent than it would have been if he'd just stayed in England somewhere. But his, his, his main departure from the tradition, and it was still being hammered out at this time in certain ways, but was basically the rejection of the notion of original sin. Yeah, I'm sympathetic to this. Yeah. Keep going. But, but that, and it was, that was an important doctrine of Augustine that he in many ways hammered out and responding to the Pelagian heresy that, so other than the past, I've called the Pelagian heresy the Nike heresy, just do it. That's good. And I always had these nicknames, zombie heresy, Nike heresy. Just do it. That from his point of view, God made us with sufficient grace and our nature, not to sin, not to sin at all, that it's inherent when the way he made us like that. And so it's possible for us to be perfect now. And it doesn't take some separate infusion of grace coming from Christ and maybe over-simplifying. But anyway, not some, it's, it's there already. And you know, the reason I say I'm sympathetic is because Pelagius and his followers, there's a number of his followers. There's a particular guy named Julian of Eclanium, but that's he's a jerk. But Pelagius was and his followers were saying, why would God have made us, you know, and punished us with the sin of our fathers? Like why, why would a little baby be cursed with the sin of Adam? So I mean, I just, you know, I think a normal person can look at that and say, that's a damn good question. You know, and so yeah, so just let's just talk about that. That's the issue is original sin. But it's not that I mean, I think he probably went really far into left field. But if you start with just the notion of how can I be blamed for someone I've never even met? How can I, how can you say I've sinned? And we teach there's original sin, there's personal sin. But how can he have made me so flawed when he's infinitely powerful? How can he make me so flawed that I'm doomed with without something else? I mean, explain that to us. Well, you know, for Augustine and for many of the ancients, there was a strong sense of solidarity in human nature. So that it was not such a wild notion to say that our first parents from whom we're all descended, lost their original righteousness. And even though we aren't personally to blame for it, what they lost, they could not pass on to their descendants. It was no longer theirs. I like to give the comparison if you got this this couple who wins all kinds of money in the lottery, you know, and then they go to Italy and they buy this estate and these vineyards and all these wonderful things. Oh, we can't wait until we pass this on to our kids. But then they keep gambling in before the children are born. They lose it all. And then they have to live in, you know, some cheap apartment somewhere. The kids get big enough to start asking, these pictures you got here of this, this beautiful estate, what happened to it? Well, we lost, you know, what? But that would have been ours. And that was, you know, that was for the notion that it's there is such a solidarity in the human race. All right, but let's take that to us. Take that analogy. It's one thing that the parents didn't pass on their mansion because they lost it. It's another thing if they passed on their debt to their children. So like the guy's just born, he's got $10 million in debt and he can't have any quality of life because of his parents debt. That'd be crazy. So what, you know, that's the original sense hard to grasp. Well, it's again, it's the sense of solidarity that you really, you are so that in Adam all fell that, that you are so much so deeply connected to Adam and to all other human beings. And you and I talked about this before that in a certain way, Pelagius could be seen as having an almost modern sense of individualism. Yes. So for him, no, it's not that solidarity. It's just me. And it's just my will. And I can be perfect if I just choose to. Yeah, that's where that's where, you know, that's, that's another layer of the problems with him is that is he just felt by pure will effort just because I have a certain amount of grace embedded in my nature, I can choose to be perfect. And I can and any, but again, the other side, a little sympathetic for me, Paul is when he says, Christ says, be perfect like your heavenly followers. And why, why would he tell us to do something that we can't do? Now, we can do it with his grace. You know, but I, you know, again, that's just, I see that as, yeah, you want me to be perfect. Well, you, then you need to have made me that way. Well, you know, the church, I think the church, at least now would, you know, would say, well, the rest of that is purgatory. Right. Yeah. And heaven to be face to face with him, we will have to be perfect. And so he's telling us, Christ is telling us, if you're not perfect by the time you die, then you still got some perfecting to do. Yeah. But I just anyway, I believe me, I understand the, especially teaching RCA, how difficult this is sometimes when we're talking about it. On the other hand, I think it might have been Chesterton, who once said something to the effect of, or maybe it's Lewis, I don't know, something effect of that original sin is the only dogma of the Catholic Church that is proven every morning in the news headlines. Yeah, and you do have to, you do have to, to, you know, say to yourself, OK, all right, Julian, all right, wages, if what you say is right, why is nobody there? Are you right? Right, exactly. If why is nobody there? Because all the evidence is the other way that there is something when we're born. Yeah. Even after we're baptized, the concupiscence, you know, but there's something for everybody when they're born that weighs us in that direction. All right, you want to know something awesome that Augustine said? I learned this the other day in preparation for that. This is cool. He said that the reason that Adam and Eve covered their loins as soon as they send they cover their loins is because that's how the sin was going to be passed down. It was like the loins were ashamed that they were ashamed of the loin. They knew that this was going to be passed down. And it's just modern psychiatrists had a great time with that. But Augustine is look at that. That gives a new little spin on why did they grab the leaves and start covering up? It's because it was through that physicality that their sin, their shame would be passed on the future generations. There's some insight into that. How am I related, you know, to my parents? Yes, I came out of my dad's loins. Yes, my mom. Yes. Yeah, right. It's powerful stuff anyway. But that's Augustine. Here he is. He just takes something from scripture that you and I have just read over a million times and heard a million times and he goes, boom, here you go. I just found out that's a great little thing. So he he did deal with Pelagianism for, you know, a long time and he had multiple people in Pelagianism. Attacking him. But I think the let's talk, let's kind of wrap us up by talking about the reason this was such an important heresy for him to overcome is because I think it gets to the heart of nature and grace and just everything, everything comes back to that. What did God make me to be and what did he not make me to be? And you know what? We're not going to be able to, you know, understand every, you know, we now talk about different types of baptism, baptism, water, blood, desire. You know, we've had flesh things out over time. We're not going to go into all that. But, you know, this we, we still have a lot of things that we don't have perfect answers to. And Augustine felt this, but he there were some basic things that he fleshed out in his battle against Pelagianism. What is our nature and the dependence we have on grace, the absolute dependence that we have on grace. Is that fair to say? I think so. I mean, that's that's why it's called Doctor of Grace. That became. Oh, it's this heresy probably. It's probably this very heresy. Yeah, because he ended up talking so much about it, how necessary it was that the grace doesn't isn't just kind of built into our nature that that it's comes to us through Christ in an additional way that we need because the nature that we received, even though God created it, comes to us from all in parents. Paul, I heard a. Story one time, there was a father who sent his son outside in the yard to do some work and he had he said, I want you, I want you, son, to move this this big rock, small boulder, big rock. I want you to move this thing. And and so the son tried and tried and used sticks and, you know, different kind of mechanisms to try to move this thing. And eventually he came back in and he said, I just I can't dad, I can't do it. I can't do it. And he said, have you tried everything? He's like, yeah, I've tried everything. And the father said, you have not tried everything. He's like, I don't know what else to do. I don't know what else he said, get back out there and you figure out other things to try to went back out there over and over and over again. The son was like in despair. I can't do this. I've tried everything. And the father finally said, you haven't asked me for help. Coming. Yes. You've tried everything except asking me for help. And that was the lesson. Is that a little way to explain nature and grace? God gave us this nature. We have original sin. But Augustine had this understanding that the loving father is not one who just created his children to be abandoned and get screwed up because of Adam's sin. But he created us so that we would then call upon him for help, which is which is what grace is. And that's yeah, it's great. And it's it teaches us humility to realize that it teaches us trust to realize that that we can't do it on our own. And so stop trying to do it all on our own trust in God's grace and then to ask him for it would be humble enough to say I can't do it. Augustine saw this through his life all the way till the end. He really focused on his own shortcomings. He never never claimed to reach that enlightened stage, you know, that the mannequins promised or that Pallagians at least implied that they could reach. He always felt that he was a sinner before God and he was never ashamed to admit it. And maybe that's a great role model for us, you know, in our lives. So well, those are the three great heresies. Any final thoughts on this this great champion of the church and the battles of that he fought to, you know, put more into concrete, you know, the great doctrines that we take for granted today. But any last thoughts before we wrap up how grateful I am that he took so seriously his his role as a bishop, his responsibility as a bishop to deal with these things publicly and clearly. I'd like to see more of that today. Me too. We'll leave it. We'll leave it at that. We'll call down the Holy Spirit to help her. Yes. Our bishops, you know, go to battle when they need to know how to unsheath their sword when they need to. All right, buddy, thanks so much. God bless you. You too. God bless. This has been an episode of The Spiritual Masters, a podcast brought to you by TAN. 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