In book II Augustine recounts the episode of the “theft of pears”. He will return to this episode again (as will I). He stole some pears. He thought that he “got away with it”, and thus showed how “free” he was. But as he recounts, it was a “counterfeit liberty” (II.vi) like the pretended freedom of a runaway slave. At its heart, sin contains a counterfeit of goodness, and the temptation to it contains a lie. For now I want to look at this episode in light of the second temptation of Christ, according to Luke’s account:
Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours." Luke 5: 4-7
What is this temptation about? Yes, it is about the desire for power and glory, and the incorrect means of obtaining and using those things. But underneath, in the subtle (remember the garden of Eden) layers of this temptation, is a well disguised lie.
“I give it to anyone I please”. Now on the surface the reader is tempted to take these words at face value, as a true claim by Satan. Yet the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; and as Jesus stands before Pilate, he tells Pilate that he would have no authority over him, had it not been granted from above. Is not the devil lying in this temptation?
Which brings us back to Augustine’s theft. The temptation to sin always contains a lie – a promise of something which it does not really have the power to deliver. And so it was in the Garden of Eden – the first temptation began with a lie (you will not die, you will be like God!). Temptation and sin always contain a falsehood and a counterfeit. Just as sloth makes a pretense of peace and quiet, and vain ambition hides behind the name of ‘honour’ (II.vi), so all sin pretends to give us good things, but it is a lie.
The young Augustine believed that to commit a sin and escape unpunished would mean that he was free from God’s authority. After all, why obey a God who doesn’t have the power or will to stop a crime? And in this pretense to liberty and freedom we find many of our own sins. God does not see. God does not act. If I do this, then I will be free, I will be like God. The same lie found in the Garden is still with us.
ps For those who think St Augustine had no sense of humour, I refer you to II.viii, where he asks himself what he gained from this episode of the theft of pears:
Quem fructum habui miser aliquando in his, quae nunc recolens erubesco...
Get it? What did I, wretched man, have as the fruit of these things... Augustine is not above the occasional groaning pun.
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