The Perversion of Christianity

How St. Augustine Changed the Meaning of Forgiveness

Christianity & The Fall of Rome | Cycles of Death and Rebirth

Death and rebirth are central themes of Christianity, both in its mythology—the story of Jesus is about coming back from the dead—and in its actual history. Christianity resurrected some notable Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions, dusted them off, and transported them forward into the Middle Ages and beyond.

Three major examples—all readily allegorized by death and rebirth—are debt forgiveness, astronomical cycles, and ego death.

Christianity originated within the Roman Empire, which, according to its own historians, eventually collapsed because of debt. The Romans were pioneers in forgoing the stability afforded by systematic debt forgiveness. From Mesopotamia to Classical Greece, preceding societies used it to stave off economic collapses like the one that eventually befell Rome.

This Mesopotamian tradition arrived in the Roman Empire via Jewish scripture and, amazingly, the figure of Jesus. However, Rome's fate was sealed when the financial forgiveness he preached was conveniently reinterpreted to mean forgiveness for sexual immorality instead. That’s how the Fall of Rome shaped Christianity as we recognize it today.

Sandro Botticelli’s Portrait of St. Augustine (1480, Florence, Italy)

Forgiveness

The forgiveness Jesus preached was economic in nature. Specifically, Jesus called for the revival of an ancient tradition of debt forgiveness within the Roman Empire. This policy prescription would have been an antidote to the debt crises that, according to Rome’s own historians, consumed that civilization.

Since St. Augustine's time, though, this economic aspect of Christianity has been downplayed to protect the fortunes of the powerful. Rome’s failure to adopt any debt relief mechanism—as virtually all its precursor civilizations had—ultimately doomed it to its famous collapse.

Traces of the original, economic nature of Christianity can still be found in the Bible. There, Jesus bodily expels moneylenders from the Second Temple of Solomon. In the Gospel of John, he lashes them with a whip.

Though the word sin (or sometimes trespass) replaces the word debt in newer translations, the telltale King James version of the Bible, published in 1611, still renders the Lord’s Prayer as “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”.

Original Sin

Augustine was the bishop of the Roman city of Hippo Regius in North Africa during the late stages of the Roman Empire. In his youth, he was a rake who indulged in the pleasures of wine, women, and song. At the age of 31, he repented of this rowdy lifestyle and converted to Christianity.

Augustine felt substantial guilt over his years of debauchery. To him, the forgiveness commanded by Jesus was not forgiveness for falling into debt; it was forgiveness for moral failings—chiefly sexual ones. Guilt over sexual misdeeds is still a feature of Christianity today, thanks to Augustine.

Augustine introduced the concept of Original Sin into Christianity, in which we are all guilty of the crime against God committed by Adam and Eve. By popular acclaim, Augustine was made a saint in his own time. His interpretation of the forgiveness commanded by Jesus became the highly recognizable interpretation we are familiar with today.

Original Sin became a highly lucrative idea when, during the Medieval period, the Church began shamelessly charging its flock for sin remission. It meant that even the most blameless still had guilt to expiate; no one was above the need to pay the Church to shorten their sentence in purgatory. That’s why, during the High Middle Ages in 1298 AD, Pope Boniface VIII made St. Augustine a Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church.

Debt & Sin

Sin and debt are related words because they are related ideas. If someone falls into debt due to a lack of financial continence, we might say they should bear the guilt for their sin. Falling into sin and falling into debt can be precisely the same thing.

Accordingly, the etymologies of the words “sin” and “debt” are related in many Indo-European languages. German is a prime example. If you bumped into someone in Germany, you might say “entschuldigung” by way of an apology. It means “excuse me” and literally translates into English as something like “faultness”.

In German accounting, debt is also called “schuld”.

These examples reveal the etymological relationship between the connected notions of debt and guilt. They also illustrate the remarkable subtlety involved in St. Augustine’s reinterpretation of the idea of forgiving sins.

The Middle Ages

Predictably, St. Augustine’s version of Christianity was very popular with the Roman elite. The actual version required them to forgive debts owed to them. But forgiveness for moral lapses, on the other hand, left the fortunes of the rich completely intact. Because the powerful preferred it, St. Augustine’s version of Christianity prevailed during the Fall of Rome and was bequeathed to the Middle Ages.

Debt forgiveness diminishes the fortunes of the wealthy to make societies sustainable over the long haul. But St. Augustine’s reinterpretation of forgiveness crippled Christianity; he removed its ability to bring salvation to Rome. And so a debt apocalypse—not unlike the book of Revelation—snuffed out Roman society on the Italian Peninsula.

As more and more of Rome's wealth was hoarded by just a few of her elite families, the poor could no longer afford to have children. The population declined rapidly, and fiery debates about the permissibility of abortion preoccupied Roman politics. They used a plant called silphium for that purpose. Abortions became so popular that it was overharvested, and the species went extinct. Incandescent abortion debates are with us again today; they’re an eternal sign of a society in economic decline.

The population decline resulted in widespread labor shortages, so the Roman government filled critical economic roles by force. In the late 3rd century, the Reforms of Diocletian required children to take up their parents' trade, a classic feature of Medieval society. Furthermore, the slaves who worked the vast tracts of farmland that fed Rome became attached to the land as serfs. The wealthy families who owned that farmland fled the chaos of the cities and retreated into heavily fortified homes at the centers of their vast estates. That’s how the Roman debt apocalypse shaped the Medieval system of lords and serfs.

Death & Rebirth

To someone trapped in debt, forgiveness is a deliverance or a rebirth. This is especially true in societies where people were pledged as loan collateral. In the event of default, those people became slaves. To them, debt forgiveness meant literal freedom. And in societies where people are not considered property, forgiveness still means financial rebirth to those heavily indebted.

Christianity uses a story about a literal resurrection as an allegory for forgiveness, which was very much meant in the financial sense during the early days of that religion. However, in St. Augustine’s reinterpretation, forgiveness became about moral failings, not monetary debts. That’s the same fundamental idea denuded of its financial context. Death and rebirth still fit perfectly as an allegory.

Just as Christianity borrowed the concept of debt forgiveness from an older Jewish tradition, it also inherited the solar iconography of the numerous sun-worshipping cults of the Mediterranean basin. These faiths used the sun as an allegory for life and death. For example, the sun discs common to Egyptian iconography became the halos of Christian iconography. In the natural world, there is no more obvious allegory for resurrection than the sun, which sets every evening and rises every morning.

In the next section of Christianity & the Fall of Rome, we’ll explore agricultural and astronomical themes of death and rebirth as they existed in Antiquity before they were bundled into the Christianity we recognize today…

Further Materials

But Christianity’s character changed as it became Rome's state religion under Constantine. Instead of its earlier critique of economic greed as sinful, the Church accepted the Empire’s maldistribution of land and other wealth. The new official religion merely asked that the wealthy be charitable, and atone for personal sin by donating to the Church. Instead of the earlier meaning of the Lord’s Prayer as a call to forgive personal debts, the new sins calling for forgiveness were egotistical and, to Augustine, sexual drives especially. The financial dimension disappeared.
Michael Hudson, The Collapse of Antiquity, 2023, Page 30