augustines teachings

• Augustine wanted to understand human nature to further understand our relationship with God and his purpose for human life
• Thomas Hobbes claimed that in the natural state humans are selfish and brutish
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau claimed that in their natural state humans are essentially good, generous creatures but different due to situation, 'man is born free and everywhere he is in chains'
• Foucault claimed that human nature is taught to us, we are socialised and educated to behave in a particular way
• Marx claimed that there is no such thing as human nature, humans have to work and create to guarantee their survival, otherwise they are just a product of their environment (product of capitalism)
• Primo Levi said 'there is Auschwitz, therefore there is no God'
• Manichaeism


  early sect of christianity : believe God is not omnipotent but that the world is a battlefield between light and dark, the human soul is under the influence of both forces of light and dark (God and satan) and advocated extreme abstinence from all enjoyments of evil such as riches, lust, wine and luxuries.
• platonists


  believed the form go good was God (the one), soul and body out to work in harmony but in practice the soul cannot control the body and this caused unhappiness. truth, wisdom and happiness can only be achieved once the soul is operated from all material influences thought contemplation and staging of the one. christ did not die for our sins but as an example of an enlightened being who had pure knowledge of the one.
• the fall

  genesis : story of creation (Adam and Eve)
• creatio ex nihilo


  creation from nothing
• cupiditas


  self love (love that existed before the fall which after the fall became selfish love)