Comment: “Sin, therefore is the mother of servitude, and first cause of men’s subjection to men.” (St. Augustjne) (1997)
The sentence is an older English rendering of prima ergo servitutis causa peccatum est from St. Augustine of Hippo‘s City of God (De Civitate Dei, 413–426), Book XIX, chapter 15. Written after the Visigoth Alaric I sacked Rome in 410, it denies that man’s domination of man is natural. Slavery and coercive rule are penal consequences of the Fall and at the same time its remedy. The thesis is radical about equality at creation and conservative about the present.
The Argument in XIX.15
- Natural order. God made rational man master of the irrational creation, not man over man, but man over the beasts. So the righteous men of early times were shepherds of cattle rather than kings of men.
- Sin’s entry. The word “slave” first appears in Scripture when Noah curses the sin of his son. The Latin servus was derived from servare, war captives spared death. Servitude is introduced by sin and not by nature, and exists only by the judgment of God.
- Inner freedom. Whoever sins is the servant of sin, so a wicked master is more enslaved than a faithful slave. It is a happier thing to be the slave of a man than of a lust, above all the lust for domination (libido dominandi).
- Counsel of obedience. Slaves should serve in faithful love, not crafty fear.
From Slavery to the State
Two loves make two cities (XIV.28): love of self, which produces the earthly city, and love of God, which produces the heavenly one. Fallen men need coercion to secure earthly peace, which Augustine defines as the tranquillity of order (XIX.13). The state is a remedial institution, a check on sin, not a school of virtue. Without justice, kingdoms are only great robberies (IV.4).
The Case For It
- Against Aristotle’s natural slavery. Aristotle’s Politics I held some men slaves by nature. Augustine insists on equality at creation, following the Stoics.
- Political realism. Reinhold Niebuhr and Herbert A. Deane (The Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine, 1963) valued his refusal to sacralise power. Pride is permanent, so political utopias are dangerous.
Critique
- Sanctified subordination. Calling servitude God’s judgment asks the slave to accept rather than resist. He never urged abolition.
- Thomist correction. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I, q. 96, a. 4) kept servile subjection as a result of sin. Political direction of free people to the common good, he held, would have existed even in innocence, because man is by nature social and political.
- Modern relocation. Jean-Jacques Rousseau traced chains to property and inequality, and Karl Marx to class. Servitude is social, hence abolishable.
- Indian echo. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (Annihilation of Caste, 1936) attacked a similar theology, in which karma and scripture justified hereditary subjection. The Constitution treats servitude as a social wrong: Article 17 abolishes untouchability, Article 23 prohibits forced labour and begar, backed by the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976.
Conclusion
Augustine rightly saw domination as unnatural and power as permanently tempted by pride. He wrongly turned that insight into a theology of patience. The modern answer keeps his diagnosis and rejects his remedy: subjection has human causes and therefore human, constitutional cures.