February (Web-only) 2003

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Blessed Are the Cynical: How Original Sin Can Make America A Better Place
By Mark Ellingsen
Brazos Press, 208 pages, $23.99

America has lost its sense of sin, says Lutheran theologian Mark Ellingsen. Augustine of Hippo can help us recover it.

According to Ellingsen, who teaches at Atlanta's Interdenominational Theological Center, America's Founding Fathers consciously held in tension two opposing conceptual frameworks: first, an optimism about the possibility of the virtuous responsible citizen (derived from John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers), and second, a pessimism about human nature (drawn from the Bible and Augustine). In Blessed Are the Cynical, Ellingsen shows that biblical thinkers like James Madison as well as Enlightenment thinkers like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson held to this paradox.

Unfortunately, we've lost the Augustinian half of the paradox: the "cynical" understanding that human beings will always act out of self-interest, even when their actions appear altruistic. And as a result, we fail to be suspicious of our motives and those of others. And by failing in this "biblical cynicism," we make ourselves and others vulnerable to manipulation and velvet-gloved tyranny.

As a Lutheran, Ellingsen turns naturally to the great fourth-century African thinker Augustine for insights. In response to the theological emergency created by the British monk Pelagius, Augustine synthesized the biblical and early church teaching on our sinful human nature. "Augustine's primary agenda," Ellingsen writes, "was not to lament the power of sin but to assert the primacy of God's action and forgiving love, to confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is humanity's only hope."

Neither Ellingsen nor Augustine thinks that we ...