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What does St. Augustine in his Confessions define as the sins of infancy and the age of sinning capability?
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St. Augustine in his Confessions views all humans, including infants, as sinners. He describes infant sins as temper tantrums and greed for breast milk, linking these behaviors to gluttony and lust. Augustine's perspective is rooted in the doctrine of original sin, suggesting all humans share in Adam's fallen soul, thus inheriting sinfulness from birth. This view attempts to reconcile the innocence of infants with the pervasive nature of sin.
According to St. Augustine, all sin, even infants. As Augustine states, "No one is free from sin in [God's] sight, not even an infant whose span of earthly life is but a single day" (Book I). Augustine goes on further to describe the types of sin that he sees infants as being guilty of. One of those sins can be defined as temper tantrums. As Augustine describes it, he frequently sees infants as being guilty of throwing tantrums when children want something but are denied the thing they want because it will harm them. In response to being denied, the child will try to "hurt many people who know better by hitting out at them as hard as his strength allows," and such a tantrum is of course an act of willful belligerence and disobedience, which are sinful. Augustine also suggests that another possible sin infants...
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commit is being greedy
for breast milk, which of course would imply both the sins of
gluttony and lust. Gluttony is the sin of being overly indulgent with
respect to eating, while lust is the sin of uncontrolled sexual desire, both of
which are two of the seven deadly sins.
But what's particularly interesting is the reason why Augustine feels he must
view even the infant as a sinner and that has to do with the understanding he
is trying to acquire of original sin. Original sin is the
doctrine that man's sin stems from the fall of man; in other words, all of
mankind sins because Adam sinned. However, this doctrine becomes
problematic when we consider the infant to be innocent,
especially the unborn baby. Therefore, Augustine attempts to
rectify the problem by arguing that "God created only one
soul," the soul of Adam, and, therefore, all other human souls are not just
genealogical branches of Adam's soul, but actually Adam's same,
identical soul ("Saint Augustine: 5. Philosophical Anthropology").
Hence, due to original sin, we are all born with Adam's fallen, sinful soul,
which is why it becomes necessary for Augustine to see even
infants as sinners.
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