Book Review: Stricken by sin, cured by Christ. Agency, necessity, and culpability in Augustinian theology

Couenhoven realises that Augustine is in dire need of better 'public relations' in these sensitive areas, for nowhere is he more pilloried than for his views on salvation, sin and all the attendant issues - peccatum originale (a term he himself coined), its transmission and Augustine's belief that human sexuality was fundamentally flawed (and thus the very likely fons et origo of our innately disordered concupiscence), as well as the consequent possibility of eternal separation from God, even for those not responsible for their unbaptised souls. [...]many readers will come to sympathise with Couenhoven's Augustine whose theory of original sin is not directly linked to his theories of predestination but instead is a way of making sense of a large part of Scripture, of embracing Christ as the Second Adam and necessary new arche of the human race, the Church's liturgical practice of baptising newborn children, as well as a very poignant explanation for the destructive habits that we experience both from within and from without ourselves. Even prior to our action, our motives, cares, and attitudes are shot through with evils that are properly attributed to us and for which we are accountable' (p. 210). [...]the Augustinian legacy is reworked to show how realities like sexism and other forms of hateful prejudices provide good test cases wherein we experience a lack of personal freedom but not necessarily responsibility.