Jesus, Antigone and Augustine - Essay Example

? Jesus, Antigone and Augustine Number Number Teacher’s Due Jesus, Antigone and Augustine History is replete with and accounts of tyrants and people who sought to exploit the masses of a nation. Present in equal if not more numbers are the people who sought to revolt against the authority of such people. They led mass revolts against the ways in which society was organized. They fought against the dogma of religion and the other forces in the society. There are many ways and methods of revolting and most of them can be seen to have been employed at some point of time or the other in history. This paper shall seek to look at the figures of Antigone, Jesus Christ and Augustine. These three figures fought against established forms of authority. What is significant about this collection of revolutionaries is that all three of them adopted methods that were not violent. All three of them were however, practitioners of very different methods and controversies remain as to the reasons as to why these three employed the methods of resistance that they employed. Antigone is a fictional character created by the great playwright Sophocles. His characterization of Antigone was meant to evoke strong reactions. On the other hand are Jesus and Augustine, both of whom are historical characters about whom most information is present, however, in the form of legends. Augustine is more of a historical character than Jesus, since information regarding him survives in the form of his writings. Jesus Christ was a person who lived during the times of the Roman Empire was a Jew who was considered to be the messiah of the Jews. The Jews in the Roman Empire lived under the control of the Roman Empire and were resentful of the control of whom they considered to be foreigners. Jesus, according to the Bible, was the Messiah (Mark 8: 27-32). He claimed to be the son of God and thus divine. He, according to the Bible, was the person who had taken on the form of man in order to wash off the sins of mankind and provide him with redemption. According to writers like John Milton, he was to be considered to have volunteered to save man from eternal perdition by laying down his own life voluntarily. By voluntarily undergoing a gruesome death at the cross, Jesus would act the role of the sacrificial lamb and thus free mankind from the original sin. Milton talks of the beginning of this story in his great work Paradise Lost (Milton). This account of the life of Jesus is however, not a strictly historical one. Historically, he is considered by many to have been a member of the Jewish community that was oppressed by the Roman Empire. He was a religious leader who sought to change the dynamics of power as they existed between the Roman officials and Empire and the Jews and the other original inhabitants of what is known today as Israel. Jesus’ contribution to the liberation of the people f Israel is considered to be seminal and this is considered by some to be the reason as to why he was deified by some. Antigone, on the other hand, is an almost completely fictional character. She is present in the work Antigone, by Sophocles. The importance of the character can be gauged from the fact that she is the titular character in the play. She also is the character who provides the play with its thematic thrust with an emphasis on the resistance to the established powers of the state. She is the daughter of Oedipus, who was once the king of Thebes and Jocasta, who was also the mother of Oedipus. The Oedipal tale is one of how man is unable to change his own fate. The tale of Antigone is however, that of one who makes an effort despite this knowledge, to change her fate. The very existence f Antigone is a challenge to the traditional social structures of her time, since she is the product of incest. Hers is a situation where her mother and her grandmother are the same person. This situation is according to conventional understandings of events, an unnatural one and Antigone is thus, a challenge to the very basis of the Greek civilization of her time. Antigone’s decision to give her brother Polyneices a burial according to the rites that were prescribed for people is an attempt to stamp the memory of her brother in the collective consciousness of the people. In the process, she goes against the decision and wishes of the new ruler of Thebes, Creon, despite the threat of the death penalty (Sophocles). Augustine, who lived during the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., was a religious reformer and sought to impose a certain kind of discipline in the religious order that he founded. He also sought to convert many people in the regions that he spent the majority of his life, the northern parts of Africa. Augustine had great faith in the ways of the Christian God and advocated a simple life which would be spent in service to God. He believed in the power of the Bible to provide people with the answers that they sought from life. The rules that he created for his religious order were different from those that had existed till then. He had to exercise a great deal f restraint for the erection of the order that he founded. He expected this restraint from other people as well (Mendelson). In the work, Saint Augustine Confessions, he talks of the restraint that people have to exercise so as to gain salvation. Augustine talks of the need to gather the fallen and the sinner and bring them back into the flock. Augustine believed that the repentance of such sinners was more of an occasion to rejoice than when people who were on the right path attain salvation. This may be a part of the explanation as to why he felt a great deal of missionary zeal (Augustine). This led him to believe in the importance of conversions, especially of people who had had no contact with Christianity. Power is thought of in modern societies as something that pervades every part of the society (Foucault). In the societies that the three people who are under discussion in this paper lived in, the structures of power was different. Power was vested in the hands of certain powerful persons. They were part of a ruling elite in most societies. The three persons that have been mentioned in this paper posed challenges to the structures of the societies that they lived in. for instance, Jesus was a revolutionary as far as his actions against the Roman Empire was concerned. His actions were aimed at bringing about a churning of the relations between the different communities in Israel at the point of time in history that he lived. The relations between the Romans and the other communities in Israel were strained during this period and the Romans had to resort to cruel punishments like the one that was meted out to Jesus. They also had to keep a tight check on the activities of the Jews and the other communities that constituted the indigenous people of Israel. They were aided in this by the attitudes that they found in the people of Israel. The different communities of Israel were divided and they took advantage of this. Jesus was one of the first people to realize this and his parables and his stories indicate the need for the unity of Israel. The fact that his disciples consisted of people of many classes and communities is also a proof of the fact that Jesus gave a lot of importance to the unity of the indigenous people of Israel. Jesus’ group of followers consisted f all kinds of people; they were mostly people who had been marginalized by the mainstream society (Atkinson). Following Jesus and his teachings gave all these people a platform to unite and thus, form radical kinships amongst themselves against the tyranny of the Roman Empire. Jesus’ teachings can thus be interpreted to be as political as they are religious and their meaning and power can be said to extend to the spheres of resistance and revolt (Gasper). This is unlike the conventional understanding of Jesus as a nonviolent and passive person. In professing his beliefs, Jesus was as fiery as any revolutionary that one can think of, a person who thought of the needs of the people as holy (Dr. Obery Hendricks Addresses The Politics of Jesus). Augustine, on the other hand, was a follower of Jesus and the Christian ideals that he preached. The importance of denying himself the pleasures of normal life was something the Augustine believed in. he thus, had to sacrifice a lot for the sake of propagating the faith that he believed in. for doing so, he had to practice self-abnegation. The strict rules that he laid down for the people of his order were opposed to the powers of the society that he lived in. Rome had not become a completely Christian state as of yet and persecution of the practitioners of the new faith was common. Such persecution, however, only led Augustine to renew his efforts in leading what he felt were sinners back to the flock (Augustine, 354-430). In his book Rule, he talks of the rules that were to be followed by the members of the monastic order that he had founded. This set of rules comprise strict orders to the people who choose to lead the flock of Christians and it is designed especially for the purpose of creating missionaries who are able to carry out the task of converting the people who Augustine considered to be heathens (Augustine). This was not an easy task and much had to be sacrificed. This was entirely against the norms of the society of the fourth and fifth centuries and Augustine’s missionary zeal was not appreciated during his lifetime. His work was thus, selfless and directed solely to the purpose of living a life that was dedicated to the Christian God. The importance of the contributions of Augustine can be assessed from the relevance that his work has in the philosophers who came later, like Rene Descartes. The different theories that were propagated by Augustine regarding the conduct of monks and missionaries came to be regarded as the basic structure of future monasteries. This was possible only through struggle and conflict between different worldviews that existed during the period of time when Augustine was alive. Since this was not a time when many monarchs patronized Christianity, it was a difficult proposition to become a practitioner of the religion, let alone try to propagate the religion. The story of Victorinus that Augustine describes in the book Saint Augustine Confessions is that of a person who inspired him to adopt Christianity (Augustine). The story reveals the struggle and marginalization that those people who followed Jesus had to face. The story of Antigone is that of a person who has to overcome a great many odds to make her own decisions. She has to face the patriarchal society of ancient Greece that does not allow her much freedom. She however, is able to break the rules that have been set for women and is able to defy the monarch f her country. The monarch of Thebes, Creon, issues an edict that Polyneices would not be given a funeral. This was a method of shaming a person who was considered to be a traitor. As mentioned earlier, the very existence of Antigone is a challenge to the structures of the family the way they existed in ancient Greece. The natural order of things is reversed in the sexual contact of Antigone’s parents, Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta. This unnatural state of affairs forebodes a change in the way in which the state is organized as well. The proof of the sexual relations between mother and son is the daughter, the offspring of the relationship. This has religious undertones as well. This is because of the ways in which religion, marriage and sex were interconnected. The action by which Antigone moves against the authority of the Theban state, she flouts all the rules that were set for women and the society. Her being a woman increases the extent of the revolt that she stages. The action is undertaken for the sake of her brother but this does not lessen the extent of her resistance to the authority of the monarch, since the punishment with which her actions are threatened is the loss of her life to the state (Sophocles). Antigone’s actions thus, are a repudiation of the patriarchal structures of the society and are a feminist statement in an ancient age, when even the word feminism had not been coined yet. The three people who have been discussed in this paper are remarkable in their own ways. They questioned the roles of men and women in the societies that they lived in and also spoke of the unity of indigenous peoples against foreign invasions and invaders. They also spoke of the importance of sacrifice in leading one’s life. While Antigone rebels against religious structures, Jesus and Augustine were busy establishing them. These actions of these people enabled a rethinking of the social structures f their times and also helped in bringing people who had been marginalized together. The revolutionary aspect of their actions may appear diminished to the modern reader; however, it is important to understand the nature of their actions when viewed from a historical point of view. Works Cited Atkinson, Arthur W. Jesus, the Revolutionary Teacher. http://www.theexaminer.org/volume7/number6/teacher.htm Accessed on 20th March, 2012 Augustine (354—430). IEP. http://www.iep.utm.edu/augustin/ Accessed on 19th March, 2012. Augustine. “Rule of St. Augustine”. Midwest Augustinians. http://www.midwestaugustinians.org/prayerrule.html Accessed on 19th March, 2012. Augustine. St. Augustine Confessions - Book Eight. http://www.ourladyswarriors.org/saints/augcon8.htm#chap1 Accessed on 19th March, 2012. “Dr. Obery Hendricks Addresses The Politics of Jesus”. Center for American Progress. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/04/jesus_event.html Accessed on 19th March, 2012. Foucault, Michel. Power, Vol 4. London: Penguin, 2004. Gasper, Phil. “Jesus the Revolutionary”. Socialistworker.org. http://socialistworker.org/2011/12/14/jesus-the-revolutionary Accessed on 20th March, 2012. Mendelson, Michael. “Saint Augustine”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/ Accessed on 20th March, 2012. Sophocles. The Theban Plays. London: Penguin, 1984. Read More