The only element that is in our power is our will or inner consent, for which we are therefore fully responsible. Thus, a person who has consented to adultery is guilty even if his attempt actually to commit it is unsuccessful, and a victim of rape who does not consent to the deed keeps her will free of sin even if she feels physical pleasure De civitate dei 1. Temptations of this kind are, in Augustine, not personal sins but due to original sin, and they haunt even the saints.
Our will must be freed by divine grace to resist them Contra Iulianum 6. In the s, opposing the dualistic fatalism of the Manicheans, he uses the cogito-like argument see 5. Harrison A contemporaneous definition of will as a movement of soul toward some object of desire emphasizes the absence of external constraint, and the ensuing definition of sin as an unjust volition see above seems to endorse the principle of alternative possibilities De duabus animabus 14— In De libero arbitrio , free will appears as the condition of possibility of moral goodness and hence as a great good itself; but as it is not an absolute good which is God alone but only an intermediate one, it is liable to misuse and, hence, also the source of moral evil De libero arbitrio 2.
With all this, Augustine is basically in harmony with the traditional view of early Christian theology and exegesis, which is still adopted in the s by Julian of Aeclanum when he blames Augustine for having fallen back into Manichean fatalism and quotes his early definitions against him Julian, Ad Florum , in Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum 1. Things change with Ad Simplicianum 1.
The optimistic-sounding claim in the first book of De libero arbitrio 1. But he never questions the principle that we have been created with the natural ability to freely and voluntarily choose the good, nor does he ever deny the applicability of the cogito argument to the will cf.
De civitate dei 5. What grace does is to restore our natural freedom; it does not compel us to act against our will.
What this means is best illustrated by the narrative of Confessiones 8 for particularly lucid interpretations, see Wetzel —; J. Though he identifies with the former, better will rather than with the latter that actually torments him, he is unable to opt for it because of his bad habits, which he once acquired voluntarily but which have by now transformed into a kind of addictive necessity ib.
Using medical metaphors reminiscent of Hellenistic moral philosophy, he argues that his will lacked the power of free choice because the disease of being divided between conflicting volitions had weakened it ib. Before, when he had just continued his habitual way of life, this had been a non-choice rather than a choice, even though, as Augustine insists, he had done so voluntarily. In substance, this remained his line of defense when, in the Pelagian controversy, he was confronted with the charge that his doctrine of grace abolished free will De spiritu et littera 52—60; cf.
De correptione et gratia 6. While the Pelagians thought that the principle of alternative possibilities was indispensable for human responsibility and divine justice, Augustine accepts that principle only for the first humans in paradise Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum 1. In a way, by choosing wrongly Adam and Eve have abandoned free will both for themselves and for all humankind. Original sin transformed our initial ability not to sin into an inability not to sin; grace can restore ability not to sin in this life and will transform it into inability to sin in the next De civitate dei The problem of the origin of evil unde malum , he claims, had haunted him from his youth Confessiones 7.
At first, he accepted the dualist solution of the Manicheans, which freed God from the responsibility for evil but compromised his omnipotence ib.
After having encountered the books of the Platonists, Augustine rejected the existence of an evil substance and endorsed the Neoplatonic view argued e. In his mature view, which was largely developed during his anti-Manichean polemics, everything that has being is good insofar as it has been created by God.
There are of course different degrees of goodness as well as of being Letter Creation and Time. A created being can be said to be evil if and only if it falls short of its natural goodness by being corrupted or vitiated; strictly speaking, only corruption itself is evil, whereas the nature or substance or essence for the equivalence of the terms see De moribus 2.
While this theory can explain physical evil relatively easily either as a necessary feature of hierarchically ordered corporeal reality De ordine 2. Augustine answers by equating moral evil with evil will and claims that the seemingly natural question of what causes evil will is unanswerable.
His most sustained argument to this effect is found in his explanation of the fall of the devil and the evil angels, a case that, being the very first occurrence of evil in the created world, allows him to analyze the problem in its most abstract terms De civitate dei The cause can neither be a substance which, qua substance, is good and unable to cause anything evil nor a will which would in turn have to be an evil will in need of explanation.
The fact that evil agents are created from nothing and hence are not, unlike God, intrinsically unable to sin is a necessary condition of evil but not a sufficient one after all the good angels successfully kept their good will. In this context Augustine, in an interesting thought experiment, imagines two persons of equal intellectual and emotional disposition of whom one gives in to a temptation while the other resists it; from this he concludes that the difference must be due to a free, spontaneous and irreducible choice of the will De civitate dei Here at least Augustine virtually posits the will as an independent mental faculty.
As he points out himself, his conviction that human beings in their present condition are unable to do or even to will the good by their own efforts is his most fundamental disagreement with ancient, especially Stoic, virtue ethics De civitate dei After and because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, we have lost our natural ability of self-determination, which can only be repaired and restored by the divine grace that has manifested itself in the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ and works inwardly to free our will from its enslavement to sin.
Augustine emphasizes the necessity of grace for both intellectual understanding and moral purification already in his earliest works cf. Soliloquia 1. This explanation is explicitly rejected in Ad Simplicianum 1. The guiding intention of Romans 9, Augustine now says, is to preclude vainglory and pride ib. Free will has nothing to do with the reception of that gift because nobody can will to receive a divine call to faith nor to respond positively to it so as to act accordingly and perform good works out of love Ad Simplicianum 1.
While gratuitous election is, apart from being consoling, comparatively easily squared with the axioms of divine benevolence, justice and omnipotence, its corollary, the equally gratuitous reprobation and damnation of Esau, is a serious philosophical problem ib. Romans The notion of original sin was not invented by Augustine but had a tradition in African Christianity, especially in Tertullian.
The view that original sin is a personally imputable guilt that justifies eternal damnation is, however, new with Ad Simplicianum and follows with logical necessity from the exegetical and philosophical claims made there about divine grace and election Flasch ; contrast De libero arbitrio 3. The theory of Ad Simplicianum is illustrated, with great philosophical acumen and psychological plausibility, in the Confessiones especially bk. After , pressed by his Pelagian opponents, Augustine paid increasing attention to the mechanics of the transmission of original sin.
The result was a quasi-biological theory that associated original sin closely with sexual concupiscence see 9. This knowledge is however hidden to human beings, to whom it will only be revealed at the end of times De correptione et gratia Until then, nobody, not even a baptized Christian, can be sure whether grace has given her true faith and a good will and, if so, whether she will persevere in it till the end of her life so as to be actually saved De correptione et gratia 10—25; cf.
While in Hellenism this had largely been a theoretical issue, it acquired practical relevance under the circumstances of monastic life: some North African monks objected to being rebuked for their misbehavior with the argument that they were not responsible for not yet enjoying the gift of divine grace De correptione et gratia 6.
Taking up ideas from De magistro and from Ad Simplicianum , Augustine replies that rebuke may work as an external admonition, even as a divine calling, that helps people turn to God inwardly and hence must not be withheld De correptione et gratia 7—9.
To the query that predestination undermines free will, Augustine gives his usual answer that our freedom of choice has been damaged by original sin and must be liberated by grace if we are to develop the good will necessary for virtue and happiness. Wetzel — ; some, especially later, texts do however present prevenient grace as converting the will with coercive force Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum 1. A problem related to predestination but not equivalent to it is divine foreknowledge Matthews 96—; Wetzel ; for general discussion, Zagzebski His solution is that while external actions may be determined, inner volitions are not.
These are certainly foreknown by God but exactly as what they are, i. De libero arbitrio 3. This argument is independent of the doctrine of grace and original sin; it applies not just to fallen humankind but also to Adam and Eve and even to the devil, whose transgression God had, of course, foreseen De civitate dei The criterion of membership in the city of God a metaphor Augustine takes from the Psalms, cf.
Psalm quoted, e. A person belongs to the city of God if and only if he directs his love towards God even at the expense of self-love, and he belongs to the earthly city or city of the devil if and only if he postpones love of God for self-love, proudly making himself his greatest good De civitate dei The main argument of the work is that true happiness, which is sought by every human being ib.
The first ten books deconstruct, in a manner reminiscent of traditional Christian apologetics, the alternative conceptions of happiness in the Roman political tradition which equates happiness with the prosperity of the Empire, thus falling prey to evil demons who posed as the defenders of Rome but in fact ruined it morally and politically and in Greek, especially Platonic, philosophy which, despite its insight into the true nature of God, failed to accept the mediation of Christ incarnate out of pride and turned to false mediators, i.
The history of the two cities begins with the creation of the world and the defection of the devil and the sin of Adam and Eve bks. Obviously, however, the heavenly and earthly cities must not be confounded with the worldly institutions of the church and the state. In history, each of these, and the Church in particular, is a mixed body in which members of the city of God and the earthly city coexist, their distinction being clear only to God, who will separate the two cities at the end of times ib.
While the city of God is a stranger or, at best, a resident alien peregrinus: ib. This dualistic account is however qualified when, in the part of the work that moves closest to social philosophy, Augustine analyzes the attitude a Christian ought to adopt to the earthly society she inevitably lives in during her existence in this world.
There are higher and lesser degrees of both individual and collective peace, e. The lower forms of peace are relative goods and, as such, legitimately pursued as long as they are not mistaken for the absolute good.
Political peace is thus morally neutral insofar as it is a goal common to Christians and non-Christians. Augustine criticizes Cicero because he included justice in his definition of the state Cicero, De re publica 1. The early Roman Empire, which strove for glory, was more tolerable than the Oriental empires that were driven by naked lust for power; the best imaginable goal pursued by an earthly society would be perfect earthly peace ib. But the doctrine of the two cities deliberately precludes any promotion of the emperor or the empire to a providential and quasi-sacred rank.
Not even Christians in power will be able to overcome the inherent wretchedness of fallen humanity De civitate dei Like the vast majority of ancient Christian theologians, Augustine has little or no interest in social reform. Slavery, meaning unnatural domination of humans over humans, is a characteristic stain of postlapsarian human life and, at the same time, an evil that is put to good effects when it secures social order ib.
War results from sin and is the privileged means of satisfying lust for power ib. Nevertheless, Augustine wrote a letter to refute the claim that Christianity advocated a politically impracticable pacifism Letter His Christian reinterpretation of the traditional Roman Just War Theory should be read in the framework of his general theory of virtue and peace Holmes To be truly just according to Augustinian standards, a war would have to be waged for the benefit of the adversary and without any vindictiveness, in short, out of love of neighbor, which, in a fallen world, seems utopian Letter Wars may however be relatively just if they are defensive and properly declared cf.
Cicero, De officiis 1. Outright misogyny is rare in Augustine, but he lived in a society and worked from a tradition—both Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian—that took the natural and social subordination of women to men largely for granted cf. Augustine interprets the Genesis tale of the creation of woman Genesis —22 to mean that, Eve having been created as a helper to Adam and for the sake of reproduction, she was subordinate to him already in paradise De Genesi ad litteram 6. This situation is exacerbated by the Fall; under the conditions of fallen humankind, marriage is, for the wives, a kind of slavery that they should accept with obedience and humility as Monnica did; cf.
Confessiones 9. Clark In his early anti-Manichean exegesis of Genesis, he allegorizes man as the rational and woman as the non-rational, appetitive parts of the soul De Genesi contra Manichaeos 2.
De vera religione 78; De Genesi ad litteram 8. By implication, woman is an image of God qua human being, but not qua woman. The practice enjoined by Paul is meant to signify this difference De trinitate This exegesis safeguards the godlikeness of woman against a widespread patristic consensus and, it appears, against Paul himself, but at the same time defends social inequality and even endows it with metaphysical and religious significance Stark a.
Clark : his mother, Monnica her name appears only in Confessiones 9. In the dialogues of Cassiciacum, Monnica represents a philosophical way of life based on the natural intuitions of reason and on an unshakable Christian faith together with a life according to the precepts of Christian morality De beata vita 10; De ordine 1. Augustine represents her influence on his religious life as pervasive from his earliest years onwards and even compares her to the Mother Church Confessiones 1.
She embodies ideal Christian love of the neighbor see 7. With this she however combines, especially in the earlier books, more mundane motives, e. Like the other human influences on Augustine reported in the Confessiones , she is used by God as an instrument of his grace in a way she neither foresees nor wills. True to the deliberately counter-intuitive and often provocative procedure of the Confessiones , he singles out an emotion that, then as now, most people would have easily understood but which he nevertheless interprets as a mark of his sinful state because it resulted from the loss of a female body he had, in a kind of mutual sexual exploitation, enjoyed for the sake of pleasure Confessiones 4.
For this disobedience they, and all humankind with them, were punished with the disobedience of their own selves, i. The inability of human beings to control their sexual desires and even their sexual organs witness the shameful experiences of involuntary male erection or of impotence: De civitate dei But he thought that Adam and Eve had been able to control their sexual organs voluntarily so as to limit their use to the natural purpose of procreation; in paradise, there had been sexuality but no concupiscence De civitate dei Original sin had destroyed this ideal state, and since then sexual concupiscence is an inevitable concomitant of procreation—an evil that may be put to good use in legitimate marriage, where the purpose of sexual intercourse is the procreation of children rather than bodily pleasure De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1.
In De Genesi ad litteram , in the Confessiones and, to a lesser extent, in De civitate dei Augustine presents his exegesis in a questioning manner and keeps the results open to revision. The reason is that, according to the hermeneutics developed especially in bk. Knuuttila —; Mayer —, each with references : God does not create in time but creates time together with changeable being while resting in timeless eternity himself Confessiones Creation occurs instantaneously; the seven days of creation are not to be taken literally but are a didactic means to make plain the intrinsic order of reality Confessiones Like the demiurge in the Timaeus , God creates out of goodness, i.
As the causality of the Trinity makes itself felt everywhere in creation, Augustine likes to describe created beings in their relation to the divine cause in a triadic manner, using, e. Changeable being is not generated from God which, according to the Nicene Creed, is true only of the Son but created out of nothing, a fact that partly accounts for its susceptibility for evil. Incorporeal and purely intellectual beings, i.
Corporeal being is created when the Forms or rational principles contained in God and contemplated by the angels are even further externalized so as to inform not only intelligible but also physical matter De Genesi ad litteram 2. Whereas his accounts outside the Confessiones center on cosmic or physical time, he here focuses on how we experience time from a first-person perspective and what it means for us and our relationship to ourselves and to God to exist temporally.
In this sense, the purpose of the book is ethical rather than cosmological. This is so because time is present to us in the form of our present memory of the past, our present attention to the present and our present expectation of the future ib. The phenomenal proof of this claim is the experience of measuring time by comparing remembered or expected portions of time to each other or of repeating a poem we know by heart, when, as we proceed, the words traverse our attention the present , passing from expectation the future to memory the past; ib.
We would thus be unable to relate past, present and future events, to remember the history of our own lives and even to be aware of our personal identity if our being in time was not divided into memory, attention and expectation and, at the same time, unified by the connectedness and the simultaneous presence of these.
Although he was soon accepted as a theological authority and consensus with him was regarded as a standard of orthodoxy throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, his views—or more precisely, the right way of interpreting them—continued to trigger controversies.
The philosophical discourse of early scholasticism 11 th —12 th centuries largely centered on Augustinian themes. With the growing influence of Aristotle from the thirteenth century onwards, Augustine came to be interpreted in Aristotelian terms that had largely been unknown to himself.
Medieval political Augustinianism projected the conflict of the Two Cities onto the Church and the State. Martin Luther — agrees with Augustine on the absolute gratuitousness of grace but does not follow the Augustinian and scholastic ideal of intellectus fidei and makes faith in the Gospel the decisive condition of salvation. But if he shall not will to sin, even this did God foreknow in Solomon and Martin, Angeles, Peter A. The HarperCollins Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: HarperPerennial, Augustine, City of God.
Boston: McGraw-Hill, , Solomon, Robert C. For more information see also the article by Leroy E. For a modern non-theological view that holds free will compatible with determinism see Michael McKenna, "Compatibilism" Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Before we dive into what Augustine has to say about free will, we must first understand what the problem is. Reading through Augustine's argument has only made my own belief's on free will stronger. Works Cited Angeles, Peter A.
The HarperCollins Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: HarperPerennial. Augustine, Saint. Chapter 9. The City of God Against the Pagans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Chapter Get Access. Powerful Essays. On Free Choice of the Will. Read More. Satisfactory Essays. Better Essays. For example, a drug addict may express a second order regret for desiring drugs he wishes he did not want drugs , even though his first order desire for drugs he wants drugs ends up motivating him to take the drugs.
Therefore, Augustine does not establish that we necessarily have power over our will. Luckily, there is a better solution for Augustine that modifies premise 1 instead of denying premise 5. Human speech is successive — one word follows another in a temporal sequence e. In other words, not only does his creative act encompass all of time, it also transcends time itself. It is substantively different, however, because his foreknowledge is both omnitemporal and atemporal.
This understanding of foreknowledge is admittedly difficult to comprehend, since the term fore knowledge itself implies temporality. But a move from human foreknowledge to divine foreknowledge is analogous to a shift from a 2D plane to a 3D plane. The 2D plane is limited as a description of the 3D plane because it lacks a third dimension. Similarly, human foreknowledge is limited as a description of divine foreknowledge because humans are constrained by time in a way that God is not.
When a human, at time t1 , foresees a future event at time t2 , he only exists at t1 , and does not yet exist at t2. But God, being omnitemporal, exists at t1 and t2 simultaneously. Hence, because God is both omnitemporal and atemporal, God cannot exhibit a successive knowledge of events in time.
Thus, premise 1 should be modified to include the notion of atemporality. Rather, it is more apt to say that God knows what the man is doing as he is doing it.
His knowledge tracks events in a perspective that transcends time. Consider again the first two premises of the problem:. And there is no doubt that this knowledge, radically different from a temporal understanding of knowledge, is difficult to fully comprehend.
But this knowledge, unrestrained by temporal boundaries, denies the assumption that underlies the problem of free will — that a future event can be determined by the prior knowledge of such event. Once Augustine removes this assumption, he can gracefully sidestep the problem by further denying that a prima facie problem even exists.
This would mean that God planned , from an atemporal perspective, that all temporally successive events be actualized. Insofar as our will allows us to pursue actions freely in the temporal sense, we would lack ultimate freedom because the existence of a divine plan seems to entail determinism. It is plausible, however, to consider this argument problematic for two reasons.
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