On Free Choice Of The Will

“We believe that everything that exists comes from the one God, and yet we believe that God is not the cause of sins. What is troubling is that if you admit that sins come from the souls that God created, and those souls come from God, pretty soon you’ll be tracing those sins back to God.”

Augustine summarizes the basic objection to the idea that a good God and human free will can coexist: if God is the cause of all that exists, and if sins come from God’s creations (humans), how is God not the cause of sin? That God produces evil seems to be a logical conclusion, but it is unacceptable to Augustine because it contradicts the proposition that God is good. By bringing up this powerful objection to his own argument, Augustine indicates that it needs to be addressed and refuses to avoid the question even though it contradicts his own logic.

“[I]t is clear now that inordinate desire is what drives every kind of evildoing.”

Augustine has just told Evodius that evil cannot be identified through external acts alone because in fact evil exists in human desires. Here, Evodius replies that Augustine has convincingly described the nature of evil: to act in a way that gives in to inordinate desires. Desire itself is not evil, but evil results when a desire is not properly ordered to determine when, how, or whether an action is to be carried out based on that desire. For example, desiring food is a good (or at least neutral) activity but desiring an inordinate amount of food becomes the sin of gluttony.

“I can’t think of anything else, since what makes us superior to animals is in the soul. If they were inanimate, I would say that we are superior to them in virtue of having a soul. But since they are animate, there is something that is present in our souls in virtue of which we are superior, which is lacking in their souls, thus allowing them to be subdued by us. It is obvious to anyone that it is something of considerable importance. What better name for that than ‘reason’?”

Evodius considers how to identify the difference between animals and human beings. Since all living things have souls, he says, the difference is not that one has a soul and the other doesn’t. Instead, though both have souls, only the human being has a soul with the power of reason, and it is due to this that the human being is a superior creature.

“Experience is not always good, since one can experience suffering. But how could knowledge in the strict sense ever be bad, since it is acquired by reason and understanding?”

Augustine makes a distinction between knowledge and experience. Knowledge is always good, since it is a product of the intellect. Experience, however, is not purely intellectual and thus can be good or bad depending on the circumstances. In many cases, experience is good, as it provides a person with more information and knowledge about the world. However, sometimes that knowledge arrives in an undesirable way that includes pain or suffering.

“[W]hen reason, mind, or spirit controls the irrational impulses of the soul, a human being is ruled by the very thing that ought to rule according to the law that we have found to be eternal.”

Augustine tells Evodius that the mind is meant to rule the body, and indeed the person as a whole. When nonrational passions and emotions are guided by the mind, which Augustine equates with both spirit and reason, then the human person is properly ordered. Allowing the body to be overcome by passion and to act in a way that is contrary to reason is a wicked way to live.

“[T]he only genuine freedom is that possessed by those who are happy and cleave to the eternal law…”

Genuine freedom, Augustine says, is not simply the freedom to choose, or the ability to make any particular choice. True freedom is only possessed by those who are happy and who live in accordance with the eternal law that is derived from God. Human beings possess this law—known as the natural law—in their souls, and it teaches them that good is to be done and evil to be avoided. True freedom is the power and ability to choose the good and to live in accordance with what is good.

“Since, as we have found, free choice gives us the ability to sin, should it have been given to us by the one who created us? It would seem that we would not have sinned if we had lacked free choice, so there is still the danger that God might turn out to be the cause of our evil deeds.”

Evodius raises a concern about Augustine’ theory of free will: if having the power of free choice gives human beings the ability to sin and do evil, is it an appropriate power for them to possess in the first place? And since it is God who would have to give free will to human beings at their creation, wouldn’t God then be the cause of evil? As the text’s author, Augustine introduces challenges and objections through Evodius’s voice so that he can entertain and answer them in order to prove what he believes to be the truth about free choice of the will.

“If human beings are good things, and they cannot do right unless they so will, then they ought to have a free will, without which they cannot do right.”

Here Augustine uses a syllogism, a type of reasoning common in philosophical arguments that combines two premises to reach a conclusion. Augustine declares that if human beings are good, and if humans only do good because they choose to, then humans must have free will, since without a free will, they could not choose to be good. If one did not have a free will, they could not be responsible for their actions, and thus could never make a genuinely good decision (or, conversely, a truly sinful one).

“The sense of the eye does not see whether it is seeing or not, and so it cannot judge what it lacks or what is enough. That is the job of the inner sense, which warns even the soul of an animal to open its eyes and make up for what it perceives is missing. And everyone realizes that the judge is superior to the thing judged.”

Evodius describes the five bodily senses as united by an inner sense that allows the soul to understand things fully. The senses only allow physical stimuli to be detected, so it is the job of the inner sense to unite this sensory knowledge with the intellect, allowing the will and the intellect to make a judgment about what is being experienced.

“Now each of us has his own sense of sight. But surely you wouldn’t say that each of us has a private sun that he alone sees, or personal moons and stars and things of that sort.”

Here Augustine argues that truth is transcendent and universal, not a relative or subjective idea that varies person to person. Everyone has their own individual eyes, and their own senses by which to detect the presence of light. Likewise, everyone has their own sense of judgment and their own intellect by which to understand truth. However, there is only one truth (one sun) that shines down on everything, so each person perceives the same truth.

“Do you think that each human being has his own personal wisdom? Or, on the contrary, is there one single wisdom that is universally present to everyone, so that the more one partakes of this wisdom, the wiser one is?”

Augustine declares that wisdom and truth are one single thing, transcendent and accessible to all. One person’s wisdom is not different from another’s, so long as both people are truly wise and able to grasp the communal truth that is available to both of them. The truth of an equation like 2+2=4 is not my own wisdom that differs from my friend’s; it is a universal wisdom that exists whether or not I know or understand it.

“Now the more one strays from the right path in life, the less wise one is, and so the further one is from the truth in which the highest good is discerned and acquired.”

All human beings have this in common: that they desire happiness. Everyone makes choices that they believe will make them happy. Augustine says true happiness consists in knowledge of the truth, and in wisdom. When human beings pursue what is good, true, and wise, then they are pursuing happiness.

“When someone says that eternal things are better than temporal things, or that seven plus three equals ten, no one says that it ought to be so. We simply recognize that it is so; we are like explorers who rejoice in what they have discovered, not like inspectors who have to put things right.”

Augustine states that truth is not created, fashioned, or remade—it is discovered. Since truth is discovered, existing separate from human opinions or desires, truth is a reality that transcends people and stands outside of them. Truth exists apart from the mind’s apprehension of it, and it is what the human mind seeks out in order to understand itself and the world around it. Human beings need to discover what is true in order to conform themselves to the reality that eternal life is more desirable than earthly things.

“This is our freedom, when we are subject to the truth; and the truth is God himself, who frees us from death, that is, from the state of sin.”

Augustine tells Evodius that freedom has true and false forms. Freedom is true when it is in right relation to the truth. God is the ultimate truth, and thus freedom requires a correct relationship to God. Sin and evil limit one’s freedom, so the more that one escapes sin, the freer one becomes and the more one is able to live a good and happy life.

“For if there is something more excellent than the truth, then that is God; if not, the truth itself is God. So in either case you cannot deny that God exists….”

Augustine posits that truth is a good so sublime that the only thing that could possibly be greater than truth is God. He adds that if there is nothing greater than truth, then truth itself must be divine. Thus, whether truth or God is more perfect, Augustine concludes that God exists.

“But nothing can form itself, since a thing can’t give what it doesn’t have. So if something is to have a form, it must be formed by something else.”

Since all things that came into being currently have existence and form, and since there was a time when they did not exist (when they did not have a form), then it follows that someone (or some thing) must have given each thing its existence as well as its form. For Augustine, this someone must be God, because God is the only necessary being.

“Therefore, when the will, which is an intermediate good, cleaves to the unchangeable good that is common, not private—namely, the truth, of which we have said much, but nothing adequate—then one has a happy life […]. But when the will turns away from the unchangeable and common good toward its own private good, or toward external or inferior things, it sins.”

Augustine states that the will is designed to naturally desire and pursue the common good, and that when it acts against its own nature, it sins. Acting against the will’s nature is not only a moral evil that must be avoided in itself; it is also what makes a person unhappy. Acting in accordance with the will’s intrinsic nature, by pursuing good and eternal truth, is what makes one happy.

“[T]the stone has no power to check its downward movement, but the soul is not moved to abandon higher things and love inferior things unless it wills to do so. And so the movement of the stone is natural, but the movement of the soul is voluntary.”

Augustine says that unlike the movement of a physical object, which always falls due to gravity, the will moves itself voluntarily. A person’s actions are not predetermined, and that person is a free agent able to make choices in the direction of either good or evil. When the soul moves towards good, it is meritorious, and it is wicked when it moves towards evil.

“I very much wonder how God can have foreknowledge of everything in the future, and yet we do not sin by necessity.”

Evodius asks how it is possible that, at the same time, God knows about human actions before they happen, yet human actions are not predetermined. If future sinful actions are already known, how can they be called free? Augustine’s answer to this question is Quote 21, below. 

“Simply because God foreknows your future happiness—and nothing can happen except as God foreknows it, since otherwise it would not be foreknowledge—it does not follow that you will be happy against your will.”

Here Augustine answers Evodius’s question in Quote 20 regarding the problem of divine foreknowledge. If God knows that a person will be happy in the future, this does not mean that God will manipulate that person’s will to produce the result of happiness. That is, just because something is infallibly going to occur does not mean that it happens against the will of the person it happens to. Human will is still free and unhindered.

“The more you love existence, the more you will desire eternal life, and so the more you will long to be refashioned so that your affections are no longer temporal, branded upon you by the love of temporal things that are nothing before they exist, and then, once they do exist, flee from existence until they exist no more.”

The love of simply existing leads people to desire existing forever. This desire for eternal life leads to the search for how to attain eternal life, which should in turn lead one to God. The love of, and desire for, eternity draws one’s attention and affection away from temporary, fleeting objects encountered during the human lifespan.

“When those who do not sin are happy, the universe is perfect; but when those who sin are unhappy, the universe is no less perfect.”

The perfection of the universe does not depend on it being morally perfect and flawless; it depends on proper order and harmony. Since the universe has been marred by sin, it cannot be perfect in the sense of free from sin. However, the universe is still perfect in its own way when humans’ outcomes match their actions—in this case, when those who behave righteously are happy and those who behave wickedly suffer the misery that results from their sinful choices.

“There are two sources of sin: one’s own spontaneous thought, and someone else’s persuasion […]. Now both of these are voluntary; just as no one sins unwillingly by his own thought, so no one yields to the evil prompting of another unless his own will consents.”

Augustine argues that the source of evil is always human. Sin either springs from within a person or is drawn out of their inordinate desires by the influence of another. Even when a person is coerced into acting sinfully by someone else, the person who acts sinfully is still a source of evil, because they choose to follow the other person’s suggestion.