Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Johannes Brachtendorf
Tübingen
1. Introduction
Augustine’s notion of freedom has few supporters among modern scholars.
One of them, however, is Albrecht Dihle, who in his book “The Theory of Will in
Classical Antiquity” praises Augustine as the “inventor of the modern concept of
will.”1 For Dihle, Augustine was the first to assert the independence of the will from
the intellect. Contrary to the so called “Socratic intellectualism” found in Platos
Protagoras,2 Augustine does not conceive of the will as a subordinate faculty,
but as a power that can freely decide whether to follow reason or not. For Dihle,
Augustine transcended the limits of ancient philosophy and invented the idea of
freedom of the will.
John Rist, however, thinks that Augustine makes humans no more than mari-
onettes of God. For Augustine’s teaching of grace, at least in its developed version,
states that humans are not free to turn their will to the good, but can be converted
by God alone. Of their own accord, Augustine claims, humans cannot do anything
good; without God’s help they sin necessarily. But if God imparts his grace on an
individual, then he unfailingly and irresistibly effectuates a conversion of the will
towards the good. According to John Rist, Augustine’s teaching of grace makes the
will decidedly unfree.3 Gerard O’Daly, in turn, ultimately concludes that Augustine’s
1. Dihle (1982), 162.
2. Cf. Protagoras, 351b ff.
3. Cf. Rist (1969).
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these intentions, on the other hand. In Confessiones VIII11 he calls the former
voluntates (in the plural, which accordingly can be translated as “strivings, or
inclinations”)12 and the latter voluntas (therefore simply “will” in the singular).
Furthermore, he designates the voluntas (in singular) as the liberum arbitrium
voluntatis because the liberum arbitrium decides over the voluntates.
If we will, then we ultimately will through the liberum arbitrium because, for
Augustine, the voluntates are always bound to a will that determines them. It belongs
to the essence of a striving of the will not only that it wills something, but also that
it is willed, which is to say, is approved by a superior will. One can see clearly
therefore the way in which Augustine deepens the problematic of freedom. While
the freedom of action concerns merely the relation between the strivings of our
will and reality, Augustine takes into account the internal relation of the will—the
relation between strivings and the liberum arbitrium. He thus extends the traditional
single-plane theory to a two-plane theory of the will.
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uniformly determine himself to will the good because the old will stands in opposi-
tion. Augustine nonetheless identifies himself more with the new will as with the
old one: “I was aligned with both, but more with the desires I approved in myself
than with those I frowned upon.”18 From the standpoint of the new will it is as Paul
writes: Augustine does that which he does not will, or, to be more precise, Augus-
tine continues to will the evil that he does not want to will. Since the old will is
also his will, however, it is Augustine himself, situated in the will’s division, who
wants to will or does not want to will. Through the concepts of the freedom of the
will and the division of the will, Augustine reconstructs the self-description of the
apostle in a non-dualistic manner and elevates it to a higher level. For Paul speaks
first and foremost about the relation of the strivings of the will to action (or about
the relation between willing and works), whereas Augustine, upon the basis of his
two-plane doctrine of the will, refers the words of Paul to the relation between the
voluntas and the voluntates. Paul does not do the good that he wills, but the evil
that he does not will. Augustine, however, does not will the good that he wants to
will, but wills the evil that he does not want to will.
Thus, does the assertion made in De libero arbitrio I: “For what is so much in
the power of the will as the will itself?,”19 even hold for the divided will? Does
the Augustine of Confessiones VIII have a free will? Is his liberum arbitrium still
functional? Augustine’s answer is: yes and no—and he consequently needs to further
develop his notions of freedom, sin, and the need of redemption. The answer is no,
because the new will is unable to gain control of the evil strivings; thus to will evil
is for him a necessity, a compulsion from which he cannot free himself, requiring
instead liberation through God’s grace. The answer is yes, because Augustine still
approves of his evil strivings through his old will. From the standpoint of the old
will, Augustine’s will is in conformity with itself and thus he freely wills evil and
is responsible for doing so. On the one hand, redemption from sin through God is
required only if humans cannot liberate themselves. On the other hand, there is no
sin without freedom. The compatibilist notion of freedom as conformity of the will
with itself enables Augustine to maintain both at the same time: the freedom and
unfreedom of humans. The new will is not in accordance with the evil strivings, and
thus Augustine is compatibilistically unfree. At the same time, it is Augustine’s old
will that still approves of his evil strivings, and thus Augustine is compatibilistically
free. Augustine uses the compatibilistic notion of freedom to explain what might
be one of the most difficult claims in all of Christian doctrine, namely that without
redemption humans are necessitated to sin freely.
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free and bound, although on different levels. He wills evil with freedom without
possessing the freedom, however, to not will evil. He is subject therefore to the
necessity of sinning with freedom. Although he is attributed freedom of the will
insofar as he possesses power over his intentions, he is without the power over
himself that would be necessary to change his moral character and make good use
of his freedom. The liberum arbitrium remains the author of the voluntates, but
it exercises this authorship only as an evil will—as voluntas mala. The liberum
arbitrium, Augustine observes, is in no way destroyed by original sin, but it is now
only of use to sin.25
In the development of Augustine’s understanding of the fallen human, the
libertarian notion of freedom as freedom of choice or as freedom of indifference
recedes in favor or the compatibilistic notion of freedom as accordance of the will
with itself. Further, Augustine’s developed position holds, in a very compatibilistic
manner, that the higher level of willing, i.e., the liberum arbitrium voluntatis or
simply the voluntas, can be determined in its use, i.e., in its moral orientation, while
the freedom of the will still maintains.
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is carried out through the liberum arbitrium, but, as Augustine emphasizes, not by
virtue of the liberum arbitrium. Even in the debate with the Pelagians, Augustine
can claim: the faithful believe because they want to believe. But the fact that they
want to believe is precisely not of their own doing.
Equally ruled out is the notion that grace removes the voluntates from the libe-
rum arbitrium’s power of control in order to place them under the efficacy of God.
According to Augustine, this would entail merely an inverted Manichaeism. Human
beings would then indeed be marionettes of God. In truth, however, grace does
not weaken the will by removing its power over the strivings of the will; it rather
restitutes this power because the liberated will (in contrast to the fragmented good
will in its divided condition) is capable of wholly and thoroughly determining its
intentions. Grace does not weaken the will but strengthens it, for the liberum arbi-
trium, having been freed to become the libertas, is reestablished in the encompassing
power of control over “what it wills.” For this reason, the thoroughly good will is
the truly free will. In this sense Augustine claims that grace does not destroy the
liberum arbitrium, but rather establishes it. Freedom, compatibilistically understood
as conformity with itself, does not become lesser through grace, but greater.
In his most speculative writing on the doctrine of freedom and grace, De cor-
reptione et gratia (426–427), Augustine juxtaposes the freedom of Adam before the
Fall with the freedom of the redeemed man. He claims in due consistency that the
efficaciousness of grace does not result in a reconstitution of the freedom of choice
between a good and an evil character as was the case for Adam and Eve, but rather
in a definitive determination of the will towards the good. God had entrusted Adam’s
free will with choice; the graced will, on the contrary, is no longer left to its own
resources, but is rather so motivated by God that it unerringly wills the good—and
which will, Augustine asks, could be more free than the one that can no longer serve
sin?28 Through the first freedom, Adam possessed the capacity not to sin if he did
not want to sin (posse non peccare); through the new freedom, the will is unable to
sin (non posse peccare).29 According to Augustine’s later writings, the freedom of
the redeemed man is even greater than that of Adam because it no longer faces the
alternative between good and evil but is decided for the will of the good.
If the libertas is the highest form of freedom, then the hallmark of true freedom
does not reside in the ability to decide one way or another from an indifferent posi-
tion, but rather in being so unequivocally directed towards the good that the freedom
of the will knows no bounds in its determination of the voluntates.
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6. Conclusion
Augustine’s doctrine of freedom and grace becomes more intelligible, or so
I believe, if we observe that his notion of freedom develops from libertarianism
to compatibilism. Does this make Augustine a compatibilist? Perhaps we have to
call him a semi-compatibilist. For in contrast to modern compatibilists, Augustine
does not reject libertarianism as a wrong or even nonsensical theory of freedom,
but he restricts it to the situation of humans before sin. According to Augustine,
encompassing freedom of choice was once real, but it is not any more. After sin
there is only compabilistic freedom.
Abbreviation
ALG: Sankt Augustinus. Der Lehrer der Gnade, lat.-ger. Gesamtausgabe seiner
antipelagianischen Schriften, ed. V. A. Kunzelmann, S. Kopp, A. Zumkeller,
Würzburg, Augustinus Verlag, 1955ff.
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Platonis opera (ed. John Burnet), Tomus 3, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1903.
Translations
ALG 3: Aurelius Augustinus, Schriften gegen die Pelagianer 3. Ehe und Begi-
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Thomas Williams, Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, trans. Thomas Wil-
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Studies
John M. Rist, “Augustine on Free Will and Predestination,” Journal of Theologi-
cal Studies 20 (1969): 420–447.
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of Philosophy 68 (1971): 5–20.
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