Augustine: Earlier Writings (continued)
to learn from you whence arises the movement by which the will itself turns from the unchangeable good, which is the common property of all, to its own interests or to the interests of others or to things beneath it, and so turns to mutable goods.
Augustine,—Why must you know this? Ev.—Because if free will is so given that it has that movement by nature, it turns of necessity to mutable goods; and no blame attaches where nature and necessity prevail. Aug.—Do you like or dislike that movement? Ev.— I dis Hke it. Aug.—So you find fault with it? Ev.—I do. Aug.—Then you find fault with a movement of the mind though it is faultless. Ev.—No, I do not. But I do not know whether there is any fault in abandoning the unchangeable good and turning towards the mutable goods. Aug.—Then you are finding fault with something which you do not know. Ev.— Don't insist on a verbal point. I said that I did not know whether there was any fault, but I meant to be understood really as having no doubt about it. Certainly I said I do not know, but obviously I was being ironical in suggesting that there could be any doubt about so clear a matter. Aug.—Just consider what is that truth you hold to be so certain that it has caused you so soon to forget what you said a moment ago. If that movement of the will exists by nature or necessity, it is in no way culpable. And yet you are so firmly convinced that it is culpable that you think fit to wax ironical about hesitation over a matter so certain. Why did you think it right to affirm, or at least to say with some hesitation, what you yourself show to be obviously false? You said: "If free will has been given in such fashion that it has that movement by nature, then it turns to mutable things of necessity, and no fault can be found where nature and necessity rule." But you ought to have had no doubt that it was not given in that fashion, since you do not doubt that that movement is culpable. Ev.—I said that the movement is culpable, and that therefore it displeases me, and that I cannot doubt that it is reprehensible. But I hold that a soul which is thereby drawn from the unchangeable good to mutable goods is not to be blamed if its nature is such that it is so moved by necessity.
2. Aug.—To whom belongs the movement which you admit is blameworthy? Ev.—I see that it is in the soul, but to whom it belongs I know not. Aug.—You do not deny that the soul is moved by that motion? Ev.—No. Aug.—Do you then deny that the motion by which a stone is moved is the motion of the stone? I don't mean the motion that we give to it, or that is given to it by some other force, when it is thrown upwards, but ON FREE WILL jyi that by which of its own accord it falls back to earth. Ev.— I do not deny that the motion you refer to, by which it turns and falls downwards, is the motion of the stone, but it is its natural motion. If the motion of the soul is like that, it too is natural, and it cannot rightly be blamed for a motion that is natural. Even if it moves to its own destruction, it is compelled by the necessity of its own nature. Moreover because we have no doubt that the soul's motion is culpable we must absolutely deny that it is natural, and therefore not like the motion of the stone, which is natural motion. Aug.—Did we achieve anything in our two previous discussions? Ev.—I am sure we did. Aug.—No doubt you remember that in the first discussion we discovered that the mind can become the slave of lust only by its own will. No superior thing and no equal thing compels it to such dishonour, because that would be unjust. And no inferior thing has the power. It remains that that must be the mind's own motion when it turns its will away from enjoyment of the Creator to enjoyment of the creature. Ifthat motion is accounted blameworthy—and you thought anyone who doubted that deserved to be treated ironically—it is not natural but voluntary. It is like the motion of the falling stone, in so far as it is a motion of the soul as the former is the motion of the stone. But it is dissimilar in this, that it is not in the power of a stone to arrest its downward motion, while if the soul is not willing it cannot be moved to abandon what is higher and to love what is lower. Thus the stone's motion is natural, the soul's voluntary. Hence anyone who says that a stone sins when it is carried downwards by its own weight is, I will not say more senseless than the stone but, completely mad. But we charge the soul with sin when we show that it has abandoned the higher things and prefers to enjoy lower things. What need is there, therefore, to seek the origin of the movement whereby the will turns from the unchangeable to the changeable good? We acknowledge that it is a movement of the soul, that it is voluntary and therefore culpable. And all useful learning in this matter has its object and value in teaching us to condemn and restrain that movement, and to convert our wills from falling into temporal dehghts to the enjoyment of the eternal good.
3. £jj^—I see, and in a sense grasp that what you say is true.
There is nothing that I feel more certainly and more personally than that I have a will, and that it moves me to enjoy this or that. I know nothing I could call my own if the will by which I will "yea" or "nay" is not my own. If I use it to do evil, to 172 AUGUSTINE: EARLIER WRITINGS whom is the e\il to be attributed if not to myself? Since a good God has made me, and I can do nothing right except by wi Uing, it is clearly evident that it was to this end that the will has been given to me by God who is good. Moreover, unless the movement of the will towards this or that object is voluntary and within our power, a man would not be praiseworthy when he turns to the higher objects nor blameworthy when he turns to lower objects, using his will like a hinge. There would be no use at all in warning him to pay no attention to temporal things and to will to obtain the eternal things, or to will to live aright and to be unwilling to live an evil life. But whoever thinks that man is not to be so warned ought to be cut off from membership in the human race. ii, 4. That being so, I have a deep desire to know how it can be that God knows all things beforehand and that, nevertheless, we do not sin by necessity. Whoever says that anything can happen otherwise than as God has foreknown it, is attempting to destroy the divine foreknowledge with the most insensate impiety. If God foreknew that the first man would sin—and that anyone must concede who acknowledges with me that God has foreknowledge of all future events—I do not say that God did not make him, for he made him good, nor that the sin of the creature whom he made good could be prejudicial to God. On the contrary, God showed his goodness in making man, his justice in punishing his sin, and his mercy in delivering him. I do not say, therefore, that God did not make man. But this I say. Since God foreknew that man would sin, that which God foreknew must necessarily come to pass. How then is the will free when there is apparently this unavoidable necessity?
5. Aug.—You have knocked vigorously. May God in his mercy grant us his presence and open the door to those who knock. But I verily believe that the vast majority of men are troubled by that question for no other reason than that they do not ask it in a pious fashion. They are swifter to make excuses for their sins than to make confession of them. Some are glad to hold the opinion that there is no divine providence presiding over human affairs. They commit themselves, body and soul, to fortuitous circumstances, and deliver themselves to be carried about and tormented by lusts. They deny that there is any divine judgment, and deceive human judges when they are accused. They imagine that they are driven on by the favour of fortune. In sculpture or painting they are wont to represent Fortune as blind, either because they are better than the god-
ON FREE WILL 173 dess by whom they think they are ruled, or because they confess that in their sentiments they are afflicted with that same bhndness. In the case of such people it is not absurd to admit that they do everything by chance, seeing that they stumble in all that they do. But against this opinion, so full of foolish and senseless error, we have, I think, sufficiently spoken in our second disputation. Others do not venture to deny that the providence of God presides over human affairs, but they would rather indulge in the wicked error of beheving that providence is weak or unjust or evil than confess their sins with suppliant piety. If all these would suffer themselves to be persuaded to beheve that the goodness, justice and power of God are greater far, and far superior to any thought they can have of goodness, justice or might, if they would but take thought to themselves, they would know that they owe thanks to God, even if he had willed them to be somewhat lower in the scale of being than they actually are, and with all that is within them they would exclaim with the Psalmist: "I have spoken: Lord have mercy upon me; heal my soul for I have sinned against thee" (Ps. 41 :5). So by stages the divine mercy would bring them to wisdom. They would be neither inflated by what they discover, nor rebellious when they fail to find the truth; by learning they would become better prepared to see the truth, and by recognizing their ignorance they would become more patient in seeking it. I am quite sure that these are your views too. Now first answer a few questions
I am going to put to you, and you will see how easily I can find a solution to your tremendous problem. iii, 6. Your trouble is this. You wonder how it can be that these two propositions are not contradictory and incompatible, namely that God has foreknowledge of all future events, and that we sin voluntarily and not by necessity. For if, you say, God foreknows that a man will sin, he must necessarily sin. But if there is necessity there is no voluntary choice in sinning, but rather fixed and unavoidable necessity. You are afraid that by that reasoning the conclusion may be reached either that God's foreknowledge of all future events must be impiously denied, or, if that cannot be denied, that sin is committed not voluntarily but by necessity. Isn't that your difficulty? Ev,— Exactly that. Aug.— You think, therefore, that all things of which God has foreknowledge happen by necessity and not voluntarily. Ev.—Y. Absolutely, ^w.—Try an experiment, and examine yourself a Httle, and tell me what kind of will you are going to have to-morrow. Will you want to sin or to do 174 AUGUSTINE: EARLIER WRITIxNGS
right? Ev.—I do not know. Aug,—Do you think God also does not know? Ev.—I could in no wise think that. Aug.—If God knows what you are going to will to-morrow, and foresees what all men are going to will in the future, not only those who are at present alive but all who will ever be, much more will he foresee what he is going to do wdth the just and the impious? Ev.—Certainly if I say that God has foreknowledge of my deeds, I should say with even greater confidence that he has foreknowledge of his own acts, and foresees with complete certainty what he is going to do. Aug.—Don't you see that you will have to be careful lest someone say to you that, if all things of which God has foreknowledge are done by necessity and not voluntarily, his own futuie acts will be done not voluntarily but by necessity? Ev.—When I said that all future events of which God has foreknowledge happen by necessity, I was having regard only to things which happen within his creation, and not to things which happen in God himself. Indeed, in God nothing happens. Everything is eternal. Aug.—God, then, is not active within his creation? Ev.—He determined once for all how the order of the universe he created was to go on, and he never changes his mind. Aug.—Does he never make anyone happy? Ev.—Indeed he does. Aug.—He does it precisely at the time when the man in question actually becomes happy. Ev.— That is so. Aug.— If, then, for example, you yourself are happy one year from now, you will be made happy at that time. Ev.—Exactly. Aug.—God knows to-day what he is going to do a year hence? Ev.—He eternally had that foreknowledge, but I agree that he has it now, if indeed it is to happen so.
7. Aug.—Now tell me, are you not God's creature? And will not your becoming happy take place within your experience? Ev.—Certainly I am God's creature, and if I become happy it will be within my experience. Aug.—If God, then, makes you happy, your happiness will come by necessity and not by the exercise of your will? Ev.—God's will is my necessity. Aug.—Will you then be happy against your will? Ev.—If I had the power to be happy, I should be so at once. For I wish to be happy but am not, because not I but God makes me happy. Aug.—The truth simply cries out against you. You could not imagine that *'havingin our power" means anything else than "being able to do what we will." Therefore there is nothing so much in our power as is the will itself. For as soon as we will [volumus] immediately will [voluntas] is there. We can say rightly that we do not grow old voluntarily but necessarily, or that we do not die