Quote:
Analysis of a section in Augustine’s “On Free Will”
Adrian Crenshaw
The argument of Augustine’s I would like to critique can be found in his writing “On Free Will”, specifically book three, paragraphs four through eighteen. This is not a small segment of text, but because of the dialog form and depth I feel that addressing a smaller part of this work would not encompass the scope of Augustine’s argument. First let me lay out the problem of free will vs. God’s foreknowledge then address Augustine’s take on the subject as best as I understand it.
Most Western religions seem to believe that God knows everything that has ever happened, is happening and will ever happen. At face value this seems to go against the concept of free will because if God knows what is going to happen then it is set in stone that it must happen by necessity. It has to happen because God is assumed to have perfect knowledge of the future, and if the event does not happen than God knowledge would not be perfect. If God knows an event will happen, and God’s knowledge is always true, then that event will happen. If it is set in stone (predetermined) then we have no free will because we have no true choice, what will happen must happen out of necessity.
Some would argue that just because God knows our entire lives does not mean that we have no free will. They say that God does not directly interfere with our decisions, thus we have free will in so much as we make the choices ourselves, even though God knows what we will do with our choices. This could be seen as an oversimplified version of Augustine’s argument, which is more refined and better fleshed out.
Augustine believed, if I understand him right, that God has perfect foreknowledge of humanity’s acts but that this foreknowledge does not contradict free will. Augustine gives the example of a person wanting to be happy. If God knows that you will be happy at some point in time then you will be happy at the moment because God’s knowledge is perfect. Even though God knows when you will be happy, is it logical to say you are happy against your will? It is your will to be happy, or at least that is the desire of most sane people, and while you can not always will yourself to be happy you are happy at that moment. How can this be against your will, even if God knows with absolute certainty that it will be so?
I think Augustine’s argument concerning happiness is a compelling one if you have the same concept of free will as he does. In Augustine’s mind will is that which we want to happen, and since our fallen nature’s will is to sin, we do not sin purely out of necessity but because we want to. I personally believe that this goes against the meaning of free will as many think of the concept today. In my view it may be possible to be happy, and it not be your free will. To me free will denotes some form of action on the part of the person exercising free will. It’s possible for me to be happy, not because of any choices on my part, but because of something outside of my will that caused the happiness. To some, such as myself, free will is the availability of true choices, crossroads where there are more than one possible out comes. If God knows what will happen then it will happen, in which case your fate is scripted and you have no free will because there is only one path that can be followed. You may have the illusion of free will in that you seem to make a choice, but you do not have free will anymore than a program running on a computer.
Some individuals might then argue “Ok, so we don’t have free will, what’s the big deal?” The big deal is that if we have no free will then nothing we do in this life is truly our decision. How can a just God judge, and punish, his creation for sins if the creation had no choice in whether or not to commit them? If who is going to heaven or hell is predetermined then what is the point of God’s creation? Faith or works have no meaning because either you were destined to have them or you were not. It’s hard to conceive of a personal being, as most western religions think of God, creating something where all of the outcomes are already known. God may have no career in time, as Augustine seems to think, but from God’s perspective neither does His creation.
In the dialog under discussion, Evodius, Augustine’s partner in the conversation, still does not understand how God can have foreknowledge and still justly punish sinners. Does God not have some small responsibility for the sins of man since he is the creator of all things? Could he not have created man as the angels, having free will but using it only to attend to God? Augustine says that we should not hold it against God for making us as we are. As he states in paragraph thirteen: “For it is not true reason but envious weakness that bids you think that anything ought to have been made better than it is, and nothing inferior should have been made at all.” Augustine goes on to give an example of wishing the earth was like heaven. He points out that we might be right to find fault with the earth if there were no heaven, but how can we begrudge God for creating a perfect thing and a less perfect thing? This may play into the idea that evil is not a thing in and of itself, but merely the absence of good. In this way God can be seen as the creator of only good things, as evil is not a thing in and of itself. Using this argument, God is not responsible for the evils of the world in Augustine’s view.
I would be interested in what books of scripture Augustine considered canon for Christian teaching. Augustine lived from 354-430 CE, while there was still much debate concerning which books should be used by the Church (or more accurately churches). The twenty seven books held canon by most modern Christians were not set forth till 367 CE when Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, published his Easter letter. Athanasius' canonical list was not well recognized till sometime after Jerome's translation (the Vulgate) used the list as its basis. When Augustine makes his statement in paragraph thirteen he may be thinking of St. Paul’s words in Romans 9:21 “Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?” (NIV Translation).
While not in the main section of text I’m writing on, things Augustine said in other works about the nature of God in relationship to time are of interest to his views on free will. What Augustine does by assuming that God sees time as a sort of point, an object seen all at once and in its entirety, it to change the way we have to talk about God’s foreknowledge. If we agree with Augustine that God is outside of time, then we can not say that God knew what we were going to do before we did it because to God there is no true before or after. Being outside of time, God knows what “is”, both present and future. This does seem to propose a few possible problems.
I’m not sure how much of a biblical literalist Augustine was, but some problems are raised with his idea of God being outside of time. In the New Testament God presumably breaks into time as the father (Jesus’ baptism and other occasions) and as Jesus himself. In the Old Testament God breaks in many times as well, at creation, with Abraham, with Jacob and with Moses as a few examples. I’m also curious as to what relationship with time Augustine might put Angels and Demons.
Another possible problem: if God is outside of time He did not just create man knowing that he would sin, but in a sense already fallen. When God created the universe outside of time did He not create all of the things and events in it? More than creating you and knowing that you would sin, God created you already fallen since He did not create the universe inside of time.
If we give Augustine that God exists outside of time, does that mean we have free will? Even if God sees time as a single entity, he is the creator of said single entity. This may be worse than a clock work universe. If God existed in time, he may have given us free will knowing that we would sin but we still have free will of a sort as we perceive making a choice. Or perhaps God is in time and created us, but does not know the future because knowing the future is as illogical as God making a mountain that He can not lift. Richard Swinburne, an Oxford philosophy professor, holds this concept of God. I have assume Swinburne is not a biblical literalist as First Peter 1 and Romans 8-9 seem to establish God as having foreknowledge of human events.
Some of Augustine’s arguments seem to be a type of fideism, and maybe mans reason is not sufficient to under stand the world and justice as God sees it. His work “On Free Will” makes me feel like he thinks it’s wrong for us to question the acts of God and the choices He makes, if they can rightly be called choices without the element of time. Some problems that many moderns might have with Augustine’s arguments stem from our modern sensibilities about freedom and our more antiauthoritarian attitudes. Social and political hierarchies were different in the fourth and fifth centuries and Augustine probably did not have the same concepts about fairness and justice that we do today. The idea of rulers having complete authority to do whatever they choose in their domain is somewhat foreign to many moderns. Even thou God created everything it is expected that he should treat his creation with a certain amount of fairness and not punish them eternally for things that may be seen as preordained acts.
In the end my idea of free will is not the same as Augustine’s. This greatly limits his ability to persuade me to his belief system. We also differ on the concept of man’s fallen nature. I find Augustine’s arguments compelling, but can not completely agree with his conclusions.
