On Free Choice of the Will

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.8 · 1.9–1.16 · 2.1–2.6 · 2.7–2.10 · 2.11–2.17 · 2.18–3.2 · 3.3–3.7 · 3.8–3.13 · 3.14–3.20 · 3.21–3.25

1. 1.1Evodius asks whether God is the author of evil; Augustine distinguishes evil done from evil suffered and argues that evil cannot be learned, since learning and understanding are good.
2. 1.2Augustine recalls that this question drove him to the Manichaeans and sets out the faith from which the inquiry starts: one good, almighty Creator, who is not the author of sin, and his begotten Son.
3. 1.3Testing why adultery is evil, Augustine rejects the law, the golden rule, and condemnation by courts as the reason and locates the evil in lust (libido), which makes even the unfulfilled desire guilty.
4. 1.4Through the case of a slave who kills his master from fear, Augustine and Evodius define blameworthy lust as the love of things that one can lose against one's will.
5. 1.5Evodius argues that human law rightly permits killing in self-defense and war to prevent greater evils, yet doubts that those who kill for perishable goods are free of sin before divine providence; Augustine approves the distinction between human law and divine punishment.
6. 1.6Augustine distinguishes temporal law, which can justly change with the condition of a people, from the eternal law, the supreme reason by which it is just that all things be perfectly ordered.
7. 1.7Turning to order within the human being, Augustine distinguishes living from knowing that one lives and notes that beasts, though stronger, never try to tame human beings.
8. 1.8Augustine argues that reason sets human beings above beasts and that a human being is rightly ordered when reason, mind, or spirit rules the lower motions of the soul, as the eternal law requires.
9. 1.9The wise man is one in whom the mind rules; the fool has a mind that does not rule, as animal-tamers show, who use the mind without being wise.
10. 1.10Augustine argues that lust cannot be stronger than the mind, no vicious mind can overcome a virtuous one, no body can overcome a virtuous mind, and nothing is higher than the wise mind except God.
11. 1.11Since neither a higher nor a lower nature can force the mind to serve lust, only its own will and free choice can do so; the mind's resulting slavery to lust is itself a just and heavy penalty.
12. 1.12Leaving open whether the soul lived wisely before the body, Augustine shows that we have a will, that a good will surpasses all external goods, and that whether we have it lies in our will itself.
13. 1.13Augustine shows that one who loves his good will has prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice, and so lives a praiseworthy and happy life, which is gained simply by willing it above fleeting goods.
14. 1.14All want happiness but not all want to live rightly, and since the eternal law joins happiness to the will to live rightly, the miserable fail to reach what they want.
15. 1.15Lovers of eternal things live under the eternal law, lovers of temporal things under the temporal law, which can punish only by taking away temporal goods; such goods are not evil, but their bad use is.
16. 1.16Evil-doing is turning from eternal to temporal things, and it comes from the free choice of the will; Evodius asks whether God should have given free choice, which Augustine defers to the next book.
17. 2.1Augustine argues that man is a good from God who can live rightly only by willing, so God had to give him free will, which was given for acting rightly; otherwise just punishment and reward could not exist.
18. 2.2Evodius asks why a will given for doing right can be turned to sin; Augustine agrees to inquire as if all were uncertain, beginning from faith and seeking understanding, as Scripture commands.
19. 2.3Beginning the proof that God exists, Augustine establishes that Evodius exists, lives, and understands, and ranks the bodily senses, the inner sense that presides over them, and reason, which judges them all and knows itself.
20. 2.4The inner sense perceives both the objects of the bodily senses and the senses themselves, and reason knows all of these and itself.
21. 2.5The bodily sense, which lives, is better than the bodies it perceives, and the inner sense is better than the bodily sense because it governs and judges it.
22. 2.6Reason judges everything below it and is the highest thing in human nature; if something eternal and unchangeable is found above reason, it is God, or God is whatever is higher still.
23. 2.7Each person has his own senses and reason, yet many can perceive the same light, sound, or body without changing it; such things are common and public, while what we consume becomes private.
24. 2.8Evodius offers the unchangeable truth of number as something common to all minds; Augustine shows that numbers, built from the unit, which no body truly is, are known not through the senses but in an inner light.
25. 2.9Wisdom is the truth in which the highest good is discerned and held; all want happiness and so want wisdom, and, like sunlight in which many things are seen, one wisdom may be common to all the wise.
26. 2.10Truths such as that one should live justly and prefer the eternal to the temporal are seen by each mind yet common to all; these rules and lights of the virtues belong to wisdom and are as unchangeable as the rules of number.
27. 2.11Asked how wisdom and number are related, Augustine suggests they may be one thing, number reaching all things and wisdom ordering them, like the light and heat of one fire; at least both are unchangeably true.
28. 2.12There is one unchangeable truth, common to all minds and belonging to none, by which we judge our minds and which we cannot judge; so it is higher than our minds.
29. 2.13Truth itself is higher than our mind; to enjoy it, more than any bodily pleasure, is the happy life, and our freedom lies in being subject to this truth, which is God.
30. 2.14Unlike bodily goods, truth and wisdom cannot be lost against one's will, are shared whole by all without crowding, and, being judged by none and judging all, are beyond doubt higher than our minds.
31. 2.15Augustine concludes that God exists, either as truth itself or as what is above it, adding that by faith the begotten Wisdom is equal to the Father; Evodius, not yet wise, already knows something of wisdom.
32. 2.16Wisdom meets its seekers in the numbered beauty of creatures and of human art, which points beyond itself to everlasting number and to an eternal, unchangeable form; those who love the signs instead of wisdom fall into darkness.
33. 2.17Since nothing can form itself, all changeable things, body and life alike, are formed by an unchangeable form that is their providence; so every good, great or small, is from God.
34. 2.18Having shown that God exists and that every good is from him, Augustine argues that free will, without which no one can live rightly, is a good like the eyes and hands, which can be misused yet are rightly given.
35. 2.19Augustine ranks the virtues as great goods, bodily beauty as least, and the powers of the mind, free will among them, as middle goods; sin is the will's voluntary turning from the unchangeable common good to its own, external, or lower goods.
36. 2.20The will's turning from God is a defective motion that comes from nothing and not from God, since every nature with measure, number, and order is from God; man fell of his own will but can rise only by Christ, God's right hand.
37. 3.1Unlike a stone's natural fall, the soul's turning from the unchangeable good is its own voluntary and blameworthy motion; otherwise praise, blame, and admonition would make no sense.
38. 3.2Evodius asks how God's foreknowledge of the first man's sin can leave the will free; Augustine says most people are troubled by this because they excuse rather than confess their sins.
39. 3.3Augustine argues that God's foreknowledge does not remove the will: what God foreknows is a will, and a will is necessarily in our power, so foreknowledge makes our free willing certain rather than impossible.
40. 3.4Foreknowledge does not compel: as our memory does not cause past deeds, God's foreknowledge does not cause future sins, so he justly punishes sins he foresees but does not commit.
41. 3.5Sinful souls are still better than the brightest bodies, and God is to be praised for creating every grade of being, from unsinning angels to souls that sin and may repent; the unwise judge creatures by use rather than by reason.
42. 3.6Sins done by the will of sinners cannot be attributed to the Creator; even one who says he would rather not exist than be miserable still wills to exist, and whatever misery follows is either just or will not happen.
43. 3.7Even the miserable prefer to exist, which shows how great a good being is; by loving and increasing existence one draws near to him who supremely is and escapes misery.
44. 3.8No one can rightly choose not to exist, since non-existence is nothing; even those who take their own lives desire rest, which is more being, not annihilation.
45. 3.9God rightly made every grade of creature, as the moon beside the sun; not sin but souls able to sin complete the universe, and just punishment fits sinful souls into its order, while the proud who refuse the humility shown by Christ share the punishment of the fallen angels.
46. 3.10Sins arise from one's own thought or from another's persuasion; man, persuaded by the devil, was justly subjected to him, until the Word became flesh and, killed though sinless and born without lust, justly freed those who believe in him.
47. 3.11God made both the highest spirits, whose sin would disturb the universe and who hold it together, and lower rational souls, whose sin does not diminish its order; the fallen soul rules its mortal body only within the laws of the universe.
48. 3.12The highest spirits abstain from sin freely; yet even if all angels had sinned, God could rule the universe by himself or create others, so he is to be praised in every case.
49. 3.13Every nature, insofar as it is a nature, is good, since corruption makes it less good; every substance is God or from God, and blaming a rational creature's fault, which is against its nature, praises both its nature and its Maker.
50. 3.14No nature is corrupted by another's fault without its own consent unless it is weaker; only faulty corruption is blameworthy, and blaming a fault praises the nature it damages.
51. 3.15Temporal things that pass away are not to be blamed, but a rational creature's failing is voluntary and blameworthy; the soul must pay its debt to God either by doing justice or by suffering misery, with no interval between.
52. 3.16God owes no one anything, while every creature owes him what it is and what it ought to be; since neither one's own nature nor another's forces anyone to sin, sin comes from one's own will and cannot be attributed to the Creator.
53. 3.17Asked why some creatures sin and others do not, Augustine answers that the wicked will, the avarice that is the root of all evils, is the first cause of sin, and no cause before the will need be sought.
54. 3.18Sins done in ignorance or under the necessity of the flesh are a just penalty inherited from man's condemnation; ignorance and difficulty are not human nature as created but the punishment of sin.
55. 3.19To those who complain that they inherit ignorance and difficulty from Adam, Augustine answers that God everywhere helps those who seek; inherited weakness is called sin because it comes from the first free sin, and nature is spoken of both as created and as fallen.
56. 3.20Augustine shows that, whichever account of the soul's origin is true (derived from the first soul, newly created, sent by God, or coming of its own accord), inherited ignorance and difficulty can be overcome with God's help, and God is not to blame.
57. 3.21Augustine declines to decide among the four accounts of the soul's origin: error about creatures is harmless if not held as certain, but error about the Creator, whose substance is the Trinity, is pernicious; what matters is where the soul is going, not where it began.
58. 3.22Sins are due to the will alone; if ignorance and difficulty are natural, they are a starting point like an infant's speechlessness, blameworthy only if one refuses to progress, and God is praised for every stage.
59. 3.23Augustine answers objections about infants who die or suffer (no one is created in vain; baptized infants are helped by the faith of those who present them; the Holy Innocents are honored as martyrs) and about animal pain, which shows the soul's desire for unity and points to the Creator's unity.
60. 3.24The first man was made neither foolish nor wise but rational, able to receive and keep a command and so to attain wisdom; his fall through pride was a voluntary passage, neither foolish nor wise, from wisdom to folly.
61. 3.25The will is moved only by what it perceives, from higher things (God's command) or lower (the serpent's suggestion); the devil fell through pride, envied man into the same pride, and Christ gave an example of humility; one day in the light of truth is worth more than all the years of this life.