Joseph Pallatty

There are three mutually exclusive theories of the freedom of the will. We may call the first one ‘Fatalism,’ the second, ‘Pelagianism,’ and the third, ‘Augustinianism.’ In ‘Fatalism’ everything is predetermined. Pelagianism says, the will in each man is undetermined towards the bad or the good. According to Pelagius the will is free, in the sense of free to choose right or wrong on any occasion, independently of what its previous acts may have been. Man can always be good if he wants to. The reason that people choose evil than good is ignorance. Educate them, and the will would be able to choose the good.

St Augustine’s position differs from both the Fatalistic and Pelagian ones. Since he believes God, he cannot accept any kind of blind determinism. He takes the fall of man seriously and realistically. He cannot agree therefore with the shallow and optimistic view of Pelagius. We shall look briefly at his understanding of the origin of evil, the fall of man, and the results of this fall. That will help us to know Augustine’s understanding of freedom of will. Augustine learnt that evil is not an entity at all, that it is not a substance, but the privation of good, or in other words, a perverse turning of the will from God. What is of special importance to us is St Augustine’s insistence on the role of the human will in the entrance of evil into the world. It was through man’s will that evil entered the life of man.

Now we come to consider specifically St Augustine’s concept of the freedom of the will. Before the fall, man was free. He had the ability or power to sin or not to sin. Augustine believed also that in heaven, the redeemed are free in the sense that they cannot will to sin. After the fall man has lost the ability to do good, he is free only to sin, but not to do good. Augustine simply meant that fallen human nature had lost the power to turn man to his creator.

This is not all that Augustine has to say about the present state of the will. He does not accept only the fall of man, but also man’s redemption. God has come to man in the person of His Son Jesus Christ. The redemption that Christ accomplished for His people on the cross is applied in their hearts by the Holy Spirit. Real changes take place within the hearts of believers. There is a new birth, a new creation, a new life. This new state of grace must have something to say about the freedom of the will. Etienne Gilson explains Augustine’s concept of the relation of grace to the free will of man in the following manner: “In order to restore this order (which was destroyed by man’s fall) we need therefore a new creation. And the re-creator cannot but be the Creator Himself. One can always fall by himself, but one cannot always rise up by himself, and one can never rise up when his fall is infinite, unless God Himself lends His hand and puts us back on our feet. This is exactly what He does when He gives us His grace. Far from abolishing man’s will, it is re-made into a good will, it is liberated.”