Freedom and Necessity: St. Augustine's Teaching on Divine Power and Human Freedom

Introduction

Introduction this book grew out of a course of four lectures which I was due to give at the University of Malta in 2001. My intention was once more to examine the predestinarian theology which Augustine expressed and defended in the course of the Pelagian Controversy, and to consider how valid is his repeated claim, which was forced upon him by a succession of texts from Scripture,1 that fallen man had, nevertheless, under the influence of grace, the opportunity to exercise free choice, and so to be a responsible agent. Against this I sought to suggest that the Pelagians, an amorphous group of theologians who have been much abused over the centuries as archheretics who denied the need for efficacious grace, did in fact defend the human responsibility which Augustine seemed, in practice, to deny, while at the same time justifying the damnation of the greater part of the human race for the inherited guilt of Adam’s primal sin. The reason for raising yet again the topic of Augustinian predeterminism was the influence which it has exercised on Western Christian theology, and not simply Protestant theology, down the ages. In the event, illness prevented me from delivering the lectures, and the preparation of a short historical commentary on the monastic rules of Augustine constrained me for two years to delay thought of possible publication. In the meantime I decided that in trying to evaluate Augustine ’s thinking on predestination and free will, it was desirable to consider his thought on other theological topics, both before and during the  1. See De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, passim. PL 44,881–912. steady stream of his predestinarian writings between 411 and his death in 430, in order to avoid the easily acquired impression that, during that period , he had no interest other than anti-Pelagian writing. The composition of the Retractations in 426/7 and the De Haeresibus in 428/9, while at the same time working on the Opus Imperfectum against Julian, easily demolishes that impression. Augustine was all his life prepared to write on each and any theological topic which might be presented to him; but he remained determined to defend his views on the issues raised by the Pelagians in all their rigor. He would concede that unbaptized infants might suffer the mildest torments in hell and that their state might be preferable to non-existence; but he continued to maintain the damnation of the overwhelming majority of the human race for lack of the sacrament of baptism, while insisting that the Christian God was a God of Love. It is generally agreed among scholars that the theological views asserted by Augustine against Pelagius and his supporters were initially formed in his answers to the questions of Simplicianus of Milan in 396/7. Augustine himself certainly considered this to be the case, as witness his comment on the Ad Simplicianum in the Retractations: “In the solution of this question [Gn. 25:23; Rom. 9:11] I labored in defense of the free choice of the human will, but the grace of God conquered.” What Augustine says here, in respect of Genesis 25:23 (Two nations are in your womb .....), can be applied to his anti-Manichaean writings as a whole, from his conversion until writing to Simplicianus. He had initially been concerned to defend human free choice against Manichaean determinism . Against the dualism of the Manichees he maintained God’s absolute supremacy over His creation, and against their assertion that men sinned because of their evil material nature, he continued to assert that sin was a moral failing, which arose from misuse of free will. Over the years, however, under the influence of St. Paul, divine omnipotence came increasingly to dominate his mind, and in writing to Simplicianus , perhaps under the influence of St. Cyprian, the significance of 1 Corinthians 4:7: “What have you that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast, as if it were not a gift?” overwhelmed him, and introduction  from then onwards the absolute power of God, the creator of the world from nothing, dominated his thinking. The essence of sin, both angelic and human, is pride—the desire of a created being to set itself up in opposition to its Creator. By this sin fell the angels, and by it Adam, and in him fell the whole of humanity. The Pelagian assertion of...