On free choice of the Will” (book II) by St. Augustine

“On free choice of the Will” (book II)

by St. Augustine

    We’ve discussed a theme “free choice of the will” on our lectures and seminars. And I’d like to generalize ideas that I found out reading St. Augustine’s book II and that were more interesting for me. So, I want to answer the following questions:

1. Why it is obviously that God exists?
2. Why did God give people free will?
3. Did God responsible for evildoing?

    St Augustine constructed a hierarchy of the senses (touch-smell/taste-hearing-sight) and a hierarchy of existence (exist-live-understand) with the help of which he proof existence of God. According to these hierarchies, to exist means to be in tangible world, to live means to have brain and senses, to understand means to reason, relying on the physical senses. But St. Augustine also tells about the sixth sense that analyzes all the information that we perceive. So, he implies that there must be something else in a human being higher than his reason: “It is clear that we have a body, as well as a sort of life by which the body is animated and nourished; both of these we find in animals. We also have a third thing, like the head or eye of the soul, or however reason and understanding might be more aptly described; and this, animals do not have. So, I ask you: can you think of anything human nature more exalted than reason?” (book II, 6.) I think, this supernatural sense Augustine suggests to call God. But moreover, he makes an example with numbers and explains it detailed and clear: “So we see that this order is fixed, secure, and unchangeable for all numbers. But how do we see this? No one perceives all the numbers by any bodily sense, for there are infinitely many of them? So where did we learn that this order extends to all of them? By what image of phantasm do we see so confidently this indisputable truth about number, which extends through infinitely many numbers? We see it by an inner light of which the bodily sense knows nothing. ” (8.) Really, we don’t know thanks to what internal feeling a person realizes definiteness of true of the incalculable. We just believe. I think it is very strong argument that God exists and that He puts into our reason thoughts about things that are over our understanding himself.    

    The next question is why God gave people free will. St. Augustine says that if there are corporal goods in the world which can led a human being to evildoing it doesn’t mean that God gave him the free will in vain. Actually, humanity in that case would look like robots. I can explain my opinion in a construction below that I made according to St. Augustine:

1. Everything good is from God
2. God punishes evildoing and rewards good deeds as true justice
3. If human beings didn’t have free will, then whatever they did would be neither sin nor good deed
4. Therefore, if human being didn’t have free will, then God’s reward or punishment would be unjust
5. However there must be justice in both punishment and reward, ‘cause these are one of the goods that come from God
6. Therefore, it is right for God to give people free will and justice is impossible without free will
7. Therefore God gave us free will to live rightly

    But many people don’t use it as God wants. This idea of free will is also represented in lots of movies and books as well. I’d like to make a short comparison of the idea of free will by St. Augustine with a well-known movie “The devil’s advocate”.  This film includes different problems and ideas of human being’s essence. But the brightest and main point, I think, concern to person’s free choice and preferences. The most exactly can show it the next devil’s monologue from this movie:

    “Human appetite has increased to such degree that can split atoms by means of the desire. Their ego has reached the sizes of a cathedral. Greasing even poor dreams with fancies which are green as dollars, and yellow as gold, it is possible to achieve that each human being will turn to the ambitious emperor and he will idolize himself.

    While we fuss, making one transaction for another, who will take care of our planet? And this is in that time when air is already impossible to breathe and water is impossible to drink and even bee honey gets metal smack of a radio-activity.

    All are busy by that trade in contracts on the future, and after all there is already no future!

    There is the whole billion of Eddy Borzun who goes at a jog trot to the future, and they each is ready to outrage upon the former planet of the Lord, and then to refuse to bear responsibility…” This thought impresses how people use their will incorrectly and what consequences wait them in the future. It is undoubted that namely these consequences are God’s punishment or reward which Augustine tells about in his book II. So this again confirms his theory that if the person has been created by God without ability to sin, then his good deeds couldn’t be attributed to his merits. And as justice also is the divine blessing, but it is applicable only to voluntary acts, then it would be discredited. But the blessing cannot be discredited; therefore there must be free will for fair punishment or encouragement.

    Actually, God is very patient and all-forgiving. And he doesn’t responsible for human being’s evildoing. God gave us just life, reason and free choice of the will. In my opinion, we created all the objects of our disordered desire (which leads to evildoing) ourselves and if there is someone who is really guilty in human beings’ suffering I can say without doubts: they are people themselves. 
 

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