Albrecht Dihle (1982) and others have maintained that the concept of the will originated with Augustine. Certainly there is nothing exactly like the idea of the will to be found in Plato or Aristotle, whereas, by contrast, the notion of the will is prominent in Augustine. In On Free Choice of the Will Augustine writes that the will, which he thinks is the first cause of sin, is itself uncaused. ‘‘What cause of the will could there be?’’ he asks rhetorically, ‘‘except the will itself?’’ (3.17.49.168). So the human will is free. It is also, he thinks, that component of our being that makes us moral agents, capable of sin, but also capable of moral rectitude.
In his efforts to define and reject Pelagianism, Augustine has to try to explain how the grace of God can influence a human will without destroying its freedom. To this challenge he responds that ‘‘free will is not made void through grace, but is established, since grace cures the will whereby righteousness is freely loved’’ (On the Spirit and the Letter, 30.52).
Another divine threat to human free will seems to be God’s foreknowledge. Augustine’s efforts to show that, contrary to appearances, God’s foreknowledge is compatible with free will are most prominent in Book 3 of his On Free Choice of the Will. One of his responses is to say that we cannot will what is not in our power. So what we will is in our power, and, ‘‘since it is indeed in our power, it is free in us’’ (3.3.8.33). Evodius, Augustine’s nominal interlocutor in that work, points out that the very same reasoning that leads us to suspect that God’s foreknowledge of what we will choose to do should apply to God as well. His idea is that God’s perfect knowledge should include what He will do, and yet God’s will is perfectly free. Since God’s foreknowledge does not rule out free will in God’s case, it should not rule out free will in the case of a human agent either (3.3.6.23).
World History
