The Ethics of St.

Augustine
Author(s): James Bissett Pratt
Source: International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Jan., 1903), pp. 222-235
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2376453
Accessed: 11-04-2020 09:32 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to International Journal of Ethics

This content downloaded from 39.52.106.196 on Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:32:39 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
222 International Journal of Ethics.

THE ETHICS OF ST. AUGUSTINE.

No other philosopher has exerted so deep and so abiding

an influence upon popular thought as has St. Augustine. From
his day to our own orthodox theology has been based upon his
teachings. All the evangelical denominations borrow their
views of God and of morals (though with some modifica-
tions) directly from St. Augustine. What he thought, there-
fore, on the vital question of right and wrong, in God and in
man, and the influences which led him to his conclusions, are
subjects of real importance even to-day.
Philosophy in St. Augustine's time, was divided into three
heads: the moral, the logical, and the physical; and God, ac-
cording to Augustine, is the principle of all three. He is the
Good, the Truth, and the Absolutely Beautiful.
Perhaps by saying God is good I do not represent Augus-
tine's teaching so well as I should if I reversed the expression
and said Good is God. God eternally is what He is, and that
is good which is in accordance with God's will. All the moral
attributes we mortals acknowledge-justice, mercy, holiness,
and the like-God has in absolute perfection; yet God so tran-
scends our comprehension that His goodness is as different
from our goodness as the heavens are high above the earth.
All good things are good because they partake in Good-i. e.
in God. And, "discarding these derived goods, conceive, if
you can, the good in itself, and it is God which you conceive.
God is righteousness itself; that which He does is right and
that is right which He does. Obedience to His will, moreover,
is the criterion of right for all His creatures. But Augustine
does not stop here as so many theologians do. He adds, It is
our duty to do the will of God because His will is our deepest
will too. No moral law forced on us entirely from without
and foreign to our nature could be morally binding on us.
"Departure from God would be no vice unless in a nature
whose property it was to abide in God." (De Civitate Dei.)
Even the arch fiend can be called sinful only because it was
originally his deepest will to abide in God, and he disobeyed

This content downloaded from 39.52.106.196 on Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:32:39 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The Ethics of St. Augustine. 223

the commands of his own nature; "for if sin b

sin at all."
What then is sin? This brings us to the great problem of
evil, the central point in Augustine's philosophy.
The Manichaeans taught that evil was a substance, a com-
ponent part of the world, a second and independent principle
opposed to God. The Platonists said that matter was evil and
that it was eternal and uncreated. Neither of these dualistic
views could Augustine accept. Nothing but God could be in-
dependent and self existent, for all things were created by
Him. But, the Manichoeans maintained, if God made all
things He must have made evil, and so He cannot be good.
No, responded Augustine, that does not follow. God made all
things yet He did not make evil; and this because evil is not a
thing. Evil is entirely negative. It is not a substance but the
corruption of substance, the privation of being. "All nature
in so far as it is nature is good. For if it is incorruptible it is
better than a corruptible nature; and if it is corruptible, since
in corruption it becomes less good, it without doubt is good.
But all nature is corruptible or incorruptible. Consequently all
nature is good." ("De Libero Arbitrio.") Augustine would
say "Whatever is is right", and would probably add, What-
ever is not is wrong. All being is good, and since God made
only that which is, not that which is not, He cannot be held
responsible for evil.
But to be more explicit: evil is a turning away from God,
the source of all being-who alone in the fullest sense is-to
something which has less of reality, and this turning away is
due not to God but to the free will of man. The Manichaeans
had said the will was not free, and against this Augustine ve-
hemently protested, as, only by making the will free could the
existence of evil, even in this negative form, be regarded as
compatible with the goodness of God. Free will is a good
and the good God must have given it to the angels and to
Adam at creation. And if one objects that the angels who
were to fall were given a will such that they would turn from
God and that God therefore is responsible, Augustine answers,
No! a free will is a free will. That is, it is an efficient, un-

This content downloaded from 39.52.106.196 on Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:32:39 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
224 International Journal of Ethics.

caused cause. For if you persist in demanding a cause for the

will you only go back to another will, and as there is as much
need for asking the reason for this will you are driven back-
ward in an endless regress and never reach a resting place.
The free evil will is therefore an uncaused cause.
Moreover the very existence of evil depends on the freedom
of the will; "without it there could be neither good nor bad
action." "Whatever be the cause of the will, if one cannot
resist it, one yields to it without sin." ("De Lib. Ar.") The
whole system of Christian theology stands or falls with free-
dom. "Punishment is unjust and recompense becomes non-
sense if man has not a free will." ("De Lib. Ar.")
It is the will, therefore, and the will alone, that is essentially
evil. The thing toward which the evil will turns is neither
evil nor good. Nothing is evil but the evil will.
We have seen that the Manichaean doctrine of necessity
drove Augustine to elaborate and fortify the doctrine of free-
dom on which his ethical system was founded. Now no sooner
had he finished with the Manichaeans than he found himself in
trouble with the Pelagians. The Pelagians made freedom the
central point of their doctrines and carried it out to its logical
and extreme conclusions-conclusions which Augustine
thought subversive to all sound doctrine.
It is possible that when Augustine took up the cudgels in
behalf of freedom against the Manichaeans he did not foresee
the logical end of the struggle. For if the will is free to
choose good or evil then it is possible for us to be good in our
own strength, grace is not essential, the redemption was not
absolutely necessary, and the power of the church is materially
decreased and its sacraments are no longer indispensable.
Pelagius and his coadjutor Celestius had the hardihood to fol-
low out this doctrine of freedom even to these lengths; and
Augustine felt that here was greater danger to the true faith
then even from Manichaeism, and that it was his duty to destroy
this new heresy in the germ. Yet a decided difficulty con-
fronted him; for if he admitted freedom how could he con-
sistently avoid the conclusions of the Pelagians? How could
freedom and saving grace both be retained

This content downloaded from 39.52.106.196 on Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:32:39 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The Ethics of St. Augustine. 225

Briefly it was done in this way: God, said Augustine, gave

Adam perfect freedom to choose both good and evil. Adam
chose evil and was justly punished by the corruption of his na-
ture and the consequent loss of freedom to choose the good.
Now Adam was the representative of the race and all his de-
scendants sinned in him and justly inherited from him his cor-
rupted nature and his inability to choose the right. There-
fore, as all men are necessarily sinners, it would only be just
if all were eternally damned. But, God out of his mercy has
provided for some a way of escape by sending His Son, the
Second Person in the Trinity, to offer Himself as an atoning
sacrifice and so to satisfy divine justice. As a result of this,
God is enabled by the application of grace and of the water of
baptism to save certain members of this corrupted and unde-
serving race whom from all eternity he foreknew and elected
unto life. Nor are the elect chosen from any merit of their
own, but purely by the will of God. The rest, the great ma-
jority of the race, are to receive throughout eternity the pun-
ishment which all deserved.
This question of freedom and grace Augustine made, espec-
ially in his later years, the vital point of his philosophy. And
we ought to consider it somewhat in detail.
And first as to Adam's fall. How was it possible, the Pela-
gians asked, that we all sinned in Adam? To this Augustine
responded that just how we sinned in him was a mystery; but
that we did so was proved by many passages of Scripture, such
as "In Adam all die" etc. Moreover it was only natural that
he, being the representative and progenitor of the race, should
transmit his corrupted nature to his descendants. If Augus-
tine had held the generation of souls, the inheritance of orig-
inal sin would have been much simpler; but at any rate our
bodies were descended from Adam, and as he was the first of
the race he stood for it and the results of his action were inher-
ited along with our bodies and our animal natures. "God, in
fact, the Author of natures and not of vices, created man pure,
but man corrupted by his own nature and justly condemned,
engendered children corrupted and condemned like himself.
We were truly all in him. We had not yet received our indi-

This content downloaded from 39.52.106.196 on Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:32:39 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 226 International Journal of Ethics.

vidual essence, but the germ from which we w

already was, and as it already was, and as it was
by sin and bound by a just condemnation, man
man could not be born in any other condition." ("De. Civ.
Dei.") "For nothing else could be born from them (Adam
and Eve) than that which they themselves had been." ("De
Civ. Dei.") "Thus from the bad use of freedom there origi-
nated the whole train of evil" which leads to eternal damna-
tion,-"those only being excepted who are freed by the grace
of God." ("De. Civ. Dei.")
Both Pelagius and Augustine appealed to facts to support
their doctrines. Consciousness showed, Pelagius maintained,
that we had the freedom of choice; this was the fundamental
presupposition of a large part of our thinking. Augustine, on
the other hand, pointed out the universality of sin and argued
from this that it was not an accident but a fundamental part
of human nature. The will was thoroughly corrupted; man
of his own strength could not be perfect. No absolutely sin-
less person could be found. Truly there was a law in our mem-
bers warring against the law of our mind and bringing us into
captivity to the law of sin. Moreover we can see plainly that
the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. The laws
of heredity, as we would call them, are like the laws of Fate.
You can never escape them and you know it. The conscious-
ness of every man bears witness to the corruption of his na-
ture. The blighting, damning effect of original sin is terribly
inevitable.
Augustine would never admit that he had entirely given
up free will; for he himself in his controversy with the Mani-
chaeans had founded his doctrine of evil upon it. The will was
still free, he maintained, but "the will makes use of its free-
dom only for evil and could not do the good without the help
of grace." ("De Civ.") Freedom, he says, consists in the
power to do as we will. But what we will is determined. We
cannot have the power of choice, for that would give too much
power to our nature and make good and evil actions spring
from the same root. The choice must have a cause and the two
real causes are original sin and grace. Man is nevertheless re-

This content downloaded from 39.52.106.196 on Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:32:39 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The Ethics of St. Augustine. 227

sponsible for his actions because he does what he does with

his will and not against it.
The Pelagians pressed the matter still further and main-
tained that what Augustine described as freedom was not free-
dom at all and that a man must be free to choose either good or
evil, or he could not be called either good or bad. To this Au-
gustine responded that good and evil were not conditioned by
any such form of freedom. For if that were the only sort of
freedom, God and the saints could not be considered free, since
they were above the possibility of evil. Free will is not the
power of choice; it is, to be exact, "a movement of the soul
which without outward constraint bears itself toward some-
thing it does not wish to lose or wishes to attain." There are
three kinds of freedom: that of God, the good angels, and the
saints, who are free to do right but not to do wrong; that of
Adam before the fall, who was free to do either right or
wrong; that of unregenerated men after the fall, who are free
to do wrong but not to do right.
But "as in Adam all die so in Christ shall all be made
alive."
The salvation made possible through the Redemption is ap-
plied by means of grace which is given to the elect and to the
elect only; and those to whom this grace is not given, cannot
do right. "To turn toward God, that is for us impossible with-
out His excitation and without His help." ("De Peccatorum
Meritis et Remissione.") The most perfect man without
grace cannot do right any more than the most perfect eye can
see without light.
Those to whom grace is to be given were from all eternity
foreknown and predestinated by God. Their number is definite
and cannot be increased or diminished. Those who are
elected and predestined to salvation will be saved; the rest
will be damned. If there are some who obey but who are
elected to death, they will find themselves destitute of the
strength necessary to obey, in order that they may cease
to obey. The eternal decrees of God are not to be altered
by the actions of any mortals. "The human race is so
apportioned that in some is displayed the efficacy of merciful

This content downloaded from 39.52.106.196 on Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:32:39 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
228 International Journal of Ethics.

grace, in the rest the efficacy of just retribution. For both

could not be displayed in all; for if all had remained under
punishment of just condemnation there would have been seen
in no one the mercy of redeeming grace. And on the other
hand, if all had been transferred from darkness to light the
severity of retribution would have been manifest in none. But
many more are left under punishment than are delivered from
it, in order that it may thus be shown what was due to all."
("De Civ.")
Those who are elected unto life are no more worthy than
those who are elected unto death. It is not for our merits we
are chosen; the only basis of choice is the will of God. "Other-
wise grace would not be Grace; for Grace is thus called be-
cause it is given freely." "It is, then, not in virtue of their
merits nor by free will that men are restored, but by grace.
The good will comes from God. Repentance itself is the gift
of God." ("Encheiridion.") "Within the number of the
elect, even those who have led the worst lives are by the goo
ness of God led to repentance." "The first desire of the good
is inspired by God in such a manner that man absolutely does
not commence to turn from evil to good if it is not brought
about in him by the spontaneous and gratuitous pity of God."
("Contra duas Epistolas Pelagianorum.") "God in fact oper-
ates in the hearts of men to incline their wills where He
pleases, either to good according to His mercy, or to evil ac-
cording to their merits." ("De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio.")
"None would be exempt from punishment which he merits if
he were not delivered by a grace he does not merit, and such
is the division of men that one sees in some free pity, in the
rest just vengeance." ("De Civ.")
The elect, moreover, cannot possibly fail of salvation. No
man, to be sure, need accept grace if he does not want to; but
the power of God is so great that he will want to. Grace in
short is "insurmountable." "The faith of the elect which
worketh by love either never faileth, or, if it does, is repaired
before life is ended; and, all intervening iniquity blotted out,
perseverance unto the end is imparted to them." ("De Corrup-
tione.") God makes men to persevere in good. "God makes

This content downloaded from 39.52.106.196 on Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:32:39 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The Ethics of St. Augustin. 229

whom He will religious." "Man never does good things which

God does not make him do."
But while the elect -are to be saved by receiving the grace of
God they can receive it only through the sacraments of the
church, especially through baptism. In this act the nature is
purified, the corruption of the will is done away, and the ability
to do right is restored. Of course none of those predestined
to life will fail of it for lack of baptism, and God brings it
about that all the elect shall be baptized. And so one can say
with assurance that outside the church there is no possibility
of salvation. There is only one exception to this. If a man
die unbaptized but confessing Christ this confession is of the
same efficacy for pardon as if he had been baptized. But this
is an extreme case, and if there is an opportunity for baptism
mere confession will not save. And good works without bap-
tism of course will not save; for only baptism can, in a mys-
terious manner, purge the nature and remove the curse of
original sin.
To say that none outside of the church are saved is not the
same thing as saying that all within the church are saved. On
the contrary, a large proportion of those who have received the
sacraments are elected unto death. And no one, not even the
holiest, can tell whether or not he is among God's chosen few;
for if he knew it, the knowledge might make him proud and
sinful. This uncertainty, of course, extends only to those
within the church; it is easy enough to tell where all others
belong. And inasmuch as within the church alone is there
any sort of safety, it behooves all those without it to be bap-
tized and received within the Catholic faith.
All those whom God has not predestined unto life will re-
ceive the due reward of their guilty natures and be eternally
punished. "Those who are not delivered by grace, either
because they could not yet hear, or because they did not wish
to obey, or because their age did not permit them to hear;
these, not having received the baptism of regeneration which
they might have received in order to be saved, are justly con-
demned." ("De Natura et Gratia.") "But for the rest (those
not elected unto life) where are they but in that mass of perdi-
Vol. XIII.-No. 2 I6

This content downloaded from 39.52.106.196 on Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:32:39 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
230 International Journal of Ethics.

tion where the Divine Justice most justly leaves them?-where

the Tyrians are and the Sidonians are, who would have been
able to believe if they had seen the miracles of Christ; but who,
inasmuch as faith was not destined for them, were denied the
means of faith as well." ("De Dono Perseverantia.")
The punishment of the damned will be eternal. It must be
measured not by the time of their acts but by the nature of
their wills. And as they would have wished to enjoy pleasure
eternally it is just that they should be punished eternally. And
still the condemned soul ought to be grateful to God, for it
exists, and existence in any form is better than non-existence.
There may perhaps be degrees in punishment; the infant
who dies at birth will not suffer so much as the criminal. Still
"for heathen unbaptized children there is no hope in the world
to come of ever seeing God. Their punishment may be a thing
of degrees, but it will be endless." ("De Civ.") It is only
right that infants should be punished, for it is evident that they
take the nature of their parents; and as their parents' nature
is corrupt, theirs must be. The same may be said of the
heathen. To be sure, Augustine says in one striking passage,
"All those who having believed in God since the foundation of
the world and having had some knowledge of Him have lived
in piety and justice, keeping the Commandments, have without
doubt been saved by Him." ("Epistole.") Yet this does not
refer to the heathen. For however virtuous they may have
seemed, such as Fabius, Scipio, Pythagoras, and Plato, their
virtues were but "splendid vices," without justice, since jus-
tice is impossible without faith. For justice means belief in
God-not in any God, but in the one true God-and grati-
tude to Him. And as these men never heard of the true God
they cannot have had faith, and so cannot have been just.
"The heathen who have not had the faith of Christ are not
just and do not please God, to whom it is impossible to
be pleasing without faith. Fabricius will be punished
less than Catiline not because he was good but because Cati-
line was bad; and if Fabricius was less impious than Cati-
line it is not because he had any real virtues, but because he

This content downloaded from 39.52.106.196 on Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:32:39 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The Ethics of St. Augustine. 23I

was not so far removed from the real virtues." ("Contra

Julianum Pelagianorum." )
If now one says, as the Pelagians did, that it is not just that
the heathen and unbaptized children should be punished, Au-
gustine replies that it would be only just if the whole race were
condemned to eternal punishment, and that it is only through
the infinite mercy of God that any are saved. But if one presses
the question and says that it cannot be just to punish a man
whose will is not free, Augustine falls back on the answer that
it is a mystery. God's ways are not our ways, neither are His
thoughts our thoughts. God's justice is incomprehensible,
-it is not like our justice and cannot be measured by human
standards. We only know that somehow or other His will is
perfectly just. And we must stop there.
This in short is Augustine's teaching as to the basis of
Right, Sin, and Punishment.
Augustine's doctrine of Right he did not get from the church
-but apparently worked it out by himself, combining in it the
best of Greek and Christian ethics. It is in my opinion not
only one of the best things in Augustine's philosophy but also
the soundest ethical theory that I know. I will briefly give my
reasons for prizing it so highly.
What, then, is the basis of right? The average theologian
of Augustine's day and of our own would respond, Obedience
to the will of God. But why obey the will of God? Because
He is mighty and will punish disobedience? If you say Yes
-you have shifted your basis of right from God's will either to
-might or to the avoidance of suffering, and you tacitly admit
that if the devil were the mightiest we ought to obey him. But
-you may respond No, we ought to obey God because He is
good. And again you have shifted your ground; for in say-
ing this you have admitted a criterion outside of God's will
-by which His will is judged good. The real basis and cri-
terion of right must evidently be sought elsewhere.
If you say that the criterion of right must be the fulfillment
of the demands of the greatest number I ask why ought I to
fulfill these demands? And if you respond, Because they will
bring about the greatest good to the whole, I ask again, Why

This content downloaded from 39.52.106.196 on Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:32:39 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 232 International Journal of Ethics.

is it my duty to seek any one's good but my ow

cannot answer me without retreating to some new criterion.
In like manner hedonism will never be able to show why
pleasure as such should be the chief object of endeavor; nor
can the Christian doctrine of gratitude to God answer our per-
sistent "Why?" And the same criticism, I maintain, holds of
every system of ethics. However logical they may pretend to
be, when you have traced them back as far as they will go,
there is always an unanswered Why staring you in the face.
As Mr. Arthur Balfour says, "If a proposition announcing
obligation requires proof at all, one term of that proof must
always be a proposition announcing obligation which itself re-
quires no proof." "If we have a moral system at all there must
be contained in it at least one ethical proposition of which no
proof can be given or required."
If, therefore, we are to have any basis for our ethics it must
be in a region where no answer to the eternal Why is required.
And this region can be found nowhere but in the will of the
individual. This is, of course, to take refuge in the autonomy
of the will and in the ethics of Aristotle. Why ought I to live
consistently with my own deepest nature? Why do I like one
thing rather than another? Why do I seek for good at all?
There is no answer to any of these questions; but the questions
themselves are, impertinent. We have reached here an ulti-
mate fact which we must merely accept; we can never get be-
yond our deepest instinctive nature.
Nothing is good apart from the will. Everything is good
so far as it satisfies the will. And the highest good for each.
man is that which most fully satisfies his most fundamental
will. If it is not really my inmost will to obey God there is.
no sense in which it can be said to be my duty to obey Him.
Duty is not a thing that can be forced on me from without.
The fundamental basis for all right for me must be found in
my own nature.
Perhaps I have read into Augustine more than he really
thought, but if I am not mistaken this is what he meant when
he said: "Departure from God would be no vice unless in a na-
ture whose property it was to abide in God," and, "If sin be
natural it is not sin at all."

This content downloaded from 39.52.106.196 on Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:32:39 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The Ethics of St. Augustine. 233

But if we accept this view we must not be blind to its logical

consequences. If consistency with one's nature be the criterion
of right, then it will follow that each man is the measure of
morality to himself, and that to a man whose nature was fun-
damentally impure, impurity would be right and purity wrong.
There is no escaping this admission. And I see no way of
reconciling the autonomy of the will with the universality of
any ethical law except the way that Augustine took; namely,
to postulate that, while the basis of right for each man is his
own nature, the natures of all men are fundamentally the same;
that while we differ in innumerable particulars, the deepest
will in us all is identical. Thus the applicability of ethical laws
is made universal. But something more than this is needed to
give morality the authority which it should have, and this Au-
gustine gives by saying that we are fundamentally alike be-
cause we are all made in the image of our Creator; that the
deepest will in us is also the will of God. And so a divine
sanction is given to our moral convictions, and the deepest
thing in the universe becomes the distinction between right and
wrong as we know right and wrong.
I cannot close this essay without saying something on Au-
gustine's doctrine of freedom and grace, although the criti-
cisms to which it is open must be obvious to every one. The
metaphysical question of freedom I will not discuss. It is very
possible that we are not free; the majority of philosophers
have agreed with Augustine on this point. It is the ethical
aspect of freedom that is of importance in considering Au-
gustine's philosophy, and we must consider it here.
And first of all, Is goodness possible without freedom of
choice? The natural answer is the one which the Pelagians
gave, namely, that goodness depends entirely upon freedom.
It seems to me that in this answer goodness has been confused
with merit. Goodness, in my opinion, does not depend on free
will. It is easy to conceive of perfect goodness, without any
real possibility of evil. God is good but it is inconceivable
that He should do wrong. A man who loved good so thor-
oughly that evil could have no attraction for him, but would
be to him absolutely and always as disagreeable and repulsive

This content downloaded from 39.52.106.196 on Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:32:39 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
234 International Journal of Ethics.

as pain, one who had even no theoretic ability to do wrong,

such a man would still be thoroughly good. And a man who
loved evil so that he could not possibly do right, the law of
whose members perpetually conquered the law of his mind
with absolutely irresistible force, a man who had even theo-
retically no power to avoid evil, such a man would still be
thoroughly bad.
And yet neither of these men would have any merit or de-
merit. Good as the former might be, it would be as absurd to
praise or reward him for his goodness as it would be to praise
or reward a normal human being for not killing his mother.
So, too, while we call God good we cannot say He is meri-
torious. In like manner we could not blame the bad man.
There seem, therefore, to be two ethical standards, one of
goodness and one of merit; and while merit is impossible with-
out freedom, goodness is independent of freedom.
Augustine, therefore, was not inconsistent when he said
that we were wicked in spite of the fact that we could not do
right. But he was wrong when he said that though we were
not free still our sins were our own fault and that we would
justly be punished for them. Punishment under such circum-
stances would be as unjust as punishment of the innocent. For
if we cannot but do evil the blame does not belong to us but to
Him who made us as we are.
If, therefore, we are not free to choose the right, God is
responsible for our sin. No juggling with Adam's fall and in-
herited guilt can change the fact. If God sends us into the
world so corrupted that we cannot help sinning, it is not our
fault but His.-And this whether our corrupted natures are
given us without reason or as a punishment for the sin of our
progenitor. And to punish us for such sins is injustice if any-
thing is. In another connection Augustine himself says: "Pun-
ishment is unjust and recompense becomes nonsense if man has
not a free will." Nor can Augustine avoid this plain result
by appealing to a mystery. To say that God's justice is incom-
prehensible is to say nothing; to say it is different from ours
is to say it is not justice at all.
See, then, how Augustine, to uphold the power of his

This content downloaded from 39.52.106.196 on Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:32:39 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The Ethics of St. Augustine. 235

church, has painted the character of God. Before all eternity

He determined to create a world of free human beings. He
foresaw that the first pair would make use of their freedom to
sin and that He would punish the sin by taking away freedom
both from them and from their descendants. Out of His in-
finite mercy He then chose by caprice certain individuals whom
He would save by "irresistible" grace and by the application
of the waters of baptism. All others He foreordained should
be unable to do right. Foreknowing all this, He created His
world. The race fell and all men sinned as He knew they
would. And against all but those few whom He had chosen,
His righteous vengeance was kindled-against some because
their natures, corrupted as a punishment for their ancestor's
sin, led them into evil, against others because He had-denied
them an opportunity of believing in Him, against others be-
cause they died in infancy before being baptized. All these
three classes of persons, therefore, constituting the great bulk
of the race, will be eternally damned in hell for their infinite
guilt-even as God from all eternity foreordained.
The necessity of grace and the consequent loss of freedom
by man, Augustine deliberately made the crucial, pivotal doc-
trine in his religious philosophy. And it has poisoned all the
rest. If he had been frankly and avowedly a determinist
throughout, his system would at least have been consistent.
But desire to keep both freedom and determinism has filled it
with self contradictions. We are free and yet not free, like
the Trinity who are one yet not one. The elect are above all
possibility of sin, yet cannot know they are elected or they
would sin. Evil is founded on freedom, yet there is no free-
dom. Sin cannot be natural, yet it is natural. Religious effort
is necessary, yet it is not necessary, since everything is deter-
mined from all eternity, and we cannot change the result. God
is merciful, yet He condemns to eternal punishment innocent
babes for the lack of a few drops of water. He is just, yet
He damns multitudes of men because He has "inclined their
wills to evil."
JAMES BISSETT PRATT.
ELMIRA, N. Y.

This content downloaded from 39.52.106.196 on Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:32:39 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms