4
Augustine’s On Free Choice of the Will
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/44458/chapter/376404006 by Hebrew University of Jerusalem user on 10 July 2023
Why Do We Sin?
4.1. Why Do We Sin, and Who Is to Blame?
The last two chapters showed Augustine arguing that our free wills are the
source of evil in the world, and that God gave us free will in order to live
rightly. In Book III of On Free Choice of the Will, Augustine pursues two fur-
ther, related questions. First, why do we sin, or as Evodius puts it, what “is
the source of the movement by which the will turns away from the common
and unchangeable good toward its own good, or the good of others, or lower
goods, all of which are changeable” (70; this chapter follows Williams’s trans-
lation of On Free Choice of the Will in Augustine [1993])? Second, who or
what is responsible for our sinning? In particular, are we to blame, or is
our maker?
Augustine begins by arguing that the will is not moved to sin by its very
nature: he insists that it is evident that the will’s sinning is blameworthy, and
that if it were moved to sin by its nature, its sinning would not be blame-
worthy. Evodius makes the point by drawing a comparison with the natural
and blameless movement of a stone:
I don’t deny that this movement, by which the stone seeks the lowest place,
is a movement of the stone. But it is a natural movement. If that’s the sort
of movement the soul has, then the soul’s movement is also natural. And if
it is moved naturally, it cannot justly be blamed; even if it is moved toward
something evil, it is compelled by its own nature. But since we don’t doubt
that this movement is blameworthy, we must absolutely deny that it is nat-
ural, and so it is not similar to the natural movement of a stone. (71)
Augustine’s suggestion here is that the will must not be determined by its
very nature to will one way or another. Rather, it must be free in the sense
that it could, consistent with its nature, choose either what is blameworthy
Saints, Heretics, and Atheists. Jeffrey K. McDonough, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197563847.003.0004
Why Do We Sin? 31
or praiseworthy. In this passage at least, Augustine thus appears to hold
that freedom and responsibility presuppose a libertarian conception
of freedom. Such a conception suggests that if we could rewind history,
keeping everything else the same, we could make choices differently the
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/44458/chapter/376404006 by Hebrew University of Jerusalem user on 10 July 2023
second time around. Augustine—rightly, I think—recognizes that given
such a conception of the will’s freedom, the question “Why do we sin?”
cannot be given a deeply explanatory answer. It’s just something we do.
Having suggested that the question “Why do we sin?” must bottom out
in an appeal to our free choices, Augustine next suggests that it is nonethe-
less utterly clear that we are to blame for our sinful actions. Evodius is made
to say,
There is nothing I feel so firmly and so intimately as that I have a will
by which I am moved to enjoy something. If the will by which I choose
or refuse things is not mine, then I don’t know what I can call mine. So
if I use my will to do something evil, whom can I hold responsible but
myself? . . . If the movement of the will by which it turns this way or that
were not voluntary and under its own control, a person would not de-
serve praise for turning to higher things or blame for turning to lower
things, as if swinging on the hinge of the will. Furthermore, there would
be no point in admonishing people to forget about lower things and
strive for what is eternal, so that they might refuse to live badly but in-
stead will to live rightly. And anyone who does not think that we ought
to admonish people in this way deserves to be banished from the human
race. (72–73)
This paragraph gives voice to a number of important themes that we
won’t dwell on here but that reappear in later chapters—for example, the
thought that praise and blame presuppose libertarian freedom, and that
there could be no point in rewarding or admonishing people if they were
determined by their natures to act in a certain way. Most important for
our present purposes is that with his declaration of our responsibility for
our sinful actions, Augustine has essentially completed his answer to the
overarching question of Book III. We sin because we choose to sin—and
because we choose to sin, we are responsible for sinning. In the rest of the
dialogue, Augustine defends this line of thought against a number of nat-
ural objections.
32 Saints, Heretics, and Atheists
4.2. Is Libertarian Freedom Consistent with Divine
Foreknowledge?
The first worry Augustine raises concerns the compatibility of his libertarian
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/44458/chapter/376404006 by Hebrew University of Jerusalem user on 10 July 2023
view of freedom with his doctrinal commitment to God’s omniscience.
Augustine pinpoints the tension himself:
How is it that these two propositions are not contradictory and incon-
sistent: (1) God has foreknowledge of everything in the future; and
(2) We sin by the will, not by necessity? For, you say, if God foreknows that
someone is going to sin, then it is necessary that he sin. But if it is neces-
sary, the will has no choice about whether to sin; there is an inescapable and
fixed necessity. And so you fear that this argument forces us into one of two
positions: either we draw the heretical conclusion that God does not fore-
know everything in the future; or, if we cannot accept this conclusion, we
must admit that sin happens by necessity and not by will. (74)
In a nutshell, Augustine’s worry is that God must know what we are going
to do even before we do it. But if God knows that, say, I’m going to steal the
car even before I steal it, then it seems that there’s no way that I’m not going
to steal the car, so it seems that not stealing the car is not really an option,
and this might seem to conflict with Augustine’s libertarian conception of
free will.
Augustine’s narrowest response to this first worry essentially skirts the
explanatory problem by clarifying the content of what God foreknows.
According to Augustine, God foreknows not only that you will do x and that
the stone will do y, but that you will freely do x and that the stone will neces-
sarily do y. Since what God foreknows is that you will freely do x, it follows
that you will freely do x, and so it follows that you are responsible for doing
x! This might seem to skirt the explanatory problem insofar as it tells us that
libertarian freedom and God’s foreknowledge are consistent, but it doesn’t
really explain how they are consistent. It seems unlikely that anyone who ear-
nestly raised Augustine’s first worry would be fully satisfied with Augustine’s
narrow response.
Perhaps anticipating that not everyone would be satisfied with his narrow
response, Augustine also offers an analogy that might be thought to make
his position more palatable. He suggests that just as our being pretty sure
that someone is going to sin doesn’t undermine the sinner’s responsibility, we
Why Do We Sin? 33
shouldn’t suppose that God’s knowing with absolute certainty that someone
is going to sin undermines the sinner’s responsibility either. Augustine writes,
Unless I am mistaken, you do not force someone to sin just because you
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/44458/chapter/376404006 by Hebrew University of Jerusalem user on 10 July 2023
foreknow that he is going to sin. Nor does your foreknowledge force him to
sin, even if he is undoubtedly going to sin—since otherwise you would not
have genuine foreknowledge. So if your foreknowledge is consistent with
his freedom in sinning, so that you foreknow what someone else is going to
do by his own will, then God forces no one to sin, even though he foresees
those who are going to sin by their own will. (78)
The thought here perhaps makes Augustine’s narrowest response more satis-
fying. Augustine seems right that I can be pretty certain that someone is going
to sin without thereby causing him to sin. So why can’t God be completely
certain that someone is going to sin without causing her to sin? Nonetheless,
we might still crave a fuller explanation of how responsibility and foreknowl-
edge could be compatible. We’ll return to such concerns in section 4.5 after
considering two more questions that Augustine raised.
4.3. Can’t God Be Blamed for Creating Beings That He
Knows Will Sin?
Having suggested that God knows that some beings will sin, and are respon-
sible for their sinning, Augustine has Evodius raise another natural con-
cern: even if all this is granted, isn’t God nonetheless responsible for creating
a being that he knows will sin? We have already seen a version of this worry,
when Evodius asked why God would give us free will if he knew we were
going to sin. This version is slightly different insofar as it asks not why God
would give us free will, but if God has not in fact erred in making creatures
that sin, that is, in making creatures that are in an important sense imperfect.
The foundation of Augustine’s response can be found in two principles of
his theodicy—that is, his explanation of why a good god would allow evil.
The first principle is that since existence itself is good, each individual thing,
insofar as it exists, is good. Although a bad turtle might be worse than a good
turtle, even a bad turtle, insofar as it is an existing thing, is good, and indeed
is even better than a stone or a stick. (Augustine makes this point by insisting
that a drunk person is still better than the good wine that he drinks.) A turtle
34 Saints, Heretics, and Atheists
is thus rightly called “bad” only in the sense that it is not as good as other
turtles (or not as good as a turtle should be). The second principle is that
while there are different degrees of goodness, God’s justice demands that he
create every level of goodness. Although zebras might be better than turtles,
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/44458/chapter/376404006 by Hebrew University of Jerusalem user on 10 July 2023
which in turn might be better than stones, the world would not be better if
God had created only zebras and not turtles or stones. No one should thus
complain that the world contains lesser beings—for example, turtles and
stones—as well as greater beings—for example, zebras and humans.
With his two principles in hand, Augustine is in a position to respond to
Evodius’s question: There is nothing blameworthy in God creating not only
angels and nonsinning humans but also sinning humans, turtles, and stones,
since all of these things are good insofar as they exist, and the world is better
for having all levels of being. In short, it is better for God to have created even
inveterate sinners than to have not created them at all:
Why, then, should we not praise God with unspeakable praise, simply be-
cause when he made those souls who would persevere in the laws of justice,
he made others who he foresaw would sin, even some who would persevere
in sin? For even such souls are better than souls that cannot sin because
they lack reason and the free choice of the will. And these souls in turn are
better than the brilliance of any material object, however splendid, which
some people mistakenly worship instead of the Most High God. In the
order of material creation, from the heavenly choirs to the number of the
hairs on our heads, the beauty of good things at every level is so perfectly
harmonious that only the most ignorant could say, “What is this? Why is
this?”—for all things were created in their proper order. How much more
ignorant, then, to say this of a soul whose glory, however dimmed and tar-
nished it might become, far exceeds the dignity of any material object! (82)
Augustine’s answer to the question “Can God be blamed for creating beings
that he knows will sin?” is thus, in a way, remarkably straightforward. His
answer is “no.” On the contrary, God, according to Augustine, should be
praised for creating sinners just as he should be praised for creating sunsets
and rainbows, and indeed, he should be praised even more for creating
sinners—who are superior by their very nature—than for creating sunsets
and rainbows. Even if sinners are not as good as they should be, they are
still—by their very natures—very good indeed.
Why Do We Sin? 35
4.4. Is It the Case That Some of Us Must Sin?
Augustine now takes up another natural line of objection: Why didn’t God
simply order creation in such a way that no one was unhappy? After all, it
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/44458/chapter/376404006 by Hebrew University of Jerusalem user on 10 July 2023
seems that if God is good he would want everyone to be happy, and if he were
omnipotent he could have brought it about that everyone is happy. Augustine
initially responds by claiming that, first, the order of the world is just (since
nothing has a right to a higher place on the great chain of being than it actu-
ally enjoys) and, second, that since existence itself is good, the world could
not be better by lacking the existence of anything that actually does exist.
Augustine even gives us a nice little analogy: just as the world is better for
having the moon and the sun, even though the moon is not as bright as the
sun, so the world is better for having people destined to suffer even though
they are not as good as those destined to be happy.
But Augustine’s discussion of happiness is really intended to set up a
deeper objection: The sinning and suffering of at least some people now seem
necessary for the perfection of the universe, and thus it seems to be the case
that at least some of us must sin. And if that’s right, then it might seem unfair
that God punishes sinners, since their sinning is after all necessary for the
perfection of the world. Here’s Augustine:
Someone . . . might raise this objection: “If our unhappiness completes the
perfection of the whole, then this perfection would be missing something
if we were always happy. Therefore, if no soul becomes unhappy except by
sinning, it follows that even our sins are necessary to the perfection of the
universe that God created. How then can God justly punish our sins when
they are necessary to ensure that his creation is complete and perfect?” (89)
The objection is a good one and it arises naturally from Augustine’s own the-
odicy. If God creates turtles because they are good and an essential part of
a good world, it doesn’t seem right to blame turtles for existing or having
hard shells. But, analogously, if God creates sinners because they are good (in
themselves) and an essential part of a good world, what sense does it make to
blame them for existing as sinners, that is, for their sinning?
Augustine responds to this challenge by essentially arguing that it is not
sinners that are required for the perfection of the universe but rather freedom
and justice. That is to say, the universe’s perfection requires the creation of
36 Saints, Heretics, and Atheists
creatures capable of sinning as well as the punishment of those creatures if
they sin. It does not, however, require sin and unhappiness themselves:
What is necessary to the perfection of the universe is not our sins or our
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/44458/chapter/376404006 by Hebrew University of Jerusalem user on 10 July 2023
unhappiness, but the existence of souls that, simply because they are souls,
sin if they so will and become unhappy if they sin. . . . When those who do
not sin are happy, the universe is perfect; but when those who sin are un-
happy, the universe is no less perfect. The fact that there are souls that will
be unhappy if they sin and happy if they do not sin means that the universe
is complete and perfect with respect to every nature that it contains. Sin and
the punishment for sin are not natures, but characteristics of natures, the
former voluntary and the latter punitive. The voluntary characteristic that
comes about when one sins is disgraceful, so the punitive characteristic is
used to place the soul in an order where it is not disgraceful for such a soul
to be, forcing it to conform to the beauty of the universe as a whole, so that
the ugliness of sin is remedied by the punishment of sin. (89)
Augustine’s profound suggestion here runs as follows: (i) The harmony of the
whole requires the existence of creatures that can freely choose to sin or not
to sin. (ii) Those that freely sin introduce a kind of disorder into the world by
making themselves unworthy of the position they hold in the hierarchy of
being. (iii) God restores that order by punishing those sinners, and in doing
so effectively moves them down the chain of being, restoring harmony to the
whole. Perhaps, in Augustine’s view, it doesn’t really matter so much whether
you sin or not, what really matters is that those who don’t sin are rewarded,
and that those who do sin are punished: that order and justice prevail.
4.5. Three Views on Divine Foreknowledge
As we’ve seen, in Book III of On Free Choice of the Will, Augustine raises
a concern that has long exercised theists: how can human freedom be con-
sistent with divine foreknowledge? Compatibilism provides one relatively
straightforward solution to this apparent tension. In chapter 2, section 7,
we noted that optimistic compatibilists hold that humans can be free and
responsible for their actions even if their actions are causally determined
by past events and the laws of nature. Under such a view, it seems that God
can know what I will do tomorrow in much the same way that I can know
Why Do We Sin? 37
what a billiard ball will do when I strike it with my cue stick. Since optimistic
compatibilists deny that we must have libertarian freedom in order to be re-
sponsible for our actions, they see no difficulty in supposing both that God
knows that we will sin and that we are nonetheless responsible for sinning.
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/44458/chapter/376404006 by Hebrew University of Jerusalem user on 10 July 2023
Although it provides a relatively clear-cut response to the tension engen-
dered by divine foreknowledge, many theists in particular reject optimistic
compatibilism because they think that libertarian freedom is necessary for
our being responsible for our actions.
Other approaches attempt to reconcile libertarian freedom and divine
foreknowledge—indeed, far too many to consider here. Nonetheless, we
might highlight two especially interesting, and I think interestingly opposed,
views. The central difference between these two views can be seen in the fol-
lowing scenario: Suppose you decided to go to class today. Do you know what
you would have done for the rest of the day, the rest of the year, the rest of
your life, if you hadn’t decided to go to class today? Your decision to cut class
might have led you to encounter different options, and to make still other
decisions. Since each decision you make quickly ramifies and intersects with
new decisions (and the decisions of others), it seems that it would be very
difficult—practically impossible—for you to know exactly what you would
have done had you not gone to class today. But what about God? Does God
know how the rest of your life would have turned out if you had decided not
to go to class? In terminology that philosophers commonly use, we can ask,
does God know not just all factual truths, but also all counterfactual truths
about you?
Molinism, named after Luis de Molina, a sixteenth- century Jesuit,
maintains that while we enjoy libertarian freedom, God knows all the fac-
tual and counterfactual truths about how we would choose in any given cir-
cumstance. So, with this view, although I am free to choose whatever flavor
I want when I walk into the ice cream store, God knows with absolute cer-
tainty what flavor I will choose in those circumstances. Furthermore, he
knows what flavor I would have chosen under different circumstances, in-
deed under all possible circumstances. If I had decided to go to a different
ice cream store, God knows what flavor I would have freely chosen in those
circumstances as well.
Molinism can claim several advantages as a view of God’s foreknowl-
edge. First, it promises a way of reconciling libertarian freedom and divine
foreknowledge, since it allows God to know exactly what we will do while
still allowing that we choose freely and that we could have done otherwise.
38 Saints, Heretics, and Atheists
Second, under this view, God is able to exercise full providential control
over creation. In other words, God knows exactly what he is getting into
when he creates the world and each creature in it. He is never surprised by
what unfolds. Third, Molinism is consistent with a common response to the
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/44458/chapter/376404006 by Hebrew University of Jerusalem user on 10 July 2023
problem of evil. Since counterfactual truths are independent of God’s will
(because they are dependent upon what we choose), God may be credited
with having created the best possible world (or at least a sufficiently good
world), even though our world contains free creatures that introduce sin and
suffering into it.
In spite of its apparent virtues, many theists have found Molinism un-
acceptable as an account of divine foreknowledge. Let’s considered two
objections. First, one might wonder if the Molinist view is at root coherent.
In particular, one might wonder how it can be both that I enjoy libertarian
freedom and that there are all these counterfactual truths about what I would
exactly do in various circumstances. In short, how could it be that I could
have chosen otherwise, and yet it also be the case that God could know
with certainty what I would choose? Second, some theists have worried
that Molinism makes God too involved in our sinful choices. If God knows
ahead of time that if I’m placed in the ice cream store, I’ll eat too much ice
cream, and he puts me in the ice cream store anyway, isn’t he implicated in
my eating too much ice cream? Perhaps I should be blamed for eating too
much ice cream, but—if the Molinist is right—isn’t God also responsible? If
the Molinist is right, isn’t God an accomplice to our sins?
Another school of thought, known as open theism, offers a very different
response to the problem of divine foreknowledge. Open theists maintain that
there are no counterfactual truths, or even merely future truths, about what a
free agent will do before she chooses. The future is truly open on this account,
and so no one, not even God, can know with absolute certainty that I will, say,
choose chocolate ice cream until I actually choose chocolate ice cream. After
all, given a libertarian conception of the will, I could always, at the last mo-
ment, decide to get vanilla.
Like the Molinists, open theists can claim many virtues for their account
of divine foreknowledge. First, many religious philosophers have thought
that open theism puts the relationship between God and creatures in a better
light. As we saw earlier, there’s a way of viewing Augustine’s God as being in-
different to our sinning and punishment: what is really important is the per-
fection of the world as a whole, which requires the existence of creatures with
free will, but isn’t really affected by whether those creatures sin or not. Open
Why Do We Sin? 39
theism maintains that this approach is all wrong. Open theism suggests
that once we are created, what we choose next is literally up to us, and that
the world will be a better place if we choose well. In this sense, we have an
active role to play in perfecting the world. We might even imagine God as
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/44458/chapter/376404006 by Hebrew University of Jerusalem user on 10 July 2023
rooting for us to do the right thing. Second, some philosophers have also
maintained that open theism offers an especially good basis for responding
to the problem of evil. With the open theist view, that creatures will sin is not
foreordained, and so it need not be any part of God’s plan for there to be sin
in the world in addition to free creatures.
Not surprisingly, there are also strong objections to open theism. Again,
let’s consider two. First, just as one might worry that Molinism doesn’t re-
ally allow us to have libertarian freedom, so one might worry conversely that
open theism doesn’t really satisfy the demands of divine foreknowledge be-
cause God doesn’t know what we’ll do next. The open theist will resist this
suggestion by insisting that this is not a genuine problem. She’ll insist that
the fact that God doesn’t know what we’ll do next is no slight against divine
omniscience because there is literally nothing to know about what we will
do next until we do it. But the open theist’s opponent might understandably
worry that the open theist paints God as being omniscient in a rather anemic
sense. Second, and relatedly, some have worried that open theism doesn’t af-
ford God sufficient providential control over the created world. Having cre-
ated beings with free will, God literally doesn’t know what they will do next,
and so can’t be sure how his own creation will unfold. Some have thought
that such a picture cannot be squared with their own views on providential
control and accepted religious doctrine. No surprise then that the question
of how to reconcile freedom and divine foreknowledge continues to be much
debated among philosophers and theologians.
Further Study
Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will. Trans. Thomas Williams, Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett, 1993.
Thomas Nadelhoffer, Flickers of Freedom (Blog), http://philosophycommons.typepad.
com/flickers_of_freedom/. Advanced group blog focused on philosophical issues con-
cerning freedom and responsibility. Unfortunately, no longer active.
James Rissler, “Open Theism.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.
edu/o-theism/. Helpful overview of open theism with an extensive bibliography.
