On Free Choice of the Will 3.14–3.20

We must also see whether it is truly said that some nature is corrupted by the fault of another nature, with no fault of its own added. For if a nature that approaches another with its fault in order to corrupt it finds nothing corruptible in it, it does not corrupt it. But if it finds something, it works its corruption with the other's fault joined to its own. For a stronger nature, if it does not want to be corrupted by a weaker, is not corrupted; but if it wants to be, it begins to be corrupted by its own fault before another's. And an equal likewise cannot be corrupted by an equal if it does not want to be. For whatever nature with a fault approaches one without fault in order to corrupt it, by that very fact approaches not as an equal but as weaker through its fault. But if a stronger nature corrupts a weaker, this happens either by the fault of both, if it happens through the depraved desire of both, or by the fault of the stronger, if its nature is of such excellence that even when faulty it surpasses the lower one it corrupts. For who would rightly blame the fruits of the earth because people do not use them well, and, corrupted by their own fault, corrupt the fruits by misusing them for luxury? Yet it would be madness to doubt that human nature, even when faulty, is more excellent and powerful than any fruits, even unspoiled ones. It can also happen that a stronger nature corrupts some inferior one, and this by the fault of neither, since by fault we mean what is worthy of blame. For who would dare to blame a frugal man who seeks nothing else from fruits than the replenishment of nature, or the fruits themselves because they are corrupted by his use of them as food? Such corruption is not even ordinarily called corruption, since corruption is usually above all a name for a fault. For it can easily be noticed in things too that a stronger nature often corrupts an inferior one for no use in filling its own need: either by the order of justice, when it punishes a fault (by which rule the Apostle said, “If anyone corrupts the temple of God, God will corrupt him”), or by the order of changeable things giving way to one another according to the most fitting laws given to the universe according to the strength of each part. For if the sun by its brightness corrupts someone's eyes, which by the measure of their nature are too weak to bear light, it is not to be thought that it changes them to fill a lack in its own light, or that it does this by any fault of its own; nor are the eyes themselves to be blamed, because they yielded both to their master, so as to be opened against the light, and to the light itself, so as to be corrupted. Of all corruptions, then, only the faulty corruption is rightly blamed; the others are either not to be called corruptions at all, or certainly, since they are not faulty, cannot be worthy of blame. For blame itself (vituperatio) is believed to have taken its name from the fact that it is prepared (parata), that is, fitting and owed, for fault (vitium) alone. But fault, as I had begun to say, is evil for no other reason than that it is opposed to the nature of the very thing whose fault it is. Hence it is evident that the same thing whose fault is blamed is praiseworthy by nature; so that we must admit that this very blame of faults is the praise of natures, namely of those whose faults are blamed. For since fault is opposed to nature, as much is added to the malice of faults as is taken from the soundness of natures. When, then, you blame a fault, you surely praise that whose soundness you desire; and whose soundness but that of the nature? For a perfect nature is worthy not only of no blame, but even of praise in its kind. What, then, you see lacking to the perfection of a nature you call fault, testifying well enough that the nature pleases you, since by blaming its imperfection you would want it to be perfect.

If, then, the blaming of faults commends the beauty and dignity even of the very natures whose faults they are, how much more is God, the maker of all natures, to be praised even in their faults! For they have from him that they are natures; they are faulty insofar as they depart from his art by which they were made; and they are rightly blamed insofar as the one who blames them sees the art by which they were made, so that he blames in them what he does not see there. And if that art through which all things were made, that is, the highest and unchangeable Wisdom of God, truly and supremely is, as it is, see where whatever departs from it is tending. Yet this failing would not be worthy of blame unless it were voluntary. For consider, please, whether you rightly blame what is as it ought to be. I think not; surely you blame what is not as it ought to be. And no one owes what he has not received; and whoever owes, to whom does he owe, but to the one from whom he received what he owes? For even what is repaid by bequest is repaid to the one who made the bequest; and what is repaid to the lawful successors of creditors is surely repaid to those whom they lawfully succeed. Otherwise it should be called not repayment but cession or remission or something of that kind. Therefore it is most absurd to say of all temporal things that they ought not to fail; for they are so placed in this order of things that, unless they fail, future things cannot succeed past ones, so that the whole beauty of the ages may be completed in its kind. For as much as they have received, so much they do, and so much they repay to him to whom they owe what they are, to whatever extent they are. Whoever grieves that they fail should attend to his own speech, that very speech in which he complains of them, if he thinks it just and coming from prudence. If anyone, as regards its sound, loved one little part of that speech and did not want it to give place to the rest by passing away, though it is by their passing and succeeding that the whole speech is woven, he would be judged astonishingly mad. In those things, then, which fail because they have not received further being, so that all things may be completed in their times, no one rightly blames the failing; for no one can say, “It ought to have remained,” since it could not pass the limits it received. But as for rational creatures, through whom, whether they sin or not, the beauty of the universe is bounded in the most fitting ways: either there are no sins, which is most absurd to say (for at least one sins who condemns as sins what are none); or sins are not to be blamed, which is no less absurd (for right deeds too will begin not to be praised, and the whole attention of the human mind will be thrown into confusion and will overturn life); or what was done as it ought to have been done will be blamed, and an execrable madness, or, to speak more mildly, a most wretched error will arise; or, if most true reason compels, as it does compel, both that sins be blamed and that whatever is rightly blamed be blamed because it is not as it ought to have been, ask what a sinful nature owes, and you will find: right action; ask to whom it owes it, and you will find: God. For from him from whom it received the ability to act rightly when it wills, it also received that it should be miserable if it does not, and happy if it does. Since no one surpasses the laws of the almighty Creator, the soul is not allowed not to pay its debt. For either it pays by using well what it received, or it pays by losing what it was unwilling to use well. So if it does not pay by doing justice, it will pay by suffering misery; for in both cases the word “debt” sounds. What was said could also have been said this way: “If it does not pay by doing what it owes, it will pay by suffering what it owes.” And these are separated by no interval of time, as if at one time it did not do what it owes and at another suffered what it owes, lest even for a moment of time the beauty of the universe be marred, so that there should be in it the disgrace of sin without the grace of punishment. But whatever is now punished most hiddenly is kept for the future judgment, to be made manifest and to be felt as misery most keenly. For just as one who is not awake sleeps, so whoever does not do what he owes suffers without any interval what he owes; for so great is the happiness of justice that no one can depart from it except into misery. In all failings, then, either the things that fail have not received further being, and there is no fault (just as, while they exist, there is again no fault, because they have not received more being than they have), or they are unwilling to be what they received the ability to be if they willed; and because that is good, there is guilt if they are unwilling.

But God owes nothing to anyone, since he gives all things freely. And if anyone says that something is owed to him by God for his merits, certainly his existence was not owed to him; for there was no one to whom it could be owed. And yet what merit is it to turn to him from whom you are, so that you may be made better by him from whom you have your being? What, then, have you paid him in advance, that you should demand anything as a debt? If you were unwilling to turn to him, he would lack nothing; but you would lack him, without whom you would be nothing, and from whom you are something in such a way that, unless you repay him what you are from him by turning to him, you will not indeed be nothing, but you will be miserable. All things, then, owe him, first whatever they are, insofar as they are natures; then whatever better they can be if they will, as many as have received the power to will; and whatever they ought to be. No one, then, is guilty for what he has not received; but for not doing what he ought he is justly guilty. And he owes it, if he has received both a free will and a fully sufficient capacity. So far is it from being any fault of the Maker when anyone does not do what he ought, that it is even to his praise; for the person suffers what he owes, and in the very fact that he is blamed for not doing what he owes, nothing but praise goes to him to whom it is owed. For if you are praised for seeing what you ought to do, though you see it only in him who is unchangeable Truth, how much more is he praised who both commanded the willing, and supplied the power, and did not allow unwillingness to go unpunished? For if each owes what he has received, and man was made such that he sins necessarily, then he owes this: to sin. So when he sins, he does what he owes. But if it is wicked to say this, then his own nature compels no one to sin. Nor does another's nature. For no one sins while he is suffering what he does not will. If he suffers justly, he does not sin in what he suffers against his will, but he sinned in doing willingly what made him justly suffer what he did not will. And if he suffers unjustly, how does he sin? For sin is not suffering something unjustly but doing something unjustly. So if no one is forced to sin either by his own nature or by another's, it remains that sin is committed by one's own will. And if you want to attribute it to the Maker, you will acquit the sinner, who did nothing beyond what his Maker established; and if he is rightly defended, he did not sin; so there is nothing for you to attribute to the Maker. Let us praise the Maker, then, if the sinner can be defended; let us praise him if he cannot. For if he is justly defended, he is not a sinner: so praise the Creator. And if he cannot be defended, he is a sinner insofar as he turns away from the Creator: so praise the Creator. I absolutely do not find, then, and I affirm that it cannot be found and that there is no way at all, how our sins are to be attributed to God our creator; for I find him praiseworthy even in them, not only because he punishes them but also because they happen when one withdraws from his truth. E. I accept these things most gladly and approve them; and I fully agree that it is true that our sins can in no way rightly be attributed to our Creator.

E. But I would still like to know, if possible, why that nature does not sin which God foreknew would not sin, and why this one sins which he foresaw would sin. For I no longer think that God's foreknowledge itself forces this one to sin or that one not to sin. Yet if there were no cause, the rational creature would not be divided so that one part never sins, another persists in sinning, and another, as it were between the two, sometimes sins and sometimes turns to acting rightly. What cause has divided it into these three parts? But I do not want to be answered, “The will”; for I am asking the cause of the will itself. For it is not without cause that the one never wills to sin, the other never fails to will it, and another sometimes wills it and sometimes does not, though they are all of the same kind. This alone I seem to see, that this threefold will of the rational creature is not without a cause; but what the cause is, I do not know. A. Since the will is the cause of sin, and you are asking the cause of the will itself, if I can find it, will you not then ask the cause also of the cause that has been found? And what limit of seeking will there be, what end of questioning and discussing, when you ought to seek nothing beyond the root? For beware of thinking that anything truer could have been said than what was said: that the root of all evils is avarice, that is, wanting more than is enough. And as much is enough as the measure of preserving a nature in its own kind requires. For avarice, which in Greek is called philargyria, is to be understood not only of silver or coins, from which it seems rather to have taken its name (for among the ancients coins were usually made of silver or of silver mixed with other metal), but of all things that are desired immoderately, wherever anyone wants altogether more than is enough. And this avarice is cupidity; and cupidity is a wicked will. So a wicked will is the cause of all evils. If it were according to nature, it would surely preserve nature and not be destructive to it, and so it would not be wicked. From this it is gathered that the root of all evils is not according to nature; and this is enough against all who want to accuse natures. But if you seek the cause of this root, how will it be the root of all evils? For the root will be that which is its cause; and when you have found it, as I said, you will seek its cause too, and you will have no limit to seeking. But what, after all, could be the cause of the will before the will? Either it is itself a will, and there is no departing from this root, the will; or it is not a will, and it has no sin. Either, then, the will itself is the first cause of sinning, or no sin is the first cause of sinning. And there is no one to whom sin is rightly imputed but the one who sins. So there is no one to whom it is rightly imputed but the one who wills; and I do not know why you would want to look for anything else. Further, whatever that cause of the will is, it is surely either just or unjust. If just, whoever obeys it will not sin; if unjust, let him not obey it, and he will not sin.

Or is it perhaps violent, and does it force one against his will? Must we repeat the same things so many times? Remember the many things we said earlier about sin and free will. But if it is laborious to commit everything to memory, hold this very brief point: whatever that cause of the will is, if it cannot be resisted, one yields to it without sin; but if it can, let one not yield to it, and there will be no sin. Does it perhaps deceive the unwary? Then let him beware that he is not deceived. Is the deception so great that it cannot be guarded against at all? If so, there are no sins. For who sins in what can in no way be guarded against? But sin is committed; so it can be guarded against. And yet some things done even through ignorance are disapproved and judged to need correction, as we read in the divine authorities. For the Apostle says, “I obtained mercy, because I acted in ignorance”; and the prophet says, “Remember not the sins of my youth and of my ignorance.” There are also things done by necessity that are to be disapproved, when a man wants to act rightly and cannot. For where else do those words come from: “For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I do not want, this I do”; and, “To will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I do not find”; and, “The flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, so that you do not do what you want”? But all these belong to human beings who come from that condemnation to death. For if this is not man's punishment but his nature, none of these are sins. For if there is no departure from the way in which he was naturally made, so that he could not be better, then he does what he ought when he does these things. But if man were good, he would be otherwise; now, because he is as he is, he is not good, and he does not have it in his power to be good, whether by not seeing what he ought to be, or by seeing it and not being able to be what he sees he ought to be. Who would doubt that this is a punishment? And every punishment, if it is just, is the punishment of sin and is called a penalty; but if the punishment is unjust (since no one doubts that it is a punishment), it was imposed on man by some unjust master. Further, since it is madness to doubt God's omnipotence and justice, this punishment is just and is paid for some sin. For no unjust master could either steal man away, as if God did not know, or wrest him from God against his will, as if God were weaker, whether by terrifying or by fighting, so as to torment man with an unjust punishment. It remains, then, that this just punishment comes from the condemnation of man. Nor is it to be wondered at that, through ignorance, he does not have free choice of will to choose what to do rightly; or that, with fleshly habit resisting, which by the violence of mortal descent has in a way grown in as if by nature, he sees what should rightly be done, and wills it, and cannot fulfill it. For this is the most just punishment of sin, that each one loses what he was unwilling to use well, when he could have done so without any difficulty if he had willed. That is, he who knowingly does not act rightly loses the knowledge of what is right; and he who was unwilling to act rightly when he could loses the ability when he wills. For truly these two penal things belong to every sinning soul: ignorance and difficulty. From ignorance error disgraces it; from difficulty torment afflicts it. But to approve false things for true, so as to err unwillingly, and to be unable to refrain from lustful works because the pain of the fleshly bond resists and tortures, is not the nature of man as he was established, but the punishment of man as condemned. When we speak of the free will to act rightly, we speak, of course, of the will in which man was made.

Here that question arises which people who grumble among themselves usually gnaw at, ready as they are to accuse anything rather than themselves when they sin. For they say: “If Adam and Eve sinned, what have we wretches done, that we should be born with the blindness of ignorance and the torments of difficulty; that we should first err, not knowing what we ought to do, and then, when the commands of justice begin to be opened to us, want to do them and be unable, because some necessity or other of fleshly concupiscence resists?” The brief answer to them is that they should be quiet and stop grumbling against God. For perhaps they would rightly complain if no human being were victor over error and lust. But he is everywhere present who in many ways, through the creation that serves him as its Lord, calls back the one who has turned away, teaches the one who believes, comforts the one who hopes, encourages the one who loves, helps the one who strives, and hears the one who prays. So it is not counted to you as a fault that you are ignorant against your will, but that you neglect to seek what you do not know; nor that you do not bind up your wounded limbs, but that you despise him who wants to heal them: these are your own sins. For no human being has been deprived of knowing that it is useful to seek what it is harmful not to know, and that weakness must be humbly confessed, so that he may come to the help of the one who seeks and confesses, who neither errs nor labors in helping. For what anyone does not do rightly through ignorance, and what he cannot do though he rightly wills to, are called sins because they take their origin from that sin of free will; for that preceding sin deserved these consequences. Just as we call “tongue” not only the member that we move in the mouth when we speak, but also what follows from the motion of this member, that is, the form and pattern of the words, in which sense one tongue is called Greek and another Latin, so we call sin not only that which is properly called sin, for it is committed by free will and knowingly, but also that which necessarily follows from its punishment. So too we speak of nature itself in two ways: properly, of the nature of man in which he was first made blameless in his kind; and otherwise, of this nature in which, from the penalty of that condemned man, we are born mortal and ignorant and subject to the flesh; in which sense the Apostle says, “For we too were by nature children of wrath, like the rest.”

That we should be born from that first couple with ignorance, with difficulty, and with mortality, since they, having sinned, were cast headlong into error, hardship, and death, most justly pleased God, the supreme governor of things; so that the justice of the one who punishes might appear at the origin of man, and the mercy of the one who sets free in his progress. For happiness was not taken from the condemned first man in such a way that fertility too was taken away. For even from his offspring, though fleshly and mortal, there could come some beauty and ornament of the earth in its kind. That he should beget offspring better than he himself was would not have been fair; but it was fitting that anyone who, by turning to God, would overcome the punishment that his origin had deserved by turning away, should not only not be prevented if he willed it, but should even be helped. For even in this way the Creator of things showed with what ease man could have kept, if he had willed, what he was made, since his offspring could even overcome what it was born. Further, if one soul was made, from which the souls of all human beings who are born are derived, who can say that he did not sin when that first man sinned? But if souls are made one by one in each person who is born, it is not perverse, but appears most fitting and well ordered, that the evil merit of the earlier soul should be the nature of the later, and the good merit of the later the nature of the earlier. For what is unworthy if the Creator wished to show even in this way how far the dignity of the soul excels bodily creatures, so that one soul could begin at the level to which another's fall had brought it? For when that sinful soul came to ignorance and difficulty, this is rightly called punishment, because it was better before this punishment. If, then, another soul began to be, not only before sin but before all its life, such as the first became after a blameworthy life, it has no small good for which to thank its Maker; for its very beginning and inception is better than any perfect body. For they are no ordinary goods, not only that it is a soul, by which nature it already surpasses every body, but also that it has the capacity, with the Creator's help, to cultivate itself, and by devoted effort to acquire and take in all the virtues by which it may be freed both from tormenting difficulty and from blinding ignorance. If this is so, ignorance and difficulty will not be a punishment of sin for souls being born, but an admonition to make progress and the beginning of perfection. For it is no small thing, before any merit of good work, to have received a natural judgment by which the soul prefers wisdom to error and rest to difficulty, so as to arrive at these not by being born but by striving. And if it is unwilling to do this, it will rightly be held guilty of sin, as one that has not [used well the capacity it received]. For although it was born in ignorance and difficulty, it is not compelled by any necessity to remain in what it was born as. And no one but almighty God could be the creator even of such souls, which he makes without being loved by them, restores because he loves them, and perfects when he is loved by them; who gives to things that do not exist that they may exist, and to those who love him from whom they are, that they may be happy. But if souls already existing in some secret place of God are sent to animate and rule the bodies of individuals as they are born, they are surely sent for this task: that, by governing well the body which is born from the penalty of sin, that is, from the mortality of the first man, chastening it through the virtues and subjecting it to a most orderly and lawful servitude, they too may obtain, in due order and time, a place of heavenly incorruption. When they enter this life and take up mortal limbs to carry, they must also take up forgetfulness of their former life and the labor of the present one. From this follows that ignorance and difficulty which in the first man was the punishment of mortality, for paying out the misery of the mind, but which in these souls is the door of service for restoring the body's incorruption. For in this way too these are called sins only because the flesh, coming from the stock of the sinner, produces this ignorance and difficulty in the souls that come to it; and this is to be attributed as a fault neither to the souls nor to the Creator. For he gave both the capacity to work well in laborious duties and the way of faith in the blindness of forgetfulness; and above all that judgment by which every soul grants that what it is harmful not to know must be sought, that one must strive perseveringly in dutiful labors to overcome the difficulty of acting rightly, and that help must be implored from the Creator, that he may help the one striving. He commanded, either outwardly by the law or inwardly by speaking in the depths of the heart, that one must strive; and he prepares the glory of the most blessed city for those who triumph over him who brought the first man, conquered by most wicked persuasion, into this misery, a misery which these souls take up in order to conquer him by most excellent faith. For it is a service of no small glory to conquer the devil by taking up the same punishment into which he boasts that he brought man as his conquered captive. But whoever, captured by love of this life, neglects this will in no way justly attribute the shame of his desertion to the king's command; rather, under the Lord of all, he will be ranked on the side of the one whose shameful pay he loved so much that he deserted his own camp. But if souls established elsewhere are not sent by the Lord God but come of their own accord to inhabit bodies, it is easy now to see that, whatever ignorance and difficulty has followed their own will, the Creator is in no way to be blamed for it. For even if he himself had sent them, he would be wholly beyond blame, since even in that ignorance and difficulty he did not take from them the free will to ask and seek and strive, ready as he is to give to those who ask, to show to those who seek, and to open to those who knock. For to the earnest and well-disposed he would grant that this ignorance and difficulty, when overcome, should avail for a crown of glory; and to the negligent, who want to defend their sins by weakness, he would not charge the ignorance and difficulty itself as a crime, but would punish them with just punishment because they chose to remain in these rather than to arrive at truth and ease by the effort of seeking and learning and by the humility of confessing and praying.