On Free Choice of the Will 3.3–3.7

For surely this is what troubles you and makes you wonder: how it is not contradictory and inconsistent that God foreknows all future things and that we sin not by necessity but by will. For if God foreknows, you say, that a man will sin, it is necessary that he sin; and if it is necessary, there is no choice of the will in sinning, but rather an inevitable and fixed necessity. By this reasoning you are evidently afraid that it will be concluded either that God's foreknowledge of all future things must be impiously denied, or, if we cannot deny this, that we must admit that sin is committed not by will but by necessity. Or does something else trouble you? E. Nothing else for the moment. A. You think, then, that all the things God foreknows happen not by will but by necessity? E. I think exactly so. A. Wake up at last, look at yourself a little, and tell me, if you can, what kind of will you will have tomorrow, to sin or to act rightly. E. I do not know. A. Well, do you think that God likewise does not know this? E. I would in no way think so. A. If, then, he knows your will of tomorrow, and foresees the future wills of all human beings, both those who are and those who will be, much more does he foresee what he will do with the just and the ungodly. E. Certainly, if I say that God foreknows my works, I would say much more confidently that he foreknows his own works and foresees most certainly what he will do. A. Then do you not beware lest it be said to you that he too will do whatever he will do not by will but by necessity, if all things that God foreknows happen by necessity, not by will? E. When I said that all the things God foreknew as future happen by necessity, I was looking only at the things that happen in his creation, not those in himself; for those do not happen, but are everlasting. A. Then God does nothing in his creation. E. He has once for all established how the order of the universe that he founded is to run; for he governs nothing by a new will. A. Does he make no one happy? E. Indeed he does. A. He makes him happy, surely, at the time when he becomes so. E. So it is. A. If, then, for example, you will be happy a year from now, he will make you happy a year from now. E. Yes. A. So today he already foreknows what he will do a year from now. E. He has always foreknown it; I agree that he foreknows it now too, if it is going to be so. A. Tell me, please, are you not his creature, or will your happiness not come about in you? E. Indeed, I am his creature, and it will come about in me that I will be happy. A. Then your happiness will come about in you, by God's doing, not by will but by necessity. E. His will is necessity for me. A. So you will be happy against your will. E. If I had the power to be happy, I would surely be so already; for I want it even now, and I am not, because not I but he makes me happy. A. Truth cries out from you most excellently. For you could not think that anything else is in our power except what we do when we will. So nothing is so much in our power as the will itself; for it is present without any interval at all, as soon as we will. And so we can rightly say, “We grow old not by will but by necessity,” or “We die not by will but by necessity,” and anything else of this kind; but who, even if delirious, would dare to say, “We will not by will”? Therefore, although God foreknows our future wills, it does not follow from this that we do not will something by will. As to what you said about happiness, that you are not made happy by yourself, you said it as if I had denied it; but I say that when you are going to be happy, you will be so not against your will but willingly. Since, then, God foreknows your future happiness, and nothing can happen otherwise than he foreknew (otherwise there is no foreknowledge), we are not therefore forced to think, what is most absurd and far removed from the truth, that you will be happy without willing it. And just as God's foreknowledge, which even today is certain of your future happiness, does not take from you the will for happiness when you have begun to be happy, so too a blameworthy will, if there is to be one in you, will not therefore fail to be a will because God foreknew that it would be. For notice, please, with what blindness it is said: “If God foreknew my future will, since nothing can happen otherwise than he foreknew, it is necessary that I will what he foreknew; and if it is necessary, it must be admitted that I will it no longer by will but by necessity.” What singular folly! How, then, can nothing happen otherwise than God foreknew, if there will be no will, when he foreknew that there would be a will? I pass over the equally monstrous thing that I mentioned a little earlier, that the same man says, “It is necessary that I will so,” who, by supposing necessity, tries to take away the will. For if it is necessary that he will, how will he will, when there will be no will? And if he does not say it this way, but says that, because it is necessary that he will, he does not have the will itself in his power, he will be met by what you yourself said when I asked whether you would be happy against your will. For you answered that you would already be happy if the power were in you; you said you willed it but could not yet. Whereupon I added that truth had cried out from you. For we cannot deny that we have power, except when what we will is not present to us; but when we will, if the will itself is lacking to us, we certainly do not will. And if it cannot be that when we will we do not will, then the will is certainly present to those who will; and nothing else is in our power except what is present to us when we will. So our will would not be a will unless it were in our power. And since it is in our power, it is free to us. For what we do not have in our power, or what can fail to be when we have it, is not free to us. So it comes about that we do not deny that God foreknows all future things, and yet we will what we will. For since he foreknows our will, the will of which he has foreknowledge will be. It will therefore be a will, because he foreknows a will. And it could not be a will if it were not in our power. So he also foreknows the power. My power, then, is not taken from me by his foreknowledge; rather, it will be present to me the more certainly, because he whose foreknowledge does not err foreknew that it would be present to me. E. See, I no longer deny that whatever God foreknew must necessarily happen, and that he foreknows our sins in such a way that the will remains free to us and placed in our power.

A. What, then, troubles you? Have you perhaps forgotten what our first discussion accomplished, and will you deny that we sin, compelled by no one, superior, inferior, or equal, but by our own will? E. I absolutely dare not deny any of these; but I confess that I do not yet see how these two do not conflict: God's foreknowledge of our sins and our free choice in sinning. For we must admit that God is both just and foreknowing. But I would like to know by what justice he punishes sins that must necessarily happen; or how what he foreknew would happen does not necessarily happen; or how whatever must necessarily happen in his creation is not to be attributed to the Creator. A. Why does our free choice seem to you to conflict with God's foreknowledge? Because it is foreknowledge, or because it is God's foreknowledge? E. Rather because it is God's. A. Well then, if you foreknew that someone would sin, would it not be necessary that he sin? E. Yes, it would be necessary that he sin; for my foreknowledge would not otherwise be foreknowledge unless I foreknew certain things. A. So it is not because it is God's foreknowledge that what he has foreknown must happen, but only because it is foreknowledge; and foreknowledge that does not foreknow certain things is surely no foreknowledge. E. I agree; but where is this leading? A. To this, unless I am mistaken: you would not by that fact compel the man to sin whom you foreknew would sin; nor would your foreknowledge itself compel him to sin, although he would undoubtedly sin, for otherwise you would not foreknow that it would be. So, just as these two do not conflict, that you know by your foreknowledge what another will do by his own will, so God, compelling no one to sin, nevertheless foresees those who will sin by their own will. Why, then, should he not punish as a just judge what, though he foreknows it, he does not compel to be done? For just as you do not by your memory compel past things to have been done, so God does not by his foreknowledge compel future things to be done. And just as you remember some things that you have done, yet have not done all that you remember, so God foreknows all the things of which he himself is the author, yet is not himself the author of all that he foreknows. And of those things of which he is not the evil author, he is the just avenger. Understand from this, then, by what justice God punishes sins: what he knows will happen, he does not do. For if he ought not to repay punishment to sinners because he foresees that they will sin, neither ought he to repay rewards to those who act rightly, because he foresees no less that they will act rightly. Rather, let us confess that it belongs to his foreknowledge that nothing of the future is hidden from him, and to his justice that sin, since it is committed by the will, does not go unpunished by his judgment, just as it is not compelled to happen by his foreknowledge.

Now as to what you put third, how whatever must necessarily happen in his creation is not to be attributed to the Creator: that rule of piety which we should remember will easily remind us that we owe thanks to our Creator. His most abundant goodness would most justly be praised even if he had created us at some lower grade of creation. For although our soul is wasted by sins, it is nonetheless higher and better than if it were turned into this visible light. And you see how greatly souls praise God for the excellence of this light, even souls given over to the senses of the body. So do not let it trouble you any longer that sinful souls are reproached, so that you say in your heart that it would have been better if they did not exist. For they are reproached in comparison with themselves, when one considers what they would be if they had not willed to sin. Yet God their founder is to be praised most gloriously, as far as human ability allows, not only because he orders them justly when they sin, but also because he founded them such that, even when soiled by sins, they are in no way surpassed in dignity by bodily light, for which he is nevertheless rightly praised. I warn you also to beware lest perhaps you do not indeed say that it would have been better for them not to exist, but say that they ought to have been made otherwise. For whatever better thing occurs to you by true reason, know that God has made it, as the maker of all goods. But it is not true reason but envious weakness when, having thought that something better ought to have been made, you then want nothing else lower to be made; as if, having looked at the sky, you did not want the earth to have been made; and that is quite unfair. You would rightly find fault if you saw the earth made and the sky left out, since you would say that the earth ought to have been made such as you could think the sky. But since you see that that also has been made to whose appearance you wanted to bring the earth, only it is called not earth but sky, I believe that, not having been cheated of the better thing, you ought by no means to begrudge that something lower too should be made and that there should be earth. And in this earth, again, there is such variety in its parts that nothing occurs to one thinking of the appearance of the earth that God, the maker of all, has not made somewhere in its whole mass. For from the most fertile and pleasant land to the saltiest and most barren, one passes by degrees through intermediate ones, so that you would dare to find fault with none except in comparison with a better; and you would so ascend through all the degrees of praise that, even when you had found the highest kind of land, you would not want it to be the only one. And how great is the distance between the whole earth and the sky! For between them are set the moist and the airy natures; and from these four elements other species and forms of things vary, innumerable to us but numbered by God. So there can be something in the nature of things that you do not think of by your reason; but it cannot be that what you think of by true reason does not exist. For you cannot think of anything better in creation that has escaped the Maker of creation. For the human soul, naturally connected with the divine reasons on which it depends, when it says, “This would be better made than that,” if it speaks the truth and sees what it says, sees it in those reasons with which it is connected. Let it believe, then, that God has made what by true reason it knew ought to have been made by him, even if it does not see this among things made. For even if it could not see the sky with its eyes, and yet gathered by true reason that some such thing ought to have been made, it ought to believe that it was made, though it did not see it with its eyes. For it would not see in thought that it ought to have been made except in those reasons by which all things were made. And what is not there, no one can see by true thought, any more than what is not true. Most people err in this, that when they have beheld better things with the mind, they do not look for them with the eyes in their proper places; as if someone, grasping perfect roundness by reason, should be annoyed that he does not find such roundness in a nut, if he had never seen any round body except fruits of this kind. So some people see by most true reason that a creature is better which, though it has free will, has yet, fixed always on God, never sinned; and looking at the sins of human beings, they grieve, not that they may stop sinning, but that they were made, saying: “He should have made us such that we would always want to enjoy his unchangeable truth and never want to sin.” Let them not cry out, let them not be angry. For he did not compel them to sin because he made them, giving them the power to do as they willed; and there are such angels, who have never sinned and never will sin. So if a creature delights you which by a most persevering will does not sin, there is no doubt that by right reason you put it above a sinning one; but just as you rank it above in thought, so God the Creator has ranked it above in his ordering. Believe that such a creature exists in the higher dwellings and in the height of the heavens; for if the Creator showed goodness in creating one whose future sins he foresaw, he would by no means fail to show that goodness in creating a creature which he foreknew would not sin. That lofty creature has its perpetual happiness, enjoying its Creator forever, which it merits by a perpetual will to keep justice. And this sinful creature too has its order, having lost happiness in its sins, but not having let go of the capacity to recover happiness. It certainly surpasses that creature which a perpetual will to sin holds fast; between that one and the former, which abides in the will for justice, this one shows a kind of middle position, and recovers its height by the humility of repentance. For not even from that creature which God foreknew would not only sin but also remain in the will to sin did he withhold the bounty of his goodness, so as not to create it. For just as a horse, even a straying one, is better than a stone that does not stray because it lacks its own motion and sense, so a creature that sins by free will is more excellent than one that does not sin because it does not have free will. And just as I would praise wine that is good of its kind, and blame a man drunk on that wine, and yet rank that same man, already blamed and still drunk, above the praised wine on which he got drunk, so the bodily creature is rightly praised in its own rank, while those are to be blamed who by its immoderate use are turned away from perceiving truth; although these same people, now perverted and, as it were, drunk, are still ranked above that same creature, praiseworthy in its own order, through greed for which they became empty, not now by the merit of their vices but still by the dignity of their nature. Since, then, every soul is better than every body, and every sinful soul, wherever it has fallen, is by no change made a body, nor is it deprived at all of being a soul, and so in no way loses its being better than body; and since among bodies light holds the first place, it follows that the lowest soul is ranked above the first body; and it can be that some other body is preferred to the body of some soul, but never to the soul itself. Why, then, should God not be praised, and praised with ineffable proclamation, who, having made those souls which would remain in the laws of justice, made also other souls which he foresaw would sin, or even persevere in their sins? For even these are still better than those which, having no rational and free choice of will, cannot sin. And these again are still better than the most splendid brightness of any bodies whatever, which some, though in great error, venerate as the substance of the supreme God himself. And if in the order of bodily creatures, from the very brightness of the stars down to the number of our hairs, the beauty of good things is woven together by degrees in such a way that it is most ignorant to say, “What is this? What is this for?” (for all things are created in their order), how much more ignorant it is to say this about any soul, which, to whatever diminution and failure of its beauty it has come, will always, beyond any doubt, surpass the dignity of all bodies! For reason values things one way and use another. Reason values by the light of truth, so that by right judgment it subjects lesser things to greater; but use is usually inclined by the habit of convenience to value more highly what truth proves to be lesser. For though reason ranks heavenly bodies far above earthly ones, which fleshly man would not rather have one or more stars missing from the sky than one little tree from his field or a cow from his herd? But older people either wholly disregard, or at least patiently wait to correct, the judgments of little children, who, except for some whose love delights them, would rather any other human being died than their sparrow, and much more so if the man is fearsome and the sparrow tuneful and pretty. Just so, those who by the progress of the mind have advanced toward wisdom, when they find unskilled judges of things who praise God in the lesser creatures, which suit their fleshly senses better, but in the higher and better ones partly do not praise him or praise him less, partly even try to find fault with them or correct them, and partly do not believe that he is their maker, become accustomed either to disregard the judgments of such people altogether, if they cannot correct them, or to bear and endure them calmly until they correct them.

This being so, it is so far from true that the sins of a creature are to be attributed to the Creator, although what he foreknew would happen must necessarily happen, that, while you said you could not find how whatever must necessarily happen in his creation is not to be attributed to him, I on the contrary cannot find a way, and I affirm that none can be found and that there is none at all, by which whatever must necessarily happen in his creation in such a way that it happens by the will of those who sin is to be attributed to him. For if anyone says, “I would rather not exist than be miserable,” I will answer: “You lie. For you are miserable now, and you do not want to die for no other reason than that you may exist; so, though you do not want to be miserable, you nevertheless want to exist. Give thanks, then, for what you willingly are, so that what you unwillingly are may be taken away. For you exist willingly, and you are miserable unwillingly. And if you are ungrateful for what you want to be, you are justly forced to be what you do not want.” So, from the fact that even when ungrateful you have what you want, I praise the goodness of the Creator; and from the fact that, being ungrateful, you suffer what you do not want, I praise the justice of the one who orders all things. If he says, “I do not want to die, not because I would rather be miserable than not exist at all, but lest I be more miserable after death,” I will answer: “If this is unjust, you will not be so; but if it is just, let us praise him by whose laws you will be so.” If he says, “From where do I presume that if this is unjust I will not be so?” I will answer: “Because if you are in your own power, either you will not be miserable, or, by ruling yourself unjustly, you will be justly miserable; or, wanting and not being able to rule yourself justly, you will not be in your own power, and you will be either in no one's power or in another's. If in no one's, then either unwillingly or willingly. But you can be nothing unwillingly unless some force has overcome you; and one who is in no one's power cannot be overcome by any force. And if you are willingly in no one's power, the reasoning comes back to this, that you are in your own; and either, by ruling yourself unjustly, you are justly miserable, or, since whatever you are you will be willingly, you still have reason to give thanks to the goodness of your Maker. And if you are not in your own power, either something more powerful or something weaker than you will have you in its power. If something weaker, the fault is yours, and the misery just; for you could overcome the weaker if you wanted. But if something more powerful has you, the weaker, in its power, you will in no way rightly think so right an ordering unjust.” So it was said most truly: “If this is unjust, you will not be so; but if it is just, let us praise him by whose laws you will be so.”

If he says: “I would rather be even miserable than not exist at all, because I already exist; but if I could have been consulted before I existed, I would have chosen not to exist rather than to be miserable. For now, that I fear not to exist though I am miserable belongs to my very misery, by which I do not will what I ought to will; for I ought to will not to exist rather than to be miserable. But now I admit that I would rather be even miserable than nothing; yet I will this the more foolishly the more miserable I am, and I am the more miserable the more truly I see that I ought not to have willed it”: I will answer, “Beware rather that you do not err here, where you think you see the truth. For if you were happy, you would certainly prefer to exist rather than not to exist; and now, though you are miserable, you still prefer to exist, even miserable, rather than not to exist at all, though you do not want to be miserable. Consider, then, as far as you can, how great a good being itself is, which both the happy and the miserable want. For if you consider this well, you will see that you are miserable insofar as you do not draw near to that which supremely is; that you think it better for someone not to exist than to be miserable insofar as you do not see that which supremely is; and that you nonetheless want to exist because you are from him who supremely is.” If, then, you want to flee misery, love in yourself this very fact that you want to exist. For if you want to exist more and more, you will draw near to that which supremely is; and give thanks now that you exist. For although you are lower than the happy, you are yet higher than the things that do not even have the will for happiness, many of which are nevertheless praised even by the miserable. Yet all things, by the very fact that they exist, are rightly to be praised, because by the very fact that they exist they are good. For the more you love to exist, the more you will desire eternal life, and you will long to be so formed that your affections are not temporal, branded and stamped with the loves of temporal things; for temporal things are not before they are, flee while they are, and will not be when they have fled. So when they are future, they are not yet; and when they are past, they are no longer. How, then, will they be held so as to remain, when for them to begin to be is to proceed toward not being? But one who loves to exist approves them insofar as they exist, and loves what always is. And if he was unstable in the love of these, he will be strengthened in the love of that; and if he was dissipated in the love of passing things, he will be made solid in the love of what abides, and will stand, and will obtain that very being which he wanted when he feared not to exist and could not stand, entangled in the love of fleeting things. So let it not displease you, but rather please you greatly, that you would rather exist even miserable than cease to be miserable by being nothing. For if to this beginning, your will to exist, you add more and more being, you rise up and are built up toward that which supremely is; and so you will hold yourself back from every fall by which what is lowest passes into not being and with itself undermines the strength of the one who loves it. Hence it comes about that one who prefers not to exist, so as not to be miserable, is left to be miserable, since he cannot not exist. But one who loves to exist more than he hates to be miserable, by adding to what he loves, may shut out what he hates; for when he has begun to exist perfectly in his own kind, he will not be miserable.