The Redeemed Will

Chapter 5 continues to concentrate on developments during the Pelagian controversy, setting forth Augustine’s diverse responses to the question of what the will is under grace. Part I introduces two of Augustine’s central images: the everyday image of a root and the abstract image of the eye of the soul. Part II analyzes a number of other ways Augustine characterizes the good will. Part III assesses the relationship between the good will and the heart in Augustine’s thinking. The overall picture of the good will that emerges during the Pelagian controversy is presented in part IV. For Augustine, rather than having its own independently coherent character, the will is good in relation to God, its maker and redeemer.

What Is in Our Power

Chapter 3 begins to look at how Augustine’s thought on the good will developed during the Pelagian controversy. It considers Augustine’s answers to the question of what is within human power with respect to the will by addressing two subsidiary questions: How much can people do to achieve a good will? and How much can people do to enact a good will, to carry through with the good they want even when their will is weak? Augustine’s conviction that human beings need God’s help for the latter remained constant throughout the Pelagian controversy. Over time, however, he understood the need for God’s electing grace for the former, to meet the preconditions of conversion, in more and more radical terms. This development was not a result of polemical exigency alone but the gradual outworking of decades of struggling with the writings of Paul following Augustine’s initial flash of insight in Ad Simplicianum.

The Holy Spirit and the Will

Inseparably involved in the transforming work of Christ is the Holy Spirit. Yet the Holy Spirit relates to the human will in a manner unique to the Holy Spirit’s own divine person. After addressing the connection of Christ’s work upon the will to that of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit’s role in enabling right human willing, this chapter investigates how the human will images the Holy Spirit in De Trinitate, thereby demonstrating how Augustine’s understanding of the human will is essentially connected to his account of the Trinitarian relations. The Holy Spirit’s involvement in Augustine’s concept of the human will takes place not only on the level of analogy but also on the level of concrete intervention. Since this loving activity is specifically the activity of the Holy Spirit, Augustine’s account of will has a distinctively triune, and therefore distinctively Christian, character.

God’s Gardening

Chapter 4 continues the analysis begun in chapter 3 of the Pelagian controversy, now turning attention to the specific question of how God impacts the will. It tackles this question in two parts. The first focuses on the theme of prayer. Throughout the Pelagian controversy, Augustine consistently points to prayer, especially the Lord’s Prayer, as evidence of God’s impact on the will. The Christian practice of prayer, as interpreted in scripture, is a key source for Augustine’s views about God’s impact upon the human will. The second part addresses how Augustine’s views develop over time. Whereas Augustine’s estimation of what is in human power with respect to good willing contracts over the course of the Pelagian controversy, his estimation of the extent of God’s role in effecting good human willing expands with each successive stage. Throughout the controversy, however, he views God’s aid as indispensible for right human willing.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the most significant debates surrounding Augustine’s understanding of the will (uoluntas), the hybrid methodology employed in this work, and the thesis that Augustine articulates a theologically differentiated notion of will. Is Augustine’s notion of will original in the history of Western philosophy? Can his affirmation of free will be sustained given his approach to the problem of evil, foreknowledge, predestination, and grace? How does the concept of free will fit, or fail to fit, within the larger scope of Augustine’s thought? Traditional questions in the literature are adumbrated along the way to show the fruitfulness of a theological account.

The Created Will

Chapter 1 introduces Augustine’s earliest conception of will, synthesizing his comments in a number of his key anti-Manichean works as well as in two of his early classics, Soliloquies and On Free Will. Augustine’s conception of will in these texts is already both theological and biblically informed, though not in quite the same way as it will be in more mature periods. Augustine elaborates his understanding of will in these early works in light of, and in support of, general principles emerging from scripture as a whole—creation, God’s justice, the analogy between divine and creaturely being as expressed, for example, in the doctrine of the imago dei—whereas later he will rely to a greater extent on specific biblical pericopes. The resulting portrait of will accords it enormous importance, power, and potential for goodness. To speak in Augustine’s own terms, the will is a hinge (cardo) upon which the moral status of each act and the possibility of attaining fellowship with God depend.

The Eschatological Will

This chapter presents the final dimension of Augustine’s theologically differentiated conception of will: the will in the perfection of the eschaton. First, it addresses the fully free character of the eschatological will. This full eschatological freedom is to be distinguished not only from various types of freedom the will enjoys in other periods but also from free choice. The chapter next addresses another key feature of the eschatological will: its inability to sin. Augustine defends the desirability of this “blessed necessity” theologically. Finally, this chapter turns to Augustine’s positive characterization of the eschatological will, focusing particularly on his description of its felicity at the conclusion of City of God.

The Fallen Will

The writings of Paul, especially, prove crucial to Augustine’s diagnosis of the fallen condition of the human will, both in the more generalized discussion of texts such as Ad Simplicianum and in his intense personal reflections on the conflict of will leading up to his conversion in book 8 of Confessions. As Augustine adapts and reframes his thinking in response to texts such as Romans 9, his account of will becomes multidimensional, including two distinct characterizations of will, one corresponding to its created and another to its fallen state. In its first dimension, the will is a powerful hinge; in its second, it forms a link in the chain (ansula catenae) that holds human beings in bondage to sin. The account of this transition illustrates how Augustine’s multidimensional approach to willing can accommodate radical shifts within a coherent, biblically indexed scheme, thus preserving continuity in his thinking amid drastic developments.

Conclusion

The conclusion comments briefly on the concrete images Augustine uses to represent the will in its various permutations, the matter of defining the Augustinian will, and the contested issue of how Augustine’s theology of the will situates him in the Western intellectual tradition. It addresses the key sources for Augustine’s thinking. These include philosophy but also, first and foremost, the Christian scriptures, and a long line of earlier Christian reflection on human freedom and will, running from Origen to Cyprian and Ambrose. The latter two thinkers supplied key building blocks for the Augustinian will. The originality of Augustine’s thinking on the will rests upon the theological differentiation of his approach, the centrality of divine action in making human willing what it is, and the link he establishes between willing and loving, between the will and the heart.

Christ and the Will

Centuries before Maximus the Confessor, Augustine had already declared in explicit terms that Christ takes on a human will distinct from his divine will. According to Augustine, possessing a distinct human will allowed Christ to model how grace impacts the will. Yet, as Augustine insists over and over against Pelagius, Christ does more than take on a human will and model grace’s effects upon it. Christ transforms the human will. Augustine’s debts to Cyprian are on display as he points repeatedly to the Lord’s Prayer to show human need for Christ’s aid. Augustine’s understanding of Christ’s person and work, then, plays an indispensible role in shaping the character and operation of the redeemed human will. While for the early Augustine, the human will illustrates the workings of divine willing, here in the Pelagian controversy Augustine emphasizes the reverse: that Christ’s willing illuminates and transforms the workings of our own.