Christendom. It was as a doctrine of free will that
Neo-Platonism was embraced by Saint Augustine at
the turn of the fourth to the fifth century. It afforded
him deliverance from the crude heresy of Christian
Manichaeism. In common with other forms of Gnos-
ticism this sect attributed the genesis of mankind to a
cosmic defeat by which elements of “light” were cap-
tured and enmeshed in “darkness.” The Neo-Platonic
psychology gave arms to Augustine in which to appear
as the champion of God's good creation. By a shift
in the level of his love, man, created in the divine
image, had become the author of his own degradation.
Being free, he had misused the power of choice (Con-
fessions vii 3-21).
So far, Augustine was all for free will. He was soon
to face in another direction. There was nothing arbi-
trary or accidental in his change of front. There were
special emphases in biblical and Christian theism
which tipped the balance of the Neo-Platonic system.
Neo-Platonic deity is not seen as the Judge of men's
souls, fixing their eternal destiny according to their
merit; and so there is no urgency in the enquiry about
the degree of a man's personal responsibility for his
character or attitudes. If men are wise and holy, they
are wise and holy; they can be infuenced towards such
a desirable state, and their own choices or resolves will
help. The absolute question, how much could have
been expected of any one soul, has no practical impor-
tance. It is another thing for the Christian who sees
himself placed before the bar of the Eternal Judge.
But while on the one side biblical theism sharpened
the sense of a free choice of will determining one's
salvation or perdition, on another side it called it in
question. The God of the Bible is conceived as sover-
eign will, the creator of all things by fiat, and the savior
of men by interposition. How then can the creature's
will be anything but the instrument of the Creator's,
and how can the salvation of the elect be the work
of any but God? Neo-Platonism conceived of God not
as sovereign will, but as supreme perfection; less per-
fect beings were the outfall and overspill of his being,
not the creatures of his will. He was their savior only
in the sense that he was their true Good, and that
without the pull of his attraction, no one would aspire
after him. But equally if one did not aspire, the attrac-
tion would have no effect. On these terms it was
scarcely meaningful to ask whether the turning of a
soul to God was its work or his.
Augustine felt able to save man's free will on the
side of the Creatorship of God. The Creator had chosen
to confer on his human creature much such a free will
as Neo-Platonism taught, for had not he created man
in his own image? But on the side of Redemption no
such concession could be made. Redemption was a
rescue of the perishing, a sheer seizure of minds in-
capable of loving God through their own act or choice.
Though created free to love God, man had lost that
freedom by his disobedience or irreligion. Mankind,
apart from the grace of salvation, was sick or corrupt;
it needed to be restored or healed by God, before it
regained freedom to love God. Fallen man might in-
deed exercise free choice in the pursuit of such objec-
tives as he was capable of loving; he could not give
himself the higher love. Restored by grace, he would
choose freely on all levels, except insofar as his un-
redeemed condition still hung about him (De spiritu
et litera, De natura et gratia).
Augustine's teaching provoked vigorous reactions
from Christians who feared it would enervate spiritual
effort. It would be wiser, said Pelagius and Julian, to
see in salvation God's provision of indispensable means,
means which it lay in the free choice of man to employ
or to neglect. Augustine rejected that doctrine as in-
adequate to the Christian facts and as conducive to
spiritual pride. We do not reach out our hands and
take salvation; salvation takes us. The controversy
drove him into extremes. God had eternally predes-
tined whom he would elect to salvation and his saving
will was irresistible. None who truly aspired to salva-
tion, indeed, were denied it; but their aspiring was by
God's predestination and grace.
Augustine carried the day against Pelagianism, but
the sharp paradox of human responsibility and divine
predestination was found difficult to live with and was
soon qualified by the Church. The Scholastics of the
high Middle Ages elaborated a subtle account of the
cooperation of free will with grace (e.g., Aquinas,
Summa Theologica, prima secundae Quaest. cix-cxiv).
But the balance of interest for them was somewhat
shifted by their adoption of a Neo-Aristotelianism
drawn from Muhammadan sources. The system derived
from Islam an overwhelming concern with the absolute
sovereignty of the Creator's will over all created things
and events. The human agent, like every other crea-
ture, was a secondary cause instrumental to the sole
primary cause, God. The Christian philosophers
labored to find a place for free will under the all-
determining and all-foreseeing mind of God (ibid., pars
prima, qu. xiv art. 13, qu. xxii art. 4). Within the
created system, says Thomas Aquinas, there are chances
genuinely open to the choice exercised by human free
will; human decision is as real a cause as any other
finite cause. But that does not stand in the way of our
acknowledging the whole system, including the human
volitions it contains, as the effect of divine ordination.
It is a superstition to suppose that a divinely ordained
effect must operate by a process of mechanical deter-
mination rather than by one of free choice. It would
be misleading, then, to say that I was bound to do what
I freely decided, since there is no binding in the case.
It remains that I was going to do what I did. It must
surely be objected that if this is a harmless tautology,
it does not give reality to God's prior causality; while
if it is so understood as to do this, it reduces free choice
to a subjective illusion. Freely as we may act, we shall
be toeing a predetermined line.
The Protestant Reformation rejected the subtleties
of Scholastic Aristotelianism together with its meta-
physical preoccupations. The interest of Luther and
Calvin reverted to Augustine's position on salvation,
which they reasserted in all its uncompromisingness.
Indeed, the paradox is sharpened, insofar as Augustine
is now seen as a commentator on Saint Paul simply,
and his Neo-Platonic overtones are lost. The sover-
eignty of the divine will is conceived as decisive power
rather than as self-fulfilling Good and the collision of
omnipotent grace with creaturely free will is un-
cushioned. Salvation is an unmerited gift towards
which the fallen will can do nothing. Luther wrote
a treatise Of the Will Enslaved (De servo arbitrio,
1525); Calvin carried the speculation of predestination
to unexampled extremes (Instituta, iii 21-23; definitive
ed., 1559). Reaction was not slow to follow; on the
part of the Catholic Church it was immediate (Council
of Trent, 1545-63). Within the Calvinist confession
Arminius led the revolt. Strict Calvinism has since been
reasserted by one reform after another, but on balance
has lost ground.
