I RESPOND: You are right. I do not give a balanced assessment of Blessed Augustine, because Augustine contradicts himself. At times he affirms free will, but other times, he denies it. That is one of the problems with Augustine. People can read different and conflicting teachings from Augustine.
Augustine penned over 100 extant works, cumulatively containing in excess of five million words; so synthesizing particular doctrines can be difficult. Hopefully as a saint and Father of the Church Augustine gets the same presumption of consistency in his works as the eastern saints, until the contrary is proven. I don’t always find that the EO treat him this way though.
For example, he is very close if not identical to Calvin when he wrote:
Therefore they were elected before the foundation of the world with that predestination in which God foreknew what He Himself would do; but they were elected out of the world with that calling whereby God fulfilled that which He predestinated. For whom He predestinated, them He also called, with that calling, to wit, which is according to the purpose. Not others, therefore, but those whom He predestinated, them He also called; nor others, but those whom He so called, them He also justified; nor others, but those whom He predestinated, called, and justified, them He also glorified; assuredly to that end which has no end. Therefore God elected believers; but He chose them that they might be so, not because they were already so. “On the Predestination of the Saints,” Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers Series I, vol. 5, p. 515
With respect, I think you are doing the same thing the Reformers did when they would pick and choose a single chapter from a single work to somehow fully express Augustine’s thought on the matter.
Predestination was a response to a request from St. Prosper for assistance against the teachings of Pelagius. The Semi-Pelagian heresy claimed that initial faith is given as a result of our own merits. Augustine forcefully argued that initial faith is a result of unmerited grace, not our good works:
And, therefore, commending that grace which is not given according to any merits, but is the cause of all good merits, he says, Not that we are sufficient to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God. 2 Corinthians 3:5 Let them give attention to this, and well weigh these words, who think that the beginning of faith is of ourselves, and the supplement of faith is of God.
Chapter 5.
Augustine is not interested in treating the concept of free will at all. He is focused on correcting the semi-Pelagian notion that initial faith is the result of meritorious good works rather than unmerited grace. In fact, other than quotes from Pelagius, Augustine only references “free will” once in
Predestination. Here is what he says:
Was He not born the only Son of God, of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary—not of the lust of the flesh, but by God’s peculiar gift? Was it to be feared that as age matured this man, He would sin of free will? Or was the will in Him not free on that account? And was it not so much the more free in proportion to the greater impossibility of His becoming the servant of sin?
Chapter 30.
Notice that Augustine does not deny free will, here in connection with Christ. Instead he states that he who receives more grace is more free than he who receives less grace. This is the mystery of the relationship between grace and free will. It is a very catholic statement.
He also wrote the following which certainly seems to deny free will, “It came by the freedom of choice that man was with sin; but a penal corruption closely followed thereon, and out of the liberty produced necessity. Hence the cry of faith to God, “Lead Thou me out of my necessities.” With these necessities upon us, we are either unable to understand what we want, or else (while having the wish) we are not strong enough to accomplish what we have come to understand. Now it is just liberty itself that is promised to believers by the Liberator. “If the Son,” says He, “shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”For, vanquished by the sin into which it fell by its volition, nature has lost liberty. “ “On Man’s Perfection In Righteousness” Ibid, p. 162
My interpretation of this passage is quite different from yours, although that may be because I am very familiar with On Free Will and the related Retractationes. It is not possible that Augustine is denying free will here, because he explicitly states that “
t came by the freedom of choice that man was with sin.” It is only when man gives up his liberty and agrees to let Christ work through him (and this is done freely, yet with the assistance of grace) that he shall truly be free. I simply do not see the problem with this passage.
