A Treatise on Grace and Free Will

I found this treatise in A Select Library of the Christian Church: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Volume 5, edited by Philip Schaff , pp.441ff. Portland Public Library has at least one copy available and most Christian college libraries are sure to have at least one copy available for borrowing and possibly another in their reference section. The easiest way to find it on a library catalog program is to do an author search for Philip Schaff.

What does it mean to be a human being? One aspect of this question has generated a theological debate that continues into the present day. This is the question of to what extent our free will is really free. Now those of you who've been to Bible college will probably instantly recoil at the thought of reliving some late night dorm room conversation that took hours and went nowhere, but before you quit reading, I think this treatise of Augustine's might provide a way forward from those conversations if we just listen.

For Augustine there are two dangers when it comes to expressing to what extent we have a free will. The first is what his audience has succumbed to, that is denying that we have any active part to play in our salvation. We know we have a free will because God commands us. It would be patently ridiculous for God to expect us to obey when we do not have the capacity for obedience or disobedience. The second danger is to think that grace is simply an aid to our free will. Augustine sees it as equally absurd for God to command us to pray that he keep us from temptation if that was in our power to do in the same sense that we carry on the normal activities of human life (chapters 1-10).

After this, he demonstrates how we can talk about free will without falling into Pelagianism. While the Pelagians misconstrue the relationship between God's grace and our will by saying that God gives grace in response to a small amount of human merit, Augustine shows through the life of Paul and a couple of other examples that God actually gives His grace in spite of our bad merit and that grace creates in us the will to do good and to persevere in it (chapters 11 - 18).

The main implication of this, in Augustine's mind, is that we are justified solely by God's grace. However, eternal life is both a continuation of God's grace to us in that we would be utterly incapable of fulfilling the Law without His grace and eternal life is something that we earn because of God's grace working in us in that God calls the result of his outpouring of grace into us, that is good works, genuinely our works because they were accomplished through our wills. He uses Ephesians 2: 8 - 10 to explain this. He sees these verses as a sort of beacon to help us navigate between the two dangers of believing that salvation is given to us by our works (it is by grace through faith) on the one hand and believing that our will and its functions are unnecessary or irrelevant (we are created for good works) on the other (chapters 19-21).

After showing the key role that grace plays in our salvation, both in that we are justified by grace and that we do good works because God's grace enables us to do them, Augustine then explains what this grace is by distinguishing his view from the Pelagians, who say that the Law is the grace which helps us to not sin. Instead the Law gives us knowledge of sin, but not the power to overcome it.

Similarly, this grace cannot be an aspect of our nature. It is not shown in the fact that we have a rational mind and are capable of telling right from wrong. He sees this for two reasons: first, both godly and ungodly people can be rational and, to some extent, moral; second, we did not get rationality through faith. Finally grace is not simply the remission of past sins to the exclusion of it being a help in present and future temptation. For Augustine, grace is that act of God by which he effects our fulfillment of the Law, the liberation of nature (presumably from death?), and the removal of the dominion of sin (chapters 22-27).

As a corollary to his view on grace, Augustine also sees faith as a gift from God. He shows that the Scriptures speak of it as such and that God is able to turn unfaithful people into faithful ones. Once again, this is not done as a result of human preparation for faith, but is preceded by human resistance. This brings Augustine to his point:

We should remember that it is He who says, "Turn and live," to whom it is said in prayer, "Turn us again O God." We should remember that He says, "Cast away from you all your transgressions," when it is even He who justifies the ungodly. We should remember that He says, "Make you a new heart and a new spirit," who also promises, "I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you." How is it, then, that He who says, "Make you, " also says, "I will give you"? Why does He command, if He is to give? Why does He give if man is to make, except it be that He gives what He commands when He helps him to obey whom He commands? (chapter 31)

For Augustine, this has huge implications for how we think of sanctification, love, and the limits of our free will. With regard to sanctification, it means that, to some extent that Augustine does not specify, we can follow the Law as believers in Christ. For, "It is certain that it is we that will when we will, but it is He who makes us will what is good..." (ch. 32). So why are we unable to always do good? His answer is that our wills need to grow. We start out on our walk of faith with a weak will and unable to do a great deal of what it is that we want to. God grows our wills through trials and suffering. He works without us in order to shape us to will what is good, and then works with us when we will what is good as the result of his work.

When it comes to love, the end of God's sanctifying work is for us to become people who genuinely love God from the bottom of our hearts with His love. As with grace and faith, this love is given to us by God and not conjured up from within ourselves.

Finally, if this is truly the path that God has us on, then it means that our wills are ultimately in God's power and therefore limited. He is able to harden us so that we commit sin (notice this is not God committing sin, it is still our wills doing it). This hardening is not necessarily tied to extreme cases of wickedness. The primary example of this that he sees is infants. Some are baptized and receive the washing from original sin, while others die before this can be provided and, in Augustine's mind, die separated from Christ. As with God's dealings with all of humanity, we are not to be His judge and it is better for us to be unable to explain his secret workings in the hearts of men than for us to take that seat of judgment and be answered with His answer to Job. We must trust his character when answers are not forthcoming. "God will certainly recompense both evil for evil, because He is just; and good for evil, because He is good; and good for good, because He is good and just; only, evil for good He will never recompense, because he is not unjust. He will, therefore, recompense evil for evil - punishment for unrighteousness; and He will recompense good for evil - grace for unrighteousness; and He will recompense good for good - grace for grace." (chapter 45)

I find Augustine helpful in dealing with the issue of how God's grace and our will interact because he attempts to do justice to both sides of the issue with a sincerity few, if any, have matched. He's the first person that I've read on this subject that really affirms both God's sovereign love and the reality of human will, with all of their implications. Here is neither the dry predestinarianism Calvinists are alleged to hold, nor the "choose your own adventure" Christianity that Wesleyans are caricatured as believing. This is God's sovereign love transforming human wills, not overpowering or acquiescing to them.

I believe that, if I understand Augustine correctly, this is a far more beautiful version of predestinarianism than much of what falls under the category of Calvinism or reformed theology today. I came to this treatise looking for ammunition in a debate with some friends of mine. What I found was a direct critique of my position (our free will had no direct implications for salvation, but needed to be overcome by God's grace) and a helpful, and I think more Scriptural, approach to the concept of free will than I have yet heard from people who take Wesleyan/ Arminian perspective. Tell me what you think. Do you agree with him or disagree? Why? Better still, read the treatise and then tell me what you think.

Since it will soon be Christmas, I plan on reading On the Incarnation by Athanasius. Hopefully, I'll post again before the end of the month. Is there a work you'd like to see discussed on this site? Feel free to post a recommendation.