Augustine Free Will

Free will: the doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not simply determined by physical or divine forces. However, do human beings truly have free will? If we have free will, then we are able to act for ourselves and be judged rightfully in the sight of God. Nonetheless, some may argue that because God knows all things, his foreknowledge overrides our free will. I believe that human beings must have free will; if we did not have freedom, one could not be judged justly, and progress to be the person God wants us to become. Augustine believes that humans have free will, and the importance of being able to choose between good and evil. Additionally, Augustine believes that our orientation of the will determines

In “History of Philosophy,” it says Augustine believed that, “…he would not have created man without willing that man should be what He meant them to be” (2: 83). Elder Todd D. Christofferson also said, “It is His plan and His will that we have the principal decision-making role in our own life’s drama. God will not live our lives for us nor control us as if we were His puppets.” If God’s foreknowledge interfered with our free will, then we would not be able to make decisions on our own. Likewise, we would not be able to be judged justly; for our actions were not our own. In “The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy,” Peter Adamson said, “If I am not free with respect to an action, then it will not be just for God to punish me for that action” (400). If we are the person who controls our decisions and will be accountable for our sins; therefore, we must have free will. Montague Brown from Saint Anselm College said, “We, of course, cannot understand how both God, through his providence, and we can be the cause of our good acts of free will; to understand this, we would have to be God.” While we cannot comprehend this knowledge, we can understand that God’s providence and our free will

In “History of Philosophy Vol. 5” its states, “he sees how little reason can prove…by the natural beliefs which common human nature imposes on him as on others” (5: 317). According to Hume, a necessary connection can exist between two events. However, men cannot be free and determined, for one cannot exist while the other remains. “A History of Western Philosophy” reads, “If every impression is a distinct item in our experience, there can be no necessary connection between two ideas derived from two impressions, however closely juxtaposed the original impressions may have been” (318). Hume describes liberty as, “a power of acting or not acting according to the determinations of the will.” However, liberty and necessity cannot work together. For if you say they can, it is saying you believe in chance; because events cannot happen by chance, this argument is proven