Augustine Free Will

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Recommended: Saint Augustine’s philosophical problem of evil

In the reading “On Free Choice of the Will”, Augustine agrees with Plato that human is an immaterial soul that can think, and that the soul of those who most love the forms would rise to contemplate the eternal truth, a place like heaven. He said that these forms were ideas in the mid of the perfect eternal God and that we are required to love the perfect eternal God. Augustine concept is emphasized on the importance of the will, to have the abilities to choose between good and evil. Since everyone believe that human was created perfectly by God and established in a happy life, it is their mistake to fall into the hardships of mortal life. According to Augustine, the fundamental religious duty is to love and serve God. If we can manage to succeed …show more content…

But we humans are now constantly attracted towards evil, attracted to excessive satisfaction of our lower desires for material things and pleasures. And the only way we can break free from this kind of sinfulness is if we receive grace from God. But there is no way we can simply earn this trust or grace just by simply being good. We are unable not to sin. Our will cannot free itself from the bondage to sin through any effort of our own. However, through no merit of our own, God may bestow His grace upon us. And if he does, we may avoid sinning, but if he does not, we are left to what human nature now offers us, the certainty of sin. Augustine’s understanding of evil is that he circles around one main point; all that exists is good. To truly understand what Augustine, mean, we must first understand what is evil and what are the nature of God. He defines evil as a contrary to nature, hurtful and corrupts. This is a privation of good. For example, if a cut is evil, but if the cut is taken away then the evil is gone. However, the cut cannot have existed if the health of the body was good. By accepting these definitions, we can say that if evil is the privation of good, then as shown, something must first be good for it to be evil. Therefore, evil cannot have an independent existence apart from

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