Comparing Free Will In St. Augustine Of Hippo, Boethius, And

St. Augustine of Hippo, Boethius, and Anselm all address the concept of free will and God’s foreknowledge in their works “The City of God”, “The Consolation of Philosophy”, and “De Concordia”. While each work was written during a different time period, each of their approaches consists of a solution comprised of both unifying and unique points and arguments. While there is no clear contesting between one work and another, it is clear that free will is a complex and critical idea in Christian theology that has long since been debated. '

The Augustinian solution to the problem of free will and foreknowledge is given in chapter 30 of “The City of God” (Book XXII). Augustine maintains that free will is not absent in the City of God simply because

sin is no longer present, in fact, “It will, on the contrary, be all the more truly free, because set free from delight in sinning to take unfailing delight in not sinning.” as he states on page 5 of the excerpt. Augustine goes on to discuss the original sin and Adam, noting that the first demonstration of free will and mankind was when “he was able to not sin”. He maintains that evil exists in the world because of free will, an idea adopted by most modern Christians, and that God does indeed enable humans to freely choose their own actions. In fact to be granted free will is a gift from God