the recovery of free agency in the theology of st. augustine

Harvard Divinity School

The Recovery of Free Agency in the Theology of St. AugustineAuthor(s): James WetzelSource: The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 80, No. 1 (Jan., 1987), pp. 101-125Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Harvard Divinity SchoolStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1509657Accessed: 21/10/2009 10:05

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HTR 80:1 (1987) 101 -25

THE RECOVERY OF FREE AGENCY IN THE THEOLOGY OF ST. AUGUSTINE

James Wetzel Columbia University

In The Spirit and the Letter Augustine claims that grace not only avoids abrogat- ing human freedom it actually establishes free will.1 His claim raises some intri- guing questions. What sort of freedom is it that can be established only by the influence of another agent-in this case, God-and what sort of bondage is it that is overcome by grace? If we remain exclusively within Augustine's theological discourse, the answers come straightforwardly and by now have a ring of familiarity. The freedom in question is the state of loving God over and above his worldly and time-bound creations, fulfilling (with divine assistance) the demands of the Law, and finding one's happiness in reconciliation with the eternal through the mediation of Jesus Christ. Bondage is conversely the blindness and perversity of keeping one's attention fixed on creation apart from its relation to its Creator and of courting the satisfaction of only those desires which are

1 De spiritu et littera 30.52 (CSEL 60. 208): Liberum ergo arbitrium evacuamus per gratiam? Absit, sed magis liberum arbitrium statuimus. (Do we therefore rid ourselves of free will through grace? On the contrary, we establish free will.)

The task of translating Augustine's terminology for discussing the will has frequently become a source of disagreement among scholars. In his The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine (trans. L. E. M. Lynch; New York: Random House, 1960) 323 -24, Etienne Gilson tries to sort things out as systematically as possible. Liberum arbitrium seems generally to be reserved for describing the freedom in action that all humans, whether saintly or benighted, enjoy by virtue of acting on what they desire. Liberatus and libertas, however, seem only to apply to those whose desires are con- formed to the will of God. The latter terms in particular admit degrees of freedom.

While Gilson's observations are helpful, glaring exceptions still can be expected. A case in point is the above citation, where liberum arbitrium does not have the simple meaning of the facility to act on one's desires, but instead comes closer to the usual meaning of libertas. (Augustine is probably playing on the ambiguity of his own terminology for rhetorical effect.) As a rule, it is always better to rely on context than on consistency in terminology for sorting out Augustine's reflections on the will.

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framed independently of God's claims on every human being. Freedom is loving well or having a bona voluntas; bondage is loving aimlessly, unreflectively, and hence destructively.2

Despite the availability of Augustine's theology, the assumptions about the nature of human freedom which it embodies bear an uneasy and often antag- onistic relationship to our contemporary sensibilities. In linking the exercise of free will with substantive theological claims about the proper sort of love, he seems to include too much within the concept of freedom, and in tying the possibility of free will to divine beneficence, he seems to include too little. As a result, when it has come to evaluating his complex theological reflections on grace and sin for their consistency with what we would normally wish to say about human autonomy and moral responsibility, Augustine is found wanting or simply unintelligible.

Unfortunately, whenever Augustine is so drawn into considerations about free will and determinism, it generally amounts to an exercise in matching well-informed articulations of his theological vision with relatively inarticulate intuitions about what is to count as "real" freedom. The one possibility never entertained with any seriousness is that contemporary wisdom about freedom might not be a desideratum either for assessing Augustine's theology or for a fully persuasive understanding of human freedom. It may well be the case that Augustine disturbs contemporary sensibilities with good reason, such that the burden of rethinking and reformulation shifts to us. In order to test that possibility, however, we would need to be able to reconstruct an Augustinian theory of freedom that was not simply a requirement of Augustine's theology; otherwise there would be no commensurability between contemporary concerns and Augustine's interests (except among convinced Augustinians), and a preference for Augustinian freedom would simply beg questions.

I doubt whether anyone could manage such a reconstruction and still seri- ously call it a historically accurate interpretation of Augustine's thought. This is probably one reason why few if any Augustine scholars have given the exercise much consideration. On the other hand, a lack of historicity need not be especially troublesome if the end in view is an understanding of freedom inspired by Augustine rather than one directly attributable to him. A reconstruction would of course begin with Augustine's own theological and philosophical

2 For a first-rate exposition of the theology bearing on the will and its states of freedom and bondage, see John M. Rist, "Augustine on Free Will and Predestination," JTS n.s. 20 (1969) 420-47; reprinted in R. A. Markus, ed., Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City: Doubleday, 1972). For a general understanding of Augustine's theology, I am especially indebted to Eugene TeSelle, Augustine the Theologian (London: Burns & Oates, 1972); Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967); John Burnaby, Amor Dei: A Study of the Religion of St. Augustine (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1938); and Oliver O'Donovan, The Prob- lem of Self-Love in St. Augustine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980).

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presuppositions, but unlike an interpretation it would not have to remain there. Contemporary philosophical reflection on free will could be used to elaborate lines of thought initiated by Augustine at the same time Augustine posed a challenge to aspects of the contemporary debate. Although such a strategy perhaps risks anachronism and misunderstanding, it is by no means committed to these errors. As long as moments of exposition are distinguishable from moments of reconstruction, we can approach Augustine in the same manner he approached the best pagan thought of his day-with a healthy relish for plundering truth wherever it may be found.3

The various levels at work in reconstruction-interpretation, redescription, reevaluation-serve not so much to distinguish separate steps in an argument as they do to keep straight partners in a conversation. I intend to set up a number of conversations between Augustine's theology and contemporary philosophy. The first will concern the understanding of freedom usually felt to be at stake when determinism looms and whether it is freedom worth defending (here theology challenges philosophy). The second will temporarily set aside worries about determinism and attempt to motivate a richer conception of freedom (here philosophy elaborates theology). Finally, the third will reintroduce determinism-the kind occasioned by a certain kind of God-and investigate whether the freedom having emerged from the second conversation can still be maintained (here theology responds to philosophy). The drift of the conversations should be towards an understanding of free will compatible with Augustine's thought yet engaged as well with contemporary reflection.

The Problem of Free Will

Determinism is the thesis that from some point of view-be it that of God, causality, the subconscious, or something else-all human actions can be described as having occurred necessarily. From determinism worries about the possibility of free will follow. Those who overcome the worries are called compatibilists, and those who succumb incompatibilists. Although each side disagrees with the other over whether human freedom is possible, both compatibilists and incompatibilists agree that the view of freedom at issue depends on the analysis of counterfactuals in the form: "The agent could have done other-

3 See, e.g., De doctrina Christiana 2. 40. 60 (CCSL 32. 73-74). Augustine believed that the Christians of his day could happily mine the liberal disciplines of pagan culture for truths not necessarily intended by their pagan articulators (e.g., theological truths). The point cuts both ways. Augustine's theological reflections can be read by us in ways that go beyond his own intentions. The theology, of course, must be understood in its own terms first.

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wise, if he or she had so chosen." Only compatibilists believe that determinism can preserve counterfactuals of this form as expressions of genuine possibility.4

Augustine's theological determinism, with its emphases on divine sovereignty, the necessity of grace, and universal predestination, tends to land him squarely within this debate. Commentators scrutinize his theology to see whether Augustine ever allows for an "ability to do otherwise" on the respective roads to salvation and perdition.5 If he does, he is a compatibilist and human freedom is preserved. If not, he is an incompatibilist and all is not well in God's universe.

Recently in the American Philosophical Quarterly Arthur Falk has argued that Augustine is the rightful father of compatibilism and that compatibilism is radically defective.6 For a number of reasons, Falk's article recommends itself as a useful framework for discussing the limitations of the counterfactual or modal condition of freedom as an interpretive tool for understanding either Augustine or free will. Not only is his argument clear and precise, it is sufficiently general to apply to a broad range of debates adopting a modal focus on free will and its compatibility with determinism. Even more importantly, Falk's interpretation and criticism of Augustine qua compatibilist fails and fails for illuminating reasons-reasons which move us away from the temptation to define freedom solely against the threat of determinism and toward richer Augustinian formulations.

In setting up his case, Falk takes his cue from a well-known passage in The Spirit and the Letter, where Augustine distinguishes power (potestas) from will (voluntas). Power is the ability to act, and will is the effecting of what is in one's power to do. According to Augustine, whatever someone wills is ipso facto an expression of power, whereas not everything within someone's power finds expression as will.7 This analysis rests on the intuition that someone can be

4 Most, but not all, varieties of compatibilism have been concerned with counterfactuals and with questions of modality in general. The exceptions are not considered here, since they have been less prominent in evaluations of Augustine.

5 Rist's evaluation of Augustine in his seminal article (above, n. 2) is a case in point. He assumes that Augustine preserves human freedom only if grace is resistible.

6 "Some Modal Confusions in Compatibilism," American Philosophical Quarterly 18 (1981) 141 -48.

7 De spiritu et littera 31.53 (CSEL 60. 209- 10). Falk (143) excerpts John Burnaby's translation in Augustine: Later Works (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1955) 237, as follows:

Willing is one thing, ability another; willing does not necessarily imply ability nor ability willing; we sometimes will what we are not able to do, and sometimes are able to do what we do not will. ... If you act ... it can never be without willing; and since the willing is carried into effect, we cannot say the actor was powerless. If in yielding to compulsion you willed an act which you could not perform, we should say that the will was present, albeit forced, but the power lacking. But when you do not act because you will not, the power is there [Falk's emphasis] but the will is lacking so long as your resistance to compulsion withholds the act. We have then a sufficient

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both able and unwilling at the same time-an intuition that Falk identifies as the bedrock of any compatibilist defense of free will. The intuition can be expressed more precisely, Falk contends, as the analytic claim that whatever causes an agent to will some act, A, is not part of the circumstances which define A as a possibility.

His reinterpretation of Augustine's voluntaslpotestas distinction can be illus- trated as follows. In the first book of the Confessions Augustine recalls that, as a boy, he once became ill and nearly died. During the period of his fever, his mother Monica agonized over whether her son ought to be baptized into the faith. Although he was then only a catechumen and at best lukewarm about Christianity, Monica accounted it a great evil if he should die without having received the sacrament. On the other hand, she also knew of the young Augustine's profane ambitions and marked susceptibility to temptations of the flesh-qualities which made it likely that he would experiment with intemperate pursuits and heretical beliefs should he survive. A premature baptism might saddle Augustine with responsibilities he would be ill-equipped to handle. After weighing the relevant features of the situation-the evil of death without baptism, the evil of a wayward life with baptism, and the likelihood of death- Monica decided not to have him receive the sacrament. According to Augustine's analysis, she had the power but was unwilling to arrange his baptism. According to Falk's reinterpretation, the circumstances which made Augustine's baptism a live possibility did not include the desire(s) effective in determining Monica's will for or against the possibility.8

Compatibilists following Falk's reinterpretation of Augustine can allow the circumstances of possibility to fall within some net of necessitation and still have something left over-the "cause" of the will-whereby the agent is left free to act or refrain from acting. Falk, however, wants to go on to argue that the intuition allowing for something to be left over from the description of the circumstances of possibility is ultimately unsupportable, and he suggests the following thought experiment to expose its inadequacy. If the distinction between the determination of the will and the description of what makes an act possible is held analytically, then the attempt to include the determination of the agent's will as part of the circumstances of an action's possibility should produce conceptual confusions. The incompatibilist can demonstrate the absence of con-

definition of power in the union of the will with the capacity to act. We say that any man has in his power that which he does if he wills and does not if he wills not.

8 Compatibilism does not require that all agent-relative items (beliefs and desires, for instance) be excluded from the circumstances of possibility. In deliberation I can reflect upon my own beliefs and desires as part of the situation under consideration. What compatibilism does require is that the desire associated with the outcome of the deliberation and effective in action remain outside the description of the circumstances making the action possible.

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ceptual confusion simply by generating a description D of the circumstances of possibility for some intentional action A, such that A can be inferred directly from D.

This experiment strikes directly at the heart of the compatibilist position. The fact that A is intentional means that the circumstances of possibility preface an action describable only with reference to certain beliefs and desires of the agent. With D, those desires and beliefs are precisely the ones needed for describing A, and they enter into D in such a way as to cause A to follow. Com- patibilists can admit an agent's beliefs and desires within the circumstances of possibility (even those which rationalize A), but they cannot admit a causal connection between D and A. Without that proviso, nothing bars the determination of the will from falling within what makes an action possible.

In order to demonstrate the possibility of D, Falk contends that the incompatibilist needs only to make a distinction between two times before the time of A 's occurrence. At tp, the time of possibility, the agent is still far enough away from the time of occurrence that changes of mind, incomplete deliberation, or problems of an akratic nature could block the inference from any putative D to A. But as the time moves closer and closer to the time of occurrence, any unwillingness to perform A begins to take on the character of a disabling circumstance. When tp finally becomes tn, the time of the onset of necessitation, the interval between the time of occurrence and tn is small enough such that if at tn the agent is still unwilling to perform A, A cannot be performed; otherwise A follows from D at tn.9 In other words, at tn there is no longer enough time for the usual agent-relative blocks to inferring actions. Whatever way the will of the agent is determined at tn is the same determination of the will for action. Contrary to compatibilist intuitions, then, there is a description of the circumstances of A 's possibility which (1) makes reference to how the agent's will is determined and (2) facilitates the inference to A.

An example of the incompatibilist intuition would probably help to make the argument clearer. Let's suppose, in a modification of our earlier example, that at tb, time of baptism, Monica arranges to have her ailing son baptized. It is an intentional act in that "arranging to have her son baptized" accords with what Monica believes and desires herself to be doing. At tp, the circumstances of possibility include the illness of Augustine, the existence of a certain kind of

9 Falk, "Some Modal Confusions," 142-43: "This point is reached when the time of possibility is so close to the time of the act that there is not enough time left to permit changing one's mind. At this point one can no longer say that one is then still able though unwilling to perform the act, because one's willingness as of that moment is a circumstance disabling one from becoming willing in the brief moments left. Deliberation also stops at this moment because to continue would be pointless. Here we do intuit an inability relevant to deliberation, and this implies that there are conditions under which what one is willing to do is a circumstance of the possibility of doing otherwise, and is in fact a disabling circumstance."

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church, the availability of rites, and other external contingencies. They also include the state of Monica's will, which at tp is likely to be one of internal conflict stemming from doubts about the gravity of Augustine's fever and the benefits of an early baptism. But if the action as described is to take place at tb, that internal conflict must be resolved so that at some tn, not only has Monica decided which of her conflicting desires will determine her course of action, tn is close enough to tb to rule out further wavering and conflict. The state of Monica's will at tn (intending to have her son baptized) results in her acting intentionally at tb (arranging to have her son baptized). 0

The notion of the time of the onset of necessitation and its associated description of the circumstances of an action's possibility are supposed to have ren- dered dubious the compatibilist analysis of the contrast between voluntas and potestas. If so, that would leave us with two ways of recasting the situation where one is both able and unwilling to perform some action, each of which is a variety of incompatibilism. The first would be to join with fatalists and admit that the performance or nonperformance of an action follows from inexorable necessities having their source both within and outside of the agent. In that case the conjunction of ability and unwillingness would have to refer to the state of the agent prior to the onset of necessitation.1 After that time the unwillingness becomes what might be termed a psychological necessity and hence counts as disabling. The other option, rather more desperate and patently ad hoc, would be to admit all the usual psychological items associated with willing into the description of an action's possibility but then refuse to identify any part of them with the act of will. This strategy, generally dubbed "libertarian," turns acts of will into metaphysical curiosities, since all such acts are by definition dissoci- ated from the psychological history of the agent.

With compatibilism theoretically discredited and incompatibilism coming across as fatalistic or fantastical, Falk believes that he has critically undermined a way of talking about free will that goes at least as far back as Augustine. While I sympathize with his motivations,12 I think he has failed to establish his

10 Monica's action at tb can be inferred from her state of mind at tn only when it is assumed that no external contingencies frustrate her intention in the interim. The qualification is important, since it reminds us that Falk's thought experiment has no bearing on whether a science of human action is feasible. For decisive doubts about the latter, see Donald Davidson, "Freedom to Act," in Ted Hon- derich, ed., Essays on Freedom of Action (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973); reprinted in Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980). 1 Falk, "Some Modal Confusions," 143: "Even a fatalist can admit that he is simultaneously both able-and-unwilling-at-a-time to perform an act at a later time provided the circumstances-of- possibility include the impulses and assentings and habits of thought that cause one's willing."

12 Falk himself does not believe that modal or counterfactual approaches can generate interesting conclusions about human freedom. His excursus into the determinism debate is consequently an attempt to discredit the understanding of freedom it assumes. His strategy is as follows: (1) Assume that free will turns on the analysis of counterfactuals about actions; i.e., it is a modal issue; (2) it fol-

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desired reductio of the traditional debate. To see why this is so, we need to return to Augustine and reexamine an assumption that was for the purposes of argument initially taken for granted; namely, that the supposed father of compatibilism was in fact a compatibilist.

I follow a number of commentators in thinking that during the mid-390s, when Augustine was absorbed with interpreting the Letter to the Romans, his understanding of election and the interaction of freedom and grace shifted fun- damentally.13 His initial views can be culled from Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans, one of the earlier works of this period, where he divides the field of human agency into four types. Agents ante legem (before the Law) are said to pursue their own desires blindly, without due regard for the sort of life those desires constitute. Those sub lege (under the Law) are able to recognize the temperate and well-directed life and their own accountability for not pursuing it, but the continuing hold of past practices and present temptations prevents them from acting on their knowledge. Only when agents are sub gratia (under grace) do they find the power to overcome the legacy of sin and the lure of temptation. Finally in pace, beyond the dissipating forces of time and change, the blessed in eternal beatitude are freed from all temptations and enjoy rightly ordered desires and intentions. Within this typology of agent stances, it is the transition between sub lege and sub gratia that is especially relevant for the doctrines of grace and election. In the view of the Propositions, the transition occurs by way of the free consent of the person sub lege to accept the grace that would facilitate an obedient life. By "free consent" (liberum arbitrium) Augustine means in this context a decision made without divine assistance to reject the perversion of past ways and accept God's offer for renewal. The doctrine of election, the dogma that some are destined for salvation and some not, can then be founded on God's

lows that incompatibilism is theoretically more plausible than compatibilism (the burden of his case); (3) incompatibilism is either fatalism or libertarianism. Since both fatalism and libertarianism are unacceptable to the majority of philosophers, Falk believes that he has offered a reductio of (1). While I agree with Falk that free will is not helpfully defended or denied within an exclusively modal context, I doubt whether the thesis of incompatibilism is sufficiently clear to force any issues. For similar doubts, see Peter Strawson's brilliant piece, "Freedom and Resentment," Proceedings of the British Academy 48 (1962) 1 - 25.

13 Scholarly interest in this period of Augustine's intellectual development is growing. I have availed myself of discussions in TeSelle, Augustine the Theologian, 156-82; Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 146-57; and William S. Babcock, "Augustine's Interpretation of Romans (AD 394- 396)," Augustinian Studies 10 (1979) 55- 74. Babcock is particularly adept at detailing the transformations in Augustine's doctrine of election. I have to dissent, however, from his conclusion that by 396 "Augustine has, in effect, sacrificed both man's freedom and God's justice on the altar of the sheer gratuity of God's grace."

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foreknowledge of an individual's willing acceptance or rejection of his or her own redemption.14

The reconciliation of grace and freedom in the Propositions is certainly elegant, in so far as it manages to preserve God's justice without undermining the sufficiency of grace for renewal. It does the former by finding a distinction between persons on which election can be based, and the latter by picking a distinction that does not depend on the accomplishment of unassisted obedient acts. Placing one's trust in God is not to count (at this point) as an expression of the rightly ordered love that comes only with grace. Instead, the act of faith is the one prerequisite for receiving grace and benefiting from the divine work of regeneration. This view of election fits quite well, I think, with the compatibilist reading of human freedom which Falk is anxious to attribute to the Augustine of The Spirit and the Letter, written in 412. At the juncture between sub lege and sub gratia, the circumstances establishing conversion as a possibility include the offer of divine assistance and a person's recognition of a need for assistance. What remains outside the circumstances of possibility is the determination of the person's will for or against the offer. At all times the person sub lege is free to reject the call to a new life. Acceptance, then, is by compatibilist lights a genuine expression of agent autonomy.

Scarcely two years after writing the Propositions, however, Augustine reex- amined Rom 9:10-29 at the request of his friend Simplicianus and rethought radically his earlier understanding of election. In particular, he noticed how Paul's rendition of Jacob's election over Esau ruled out any distinction between the two brothers on which to hang the election of one and the rejection of the other. In neither case did the disposition of God follow from an assessment of their respective merits. Augustine's earlier solution-the appeal to God's foreknowledge of faith-could not be borne out from the text, which emphasized only the effectiveness of God's merciful calling and made no mention at all of the freely willed acceptance of faith by the one elected. Reluctantly, Augustine began to abandon the distinction he had drawn between consent to the influence of grace and the works enabled by that influence. The turn to God and the life sub gratia were joined within a seamless narrative of the work of redemption, such that when the person sub lege opted for God, even that decision depended on the supporting exercise of divine agency.15

14 For the Latin text and English translation of Expositio quarundam Propositionum ex Epistola ad Romanos, see Paul Fredriksen Landes, Augustine on Romans (Chico: Scholars Press, 1982). Propositions 13-18, 35, 44-46, 55, and 60-61 are the most important for my argument.

15 De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum 1.2.7 (CCSL 44. 31- 32): Nemo enim credit qui non vocatur. Misericors autem deus vocat nullis hoc vel fidei meritis largiens, quia merita fidei sequuntur vocationem potius quam praecedunt.... Nisi ergo vocando praecedat misericordia dei, nec credere quisquam potest, ut ex hoc incipiat iustificari et accipere facultatem bene operandi. (For no one believes who is not called. Furthermore God in his mercy does not grant a calling as a

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Even the casual reader of Ad Simplicianum 1.2 will be struck by how greatly the Pauline version of Jacob and Esau taxed Augustine's sensibilities. The intuition that had been so fundamental for his earlier views of grace and election- that election depended in some way on what individuals did-no longer served as a rule for interpretation. On the question of God's justice, Augustine found himself backed into a corer and reduced to appealing (rather lamely) to a "hidden equity far removed from human perception" for the standard God used to distinguish elect and damned.16 Moreover, once he had included the acceptance of grace within the scope of divine intervention, he needed to explain how it could be that some individuals seemed to frustrate the purposes of an omnipotent God by refusing the call. Any temptation he might have had to restrict calling (vocatio) to the elect was overruled by Matt 20:16: "Many are called but few are chosen."17

When he began to formulate an understanding of calling that would reconcile the dynamics of grace with his revised understanding of election, Augustine sorted out two modes of calling-general and suitable. For those outside the elect, who were called generally but not suitably, callings failed to engage them in a way that would motivate them to accept. They were unwilling to convert and necessarily unwilling in that their callings failed to establish circumstances conducive to their respective conversions. By contrast, the elect were called suitably (congruenter), or in a manner congruent with the external features of their situation and their internal frame of mind. When the omnipotent and omniscient deity tailored the circumstances of possibility to match the psychological history of the person sub lege, human willing necessarily followed suit.18

The reformulation of callings worked out in Ad Simplicianum was not just an occasional position for Augustine. The notion of a suitable calling laid the foun- dation for his theology of grace and gave him all the ammunition he needed for combating the Pelagians. In The Spirit and the Letter, appearing in 412 as a major sally against Pelagian assumptions, his reflections on Paul in Ad Sim-

reward for faith, since the merits of faith follow the calling rather than precede it. Therefore, unless the mercy of God sets the stage by means of a calling, no one is able to believe in such a way that he or she begins to be justified and to receive the power for acting well.)

16 Ad Simplicianum 1.2.16 (CCSL 44. 42). Babcock ("Augustine's Interpretation," 66-67) offers an interesting assessment of Augustine's views on divine justice as they change from his earlier interpretations of Paul to his position in Ad Simplicianum.

17 This verse appears in the Vulgate in Matt 20:16 and 22:14. The RSV cites it only in Matt 22:14. 18 Ad Simplicianum 1.2.13 (CCSL 44.38): Illi enim electi qui congruenter vocati, illi autem qui

non congruebant neque contemperabantur vocationi non electi, quia non secuti quamvis vocati. .... Cuius autem miseretur, sic eum vocat, quomodo scit ei congruere, ut vocantem non respuat. (For they have been elected who have been called suitably; the ones, however, who neither suited nor obeyed their calling have not been elected, since they have not followed although they have been called.... God calls the one on whom he has mercy in the way God knows will suit that person, with the result that he or she does not reject the calling.)

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plicianum are certainly presupposed.19 Historically, the suitable calling comes as a revolution in Augustine's thinking; philosophically, it causes us to resituate Augustine's thought within the debate over free will.

In particular, if the notion of a suitable calling is normative for Augustine's mature theology, then he cannot be the compatibilist Falk thinks he is. To put the manner in somewhat anachronistic (but, I think, accurate) terms, when Augustine casts the conversion to God as a function of a divine calling, he in effect admits the determination of the agent's will into the circumstances of the possibility for the agent's opting for God. Not only does this abrogate his compatibilism, it commits him to what Falk is calling fatalism. For if the interaction of human and divine agency were modeled on either compatibilist or libertarian schemes, it would be impossible to account for the flawless manner in which God converts and sanctifies exactly and only those chosen few whom he wishes to convert and sanctify. Weakness of will, failures in deliberation, stubborn- ness, or sheer force of will would remain permanent possibilities for human agents to lay aside the best laid plans of Almighty God. With a suitable calling, however, it is assumed that all agent-relative and agent-independent contingencies are factored into the calling in such a way that possibilities embarrassing to divine omnipotence and omniscience are eliminated.

If we accept Falk's analysis of the modal approach to the problem of free will, then Augustine has managed to give us the reductio of his own theological assumptions. Such a conclusion would tend to support the feeling among many students of Augustine that his doctrines of grace, election, and predestination involve the suppression of human freedom for the greater glory of God. But if the charge is fatalism, I strongly suspect that most objections to Augustine have been based more on offended sensibilities than reasoned arguments. Certainly the fatalism depicted by Falk and embraced by Augustine is more terrible as an epithet than as a substantive claim about human agency. What, after all, is so terrible about being "determined" by one's own beliefs and desires? I should think that any reasonable understanding of human agency would have in some fashion to advance that kind of determinism as a requirement for freedom.

19 For those who have worked through Ad Simplicianum, the judgment of Eugene Portalie is fairly typical: "If his teaching of predestination destroyed liberty, Augustine denied it already in 397, for at the very beginning of his episcopacy (fifteen years before the Pelagian controversy began) he for- mulated his system in a famous reply which has not been sufficiently studied or understood. Sim- plicianus, Ambrose's successor to the see of Milan, posed several questions to his old pupil. Among them, he asked Augustine about Chapter IX of the Epistle to the Romans. The reply, On Various Questionsfor Simplicianus, constitutes a true key to the Augustinian system because of its accuracy, its fullness, its clarity, and especially because of the rational explanation which it gives to the dogma. It must be reread if one wishes to grasp the depth of its thought and the significance of the formulas which, though in constant use later, are rarely explained elsewhere" (Eugene Portalie, A Guide to the Thought of St. Augustine [trans. Ralph J. Bastian; Chicago: Regnery, 1960] 182).

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The rub, of course, is supposed to be the time of the onset of necessitation, when agents are, as it were, locked into a frame of mind suited for only one kind of intentional action. The intuition which inclines us to view this as a problem, however, is a red herring. All that the time of the onset of necessitation tells us is that all actions involve a determination of the will at some point prior to their performance. But that much is required simply for explaining how a person's desires and beliefs can result in intentional actions. Free will pertains to a capability for a particular sort of intentional action, and therefore its possibility rests with how the will is determined. The debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists is over whether the will is determined prior to action. Incompatibilists win, but nothing about freedom follows.

As long as the determination of the will is treated as a discrete item within the circumstances of possibility, we fail to engage the issue of human freedom. That is precisely the lesson we could have learned from a sympathetic reading of Augustine's theological reflections in Ad Simplicianum. His account of a calling given suitably, whereby willing is brought within the circumstances of an action's possibility, explains the congruence of human action with divine intentions without prejudging the issue of human freedom. It is fatalistic (whatever that means) only by reputation.

The final moral I wish to draw from this excursion into modality is that we do not have sufficiently reliable intuitions about freedom and its relation to the will for judging or even framing issues about determinism. Free will is, to use a fashionable term, theory-laden. It has to be reconstructed out of a host of complicated assumptions about desires, intentions, values, deliberation, and practical reason generally. In other words, the "will" component of free will requires as much attention as the "free" part.

The Recovery of Free Agency This next section begins the work of reconstruction proper. If freedom is pri-

marily a function of how a will is determined, we need to know what the nature of the determination is and what sorts of capabilities agents must have to make it possible. In the Propositions Augustine has already supplied us with a con- venient typology of agent stances, ranging from a state of complete bondage to a state of full freedom. For our purposes, we need only concern ourselves with the recovery rather than with the full restoration of freedom, since the latter is a possibility only in pace, beyond this life. That leaves for investigation the stances ante legem, sub lege, and sub gratia, each of which reveals a different stage of a person's capabilities and limitations vis-a-vis free agency. By recon- structing the transitions between these stances, we can tease out the assumptions behind a properly Augustinian understanding of freedom.

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A curious phenomenological feature of agency ante legem is that, despite its condition of bondage, the agent does not experience lack of freedom as such.20 On the contrary, the condition is fairly self-contained and may even be mistaken for happiness. Desires, often of a sophisticated sort, are experienced, become the subject for deliberation, and finish as the motivations for action.21 The pur- ported bondage of the agent, which can only be detected from a perspective external to the stance ante legem, is in not having certain kinds of desires come up for review-specifically, those desires that would order all temporal pursuits within a framework of love for God. But what sort of incapacity is it that is involved with the failure to love God?

Augustine's theological presuppositions are sufficiently woven into the description of the stance ante legem to make the question difficult to answer. We seem simply to want to say that not loving God is an incapacity sui generis. This theological formulation, however, is too opaque to be of much use for explicating free agency.

Fortunately, there is a way to get behind it. A number of contemporary philosophers-ones who have tended to set free will within a comprehensive theory of action-have engaged themselves with what amounts to genealogies of rational agency in an effort to isolate the capabilities involved in willing freely and rationally. Their investigations stand roughly as nontheological counterparts to Augustine's array of agent stances, and the work of at least two such philosophers bears suggestively on Augustine's position.

One is Harry Frankfurt, who in his influential article, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,"22 has argued that the key transition between persons and nonpersons rests on the reflexive capability persons have for evaluating their own desires. Only persons deliberate effectively over whether the desires

20 For a concise description of ante legem as a stance of agency lacking the resources for self- evaluation, see Augustine's comment about his own stormy adolescence in the Conf. 2.2.2 (CCSL 27. 18).

21 Because of Augustine's own fascination with the threat inordinate sexual desires posed to self- integrity, there is an understandable temptation among his readers to equate all forms of concupiscence with unbridled sensual passions and biological drives. The life ante legem is then pictured as a round of debauchery and profligate indulgence, and spiritual struggle ends up as a fight against the beast within. To recognize just how distorted such a picture is, one need only call to mind some of the other varieties of concupiscence described in the Confessions-excessive attention to refine- ments in speech, unreasonable concern for finding favor in the eyes of friends, and inordinate attach- ment to the pleasures of music and theatre. In Conf. 10.35 Augustine describes what might even be called a form of intellectual concupiscence. Curiositas is an inquisitiveness having its source in a thirst for knowledge but lacking in the appropriate concern for truth. Although it is a form of concupiscence, it cannot be identified simply with the pursuit of pleasure, since curiositas may entice someone to court unpleasant experiences simply for the sake of new information (see CCSL 27. 184- 86).

22 Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971) 5 - 20.

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defining their usual preferences and pursuits (first-order desires) should be the desires determining their will. This sort of deliberation involves both a preference for certain kinds of desires (a second-order desire) and a resolution to allow that preference to order one's will (a second-order volition). Protoper- sons, what Frankfurt calls "wantons," have plenty of first-order desires, perhaps even occasional second-order desires, but never second-order volitions. Consequently, wantons have sufficient resources for deliberating over how, when, and where certain desires are best satisfied, but they cannot engage in the kind of reflection that would lead to an unforced decision not to gratify those desires at all.

Following Frankfurt's lead, Annette Baier has complicated the genealogy by introducing an intermediate stage between wantons and persons. "Half- wantons" are social creatures who, by virtue of their initiation into a host of customs and conventions, are able to judge the propriety of their actions without making reference to their desires qua individuals. Unlike wantons, half-wantons are not egoistic calculators of self-satisfaction. They can and do seek the appro- bation of their fellow half-wantons, and the social dimension of their motivations lends a greater complexity to their mental life. The principal incapacity which keeps them from fully rational agency is their inability to put into question the values ensconced in their own social conventions. As Baier puts it, "Half-wantons have customs, but not the custom of custom-criticism."23

Frankfurt's wantons and Baier's half-wantons each reveal an important aspect of what Augustine means by the stance ante legem. Like wantons, persons ante legem are impaired from making certain kinds of reflective judgments-not only concerning whether their wills should be determined by customary desires, but also how a complex variety of desires, at times perhaps conflicting, should be ordered. To say that loving God is never entertained as a possibility ante legem is not to say, as we may have first supposed, that one sort of desire (albeit an exalted one) is simply absent from the usual fray. It is instead indicative of a more systemic failure. Persons ante legem cannot (or do not) assume a perspective from which to evaluate, order, and control their desires in the manner required for maintaining self-integrity.

Disorder in this case does not mean chaos. Although those ante legem are in many ways the slaves of their own passions, they continue to be able, like the half-wantons, to participate in wide varieties of social activity. This ability to manage at least tolerably well at an intersubjective level accounts for the possibility in the stance ante legem for achieving a semblance of order among one's desires-one that mimics and can be mistaken for the order proper to higher

23 Annette Baier, "Mind and Change of Mind," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Metaphysics 4 (1979) 157 - 76; reprinted in idem, Postures of the Mind: Essays on Mind and Morals (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985).

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stances. It also helps to capture some of the flavor of Augustine's use of consuetudo, which is usually translated as "custom" or "habit," although it actually falls somewhere between the two. Consuetudo refers to the formation of a person's character out of the patterns of interplay between wanton desires and half-wanton sensibilities. The wanton part makes it a little less than custom, and the half-wanton part makes it a little more than habit. As long as a person remains ante legem, consuetudo continues to constrict the possibilities for character change.

The stance ante legem is not, however, a simple composite of wantonness and half-wantonness. It instead stands related to these conditions within a continuum of increasingly complex incapacities of agency. Wantons cannot reflect critically on the organization of their desires qua individuals, half-wantons on the organization of their intersubjective relations, and persons ante legem on the organization of the loves regulating their individual projects and social commit- ments. Once the continuum has swung to the ability to love, a great deal has already been presupposed about abilities to organize desires, function socially, and cultivate refined sorts of pleasure. The one crucial capability not presupposed is for making accurate judgments about the nature of the good and how it may be pursued. All those ante legem simply lack the reflective capability needed for coming to recognize what a fully realized human life (beatitudo) would look like. Their attention is riveted elsewhere.24

Many assumptions are incorporated into the seemingly innocent phrase "judgment about the good." For instance, Augustine assumes that its content will always bear on the truth of Christianity and that its framework will involve the organization of all loves into two general sorts-those oriented toward the eternal, and those oriented toward the temporal. While these assumptions are foundations for Augustine's theologizing, neither one is indispensable for characterizing the freedom (or lack of freedom) dovetailing with the theology. So far, all that we are really committed to is some version of a moral realism, where beatitudo can be characterized in terms of what human beings are rather than in terms of what they may suppose themselves to be. Persons ante legem are the ones who suppose themselves to be what they are not and thereby accept seeming for genuine happiness.

24 Augustine generally associates the failure to recognize the nature of beatitudo with a failure to understand how God is related to the created world. The latter failure is in turn rooted in a myopic attention to creation. Persons ante legem become so enamored with the immediacy of the created order that their love loses its proper measure and proportion. The result is impaired judgment. See Conf. 10.6.10 (CCSL 27. 160): Homines autem possunt interrogare, ut invisibilia dei per ea, quae facta sunt, intellecta conspiciant, sed amore subduntur eis et subditi iudicare non possunt. (Humans are able to examine the created order with an eye toward discerning the unseen nature of God through creation, but their love for created things draws them away and having surrendered themselves they lose their capacity for judgment.)

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The advancement to the stance sub lege, with its newly acquired recognition of where beatitudo lies, does not (usually) arrive as a gestalt perception. There are tributaries of reflection feeding into the first glimmers of wisdom. In Augustine's own case, for instance, Cicero, the Manichees, and the Neo- Platonists had to be digested before St. Paul could be read with any insight. Nor is the advancement exclusively a cognitive achievement. Judgments as to what constitutes a good life require subsidiary feats of attention and resolution in order to achieve a critical perspective.

Augustine emphasizes two such feats. One is continence, which, as the Latin suggests (con + teneo), involves holding oneself in check against the lure of immediate pleasures and customary distractions. Without the restraint and resolution of continence, the tide of consuetudo would sweep over reflection and wipe out occasions for self-evaluation. The other feat, which presupposes a measure of continence, amounts to a sophisticated exercise of memory. As human agents begin to recognize the path to beatitudo, they become involved in reinterpreting their past to align with their present stance and with where they wish to go. No longer are acts of recall simple re-presentations of past times. Instead, they are elements in the reorganization of the self in accordance with the knowledge (however fragmentary) of beatitudo. Both continence and memory, in concert with judgment, work together to regather the self out of its dissipation within aimless pursuits of worldly satisfactions.25

The proper coordination of memory, continence, and judgment enables the person sub lege to frame intentions for living the well-ordered and properly oriented life. At what precise moment having such intentions constitutes a new capability is difficult to pinpoint, given that the various cognitive, affective, and volitional components at work may be in various stages of development and integration with one another. Phenomenologically, the transition from ante legem to sub lege is marked by a gradual change in the experience of consuetudo. The familiarity of customary pursuits and habitual patterns of desires and actions turns increasingly into a constraining necessity.26 Finally a point of crisis may be reached, when the lack of congruence between intentions and actions results in a kind of paralysis.

25 The importance of continence for self-integrity is expressed clearly and succinctly in Conf. 10.29.40 (CCSL 27. 176). Memory is the subject of most of Book 10. The sections most germane to my reading of Augustine include 10.23-26 (CCSL 27. 172-75), where he links acts of remembering with the search for God and beatitudo.

26 See Conf. 8.5.10 (CCSL 27. 119): Velle meum tenebat inimicus et inde mihi catenam fecerat et constrinxerat me. Quippe ex voluntate perversa facta est libido, et dum servitur libidini, facta est consuetudo, et dum consuetudini non resistitur, facta est necessitas. (The enemy was taking hold of my will, and from it he had forged my chains and constrained me. For indeed perverse desire sprang from my perverse will, and while I was serving desire, its familiarity was established, and while I failed to resist that familiarity, it was made my necessity.)

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In Augustine the locus classicus for this moment comes with the garden scene in Book 8 of the Confessions, where he agonizes over why he has yet to commit himself to Christianity. He has by then understood and accepted the essential doctrines of the faith, grown dissatisfied with the accolades brought by rhetoric, recognized in turn the desirability of Christian beatitudo, and has set before him the example of the conversion of Victorinus (a great orator). Despite the favorable circumstances and his own desires, Augustine fails to find the will within himself to follow through on his intentions to pursue a Christian voca- tion. He experiences in dramatic fashion the key incapacity of the person sub lege -the inability to will what is known to be good.

The peculiar feature of this sort of situation is its unintelligibility from the agent's point of view. Consuetudo may supply some explanation for the resid- ual hold of familiar patterns of action and desire, but it does not give the agent a reason to opt for what, in the agent's own best judgment, ought not to be chosen.27 Once a person faced with forced and momentous alternatives has considered all the relevant circumstances and assessed the options, he or she can no longer appeal to reasons to account for an unwillingness to act on preference. If preference cannot lead to the appropriate resolution of the divided will, then either the self-understanding of the agent is frustrated or the situation is somehow restructured to meet the needs of the agent.

We know what occurred in Augustine's situation-the fig tree, the voice in the garden, the verses from Romans, then catharsis. Restructuring came in the form of a suitable calling, and Augustine suddenly found himself in a position to consent to the way of life he had already sufficient reason for wanting.28 From then on he lived sub gratia and pursued actively the path to beatitudo, although (presumably) not without occasional backsliding and further cases of internal conflict.

Since I have already discussed what is involved with calling congruenter, I have little to add about the transition between sub lege and sub gratia, except perhaps to issue a precautionary note. Augustine's autobiographical descrip- tions, though illustrative of his theological reflections, should not be allowed to constrict arbitrarily the range of experience conforming to his agent typology. In particular, the acute mental distress and cathartic resolution of his garden scene conversion are not necessary ingredients in everyone's experience of coming to be able to act on the good. The transition may be as gradual and

27 I am indebted here to Donald Davidson's discussion of the essentially "surd" character of intentionally acting counter to one's own best judgment. See his "How Is Weakness of the Will Possible?" in Joel Feinberg, ed., Moral Concepts (Oxford Readings in Philosophy; New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); reprinted in Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events.

28 TeSelle (Augustine the Theologian, 197) also draws the connection between Augustine's theological convictions in Ad Simplicianum and his description of his own conversion in Book 8 of the Confessions.

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imperceptible as the move away from the stance ante legem potentially is. In Augustine's typology, the progression between the various agent stances requires conversions, but not conversion experiences.

The stance sub gratia, with its capability for knowing and acting on the good, marks the beginning of the recovery of free agency and the end of this reconstruction of Augustine's agent types. Along the way the notion of freedom that has emerged is one where freedom (1) requires judgments about what sort of life is appropriate for a human being, (2) requires those judgments to be correct, and (3) requires those judgments to determine the agent's will. Whether such an understanding of freedom is workable depends ultimately on whether it makes sense to import judgments of truth and falsity into the arena of ethics. Although I happen to think that some version of a moral realism is defensible, I am not presently prepared to undertake any such defense. Nevertheless, a prima facie argument in Augustine's favor is his apparent ability to generate complex views of human agency which promise to illuminate a wide variety of moral experience.

Theological Determinism

I claimed at the close of the first section that a more articulated and theory- laden understanding of freedom was needed before the question of determinism could be posed with any seriousness. Although I have managed only a rough sketch of free agency and its recovery in Augustine's theology, it supplies us enough of a framework for wondering whether free will constitutes a problem in a theological context. Specifically, does the introduction of a certain kind of God into human affairs prejudice the possibilities for freedom in a manner detri- mental to human beings qua agents?

I intend to conduct a brief meditation on this issue from two sides, both varia- tions on the theme of the interaction of divine and human agency. One side highlights God's influence on those who navigate successfully between agent stances, and the other God's lack of influence on those who remain perpetually perverse or weak-willed. This asymmetry of theological determinism along the lines of salvation and damnation tracks some of the complexity of Augustine's puzzling contention that sinners are culpable for their moral failings even while saints are not commendable for their moral successes.29

29 The thesis that determination for what is good bears differently on human freedom than determination for evil has recently entered the contemporary debate on free will by way of Susan Wolf's article, "Asymmetrical Freedom," Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980) 151 -66. In good Augustinian fashion Wolf argues that the condition of freedom cannot be specified without reference to notions of truth and goodness. Consequently, she finds determination for the good acceptable for human freedom in a way that determination for evil cannot be. On the whole, her article confirms my suspicion that many of Augustine's assumptions about the nature of human freedom have validity apart from

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In turning first to the dynamics of redemption, it proves surprisingly difficult to produce a candidate for "the problem of free will." Within Augustine's typology of agent stances there are certainly occasions for internally conflicted wills, failed intentions, and moral lapses, but the family of phenomena related to weakness of will comprises a set of local problems, which are clearly recogniz- able to afflicted agents. By contrast, the traditional worry about free will has generally been of global scope, encompassing all agents at all times with or without their knowledge. Interest in a more global issue may seduce the unwary back into thinking that the elect cannot truly be said to enjoy freedom unless at every step along the road they could have rejected their election. There is no quarter here, however. Freedom not to pursue beatitudo is, for Augustine, either elliptical for the responsibility anyone would have for acting on perverse desires and corrupt reasons, or it is plain nonsense.

Of course there is no sense in looking for trouble. If the problem of free will cannot be located within the work of redemption, perhaps it is not there in the first place. But at the risk of sounding contentious, I would pause to consider a few Augustinian habits of thought before dropping the issue. For instance, Augustine rarely develops his notion of consuetudo outside of its role as a problem for the achievement of beatitudo. Familiar patterns of desires and actions are as a rule taken to shape the wrong sort of character. There are no comparable discussions of what positive role consuetudo might have for rendering the character of a person sub gratia consistently virtuous.30 Furthermore, Augustine often treats continence and temperance as synonymous concepts. Both are used to refer to a person's capability sub gratia for successfully resisting the onslaught of temptation. Temperantia, Augustine's Latin translation of sophrosyne, retains none of its Aristotelian sense as a freedom from base appetites.31

I mention these habits of thought in order to suggest that while Augustine was perfectly willing to speak of a reformation in the desires and affections of those under the influence of grace, he was much less at home with the idea that members of the elect might become habituated to the life of virtue and obedient service and cease finally to experience temptation as such. The theological sources for his reservations are manifest. The doctrine of original sin convinced him that temptation could never cease to plague even the most favored of God's servants, and the doctrine of grace confirmed his appreciation for the fragility of

the context of his theology. His comparable views about moral responsibility, however, are wedded firmly to doctrines about grace and human fallenness. Some of the complexity of Augustine's understanding of responsibility will come out in a discussion of theological determinism but certainly not the whole picture.

30 In De doctrina Christiana Augustine does make mention of "the peace of proper consuetudo," but he never develops the idea at any length. See 1.24.25 (CCSL 32. 20).

31 See De civitate Dei 19.4 (CCSL 48. 665).

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human virtue and his distrust of Christian humanism in the style of a Pelagius or a Julian. But regardless of whether his reservations were well motivated, Augustine's preference for strong doctrines of sin and grace tends to throw into relief a likely candidate for the theological version of the problem of free will. Namely, if the exercise of divine agency continually shapes and sustains the saintly life, hasn't the work of character formation been withdrawn altogether from human agents?32

This challenge receives its particular onus from an understanding of human and divine interaction modeled, quite literally, on infusion. Persons qua vessels are supposed to receive passively the installments of grace which progressively regenerate their wills and implant dispositions toward virtue and obedience. We know enough already about the dynamics of grace to recognize how this picture distorts Augustine's position. For a start, although human responses to divine overtures are receptive when the calling is suitable, they are not passive. Conversion requires above all else the knowledgeable consent of the convert. In order to motivate that consent, God structures the conversion situation to meet the particular volitional stance of the human agent in question. When conversion follows, it arrives as the fulfillment of both a human and a divine intention. Infusion views tend to collapse everything into the divine intention, thereby stripping human beings of their agency.

If we extend the notion of a suitable calling beyond the moment of conversion, we can generate the full sweep of divine influence in determination for the good. Moving forward into sanctification, the convert is enabled to translate conviction ever more effectively into works, as divine callings begin to bring together human intentions and actions within an unfolding narrative of a unique Christian life. The suitable callings are the high points of the story, since they mark the successes, but there can be an important role as well for general callings. When general callings fail directly to motivate human agents to will the good, they may not always be functioning as indications of perdition. Some- times they may serve as the preparatory stages for the cognitive and volitional abilities required crucially at a later time; that is, they may set the stage for callings given congruenter. Certainly this is the picture we get in the Confessions, where Augustine reads the providential hand of God back into the events leading up to his conversion.

As God's modus operandi, callings suggest a model of human and divine interaction more along the lines of edification than infusion. God-in the capacity of a perfect teacher of virtue and beatitudo -discerns the disinclinations and propensities certain individuals have and arranges for them to receive the influences and stimuli that will facilitate their arduous pilgrimage from

32 The possible conflict between a theology of grace and an ethics of character was first brought to my attention by Scott Davis.

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confusion and depravity to gradual enlightenment, recovery of moral agency, and final reconciliation. One singular advantage of this edification analogy lies in its ability to illuminate why Augustine apportions responsibility and agency asymmetrically within the saintly life. According to Augustine, although members of the elect are in fact the agents of the good works they accomplish intentionally, they are not responsible (in the sense of being directly commendable) for them. Consequently saints must never pride themselves (glorior) on what they can achieve. The analogy of edification adopts a two-agent model to unpack this curious claim.

Consider first the case of a human teacher-a Socrates, for instance-and his student. To the extent that Socrates is effective, he is able to pose just those questions and considerations which draw the student out of a state of self- delusion and moral perversity into the beginnings of moral enlightenment. The insights of the dialectical exchange remain the student's own, but it is Socrates who has elicited them and earned due credit. Presumably the sort of life the recipient of Socratic edification leads after the edification is a matter of his or her own responsibility and can be praised or blamed accordingly.

The replacement of a human with a divine teacher requires a few modifications in how the situation is described. Unlike Socrates, God has an unfailing influence on whether individuals become virtuous and achieve beatitudo. Omnipotence opens up the fullest possible range of influences upon human agents, omniscience guarantees that influences will address agents suitably as individuals, and benevolence prevents God from ever abandoning edification once it has begun. The result is the continuous presence of provi- dence in the lives of the elect, eliciting from each of them the sorts of knowledge and action appropriate for rational beings on the way to beatitiudo. In so far as another agent (God) is continually and necessarily involved in their moral successes, members of the elect are never strongly commendable for what they manage to accomplish. They are weakly commendable, however, simply for being the agents of their own actions and for being the sorts of people God has led them to become. That is enough commendation for a sense of self- integrity, but not enough for self-satisfaction.

It would be foolish to think that the analogy of edification is anything but suggestive for Augustine's understanding of responsibility in the Christian life. The analogy itself is somewhat inexact, and it leaves out of the account entirely some crucial features of Augustine's theology (such as the role of the mediator). On the other hand, I would want to claim that the dynamics of grace and the distinction between attributions of responsibility and agency-the points of depar- ture for the edification analogy-forestall any problems with free will in determination for the good. If there are still difficulties with Augustine's account of election and the work of redemption, they are occasions for further theological

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reflection rather than for further rethinking on the nature and exercise of human freedom.

We are left to consider the matter of determination for evil. Theologians have as a group been relatively uninterested in this sort of determination, shelv- ing it away either as a mystery or an impossibility, and philosophers have been insufficiently puzzled by its possibility. Under what conditions, if any, can we claim that circumstances work to corrupt character inexorably and without hope of reform? I doubt whether anyone has managed a convincing answer to this. Nevertheless, the question must be addressed in some form if we are to evaluate theological determinism on the damnation side. Augustine contends that those who fall short of election necessarily lead perverse lives, for which they are solely responsible and justly condemned. We want to know whether he can connect necessity and responsibility in this manner without saddling his theology with a problem about free will.

In the context of determination for the good, we discovered that the problem of free will is not easily motivated. The case with determination for evil, despite some troubled intuitions, is not much clearer. Persons slotted for damnation are not even supposed to have free will. Throughout their lives, they are said to remain bound to their own misguided desires and false beliefs. Free will may indeed be a practical problem for them, but why should it end up as a theoretical problem for Augustine's theology?

If there is a theoretical problem lurking about, it has less to do with freedom directly than with responsibility and the extent to which responsibility requires freedom. Augustine is already committed to a distinction between freedom and responsibility by virtue of the link he forges between freedom and the pursuit of the good. In particular, responsibility does not always (or even usually) entail freedom; otherwise, anyone who acted without the proper orientation toward beatitudo would, ipso facto, fail to be responsible for his or her actions. The doctrine of election, however, commits him to a position more radical than a simple distinction. Since those who are damned are denied in advance the possibility of reform and redemption, the condition of damnation lacks not only freedom but escape as well. Responsibility must be compatible with a lack of freedom and with an incorrigible lack of freedom.

When incorrigibility as well as bondage accrues to membership in the nonelect, the condition of damnation takes on its peculiar necessity. It is this sort of necessity, moreover, which seems to motivate worries about free will- not that agents don't have wills determined for the good (simple bondage), but that they can't have wills determined for the good (necessary or predestined bondage). The modal qualification of bondage as a necessary condition of unfreedom threatens to remove the responsibility for character out of the hands of the human agent. For even if a lack of freedom manages to preserve respon-

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sibility, it is much more difficult to comprehend how an incorrigible lack of freedom could.

In determination for evil, there is evidently a nastiness to the necessitation involved-a nastiness which is notably absent when human agents are flawlessly guided by God to pursue beatitudo. Nevertheless, we are no closer to formulating a theoretical objection to its consequences for freedom and responsibility than we were before, and I have serious doubts about whether any such formation is even possible. For one thing, we simply do not have a normative theory of responsibility which could be used for making invidious comparisons with Augustine's own claims, and our intuitions about responsibility are argu- ably worse than our intuitions about freedom. So we are on shaky ground to start with. Furthermore, Augustine himself is notoriously vague about the nature of the necessity involved in unredeemed bondage to sin. Presumably it has something to do with inherited depravity and the adverse effects of consuetudo on character change. But since the doctrine of original sin has never been famous for its clarity, it is of little help as an explanatory principle.

Given the obscurity surrounding the nature of responsibility and what capaci- ties of agency it may require, I propose a modest strategy of indirection for coming to some conclusion about determination for evil. First we begin by asking what sort of necessity (1) would be relevant for theological determinism, (2) would lock individuals into corrupt and perverse lives, and (3) would clearly abrogate the responsibility those individuals would normally have for leading such lives; then we determine whether this sort of necessity could plausibly be attributed to Augustine. If so, then the lack of freedom associated with those bound to sin is theoretically troubling, and theological determinism poses a challenge to an Augustinian understanding of God. If not, then at least prima facie theological determinism for evil does not raise a problem about free will.

There is really only one plausible candidate for a necessity satisfying conditions (1)-(3), and it assumes the dynamics of a calling given congruenter. As with determination for the good, God coordinates circumstances suitably with an agent's volitional stance in order to elicit certain kinds of intentional action, and over the course of time these actions give shape to a certain kind of life. The kind of life taking shape, however, is quite different. Callings are designed specifically to confirm and encourage individuals in ill-formed and pernicious characters, either directly by presenting corrupting influences or indirectly by preventing the occurrence of salutary influences.33 As a result, affected

33 George Orwell's 1984 can be interpreted as a literary illustration of this sort of determination for evil. The "Big Brother" State parodies Augustine's God in all essentials. It pretends to omniscience through techniques of surveillance and manipulation of access to information, to omnipotence through the rigid control of thought and language, and it is wholly malevolent, exercising power solely for power's sake. Salvation comes in loving Big Brother; damnation is having any love other than for Big Brother. When the State detects deviance among its subjects, it watches carefully

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individuals necessarily lead perverse lives and serve as the agents of their own perdition, all in perfect accordance with what God has intended. Even though such lives would also be rationalized by the very desires and beliefs of the human agents themselves, the guiding and fully compelling exercise of divine influence upon their wills clearly absolves them of any responsibility for their conduct, at least in a strong (condemnable) sense.

Augustine anticipated this possible extension of a suitable calling into determination for evil and rejected it as illicit. God neither compels anyone to sin nor in general contributes to the corruption of anyone's character. According to Augustine, God merely allows depravity to take its usual course and refrains from ever intervening to arrest its fixation of character. Putting the two direc- tions of determination together, we get a picture of God actively working for the salvation of some and passively permitting the perdition of others.34

The restriction of God's direct influence to determination for salvation rests on sound theological instincts, since the lack of influence on the damnation side makes the corruption of human character something more than a mere artifact of divine engineering. It therefore holds some promise for preserving human responsibility, even when the damned life is incorrigible. As long as human beings are either solely or mainly the agents of the necessity of their characters (by way of consuetudo), responsibility can be compatible with at least some forms of an incorrigible lack of freedom.

The remaining obstacle for Augustine's view of determination for evil lies in whether original sin-the source of general depravity-handicaps human agents unfairly and arbitrarily from the start. If individuals cannot be reasonably held responsible for beginning their careers as agents with corrupt preferences, then they cannot be condemned for turning those preferences into encrustations of character. Unfortunately, original sin is either too complex or too confused a doctrine to yield much in the way of a conclusion. In absence of a clear demonstration of the doctrine's incoherence or utter incompatibility with human responsibility, I tend to give Augustine the benefit of the doubt. Enough of a doubt lingers, however, to say that theological determinism is freer of potential conceptual conflicts with human freedom and responsibility when it is determination for the good.

and learns everything there is to know about the person who has erred, waiting for that moment when it can in its omniscience and omnipotence suitably call the deviant back to conformity. Conversion finally comes in Room 101, where the situation is always structured perfectly to elicit love for Big Brother and betrayal of all other loves.

34 Ad Simplicianum 1.2.15-16 (CCSL 44. 39-42). Augustine develops the idea that the harden- ing of sinners results from the denial of God's mercy and grace rather than from any direct intervention on God's part. In his later writings on predestination, these reflections become the basis for his distinction between God's active and permissive will.

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JAMES WE'I'TEL

My investigation of theological determinism has not had as its object a blanket endorsement of Augustine's theology. As far as I know, there may be many problems with his understanding of grace, election, and sin quite apart from issues about free will. My only goal has been to show that theological determinism poses no obvious problems for human freedom-not when the problems come directly as worries about the formation of character and the attribution of agency, nor when they come indirectly as worries about responsibility and the attribution of merit and blame. We can in fact conceive of God as necessarily and decisively involved in human progress toward beatitudo and still have an interesting notion of freedom left to show for it.

Conclusion

This essay has been an attempt to set theological and philosophical reflection in counterpoint, so that one is made alternately to answer the other and their common focus on free will correspondingly advances in nuance and complexity. Throughout the exercise, Augustine's notion of a suitable calling has served as a unifying theme. In The Problem of Free Will it entered as a challenge to the adequacy of the compatibilist debate as a starting point for reflection on the nature and possibility of human freedom. When the focus in The Recovery of Free Agency shifted towards an agency-centered understanding of freedom, the suitable calling brought together exactly those capabilities needed for a recovery of free agency. Finally, in Theological Determinism, when the question of determinism was reissued, callings-suitable and otherwise-centered reflection on the interaction of divine and human agency and the possible difficulties it posed for making sense out of human freedom and/or responsibility.

The contrapuntal methodology tends to deny my essay a comfortable home either within mainline theological and historical studies of Augustine on the will or within contemporary philosophical discourse on free will and determinism. Nevertheless, it is not my intention to be an exile from either camp. If there is one lesson to be drawn from the entire investigation, it is that an examination of what Augustine means by a calling can be the occasion both for advancing our understanding of his theology and for advancing contemporary theory of action.

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Article Contentsp. [101]p. 102p. 103p. 104p. 105p. 106p. 107p. 108p. 109p. 110p. 111p. 112p. 113p. 114p. 115p. 116p. 117p. 118p. 119p. 120p. 121p. 122p. 123p. 124p. 125

Issue Table of ContentsThe Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 80, No. 1 (Jan., 1987), pp. 1-132Volume InformationFront Matter [pp. 78 - 126]Toward a Critical Theological Education [pp. 1 - 13]Alaktu and Halakhah Oracular Decision, Divine Revelation [pp. 15 - 42]On Hidden Hatred and Open Reproach: Early Exegesis of Leviticus 19:17 [pp. 43 - 61]The Pharisaic Paradosis [pp. 63 - 77]Ethical Responsibility and Human Wholeness in Matthew 25:31-46 [pp. 79 - 100]The Recovery of Free Agency in the Theology of St. Augustine [pp. 101 - 125]Notes and ObservationsWomen and War in Qohelet 7:23-8:1a [pp. 127 - 132]

the recovery of free agency in the theology of st. augustine

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