Free Will

You say: “Lord, these commandments are great and fine and glorious, and they can gladden the heart of anyone who can keep them. But I do not know whether a human being can keep them, because they are very hard.” He answered: “If you set it before yourself that they can be kept, you will keep them easily and they will not be hard. But if it already rises in your heart that a human being cannot keep them, you will not keep them.”

Those who have the Lord on their lips, but whose heart is hardened and far from the Lord — for them these commandments are hard and difficult to walk. So you who are empty and light in the faith: put your Lord into your heart, and you will know that nothing is easier than these commandments — or sweeter, or gentler.

But so that no one, from what we said earlier, will think we claim that events happen by the necessity of fate — just because they were foretold as things known in advance — we will clear this up too.

We have learned through the prophets, and we declare it true, that punishments, chastisements, and good repayments are given according to the worth of each person’s deeds.

If that were not so, and everything instead happened by fate, then nothing at all would be in our power. For if it is fated that this one be good and that one worthless, then the first is not to be approved and the second not to be blamed.

And again: unless the human race has power, by free deliberate choice, to flee what is shameful and to choose what is fine, it is not accountable for whatever is done.

But that it both succeeds and fails by free deliberate choice, we prove as follows. We see the same human being turning to pursue opposite things. If it had been fated that he be either worthless or excellent, he would never have been able to receive both opposites, nor change so often.

Nor would some be excellent and others worthless — for then we would make fate the cause of both good and worthless things, acting against itself — or else that earlier claim would seem true: that there is no virtue and no vice, only opinion labeling things good or bad, which, as the true Word shows, is the greatest impiety and injustice.

But we say this is unbreakable ‘fate’: that those who choose what is fine receive fitting rewards, and those who likewise choose the opposite receive fitting wages.

For God did not make the human being like other things — trees and four-footed animals — that can do nothing by choice. He would not deserve reward or praise if he did not choose the good from himself, but were simply made that way; nor, if he were bad, would he justly meet with punishment, not being such from himself, but unable to be anything other than what he had been made.

Evil does not have the nature of the good — that nature belongs to God alone. Among human beings it is completed by the freedom of deliberate choice, so that the worthless person is justly punished, having become wicked through himself, and the just person is worthily praised for noble deeds, not having transgressed God's will by the self-determining power given from God.

As with human beings, who have virtue and vice by their own choice (αὐθαίρετον) — for you would neither honor the good nor punish the wicked if vice and virtue were not in their power, and some prove faithful in what you entrust to them while others prove unfaithful — so it is also with the angels.

Some, free to choose as God made them, stayed in what God made and ordered them to be. Others abused both the substance of their being and their rule: the ruler over matter and its forms, and others among those around the first firmament.

That saying — “How often I wanted to gather your children, and you were not willing” — set out the ancient law of human liberty. From the beginning God made man free, possessing his own power, just as he possesses his own soul, so that he might use God’s counsel voluntarily and not as one forced by God.

Force does not come from God; good counsel is always with him. For that reason he gives good counsel to all. He also placed in man the power of choice, as also in the angels — for angels too are rational — so that those who obeyed might justly possess the good: given by God, kept by themselves.

If he turns instead to the works of death, disobeying God, he himself is the cause of his own death. For God made the human being free and self-determining.

What he procured for himself through carelessness and disobedience, God now gives him through his own kindness and mercy — when the human being obeys him.

Just as by disobeying, the human being drew death on himself, so by obeying the will of God, the one who wants to can procure eternal life for himself. For God gave us a law and holy commandments.

What is voluntary is either by appetite, or by deliberate choice (προαίρεσις), or by thought. Sin, mishap, and injustice sit next to one another in this range: living in luxury and license is a sin; striking a friend as an enemy from ignorance is a mishap; tomb-robbery or temple-robbery is injustice.

Sinning comes from not knowing what must be done, or from being unable to do it. But it is in our power (ἐφ’ ἡμῖν) both to present ourselves for training and to obey the commandments. If we refuse to share in them, we will sin — or rather, wrong our own soul.

I find that man was set up by God free — of his own decision and of his own power. I notice no greater image and likeness of God in him than this form of status.

For he was not stamped toward the one God by face and bodily lines — so varied in the human race — but in that substance he drew from God himself, that is the soul, marked toward God’s form, which pledges the freedom and power of his own decision.

The law God then set confirmed this status. A law would not be laid on someone who did not have the owed obedience to the law in his own power; nor would the threat of death be written against transgression if contempt of the law were not charged to man as freedom of decision.

So also in the later laws of the Creator you will find him setting before man good and evil, life and death.

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So full freedom of decision was granted him toward either side, that as his own master he might steadily meet good by keeping it willingly and evil by avoiding it willingly — since a man set under God’s judgment had to make that judgment just by the deserts of his own free decision. Otherwise neither reward for good nor for evil could rightly be weighed out to someone who turned out good or evil by necessity, not by willing.

Since the church’s proclamation includes the word about God’s just judgment — and those who trust it are called to live well and flee sin in every way, agreeing that what deserves praise or blame is in our power — let us also treat briefly of self-determination (τὸ αὐτεξούσιον), a most necessary question.

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Of things that move, some have the cause of motion in themselves; others are moved only from outside. Wood and stones are moved only from outside. Animals and plants have the cause in themselves. Rational living beings also have reason, which judges the impressions, rejecting some and accepting others, so that the creature may be led by them. We choose the fine and turn from the shameful — and are praiseworthy or blameworthy accordingly. What falls on us from outside is not in our power; judging how to use what has happened is the work of the reason in us.

Orthodox: I do not think it right to say that human beings were made by God as mere necessities. I say the first human was made self-determining — that is, free — and from him the heirs of the race inherited the same freedom.

So I affirm that the human being was made free, yet a slave to whatever he wills to serve. I say this is the greatest gift given him by God. For all other things serve the divine command by necessity: if you speak of heaven, it stands bearing its Master, not leaving its appointed place; if of the sun, it completes its set course, not refusing the run, but serving the Master by a kind of necessity.

Earth likewise you see fixed and bearing the command of the one who ordered it. The rest also serve the Maker by necessity, none of them able to do anything other than that for which it was made. Therefore we do not praise them for obeying the Master this way, nor is a better hope laid up for them, because they kept the command unwillingly.

But the human being received authority to obey whatever he wills, bringing himself into service — not mastered by necessity of nature, nor stripped of power. I say this was granted for the sake of better things, so that he might receive something more than he has from the Better One — something that comes to him from obedience and that he may claim from his Maker as what is due.

Someone will say: why then does God allow these things to happen and not rescue people from such bad errors? So that evils may fight with goods, so that vices may stand against virtues, so that he may have some to punish and others to honor.

For in the last times he has appointed to judge the living and the dead — of which judgment I will speak in the last book. So he delays until the end of times comes, when he will pour out his wrath in heavenly power and might, as the predictions of the pious prophets terrify with a dreadful warning.

For now he allows people to err and even to be impious against him — he himself being just and mild and patient. It cannot be that the one in whom there is perfect virtue should not also have perfect patience.