Origen of Alexandria, On First Principles

We hold that certain teachings about God's promises must be grasped when we turn our understanding toward the contemplation of that endless, eternal age of praise, fixing our gaze on its indescribable joy and blessedness.

Yet because the Church's preaching also includes faith in the future judgment of God — a judgment whose certainty stirs people and urges them to live well and blessedly and to flee every kind of sin — it is plainly shown that it lies within our power to commit ourselves either to a praiseworthy life or a blameworthy one. For this reason I consider it necessary to say something, too, about the freedom of our will, since this question is being debated by very many people, and not without dignity.

So that we may more easily understand what freedom of will is, we must ask what the very nature of will and choice desires. Among all things that are moved, some carry the causes of their motion within themselves, while others receive them from outside. For example, everything without life — stones, wood, and whatever consists solely in the disposition of its matter or bodies — is moved only from without. We may set aside for now the question whether the motion of corruption, when bodies dissolve, counts as motion at all, because it does not serve our present purpose.

Other things, however, possess the cause of movement within themselves: animals, trees, and everything that subsists either through natural life or through a soul. Some have thought that even veins of metal, and perhaps the motion of fire and the sources of water, belong in this class. Among these self-moved things, some are said to move from themselves, others from themselves; thus they distinguish those that move from themselves because they live but are not animate, from animate things that move from themselves when fantasy — that is, a certain will or impulse — is present, provoking and urging them to move toward something.

Indeed, even in certain animals there is such a fantasy, a will or sense, which by a natural instinct stirs and incites them to ordered and composite movements. We see this in spiders, which are roused to the work of weaving in a remarkably orderly way by a fantasy, that is, by a certain will or zeal for weaving, a natural movement that prompts the intention of this work; yet the animal itself is found to possess no other sense than this natural zeal for weaving, just as the bee is said to fashion honeycombs and honey.

The rational animal, since it also has these natural movements within itself, nevertheless possesses something more than the other animals: the power of reason, by which it can judge and discern among natural movements, rejecting and casting away some, approving and accepting others, so that human movements may be directed and governed toward a worthy life by the judgment of this reason. It follows that, because the nature of this reason in man has within itself the power to distinguish good and evil, and once it has distinguished, there is also in it the faculty of choosing what it has approved. In choosing what is good it is praiseworthy; in following what is base or evil it is justly blameworthy.

We must not overlook the fact that in some mute animals a more ordered movement is found than in others — as in clever dogs or war horses — so that they appear to be moved by a kind of rational sense. But this is to be believed to happen not so much by reason as by a certain impulse and natural movement, more abundantly granted for such uses.

But to return to our starting point: since the rational animal is so constituted, certain things can befall us from outside and occur — whether to sight, hearing, or other senses — which provoke and incite us to good or contrary movements. Because these things happen from outside, it is not in our power to prevent them from happening or occurring. But to judge and determine how we ought to use these things that befall us is the work of nothing other than the reason that is in us, that is, our own judgment. By the judgment of this reason we employ the external incitements toward whatever reason itself has approved, and we govern our natural movements by its nod either toward good or toward contrary things.

If someone should claim that the external occurrences which provoke our movements are such that it is impossible to resist them, whether they incite us to good or to evil: let him turn his mind to himself for a little while and examine his own movements more closely. He will find that when the allurements of some desire strike him, nothing is done before the assent of his mind is given and the nod of his mind yields to the wicked suggestion — so that even in the tribunals of our heart, as it were, with the judge presiding, an argument seems to be made from both sides, that a sentence about the judgment of reason may be pronounced after the causes have been laid out.

For, to take an example, a man who has decided to live continently and chastely and to keep himself from all sexual contact is not forced into sin simply because a woman appears who provokes and entices him to act against his purpose. She is not a perfect and absolute cause or necessity of transgression for him, since he can certainly remember his resolve, restrain the incitements of lust, and curb the delights of the alluring pleasure with the stricter precepts of virtue, so that the firmness and constancy of his purpose may endure with every sense of luxury banished.

Finally, when such incitements come upon more learned men and those strengthened in divine institutions, they, mindful of themselves, immediately recall to memory what they have meditated on and been taught, and, fortifying themselves with the supports of a holier doctrine, they reject and repel every allurement of incitement and drive away contrary desires by the objection of the reason innate to them.