The Human Being
Against fate and fixed natures, the early fathers insist that human beings can choose — or the language of reward, blame, counsel, and judgment collapses. Voices range from the well-known apologists to Methodius, Hermas, and Lactantius.
Each row is one claim. Each name is a writer, placed at the date of the passage. Select a name to read what they said.
12 of the 12 writers here teach: “Will remains capable of choice.” The turn comes with Augustine of Hippo, c. 412.
teaches it partly rejects it later writer, summary only
Will remains capable of choice12 teach
Will cannot choose the good without prior grace1 teach
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. […]
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.
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.
After Adam, the will is not free to turn to God for salvation without prior grace; choice alone cannot restore what was lost.