Anselm's Theory of Freedom Thomas Gwozdz Saint Joseph Seminary College (LA) This article is a discussion of Saint Anselm’s understanding of man as created in a state of original justice, the loss of that justice in the Fall and its restoration in redemption and grace. Before the Fall, man’s original justice was an original freedom, namely, the pure inability to sin. By means of an accidental feature in human beings called freedom of choice between alternatives, man lost his original inability to sin. In fact, after the Fall man is unable not to sin. He has lost the gift of justice, no longer has an upright will, and is rendered powerless with respect to freedom. Against one’s will, man now experiences all kinds of inordinate desires and temptation. Yet Anselm argues that temptation is ultimately impotent with regard to man’s inner freedom which has been restored by the redemption and an all pervading grace. Man once again has uprightness of will. The miracle of it all is that God restores to man what man willingly chose to desert in the first place, namely, an original freedom, i.e., the will to choose the right thing. The discussion ends with the problem of grace and freedom: if God’s grace is so pervading, how in fact is an act of free choice really an intrinsically human act. In his book Will in Western Thought, Vernon Bourke submits this definition of freedom as the very essence of the will: . that power or condition of an agent which enables him to act, or refuse to act, and to do so in ways which he determines, without compelling restraints from forces external to, or internal to, his personality.1 It seems, however, that this notion of free will is not to be found in the tradition of the early Greeks, at least not explicitly. Plato speaks of freedom in terms of political and social freedom and Aristotle never once suggests that the genus of willing is freedom.2 As a matter of fact, for Aristotle, it is doubtful whether there is a theory of will at all, let alone a notion of freedom. There is a notion of choice but it seems to be reduced to an intellectual preference, i.e., a kind of reasonable desire that issues forth necessarily in action as the last step in a process of deliberation by the practical intellect. "Choice is either desiderative reason or raciocinative desire."3 Etienne Gilson seems to agree with this position when he says that, "It remains a fact that Aristotle spoke neither of liberty nor free will."4 Albrecht Dihle in his paradoxically named book The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity argues that the authors of classical antiquity prior to Augustine lacked any vocabulary and for the most part any conception of the will. For both 1 Vernon Burke, Will in Western Thought (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964), 79. 2 Ibid., 80. 3 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI, 1139 b 3 , trans. Martin Ostwald (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing Co., 1962). 4 Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, trans. A.H.C. Downes (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936) 307. The Saint Anselm Journal 7.1 (Fall 2009) 1 Plato and Aristotle, reason is what motivates, and it motivates independently of any other faculty.5 Mary T. Clark in her book Augustine, Philosopher of Freedom says that "after Aristotle there is a confusion of free choice with spontaneity by Epicurus and then the establishment of a rigorous doctrine of universal determinism by the Stoics."6 If freedom and free will are not explicitly treated in Plato and Aristotle and are confused with spontaneity and determinism in Epicurean and Stoic doctrines, it is somewhat ambiguous as to what their explicit origin in thought is. Nevertheless, freedom and free will are vividly presented in the writings of the early Eastern Fathers of the Church, in Clement of Alexandria,7 Origen,8 and Gregory of Nyssa.9 Here, however, freedom of will is found together with the notion of God's grace in a constant dialectic "like two poles of one and the same reality."10 With Augustine, the themes of freedom, free will and grace which are seen in the Fathers of the Eastern Church enter the West and with them more philosophical insight and distinction. For Augustine, freedom is fundamentally a quality of the will which enables one to do what one ought to do according to God's will.11 It is a freedom to do the good, an original freedom given to man with creation. However, Augustine's own psychological struggle made him realize that something had gone wrong and the will "does not will in its entirety."12 Rather, it is in a tug-of- war between what it wants and what in fact it wills. What had gone wrong was the Fall after which man was rendered powerless to choose the good. His original freedom was taken away, and from then on the will was systematically turned from doing what was right. Freedom from then on was experienced as the ability to sin or not to sin, and the will being radically misdirected from its original thrust was in need of grace. God's grace was necessary to restore what was lost and thereby render man once again able to choose the good. According to Augustine, the grace needed does not destroy free will but "changes the will from a bad will to a good will"13 without which change "we are powerless to perform good works of a salutary nature."14 Hence, God's grace brings about our power to will the good as well as cooperates in our free acts of willing. 5 Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). See pages 20–67 for a detailed study in Ancient Greece of the lack of any notion of will as separate from an intellectual or non-intellectual context. 6 Mary T. Clark, Augustine, Philosopher of Freedom: A Study in Comparative Philosophy (New York: Desclee Co., 1958) 17. 7 Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, VI, 12 in The Writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1956). 8 Origen, Contra Celsum, 5, 12 trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: University Press, 1965). 9 Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, trans. Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson in The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 66, 114. 10 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London: James Clarke & Co., Ltd., 1957), 197. 11 Augustine, De libero arbitrio, III, 18,52 trans. Robert P. Russell in The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 59 (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1968). 12 Augustine, Confessions, VIII, 9 trans. John K. Ryan (New York: Doubleday Image Books, 1960). 13 Augustine, De gratia et libero arbitrio trans. Robert P. Russell in The Fathers of the Church , Vol. 59 (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1968) 15, 31. 14 Augustine, De gratia, 17, 33. The Saint Anselm Journal 7.1 (Fall 2009) 2 Augustine's contribution to an understanding of the nature of freedom, will, and grace in the context of man's original state, sin, and redemption is monumental. He focused in directly on the will and its freedom as the source of free choice. It is the direction of the human will guided by grace rather than the cognitive process of practical reason that issues forth in free acts. In this way, the emphasis on freedom and the will entered the mainstream of Christian philosophy in the West—an emphasis which Anselm of Canterbury inherited and continued together with a penetrating philosophical analysis. This paper will discuss the notions of freedom, free choice, will, and grace as developed by Anselm, especially in the De Libertate Arbitrii and the De Concordia III. However, reference will be made to other works in the Anselmian corpus in order to flesh out the picture. In order to understand Anselm's treatment of freedom and grace in the order of creation, sin and redemption, it is necessary as a preliminary to focus in on the concepts of rectitude and justice which thread through the treatment. According to A.E. McGrath, Anselm's understanding of justice is derived from Augustine for whom God is the justissimus ordinator who orders the universe according to his will.15 In the De Trinitate, Augustine calls God the highest justice who orders all things according to weight, measure, and number which in turn mirror God's justice as the supreme exemplar. But, not only is God's justice mirrored in the physical order of creation, it also prescribes the moral order, i.e., how men are to act according to free choice. God's justice, then, is reflected in the human will as the right order men ought to choose. This is man's rectitude of will.16 In this sense, justice and rectitude are synonymous terms which refer to God's will for both the physical and moral orders of his creation. They are primarily attributes of God and only secondarily of creation and human affairs as they participate in God's will. This Augustinian vision of God's justice and rectitude mirrored in creation is reflected in Anselm when he defines truth as rectitude perceptible only to the mind and justice as right ordering of things according to the will.17 What Anselm seems to be saying is that there is a right order in creation, i.e., a state of affairs that ought to be.