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Anselm of Canterbury on Freedom and Truth

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Anselm of Canterbury on Freedom and Truth Anselm of Canterbury on Freedom and Truth Katherin Rogers University of Delaware A proof text that Anselm is a libertarian on free will is his point in De libertati arbitrii that it is logically impossible that God should cause the act of sin, since that would involve the contradiction of God willing that the created agent should will what He wills that the agent not will. Those, like Aquinas, who hold that God does will the act of sin often argue that, while sin is against the antecedent will of God, it is in accord with His consequent will. Anselm does not consider this possibility, in part, I suggest, because it would entail that God deceives His created agents; a thing which God would not do since He is perfect Truth. In the present paper I work through Anselm’s De Veritate to see if his understanding of truth in general and divine Truth in particular might allow that God could deceive regarding His commandments. I conclude that, although Anselm’s understanding of truth is surprisingly broad and complex, it would not allow the possibility that God, the standard of Truth, could antecedently issue commands which He consequently causes His created agents to disobey. Scholars debate concerning Anselm of Canterbury’s analysis of free will. In the present paper I discuss Anselm’s view of truth in his De Veritate, as part of a defense of my interpretation that he is a libertarian. The first job is to say a little about why the understanding of truth is so important for interpreting Anselm on free will. Elsewhere I have argued that Anselm attempts a developed and systematic analysis of the workings of a libertarian free choice. Probably he is the first philosopher to do so. The term “libertarian” is anachronistic, but that should not blind us to the fact that Anselm’s description of what created free will involves shows his view to be what we, today, would label libertarian. The heart of freedom, according to Anselm, is aseity, the being able to choose a se, from oneself.1 But for a created agent this is possible only when the agent confronts genuinely open options such that, having chosen one, it is the case that he could have chosen the other. (This, at any rate, is the case for the unfallen created will. Things are a little trickier after the fall. But for the will in its pristine condition . .) It is the opting for one option over the other that is absolutely up to the created agent. Anselm, of course, subscribes to the medieval vision of God as creator omnium, but he holds that, though God is the cause of all that exists, He is not the cause of all that happens. Elsewhere I have tried to spell out this Anselmian account of libertarian freedom, in which a choice is not a “thing” with ontological status.2 1 For Anselm, perfect freedom consists in effortlessly conforming one’s will to the will of God, but in order to achieve this state one must have been able to choose a se. 2 K. A. Rogers, Anselm on Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) 117-121; K. A. Rogers, “Anselm on the Ontological Status of Choice,” International Philosophical Quarterly, 52 (2012), 183-197. Regarding the point that a choice is not a “thing,” this second work is an improvement over the discussion in Anselm on Freedom. In the book I had called the will of the created agent a “primary cause,” but that suggests that the created agent brings something into being. A more careful read of Anselm allows the interpretation that the choice per se has no ontological status. The Saint Anselm Journal 10.1 (Fall 2014) 1 Some scholars take it to be close to impossible that Anselm’s position is as I have described it. The historical criticism is that it sets Anselm at odds with his chief source, St. Augustine, and also conflicts with the view of his greatest successor, St. Thomas Aquinas. Augustine, at least in his later work, is clearly what might be termed a theist compatibilist, that is, he holds that we are free and responsible, although God causes our choices. Augustine does not say that God causes evil since evil is nothing and so, presumably, nobody causes it. But God does cause our choices.3 Aquinas is very clear that, while God does not cause the nothingness which is the evil of a wicked choice, in that the act of sin is a thing, it must be caused by God.4 The philosophical impediment to my interpretation is that, in the view of many, including Augustine and Aquinas, ascribing anything akin to libertarian free agency to created agents radically diminishes divine sovereignty. It introduces a cause to the universe other than God, a cause that is capable of determining how some things in the universe will go. It means that things happen that God truly did not want to have happen. It entails that God “learns” about our free choices from us, that is from our actually making the choices. Surely—some will say—Anselm didn’t want to say that! The only way to avoid these unpalatable consequences is to hold that God does indeed cause everything that exists and everything that happens. I offer the Anselmian response—with good textual backing—that the thought that God couldn’t or wouldn’t create libertarian free agents diminishes God even more than the thought that He could and did. Only creatures who are robustly free can reflect, however dimly, the aseity of God and hence be the splendid imagines dei that Anselm takes us to be (or at least he takes it that that is what God intended us to be).5 And, in any case, created agents choose to sin, and God does not cause that choice. In Chapter 8 of De libertate arbitrii Anselm argues that God cannot possibly remove justice from someone, or, to put it another way, it is impossible for God to make someone sin. It is logically impossible. To sin is to will other than what God wills you to will. God cannot will that you should will other than He wills you to will. But if God does not cause the choice to sin, and sin happens, then it must be up to the created agent himself. In De casu diaboli (13-14) Anselm explains how this aseity depends upon open options. The opponent of my interpretation will claim that this is too fast. There is a move to be made which can grant that to sin is to will other than God wills that you should will, and yet that God wills all that happens. Augustine hints at it, and Thomas spells it out—there are two wills in God, an antecedent and a consequent will.6 The former captures what would be the good for creatures considered in abstraction from their existing actually in the universe God has chosen to create. For example, committing adultery is the sort of thing that is harmful to human individuals and their society, and so in willing human nature God wills that human beings should not 3 Rogers (2008), 31-52. Augustine’s De gratia et libero arbitrio provides a good proof text for the later Augustine’s position. 4 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles I, Ch. 85 and Summa theologiae I, q.83. 5 Rogers (2008), 58-60. 6 For Augustine see, De gratia et libero arbitrio 20.41-42; Enchiridion (26.100). For Aquinas see Summa theologiae I, q.19. The Saint Anselm Journal 10.1 (Fall 2014) 2 commit adultery. The commandment, “Thou Shalt not commit adultery” is an expression of this antecedent will. But on Aquinas’ metaphysics God must be the cause of all that happens, and there is another divine will by which God wills what actually happens. This is the consequent will, which can be thought of as an “all things considered” sort of will. All things considered, it is good that certain wicked choices happen because they are part of God’s chosen plan. So, when someone, Bill let’s say, chooses to commit adultery, Bill, through an act of will, makes the choice as a secondary cause, and God causes the choice as a primary cause. Of course God has not done anything wrong. God is guiding the universe so that it unfolds in a good, orderly, and purposive way following the divine plan. If Bill commits adultery, then it is the case that Bill’s adultery is a part of the plan. God’s consequent will is what guides the actual universe. So Thomas can hold that when Bill commits adultery he is willing to will what God wills that he not will—antecedently—and yet, when Bill commits adultery he is willing what God wills that he will—consequently. I will refer to this as the doctrine of the double will (though note that Aquinas says that the distinction does not apply to the divine will itself, but to the things willed.) Some suppose that this must have been Anselm’s view as well. Otherwise the unwholesome consequences already mentioned will follow. Hugh McCann, with whom I have been debating this issue in the pages of Faith and Philosophy for over a decade now, is of this school of thought.7 In response I have noted that, as far as I know, Anselm does not make anything like this distinction between an antecedent and a consequent divine will anywhere at all.
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