CHAPTER TWO

AUGUSTINE

During the ensuing centuries, Aristotle's De interpretatione became the subject of frequent commentary.1 Ammonius and Boethius report that there had already been commentaries written by Aspasius (first century), Herminus and Alexander of Aphrodisias (second century), Porphyry (third century), Iamblichus (fourth century), and Syrianus of Athens (fifth century); Philoponus also commented on the work (sixth century), and Theophrastus, Aristotle's immediate successor at the Lyceum, may have also discussed it in one of his treatises. Around 363, early in the lifetime of Augustine, Marius Victorinus translated De interpretatione into Latin. There is, however, no indication that Augustine ever read the work. He never cites it and his own discussion of the problem of foreknowledge and future contingents reflects no contact with Aristotle's writing, but seems to have been stimulated principally by Cicero's De fato.2 This is not surprising, for in the time following Aristotle's death the purely logical issues of antecedent truth and semantic necessity tended to be eclipsed by questions concerning freedom of the will and causal determinacy.3 This concern manifests itself in Augustine's own discussions of the prob• lem of fatalism.

TURN TO THEOLOGICAL FATALISM What is of special interest to us, however, is that under the influence of Neo-platonism and Christianity, the problem of fatalism has taken on a new guise: the problem of theological fatalism. Well before the time of Ammonius (d. 241-42) the relation of God's foreknowledge to human freedom was an oft-discussed question.4 Celsus in the second century, for example, had objected to Christianity on the basis of the fatalistic conse• quences of Christ's predictions of his betrayal.5 Origen defended the compatibility of foreknowledge and human freedom against Celsus's attack, charging that his opponent erred in thinking foreknowledge to be the cause of an event, rather than the reverse. According to Origen, though God's foreknowledge is chronologically prior to the event foreknown, it is not causally prior to the event and so places no necessity upon it. This interchange between Celsus and Origen was to have a considerable influence upon subsequent generations of Christian thinkers in their handling of the problem. 60 AUGUSTINE

Since God's foreknowledge was a non-negotiable doctrine, the issue of theological fatalism was especially acute for Christian thinkers. As Baudry observes, denying foreknowledge was perhaps not so grave a difficulty for a philosophy which held that God ignores the entire universe; but for Christians the prophetic element in Scripture demanded God's knowledge of future contingents.6 Hence, when Cicero denies divine foreknowledge to preserve human freedom, Augustine scorches him for the ' 'conspicuous act of madness" {apertissima insania) of simultaneously holding to God's existence while denying His foreknowledge.7 Even if Cicero agrees that God exists, still his denial of God's knowledge of the future amounts to nothing more than what "the fool hath said in his heart: there is no God" (Psalm 14:1). 'Tor one who does not know all future things is surely not God."8

AUGUSTINE'S CONTEXT OF THEODICY Augustine's fullest treatments of theological fatalism are to be found in the first four chapters of book three of De libero arbitrio and chapter nine of book five of De civitate Dei. We shall in our discussion focus out atten• tion on the more extensive handling of the problem in the former work. The central issue in this work, as Augustine notes in his Retractions, is the origin of evil.9 The book derives its title from Augustine's conclusion that evil has no other origin than in the free choice of the will. He emphasizes that when he discusses the freedom of the will to do right, he is speaking of man's freedom prior to his fall into sin, subsequent to which the will suffers ignorance and inability from birth, unable to choose righteousness unless first liberated by God's grace.10 In this sense, the key question with regard to theological fatalism might be put: if God foreknew Adam's fall, then did Adam sin necessarily and not freely? In book one Augustine inquires into the cause of evil. He differentiates between the evil a man suffers and the evil a man does.11 God in His providence is the author of the evil a man suffers, since this is his just punishment for sin; but God is not the author of the evil a man does. Indeed, there is no single author of such evil—"Every evil man is the author of his evil deeds."12 This differentiation presupposes that such deeds were done voluntarily, for "They would not be justly punished unless they were done voluntarily."13 It is not clear whether by voluntate Augustine means "freely." But he says as much when he proceeds to argue that sin must be voluntary, since a virtuous mind cannot be compelled to sin—not by a superior power, since any such power would also be just and, hence, would not induce the soul to sin; and not by any inferior power, since it is too weak to do so—and that therefore "Nothing