Do we need to understand what we
believe? Augustine says that our faith is “incomplete and unstable until it is
replaced by knowledge.” He also said that we cannot understand unless we
believe first, but it must be followed by knowledge which comes by sight.
He was a major Christian leader and
writer who lived 1600 years ago. He was a prolific writer. I am including a
condensed version of the introduction to his “On Free Choice of the Will.”
As you read the following, a few
biblical thoughts come to mind:
“..grow in the grace and knowledge
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” – 2 Peter 3:18
“..you shall know the truth, and it
shall set you free.” – John 8:32
My main point and question: At what
point do we conclude that we have all the truth?
(The following is from Augustine’s
book, as translated by Thomas Williams.)
Augustine – On Free Choice of the Will
With Introduction by Thomas Williams
Despite its relative brevity, On Free Choice of the Will contains almost every distinctive
feature of Augustine’s philosophy. It
presents the essentials of his ethics, his theory of knowledge, and his views
of God and human nature. In what
follows, therefore, I concern myself chiefly with the two concepts that figure
in the title: freedom and the will.
The
word ‘freedom’ has many senses. One sort
of freedom involves the absence of restraints.
We might call this physical
freedom.
I may still be physically free--- no one has locked me up or
tied me down – but it seems that I lack freedom in some stronger and more
interesting sense. I am free to act as I
choose, but my choices themselves are not free.
The freedom to
choose in a way that is not determined by anything outside my control is what I
shall call metaphysical freedom.
The
view that human beings have metaphysical freedom is called
‘libertarianism’. Augustine was one of
the great defenders of libertarianism; indeed, he was the first to articulate the
view clearly. According to
Augustine, human beings
are endowed with a power that he calls the will. This feature of the will Augustine calls liberum arbitrium, which can be
translated as “freedom of decision” or (more usually) “free choice.” Thus, the will is not determined by any external factors. This freedom is what allows us to be responsible for our actions; if
outside forces beyond our control caused us to choose to act in a certain way,
we could hardly be held responsible for acting I that way.
Thus far I have talked about being determined by external things. But it is not external states that determine
our choices; it is internal states: beliefs, desires,
states of character, and so on. And since it is my desires and
my character that determine my choices, my freedom is not threatened.
A
libertarian like Augustine would not be convinced by this sort of reasoning. The fact that this causal chain eventually
wormed its way inside me, so to speak, determining my choices from within, no
longer seems to guarantee my freedom. It
is with such considerations in mind that Augustine rejects the view (known an
‘compatibilism’) that determinism is compatible with human freedom and moral
responsibility; and since he
is convinced that human beings are in fact free and responsible, he must reject
determinism as well.
Because
human beings have metaphysical freedom, we are capable of making a real
difference in the world. In this way we
can truly be said to be in the image of God, who created all things distinct
from himself by a free and unconditioned act of the will. Like God, human beings can introduce genuine
change, can bring into being something that except for their free choice would
have never existed.
Unfortunately, this metaphysical freedom can be used – indeed, Augustine thinks that
it has been used – to introduce evil into the world.
Augustine’s
answer is that human beings have metaphysical freedom, and so the blame for any
evil action rests on the person who performed that action. Without metaphysical freedom, the universe is
just a divine puppet show. If there is
to be any real creaturely goodness, any new and creative act of love, rather
than the merely mechanical uncoiling of a wind-up universe, if there are to be any real decisions
other than those made in the divine will, then there must be metaphysical
freedom, and such freedom brings with it the possibility of evil as well as the
promise of goodness.
There is a
third sense of ‘freedom’ that I shall call autonomy. Augustine describes autonomy as “the sort of
freedom that people have in mind when they think they are free because they
have no human masters, or that people desire when they want to be set
free by their masters”. This sort of
freedom is not freedom in the highest and most genuine sense, Augustine
believes, and so he has little to say about it.
Augustine,
however, would point out that if you are your own boss, you are ipso facto your own slave. And it is not right to be ruled by what is equal to oneself. One should be ruled only by what
is in every respect superior to oneself, and that is Truth, which Augustine
identifies with God. The unchanging
divine truth about what we ought to do is what Augustine calls the eternal
law. The morally grown-up human being
recognizes this law for what it is: an
immutable standard of divine authority, one that binds us unconditionally,
quite independently of what we may happen to desire or believe.
The Kantian doctrine has an undeniable appeal, but Augustine
would point out that evil
always has a specious attractiveness and that error is most dangerous when it
is parasitic on some truth. That is what
Augustine means by saving that we must try to understand what we have already
believed. If I think that the moral law
has no higher authority than my own reason, I can easily come to think that it
has no real authority at all.
Augustine, by contrast, insists on the absolute objectivity and authority of the
eternal law.
This is not the arbitrary
judgment of a killjoy God; it is the natural and inevitable result of trying to
live in a law-governed universe while defying its laws.
This is one reason why Augustine thinks that it is important to understand what
we have believed.
Our only security against this
instability of moral belief is to attain understanding or knowledge, rather
than mere belief, about moral matters.
“Faith comes by hearing,” but knowledge comes by sight. “Unless you believe, you will not understand.
This may sound like arguing in a circle, or at least like a
kind of proof texting. (“Here’s what I believe; now I’ll try to prove that I’m
right”), but in fact it is a very plausible position. “You only say that because you’re a
physicist.”
Moral truths are no
different. Belief is required for understanding.
”You only say that because you’re a moralist”.
So belief is necessary for the attainment of knowledge, but belief is
incomplete and unstable until it is replaced by knowledge.
Where human beings are
concerned, there is no such thing as being free from a law that is imposed from
without; to deny the authority of the eternal law is not moral adulthood but
moral perversity. Moral uprightness,
therefore, consists in submission to this eternal and immutable truth, which is
not of our own making.
But why does Augustine go on to say that not merely uprightness, but freedom,
consists in submission to the Truth?
This brings us to the final sense of freedom. Since Augustine thinks of this sort of
freedom as the highest and most valuable sort, I shall call it genuine freedom. Genuine freedom involves using one’s
metaphysical freedom to cleave to the eternal law, to love what is good, to
submit to the truth. So the soul that
submits to the truth and loves the good will be free, while the soul that is fixed
on lesser things is at the mercy of forces beyond its control.
The only genuine freedom, then,
is submission to the truth. In other
words, obedience to the eternal law, which is no arbitrary divine pronouncement
but the rules for action that are stamped on our very nature, is our only
security against frustration, dissatisfaction, confusion and the tyranny of bad
habits and misplaced priorities.
