Two Irreconcilable Views of Freedom - Essay Example

Pelagius Vs. Augustine: Two Irreconcilable Views of Freedom The idea of free will has concerned many not just Christians, for many centuries. This idea is often held to be central to Christianity; it is thought that the gift of free will by God to humans is what elevates us about all of God’s creation. However, throughout the history of Christianity there have sharply contrasting views as to how exactly free will works, and just exactly how free we are to make our own decisions. Two Christians that did hold opposing views of the subject, Pelagius and St. Augustine, followed two very different paths in their lives. Augustine’s views would be adopted by the church, while Pelagius’ view would be called heretical. Of course, Pelagius obviously would have viewed himself in a different light: “There can be no doubt that Pelagius saw himself as a defender of the faith” (Evans 236). Of course, the exact same thing can be said of Augustine. As history shows, though, these two men were intrinsically opposed to the viewpoints of each other, which is interesting considering that they both held more or less the exact same goal. Of course, by examining the two views of these writers, we can see exactly how incompatible these two views are with each other. Further examination of some of the basic assumptions held by both can also reveal much about both of these men and the very possibility of free will in a universe created by an omnipotent, omniscient God. The view held by Pelagius follows along the lines of absolute free will. According to Pelagius, people have the ability to choose to obey God. Since people are free to make this decision, then they held the ability to earn salvation without divine aid. Any modern Christian hearing this argument for the first time would be taken aback; this is in fact very contrary to what has been taught by Christians for centuries. However, it should be noted that this is because of the doctrine of original sin that was adopted by the church. In other words, it wasn’t always necessarily believed that the only way to receive salvation was through the acceptance of Jesus Christ. This view has some very serious philosophical repercussions. It also levels charges at the accepted doctrine of original sin and free will that do seem to be difficult to explain. In the Pelagian view of original sin, Adam merely set a bad example for people to follow; he did not instill sin into mankind so that humans were a necessarily a sinful creature: “Pelagius maintained that there was no loss of free will in the descendants of Adam as a result of the fall” (Wolfson 555). In this regard, as Jesus Christ died on the cross, he was merely setting a good example for people to follow. The Pelagian view claims that because of free will, humans have the basic ability to choose to do good and to choose to not do evil. Because of this, Pelagians view the baptism of infants as pointless, because a child is born without sin, and it is only through the choice to do evil that it becomes necessary for a person to become baptised. Also, the earthly desires of the flesh were not considered to be evil. This argument came from the idea that God would not create people with natural desires and then state that they are evil. Since there was no original sin in the view of Pelagius, the only desires that people would have were due to the fact that God had naturally made people inclined to have those desires, and it would not be logical for God to create people with the desire to do things that God wouldn’t want them to do. According to Augustine, whose views became those accepted as church doctrine, the original sin of Adam caused all people to carry with them sinfulness in their nature from the time that they are born. In this doctrine, because humans carried this flaw without any choice in the matter, people didn’t have the ability by their own free will to choose to do good. It was only through grace that people could choose to do good: “The necessity by which man can refrain from sin and act righteously is divine grace” (Wolfson 558). According to this view, grace preceded free will. It was only through the aid of God that people were able to do choose to do good, and because of this, it was necessary to accept divine aid in order for a person to go to heaven. This view also held that the desires of the flesh was a necessarily bad thing, and that even after the baptism of an infant, the sin of the act of the creation of a child still kept it from being without sin. It was because of this that people had to turn to God for divine aid in the form of grace in order to be able to do good and to go to heaven after one dies. The reason for earthly desires being considered an evil was because it was thought to be a remnant of original sin. God hadn’t created people with a natural inclination to want to sin, but Adam’s original sin had instilled in people this natural inclination. Because people were born with original sin, they were impure from the beginning, and could not simply do good and not evil of their own free will. Because of this, God used grace as the divine aid that allowed people to do good and not evil. There were charges leveled at each side when these Pelagius and Augustine originally were putting forth their points of view in letters and writings. Augustine stated that the Pelagian view put humans on the same level as God, because they did not need any divine aid in order to reach heaven. If people have the ability to choose to do good, and it follows that they have the ability to do good to such an extent that they earn their own way into heaven, than it follows that people don’t really need God in the first place. God might have created us, but God doesn’t not have to play an active role in our lives. The removal of God from human interactions was seen as unacceptable. This view of free will was so extreme that it led to the conclusion that God wasn’t necessary to anyone, and it placed people on the same level as God. In order for Christianity to properly function as a religion, its own people naturally had to be in need of their God that had created them. People also questioned just how people were actually to avoid sinning always, as this seemed to raise the standard of behavior to an impossibly high level. This was why the doctrine of original sin was accepted by the church, and the Pelagian view was rejected. However, Pelagius asserted very serious arguments against the idea of original sin and grace that cast just as much doubt on the accepted church doctrine. According to Pelagius, the idea of grace removes free will from humans: “Said Pelagius to Augustine: You are a fatalist; you assert fate under the name of grace” (Wolfson 559). Grace then became just another name for fate, and if it was a matter of being fated to do either good or evil, then it was never really up to humans whether they were going to go to heaven or not. If everything is fated, then people never had any kind of control over their actions, and then God arbitrarily decided before a person was born whether that person would get to go to heaven or not. This idea was thought to be unjust: “’It is improbably; it is untrue; it is unjust’, of the very notion that God would allow a flaw to remain in the nature of man as a result of Adam’s sin” (Evans 238). This view states that if God were just and fair, then God would not allow of mankind to be tainted by original sin, since if humans were tainted by original sin, then the only way to reach heaven would be through grace, which is really just a matter of fate. This is completely taking away free will and putting humans in a fatalistic universe. The Pelagian view was fiercely against the idea of fate and predestination. It reasoned that God would not create humans, as God would be precisely aware of what humans were capable of doing, and then treat them as though they were puppets on strings. If fate is true, then God decided upon every single one of our actions, and the idea of good and evil would be rendered null and void, because how could an action possibly be good or bad if people were not responsible for their own actions because they had been decided upon by God before the person was ever born? The Pelagian view insisted upon people taking responsibility for their own actions, and stating that God created people knowing that they had the ability to do either good or evil, though God only wanted people to choose to do good. If people did not posses the ability to do good on their own, but needed grace to act as a divine aid, then people didn’t necessarily have the choice to do either good or evil, and this in turn removed the responsibility of any act from the person. While the Pelagian view raised humans to the level of God, the Pelagians assert that the Augustinian view raises evil to the same status of good, an idea that is held by Manichaenism. In this view, the struggle of man is a constant struggle between light and darkness, between the spirit and the flesh. Augustine had converted from Manichaenism to Christianity, and Manichaenism was considered another heretical doctrine such as Pelagianism. If people were not able to choose to do good on their own, then it followed that evil was a force that asserted its influence over humans, which were a creation of God. If this were so, then it would seem as though evil was as powerful as God, and this raises evil to the level of God. So, we can see in either view that either man or evil is raised to the same level as that of God. Each view raises obvious logical problems created by the other side’s views. However, both of these views do not question whether or not free will is even a possibility in a universe that has been constructed by an omniscient, omnipotent God. Consider this: If God created everything and everybody, and God knows everything, then God knows every single action that a person is going to take. If God creates a person and knows what that person is going to do before that person is ever born, how can this person claim to have made any decision from free will? This would seem to be an obvious logical problem. If God did not know what a person was going to do, then God could not be said to be omniscient. So here we encounter a problem with the idea of free will that must be solved before any of the arguments made by Augustine or Pelagius can be taken into account. Another argument that is similar to the rock argument can be made about free will. In the rock argument, the question is asked that if God can do anything, then can God create a rock so big that God is unable to lift it? If God can’t create the rock, then God cannot do all things. If God cannot lift the rock, then again God cannot do all things. Along these lines, we can ask the question about whether an omnipotent God could create free will. If God can create free will, then that would imply that God does not know what people are going to do, showing that God can’t do all things. If God is then unable to create free will, then that again is something that God is unable to do, and once again the idea of an omnipotent God is cast into doubt. The entire argument about free will stems from the idea as to whether or not people have the ability to choose to do good or to choose to do evil. Since good and evil are inherently a part of the idea of free will, the concepts of good and evil should also be analysed. Let us again take the position that God is omniscient and omnipotent. If this is the case, and evil really exists in the universe, then it would seem as though God created evil. If God created evil, then can evil really be thought of in terms that either Augustine or Pelagius considered it in? If God created both good and evil, then the source of all evil was God. The purpose of creating both good and evil was then to supply people with a choice of doing one or the other, because free will cannot be said to exist if there is not really anything to choose between. So it would seem as though evil is a necessary condition for free will to exist. This condition would seem to result in the Pelagian viewpoint being necessarily true, so another aspect of the Pelagian viewpoint that must be considered is that in it, God must have necessarily created evil in the world. If, however, a person were to argue that God did not create evil, then that would once again be putting evil on the same level as God, as evil was then able to create itself in the way that God created itself. Whether God created itself or was always in existence is not a point worth arguing. Whatever view taken, if evil was not created by God, then it was also either always in existence or created itself. In this view, then, God did not really give free will to humans, as free will is dependent upon humans’ ability to choose to do either good or evil. If this is the case, then evil is on the same level as good, such as in the view held by Manichaenism. It seems as though that no matter what point of view that a person takes in regard to religion and the idea of free will, logical problems arise in every version. In regards to religion, it would seem as though the idea of free will will never be logically satisfactory. Both Pelagius and Augustine were able to show discrepancies in each other’s view, but neither of these men attempted to deal with the problems associated with free will that arose ever before their arguments could be of value. It would seem as though, in regards to religion, that the idea of free will is only used to promote an individual’s ideology. As the problem has yet to be really be solved, it is doubtful that religion will ever come up with a proper solution to the idea of free will. Works Cited Evans, Gillian R., “Neither a Pelagian nor a Manichee.” Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Sep., 1981), pp. 232-244 Wolfson, Harry A., “Philosophical Implications of the Pelagian Controversy.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 103, No. 4 (Aug. 15, 1959), pp. 554-562 Read More