Neoplatonism maintains that evil is a privation and not a true reality. Saint Augustine agrees with this view.11 But still it is necessary to distinguish two types of evil: natural evil (the misery of our condition, the tragedy of human destinies) and moral evil, that is to say, Sin. The former is explained to the extent that shadows are justified in a painting.12 It serves the universal harmony. Concerning the latter type, the question is more complex. How is it possible that God has endowed us with free will, that is to say, a will capable of doing evil: “Because [man] is what he now is, he is not good, nor is it in his power to become good, either because he does not see what he ought to be, or, seeing it, has not the power to be what he sees he ought to be.”13It is that sin, the consequence of original sin, is attributable to us. God has given us the free will of Adam, but our will has acquired the desire to serve evil. And we are so profoundly corrupted that it is from God alone that comes all good use of free will. Left to himself, man would possess in himself only wickedness,
- De Natura Boni IV, P.L. vol. 42, col. 553.
[The full title of this work is De Natura Boni Contra Manichaeos.—Trans.] 12. Contre Julianum 111, 206, P.L. 45, col. 334.
[The text to which Camus is referring is not Augustine’s Contra Iulianum but rather his
Contra secundam Iuliani responsionem imperfectum 111, 206, P.L. 45, col. 1334.—Trans.] 13. De libero arbitrio L 3, chap. 18, no. 51, P.L. 32–1268.
[Saint Augustine, On Free Will,3.51, in The Library of Christian Classics,vol. 6, ed. J.Ballie and J. T. McNeill, trans. J. H. S. Burleigh (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), 201.— Trans.]
falsehood, and sin: “No one has anything of his own except falsehood and sin.”14 It is God who restores him when he deigns to do so. This is why the virtues that reside in us only have meaning and value through God’s assistance, special and suited to our weakness; namely, through his grace. Saint Augustine lays great stress upon the vanity of virtue itself. First grace, then virtue; here we recognize an Evangelical theme.
Thus it is that pagan virtues are ineffectual. God has given them virtues in order to urge us to acquire them if we lack them, and to humble our pride if we possess them. In Christianity, virtue, in the Hellenic sense, was never so severely tried and never on such frequent occasions.15Moreover, these natural virtues instead become vices when man glorifies himself through them.16 Pride is the sin of Satan. On the contrary, our only legitimate end is God. And the gift God makes of his grace is always the result of his generosity. This grace is free. Those who believe they can acquire it through good works take things the wrong way. Grace would not be free if it were possible to merit it. It is necessary to go even further. To believe in God is already to experience his grace. Faith begins with Grace.17
We see to what extremes Augustine can go in his thinking. He never spares himself any of the problem’s difficulty. Of course, there is still no problem where there is only submission. Nevertheless, as is the rule in what concerns evil, this absolute dependence gives rise to great difficulties. Here divine grace is absolutely arbitrary: man must only have faith in God. How then can we speak of human freedom? But the difficulty is that our only freedom is precisely the freedom to do evil.18 Saint
- In Johann. V, 1 [sic], P.L. 18, vol. 35, col. 414: “Nemo habet de suo nisi mendacium atque peccatum.” Also, Sermones 156, II, 12; P.L. vol. 38, col. 856: “Cumdico tibi: Sine adjutorio Dei nihil agis nihil boni dico, nam ad male agendum habes sine adjutorio Dei liberam voluntatem.”
[Saint Augustine, Homilies on the Gospel of John, 5.1, in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7, ed. P. Schaff, trans. J. Gibb and J. Innes (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1956), 31. The full Latin title of this work is Ioannis Evangelium.—Trans.] - De civitate Dei V, 18, 3, P.L. vol. 41, col. 165 [sic]; V, 19, P.L. vol. 41, col. 165–66; Epistolae 138, II, 17, P.L. vol. 33, col. 33; De Patientia XXVII, 25, P.L. vol. 40, col. 624. De gratia Christi XXIV, 25, P.L. vol. 44, col. 376.
- De civitate Dei XXI, 16, P. L., vol. 41, col. 730, and XIX, chap. 25, untitled: “Quod non possint ibi verae esse virtutes ubi non est vera religio” (vol. 41, col. 656). Cf. also De diversis quaestionibus 83, 66, P.L. vol. 40, col. 63.
- Above all De diversis quaestionibus bk. I, 2, P.L. vol. 40, col. 111.
- On the metaphysical plane. In psychology, Saint Augustine concedes free will.
Augustine’s final word on this question, vital for a Christian, is an admission of ignorance. Divine arbitrariness remains intact.19
It is this theory that Saint Augustine has been led to develop in all its detail in the face of the Pelagian heresy. In this case, he has been able to surpass his own thought for the needs of the cause. But it is also that his pessimism and his renunciation have retained all their bitterness. It is in this way, then, that his doctrine of freedom takes shape.
b) The fierceness that Saint Augustine puts into his fight against Pelagianism will be explained if we summarize the latter’s thought.20 It is from his profound experience, from his acute awareness of the wickedness in man, that Saint Augustine was suffering.
A Breton monk, Pelagius feared at bottom a certain complacency in sin that can be drawn from the doctrine of predestination. A man of conscience rather than of ideas, these especially are his disciples: Celestius and Julian, who propagate his doctrines.
According to Pelagius, man had been created free. He can do good or evil as he pleases. This freedom is an emancipation from God. “Freedom of will, whereby a man was emancipated from God, consists of the ability to commit sin or refrain from sin.”21
The loss of this freedom was for Saint Augustine a consequence of original sin. On the contrary, the Pelagians thought that Freedom, being governed entirely by the will, implies that man could, if he desired it, avoid sin. “I say that it is possible for a man to be without sin.”22
- De diversis quaestionibus I, 2, 16, P.L. vol. 40, cols. 120, 121.
- For the works of Pelagius (Commentarium in Epistulas Sancti Pauli; Epistula ad Demetriadem; Libellus Fidei ad Innocentium papam) and those of Julian and Celestius, see P.L. vol. 30.
- Julian, according to Augustine, Contra Iulianum I, 78, P.L. vol. 45, col. 1101. See also Pelagius, Libellus Fidei 13.
[“Libertas arbitri qua a Deo emancipatus homo est, in admittendi peccati et abstinendi a peccato possibilitate consistit [sic].” This passage is not from Augustine’s Contra Iulianum, as Camus suggests, but rather from his Contra secundam Iuliani responsionem imperfectum 1.78. The passage should read: “Libertas arbitrii, qua a Deo emancipatus homo est, in admittendi peccati et abstinendi a peccato possibilitate consistit.” There is no standard English translation of this text. The English translation I offer here is by Guy Chamberland, Laurentian University.—Trans.] - Pelagius, according to Augustine, De natura et Gratia. Cf. also De Gratia Christi I, 5, and De gestis Pelagii.
[“Ego dico posses esse hominem sine peccato.” Saint Augustine, On Nature and Grace 8, in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. P. Schaff, trans. P. Holmes and R. E. Wallis (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1956), 123.—Trans.]
But then the doctrine of original sin loses all significance. And the Pelagians reject this doctrine absolutely as leading to Manichean conclusions. If Adam has injured us, it is only through his poor example. We must not even accept the secondary consequences of the fall, like the loss of the soul’s immortality. According to Pelagius, Adam was born a mortal. Nothing of his error has been passed on to us. “New-born infants are in the same condition as Adam was before the fall.”23
If we sin easily, it is because sin has become in us a second nature.24 As the Pelagians see it, and strictly speaking, grace is useless. But as always according to Pelagius, creation is already a form of grace. For all that, grace retains its usefulness not “in order to accomplish” but “in order to accomplish more easily [the works of God].”25 It is an aid, a recommendation with which God provides us.
This doctrine is found summarized in the nine points of accusation accepted by the Council of Carthage (April 29, 418).26 In a general way, it demonstrates confidence in man and rejects explanations by divine arbitrariness. It is also an act of faith in man’s nature and independence. So many things that should make a man indignant fill the cry of Saint Paul: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”27 But graver consequences followed from this. The fall denied, Redemption lost its meaning. Grace was a pardon and not a type of protection. Above all, this was to declare the independence of man in relation to God and to deny that constant need of the creator that is at the heart of the Christian religion.
Against this doctrine, Saint Augustine concluded his theories with a certain number of affirmations. Adam possessed immortality.28 He was free in that he had the “ability not to sin”29 and enjoyed already a certain divine grace. Original sin came to destroy
