Augustine: Nothing Is So Much in Our Power as the Will

The Quote

"Nothing is so much within our power as the will itself, for it is near at hand the very moment that we will" is Augustine's defense of the freedom of the will in the dialogue On Free Choice of the Will (De libero arbitrio, Books I-III, c. 387-395). It is the philosophical core of his early teaching on freedom.

Context

The dialogue is Augustine's attempt to solve the problem of evil: if God is good and omnipotent, where does evil come from? His answer is that evil enters through the misuse of the free will, and that freedom is therefore a good worth having even though it can be abused. In Book III, the discussion turns to the objection that divine foreknowledge rules out freedom: if God knows that I will sin, must I not sin? Augustine replies that God's foreknowledge is not a cause, and that the will, being immediately in our power, acts freely even under the gaze of omniscience.

Meaning & Interpretation

The argument turns on the special status of the will. All other goods — health, wealth, friendship — are "in our power" only conditionally, because they depend on fortune. The will is different: it is exercised in the very act of willing, with no intervening condition to be met. Since our willing is thus ours, the fact that God eternally knows what we will does not make us will it necessarily. Augustine's solution — foreknowledge does not necessitate — became the standard Christian answer to the problem, anticipating the Boethian distinction between the necessity of the consequent and the necessity of the consequent's being.

Legacy

Augustine's early defense of free will defined the terms of the Christian debate for a millennium. Boethius refined it with the doctrine of God's timelessness; Aquinas systematized it; and the same arguments are still deployed in contemporary philosophy of religion under the heading "foreknowledge and free will." Augustine's later teaching on grace and predestination complicated the picture, and the tension between his defense of freedom and his doctrine of election has engaged theologians and philosophers ever since — making this passage a permanent reference point.

Sources

1. Mendelson, M. (2019). "Saint Augustine." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/
2. Augustine (c. 395). On Free Choice of the Will, trans. T. Williams. Hackett Publishing.
3. Zagzebski, L. (2017). "Foreknowledge and Free Will." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-will-foreknowledge/
4. Tornau, C. (2020). "Augustine." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/augustine/