On Freedom of Choice

If freedom meant being able to sin, God would not be free; Anselm defines it instead as the power to hold on to what is right.

by Anselm of Canterbury35 passages held

Latin, the original language

Original title: De libertate arbitrii
First published: 1085(aged 52)
Original language: Latin

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Overview

Some writers in Anselm's time defined free choice as the power to sin and not to sin. The student in this dialogue repeats their definition and runs straight into a difficulty: if we always have that power, why do we need grace, and if we do not always have it, how can a sin committed without it be held against us? The teacher rejects the definition outright. God and the good angels cannot sin, and nobody would say that they lack free choice; so the ability to sin cannot be part of what freedom is. The definition Anselm puts in its place is that free choice is the power to keep the will's rightness for the sake of that rightness itself. Several things follow that sound strange at first. People and angels did sin through free choice, but not by means of the power that makes it free. No temptation can force a will that refuses to consent, and not even God can take its rightness away against its will. A will that has abandoned rightness, though, cannot recover it alone, and Anselm judges it a greater miracle for God to give it back than to raise the dead, since a body dies by necessity and a will deserts by its own act. Anselm wrote the dialogue at Bec in the 1080s, as the second of the three he later set in order with On Truth and On the Fall of the Devil. The student's opening remark, that free choice seems to conflict with grace, predestination and God's foreknowledge, set the agenda for the last treatise Anselm completed, De Concordia, which more than twenty years later takes the three conflicts one by one.

Key concepts

How does Anselm define free choice?

Free choice is the power to keep the will’s rightness for the sake of that rightness itself. Rightness of will means willing what one ought to will, and keeping it for its own sake means holding to it because it is right, not for a reward. The definition fits God, angels and human beings alike, and it leaves out the ability to sin, which Anselm counts as no part of freedom.

Can a will be enslaved and free at the same time?

Yes, in two different respects. Whoever sins becomes a slave of sin, because the will that has abandoned rightness cannot regain it by itself. Yet its free choice is not destroyed: it still has the power to keep rightness, which it would use if rightness were given back. Anselm compares it to sight in total darkness, still a power to see even when there is nothing it can see.

Why can a will that has lost rightness not recover it by itself?

Because nobody can will rightness without already having it. To want what one ought, for the reason that one ought, is itself to have a right will, so a will that has lost rightness has nothing from which to start. It can want many things, but not that one, unless it is given back. That is why Anselm treats the restoring of rightness as God’s gift and not as something a sinner achieves.

Is God free in the same way as people and angels?

No. The definition is shared by every rational nature, but Anselm divides freedom by where it comes from. God’s freedom is his own, neither made nor received from anyone. Angels and human beings have a freedom made and given by God, and it differs again in those who have rightness and keep it, those who have lost it, and those who can no longer lose it.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

A Freedom That Need Not Include Sin

If being free means being able to do wrong, the holiest being would be the least free. Anselm rejects the premise and asks what freedom is for.

The common definition, the power to sin and not to sin, fails at once: it would make God and the good angels unfree. Anselm defines free choice instead as the power to keep the will’s rightness for the sake of that rightness. Angels and Adam sinned through free choice, but not through the power that makes it free. A will that has lost rightness keeps that power the way a person keeps their sight in the dark, unable to use it. Only God can give the rightness back, a greater miracle, Anselm says, than raising the dead.

free will
moral rectitude
rectitude
definition
conceptual distinction
capacity
potentiality
angels
grace
divine grace
human faculties
rationality

Enter a dialogue

No Force Can Bend a Will

Can anyone honestly say a temptation was too strong for them? The dialogue argues that every surrender is the will’s own act, which is also why it can be blamed.

Temptations feel overwhelming, and people say they could not resist. Anselm argues that this is a way of speaking. Nothing can turn a will away from rightness except the will itself, so when a will is beaten, it is beaten by its own strength. A man who lies to escape death lies unwillingly only in a loose sense: he wills the lie, because he wills to live more than he wills the truth. Not even God takes rightness from a will against its will. Nothing, the dialogue concludes, is freer than a right will.

temptation
coercion
consent
weakness of will
volition
will
necessity
moral responsibility
moral agency
moral choice
sin
desire

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 35
distinct concepts: 48
by passages held, corpus-wide: #704

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “free will” and “moral rectitude”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 7 concepts, joined by 15 pairings. 31 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
free will	moral rectitude	14
free will	sin	11
free will	moral responsibility	9
free will	temptation	7
moral rectitude	sin	5
moral responsibility	sin	4
moral responsibility	temptation	4
free will	volition	3
free will	will	3
moral rectitude	temptation	2
moral rectitude	will	2
moral responsibility	volition	2
volition	will	2
moral rectitude	moral responsibility	1
temptation	volition	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1076 Monologion
The earliest of Anselm's books about God and the longest he wrote at Bec, composed in the mid-1070s while he was still prior there.
LA
1078 Proslogion
The book by which Anselm is known: twenty-six short chapters composed at Bec in 1077 and 1078, a year or two after the Monologion.
LA
1078 Reply to Gaunilo (Liber apologeticus contra Gaunilonem)
A treatise Anselm did not choose to write: his answer to a critic of the Proslogion, in which he restates its argument point by point.
LA
1080 De Grammatico (De grammatico)
The odd one out on Anselm's shelf: a short exercise in logic for beginners, of disputed date, which he refused to count among his dialogues on Scripture.
LA
1080 On Truth (De veritate)
The first of three dialogues Anselm wrote at Bec in the 1080s and later arranged as a set, with On Freedom of Choice and On the Fall of the Devil.
LA
1085 On Freedom of Choice (De libertate arbitrii) you are here LA
1085 On the Fall of the Devil (De casu diaboli)
The longest of the three dialogues from Bec and Anselm's fullest account of evil, worked out on the case of the angels who fell.
LA
1094 On the Incarnation of the Word (Epistola de incarnatione Verbi)
A letter turned treatise, begun by the abbot of Bec around 1092 and finished by the Archbishop of Canterbury two years later, addressed to the pope.
LA
1098 Why God Became Man (Cur Deus homo)
The founding text of the satisfaction theory of the atonement, in two books, completed during Anselm's first exile from England.
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1099 On the Virgin Conception and Original Sin (De conceptu virginali et de originali peccato)
A sequel to Why God Became Man, written a year later for Boso, the questioner of that dialogue, to give a second answer to a question it had raised.
LA
1102 On the Procession of the Holy Spirit (De processione Spiritus Sancti)
Given first as a speech at a council and written up four years later: the treatise in which Anselm argues not with a pupil or a critic but with another church.
LA
1107 De Concordia (The Compatibility of God's Foreknowledge, Predestination, and Grace with Human Freedom) (De concordia praescientiae et praedestinationis et gratiae Dei cum libero arbitrio)
Anselm's last completed treatise, written in 1107 and 1108 after his second exile, and his answer to a question the student had raised in On Freedom of Choice more than twenty years before.
LA

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