The notion of free agency is essentially tied to the question of accountability in religion. Similarly, the fact that God created a universal of wrongdoing, or “evil” if you like draws (in my mind) 2 questions:
1) [b]Can we maintain an All Good God in light of evil and our capacity for evil?
2)[/b]To what extent (if any) are humans accountable for “wrongdoing” in light of God setting our nature and our unique physiological contraints leading to our respective orientations on many levels.
I have enclosed some of my notes on Anselm’s Fall of The Angel that I think would serve to stimulate and begin debate if anyone wants to take it up. If not, skip Anselm, give your thoughts.
For Anselm, if one has reason, one can be aware of what justice (uprightness) is. And if one can be aware of what uprightness is, then one can act on it. For Anselm, justice is uprightness as noted above, but further, it is keeping uprightness for its own sake. That is, keeping uprightness for no other reason than to keep uprightness e.g. not for one’s happiness. Freedom for Anselm then, is the ability to choose to act on justice or happiness. In order for a creature to have freedom (free will), it must have two ultimate motives or wills: 1) happiness, 2) justice. Only beings who can make a choice/discern between uprightness and happiness are subject to praiseworthiness and blameworthiness.
Moreover, keeping rectitude for the sake of rectitude is the same as willing rectitude for Anselm. Rectitude of the will equals willing rectitude of the will. As long as one wills it, one is preserving it. It is not the case that one has the will to keep rectitude and at the same time not preserving it. ~(will rectitude ^ ~preserve rectitude). The will is prior in nature, but the two are simultaneous in time. Two things can happen at the exact same time but one of those things can be responsible for the other. Take for example a locomotive that has a caboose attached behind it. Once in motion, the movement of the locomotive and the caboose are simultaneous in time, but the movement of the locomotive is prior in nature. Say we have spectators watching the movement and person A asks “what caused the movement of the caboose?†The answer would be that the locomotive caused the movement of the caboose. Although they were simultaneous in time, the movement of the locomotive was prior in nature. Similarly, the willing of rectitude is prior in nature but simultaneous in time to the preserving of rectitude.
To help clarify the type of being described above (a being that has reason and is aware of rectitude) from a being that does not possess such attributes described, a distinction will be made between the two. A being that does not have reason can not be aware of what justice is. A being that can not be aware of what justice is can not choose justice for its own sake. A being that can not choose justice for its own sake, can not will it because it is void of such a will for the reasons above. If such a creature is void of the will for uprightness for its own sake, it has only one will rather than two. The only will it has is the will to its own happiness. If a creature only has one will, it is not free because it can not discern and therefore can not choose. Anselm claims we can not hold that creature blameworthy nor praiseworthy for such a creature could not do anything but what it has done and can not do anything other than it will do. This is not to be confused with the following situation for example of a being that has two motivations and claims that he did something and could have done nothing else: A man is arrested after crashing into a store while drunk. In defense, he claims that he could have done nothing else because he was drunk. To make clear of this type of creature, he is a creature who chose to drink and chose a series of decisions that afforded such a scenario to unfold. This creature is nevertheless free, therefore, blameworthy and praiseworthy.
Commenting upon the issue of the will, we now face the notion of motivation in this scheme. Consider the following case: One might ponder a person who acts to keep justice but because this brings this person happiness. That is to point out, that this person’s motivation is to acquire happiness. If this is the case, even if this person only commits acts considered just, he is not keeping uprightness for its own sake, but rather committing acts of justice for the sake of happiness. This person is not getting to justice. Strictly speaking, freedom does not consist in the power to have or act on either of the two motives. Rather, freedom is to “choose†justice for its own sake. The sake for which one wills something is one’s ultimate end.
It is important to identify what it is to “choose†since this term used is essential in understanding the type of being at issue. Distinguishing choosing from picking, picking is the power to be arbitrary, to choose is to assume that there was a dilemma so to speak or potential of dilemma. To pick is to opt for something for no partial reason. For example, coming upon shelves with perfectly aligned cans of Campbell’s soup, one merely picks one for no reason other than the will that one wished a can of Campbell soup. To choose is to act upon a dynamic with the will to uprightness for its own sake and the will to happiness both availing themselves. This would make clear that anything that chooses does so in a “dilemma-esque†fashion in that there was a conflict of what one might call “interests.†This assumes that no two things are identical ~(A=A) or (A=/=A) God cannot choose because to do so would point to a defect in his nature which naturally is not the case in Anselm’s view.
Tying all of this back to Anselm’s claim (humans who have lost justice cannot get it back), it would be prudent now to explain how it is that a being loses justice and can not get it back. Anselm relates: Everything comes from God. Our will to justice comes from God. And even God is not able to remove uprightness of the will. That is, he can not remove uprightness from a will which has it. Injustice is the absence of justice and the absence of justice and not having justice are blameworthy. Injustice is the absence of justice where justice ought to be. Taking Satan as our exemplar, once he chooses happiness in abandonment of justice, that is sacrificing justice for happiness, and there is only the prior will for happiness remaining, he ought not to have it “because of his merited fault.†From this, Anselm concludes that he “is in no respect able to have justice from himself when he does not have justice, because [he is unable to have it from himself] either before he receives it or after he deserts it. He ought not to have anything for himself.†That is, a being who has lost justice, loses it because it willed happiness, abandoning rectitude for its own sake. Thus, although the devil can not get justice back, he is nevertheless blameworthy because he nonetheless has the capacity to be aware of uprightness and is blameworthy for his initial choice to abandon rectitude. In short, once a being chooses happiness over justice, it loses ones justice. And since one has nothing from himself and since everything comes from God, it is only God who can give it back.
Further elaborating on the fall of the devil for purposes of understanding why it is that a being who loses justice cannot get it back, we have the case in which Satan was free and had the ability to choose/discern between happiness and rectitude. Satan chose happiness, deserting rectitude. In order for Satan to have chosen happiness, sacrificing rectitude, he must have believed that there was a chance that he would not be punished because punishment would not yield happiness. The fact that Satan lost his justice does not make Satan an “un-free†being. Satan therefore is not alleviated from blameworthiness. Rather he is different from say a dog who has only the will to happiness and not the will to justice for its own sake. The relevant distinction between two such creatures (one which only has the will to happiness, the other which has the will to happiness and the will for uprightness for its own sake) is this: Not aware of the notion of keeping uprightness for its own sake a dog lacks the will for uprightness for it own sake which leaves him only one will: happiness. Satan on the other hand is aware of uprightness for its own sake which is sufficient for being a free creature. Concurrently, Satan has lost his justice and can not get it back. Satan therefore can not choose justice for its own sake but is still a free creature whose actions are blameworthy and praiseworthy.
Anselm, then, has two main claims: 1) This is not God’s fault, 2) Justice goes away forever if one chooses against it once. Anselm explains (how it is) that any being is at the same time capable of sin and blameworthy for sinful deeds, and at the same time created by an all Good God. How is it that we have the power of sin? Anselm replies to this question by pointing out that we have a good power that sometimes fails. Anselm proposes the notion of “aiming and missing.†We as humans can intend on doing something but fail. According to Anselm, God gave us two good things: 1) will to happiness, 2) will to justice. At our own fault, these two conflict. We have a perfect will for justice that sometimes interferes with our will for happiness. As an illustration, if I create a nuclear program to attack innocent people with and do it, certainly it is not the programs fault because it could not help itself. The program was not free, I created it and it could have only done what it did because it could have done nothing else. It is my fault because I exercised my freedom and committed the act in light of a choice. Therefore, if God created us with only one will, God would be at fault because if this were the case and we only had one will, we could not be free and therefore we could not choose, thereby making us creatures who could do nothing other than what we do. From this, Anselm draws that humans have two good wills that come into conflict by merit of our own fault, thereby maintaining that God is all Good.
