A study of the patristic doctrine of free will

This purpose of this work is to examine influential patristic writers from the first four hundred years of church history in an effort to understand what they meant when they spoke of free will. Richard Swinburne claims that the early church fathers held to a libertarian understanding of human freedom. He writes, "My assessment of the Christian theological tradition is that all Christian theologians of the first four centuries believed in human free will in the libertarian sense, as did all subsequent Eastern Orthodox theologians, and most Western Catholic theologians from Duns Scotus (in the fourteenth century) onwards."1 However, not all agree with Swinburne.;To focus this discussion, three questions must be answered. The first question addresses the nature of the philosophical and theological context out of which the church fathers wrote. Bruce Demarest's claim that "Many early church Fathers, concerned to avoid pagan fatalism and Gnostic determinism, stressed the freedom of the human will and its ability to repent over the exercise of faith,"2 shows the importance of this question. If this is the case then one should consider if this discounts, or discredits what the early church fathers said about human free will. This is an historical question. The second question seeks to determine if the early church fathers, in claiming free will, meant freedom in a libertarian sense or in a compatiblistic sense. This is a definitional question. The third question to consider is whether the early church fathers believed that the free will that survived the fall was libertarian freedom or not. This is a theological question. If only compatibilist conceptions of freedom were possible as result of the fall, then Swinburne's claim would require modification, and the thesis of this paper would fail for want of the evidence.;At issue in this current examination will be the nature of man's freedom, as expressed by these patristic writers. It answers three key questions regarding the doctrine of free will. The first question answered is whether the philosophical and theological landscape in which the early church wrote shaped its view of free will. The second question is whether the free will expressed by these church fathers should be categorized as libertarian freedom or compatibilism. The third question addresses how the fall affected man's free will, as expressed by these writers. The answers to these questions will clarify the early church's view and thereby contribute to the current debate concerning the nature of man's free will.;In the chapter one, certain issues are clarified before beginning the investigation in earnest. In the second chapter, the philosophical and theological context in which the early church developed are examined. These systems of thought include Late Stoa Stoicism, Epicurianism, Middle Platonism and Gnosticism. In the third chapter, the western church fathers writings in regards to man's free will are inspected. The writers examined are Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian of Carthage, and Augustine of Hippo. In the fourth chapter, the researcher delves into what the early church leaders of the eastern tradition wrote about man's free will. The writers examined here include Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers and Chrysostom. In the fifth chapter, the conclusion is presented.;It is the researcher's thesis for this work that Swinburne's assessment is correct, the early church writers represented here did in fact teach libertarian free agency when they taught man had free will. If this is in fact the case, it would seem that the early church's stance on this issue should carry considerable weight in the future of this hotly contested issue. That is the modest hope of this work.;1Richard Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil (New York: Clarendon, 1998), 35. 2Bruce Demarest, The Cross and Salvation (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1997), 99. Demarest goes on to say, "Calvin judged that many pre-Augustinian fathers resisted the doctrine of sovereign election (1) so as to accommodate their views to influential worldly philosophers and (2) to avoid the Christians constant tendency to slothfulness." (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...