A Primer on Augustine’s Understanding of God, the Moral Order, Free Will, and Grace

This work provides an overview of Augustine’s philosophical and theological understanding of God, the moral order, and the struggle each person faces to pursue the higher moral inclinations over the lower carnal inclinations of fallen human nature. Central to this struggle as Augustine experienced it is the need to overcome the split of the human will into two wills—one spiritual and one carnal—that vie for dominance, as was experienced by Augustine and which every person encounters. Augustine argues that while the human person has free choice of the will, ultimately God’s help is needed to overcome the general lust for what this world offers, so as to freely choose the higher good which God offers and which good each person can know and for which one can strive but only with this divine help can one attain.

What particularly obstructs both the knowledge of, and the striving for, good is a person’s self-deception in which the person refuses to accept the knowledge of, and tendency toward, vice and evil which each person to some extent and in various ways is inclined. Self-deception once chosen by the person obstructs knowledge of good and further limits free choice of the will until the person is liberated by God’s grace.