Calvinism – History of:

Fact Checking Calvinist Early Church Claims

Calvinists claim that the concept of Free Will was never taught or supported by the Pre-Augustine Fathers of the early Church. It is important to understand that neither I, nor (I assume) Calvinists suggest that the writings of the Early Church Fathers should ever be thought of as infallible nor be given the same weight as the writings of the Apostles that make up our Gospel. However, just as we can make use of historical writings like that of Josephus and Philo (and other historical references), to gain understanding of the customs and beliefs of earlier cultures we can do the same thing here by investigating the beliefs and understandings of the Early Church Fathers. After all, and in consideration of the fact that some of the early Church Fathers actually walked with and were disciples of the Apostles we can assume that any general consensus between such Early (Pre-Augustine) Church Fathers as helpful to our own understanding and teachings today. Thus I believed it only fair to fact check the Calvinist claims in this regard. Now although there was a small group of Early (Post-Augustine) Church Fathers who would later support Augustine, I did not find any Early (Pre-Augustine) Church Father who did not teach Free Will. Thus I provide the following statements made by some of the most influential and renowned Early (Pre-Augustine) Church Fathers as evidence that the Calvinist claim is proven to be False:

Justin Martyr (100-165)

• “God wishing men and angels to follow His Will, resolved to create them free to do righteousness. But if the Word of God foretells that some angels and men shall certainly be punished, it did so because it foreknew that they would be unchangeably (wicked) but not because God created them so. So, if they repent, all who wish for it can obtain mercy from God” (Dialogue, CXLI)
• “In the beginning, he made the human race with the power of thought and of choosing the truth and doing right, so that all men are without excuse before God” (c 160, E) 1.172
• “Let some suppose, from what has been said by us, that we say that whatever occurs happens by a fatal necessity, because it is foretold as known beforehand, this too we explained. We have learned from the prophets and we hold it to be true, that punishments, chastisements, and good rewards, are rendered according to the Merit of each man’s actions. Now if this is not so but all things happen by fate, then neither is anything at all in our own power. For if it is predetermined that this man will be good in this other man will be evil neither is the first one meritorious nor the later man to be blamed. And again unless the human race has the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice they are not accountable for their actions”. (c 160 E) 1.777.
• “Neither do we maintain that it is by Fate that men do what they do, or suffer what they suffer. Rather we maintain that each man acts rightly or sins by his free choice … Since God in the beginning made the race of angels and men with free will, they will justly suffer in Eternal fire the punishment of whatever sins they have committed”.  (c 160 E) 1.190
• “It was God’s desire for both angels and men, who were endowed with free will … that if they choose the things acceptable to him he would keep them free from death and from punishment. However, if they did Evil he would punish each as he sees fit”. (c 160 E) 1.243
• “He created both angels and Men free to do that which is righteous. And he appointed. Of time during which he knew it would be good for them to have the exercise of free will”. (c 160 E) 1.250
• “I have proved and what has been said that those who were foreknown to be unrighteous whether men or angels are not made Wicked by God’s fault rather each man is what he will appear to be through his own fault”. (c 160 E) 1.269

Irenaeus (130-200)

• “This expression ‘How often would I have gathered thy children together, and thou wouldst not’ set forth the ancient law of human liberty, because God made man a free [agent] from the beginning, possessing his own soul to obey the behest of God voluntarily, and not by compulsion of God. For there is no coercion with God, but good will [toward us] is present in Him continually. And therefore, does He give good council to all. And in man as well as angels, He has placed power of choice (for angels are rational beings), so that those who had yielded obedience might justly posses what is good, given indeed by God but preserved by themselves… If then were it not in our power to do or not to do these things, what reason had the Apostle and much more the Lord Himself, to give us council to do some things and to abstain from others” But because man is possessed of free will from the beginning, and God is possessed of free will in whose likeness man was created, advice is always given to him to keep fast the good, which thing is done by means of obedience to God”. (Against Heresies XXXVII)

Athenagoras of Athens (Second Century)

• “Just as men have freedom of choice as to both virtue and vice (for you would not either honor the good or punish the bad; unless vice and virtue were in their own power and some are diligent in the matters entrusted to them, and others faithless), so is it among the angels”. (Embassy for Christians XXIV)

Theophilus of Antioch (Second Century)

• “God made man free, and with power over himself … now God vouchsafes to him as a gift through His own philanthropy and pity, when men obey Him. For as man, disobeying, drew death on himself; so obeying the will of God, he who desires is able to procure for himself life everlasting”. (To Autolycus XXVII)

Tatian of Syria (Late Second Century)

• “Live to God, and by apprehending Him lay aside your old nature. We were not created to die, but we die by our own fault. Our free will has destroyed us; we who were free become slaves; we have been sold through sin. Nothing evil has been created by God; we ourselves have manifested wickedness; but we, who have manifested it, are able again to reject it”. (Address XI)

Bardaisan of Syria (c 154-222)

• “How is that God did not so make us that we should not sin and incur condemnation? If man had been made so, he would not have belonged to himself but would have been the instrument of him that moved him … And how, in that case, would man differ from a harp, on which another plays; or from a ship, which another guides; where the praise and the blame reside in the hand of the performer or the steersman … they being only instruments made for the use of him in whom is the skill? But God in His benignity, chose not so to make man; but by freedom He exalted him above many of His creatures”. (From historical fragments)

Clement of Alexandria (c 150-215)

• “We who have heard by the Scriptures that self-determining choice and refusal have been given by the Lord to men, rest in the infallible criterion of faith, manifesting a willful Spirit, since we have chosen life and believe God through His voice?” (Stromata 2.4)
• “Nothing is without the will of the Lord of the universe. It remains to say that such things happen without prevention of God; for this alone saves both the providence and the goodness of God. We must therefore think that He activity produces afflictions (far be it that we should think this!); but we must be persuaded that He does not prevent those that cause them but overrules for good the crimes of His enemies”. (Stromata 4.12)

Tertullian (155 – 225)

I must note that Tertullian is one of my favorites.

• “I find then that man was by God constituted free, master of his own will and power, indicating the presence of God’s image and likeness in him by nothing so well as by this constitution of his nature. …You will find that when He sets before man good and evil, life and death, that the entire course of discipline is arranged in percepts by God’s calling men from sin, and threatening and exhorting them; and this on no other ground that man is free, with a will either for obedience or resistance … Both goodness and purpose of God are discovered in the gift to man of freedom in his will”. (Against Marcion 2.5)

Novation of Rome (c 200-258)

• “He also placed man at the head of the world man too made in the image of God, to whom He imparted mind, and reason, and foresight that he might imitate God; and although the first elements of his body were earthly yet the substance was inspired by Heavenly and divine breathing, and when He had given him all the things for His service, He willed that he alone would be free and lest again an unbounded Freedom should fall into Peril. He laid down a command in which man was taught that there was no evil in the fruit of the tree; but he was forewarned that evil would arise if perchance he should exercise his Free Will in the contempt of the law that was given” (On the Trinity Chapter 1)

Origen (c 185-254)

• “Now it ought to be known that the holy apostles, in preaching the faith of Christ, delivered themselves with the utmost clearness on certain points which they believed to be necessary to everyone … This also is clearly defined in the teaching of the Church that every rational soul is possessed of free will and volition”. (De Principiis, preface)
• “There are indeed innumerable passages in the Scriptures which establish with exceeding clearness the existence of freedom of will”. (De Principiis, 3.1)

Methodius (c 260-311)

• “Those who decide that man is not possessed of free will and affirm that he is governed by the unavoidable necessities of fate … are guilty of impiety toward God Himself, making Him out to be the cause and author of human evils”. (The Banquet of the Ten Virgins XVI)
• “I say that man was made with free will, not as if there were already existing some evil, which he had the power of choosing if he wished … but that the power of obeying and disobeying God is the only cause”. (Concerning Free Will)

Archhellaus (c 277)

• “All creatures that God made, He made very good, and He gave to every individual the sense of free will in accordance with which standard He also instituted the law of judgment. To sin is ours, and that we sin not is God’s gift, as our will is constituted to choose either to sin or not to sin”. (The Disputation with Manes)

Arnobius of Sicca (c 253-327)

• “Does He not free all alike who He invites all alike? Or does He thrust back or repel any one from the kindness of the Supreme who gives to all alike the power of coming to Him? To all, He says the fountain of life is opem, and no one is hindered or kept back from drinking …”. (Against the Heathen 64.1 Reply)
• “Nay, my opponent says, If God is powerful, merciful, willing to save us, let Him change our dispositions, and compel us to trust in His promises. This then is violence, not kindness nor the bounty of the Supreme God but a childish and vain strife in seeking to get the mastery; For what is so unjust as to force men who are reluctant and unworthy to reverse their inclinations; to impress forcibly on their minds what they are unwilling to receive, and shrink from …”. (Against the Heathen, 65)

Cyril of Jersulalem (c 312-386)

• “Know also that thou hast a soul self-governed, the noblest work of God, made after the image of its creator, immortal because of God that gives it immortality, a living being, rational, imperishable, because of Him that bestowed these gifts; having free power to do what it willeth”. (Lecture, IV 18)
• “There is not a class of souls sinning by nature and a class of souls practicing righteousness by nature; but both act from choice, the substance of their souls being of one kind only and alike in all”. (Lecture, IV 20)
• “The soul is self governed; and though the Devil can suggest, he has no power to compel against the will. He pictures to thee the thoughts of fornication; if thou wilt, thou rejectist. For if thou wert a fornicator of necessity, then for what cause did God prepare Hell? Of thou wert a doer of righteousness by nature and not by will, wherefore did God prepare crowns of ineffable glory? The sheep is gentle, but never was it crowned for its gentleness; since it its gentle quality belongs to it not from choice but by nature”. (Lecture, IV 21)

Gregory of Nyssa (c 335-395)

• “Being in the image and the likeness… of the power which rules all things, man kept also in the matter of a free will this likeness to him whose will is over all”. (On Virginity, 368 Chapter XII)

Jerome (c 347-420)

• “It is in vain that you misrepresent me and try to convince the ignorant that I condemned free will. Let him who condemns it be himself condemned. We have been created, endowed with free will still it is not this which distinguishes us from the brutes. For human Free Will as I said depends upon the help of God and needs His aid moment by moment a thing which you and yours do not choose to admit. Your position is that once man has free will he no longer needs to help of God. It is true that freedom of the free will brings with it freedom of decision. Still man does not act immediately on his free will but requires God’s aid who himself needs no aid”. (letters 133)
• “But when we are concerned with Grace and mercy, Free Will is in part void in part I say for so much depends upon it, that we wish and desire and give a scent to the course we choose. But it depends on God whether we have the power and his strength and with his help to perform what we desire and to bring to effect our toil and effort”. (Against the Pelagians, Book 111, 10)
• “It is ours to begin, God’s to finish”. (Against the Pelagians, 3.1)

John Chrysostom (347 – 407)

• “God having placed good and evil in our power, has given us full freedom of choice; He does not keep back the unwilling, but embraces the willing”. (Homilies on Genesis 19.1)
• “All is in God’s power but so that our free will is not lost … It depends therefore on us and on Him. We must first choose the good, and then He adds what belongs to Him. He does not precede our willing, that our free will may not suffer. But when we have chosen, then He affords us much help … It is ours to choose before hand and to will, but God’s to perfect and bring to the end”. (On Hebrews Homily 12)

Augustine (354-430)

• Early Augustine
• “Free will naturally assigned by the Creator to our original soul, is such a neutral power, as can either inclined toward faith, or turn toward unbelief”. (On the Spirit and the Letter 58)
• “Sin is so much of voluntary evil that is not sin at all unless it is voluntary”. (Of the religion, 14)
• “Either then will is itself the first cause of sin, or the first cause is with out sin”. (On Free Will, 3.49)
• “Sin is indeed nowhere but, in the will, since this consideration also would have helped me, that Justice holds guilty those sinning by evil will alone, although they may have been unable to accomplish what they willed… Whoever has done anything Evil by means of one unconscious or unable to resist the latter can by no means be justly condemned … Everyone also who does a thing unwillingly is compelled, and everyone who is compelled, if he does a thing, does it only unwillingly, it follows that he that is willing is free from compulsion, even if anyone thinks himself compelled”. (Two Souls Against the Manichaeans, 10 12)
• “Our conclusion is that our Wills have power to do all that God wanted them to do and foresaw they could do. Their power, such as it is, is a real power. What they are to do they themselves will most certainly do, because God foresaw both that they could do it and they would do it and his knowledge cannot be mistaken … The conclusion is that we are by no means under compulsion to abandoned free choice in favor of divine knowledge, nor need we deny, God forbid! God knows the future, as a condition for holding free choice”. (City of God, 5.9)

Late Augustine

Anselm (1033-1109)

• “No One desserts up brightness except by willing to Desert it. If against Ones Will means unwillingly then no one deserts up rightness against his will… but a man cannot will against his will because he cannot will unwillingly to will. For everyone who wills, Wills willingly” (Truth Freedom and Evil, 130)
• “Although they (Adam and Eve) yield themselves to sin, they could not abolish in themselves their Natural Freedom of choice. However, they could so affect their state that they were not able to use that freedom except by a different Grace from that which they had before their fall”. (Truth Freedom and Evil, 125)
• “We are not to say that they Adam and Eve had freedom for the purpose of receiving, from a giver, the uprightness which they didn’t have, because we have to believe that they were created with upright wills, Although we must not deny that they had freedom for receiving this same uprightness again, should they once dessert it and where it returned to them by the one who originally gave it. We often see an Evidence of this in men who are LED back to Justice from Injustice by Heavenly grace”. (Truth, Freedom, and Evil, 126)
• “don’t you see it follows from these considerations that no temptation can conquer and upright will? Or if Temptation can conquer the will, it has the power to conquer it, and conquers the will by its own power. But Temptation cannot do this because the will cannot be overcome only by its own power”. (Truth, Freedom, and Evil, 132)
• “Now I wonder whether even God could remove uprightness from a man’s will. Could he? I’ll show you that he cannot. For although he can reduce everything which he has made from nothing back to nothing. He does not have the power to separate uprightness from a will that has it”. (Truth, Freedom, and Evil, 136) Although an assumption, I can only imagine that the context of what Anslem was trying to say is that because God does not tempt people to do evil, for it still took Satan to do that, God likewise does not tempt people to do righteousness, instead just as before Adam and Eve’s Fall, God commands obedience and uprightness.

Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274)

• “The cause of sin is the wills not holding to the rule of reason and divine law. Evil does not arise before the will applies itself to doing something”. (Theological Texts 132)
• “Necessity comes from the agent when the latter so coerces someone that he cannot do the contrary. We refer to this as necessity by coercion. Such necessity by coercion is contrary to the will. For we consider violent whatever is contrary to a things inclination. But the wills own motion is an inclination towards something, so that something is voluntary when it follows the inclination of nature. Just as something cannot possibly be violent and natural simultaneously, so something cannot be absolutely coerced or violent and simultaneously voluntary “. (An Aquinas Reader 291-292)
• “Thus, of necessity man Will’s happiness, and it is impossible for him to well not to be happy or to be unhappy. But since choice does not deal with the end but with the means to the end, as previously discussed [Summa Theologica, I-II, 13, 3], it does not deal with the perfect good or happiness but with other particular goods. Consequently, man does not choose necessarily but freely”. (An Aquinas Reader 293)
• “Some have proposed that man’s will is moved necessarily to making some choice, although they do not hold that the will is coerced. For not every necessity from an external principle violent motion is course of but only that which originates from without, where certain natural movements are discovered to be necessary but not Chorus of. For the course of his opposed to the Natural just as it is also opposed to voluntary emotion, because the latter comes from internal principle, while violent motion comes from an external one. This opinion of Latin airvists is therefore heretical because it destroys Merit and demerit and human actions. For why should there be any Merit or demerit for actions one cannot avoid doing? It is moreover be included among the excluded opinions of philosophers for if there is no freedom in us but we are moved of necessity to will, then deliberate choice, encouragement, precept, punishment, praise, and blame are removed, and these are the very problems that moral philosophy considers, not only is this contrary to the faith but it undermines all the principles of moral philosophy” (An Aquinas Reader 294-295)
• “Sin cannot destroy man’s rationality altogether for then he would no longer be capable of sin”. (Philosophical Texts 179)
• “To be free is not to be obliged to one’s determinate object”. (Philosophical Texts 259)
• “Man has free choice otherwise councils exhortations precepts prohibitions rewards and punishments would all be pointless” (Philosophical Texts 261-262)
• “Man however can act from judgment and adaptation in the reason a free judgment that leaves intact the power of being able to decide otherwise” (Philosophical Texts”
• “Sin is caused by the Free Will according as it turns away from God hence it does not follow the God is the cause of sin although he is the cause of free will” (On Evil, 106)
• “It must be noted that the movement of the first mover is not uniformly received in all movable things, but in each according to its own mode… for when a thing is properly disposed to receive the movement of the first mover a perfect action in accord with the intention of the first mover follows; but if a thing is not properly disposed and suited to receive the motion of the first mover an imperfect action follows. And then whatever action is present is referred to as the first mover as the cause, but whatever defect is present is not referred to the Mover as the cause, since such a defect in the action results from the fact that the agent departs from the order of the first mover… And for this reason we maintain that the action pertaining to sin is from God, but the sin is not from God” (On Evil, 110)
• “The deformity of sin in no way falls under the Divine will but results from this that the Free Will departs or deviates from the order of the Divine will” (On Evil, 111)
• “Similarly when something moves itself, it’s not precluded that it was moved by another from whom it has this variability by which it moves itself, and therefore it is not contrary to Liberty that God is the cause of the act of free will, … Sin wounded man in his natural Powers so far as concerns his capacity for gratuitous Goods but not in such a way that it takes away anything of the essence of his nature; and so it does not follow that the demons intellect erred except about gratuitous matters” (On Evil, 496)