Augustine:  Why, greetings, Thrasymachus!  What are you doing in the forum of Hippo?

Thrasymachus:  I am not sure, my dear Augustine; I was under the impression that I was dead.  However, since our paths have crossed so conveniently, why don’t we have a dialogue on whether God is just.

A:  Good idea.  I, for one, would take the position that God is just; in fact, that he is the most just of all beings.

T:  And I, assuming for the sake of argument that such a God exists, would agree with you.

A:  Then it seems we have little to debate.

T:  Ah, but you would object most strenuously if you knew what I mean by “just.”

A:  Perhaps.  I mean to say that an action is just when it respects the perfect ordering of the world, and does not try to put a superior below an inferior. Among men, this principle leads me to call justice the virtue by which every man is given his due, exactly what he deserves according to this eternal law of perfect order.  Who would doubt that such justice is a good thing?  Then God, the most perfect Being who possesses in the highest degree all attributes of goodness, who created this perfect order by His law, is clearly the most just.

T:  Then our definitions are indeed quite different, for I say that God is just only because he is mighty, and that justice is the will of the stronger — or, rather, that whatever is the will of the stronger will pass as justice, the cries of the weak notwithstanding.  God, then is just not because His acts pass a test of morality, but only because He is the strongest Being in the universe, because His will triumphs over all others.  He is, in this way, the ultimate dictator, and His will is just only because it is useless to consider alternate concepts of justice when His will is immutable law.

A:  What a shallow understanding of God you have!  Tell me, why do you think that God is not just in the sense that I identified?

T:  If it were only a question of whether God respects some imaginary ordering of which we are unaware, then I would agree with you, for this ordering may be merely an expression of His will, and again he would be just only because His will is law. But you say that this ordering of the universe is good, and I do not think that God is good — at least in the sense that we use “good” in our daily affairs — because there is evil in the world that an all-powerful and all-good God would be able to prevent.

A:  So you believe that a substance known as “evil” exists?

T:  (laughs) No, I won’t go down that road with you, Augustine; I dislike the wordplay of your “proof” to Evodius.  Whether evil is a substance or not, evil actions occur.  The rich oppress the poor, the wicked oppress the righteous, and so on.  When two men enter into a contract, the one who plays by the rules will suffer and the one who breaks them will gain.  How could a just God allow injustice to prevail?

A:  Your question assumes that God is responsible for the choices of men; but if our will is free, then He deserves no blame for what evil men may do.  Free will thus provides a simple answer to the question of God’s justice.

T:  This seems very reasonable, and I would agree with you here:  given that humans act unjustly, the decision of whether God is just rests at least in part on whether humans have free will. The existence of free will is necessary, if not sufficient, for God to be just.

            Yet I wonder why, if the will is free, any man would knowingly choose to sin.  If evil is only done when the will turns to evil, then what is the origin of this movement away from the good?  Clearly this turn is evil, for it is corrupting.  If the cause of the turn lies in the will itself, then there must have already been a turn towards evil for this cause to exist.  Even if the will is the proximate cause, must not there have been an ultimate cause — namely, God, the ultimate cause of all things?

A:  You raise the same question as Evodius did, and I must give you the same answer:  I do not know.  If the movement by which the will turns to evil is blameworthy, which it is, then it must be voluntary and not natural.  A natural phenomenon cannot be immoral, as no one would say a stone sins as it falls.  If God judges us on the basis of our actions and will, then the turn to evil must be voluntary.  Besides, if the cause is not the will, then our search would go on forever without end; why not take the will as the morally relevant cause?

T:  We could, but why does evil need a cause?  What if we were to take each evil act as uncaused, sui generis, just as you take the turn of the will?  In the chain of causes, there seems to be no reason why your stopping point is any less arbitrary than any earlier or later cause.

A:  Yes, there is.  If the will were not free, and if evil did not originate solely by voluntary choice, then there would be no point in telling people to do good, and God would be unjust for rewarding the righteous and punishing the wicked. I believe that God is just, and so I cannot accept any doctrine that the will is unfree.  I believe in order to understand, and I feel that true understanding will be denied us unless we accept the doctrine of free will.

T:  Perhaps; yet if reason can give us no guide, then we could be basing our understanding on a false belief.  What reasons are there to believe the will is free?

A:  Convincing ones, in my opinion.  Consider the perfect order which I described, and consider the place of the human mind, which controls the actions of the body.  Clearly, if something wished to corrupt the mind, it would be less perfect than the mind, for nothing more perfect would have such a corrupting tendency.  Yet nothing that is less perfect than the mind could be stronger than the mind, for then an inferior would have power over the superior and the perfect order would be upset.  Sin and cupidity cannot corrupt the mind, “precisely because it is right and just for the mind to rule over cupidity.”  Thus it must be the decision of the mind, and the mind alone, to follow a more corrupted course and to turn towards evil things, and so our will is free.

T:  I find this argument unpersuasive.  If you assume that the existing order (if one does exist) is just and perfect, then you are assuming that the Creator of that order is just, which is the subject of our inquiry.  Even assuming such a perfect order exists, perfection does not imply puissance; in what way is a perfect circle stronger than a lumpen one?  This seems to support my contention that whatever is stronger is called more “perfect” in nature — that might makes right.

 A:  No, it is more that “right makes might.”  Perfection does not flow from strength, but rather strength is granted by perfection.  Besides, according to the just order, there is no reason to call one aspect “cause” and the other “effect,” since they are simultaneous and coequal attributes of a substance.

T:  Then we are still left with the question of whether this order is just.  Most people would say that it is not, since any fool can see that the righteous suffer, sometimes by no fault of a wicked man, in which case your artifice of free will might exempt God of responsibility.  We see frequent acts of injustice in the natural world, which is subject to no man’s will:  a volcano erupts and buries Pompeii under its ash, and everyone in the city is killed; an epidemic strikes, and innocent children suffer.  Where is the justice in this?  If these ills are not due to man’s sin, then the blame lies with God.

A:  Yet there remains another sense in which even these ills result from the will of man, for which God is not responsible.

T:  So the erupting volcano is controlled by some man’s will?

A:  The volcano itself is not, but any suffering that results from the eruption is due to a disordered will.  Let me provide you with an example of a good will, and then you will agree that only a misshapen one could feel suffering from such acts of God.

            God meant for us to be happy, and happiness is within our power to achieve, as long as we love only that which is eternal, unchangeable, and attainable solely through the will.  However, what most people think of as “happiness” in fact brings only pain and suffering, for in their cupidity they love “those things that one can lose against one’s will.”  Think on what will happen to a man consumed with inordinate desire for wealth, fame, or physical pleasure:  whenever he is denied these things by Providence or circumstance, he will feel the acute pain of their absence.  Indeed, it would be better to describe his desires as pains, rather than pleasures, since the agony of his longing can only be abated for a few moments before it returns, like a curse, to plague him again.  How can the happiness he gained by temporarily satisfying his cupidity be considered real happiness?  When he blindly follows his passions, he does not become happy; he becomes enslaved.  When confronted with his deeds, he may say, “I want to be good, but I just can’t, it’s too hard” — admitting that by following his passions he has lost the freedom to satisfy his true desire for the good.  Even were this man a king, free from the will of other men, he would still be bound by the law of gravity and by the equally eternal law that desire brings with it suffering.

            Thus, no matter how great your rank, if you love those things you can lose against your will, you will suffer.  And no matter how many volcanoes erupt or epidemics spread, if your will is turned only to those things that cannot be lost, you shall not suffer.  Even your life can be lost against your will, and so you should be willing to give it up when God calls you home.  In this way, sin brings its own punishment, for there is only one cause of sin — inordinate desire for that which one should not love— and only one punishment, namely that desire’s frustration.  Thus is the justice of God revealed:  only by our own choice, our own sin, can we experience pain and suffering.

T:  I am sorry, Augustine, but I find these doctrines fundamentally flawed.  For one thing, I will not be as easily convinced as was Evodius that foreknowledge and free will are compatible.  Yet there are subtler issues for us to examine.  Humans were not created with perfect freedom; no, they were created with passions and desires, feelings that are real enough even if they offer only a false hope of happiness.  No one chooses whether or not to feel hunger; we can choose not to respond to our desire, but we cannot choose not to feel the pain of deprivation.  What have we done to deserve this curse of desire?  Why are we not as free as Adam was?  Should not we, who were born sinful, be judged on a more lenient scale than he who was created perfect?  On the other hand, if the will were perfectly free, meaning that there were no passions and desires to cloud its judgment, then the will’s freedom would be meaningless, for there would be no desires to fulfill and so it would be indifferent to all choices.  The freedom only to make choices to which one is indifferent, it seems, is no freedom at all.

            Second, I say that your conception of the good will is far too strict.  Only a very sterile existence would remain if one loves only what can be achieved through the very wanting; the statement that “I will be happy if I only want what I already possess” is a tautology and no great moral truth.  Even so, the greatest problem is not whether a man with a good will would be happy; it is whether he would live a moral life.  If he wanted nothing that could be lost against his will, then he would be an Epicurean of sorts, indifferent to the happiness of all creatures except himself, his friends and family included.  He would love his neighbor as himself only in that he would care as little for his neighbor’s welfare as for his own.  He would not want knowledge of the empirical world, since his eyesight and senses could be lost against his will; he would not want the salvation of men or the conversion of the heathen, since they are not up to his will to grant; nor would he even want to have a living knowledge of the Word of God, for someone could throw him in jail and deprive him of the Scriptures, and he would eventually forget much of them despite a strong will to remember.  How can it be cupidity to want these things, especially knowledge of divine revelation?

            Furthermore, if you are right, and this is the way to lead a moral life, then it would still be so if there were no other people on earth, or even perhaps no God, or at least an impersonal God who did not intervene in His creation.  If the good can be found through a tautology like yours, then it is fully independent of God and dependent solely on man and his free will; heaven and hell become unnecessary if those who have cupidity are punished on earth.  What was the need for the Incarnation, if those with a good will would be as happy with Christ as without Him?

A:  Let me refine my definition of the good will, then — after all, Free Choice was an early work, and I may have written it while under the influence of Stoic philosophy.  I shall assert that the good will does not just desire that which it can achieve by the mere act of willing, and reject all that can be lost against its will.  Because it loves the eternal and unchangeable, it loves God’s eternal and unchangeable will, and wishes to will as God wills.  This answers your worries; you should love your neighbor with a real and living love, but should not love him as an end in himself.  You should love him because it is God’s will that you do so; your love of him is not a burden or obligation to you, but a joy, because you will the will of God:  “those who love you, O God, and love their friends in you and their enemies for your sake ... will never lose those who are dear to them, for they love them in one who is never lost, in God.”  Since the will has full power over itself, it can achieve this wish, and so the good man makes God’s will his own.  In this way, happiness will come to those with good wills, and God’s justice is clear.

T:  I see.  Yet I have a question to pose to you:  would someone who is moral in this way ever grieve?  For it seems that if they will as God wills, and God’s will is always fulfilled (for if God’s will were frustrated, then He would not be omnipotent), then they should never grieve, for their will is fulfilled.  Yet they love things, such as the happiness of their loved ones and the salvation of mankind, that can be lost against their will.  If a man wickedly injures a loved one of mine, how can I not grieve?  But how could his sin have been counter to God’s will?  Must not God have willed the sin?

A:  Of course not; God would not will that someone sin, for this would both diminish God’s justice and deprive the sinner of free will.  Likewise, however, God would not prevent someone from sinning through His will, since that would have the same effects.  Free will, as I instructed Evodius, is a great enough good to outweigh the evils that it makes possible; it is better that God allow someone to sin than that He interfere and deprive him of free will.

T:  But it would be best of all that the person freely choose not to sin.  And if this is a better outcome, then God must desire it to a greater degree.  So there must be some intermediate state between will and indifference, such that God could, say, prefer that people not sin, but not prevent them from doing so by His will.  In this light, the best of all possible worlds would be an earth on which all men had free will, but none chose to sin, like Adam and Eve before the Fall.  The world that exists, that God created, is worse in comparison — it is not the best of all possible worlds, but yet any attempt by God to improve upon it, to make it less sinful, would in fact make it worse.

A:  I do not like your implication that God is powerless to improve upon His creation; it must not be that God cannot, but that He does not, that He chooses not to, for reasons serving His own higher purposes.  The suffering of some, by natural causes like volcanoes or unnatural ones like sin, serves to instruct others, or perhaps to test their faith.  In any case, one can feel sure that God has His reasons, and that no one suffers needlessly or without justice.

T:  Ah, and so we return to my original definition of justice.  How can such a God be considered just?  Anything, Augustine, can be explained by hidden purposes; could not a tyrant justify his tyranny by saying that he has hidden purposes of benevolence and justice?  Why should I judge God’s will to be better than that of the tyrant, or than my own?  If the greatest evils, the most pointless suffering, can be justified through an appeal to God’s hidden purposes, then God’s justice in no way resembles “justice” as we use the word in our daily affairs.  The order according to which God judges is arbitrary and of His own creation; he is bound to no moral authority; he acts as He pleases and makes laws with no legitimacy but His own power.  His words are said to carry moral force only because, as he told Job, He made the firmament and we did not.  So yet again, might makes right, and there is no use protesting.

            And if God’s justice is so far removed from earthly justice, what guidance does it give us for how to live our lives on earth?  Our own morality is jeopardized by His impenetrable reasoning, and actions that we know to be evil could be justified in imitation of Him.  Remember your quote from Terence on Jupiter’s seduction of Danae:  “What a god he is!  His mighty thunder rocks the sky from end to end.  You may say that I am only a man, and thundering is beyond my power.  But I played the rest of the part well enough, and willingly too!”

A:  (laughs) Ah, Thrasymachus, we should have had this discussion many hundreds of years ago, when you had not yet become bitter in your old age.  Is your confusion not a very proof of my statement that we must believe in order to understand?  By refusing belief in that which you do not understand, you have torn away the foundation for the morality I have proposed, yes; but you have also torn away any foundation for a morality of your own.  You claim to have defined justice, but your definition does the opposite — it states not what justice is, but what goes by that name, and denies the possibility that a true definition will be found.  It defines justice as no more than “what happens,” a definition that is as empty as it is self-fulfilling.  I pity you, Thrasymachus, for in your moral unbelief you will never achieve moral understanding.  From your skepticism there can come no moral guidance or shelter.  I bid you good day, and hope that your temperament will have grown milder should we meet again in another few hundred years.