y if he has given it so good a start that it may by zeal and progress reach the fruit of wisdom and justice, and has given it so much dignity as to put within its power the capacity to grow towards happiness if it will?26 Though God gives freedom at creation he is not to be charged with its misuse. "The soul was not created evil because it was not given all that it had power to become."27 The purpose for which God gifted his creatures with freedom was that they might live righteously. God is exonerated and humanity, being the efficient cause of evil/sin, is guilty. One might argue that "Freedom is not possible due to God having foreknowledge. Whether freedom be defined as power to contrary or self-determination, the creature is certain to choose what God has already known and, therefore, cannot be free in any sense. A deterministic or even fatalistic view of God and his creation is the only possible alternative, given the infallible foreknowledge of God." Once again, the Bishop of Hippo provides a great deal of aid in understanding the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom (either definition). In De Libero Arbitrio Evodius asks Augustine, "Since God foreknew that man would sin, that which God foreknew must come to pass. How then is the will free when there is apparently this unavoidable necessity?"28 Augustine is quick to point out the disjunctive thinking on the matter. First, it assumes an either/or scenario (bifurcation) and doesn't offer a third alternative, viz., that God has foreknowledge of the power to will. Second, this disjunction assumes, unnecessarily so, that foreknowledge is somehow causative. Once again, this confuses conditions with causes. Third, it makes foreknowledge out to be far more than is intended at this point. Augustine clearly states that foreknowledge is prescience, or knowing beforehand. "God by his foreknowledge does not use compulsion in the case of future events . . . God ...
