re you not going to ask for the cause of the cause I have found? What limit will there be to your quest, what end to inquiry and explanation?"7 While it may appear that he is avoiding the question, Augustine does point out that the cause of evil is an evil will and the cause of the evil will is self-determining. And the self is determined to choose for or against x based upon his/her inclination toward or away from x. This would appear to be in opposition with what has come to be known as one of the standard definitions of freedom, viz., absolute power to contrary. This explanation of freedom is so prevalent that some have understood it to make God contingent in some way.8 Alvin Plantinga is often quoted on freedom as power to contrary. If a person is free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing it; no antecedent conditions [italics mine] and/or causal laws determine that he will perform the action, or that he won't. It is within his power, at the time in question, to take or perform the action and within his power to refrain from it.9 But Augustine understood that the antecedent condition for the movement of the will is a prior inclination. Far from coercion, Augustine believed in a predisposed bias or inclination toward either good or evil. Choices, motives, and desires do not happen in a vacuous environment nor are they indifferent to or disinclined toward any direction. Whether human freedom entails power to contrary choice or self-determination depends upon the inclination of the soul. And the soul's inclination depends upon which era of human existence is being assumed in the defining stages of freedom. There are four distinct epochs of history in which humans exist.10 At creation and before the Fall, after the Fall and before regeneration, after regeneration and before glorification and the eternal state after death. Each of these categori...
