Dist. 25, Part 1
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/2/d/25/q/bon-sent-II-d25-p1-littera
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### DISTINCTION XXV.

#### Part I.

#### Chapter I.

#### *The definition of free choice according to the philosophers.*

Now let us return to our purpose, namely to the treatise on free choice; which the philosophers, defining it, called *a judgment of the will concerning the free*, because that power and aptitude of will and reason, which we said above to be free choice, is free with respect to either alternative, because it can freely be moved to this or to that. Choice is therefore called *free* with respect to the *will*, because it can be moved voluntarily and borne by spontaneous appetite to those things which it judges, or is able to judge, to be good or evil.

But this must be known, that free choice is not referred to the present or to the past, but to future contingents. For what is in the present is determined, nor is it in our power that it should then be, or not be, when it is. For it can later not be, or be otherwise; but it cannot not-be, *while it is*, or be otherwise, while *that is* which is; but in the *future*, whether this be, or that, pertains to the power of free choice. Yet not all future things come under the power of free choice, but only those which through free choice can be done, or not done. For if anyone should will and dispose to do such a thing as is in no way in his power, or which would equally come to pass without his disposing of it, in this he himself does not have free choice.

And indeed, according to the aforesaid assignment, free choice seems to be only in those who can change the will and bend it to *contrary* things, in whose power, namely, it is to choose good or evil, and to do or to forgo either according to election; according to which there can be no free choice either in God or in all those who are so strengthened by the grace of beatitude that they can no longer sin. — But that God has free choice, Augustine teaches in the twenty-second book *On the City of God*, saying thus: « Surely is God himself, because he cannot sin, on that account to be denied to have free choice »? Ambrose also in the book *On the Trinity* says: « Paul says: *Because one and the same Spirit works all things, dividing to each as he wills*, that is, according to the choice of free will, not according to the obedience of necessity ».

#### Chapter II.

#### *How free choice is taken in God.*

But free choice is taken otherwise in the Creator than in creatures. For God's free choice is said to be his most wise and omnipotent will, which not by necessity, but by free goodness, does all things as it wills. And therefore Jerome, attending to the fact that free choice is not in God as it is in creatures, seems to exclude free choice from him, saying in a certain homily *on the prodigal son*: « God alone is the one into whom sin does not fall nor can fall; the rest, since they are of free choice, can be bent to either side ». When he says *the rest*, he indicates that free choice, as it is in the rest, is not in God.

#### Chapter III.

#### *That the Angels and the Saints have free choice.*

But the Angels and the Saints, who now live happily with the Lord, and are so confirmed by the grace of beatitude that they neither will nor are able to be bent to evil, do not lack free choice; whence Augustine in the twenty-second book *On the City of God* says: « Just as the first immortality was *to be able not to die*, which Adam lost by sinning; so the first free choice was *to be able not to sin*, the last *to be unable to sin* ». The same in the *Enchiridion*: « Thus it was fitting that man should first be made, so that he could will both well and ill; but afterward it will be so, that he cannot will ill, nor on that account will he lack free choice ».

#### Chapter IV.

#### *That free choice will be more free, when it will be unable to sin.*

« For much more free will the choice be that will not at all be able to serve sin. Nor is it either that the *will* does not exist, or that it is not to be called *free*, by which we so will to be blessed that we not only will not to be wretched, but are utterly unable to will it. Just as therefore our soul now has *to be unwilling for unhappiness*, so it will always be about *to be unwilling for iniquity*. But an order had to be kept, by which God willed to show how good is a rational creature, which *can even sin*, although it is better that it *cannot sin* ». — Behold, by these words it is evidently established that after the confirmation of beatitude there will be in man a free choice by which he will be unable to sin; and it is now in the Angels and in the Saints who are with the Lord, and so much the more free indeed, the more it is immune from sin and prone to good. For the further anyone stands from that servitude of sin, of which it is written: *He who commits sin is the servant of sin*, the more freely he has judgment in choosing the good. Hence, if it be diligently examined, choice seems to be called free because without coercion and necessity it is able to seek or to choose what it has decreed by reason.

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