lust is the evil in adultery lust is also called “desire” all evildoings are evil precisely because they come bout from lust, that is, from a blameworthy desire.
to understand that lust is the evil in adultery, consider the following. If a man does not have the opportunity to sleep with someone else’s wife but it is plain somehow that he wants to do so, and that he is going to do so should the opportunity arise, he is no less guilty than if he were caught in the act.
Surely evil people desire to live without fear, just as good people do. But the difference is as
follows. Good people pursue this by turning their love away from things that cannot be possessed without the risk of losing them. Evil people, on the other hand, try to remove hindrances so that they may securely attach themselves to these things to be enjoyed. The end result is that they lead
a life full of crime and wickedness, a life which is better called death.
With respect to chastity, well, seeing that it is a virtue, who would doubt that it is located in the mind itself? Therefore, it cannot be taken away by a violent rapist.
Do you think that lust is more powerful than the mind itself, which we know has been granted governance over lusts by eternal law? I do not myself think so. The weaker commanding the stronger
would not be a case of being completely in order. Accordingly, I think the mind must be more powerful than desire for the very reason that it rightly and justly dominates desire.
Then no vice-ridden mind overcomes a mind equipped with virtue.
Therefore, since (a) anything equal or superior to a governing mind possessed of virtue does not make it the servant of lust, on account of justice, and since in addition (b) anything inferior to it could
not do this, on account of weakness, as the points we have agreed on between us establish, we are left with this conclusion: Nothing makes the mind a devotee of desire but its own will and free choice.
such a mind justly pays the penalties for so great a sin.
What is a good will?
augustine : A will by which we seek to live rightly and honorably, and to attain the highest wisdom. Now see whether you do not seek a right and honorable life, and whether you do not passionately want to be wise – or at least whether you would venture to deny that we have a good will when we want these things.
a life which is not unhappy is happy.
someone is happy when he takes delight in his own good will, and on account of it he attributes little worth to anything else that is called good but can be lost even when the will to retain it remains.
anyone having a contrary will is unhappy?
even if we have never been wise before, nevertheless it is by our will that we have and deserve either a happy and praiseworthy life, or an unhappy and disgraceful one?
Anyone who wills to live rightly and honorably, if he wills himself to will this instead of transient goods, acquires so great a possession with such ease that having what he willed is nothing other for him than willing it.
If indeed the joy occasioned by acquiring this good elevates the mind calmly, peacefully, and steadfastly, this is called the happy life. You do not think that living happily is something other than rejoicing in
genuine and certain goods, do you?
Then why do they not all attain it? We had said and agreed that it is by the will that people deserve the happy life, and it is also by the will that they deserve the unhappy life; the end result is that people
deserve what they get. But now some sort of contradiction has cropped up, and, unless we look into the matter carefully, it will work to undermine the earlier carefully crafted and solid argument. How does anyone suffer an unhappy life by his will, since absolutely no one wills to live unhappily? That is, how does someone gain the happy life through the will, when everyone wants to be happy and yet so many are unhappy?
Does it happen because it is one thing to will in a good or evil manner, another to deserve something due to a good or evil will? Those who are happy (who must also be good) are not happy simply because they
willed to live happily. Even evil people will this. Instead, it is because they willed to live rightly, which evil people are unwilling to do. For this reason, it is no wonder that unhappy people do not attain what they will, namely the happy life. They do not likewise will what goes along with it, namely living rightly, and without willing this no one is worthy of the happy life or attains it.
Thus when we say that people are unhappy due to the will, we are not thereby saying that they will to be unhappy, but rather that they are in a condition of will upon which must follow unhappinesses, even
against their will. Accordingly, the fact that all people will to be happy and yet are not able to be happy does not contradict our earlier argument, because not all will to live rightly; the happy life is due to this one will.
Well, when he loves the law, does he love something changeable and temporal, or something stable and everlasting?
evodius : Surely eternal and unchangeable.
augustine : What about those who persist in their evil will but nonetheless desire to be happy? Are they able to love the law by which people such as themselves are deservedly punished by unhappiness?
evodius : Not at all, I think.
august ine : They do not love anything else, do they?
evodius : On the contrary, many things – namely the things their evil will is bent on acquiring or keeping.
august ine : I think you are talking about riches, honors, pleasures, physical beauty, and all the other things that they can fail to acquire despite willing to, and can lose against their will.
evodius : Those are the very things.
august ine : Surely you do not think that these things are eternal? You see that they are subject to the vicissitudes of time.
Then since it is clear that some people love eternal things and others temporal things, and since we have agreed that there are two laws, one eternal and the other temporal – if you know anything about
fairness, which group do you judge should be subject to the eternal law, and which to temporal law?
happy people dwell under the eternal law, due to their love for eternal things, whereas temporal law is imposed on unhappy people.
Hence the eternal law commands us to turn our love aside from temporal things and to turn it, purified, towards eternal things.
temporal law restrains through fear. It twists and turns the minds of the people, for whose governance it was designed, to what it wants. As long as people are afraid to lose these goods, they maintain a certain mode of conduct in using them, one appropriate to holding together whatever kind of state can be set up with such people.
Retribution for sin is not exacted when they love these goods, but rather when they are taken away from others through dishonesty.
Hence the selfsame things are used in a good manner by one person and in an evil manner by another. The person who uses them in an evil manner holds fast to them with love and is tangled up with
them. That is to say, he is controlled by things that he ought to control, and, in setting them up as goods for himself that need to be put in order and treated properly, he holds himself back from the [true] good.
However, the person who uses them rightly shows that they are goods, but not his own goods, for they do not make him good or better. Instead, they become good or better due to him. Hence he does not attach himself to them with love. Nor does he make them like the limbs of his mind (which happens through loving them), so that when they start to be cut off again he is not ravaged by pain and corruption. Rather, he is completely above them, possessing and governing them when there is need;
he is ready to lose them, and more ready not to have them.
We have now begun to see, I think, the power of eternal law, and to discover how far temporal law can extend in redress. We have also explicitly and adequately distinguished two kinds of things,
the eternal and the temporal, and again two kinds of people: some who follow and take delight in eternal things, and others who follow and take delight in temporal things. We have established that what each person elects to pursue and embrace is located in the will, and that the mind is not thrown down from its stronghold of dominance, and from the right order, by anything but the will. It is also clear that when a person uses something in an evil manner, the thing should not be blamed, but rather the person using it in that evil manner.
consider whether evildoing is anything other than pursuing temporal things and whatever is perceived through the body (the least valuable part of a human being), which can never be fixed, as though they were great and wonderful, having neglected eternal things, which the mind enjoys through itself and perceives through itself and which it cannot lose while loving them. For all evildoings – that is to say, all sins – seem to me to be included under this one heading. But I am waiting to know what you think.
evodius : It is as you say. I agree that all sins are contained under this one heading, when someone turns aside from divine and genuinely abiding things and towards changeable and uncertain things. Although
the latter are rightly located in their proper place and attain a certain beauty of their own, it is the mark of a twisted and disordered mind to be subject to pursuing those things he was set above, to be in charge of as he might so command, in accordance with divine order and right.
We have free choice of the will, and we sin through it alone. We have our existence from God;
whether we sin or act rightly, we deserve penalty or reward from Him.
if a person is something good and could act rightly only because he willed to, then he ought to have free will, without which he could not act rightly. We should not believe that, because a person also sins
through it, God gave it to him for this purpose. The fact that a person cannot live rightly without it is therefore a sufficient reason why it should have been given to him.
Free will can also be understood to be given for this reason: If anyone uses it in order to sin, the divinity redresses him [for it]. This would happen unjustly if free will had been given not only for living rightly
but also for sinning. How would God justly redress someone who made use of his will for the purpose for which it was given?
when God punishes the sinner, what does He seem to be saying but: “Why did you not make use of free will for the purpose for which I gave it to you?” – that is, for acting rightly.
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