Is free will a gift or a responsibility?

Free will is a precious divine gift and at the same time an obligation upon us to ensure that we preserve the free will of those who are subject to us, whether they be family members or subordinates at work or servants. We pay back God’s gift to us through those with whom we interact.

St. Augustine believes that even in the circumstances of a slave economy, a believer must never be beguiled by his legal right to command his slaves; but rather, as a kind of fatherhood or motherhood, he must feel that he is himself responsible to care for every aspect of his slaves’ lives: spiritual, financial, and psychological. Owning a slave is not about one person living at ease at the expense of another person — the master takes on the responsibility of caring for his slave who is also his brother, and in this way, the master is also the servant of his slave.

1072 Minucius Felix, The Octavius 38 (ANF 4:197).

1073 Minucius Felix, The Octavius 37 (ANF 4:196).

1074 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies 4.8 (ANF 2:421) amended.

1075 Cf. Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 4, 11–12 (ANF 2:131, 134).

St. Augustine says, “Even those who rule serve those whom they seem to command; for they rule not from a love of power, but from a sense of the duty they owe to others — not because they are proud of authority, but because they love mercy.”¹⁰⁷⁶

And further, “Since, then, the house ought to be the beginning or element of the city, and every beginning bears reference to some end of its own kind, and every element to the integrity of the whole of which it is an element, it follows plainly enough that domestic peace has a relation to civic peace — in other words, that the well-ordered concord of domestic obedience and domestic rule has a relation to the well-ordered concord of civic obedience and civic rule. And therefore it follows, further, that the father of the family ought to frame his domestic rule in accordance with the law of the city, so that the household may be in harmony with the civic order.”¹⁰⁷⁷

“And [St. Paul] adds another passage from the from the Epistle to Philemon, where, speaking of Onesimus, [St. Paul] says: ‘Whom I would have retained with me, that in your stead he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of the gospel. But without your mind would I do nothing; that your benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly’ (Philem. 13–14). Likewise, in Deuteronomy: ‘Life and death has He set before you, and good and evil: choose life, that you may live’ (Deut. 30:15, 19). So in the book of Solomon: ‘God from the beginning made man, and left him in the hand of His counsel; and He added for him commandments and precepts: if you will—to perform acceptable faithfulness for the time to come, they shall save you. He has set fire and water before you: stretch forth your hand unto where you will. Before man are good and evil, and life and death; poverty and honour are from the Lord God’ (Sir. 15:14–17). So again in Isaiah we read: ‘If you be willing, and hearken unto me, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you be not willing, and hearken not to me, the sword shall devour you: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken this’ (Isa. 1:19–20) … Not that the result is without our will, but that our will does not accomplish the result, unless it receive the divine assistance.”¹⁰⁷⁸