Original Sin
Part 8
Did the early church believe in free will and the ability to obey God?
Was this belief universal in the early church before Augustine in the 5th century, that we were born with free will and able to do as God commanded? What percentage of them held to free will and ability?
ChatGPT responds.
Short answer: There is no clear evidence of any pre-Augustinian church father who outright denied free will or taught total moral inability in the later Augustinian/Calvinist sense. The overwhelming pattern—across Greek and Latin writers before the early 5th century—is the opposite: they strongly affirm human free will and real ability to obey God, even while also affirming the necessity of grace.
Let me break that down carefully so you can gauge the “percentage” question meaningfully.
1. Is there anyone before Augustine who denied free will or taught inability?
There are no (that sounds like 100%) major, orthodox fathers before Augustine of Hippo who say:
- humans lack free will, or
- humans are constitutionally or naturally unable to obey God’s commands
You simply don’t find statements like: “Man cannot do what God commands unless irresistibly changed first.” That kind of formulation is distinctively Augustinian (and later Western).
What you do find instead is this.
Even when fathers speak of:
- sin,
- corruption,
- death,
- or weakness inherited from Adam,
They still consistently maintain that humans can respond, repent, and obey.
2. What do the pre-Augustinian fathers actually say?
Here’s the dominant chorus:
- Justin Martyr — insists humans are created with the capacity to choose good or evil; otherwise, judgment would be unjust.
- Irenaeus of Lyons — emphasizes human freedom as essential to being made in God’s image.
- Clement of Alexandria — says virtue depends on voluntary choice.
- Origen — strongly affirms free will as foundational to moral responsibility.
- Tertullian — explicitly argues that free will is necessary for justice.
- Cyprian of Carthage — calls people to choose obedience.
- John Chrysostom — repeatedly says God’s commands imply human ability.
Across the board, their logic is consistent: If God commands it, humans must be able (in some real sense) to do it.
(All of the early church fathers (100%) affirm the moral logic and moral necessity that the commands of God imply our ability to do as commanded. Augustine, and others such as Luther and Calvin, changed that over the centuries. How did they change it? For all practical purposes, they denied it in full, or some denied it in part. That denial of ability has polluted Christianity and all of the most important truths about faith, grace, justice, and salvation. Only God knows the damage they have done and the number of souls who have gone to hell as a result.)
3. So, what about “corruption” or “weakness”?
This is where nuance matters.
Some fathers (especially later ones like Athanasius of Alexandria or Gregory of Nyssa) speak of:
- Mortality (we all die physically) inherited from Adam
- a weakened or diseased condition
- a tendency toward sin
But they do not draw Augustine’s conclusion that:
- the will is bound in such a way that one cannot obey God without prior irresistible grace
Instead, they typically say:
- humans are weakened → but still capable
- grace helps, heals, enlightens → but does not replace human cooperation
4. Your “percentage” question
We can’t assign an exact statistical percentage (there weren’t polls or uniform doctrinal surveys), but historically speaking:
- Explicit affirmation of free will: ~near universal (effectively 90–100%)
- Explicit denial of free will or total inability: 0% among recognized orthodox fathers before Augustine
- Statements that could be stretched toward later Augustinian ideas: rare and ambiguous, not systematic
So, if you’re asking: Was free will the predominant view? The answer is stronger than that: It was the baseline, assumed, and nearly uncontested framework.
(Let that sink in for it is a remarkable statement. Next time you hear a Calvinist claim that they represent the Orthodox Christian view, you will know that is simply not true if one goes back to the very beginning of the Christian Church. Augustine’s repentance from Orthodoxy began in the 5th century.)
5. What changed with Augustine?
Augustine of Hippo, especially during the Pelagian controversy, introduced a more developed doctrine that included:
- inherited guilt (in many interpretations)
- bondage of the will (a non-free, free will)
- necessity of prevenient grace in a stronger sense
- inability to do good apart from grace
This was not a simple continuation of earlier language—it was a significant theological development, even if Augustine believed he was defending Paul.
(Augustine’s view was basically the opposite of what the early church believed. In that sense, it was a significant departure from Original Orthodoxy – another gospel. That is one reason it should be rejected by serious Christians.)
6. Bottom line, per ChatGPT, (I suggest you read this a few times and let it sink in deeply.)
Your instinct matches the historical record:
- Before Augustine, free will and real human ability were the dominant and nearly universal teaching.
- The idea that humans are unable to obey God’s commands apart from a prior transformative act of grace is not clearly taught by earlier fathers in the way Augustine later formulates it.
I asked ChatGPT, to include more actual early church quotes on free will and ability.
Below are direct, representative quotations from pre-Augustinian fathers. Watch how consistently they tie God’s commands to human ability and free choice. These are in additions to the ones you have already read in an earlier article.
Justin Martyr (c. 150 AD)
“We have learned from the prophets… that punishments and chastisements and good rewards are rendered according to the merit of each man’s actions. Since, if it be not so, but all things happen by fate, neither is anything at all in our own power……But neither would a man be worthy of reward or praise if he did not of himself choose the good.”
(First Apology, ch. 43)
👉 His logic is explicit: no free choice = no justice = no meaningful obedience.
Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 180 AD)
“Man is possessed of free will from the beginning, and God is possessed of free will… and therefore does He give good counsel to all…
…so that those who obey Him are justly possessed of good, and those who do not obey are justly subject to judgment.”
(Against Heresies, IV.37.1)
And even more bluntly:
“If then it were not in our power to do or not to do these things, what reason had the apostle… to give us counsel to do some things, and to abstain from others?”
(Against Heresies, IV.37.2)
👉 This directly addresses your concern: commands imply ability.
Tertullian (c. 200 AD)
“I find, then, that man was constituted free by God… master of his own will and power…
…for a law would not be imposed upon one who had it not in his power to render obedience.”
(Against Marcion, II.5)
👉 One of the clearest early statements: law presupposes ability.
Clement of Alexandria (c. 195 AD)
“Neither praises nor censures, neither rewards nor punishments, are right if the soul has not the power of inclination and disinclination…
…virtue depends on ourselves.”
(Stromata, I.17)
👉 Again: moral responsibility requires real human capacity.
Origen (c. 225 AD)
“It is not by nature that we do evil or good, but by choice…
…we are responsible for being good or bad.”
(On First Principles, III.1)
And:
“Every rational creature… is capable of earning praise or blame.”
👉 Origen strongly insists on freedom as the basis of judgment.
Cyprian of Carthage (c. 250 AD)
“The liberty of believing or of not believing is placed in free choice.”
(On the Unity of the Church)
👉 Simple, but unmistakable: faith itself involves choice.
Lactantius (early 4th century)
“For if there is no free will, there is no justice…
…God has given to man free will, that he might choose righteousness.”
(Divine Institutes, VI.8)
John Chrysostom (late 4th century)
This one is especially striking:
“All is in God’s power, but so that our free will is not lost…
…it depends therefore on Him and on us.”
And commenting on moral responsibility:
“If it were not in our power to choose the good, God would not have commanded it.”
👉 This is very close to your exact concern.
Jerome (late 4th century)
“We have been created with free will… it is in our power either to sin or not to sin.”
(Letter 133)
What stands out when you see them together?
Across different regions (Rome, North Africa, Alexandria, Antioch) and over ~250 years, they repeatedly affirm:
1. Free will is essential to justice
If humans cannot choose, then:
- commands are meaningless
- judgment is unjust
2. God’s commands imply ability
This is stated almost verbatim by multiple fathers.
3. Obedience is genuinely possible
Not easy, not unaided—but possible.
What do you notsee in these quotes?
You do not see statements like:
- “Man cannot obey God at all without prior regeneration.”
- “The will is bound such that obedience is impossible.”
- “Commands exist to show inability.” (And that is precisely what Augustine claimed.)
Those ideas emerge much more clearly later, especially in Augustine of Hippo’s anti-Pelagian writings.
(If you want real Christian Orthodoxy, then look to the fathers closest to the apostles. Do not look to Augustine and those who followed his errors and expanded his false teachings. Augustinian Calvinism is not Orthodox but a serious corruption of it. It is another gospel in the truest sense of the term. I believe that Peter would call Augustinian Calvinism a damnable heresy. See my article titled, Damnable Heresies.)
Bottom line, according to ChatGPT
When you read the fathers directly—as you’ve been doing—you’re not imagining it:
The pre-Augustinian consensus strongly and repeatedly affirms real human freedom and the ability to obey God’s commands, even while acknowledging the need for grace.
Concluding comments
In this series of articles, I have provided many quotes from early church fathers relevant to this subject. They are not the final word (The Bible is the final word), but they do provide valuable and indispensable historical context. They do and should provide a baseline for Christian Orthodoxy. All of the most important tenets of Augustinian Calvinism and much of evangelicalism today embrace some or all of these heterodox doctrines. And Augustine is the father of it all.
It is an amazing thing to hear Calvinists talk about other Christians who are not Orthodox while ignoring their own heterodox doctrines. Dr. James White claims that the PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) is a Reformed doctrine. That means it is not baseline Orthodoxy even as some of them pretend that it is. See my articles on the atonement.
