THE HUMAN WILL AFTER THE FALL: FREEDOM, BONDAGE, AND DIVINE GRACE

Introduction and Thesis Statement

After the Fall, humanity became morally and ethically constrained. Although people still choose and act, the corruption of human nature now redirects those choices toward sin and moral disorder. Moral freedom, therefore, is not eliminated after the Fall but substantially weakened. As a result, sustained virtue and moral choice no longer arise naturally from the human will and instead require divine grace and possibly structured ethical formation to guide behavior. Human agency remains real, but it operates within the limits of a will shaped by moral disorder.

This study uses a comparative and interdisciplinary research approach, drawing on both classical theological accounts of the will and modern discussions in moral theology and ethics. It examines primary sources from Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin alongside relevant philosophical arguments. Through close analysis of Scripture, patristic writings, and theological texts, the paper explores the condition of the human will before and after the Fall. It focuses on the distinction between unrestrained freedom and morally constrained agency and considers the ethical and practical consequences of moral responsibility in a post-Fall world.

Ultimately, this paper presents a normative argument by examining four major theological views of human freedom after the Fall and arguing that one perspective offers the most convincing explanation, grounded in biblical testimony and theological consistency. To accomplish this, the paper is divided into four sections. First, it introduces and explains four influential views of the will, those of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin, focusing on their respective ideas of freedom before and after the Fall. Next, it compares these positions, emphasizing both shared assumptions and key differences. Then, it provides a detailed critique of each view, assessing its strengths and weaknesses. Finally, the paper synthesizes these insights to support a normative conclusion about the nature of human freedom after the Fall.

Comprehensiveness Of Ideas

These four positions are especially significant because they span the major intellectual periods of Western Christian thought, from late antiquity through the Reformation. The Augustinian account emerges within the patristic context of late antiquity, where Augustine conveys his doctrine of the will in works such as De libero arbitrio and On Nature and Grace. [1] Writing between the fourth and fifth centuries, Augustine frames the will as active yet impaired by sin, a position that profoundly shaped subsequent Christian theology.

The medieval and scholastic period finds its fullest articulation of the will in the writings of Aquinas, particularly in the Summa Theologiae.[2]  Composed in the thirteenth century, Aquinas integrates Aristotelian philosophy with Christian doctrine, offering a systematic account of human freedom that affirms rational agency while emphasizing the necessity of grace for moral perfection. His work embodies the culmination of medieval theological thought just before the intellectual shifts of the Renaissance.

The Reformation period introduces a reconfiguration of the doctrine of the will in the writings of Luther and Calvin. Luther’s The Bondage of the Will rejects any account of moral freedom that presumes an uncorrupted human capacity to choose the good apart from grace, according to the ideas of Aquinas.[3]  Calvin further develops this Reformation emphasis in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, where he situates the will within a broader framework of providence, election, regeneration, and sanctification.  Both Reformers wrote during the sixteenth century, in the wake of the Renaissance, yet their theological concerns consciously return to, and intensify, patristic debates.

Taken together, these four perspectives reveal a remarkable continuity of concern across centuries. Questions vigorously contested in the third and fourth centuries remain central to theological inquiry today. The persistence of these debates underscores the enduring importance of the doctrine of the will for Christian theology, particularly with respect to moral responsibility, grace, and the possibility of virtuous action after the Fall.

 

The Four Main Positions

Augustine of Hippo (354-430)

Augustine argued that before the Fall, humans possessed free will (liberum arbitrium) because their choices flowed from rightly ordered desires. Humans freely chose what they loved most, and because their supreme love was directed toward God, they possessed the real ability not to sin.[4]  After the Fall, however, humans became morally enslaved, not because voluntary choice ceased, but because desire itself became disordered (amor perversus).[5]  Today, humanity continues to choose freely, yet our love turns inward toward lesser goods, leading us to prefer lesser things over God. This inward turn is rooted in pride (superbia), through which humans learned to love themselves more than their Creator.[6] 

Augustine emphasized that pride, pleasure, power, and self-sufficiency are not inherently evil, since everything God created is good.[7]  These desires existed even before the Fall and became sinful only when they were loved more than God or pursued apart from Him.  Evil, therefore, was not created by God but arises when humans desire good things in the wrong order, elevating lesser goods above God. Prior to the Fall, human will was properly ordered because humans followed the correct hierarchy of goods. For Augustine, morality is not fundamentally a matter of rule-keeping but of the order of love (ordo amoris).[8]   God is the supreme good, followed by the soul and then bodily and worldly goods, and a rightly ordered will loves each according to its true worth. Sin, therefore, occurs when this hierarchy is inverted, resulting in a disordered will and corrupt freedom.[9] 

After the Fall, Augustine describes the will as morally enslaved because it no longer loves rightly, even though it continues to choose freely. The problem is not that humans lost the capacity for choice, but that they lost the ability to choose God as the highest good apart from divine grace. Augustine locates this inability in the advent of guilt, which he understands not as a subjective feeling but as an objective moral condition inherited from Adam that corrupts human nature from birth.[10]  This guilt does not only function in a therapeutic or psychological sense, making individuals merely feel bad, but also in a moral sense, disorienting the will’s loves.[11] As a result, humans are inclined toward what is immediate, familiar, and self-affirming rather than toward God and righteousness. Due to this, humanity gravitates toward lesser goods, such as pleasure, status, or self-gratification, not simply because these relieve only emotional discomfort, but more important because guilt has reordered desire itself. In this way, Augustine suggests that the post-Fall moral disorientation of the will is rooted in guilt’s corruption of love, even though he does not articulate this dynamic in modern psychological terms.

Looking at Augustine from this angle, his ideas seem to imply a continuous move away from God toward the therapeutic, or emotional notion of humanity’s wellbeing, wrapped up not in God, but rather in a psychological blanket, where choices are about ourselves, and how best to feel about ourselves, continuously moving away from God. Philip Rieff’s critique of the therapeutic resonates strongly with Augustine’s account of guilt, but mostly as a warning about what happens when Augustine’s moral diagnosis is misread psychologically.[12]

Philip Rieff, in The Triumph of the Therapeutic, argues that modern culture has redefined guilt as emotional discomfort rather than moral disorder. The goal is no longer reconciliation with objective moral truth, but relief from feeling bad.  In this framework, what matters most is whether something promotes self-esteem, happiness, or inner peace. Guilt becomes something to be managed, soothed, or eliminated, not something that points beyond the self to a higher moral order.

Augustine, by contrast, insists that guilt is not primarily a feeling at all, but an objective condition of moral misalignment. For him, guilt harms the will by distorting love, turning the self-inward and away from God. According to Augustine, feeling good is morally irrelevant if the will is wrongly oriented. In Augustine’s view, removing guilt as a feeling without healing guilt as a condition leaves the will enslaved, not free.

The more challenging part of Augustine’s theology involves understanding why humanity chose pride and lesser goods over God. Augustine argues that humans did not fall because they were forced, deceived, or lacking, but because their will freely and inexplicably turned away from God. The Fall has no efficient cause but only a deficient cause (causa deficiens). The will did not move toward something evil; instead, it failed to stay focused on the highest good. This failure occurred when the will sought self-ownership rather than dependence on God, desiring to be like God rather than with God. 

The question that comes to mind when reading Augustine is an obvious one: “Why did humans choose, at some specific point in time, the lesser things over God, knowing that God was perfect and providing everything humanity needed?” Accordingly, Augustine argues that asking “why” in a causal sense is ultimately a poor question. To ask what caused the will to turn away from God is like asking what caused darkness: darkness is not a substance but the absence of light. Similarly, evil is the absence of good, or the absence of God. Using Augustine’s ideas, we can deduce that evil, therefore, does not come from a created substance or motive but from the will’s failure to stay aligned with God, a moving away from God, if you will. If one insists on identifying a cause, Augustine concludes that the only answer is “the will itself”.

In sum, Augustine argues that people do not choose evil for its own sake; rather, they choose wrongly because their love is disordered. Human beings pursue what they perceive as good, but when they love lesser goods than the highest good, their choices become sinful and destructive.

The major criticisms of Augustine focus on his account of the will and moral responsibility, particularly where his explanations appear philosophically incomplete or morally troubling. Critics commonly raise the following objections:

a.         Explanatory gap in the Fall: By denying any efficient cause of the Fall and attributing it to a self-caused defection of the will, Augustine leaves the origin of sin insufficiently explained and seemingly arbitrary. [13]  

b.         Freedom as irrational choice: Augustine’s claim that the will can freely turn away from the highest good without prior defect risks portraying freedom as unreasoned or arbitrary rather than guided by rational deliberation. [14]

c.      Moral responsibility without ability: His insistence that the fallen will is morally incapable of choosing God apart from grace raises concerns about justice, since humans remain blameworthy despite lacking the ability to do otherwise. [15]

d.         Inherited guilt and psychological thinness: Finally, Augustine’s doctrine of original sin as inherited guilt, along with his relatively underdeveloped psychological account of habit, emotion, and social conditioning, is often seen as incompatible with modern understandings of moral agency and human development.[16] 

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

            The medieval theologian, philosopher, and one of the most profound thinkers in Western history, Thomas Aquinas, was an advocate of Augustine's work. Aquinas addresses the shortcomings of Augustine’s theology not by rejecting Augustine but by completing it philosophically. Where Augustine leaves tensions unresolved to protect divine grace and human responsibility, Aquinas systematically explains how the will operates without undermining Augustine’s core insights.

One of the most frequently identified weaknesses in Augustine’s account of the will is the so-called explanatory gap, as previously discussed. Augustine maintains that the Fall has no efficient cause (God did not create evil), only a deficient one, a claim that many philosophers and theologians regard as insufficiently explanatory because it renders the original act of sin difficult to understand.[17]  Thomas Aquinas addresses this gap by refining Augustine’s account of the human will. While Aquinas agrees that evil itself has no efficient cause and that God did not create evil, he adds the crucial principle that the human will always act for a perceived good.  Human beings do not choose actions because they are evil or unrighteous as such; rather, they choose actions because those actions appear desirable in some respect.  On Aquinas’ view, the Fall did not occur without reason, but because the human intellect mistakenly presented a lesser good, such as autonomy or self-exaltation, as desirable apart from its ordering to God.  In this way, Aquinas renders the Fall understandable without attributing its cause to God. Evil arises not from a desire for evil itself, but from the pursuit lesser goods at the expense of choosing God. Importantly, Aquinas does not attribute this failure to an inherent defect or inferiority in human nature or the will, but to the limitations of human reason, which does not always apprehend goods within their proper hierarchy.  When the intellect misjudges what is truly good, the will freely follows that judgment, and sin results. Like Augustine, Aquinas maintains that actions oriented toward the self rather than toward God are sinful, not because they lack goodness altogether, but because they are wrongly ordered. 

Accordingly, Aquinas affirms with Augustine that God did not create evil and that Satan neither could nor did coerce Adam and Eve; the Fall resulted from a voluntary human choice, one made for a perceived good, but a good wrongly ordered toward the self rather than toward God.[18] 

This preserves Augustine’s insistence that God did not cause the Fall while rendering the human choice intelligible rather than mysterious. Accordingly, Aquinas holds that human will is the efficient cause of sinful acts, but that their sinfulness arises from a failure of reason to apprehend and order goods correctly. Sin, therefore, is not the result of a desire for evil as such, but of an intellectual failure to recognize and choose the highest good.

Additionally, Aquinas corrects the concern that Augustine’s view makes freedom seem irrational or random. For Aquinas, the will never choose blindly; it is always guided by the intellect. The intellect presents something as good (pleasant, useful, or satisfying), and the will always move towards it.[19]  Even sinful actions are chosen because they appear good in some limited respect. Thus, no one chooses evil as evil. Applied to the Fall, Aquinas explains that Adam and Eve did not choose against what they knew to be best without reason. Instead, their intellect focused on a partial good (such as autonomy or self-exaltation), while failing to consider its proper order to God.[20]  The will then freely followed this mistaken judgment. The act was wrong, but it was not irrational.

Furthermore, Aquinas refines Augustine’s tension between moral responsibility and moral inability by distinguishing between different levels of freedom. Augustine teaches that fallen humans remain responsible for sin, even though they are unable to choose God as their highest good apart from grace. Aquinas clarifies this tension by affirming that humans retain natural freedom, enabling them to choose voluntarily among goods, while lacking the supernatural capacity pursue God as their ultimate end without some form of divine assistance. In this respect, Aquinas’s position remains broadly consistent with Augustine’s: both hold that the fallen human will is disordered in its orientation toward God.  However, Aquinas locates the primary source of this disorder not in guilt as a psychological condition, but in the weakening of reason and desire that follows the Fall. Guilt, for Aquinas, is a consequence of choosing lesser goods contrary to the highest good, and it signifies a state of alienation from God rather than a direct cause of sinful choice.[21]  While guilt accompanies and reinforces the will’s disordered orientation, it is not a necessary condition for sin itself. Instead, guilt marks the relational aftermath of prior sin. Through grace, guilt is forgiven, and the will is healed, restoring the capacity to pursue rightly ordered goods and, ultimately, to choose God as the supreme end. This distinction preserves responsibility while avoiding the charge that humans are blamed for what they are wholly incapable of doing.

Finally, Aquinas strengthens what is often regarded as Augustine’s relatively thin moral psychology.  Whereas Augustine focuses primarily on love and the will, Aquinas develops a more comprehensive account that incorporates habits, virtues, passions, and the coordinated operation of intellect and will, an approach clearly indebted to Aristotle.  On Aquinas’s view, sin and virtue are not merely isolated acts but stable patterns of character formed over time.  This account aligns more closely with lived human experience while remaining faithful to Augustine’s central emphasis on rightly ordered love. Through repeated acts of thinking, choosing, and practicing, individuals form habits, either virtues or vices, that shape future judgment and action. As habits become established, moral decisions require less deliberation, since the agent is already inclined toward certain goods. In this sense, Aquinas maintains that humans can sin less by cultivating habits that consistently orient their lives toward God.  Nevertheless, Aquinas also insists that divine grace is required to initiate and sustain this process, since fallen human nature cannot fully reorder its loves or form God-oriented habits apart from grace.[22] 

In summary, Augustine identifies the fundamental problem of the will, while Aquinas explains its internal mechanics. By grounding freedom more explicitly in reason, accounting for moral failure without arbitrariness, clarifying the basis of responsibility, and offering a richer moral psychology, Aquinas addresses several of Augustine’s weaknesses while still affirming Augustine’s central claim that true freedom ultimately depends on divine grace.

Yet, despite the adjustments made to Augustine’s ideas, Aquinas’s theology of the will is not without critics. Some suggest that:

a.         Aquinas puts too much emphasis on habit formation and the ability of humanity to make good decisions.[23] [24] 

b.         He does not address the ideas of grace enough to explain how it interacts with habit formation. [25] [26]

c.         Aquinas overlooks social hierarchy, suggesting that some people who form habits have higher education, time and social support needed to engage in such activities. [27]  

Reformation Period

Moving on from Augustine and Aquinas, the Reformation period marks a considerable shift in the church, and theologians viewed the theology of the will. Two of the most prominent scholars were Martin Luther and John Calvin. While both theologians agree with Augustine and Aquinas on the depravity of man after the fall, they both seem to disagree with Aquinas on how habit formation and grace may alter humanity’s ability to make better moral decisions. Both Luther and Calvin agreed that, after the Fall, humanity is not simply disordered, as Augustine and Aquinas would suggest, but is unquestionably divided and cut off from God, and has no ability to make moral decisions apart from the grace of God. Unlike Aquinas, who believes that habit formation can help humanity improve its decision-making, Luther and Calvin argue that this is impossible without grace. Luther and Calvin suggest that the only way to re-engage with God and obtain the capacity to make moral decisions is to have the gift of grace.

Martin Luther

Martin Luther presents his doctrine of the will most forcefully in The Bondage of the Will. Luther argues that the Fall did not merely weaken human freedom but placed the will in bondage with respect to God. After the Fall, humans retain the ability to make voluntary choices in earthly and civil matters, but they are incapable of choosing God, trusting God, or performing genuinely righteous acts in a salvific sense. This inability is not the result of external coercion but of an inner domination of sin, which directs human desire inward toward the self. Consequently, Luther rejects the notion of a neutral will capable of turning either toward or away from God; the will is always under a master, either God or sin, and prior to grace it is enslaved to the latter.

Central to Luther’s view is his insistence on the unilateral action of divine grace. Human reason, though useful in ordinary life, is spiritually blind and cannot initiate movement toward God. Moral discipline, habit formation, and virtue development therefore play no role in bringing about salvation and may even foster pride by reinforcing human self-reliance. Grace does not cooperate with the fallen will but liberates it, creating faith where none existed and reorienting the person entirely toward God. Only after this divine act do good works follow, not as a means of salvation but as its consequence. In this way, Luther radicalizes Augustine’s doctrine of moral inability and stands in sharp contrast to Aquinas’s account of the will as wounded yet capable of cooperation with grace.

John Calvin

            John Calvin develops his doctrine of the will most fully in the Institutes of the Christian Religion.  Like Augustine and Luther, Calvin argues that the Fall fundamentally altered human moral ability. Before the Fall, humans possessed a rightly ordered will capable of obedience to God. After the Fall, however, every faculty of the human person, intellect, will, and desire, remains structurally intact but is morally corrupted. Calvin famously describes this condition as total depravity, not meaning that humans are as evil as possible, but that sin extends to every part of human nature. As a result, fallen humans retain the ability to reason, choose, and act voluntarily in ordinary and civil matters, yet they are incapable of turning toward God or choosing true righteousness apart from divine grace. The will continues to operate freely, but it is consistently inclined toward self-love rather than the love of God.[28]

Calvin, therefore, insists that salvation depends entirely on God’s sovereign initiative. Grace does not merely assist or heal a weakened will; it regenerates it. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, God renews the heart, restores the will’s orientation, and enables faith and repentance. Only after this regenerative act the human can respond rightly to God. Unlike Aquinas, Calvin sharply limits the salvific role of virtue, habit, and moral formation, and unlike Luther, he integrates the doctrine of the will into a broader theological framework that includes providence, election, sanctification, and the life of the church. For Calvin, moral transformation follows salvation rather than contributing to it: good work is the fruit of grace, not its cause. In this way, Calvin presents a coherent account of human responsibility and divine sovereignty, maintaining that human’s sin willingly while affirming that only God’s grace can liberate the will from its bondage to sin.[29]

Although Calvin and Luther agree on the central diagnosis of the fallen will: the Fall renders humans morally incapable of choosing God apart from grace, even though they continue to choose voluntarily. Both reject the idea of a neutral free will and insist that sinners act willingly, not under coercion. For each, grace is necessary before faith, repentance, and obedience arise, only because God first acts. Consequently, neither allows human virtue, habit formation, or moral effort to contribute to salvation; good works follow grace as its fruit, not as its cause.[30]

They differ, however, in emphasis, tone, and theological integration. Luther presents the doctrine polemically, speaking of the will as bound in relation to God and minimizing the positive role of reason in spiritual matters; his aim is to exclude any trace of human self-reliance in justification. Calvin shares the substance of this view but develops it more systematically within a broader framework of providence, election, regeneration, and sanctification. Calvin argues that through divine providence, God actively orders all events, ensuring that nothing occurs apart from His will, while still holding humans responsible for their voluntary actions. Because the Fall has morally corrupted every human faculty, Calvin argues that salvation must originate in unconditional election, God’s eternal choice of individuals for salvation based solely on grace rather than foreseen merit or faith. This election is realized in history through regeneration, whereby God effectually calls the elect and renews their will, enabling faith and repentance that they were previously incapable of producing. From regeneration flows sanctification, the lifelong process by which believers are gradually conformed to Christ in holiness. Although sanctification involves real moral effort and growth, Calvin insists it remains grounded in God’s prior and sustaining grace. In this way, Calvin offers a coherent system in which providence governs all things, election secures salvation, regeneration restores the will, and sanctification transforms the believer, ensuring that human freedom and moral responsibility operate entirely within the framework of divine sovereignty.[31]

 

Summarizing the Differences

Augustine, Aquinas, Martin Luther, and John Calvin all agree on the foundational claim that the Fall fundamentally altered human moral ability. None of these theologians believes that post-Fall humanity possesses a neutral or morally autonomous will be capable of choosing God apart from grace. All affirm that human’s sin voluntarily rather than under coercion and that divine grace is necessary for restoration. They also agree that evil is not created by God and that moral responsibility remains even after the Fall. In this sense, Luther and Calvin stand firmly within the Augustinian tradition, and Aquinas does not reject Augustine but seeks to clarify and develop his insights.

Their disagreement lies in how severe the damage caused by the Fall is, how the will functions afterward, and how grace interacts with human faculties. Augustine focuses on disordered love and moral incapacity but leaves the internal mechanics of the will underdeveloped, creating tensions around causality and responsibility. Aquinas responds by integrating Aristotle, arguing that the will always acts for a perceived good, and that habits, virtues, and reason play a real, though limited, role in moral decision-making. He also states that grace heals and elevates nature rather than replacing it. Luther sharply rejects Aquinas's cooperative framework, insisting that the will is bound to God and that reason, habit, and virtue contribute nothing to salvation; grace acts unilaterally to liberate the will. Calvin agrees with Luther’s diagnosis of human inability but offers a more systematic theology, integrating the will into a broader framework of providence, election, regeneration, and sanctification. In short, Augustine diagnoses the problem, Aquinas explains its moral mechanics, Luther radicalizes the diagnosis, and Calvin systematizes it, resulting in four related but distinct views of human freedom, responsibility, and grace.

Major Criticisms

Although the above four views on human will before and after the Fall, agree and disagree on various fronts, they are all normally associated with what is called the Augustinian tradition. The Augustinian tradition, when viewed from afar, from a broad, sweeping perspective, reveals various criticisms. The following are some of the more common criticisms of the Augustinian tradition.

To start, critics argue that ideas rooted in Augustinian traditions challenge common views on moral responsibility. All four theologians maintain, in different ways, that post-Fall humans are incapable (or greatly limited) in choosing God without grace, yet they still hold humans fully responsible for sin. Many philosophers find this difficult to reconcile with typical notions of justice, which usually connect responsibility to the genuine ability to choose differently. This tension is most evident in Luther and Calvin, but it is already present in Augustine and is only partly softened by Aquinas. [32]

Further, there is a recurring concern that these views over-theologize moral failure by explaining wrongdoing primarily in terms of metaphysical corruption, inherited guilt, or divine causality, rather than social, psychological, or developmental factors. Modern critics argue that trauma, upbringing, culture, and unconscious motivations play a much larger role in moral behavior than these accounts allow, even in Aquinas’s more developed moral psychology.[33] 

            Additionally, critics claim that these traditions risk diminishing human agency. While none deny voluntary action, Augustine’s moral inability, Aquinas’s dependence on grace for the highest good, and especially Luther’s and Calvin’s emphasis on bondage and divine sovereignty can make human choice appear marginal or epiphenomenal.  In Calvin’s case, this concern intensifies around election and providence, where critics worry that human decisions seem predetermined rather than genuinely participatory.[34]

In sum, when viewed collectively, these traditions are criticized for advancing strong claims about divine sovereignty, moral corruption, and responsibility at the expense of clarity about freedom, fairness, psychological realism, and social complexity. Their enduring power lies in theological coherence; their enduring weakness lies in explaining these doctrines in ways that fully satisfy modern moral intuition and lived experience.

Benefits of the Augustinian Positions

The Augustinian tradition offers several enduring benefits for theological adherence, which help explain its lasting influence across Christian traditions. At its core, the Augustinian framework provides strong doctrinal coherence. It links human nature, sin, grace, and salvation into a unified account in which dependence on divine grace is central rather than incidental. Salvation, moral transformation, and redemption are consistently grounded in God’s action, preventing theology from fragmenting into disconnected claims or drifting toward moral self-sufficiency. In this way, the tradition preserves the primacy of grace and safeguards divine sovereignty, ensuring that salvation is understood as God’s work rather than a human achievement.

Calvin – The Most Biblically Supported Approach

Of the above four positions, the one that seems most supported by biblical scripture is that of John Calvin and, to a lesser extent, Martin Luther. It appears that Calvin’s position is most relevant because the following scriptures best support the underlying notion expressed by him. Although I appreciate the work of Aquinas, I find his theology to be more aligned with how a person should act, and how to conduct themselves, rather than a theology supportive of the will, at least based on a scriptural perspective.

            The following scriptures are organized into systematic groups, each of which supports one component of Calvin's theology. Each scripture is from NIV 2011.

            Group #1: Humans cannot act morally after the Fall

a.         Romans 3:10-12.

 “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”

b.         Romans 8:7-8

“The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.”

c.         Ephesians 2:1

"As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins."

Group #2: Humans are enslaved to sin, not neutral to sin.

d.         John 8:34

"Jesus replied, 'Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.'"

e.         Romans 6:17-18

“But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.”

f.          Romans 7:18-19

“For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

Group #3 Humans Cannot Choose God, but God Chooses them

g.         John 6:44

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will      raise them up at the last day.”

h.         John 6:65

He went on to say, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them."

i.          John 1:12-13

 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

Group #4 God Chooses

j.          Romans 9:15-16

For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then, it does not depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.

k.         Ephesians 1:4-5

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.

l.          2 Timothy 1:9

"He has saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but by His own purpose and by the grace He granted us in Christ Jesus before time began."

Group #5 God Renews The Heart and the Will

m.        Ezekiel 36:26-27

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws."

n.         John 3:3-8

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” “You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’” “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

o.          John 5:1

Everyone who believes…has been born of God.

What can be gleaned from the passages above is as follows. The Bible clearly spells out that no person is righteous, not one. No person seeks God under his own volition. The mind and flesh is hostile to God. Every one of us is a slave to sin, and we cannot be loosed from this sin unless God intervenes. God calls to those he chooses, and if you are chosen and accept God’s calling you will be saved, and removed from the bondage of sin. The Augustinian tradition offers several enduring benefits for theological adherence, which help explain its lasting influence across Christian traditions.

Conclusion

This paper has explored four main theological perspectives on the human will after the Fall: Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin. It shows that although all acknowledge human choice, they vary in their views on moral ability and the role of grace. Augustine sees the will as fundamentally disordered, Aquinas builds on this by highlighting reason and habit, and Luther emphasizes the will’s bondage without grace. Calvin, however, most comprehensively integrates these insights into a coherent biblical framework, placing the will within God’s sovereign work of election, regeneration, and sanctification.

Footnotes

[1] Augustine. (1993). On free choice of the will (T. Williams, Trans.). Hackett Publishing.; Augustine. (1991). On nature and grace (P. Holmes & R. E. Wallis, Trans.). In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 5 (pp. 121–155). Hendrickson Publishers.

[2] Aquinas, T. (1981). Summa theologiae (Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Trans.). Christian Classics.

[3] Luther, M. (1957). The bondage of the will (J. I. Packer & O. R. Johnston, Trans.). Fleming H. Revell.

[4] Augustine of Hippo. (1998). On free choice of the will (T. Williams, Trans.). Hackett Publishing Company. (Original work written c. 388–395).

[5] Calvin, J. (1960). Institutes of the Christian religion (J. T. McNeill, Ed.; F. L. Battles, Trans.). Westminster John Knox Press.

[6] Augustine of Hippo. (2002). The city of God (H. Bettenson & G. R. Evans, Trans.). Penguin Classics. (Original work written c. 413–426).

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Rieff, P. (1966). The triumph of the therapeutic: Uses of faith after Freud. Harper & Row.

[13] Rist, J. M. (1994). Augustine: Ancient thought baptized. Cambridge University Press.; Harrison, C. (2006). The Will, Rethinking Augustine's Early Theology: An Argument for Continuity. Oxford UP. https://doi.org/10.1093/0199281661.003.0007, accessed 4 Feb. 2026.

[14] Williams, T. (2001). Free will and the will to happiness. In E. Stump & N. Kretzmann (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Augustine (pp. 130–148). Cambridge University Press.; Harrison, C. (2006). The Will, Rethinking Augustine's Early Theology: An Argument for Continuity. Oxford UP. https://doi.org/10.1093/0199281661.003.0007, accessed 4 Feb. 2026.; Harrison, C. (2006). The Will, Rethinking Augustine's Early Theology: An Argument for Continuity. Oxford UP. https://doi.org/10.1093/0199281661.003.0007, accessed 4 Feb. 2026.

[15] Stump, E. (2001). Aquinas. Routledge.

[16] Rist, J. M. (1994). Augustine: Ancient thought baptized. Cambridge University Press.;  Stump, E. (2001). Aquinas. Routledge.

[17] Aquinas, T. (1981). Summa theologiae (Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Trans.). Christian Classics. (Original work written 1265–1274)

[18] Ibid.

[19] Aquinas, T. (1981). Summa theologiae (Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Trans.). Christian Classics. (Original work written 1265–1274)

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid.

[23] MacIntyre, A. (1981). After virtue: A study in moral theory (2nd ed.). University of Notre Dame Press.

[24] Tillich, P. (1951). Systematic theology (Vol. 1). University of Chicago Press.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Nussbaum, M. C. (1986). The fragility of goodness: Luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy. Cambridge University Press.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Calvin, J. (1960). Institutes of the Christian religion (J. T. McNeill, Ed.; F. L. Battles, Trans.). Westminster John Knox Press.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Erasmus, D. (1969). Discourse on free will (De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio) (E. Gordon Rupp, Trans.). Westminster Press. (Original work published 1524).; Kenny, A. (1979). Freewill and responsibility. Routledge & Kegan Paul.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Ibid.

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Butler, T. C. (2014). Joshua (Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 7). Zondervan.

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Jakobson, R. (1987). Language in literature (K. Pomorska & S. Rudy, Eds.). Harvard University Press.

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