In Anselm on Freedom, Katherin Rogers develops an original approach to the question of Anselm's understanding of freedom (both human and divine), the key to which can be found in the following claim: ‘Anselm's thesis is that God, in making man in His image, has succeeded in sharing a measure of His aseity’ (p. 91).
Rogers argues uncontroversially that Anselm is a ‘classical theist’, who holds that God is absolutely simple, His attributes being identical with each other (chapter 1). Although Anselm is one of Augustine's ‘devoted disciples’ (chapter 2, p. 30), he differs from Augustine in his view of human freedom and does not follow Augustine's compatibilism (i.e. that moral choice is ultimately causally explicable in terms of external factors). Anselm leaves ‘a small space’ for human agency (p. 33), for he is a ‘libertarian’ (i.e. he believes that the agent's free choice is not explicable in terms of external factors nor of internal factors which themselves ultimately possess external causes). In chapter 3, ‘The Purpose, Definition, and Structure of Free Choice’, Rogers finds evidence in Anselm's writings for her claim that the human agent, ‘through its free will, shares in God's aseity’ and ‘imitates God in being a genuine cause’, ‘a primary agent’ (p. 59), whose freedom is characterized by the power to preserve rightness (rectitudo) of will for its own sake (see De Libertate Arbitrii, 3). There are two sorts of desire: the desire for benefit and the desire for rightness (rectitudo). They are not competing desires: ‘the will for rightness is a second order desire that one's first order desires for benefits should be properly ordered and limited in accord with the divine will’ (p. 72). In chapter 4, ‘Alternative Possibilities and Primary Agency’, Rogers develops her case for Anselm as a ‘libertarian’. Open options, though not definitional of freedom, permit the created agent ‘to choose from himself’ (p. 76). Anselm regards the created agent as confronting ‘alternatives such that its own free will genuinely plays a causally efficacious role’ (p. 78). In chapter 5, ‘The Causes of Sin and the Intelligibility Problem’, Rogers argues that the mystery surrounding self-caused choice (that a choice whose cause is not derived from external causes is not a random or accidental event) is what ‘one ought to expect to find attached to an imago dei in the universe of traditional classical theism’ (p. 87). Anselm's solution to the intelligibility problem lies in a ‘very modest’ autonomy of the agent. There are two genuine causal forces in the world: ‘God and the free creatures He has made’ (p. 101).
In chapter 6, ‘Creaturely Freedom and God as Creator Omnium’, Rogers asks how God can be the creator of all that exists, but not be responsible for sinful acts. In De Concordia, 3, Anselm makes it clear that evil actions are the fault of man, since God ‘would not cause them, if man did not will to do them’ (p. 121). God chooses to be affected by the created agent's actions. To deny this to God would be to lessen His omnipotence. In chapter 7, ‘Grace and Free Will’, Rogers attempts to show that Anselm's position on the relation of grace and freedom differs from that of Augustine. Even after the fall, the human agent retains ‘the ability to keep rightness of will for its own sake’. Chapters 8 and 9 on ‘Foreknowledge, Freedom, and Eternity’ address both pre-Anselmian (Augustine and Boethius) and contemporary discussions of divine foreknowledge and human freedom, eternity and time. Anselm, it is claimed, holds a four-dimensionalist (i.e. tenseless) theory of time with God's eternity characterized as a kind of fifth dimension (p. 183). In the final chapter, ‘The Freedom of God’, Rogers attempts to reconcile the belief that God is obliged to do the best, with His freedom. She believes that Anselm's position not only entails that God has created the best actualizable (rather than possible) world, but that ‘Anselm believes our world is the only world God could make’. She perhaps overstates the case in claiming ‘strong textual evidence for this’ (p. 193). To stress her point she italicizes a definite article in her translation of Anselm's Latin (p. 194), but Latin of course has no definite article.
Rogers recognises the potential problem in her assertion that Anselm was the first (Christian) philosopher ‘to attempt a systematic libertarian analysis of freedom’ (p. 1). Anselm was not party to recent discussions of human freedom and applying the soubriquet ‘libertarian’ to Anselm might seem to be ‘pushing it’ somewhat. But Rogers sets out to avoid the charge of anachronism by offering a ‘close and careful analysis’ of the textual evidence.
It is in deriving from Anselm's position on the imago dei the notion of a human and limited aseity as an explanatory justification for the belief in the freedom of human choices that Rogers creatively opens up Anselm's thought to wider discussion. Whether or not this view of human aseity is one Anselm held it makes a real contribution to our understanding of what it means to be made in the image of God. To put the matter in a less qualified manner than Rogers chooses to employ (compare her comments on p. 106, final paragraph): if one treats the idea that we are made in God's image as contentful and informative of philosophical, theological and anthropological thinking, then surely we are compelled to recognize that in creating us in His image, God has made us co-creators of ourselves. The freedom we possess in our choices, which choices determine who we are, is a reflection of the divine freedom, which is itself the source of our freedom.
One final point: at the beginning of De Concordia, Anselm sets out his position that there is no conflict between divine foreknowledge and human freedom, because the manner of the choice as a free act is foreseen by God. It seems to me that this text is the central statement of Anselm's view of the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. Anselm's solution to the problem is driven by the logical entailment that whatever God foresees must be the case and that, if God has created a world in which He foresees free acts, there must be free acts. Whilst God's freedom is the source of human freedom, His foreknowledge is its guarantor.
