Voluntas as Liberum Arbitrium at Saint Augustine and Three Acceptations of the Servum Arbitrium at Martin Luther

The present study aims at analyzing several aspects of the concept of will from the perspective of Saint Augustine and Martin Luther. The authors are “classical” sources of the free will issue, the former in asserting it, the latter in coming to doubt it with regard to the “superior” choices. The actuality of the theme resides not only in the fact that it is profoundly transdisciplinary and that it continuously pursues a balance between what depends on the deliberating agent and what influences it in action from the outside, but also in that the authors we are dealing with were frequently investigated, resorted to and quoted in their age about the matter of the assertion and negation of free will. In the case of Augustine we take into consideration the relationship between arbitrium and voluntas, the former as a faculty of judgement and free consent, the latter as a complex of inclinations or dispositions. In the case of Luther three hypostases are identified in which arbitrium is slave (servum): an enslavement due to its impossibility of removing the aversion to God, an enslavement due to its impossibility of responding to God’s grace and the last one towards the sovereignty of God’s governing of the universe. The theological theory of will has the “advantage” of relating to a superior, perfect, modelling Will. Our attempt is to notice the essential anthropological aspect in which Luther distances himself from Augustine and the effect it has on understanding the arbitrium.

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