St. Anselm was a Benedictine theologian, a doctor of the church, the archbishop of Canterbury, and a Christian saint. Anselm is best known for an ontological argument for the existence of God, an argument that is still debated. Another of his important arguments concerns a defense and explanation of free will. This is expressed in his Philosophical Fragments and elsewhere in his writings. This analysis will include: 1) consideration of the definitions of free will presented by Anselm; 2) the role of divine grace in the operation of free will; 3) Anselm's arguments on the relationship between predestination and free will; 4) the notions offered of foreknowledge, predestination, and grace and their compatibility with free will; and 5) the argument that free will not only involves determinism but is in fact inconceivable without it.
Definitions of free will are set forth by the Teacher in his conversation with the student in Anselm's De Libertate Arbitrii. Anselm writes,
The ability to keep uprightness-of-will for the sake of this uprightness itself is the complete definition of freedom of choice.
Free will in this regarded is synonymous with freedom of choice. Free will, in other words, is meaningless unless and until it is exercised in choice.
Anselm is not concerned with the frivolous exercise of an individual's free will but rather with those choices which affect the individual spiritually, those decisions which either align him with God's will or which turn him away from God's will and lead him to sin. Sin in this view is the exercise of free will separate from the influence of what Anselm comes to call the "justice" of God. There is thus a steady development of Anselm's philosophy from the first definition of free will to the last clarification of this aspect of free will as related to justice.
With reference to free will, Anselm states that God has given this as a gift to man, and with it God has given as wel...