Human responsibility

So that no one may suppose from what we have said that we claim everything that happens occurs by the necessity of fate simply because it has been foretold as foreknown, we will also resolve this point.

We have learned from the prophets, and we declare it true, that punishments, penalties, and good rewards are given according to what each person’s actions deserve. For if this were not so, but everything happened by fate, nothing at all would be in our power. If it were fated that one person be good and another bad, the former would deserve no approval and the latter no blame. And again, if the human race did not have the power by free choice to avoid shameful things and choose what is good, human beings would bear no responsibility for whatever they did.

But we show in this way that people act rightly and go wrong by free choice. We see the same person changing from one opposite course to another. If it were fated that a person be either bad or good, that person could never be capable of both opposites or change so many times. Nor would some be good and others bad, since we would then be declaring fate to be the cause of evil and to act in contradiction with itself. Otherwise, what we mentioned earlier would seem to be true: that neither virtue nor vice is anything, but things are considered good or evil only by opinion—which, as true reason shows, is the greatest impiety and injustice.

We do say that there is this unavoidable destiny: those who choose what is good receive the rewards they deserve, and those who choose the opposite receive the corresponding recompense. For God did not make the human being like other things—such as trees and four-footed animals—which cannot act by choice. A person would not deserve reward or praise if he did not choose the good from himself but had simply been made that way. Nor, if he were evil, would he justly receive punishment if he were not such from himself but could be nothing other than what he had been made.