Our Free Will Between Flesh and Spirit

Between these two desires, then, the free will of the soul stands in a middle position that deserves some blame. It neither delights in the excesses of sin nor consents to the hardships of virtue. It seeks to restrain itself from the passions of the flesh, yet without being willing to undergo the suffering this requires. It wants to keep the body chaste without chastising the flesh; to gain purity of heart without the labor of vigils; to abound in spiritual virtues while keeping the body at ease; to attain the grace of patience without being provoked by contradiction; to practice the humility of Christ without loss of worldly honor; to aim at the simplicity of religion together with worldly ambition; to serve Christ, but not without the praise and favor of men; to profess the strictness that truth demands without giving the slightest offense to anyone. In a word, it is anxious to pursue future blessings in such a way as not to lose present ones. This free will would never lead us to true perfection. It would plunge us into a most miserable state of lukewarmness, and make us like those whom the Lord rebukes in the Revelation: “I know your works, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were hot or cold. But now you are lukewarm, and I will at once spit you out of my mouth.” So it would be, were it not that these struggles rising up on both sides disturb and destroy this state of lukewarmness. [a]

For when we give in to this free will of ours and want to let ourselves slide toward this slackness, at once the desires of the flesh spring up and wound us with their sinful passions. They do not let us remain in that state of purity in which we delight, and they lure us toward that cold and thorny path of pleasure which we have reason to dread. Again, if we are fired with fervor of spirit and want to root out the works of the flesh, and, without any regard for human weakness, try to raise ourselves wholly to excessive efforts after virtue, the frailty of the flesh steps in, and calls us back and restrains us from that overexcess of spirit which is bad for us. And so, as these two desires contradict each other in a struggle of this kind, the soul’s free will, which likes neither to give itself up wholly to the desires of the flesh nor to throw itself into the labors that virtue calls for, is tempered as if by a fair balance. This struggle between the two holds back that more dangerous free will of the soul and sets up a sort of even balance in the scales of our body, which marks the limits of flesh and spirit most exactly. It does not let the mind, fired with fervor of spirit, swing to the right, nor the flesh lean to the left under the pricks of sin.

And while this struggle goes on day after day within us to our profit, we are driven, most helpfully, to come to that fourth state which we do not like: to gain purity of heart not by ease and carelessness but by constant effort and brokenness of spirit; to keep the flesh chaste by long fasts, hunger, thirst and watchfulness; to gain a heart fixed on its aim by reading, vigils, constant prayer and the wretchedness of solitude; to keep patience by enduring trouble; to serve our Maker amid blasphemies and heaped-up insults; and to follow the truth, if need be, amid the hatred and hostility of the world. And while, with such a struggle going on in our body, we are kept safe from lazy carelessness and spurred on to the effort that goes against the grain and to the desire for virtue, our proper balance is admirably kept. On one side the languid choice of our free will is tempered by fervor of spirit; on the other, the frozen coldness of the flesh is moderated by a gentle warmth. The desire of the spirit does not let the mind be dragged into unbridled license, and the weakness of the flesh does not let the spirit be drawn on to unreasonable longings after holiness. Otherwise, in the one case, incitements to every kind of sin might arise; in the other, the earliest of all sins might lift its head and wound us with the still deadlier dart of pride. But a right balance will come from this struggle. It will open to us a safe and secure path of virtue between the two, and will teach the soldier of Christ always to walk on the King’s highway. And so it will come about that when the mind, through the lukewarmness that comes from this sluggish will we have spoken of, has been more easily entangled in the desires of the flesh, it is checked by the desire of the spirit, which in no way consents to earthly sins. And again, if through an overflow of feeling our spirit has been carried in unbounded fervor toward ill-considered and impossible heights, it is called back by the weakness of the flesh to sounder thinking. Rising above the lukewarm state of our free will, it goes forward with due proportion and at an even pace along the way of perfection.

We hear that the Lord ordained something of this kind in the building of that tower in the book of Genesis, when a confusion of tongues suddenly sprang up and put a stop to the blasphemous and wicked attempts of men. For an agreement that boded no good would have remained there in opposition to God—and indeed against the interest of those who had begun to assail his divine majesty—had not God’s providence used the difference of languages to stir up trouble among them, and so, through the variety of their speech, forced them on to a better state. A happy and valuable discord called back to salvation those whom a ruinous unity had driven to destruction. For when divisions arose, they began to experience the human weakness of which they had known nothing while they were puffed up by their wicked plans.