Ansel's View Of Augustine On The Nature Of Free Will

Throughout the history of the church there has been much debate about the nature of free will because it is difficult for us to understand how God’s omniscience, specifically his knowledge of what is to come, allows for anything to be done freely.
However, through studying the nature of free will from Ansel’s perspective, it is easier to understand how our will is actually free, and as a result the position of Augustine on the nature of our will, the one which the Catholic Church holds as doctrine, is revealed to be much less conflicting than we initially perceive it to be.
Before discussing the how Anselm’s principles of free will provide clarification for the nature of free will and God’s role in the world, it is important to understand the
It defines the nature of the will to be entirely independent of God, and thereby any decision made to follow the teachings of God is entirely done by man himself; there is no intervention by God.
Contrasting this viewpoint is the teachings of Augustine, who asserted that man, through original sin, in incapable of performing anything good without the power of the
Holy Spirit consuming us and converting our hearts so that we can do what God intends; the only actions we can carry out on our own are ones of sin and evil because, as we know, God does not have the velle (the will) to sin, so he therefore cannot will it for us. In between these two viewpoints is the stance most practicing Catholics identify with: semi-Pelagianism. Semi-Pelagianism concedes that man is fallen due to original sin (something which Pelagianism does not address), and that man needs God’s grace in order to save himself from a life filled with sin, but it claims that the decision to cooperate with that grace extended by God is totally up to the man willing the himself to choose the God.
To summarize these perspectives with a single analogy, imagine a 10 foot
Augustinian thought would say that man trapped in this “pit of sin” until God enters the pit Himself and carries the man up the ladder so he can do good deeds.
When deciding which of these perspectives is the most accurate, or rather which is the most appealing, most Christians would like to believe that semi-Pelagianism is the correct representation of free will because, while it portrays us as sinners, it does not claim that we are incapable of choosing good on our own. Rather, the semi-Pelagian view places us in the position where our actions or works have the capability of earning grace from God, something is important if we are hoping to reach eternal salvation and are not of the deterministic mindset of Luther and Calvin (both of these figures believe that grace is predestined, and the works you do have no impact on your eternal salvation). Furthermore, when observing the nature of the will, it is seemingly less contradictory to having one that is truly free than the church supported position