Escape from Freedom

by Erich Fromm

However, some of the most representative theologians like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, though holding the views just mentioned, at the same time taught doctrines which were of a profoundly different spirit. But although Aquinas teaches a doctrine of predestination, he never ceases to emphasize freedom of will as one of his fundamental doctrines. To bridge the contrast between the doctrine of freedom and that of predestination, he is obliged to use the most complicated constructions; but, although these constructions do not seem to solve the contradictions satisfactorily, he does not retreat from the doctrine of freedom of the will and of human effort, as being of avail for man’s salvation, even though the will itself may need the support of God’s grace.31 On the freedom of will Aquinas says that it would contradict the essence of God’s and man’s nature to assume that man was not free to decide and that man has even the freedom to refuse the grace offered to him by God.32