Thomas Williams offers a compelling description of this in his introduction to Augustine’s book On Free Choice of the Will: “Violating the eternal law is not like doing 40 in a 35-mile-per-hour zone when there is no traffic around; it is more like trying to violate the law of gravity. . . . An apple falling from a tree has no choice about whether to obey the law of gravity . . . [but] human beings can voluntarily wreck their lives by running afoul of the laws that govern their nature. This is indeed a sort of freedom, but it can hardly be the best sort.”40 Williams’s point? We can violate
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