Saint Augustine,Freedom of Will,and Pornography

Introduction

With the proliferation of pornography accessible through the internet, many who have found themselves addicted are at a loss to find ways of overcoming this enslavement. Bishop Robert W. Finn of the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph has written a very fine pastoral letter addressing this situation, Blessed are the Pure in Heart: A Pastoral Letter on the Dignity of the Human Person and the Dangers of Pornography. ¹ Bishop Finn is insightful in helping priests and counselors who guide persons with addiction to pornography. Like Bishop Finn, I offer a pastoral approach to the problem. For many years I have used St. Augustine's insights on the divided or united will to help individuals recover their freedom from addiction. While there are other ways of reducing addictive tendencies, especially prayer, I find Augustine's view most helpful in counseling not only persons with same-sex attractions but also with various forms of addiction, such as to alcohol and drugs. At the July 2009 conference of Courage and EnCourage, I addressed Augustine's views while speaking about addiction to pornography and received a very receptive response from a large audience. I was urged to publish the address I had given. Experts in different areas of psychology are concerned with the spiritual, moral and social consequences of this form of addiction and should find this approach helpful. ² It is a development of St. Augustine's view of free will found in books seven, eight and nine of the Confessions. Allow me to explain it as I did at the Courage conference. I began with a summary of Bishop Finn's pastoral letter, and then moved to the example of St. Augustine found in the Confessions. He was himself enslaved to sexual pleasure during his youth. Later he received such insight into how his addiction came about and how it was overcome that his words have helped many since.

Specifically, I will develop some views of St. Augustine on the freedom of the human will and other aspects of the will found in his Confessions. ³ My hope is that Augustine's insights will be of help to those dealing with addiction to pornography.

Bishop Finn's Pastoral Letter

In the first chapter of his pastoral letter Bishop Finn shows how pornography reduces the human person by treating him as an object rather than a person; “Pornography has become the secret entertainment of many people of all ages, walks of life and economic backgrounds. Internet pornography is perhaps the fastest growing addiction in the world.” ⁴ But what does pornography do to the person? “Pornography perverts the beauty of intimate love proper to marriage.” It regards other persons “as objects to be used, manipulated and sold.” “Use of pornography is a serious sin against chastity and the dignity of the human person. It robs us of sanctifying grace, separates us from the vision of God and the goodness of others, and leaves us spiritually empty.” Its use has led to broken marriages and loss of families. It can also lead to sexual violence and abuse. ⁵

The bishop points out that every human person has inherent dignity as a creature of God. This dignity is not dependent upon what we do, but what we are—creatures created by an all good God. Dignity is his gift to us. We are images of God. We have intelligence and free will which we use every day. Beyond our natural powers, “we have been purchased at a price. Therefore glorify God in your bodies” (1 Cor 6:20). Yes, we have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. ⁶

This dignity of the human person includes our sexuality, which is more than our gender. It is part of our person. Human sexuality is “a gift to be respected and directed to its proper end: loving and personal communion with others.” ⁷ It enables us to form love relationships to other persons, and to give ourselves to a person of the other sex in the bond of marriage for a complete union of two persons in the marital act with the hope of children. Through the marital union husband and wife cooperate with God to bring into being another human person. If each has been baptized, it is a sacramental marriage—with all the graces of the sacrament.

Sin separates us from God while virtue seeks to unite us to God. There is a virtue that calls us to respect and care for our human sexuality. We call it chastity. Chastity is not only the absence of something bad, but also something good: respect for others, and for ourselves. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

The bishop adds: “Chastity helps us to see people as they really are. It helps to ground us in truth.” ⁸

Bishop Finn makes the point that pornography violates modesty, chastity, and truth. Modesty protects the privacy of individuals regarding what is most personal and intimate. When one invades this privacy, one assaults the dignity of the other person. The vice of lust is closely connected with pornography. Paraphrasing Pope John Paul II, Bishop Finn writes, “The problem with pornography, in a sense, is not that it reveals too much of the person, but that it reveals too little of the person.” Pornographic images “reveal nothing but the person's sexual organs and sexual faculties; nowhere does the unique personality, the depth of the person, appear.” Pornography depersonalizes the person who is filmed. ¹¹

One thing I have learned from pastoral experience is that those engaged in pornography isolate themselves from their families. Love unites them. Pornography leads people away from the truth. Chastity helps people to grow in truth.

Responding to the Problem

Bishop Finn offers practical suggestions for responding to the problem of pornography. The first step, he says, is to name the problem. He makes reference to the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous—specifically, to the first step, in which the person honestly admits, “I am alcoholic and I am powerless over this condition.” Bishop Finn recommends the person suffering from addiction to pornography seek help from a spiritual counselor, to whom he can pour out his soul. In so doing he breaks out of deceitful isolation and secrecy. ¹² Obviously it is good to have an experienced confessor. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is an infallible source of healing grace. Another help is a habit of daily meditation. I describe these spiritual aids in a pamphlet, How to Redirect One's Spiritual Life. ¹³ One honestly avoids the occasions of sin with the help of a spiritual guide. The tendency of the pornographer is to keep everything secret. That is why he needs a guide. Above all he needs to put a filter in the computer. He must also throw away or burn all pornographic materials, and become involved in helping the poor while turning away from self-pity. Work with the poor! Besides Mass as often as possible, he should seek time to meditate and to examine his conscience every day. One should seek professional help as soon as he discerns that he is going to lose control of his life. Never despair of God's mercy.

Bishop Finn makes the point that pornography has reached epidemic proportions in our culture. ¹⁴ Unfortunately, it is affecting many youths as well as adults. Although many do not realize that they are becoming addicted, that is what is happening. St. Augustine understood how addictions come about, and what to do about them. In this next section I will explain the teaching of St. Augustine on the freedom of the will, showing how this is related to habits and addictions, and to knowing how these habits and addictions can be overcome.

St Augustine's Theory of Free Will

St Augustine's theory of free will may be applied to all forms of addiction, including pornography. In the present culture, the argument one hears is that persons with bad habits of impurity are just too weak to overcome such temptations to impurity. Among young people, including college students, there is a spirit of pessimism, as I point out in my book, Homosexuality and the Catholic Church: Clear Answers to Difficult Questions. ¹⁵ This pessimism discourages young people to the point that they give in to the prevailing vices of the culture. To help people to resist the tendency to give in, Augustine offers insights about the will which can help one to begin to break the bad habit of pornography or indeed, the addiction. I realize that there are other pastoral methods as well, but I find Augustine's approach very helpful. I shall use the arguments found in The Confessions of St. Augustine.

First, keep in mind the Manichean background of Augustine. The Manicheans taught the convenient doctrine that in man, as in the universe at large, two fundamental principles were struggling for supremacy. One principle was good and the other was evil, and it was the evil principle that caused a person to commit sin; thus a person could say that his evil nature overcame his good nature—and so he was not responsible for the act.

In his thirty-first year Augustine was struggling to get to the Truth. He realized that he had a will. Accepting the fact of volition and of his own existence, he knew that when he did right or wrong it was he himself who did it, and no foreign substance. Yet he hesitated to draw the conclusion that his free will was the cause of sin, because he thought it contradicted the Truth of Divine Goodness. At this stage Augustine regarded evil as a material substance, and thus he could not understand how an all-good God could create evil. It took some time for Augustine to formulate an argument that the will of man is the source of sin. Only after Augustine arrived at the notion of the Spirituality of God, and that evil was not a substance, but a privation of the good, would he be able to accept the Truth that his will was the cause of sin.

Augustine's argument against Manicheanism is that God alone is incorruptible, inviolable and immutable. At the same time, every creature is corruptible, violable and mutable by the very limitations of its nature; and the will, as a created faculty, is mutable and violable. Therefore the will can sin, and it can be subject to forces which it does not want.

Again, as Augustine drew nearer to the Truth he saw that he alone was responsible for his deliberate actions. Finally, during the spiritual crisis in the garden just before his conversion, he realized how unreasonable was the Manichean doctrine that there were two wills, one good and one bad, that fought for supremacy within man. He saw that it was not a question of conflicting wills, but rather that there were conflicting desires within the one soul of man.

He saw that it would be ridiculous to assign a will to each variant desire of the soul of man; for there is but one soul in man, having one will, which however, can be attracted by many different objects—and so tormented by many different desires. ¹⁶ If there is conflict within man, it occurs because at one and the same time the will may be attracted by two or more conflicting objects or desires. Thus, the will is divided until it makes its decision and is drawn to the object of its choice.

Augustine pondered the question of divided will continually. ¹⁷ Even after truth was in his mind, there still remained a hiatus between knowledge of virtue and its practice. For example, on the brink of conversion he desired not greater certitude concerning God, but more stability in the pursuit of Him. ¹⁸ He knew what he ought to do, but he hesitated in the fear that the new way of following Christ might prove too arduous for one who had been accustomed to gratify his sensual appetites. His affections needed purification now that his mind had received light. ¹⁹

At this stage, although displeased with himself, he continued to live in carnal pleasure, considering himself too weak to embrace chastity. Very aptly he compared his actions to those of one awakening from sleep. Such a one desires to awake, since he knows that waking is better than sleeping, but he yields to drowsiness and falls asleep again. So it was with Augustine, who was enslaved by pleasure even though he was convinced that it was much better for him to dedicate himself to God, rather than to indulge in his own cupidity. ²⁰ He could not form the resolution to do what he knew he should do. What was lacking, however, was not strength of will, but purpose.

This is what the Saint teaches in one of the most penetrating analyses of the will in literature. In ordinary usage when one speaks of conflict within man, the term is understood to mean the flesh against the spirit. Although Augustine does speak of this struggle, he treats another division of man, which is just as fierce, namely, the battle of spirit against spirit. This latter conflict is linked with the failure to integrate one's actions under one dominant aim or purpose. For the sake of order we shall consider first the conflict between the flesh and the spirit, which the Confessions view in the light of St. Paul. The Saint quotes the Apostle of the Gentiles about the law of God according to the inner man in conflict with that other law in his members drawing him down to sins of the flesh. Following St. Paul, he teaches that only the grace of Christ can overcome the rebellious tendencies of the flesh.

It must be noted, moreover, that the struggle between the flesh and the spirit involves another element, which we shall consider later in this section, namely, the question of habit. Speaking of the period when he had begun to battle against his habit of concupiscence, he writes:

One example of this type of struggle will be sufficient to show how different it is from that described in chapters eight and nine of the Confessions where the Saint portrays graphically the battle of spirit against spirit. After hearing his guest Pontitianus tell the story of two courtiers who, upon reading the life of the Egyptian monk Anthony, had renounced their earthly possessions and immediately embraced an ascetic life, Augustine entered profoundly into himself and remonstrated with himself for his delay in embracing a Christian way of life. Then he did not know the root of his procrastination, but later as he wrote the Confessions, he put his finger on the sore spot and diagnosed it as a divided and therefore maimed will—for a divided will leaves one in the state of indecision and inaction, such as he still found himself in.

The Saint continues to explain that willing and doing are so intimately linked that when one wills something resolutely, it is the beginning of doing. They are but two different aspects of one and the same human act. Precisely in the same area is the difficulty. The body obeys more easily the weakest nod of the soul and moves one of its limbs than the will carries out its own command. Why is this so? Why does the will have immediate power over bodily members, and not over its very self? Again, the answer is the same. What the mind commands itself to do is not done, because it does not command it entirely. At the same time part of its energy is being absorbed by some other object, and this prevents the execution of the command.

When the will is unified, then to will the command is the same thing as to command. The fact of indecision, partly to will something, partly not to will it, is a sickness of the mind. The will is drawn in contrary directions at one and the same time. While the goal of truth pulls it upwards, the goal of inveterate carnal pleasure drags it downwards; the consequence is indecision. More accurately it may be said that one is attracted by contrary objects, but does not will either one. Thus also two partial wills are equivalent to no will. No matter how much an individual deliberates, he remains in a moral rut, as long as he forms no resolute purpose of amendment.

Augustine points to his own delay as an example of the effects of a divided will in the practical moral life. Since he willed not entirely, he delayed his conversion and remained in sin. One may note in this analysis of his hesitancy another common misconception exposed. He shows that weakness of will is really an illusion. The will is not weak or strong, but rather divided or unified. It is divided when it is drawn in contrary directions by contrary motives; and it is unified when it concentrates on its goal with singleness of purpose.

It is to be noted, moreover, that Augustine does not blame his “weakness of will” on any foreign intangible within himself, but assumes complete responsibility for the deliberate actions of his own person:

Since moral acts, human acts, are essentially acts of the will, one may draw from the penetrating analysis of the will in the Confessions conclusions for the practical moral order. So far it has been noted that the Confessions discuss not only the conflict between the flesh and the spirit but also the battle between the spirit and the spirit. In this latter conflict, moreover, the will attempts to follow several conflicting goals at one and the same time. The consequence is indecision and so-called weakness of the will. The remedy is concentration of the will on one goal—to the exclusion of incompatible aims. Therefore, the solution to the problem of divided will is a singleness of purpose that concentrates the faculties of the soul—the whole person—on doing the will of God in all things in order to unite oneself with God.

The very formation and accomplishment of such a resolution is itself a gift of Divine grace, as the Saint attests:

Hence, the will finds strength to pursue the object of its happiness as soon as it cooperates with Divine grace and forms the whole-hearted and efficacious resolution to put the goal of its happiness—God—first in its scale of values.

Velle fortiter et integer (to will strongly and wholly) is the Saint's expression for such a resolution, which God rewards by drawing the will of the person through supernatural graces. After his conversion, therefore, the will of St. Augustine was, as it were, magnetized by the Divine Beauty, so that he could exclaim that God was sweeter than all earthly pleasure. God compensated him beyond measure for the renunciation of worldly pleasures—pleasures without which formerly he had feared that he could not live.

It is clear then that cooperation with Divine grace will bring singleness of aim or unity of will into the life of those afflicted with the same sort of indecision as was St. Augustine. God can cause people to be ravished by Divine Beauty and to be filled with the desire of union with Divinity. Whenever this happens, the will is no longer forcibly drawn by conflicting values of earth.

Other Aspects of the Will

There are several other aspects of will discussed in the Confessions that shed light on the movements within us, the distinctions between them, and how it is that habits and addictions develop. These aspects of will depict what St. Augustine experienced before his miraculous conversion. The first aspect of the will discussed is the connection between the rebellion within man and original sin, to which the Saint makes several brief references. In his investigation into the cause of sin before his conversion Augustine had observed that certain motions took place in him, but against his will. These he regarded as punishment for sin rather than actual sins: “But whatsoever I did unwillingly, I saw that I did suffer rather than do, and I esteemed that not to be a fault but a punishment.” ²³ Here “unwillingly” (invitus) may refer to the involuntary motions of concupiscence, whose rebellion is part of the punishment of original sin. In Pauline language (Rom. 7:17) they are the fomes peccati (lit. “kindling wood of sin”) within us. To feel such without consenting to them is a punishment for original sin rather than an actual sin.

Again, the Saint implies that division of will, which he graphically describes as “monstrum” (monstrousness) and “aegritudo animi” (sickness of soul), ²⁴ is the common penalty of the sin of Adam. Even infants experience this, as he notes in his description of his own infancy, quoting Psalm 50 to the effect that he was born in sin. He recalls the inordinate motions of anger and of jealousy, and he condemns them by the name of sin in the loose sense. Although he does not impute responsibility to these infant tendencies, he does stress the truth that they are the beginnings of bad habits.

Another important aspect of will discussed by Augustine is habit, in the sense of a regular pattern of activity that in some way depends upon the will, and can be extirpated by the will, though sometimes with great difficulty. According to its basic meaning, the term habit may be used with reference to either good actions (virtue) or to evil actions (vice), but inasmuch as the Confessions are concerned with the habits of concupiscence and of obstinacy, we shall use the term habit here to denote a sinful pattern of activity.

In a classic passage, Augustine describes his enslavement in the habit of impurity, comparing the formation of the habit to a chain which, forged link by link, finally enslaves the will of its maker. In reading it, the contemporary issue of pornography may be kept in mind:

One may discern four key links in this moral chain: 1) perverse will. This is found in the first deliberate act of impurity, which is primarily a rebellion of the spirit against the law of God. It is the basic deordination of the will from its summum bonum (highest good), God, that gives rise to the consequent rebellion of the flesh against the spirit, and such disobedience to God's law opens the way for the next stage, namely, 2) libido or perverted lust. The initial pleasure of lust stimulates and excites the individual to seek the same pleasure again, and with repetition comes the third stage: 3) consuetudo (habit), by which the soul is drawn powerfully to the vice it has sought frequently. Thus, an evil habit is formed from continued license; and, as this habit becomes more deeply entrenched, the fourth stage begins, and this may be termed 4) necessity. Just as a chain is fashioned from the individual links, so is the will entangled by repeated acts of impurity until the individual believes that he must have the pleasure that comes from the operation of the habit. Consequently, he despairs of his ability to resist its violence and yields to its impulses, as if unavoidable.

What, then, is the value of St. Augustine's theory of will for those enslaved to pornography? It has value for those who reflect upon it and make it part of their lives. The first step is to get rid of the notion that one is so weak that he will never be able to overcome serious sin in his life, whether pornography or any other serious sin. There is a distinction between bad habit and addiction. In the person who has the bad habit of viewing pornography, there is still in him some degree of freedom. He can turn away from it, but he is treading on very thin ice. He may lose all control. If a person has lost control, he is addicted with regard to his behavior. What can be done for him?

Several options are available. What is needed first is a personal desire to change one's way of life. And how does one generate this desire? One does so by drawing a sharp distinction between wishing and truly willing something. In the Confessions Augustine pictures himself before his conversion as paralyzed. He suffered from a divided will, which means that conflicting desires caused him not to act and even to procrastinate. He was afraid he could not give up physical intimacy with a woman. He feared that if he came to Christ he would not be able to practice chastity. His will, as it were, was torn between two desires in conflict. He prayed, and his friend Alypius, already a Christian, suggested that he come to their favorite place in the garden. Alypius told him to open up the Scriptures randomly and read. He did so. What he read was: “Not in riots and drunken parties, not in eroticism and indecencies, not in strife and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh and its lusts” (Rom 13:13–14). The context implies promiscuous partying. Augustine read no further; immediately he said, “I know what I have to do.” The grace of God was working on him. Without delay he began instructions to be baptized.

One must not forget that Augustine wrote this autobiography as a bishop. It is through Augustine's matured outlook that we come to the details found in the Confessions. In book nine he speaks of his previous fears of chastity which he no longer experiences. His will was no longer divided; he had given himself to Christ. He no longer had conflicting desires and he was able to live a chaste life. He goes on to say that half a will is no will at all. In his case his earlier life had been lived with a half will. Even while drawing close to Christ he had not fully (partialiter) willed chastity. Later he draws the distinctions between exercising a united will (totaliter) and a divided will (partialiter). He also attributes his conversion to the grace of God.

Conclusion

In addition to the insights of Bishop Robert W. Finn in his pastoral letter, Blessed are the Pure in Heart, I think that St. Augustine's theory concerning the necessity of a united will to overcome an addictive habit ought to be used as an important part of the pastoral approach to helping a person addicted to pornography. With singleness of purpose under divine grace, one wills fully to overcome the addiction to pornography, or to any other addiction.