How Does Augustine View Human Will | Han-luen Kantzer Komline
Channel: Henry Center
Date: 2023-01-23

Lecture Title - The Art of Willing: God’s Grace & Human Willing in Augustine’s Preaching

Augustine is well known for his abstract reflections, early in his career, on the role of human free choice in introducing sin into God's good creation. But this, for Augustine, was just one small part of the larger story of human willing in relationship to God. In this lecture, we will consider how Augustine understood God's grace and human willing in the larger context of God's providential plan for human beings as revealed in Scripture. At the same time, we will see how Augustine applied this larger picture on a micro-level, to the challenges of the Christian life that his flock faced on a day-to-day basis. As Augustine grapples with specific parts of the biblical story where human willing comes to the fore, we see him developing not just a diagnosis of how human willing went wrong, but a richly biblical and trinitarian vision of the art of willing rightly.

Han-luen Kantzer Komline (PhD University of Notre Dame) is Associate Professor of Church History at Western Theological Seminary. Her first book is Augustine on the Will: A Theological Account (Oxford University Press, 2019), which received the Lautenschläger Award for Theological Promise in 2020.