Evgenia Moiseeva’s debut monograph explores Augustine’s notion of the will (voluntas) during his early years as a Christian, from his conversion through the completion of his Confessions. The reliable premise of Moiseeva’s project is that in order to understand much of Augustine’s thought, it is essential to grasp the meaning he gives to the will, for it is a decisive element within several areas of his thinking (for example, anthropology, soteriology and eschatology).

The monograph contains an introduction, eleven chapters across four parts and a conclusion. The introduction makes it clear that Moiseeva is focused on attending to the finer modifications. Augustine makes in his concept of voluntas work-by-work up until Confessions viii. Moiseeva also offers a rationale for beginning her study of Augustine’s voluntas by analysing three precedents: ancient philosophy, the earlier Christian tradition and Manichaeism.

In the first chapter, which also makes up the first part, Moiseeva examines Greco-Roman (for example, Aristotle, the Stoics, Plotinus, and Romans such as Cicero and Seneca) and Christian precedents (such as, for example, Paul, Justin, Clement, Irenaeus, Origen, and Ambrose, inter alia) for Augustine’s notion of the will, and details the Manichaean understanding. Each of these domains, Moiseeva submits, helps to make sense of the thick concept of voluntas that Augustine develops. Moreover, Moiseeva advises her reader not to place the philosophical and theological sources into competition with one another, but rather to appreciate how they were woven together in late antiquity and, more specifically, within Augustine’s thought.

The second part consists of chapters ii through v, and emphasises how Augustine’s notion of voluntas is ingredient to his explanation of evil acts and the possibility of doing good. Chapter ii analyses Augustine’s description of the will as the source of evil within his De libero arbitrio, positing an evolutionary narrative arc across the three books of the treatise. This text exhibits a crucial shift from considering voluntas as a faculty of the soul to seeing it as a movement of the soul naturally inclined towards God but also capable of turning away from God, on account of its being created ex nihilo and thus being mutable. In the third chapter, Moiseeva turns to De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus to examine Augustine’s reflections during the 390s concerning the nature of human freedom and the forms of desire. The freedom of the will can be used to act justly, in accordance with the order of creation dictated by divine providence, or to act disobediently, contradicting the proper order of things. If one chooses disobedience, consequences are merited in the form of punishment, for free, rational creatures are responsible for their actions before God, their Creator. Conversely, Moiseeva describes caritas as rightly ordered love, which extends voluntas towards its proper object, the Creator. The fourth chapter locates Augustine’s reflections on the will and its operations within his De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manicheorum between Scripture and Stoicism. In seeking to show the falsehood of Manichaeism, Augustine is not yet questioning the relation of evil or its origin to the will, nor does he consider the problem presented by the will of Adam and the will’s relationship to love in the pursuit of happiness. Chapter v turns to De vera religione (p. 390) because of what it reveals about Augustine’s understanding of the mutability and sin of the human soul. The will itself is neither evil nor the source of evil. However, to the extent that the will is the foundation of voluntary action, it is a necessary condition for evil’s presence in the world. Although Augustine remains uncertain of the will’s role in the overcoming of superbia and in ascending to God, he sees the human will as remaining good despite its capacity to sin because it remains the means by which we are able to act in accordance with God’s will.

Part iii, which analyses Augustine’s refutation of the Manichaean viewpoint, includes chapters vi and vii. The sixth chapter contends for the will as the principle of the soul’s unity in De duabus animabus. Augustine provides here the first definition of the will in Latin as a ‘movement of the soul’ (motus animi), which is the origin of human action. Augustine argues not only that an evil species of the soul cannot be, but also that the will with which God made humans tends naturally toward the Good for which they were created. The soul’s mutability means turning away from God is possible, but the wilful decision to turn away originates in the will. Chapter vii argues that Augustine’s Acta contra Fortunatum Manichaeum presents a new philosophy of the will, which sees voluntas as the faculty of the soul responsible for both ethical action and the choice between good and evil (p. 289). Augustine dispels the Manichaean two-soul theory by explicating how the will’s presence in the soul accounts for human persons acting well and badly.

The final part of the book contains chapters viii to xi and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the will in light of Augustine’s assimilation of the Pauline epistles and his coming to appreciate the necessity of grace. In chapter viii, Moiseeva documents Augustine’s contention that human wills are good in his De sermone domini in monte while also exploring the function of the passions in the formation of sinful habits; examining how the will is always directed to the good despite the force of habit; and describing the beatitudes’ role in enabling the soul’s ascent to happiness and stability of the will. Only by repentance does one become humble in heart before God and find liberation from the passions. Yet Augustine remains uncertain regarding reason’s superiority relative to the will and its function in guiding the will to act well. The ninth chapter explains how Augustine’s reading of Paul’s epistles during the mid-390s propels him once more to a new philosophy of the will. Moiseeva attends to Augustine’s reflections on the will’s role in salvation, its relation to repentance, and its part in the virtue of humility; traces Augustine’s developing account of the human will’s relation to divine grace; and analyses how reading Paul finally leads in Ad Simplicianum to a major turning point in Augustine’s vision of grace and the will. Augustine characterises humility and repentance as the way of the will back towards God, but he also famously arrives at the conclusion that that faith comes from grace. Chapter x describes Augustine’s assertion in De musica, De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus and Ad Simplicianum that the concept of delectation – à la Cicero, Paul and Plotinus – is the driving force of the will. Unfortunately, Augustine reasons, our sinful natures leave us incapable of properly assessing what is good, and so we find ourselves attracted to false images of happiness, we tend towards created goods instead of our Creator, and we delight in inferior things rather than finding spiritual delight in God. We do not have the resources within ourselves to repent in humility, but God is merciful in Jesus Christ, who pours out the gift of caritas upon us that we might be re-oriented towards the good and tend towards God. The final chapter lays out the relation between the good and evil will according to Confessions viii. Moiseeva displaces the role of will (‘velle’) in the conversion narrative in favour of love (‘amare’), for the exertion of the will is unable to achieve salvation. Instead, Augustine reasons, by the power of divine grace, the human will is transformed into love for God so that one finds stability in God. In this gift of caritas, which is freedom’s true restoration, God awakens a person, giving her an increased delectatio towards God and restoring her capacity to will the good. Augustine affirms the necessity of humilitas to uproot and to undermine the power of superbia and carnal habit. In response to the state of the will consequent upon turning away from God, superbia, God’s grace intervenes by initiating the birth of charity and humility and restoring the will’s capacity to delight in the spiritual.

In a brief conclusion, Moiseeva contends that while Augustine’s account of voluntas incorporates various elements as it develops, such changes stand in relation to a continuous and consistent commitment to ‘the will as a free movement of the soul oriented towards God and capable of turning away from Him’ (p. 466). In this way, Augustine is a pioneer in that he is the first to articulate a full-blown concept or philosophy of the will.

Moiseeva is explicit about her commentarial approach and she maintains it with admirable consistency. Her study offers to interested readers an attentive account of voluntas in the early Augustine, and her engagement with philosophical precedents and other early Christian voices is commendable. This reviewer has some residual questions. For instance, could the arrangement of Moiseeva’s study have benefitted from slightly displacing the treatise-by-treatise approach, at least in the case of De libero arbitrio and De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus which were both written across considerable amounts of time. I wonder if the scope of the study may also have been determined in the light of the broader network of concepts (for example, gratia, delectatio, caritas and others) associated with, and exerting pressure upon, the development of Augustine’s notion of voluntas. Also, perhaps Moiseeva’s project could have been strengthened by engaging more with other recent scholarship in this area. For example, it was quite surprising to find that Han-Luen Kantzer Komline’s 2020 monograph, Augustine on the will: a theological account, was left unmentioned. In some ways, this omission was emblematic of a bibliography that was far narrower than one might expect (especially with regard to non-Francophone literature). Lastly, I was left, at times, asking whether Moiseeva adequately attends to distinctions, points of emphasis and even tensions between certain treatises.

Notwithstanding any of my particular questions or preoccupations, there remains work to be done in this area, especially when it comes to the study of Augustine’s developing use of voluntas across his corpus. Moiseeva has no doubt cemented her place in this ongoing scholarly pursuit.