SOURCE: “Two Views of Freedom: A Christian Objection in Plotinus Enneads VI 8. [39]7, 11-15?,” in Hellenic and Christian Studies, Variorum, 1990, pp. 397-406.

In the following essay, originally presented as a lecture in 1979, Armstrong examines Plotinus's ideas concerning freedom and free will.

The treatise “On the Voluntary and the Will of the One” (Enneads VI 8 [39]) is the profoundest discussion of the metaphysic of will and freedom in ancient Western philosophical literature. A careful study of it, especially of … ch. 7, 11-12 and Plotinus' exasperated but thorough and serious reply to it, seems to me to bring out an important difference in ways of looking at freedom, human and divine, which (though not always consciously perceived) is apparent in Greek philosophical discussions from Aristotle onwards, and has had a considerable influence on, and at times produced considerable tensions in, Christian thought about the freedom of God.

The tension or difference of emphasis...