Open Access

Bernd Goebel

• An edition, translation and analysis of three short texts by Lanfranc’s student Ralph of Battle (1040-1124), an intimate of Saint Anselm, dedicated to theological problems concerning human free will: Quare deus hominem fecit, De paradiso et inferno, and Sententia beati Ieronimi de libero arbitrio. In them, Ralph – probably following Saint Augustin – raises three main questions: Why did God create human beings knowing that they would sin? Why did he not create human beings without the ability to sin? And, given divine foreknowledge and predestination, can human beings really be held responsible for their sins? His answers to these queries are compared to those put forward by Saint Anselm, Gilbert Crispin and authors associated with the school of Laon. Interestingly, one of the two passages attributed to Jerome which Ralph uses to spell out the value of our ability to sin is actually from Pelagius (Pseudo-Jerome). This, however, is not to say that Ralph is a Pelagian.