ABSTRACT
The issues of free will, human responsibility, and divine providence concerned early Christian philosophers as deeply as they did their Hellenic contemporaries, Epictetus, Alexander, Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus. Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria seriously engaged with these issues, as they were eager to oppose the relevant Gnostic view, according to which free will pertains only to one class of human beings, and indeed not the best one. Christian philosophers, such as Justin Martyr, Theophilus, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement, tried to offer such a theory. The notions of will and of freedom, the people find in Christian philosophers surfaced in the Hellenistic philosophical schools, in Epicureanism and Stoicism. Justin is the first Christian philosopher who seriously engages with the issues of free choice and human responsibility. Irenaeus of Lyon pays a great deal of attention to the issue of free will in his anti-Gnostic critique in his Against the Heretics.
