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IIIM
Magazine Online, Volume 3, Number 51, December 17 to December 23, 2001 |
Is
the human will bound or free? Can man choose freely between each and every
option presented to him? Is man’s will neutral or has it been internally
affected in such a way so as to influence his choices? How far did man fall
when he sinned? Was it a mere stumble, or was it total? If it was total and we
are unable to incline ourselves toward anything righteous, then how can we be
responsible for our unrighteousness? In my opinion, there is no better
theological contribution to this issue than that of Jonathan Edwards. His
rigorous yet clear articulation of the issue sheds tremendous light on a thorny
and controversial topic. It is his contribution that I want to briefly reflect
on. But before I do, I want to take a brief look at how this issue first arose
in its most prominent form.
There does not seem to be any
record of a major controversy concerning man’s freedom in the decision-making
process prior to the Pelagian controversy of the 5th century. To be sure, there
were debates concerning “free will” prior to the Pelagian controversy
(Chrysostom, Origen, Jerome, and others opposed determinism), but none that
took center stage the way the Pelagian controversy did.
Pelagius, a British-born monk
who resided in Rome before it fell in 410, was “roused to anger by an inert
Christendom, that excused itself by pleading the frailty of the flesh and the
impossibility of fulfilling the grievous commandments of God. [Pelagius]
preached that God commanded nothing impossible, that man possessed the power of
doing the good if only he willed, and that the weakness of the flesh was merely
a pretext".1 This frustration with the church of
his day led Pelagius to the conclusion that man’s chief problem is not his
inability to do what God commands in and of himself, but rather his refusal to
do that which he is capable of doing, namely, righteous works. Man can
achieve in and of himself, according to Pelagius, whatever is required of him
in morality and religion. Human nature remains uncorrupted and the natural will
free to do all good. He was unable to see how responsibility could reside in us
without free will. In fact, for Pelagius, there is no need for a
Redeemer-Christ, for what is it that we need redemption from if we can do all
things righteous on our own? This position led Pelagius to eventually deny the
universality of sin, for which he was condemned in 418 AD at the Council of
Carthage.
It was St. Augustine who, at
this time, rose to challenge the position of Pelagius and argued fiercely for
the bondage of the will. Augustine was undoubtedly Pelagius’ most outspoken
opponent and he stressed that grace is an absolute necessity from beginning to
end. Sin has, according to Augustine, so affected our nature that we are
naturally inclined toward sin and sin only. “It was by the evil use of his free
will that man destroyed both it and himself”, said Augustine. Man is truly
“dead in his trespasses and sins”, and in a desperate situation. Apart from
grace, according to Augustine, no one can be saved, much less, do that which is
righteous before God. For Augustine, it was an undermining of the gospel to say
that man has the power in and of himself to incline himself godward.
Justification is entirely of God.
In defending these views, it was
Augustine who won the day, but the issue did not go away. It comes up again and
again throughout church history. In 1525, Martin Luther wrote Bondage of the
Will in response to Erasmus’ book entitled Diatribe Concerning Free Will.
Luther echoed Augustine by asserting that if one holds to a view that sees the
will as completely free and able, in and of itself, to choose that which is
righteous, then man is able to take partial credit for his salvation. Does God
get all the glory or just some of it? Luther vehemently argues that unless
sovereign grace intervenes we can do nothing righteous before God in and of
ourselves. We are hopeless!
The
other Reformers (Calvin, Zwingli, Bucer, Knox) were one with Luther in these
convictions and went on themselves to articulate it further, most notably
Calvin in his Institutes. And while many of the Puritans, one and two
hundred years later, agreed with and held to the view that man’s will is bound
by sin so that sin affects his decisions, there was none who articulated it
better than Jonathan Edwards.
Born in 1703 into a pioneer
family on the frontier of East Windsor, Connecticut, Jonathan Edwards was the
only son of twelve children. His father, Timothy, was a pastor. At the age of
thirteen, Edwards went to Yale College and graduated in 1720. After a few years
of teaching in New York and at Yale, he became an assistant pastor to his
grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, at a Congregational Church in Northampton. After
Stoddard died, Edwards became the pastor. A series of conversions took place at
his church, which coincided with the conversions taking place under the
preaching of George Whitefield, an English evangelist, in the same area.
Conversions began to sweep the area and a spiritual revival like none other
took place. We know it today as the First Great Awakening.
It
has been said of Jonathan Edwards that he produced one of the most thorough and
compelling bodies of theological writing in the history of America. More
commonly asserted is the statement that Edwards was “the greatest intellect
that America has ever produced”. Perhaps this is seen best in his book Freedom
of the Will.
A glancing at the title might
lead some to think that Edwards and Luther differed. This is not so,
essentially. The title illustrates Edwards’ thesis that we are free to
choose that which we most desire. The truth, though, according to Edwards,
is that because by nature we are dead in our trespasses and sins, we desire
only sin. Our natural inclination is not toward righteousness, but toward sin.
All mankind, according to Edwards, are “by nature in a state of total ruin, both
with respect to the moral evil of which they are the subjects, and the
afflictive evil to which they are exposed, the one as the consequence and
punishment of the other”.2
According
to Edwards, proof of original sin is easily demonstrated. Aside from the
supernatural biblical proof found in Romans 1, 3, 5 and Ephesians 2, there is
plenty of natural proof as well: All people sin! All of human history testifies
to this. And we have more proof today, following two World Wars and one Cold
War, than Edwards had in his day. Because we are free to choose that which we
most desire, and because what we most desire is to destroy ourselves, it is
our freedom that turns out to be our greatest enemy.
Edwards defines the will as “the
mind choosing”. This is unique for the simple reason that up until this point,
nobody had bothered to refine a careful definition of the will. Everyone
assumed that “will” was self-defining. Our choices, according to Edwards, are
not determined by the will itself but by the mind. Our choices are determined
by what we think is most desirable at any given moment. But why does the
mind choose one thing over another? This is where Edwards introduces the idea
of “motives”. We choose one thing over another because our mind chooses what it
thinks is best. John Gerstner sums up Edwards’ point well:
Your
choices as a rational person are always based on various considerations or motives
that are before you at the time. Those motives have a certain weight with you,
and the motives for and against reading a book, for example, are weighed in the
balance of your mind; the motives that outweigh all others are what you,
indeed, choose to follow. You, being a rational person, will always choose what
seems to you to be the right thing, the wise thing, the most advisable thing to
do. If you choose not to do the right thing, the advisable thing, the thing
that you are inclined to do, you would, of coarse, be insane. You would be
choosing something that you did not choose. You would find something preferable
that you did not prefer. But you, being a rational and sane person choose
something because it seems to you the right, proper, good, advantageous thing
to do.3
This
is precisely the point that Edwards makes with regard to motives. We choose
according to that which we desire most. The problem, however, as we noted
earlier, is that because the fall was total and not partial, and as a result we
are all dead in our trespasses and sins desiring only sin by nature, what seems
to us to be right, proper, and good is often wrong, improper, and bad. Sin has
made us God-haters at the core of our souls so that we are all by nature at
enmity with God. In order for us to do what God would have us to do, we need to
be who God wants us to be. And in order for us to be who God wants us to be, we
need new natures. And because we cannot change our own nature, no more than we
can push a bus while we are riding in it, we are in need of the sovereign hand
of grace to change it for us. We cannot do what pleases God because we will
not do what pleases God. And the reason we will not is because we don’t want
to.
We
remember that what plagued Pelagius was the paradox of human responsibility to
follow God’s holy commands and human inability. According to Pelagius, the fact
that God commands us to obey him implies that we are able to obey him. If
inability reigns, than God would be unjust to command our obedience. This
problem, as we have seen, eventually led Pelagius to deny the universality of
sin. He was unable to deal with the paradox. Edwards’ contribution to this
issue is perhaps his most profound. Edwards distinguished between what he
referred to as “natural inability” and “moral inability”. “We are said to be
naturally unable to do a thing, when we can’t do it if we will, because what is
most commonly called nature doesn’t allow it… Moral inability consists in the
opposition or want of inclination”.4 In other words, I am said to be
naturally unable to do a thing, no matter how hard I desire it, if nature
doesn’t allow it, such as flying or walking on water. In this sense, we are all
naturally able to do what is right. After all, we have all of the natural
capacities to understand the law of God. We have a mouth that is physically
capable of uttering praises to God. We have a will that enables us to choose to
do what we want to do. Original sin does not eradicate our humanity or
ability to make choices. The natural ability remains intact. God has
endowed us with the natural ability to do what he requires of us. What we lack,
however, is the moral ability. What was lost in the fall is the want or
inclination to do that which is righteous. We have no desire to obey God. We
have, in fact, no desire for God at all. Fallen man has the natural ability
to choose God but he lacks the moral ability to do so. For this reason, God
can justly command our obedience (because we have the necessary faculties of
choice), and at the same time hold us responsible for the choices we make. A.W.
Pink says, “By nature [man] possesses natural ability but lacks moral and
spiritual ability. The fact that he does not possess the latter does not
destroy his responsibility, because his responsibility rests upon the fact that
he does possess the former”.5 Without a righteous inclination to
do good, no one can choose good. Our decisions follow our inclinations. Sin has
rendered us hopeless, according to Edwards, but this is precisely what makes
the gospel so great.
“For
Edwards, the greatness of the gospel is visible only when viewed against the
backdrop of the greatness of the ruin into which we have been plunged by the
fall. The greatness of the disease requires the greatness of the remedy”.6 As someone once said, “The worst
word about us as sinners is not the last word”. It was the gospel that Edwards
was interested in, not some theoretical debate. He knew that what made good
news good was that it was preceded by bad news. Our fallen nature due to sin is
bad news. Our natural inclination to sin is bad news. Our inability to incline
ourselves godward is bad news. Our self-destruction as a result of our sin is
bad news. The grace of God in redeeming man from this desperate state and
changing his nature so that he will be free to serve God is not just good news,
its great news.
In
summary of Edwards’ view of free will, he believes that man is free in that he
can and does choose according to his strongest inclinations — his desires. But
because of original sin and the resulting corruption of humanity, no one is
naturally inclined godward. In fact, we hate God by nature. We have the natural
ability to please him but we lack the moral ability. Our nature has to be
changed if we are to seek God and do what he pleases. And only God can liberate
the sinner from his captivity to that which is destroying him, namely, his
freedom! This is nothing more and nothing less than the gospel that Edwards so
committed his life to.
1.
Adolph Harnack, History of Dogma, part 2, book 2 trans. James Millar (1898; New
York: Dover, 1961), pg. 174
2 .Jonathan
Edwards, The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended, in Jonathan
Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 10th ed., 2 vols. (Edinburgh/Carlisle,
Penn: Banner of Truth, 1979, 1:1)
3.
John H. Gerstner, A Primer on Free Will (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and
Reformed Publishing Co., 1982) p.4-5
4.
Edwards, Freedom of the Will, pg.159 as quoted in Sproul, Willing to Believe,
pg.162
5.
A.W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1984)
pg. 154
6.
R.C. Sproul, Willing to Believe: The Controversy Over Free Will (Grand Rapids,
MI: 1997) pg. 148