This is part of an on-going discussion. Kevin, in his dialogue with Clifton, posted
Of Wills, Words, and the Monarche
I entered the discussion with:
Reformed theology and freedom of the will
Kevin responded
Appetites and Inclinations
First, I withdraw my rejection of Kevin's claim that "a person can never transcend his nature unless we posit a metanature." I disagreed with what I thought he meant, but I agree with what I now think he means. We do not transend our natures when we make a decision, just as God did not transcend his nature when he decided to create.
Kevin says Reformed theology is not compatible with a consistent libertarian view of the will. This is true of human wills (which is what he was talking about). However, God does have libertarian freedom, which he exercised on at least two occasions: creation and election. I think Kevin and I are in agreement on this.
I don't believe I have "confused 'inclination' with 'appetite.'" I recognize the distinction between sensitive appetites and inclinations of the will. But the term "appetite" can include rational appetite. Something similar happens with the term "desire," as Kevin has recognized elsewhere. What I meant by "appetite" and "desire" was "inclination" (or to use Edwards's favorite term, "motive"). However, I think Kevin's suggestion that we precisify our terminology is good, and I will follow his lead, distinguishing animal appetites/desires from inclinations/motives of the will.
Kevin uses "will" to refer only to the faculty of choosing. I would more naturally include the faculty of consent too. Consent is voluntary, which is just Latin for "of the will." However, my intent is to follow Kevin's lead terminologically, so I'll restrict "will" to matters of choice.
Now for something we actually disagree about: I claimed that "it seems that whenever I make a decision, my very act of deliberation presupposes that my inclinations need not determine my action." I went on to assert that, in deliberation, I am not "taking action that might indirectly fix my inclinations upon a final choice." And Kevin, I take it, rejects this, saying "Through deliberation, we are able to manipulate the strength of our inclinations concerning that choice." If this is the case, we must regard it as a kind of side-effect of deliberation. When I deliberate "should I go left or right" the content of my deliberation is not "should I increase/decrease the strength of this or that inclination of my will?" The content of my deliberation is simply "should I decide to go left or right?" And it seems I can directly make this decision, without first altering the relative strengths of my inclinations. Here I'm just describing how things seem. Kevin argues that since deliberation is a voluntary act it "does not precede but follows the will." This is a false dilemma. Deliberation can both precede and follow the will. Will = faculty of choice. Deliberation follows the choice to deliberate and precedes the choice to go left or right. Actually, Kevin is wrong, according to his own terminology, in his implicit claim that a volutary act must follow the will, for will = faculty of choice, and I don't usually choose to deliberate. Usually I just find myself deliberating. Voluntary acts include acts of consent just as much as acts of choice. So, normally, deliberation precedes and does not follow the will. However, on some occasions it also follows the will.
Now, in this argument, I am starting from the assumption that it is initially plausible to regard genuine choices as being undetermined by nature+circumstances. I'm not ruling out the idea that the will might be thus determined, but we don't start out thinking so. We need some reason to think so. Kevin's reason seems to be a kind of argument to the best explanation: we have somet theological truths (God forordains everything; man is free; the unregenerate are incapable of good, yet blameworthy) which appear to be in tension. What's the best explanation of how they fit together? Enter Jonathan Edwards. But I have offered an alternative explanation which is just as theologically orthodox, and retains more of what common sense tells us about the human will. It is up to Kevin to demonstrate some clear advantage in the Edwardsian theory.
As for Adam, Kevin wrote, "While it is true that Adam necessarily followed his strongest inclination, which was for eating the fruit, it is not the case that this inclination necessarily had to be. Adam's nature as created made it a possible inclination, but other factors contributed both to actualizing this inclination and to making it the strongest at the moment he chose to eat of the fruit."
These other factors are either 1. Adam's own prior choices (such as his decision to deliberate) or 2. something outside Adam's will. But (1) just pushes the question back. If will necessarily follows strongest inclination, prior choices also necessarily followed the strongest inclination at the time they were made. All the links in the chain are necessary from inclinations to choice to new inclinations to new choice etc. So consider Adam's first choice. It was determined by things outside his will, i.e., by the way God made him and the circumstances God placed him in. And this first choice, thus necessitated, went on to necessitate (together with further circumstances) the strengths of inclinations for his next choice, which went on in the same way to necessitate all his future choices. Thus all his choices were necessitated by his nature + circumstances. It looks like God did indeed set him up for the fall. On this theory, God did indeed make man such that he would necessarily sin in the situation in which God placed him.
Since I cannot accept the idea that man was so poorly made, I cannot accept Kevin's account of Adam's nature, and since Edwards's theory of the will entails Kevin's account of Adam's nature (given that Adam did sin), I cannot accept it either.
As for my account of the fall, Kevin writes: "I agree with the idea that the object chosen was good insofar as God had created it. I also agree that God gave them a desire for what is pleasing to the eye and good for food. However, since every tree yielding edible fruit fell under this category, this cannot be the deciding factor in determining the morality of [?] their choice. When eating of any other tree there was no choice between the greater good of obeying God or the lesser good of eating what was pleasing- they did both. This lesser good remained a constant factor no matter what tree they ate from. We need to explain the fall in terms of what was different. The fall was not the result of choosing a lesser good but the result of flat out disobedience. We cannot reconcile Adam's fall with his supposed perfect nature by trying to look on the bright side of things."
I don't think I'm "trying to look on the bright side of things." On the contrary, I agree that the fall was a most heinous spurning of the Most Holy God and an act of "flat out disobedience". But the mere fact that it was disobedient could not motivate the act. Augustine's theft of the pears was done just because it was wrong, but that was an indication of his fallenness. Prior to the fall, the fact that something was wrong was not a motive to do it. If it were, Adam would have been already sinful before the fall: to have such a character that the wrongness of an act in itself attracts (that is, inclines or motivates) the will is to have a sinful character.
So what made the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil more attractive than any other at the moment when Adam and Eve sinned? Easy. Perhaps it was the tree they happened to be standing next to when the Serpent came along. When I'm hungry, and a steak is placed before me, why do I feel more inclined to eat it then anything else? It's the only food immediately present to my senses. Other motives might have entered in. Curiosity. Perhaps they had already tasted all the other fruit and wanted to know what this one tasted like. And they wanted to gain knowledge (another good desire). They couldn't get that from eating any old fruit.
Posted by mccartney at April 22, 2005 03:11 AM | TrackBack