It all began when Clifton said that monergism entails monothelitism. I think Kevin has made it clear that the issue isn't really the general Protestant doctrine of monergism but is rather the specifically Calvinist doctrine of total depravity. Kevin summarizes Clifton's argument in this post. A key premise in Clifton's argument is that genuine personhood, with real free will, requires libertarian freedom. In other words, in order to derive monothelitism from Calvinism Clifton must assume (or establish) the truth of the philosophical thesis known as "incompatiblism".
By the way, I think this shows the uselessness of Clifton's argument: Calvinism, as any Calvinist will tell you, is incompatible with incompatiblism. Thus Clifton, before he could infer monothelitism from Calvinism, would have to establish the truth of something incompatible with Calvinism. But if he does that he will have ipso facto refuted Calvinism. There's no need to go any further. When he goes further and infers monothelitism, he is no longer arguing against Calvinism but against the nonsensical combination, "incompatiblist Calvinism". In other words, he isn't deriving monothelitism from premises Calvinists believe, but from a contradictory mix of premises Calvinists believe with premises Calvinists don't believe. "Incompatiblist Calvinism" is nonsense. Does anybody really care if it entails monothelitism? Compatiblist Calvinism on the other hand, which is really the only kind of Calvinism, does not entail monothelitism. And Clifton has not argued that it does. He has only argued against incompatiblist Calvinism, a position nobody holds.
Kevin, noting the importance of the incompatiblist premise, responded to Clifton by deploying Jonathan Edwards's theory of the will in defence of compatiblism. I then entered the frey, objecting to Edwards's theory, and sought to provide an alternative way of maintaining compatiblism. What I find objectionable is this: Edwards's theory implies an unbroken chain of secondary causes from the creation of man to the fall. This in turn implies that Adam could not have done otherwise -- his choice was determined, not only by the divine decree, but by the "set-up" of the universe. Moreover, Edwards's view entails either that Adam desired sin as such prior to the fall, or at least that his motives were disordered, so that, by natural necessity, he prefered a lesser to a greater good.
I think I have shown that Edwards's view does entail this objectionable conclusion. But now it seems Kevin's view is rather different from Edwards's. On Edwards's view, the act of inclining the will, or making a decision, is always determined by the relative strengths of preceding motivations. But Kevin allows a personal act to interpose between the motivations and the motion of the will -- a personal act that may be undetermined by the preceding motivations. On account of this, everything about Edwards's view that I objected to in my initial post (and still object to) does not apply to Kevin. In fact, I see Kevin agreeing with what I tried to show in that post: that there is an alternative to Edwards that allows for human acts undetermined by secondary causes, that the fall was (or was initiated by) such an act, and that this alternative theory has no particular difficulty explaining how a well-made Adam could sin -- by choosing a lesser good over a greater in a way not predetermined by his preceding motivations. As far as I can tell, Kevin agrees with all of this.
Kevin misunderstands me, thinking that I hold that Adam did not intend to sin. What I actually hold is precisely what Kevin affirms: that "when Adam fell, this involved good motivations towards an act that was, in itself, good." I also hold that "along with these good motivations, Adam knew what he was doing, he knew that the action he was about to take was against the express command of God, he had both the moral and natural ability not to act, and yet he chose to sin anyway. The fall was not determined and God was just in judging it as he did." All of this I agree with. And I would add that, in addition to each of his motives being good, individually speaking, the whole complex of his motives was at no point (before the fall) disordered. This thesis, incompatible with Edwards, is, as far as I can tell, compatible with Kevin's clarified view.
Now that that's settled, two further things remain to be addressed.
FIRST: is there a distinction to be drawn between the initial act of inclining the will and the motion of the will itself? It is this distinction that allows Kevin to retain something verbally similar to Edwards's talk of motives determining a person's actions: Kevin speaks of inclinations determining the motion of the will. By this he means that, once a person has engaged in a personal act by which he inclines the will, a distinct event is necessitated: the the will necessarily moves as it has been inclined. On this view, what the will does and what the person does are distinct events. Kevin sees these two distinct events as part of a larger single "doing", which is the act of choosing, but because we have two distinct entities (person and will) both of which are doing things within the larger "doing", two events can be distinguished if not separated. And one event precedes the other, in the order of causation if not in time.
Our dispute is over the question of whether the will is actually a something-that-does-something every time I choose, or whether I choose all by myself, merely on account of my having a natural ability to choose. This question is peripheral to the issues I raised in my entry into this discussion. It is also (I say) peripheral to the original question of whether total depravity entails monothelitism. But Kevin doesn't think so. Hence I must respond to Kevin's arguments (a) and (b) against my proposal that the will is an ability, not a mechanism.
Before doing that, let me explain where I'm coming from. It's not that I feel certain that the natural will is nothing more than an ability. It's just that 1) I'm not aware of any good reasons for thinking it is something more, and 2) I have trouble understanding Kevin's characterizataion of what that "more" is, other than that it looks like a mechanism of some sort.
Kevin characterizes my notion of "the person choosing" as "vague". I think he has it backwards. All of us are quite familiar, pre-theoretically, with people choosing. But what does it mean to speak of the will "moving", if this is not a metaphor for a person choosing? Clearly it's a metaphor for something -- the will doesn't physically move: it's not located in space to begin with. But a metaphor for what? And what does it mean to speak of the will (as distinct from the person) being "inclined"? What is the will inclined to do? Surely not to choose. It is the person who chooses. Kevin is quite clear about that. Nor to act. I, not my will, am the one who is typing this sentence just as I, not my will, am the one who chooses to type this sentence. If my will is a mechanism, what is it doing? How does it bring it about that I choose and act? I suppose Kevin might say that it does so by moving as I have inclined it, but the problem is: what does this mean? The idea seems to be that I do something (it's not clear what) to something (the will, but it's not clear what that is) which, as a result, does something, or has something happen to it (but, again, it's not clear what) and somehow (it's not clear how) this results in me making a choice. Or perhaps it would be better to say not that a choice results, but that this whole complex of "person-acting-upon-something, something-being-acted-upon, something-doing-something-or-having-something-happen-to-it" just is the person's making a choice. That expresses about as much of the proposal as I understand. Even that little bit contains something that seems objectionable: wouldn't the person have to choose to act upon the "something" to begin with? --which would lead to an infinite regress.
Another way to put this point: suppose that we use slightly different words to express the metaphor -- words other than those that are already involved in our pre-theoretical talk about voluntary action. What is going when a person makes a choice? First, Kevin might respond, the person acts upon his elective-mechanism, impelling it to undergo a change-of-state, and that change-of-state in the elective-mechanism constitues the person making a choice. Clarus per obscuris non explanandum est.
That's my argument against Kevin. Now to respond to Kevin's argument against me.
a) Kevin argues first as follows. The church condemned monothelitism because they held that it entails monophysitism. (True.) If they were right, then the natural will must be associated with the nature in such a way that a single natural will entails a single nature. (Right.) But this cannot be if the will is an ability (and why not?), because that ability is not something a nature has but is something the person has. (from this the conclusion does not follow).
On my view the will is an ability. An ability is not something a nature has, it is something a person has. Therefore, on my view, the will is not something a nature has, it is something a person has. But surely Kevin agrees with this? Does he really believe that it conflicts with the condemnation of monthelitism? If the will is part of the nature, as Kevin so frequently insists, then it had better be the person that has it: the person has the nature, part of the nature is the will, therefore the person has the will as part of his nature. Both Kevin and I hold that will and nature are related as part and whole. It is not that the nature is able to will, but that part of my nature -- part of my being the sort of creature I am -- is my being able to will.
Part of having a human nature is being able to choose. It is because I am a man, rather than a stone, that I have the ability to make choices; and it is because I am a man, and not God, that I have certain limits on my ability to choose. Thinking of the will as an ability does not prevent us from associating it with nature in this way. And if we associate will (ability to choose) with nature in this way (as we should), then we shall certainly get the result that Christ, having two natures, must have two wills. For part of being human is having a finite will: if Christ is human he has a finite will, that is -- on my view -- a limited ability to will. And part of being divine is having an infinite will. If Christ is divine he has an infinite, omnipotent will: an ability to do whatever he wishes. Christ, then, as God, has a limitless ability to choose, and as man he has a limited ability to choose. He has two natural wills. And if we say otherwise, if we say he has only an omnipotent will, then he is not truly human, for it is of the nature of man to have a limmited ability to choose. Or if we say he has only a limmited ability to chose, and is in no way omnipotent, then we deny his divinity. For it is God's nature to be able to choose to do whatever pleases him.
Thus, it seems to me that thinking of the will as an ability fits very nicely with the church's condemnation of monothelitism.
b) Kevin's argues, secondly, that by calling the will an ability I deprive myself of an argument against libertarianism. This is an odd thing to say. Should I be disturbed that there is an argument from a premise I think false to a conclusion I think true? Does the existence of such an argument give me reason to think the premise isn't false after all? Surely not. It's just as easy to find a valid argument from false premises to a true conclusion as it is to find one from true premises. (All animals are white; Chalk is not white; Therefore chalk is not an animal.) This is, perhaps, simply an infelicity in the way Kevin expresses his objection, not in the substance of that objection. But the odd way of expressing it makes me somewhat doubtful about whether I've correctly understood what he's driving at.
The substance of his objection, as far as I can make it out, is that unless I treat the will as a mechanism, I cannot say what compatiblist freedom consists in, and so I cannot give any cash-value to the distinction between what is in my power and what is possible for me.
If this is his argument, I simply deny the premise: I can say what compatiblist freedom consists in. I can say it consists in the same thing Kevin says it consists in: a man chooses freely when he chooses in accordance with his desires. I couldn't say this if I failed to distinguish between desire and choice. But I do make such a distinction. The only distinction I fail to make is that between the personal act of inclining the will, and the motion of the will itself. Both of these things are posterior to desire.
In sum, Kevin's elective-mechanism is not something implicit in our pretheoretical talk about persons who make choices, act voluntarily, etc.; it is a theoretical posit. And a rather vague one at that. I can put up with some vagueness if the theory is supported by cogent reasoning. But neither of Kevin's reasons seem convincing to me.
SECONDLY: there is the issue of Kevin's account of the fall. He disagrees (so it seems) with the Reformed consensus on this point, arguing that Adam had, before the fall, a natural tendency toward sin, but that tendency was obstructed, as it were, by the presence of the Holy Spirit. After the fall, the Holy Spirit departed, leaving the corrupt nature. The nature was no different than it was before the Spirit departed, but now it was allowed to have its natural effects, producing actual sins. At the incarnation, the logos acquired a nature just as corrupt as Adam's -- before and after the fall -- but, on account of his divinity, he was able, through his atoning work, to heal and perfect that nature.
I haven't addressed this aspect of Kevin's writings yet. I'll do so in a separate post.
Posted by mccartney at March 30, 2007 05:52 PM | TrackBack