Credo Ut Intelligam

Reformed theology and freedom of the will

With trepidation I enter the extensive blog-discussion-ring-thing.

I'm responding to Of Wills, Words, and the Monarche where Kevin approves of Jonathan Edwards's thesis that "For any given decision, the will will always choose according to its strongest inclination at the moment of decision." This is a view which seems very implausible to me, and not required by Reformed theology or by Scripture.

I understand why Edwards's thesis is popular among Reformed Christians. In contradistinction to libertarians, we hold that the reprobate cannot do good. They may choose a lesser sin over a greater, they may choose to do the right thing for the wrong reason, and may thus live in a way that is, as far as externals go, morally admirable, but all the while they act from ungodly motives and thus their apparently good works are in fact sins. On the libertarian view, the moral blame we attach to sin presupposes a kind of free-will that is incompatible with necessitation. Ought, they claim, implies can. But on the Reformed view, the unregenerate cannot but sin. What is more, God foreordains everything that comes to pass, so even for those who are not dead in sin, every sin-act that we commit was foreordained by God from eternity. It is tempting to try to kill both these birds with one stone. If we can establish on philosophical grounds that the will always follows its strongest inclination, then the libertarian ideas go out the window, and with them the objections to Reformed theology rooted therein. And this may be what Kevin is doing when he writes, in another place,

"A person can never transcend his nature, for the ability to transcend anything can only be explained according to and as a function of nature. We would have to posit a metanature, which, in the end, would just be a nature. All persons, human, angelic, and divine, act and will according to their natures."

But I don't accept this line of reasoning. The ability to make choices beyond what our natures determine does not require positing a metanature. There is no contradiction involved in saying that it is our nature to be able to sometimes transcend our nature. For instance, as mammals, it is our nature to reproduce sexually, but as intelligent beings, it is our nature to be able to come up with non-sexual means of reproduction and transcend our animal nature. A similar logic is involved in the case of the will. As appetitive creatures it is our nature to follow our strongest inclinations, but as creatures with a free-will, it is our nature to be able to choose to follow a weaker inclination over a stronger.

There is a distinction to be drawn between what I will call freedom of consent and freedom of decision, and another distinction between what is possible for me and what is in my power. I don't believe it's possible to will something if there is no desire or inclination whatsoever in that direction. Nevertheless, it is often in our power to do so. It is now in my power to slit my throat: nothing prevents me from doing so. But nothing in me (that I am aware of) would incline me to want to do that. And thus it is impossible for me. If I were to slit my throat you would rightly conclude that I must have had some hidden desire to do so (whether for the sake of the action itself, or, more likely, for the sake of some expected consequence thereof--ending the pain, or some such thing). If the action be done, the desire had to have been there. Therefore, necessarily, if the desire is not there, the action is not going to be done. This necessity is compatible with freedom of consent. And it is consent that is required for moral evaluation. Freedom-of-consent is compatible with necessitation-by-my-nature.

But what if I have two or more conflicting desires? I can see no reason to think that I must always follow the strongest one. On the contrary, it seems that whenever I make a decision, my very act of deliberation presupposes that my inclinations need not determine my action. In the moment prior to making a decision, my inclinations have not yet determined what I will decide (otherwise the decision would be already made) and I am not just waiting around until some inclination comes out on top; I am actively deciding which inclination to follow. And not by taking action that might indirectly fix my inclinations upon a final choice. Though such indirect actions do occur, that is not what I am engaging my will in at the moment immediately prior to making the decision. The only thing I am engaging my will in at that moment is the very choice I am about to make. If we do not possess, over and above freedom of consent, a freedom of decision, a freedom to choose what our nature and circumstances do not determine, then every time we experience the common phenomenon we call "making a decision" we are deceived. It is not possible to make a decision without believing, at some level, that the choice we are about to make is genuinely open, undetermined by our nature + circumstances.

At the very least, as one of Kevin's interlocutors has pointed out, God's choice to create was not determined by his nature. Thus there can be no contradiction in the notion of a will that has freedom of decision. (God does not have freedom to decide whether or not to sin--his nature prevents him from sinning--even though he is sinless by free consent. Unrighteous action is in his power but contrary to his nature and therefore impossible). And the fact that God foreordains whatsoever comes to pass is compatible with human freedom of decision: freedom of decision is incompatible with determination by our nature and circumstances, but divine forordination occurs in eternity, and is no part of our nature or circumstances.

Postulate: Adam and Eve had freedom of decision in the garden to sin or not to sin. Since God created them good, their desire to obey him was stronger than their desire for what was pleasing to the eye and good for food. Notice that none of their desires is bad. God gave them the desire for what is pleasing to the eye and good for food, and that desire was good. What was evil was their choosing to follow the desire for the lesser good. On this postulate God has created nothing bad or corrupt or ill-made. But if their choice was determined by their strongest desires, then God made human nature such that its strongest desire would of necessity lead it into sin. And such a nature is bad, corrupt, and ill-made.

That is one reason I object to Kevin's hypothesis that Adam's natural inclinations before the fall were essentially the same as those of the redeemed before glory. He writes,

"The chief advantage of such a view in this debate would be in accounting for the fall in a way consistent with a Reformed view of the will. Generally, there is no explanation for how Adam could have fallen if he had a perfectly good nature and the will cannot act against nature. If his nature is that of corruptible flesh indwelt by the Holy Spirit, then his odds of falling are the same as ours might have been."

I don't like those odds. They make it look like God was setting us up for a fall, stacking the deck against us like that. Actually, it isn't even a matter of odds. If Kevin's hypothesis is correct, given human nature as God made it, and given that particular circumstance, Adam's strongest inclination necessarily was toward eating the fruit, and so he necessarily did so.

But, on the contrary, my postulate is consistent with Reformed theology and it explains how Adam could have fallen even though he had a perfectly good nature: he fell by freely choosing a natural, good desire for a good thing over a stronger natural desire for a better thing.

Posted by mccartney at April 2, 2005 3:37 AM | TrackBack