I hope you all understand how jocular I was being in my last post. Life is too short for arguing, seriously, about whether or not so-and-so's essay, the substance of which I affirm, had an insufficient emphasis on this or that point. If I seemed to be doing that, it was only for the fun of calling Doug Wilson (of all people) baptistic! But behind my jocularity there was a serious point. The truth that, in the Lord's supper, we feed upon the very body and blood of Christ is a truth I care very much about. And I am sad that this truth is not taught in our churches (I only discovered it by reading Calvin). Of course, it isn't Doug Wilson who is leading the way in this forgetfulness of our theological tradition. Quite the contrary. When it comes to sacramental theology, Wilson and the other FVers are leading the way in exposing and correcting such forgetfulness. So, in my last post, I was really (if you can belive it) expressing my appreciation for FV theology. In this post, I want to continue expressing my appreciation for FV theology, this time in the area of ecclesiology and election.
Like FV proponents, I want to emphasize the importance of the church-which-is-visible, and like them I have concerns about the term "invisible church". The WCF defines the invisible church as the totality of the elect. Now, the distinction between the elect and the reprobate is very important, and I would stand against any attempt to downplay or deemphasize it. But I don't think it is helpful to speak of elect pagans as belonging, in any sense, to the church. They will belong to the church in future, but they do not belong to the church now. They must first be regenerated (and they will be, for God has chosen them before the creation of the world to be regenerated), and they must be joined to the visible church, normally through baptism (and they will be, for God has chosen them before the creation of the world to be members of his bride). But even regenerate persons who have not yet been baptized are not yet members of the church -- at least, not full members. They are spiritually alive, and thus eminently fit for church membership. But they do not actually become members until they are baptized. Moreover, every regenerate person will be (sooner or later) joined to the body, and glorified with her. And no unregenerate person will be a member of the church when she is glorified.
The WCF states that the invisible church is the bride of Christ. This is not exactly false -- after all, on the day of the wedding, the invisible and the visible church will be coterminous. But it is, I think, problematic. It suggests that that body of persons who compose the invisible church is currently the bride of Christ, and that no other body of persons is. And the problem with this is twofold. First, the members of the invisible church do not currently compose any body of persons, nor will they till judgement day. Talking about the invisible church is an abstract way of talking about all of the elect, but the elect do not currently compose a corporate unity. Secondly there is a body of persons that is not the invisible church and that is the bride of Christ. The visible church is a corporate unity (distinct in membership from the invisible church) that is, right now, the bride of Christ. She herself, and no other. On the day of the wedding, any nonelect member of the visible church will be removed from her, and any elect non-member of the visible church will be joined to her, at which point it will still be she and no other who will be wed to Christ: she, the visible church, who will then be coterminous with the so-called "invisible church". This makes it clear that even unregenerate persons who have been baptized (and who have not apostatized) are really part of the bride of Christ -- that's how important baptism is, and that's why it is so important for Christians to be baptized. But just because you are in the church now doesn't mean you will be tomorrow, or at judgement day. Not so with election. Election is irrevocable.
I allow for both corporate and individual senses of "election". The elect body is the visible church. Her election is irrevocable. The bride of Christ cannot lose her corporate salvation. She will certainly be saved. But that doesn't mean that every individual in her will be saved. They will be saved only if they remain in her (and just because you haven't been formally excommunicated when you die doesn't mean God won't remove you from his church at judgement).
Individuals are also elect. Their election is irrevocable. No one whom God has chosen before the creation of the world can fail to be saved. But what does that "salvation" consist in? It consists (among other things) in their being joined to the totus Christus, head and body. The WCF says that outside of the visible church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. I agree. I would even be willing to say it without the "ordinary": Outside of the visible church there is no possibility of salvation. But I would add that God may join someone to the visible church at the last day, even if that person had not joined the church in his lifetime.
I would not follow some FV proponents in speaking of individual church members who are not predestined for glory as "elect" in a revocable sense. It's latin etymology makes "election" unavoidably a technical theological term. If Scripture speaks of such individuals as being in some sense "chosen", then use the anglo word "chosen". God certainly "chose" that they would belong, temporarily, to the visible church. But they are not among the "elect." This is a matter of terminology, though, not substance. As for substance, I'm agreeing with FV here.
Here's a point on which I'm more FV than Doug Wilson: I take a more realistic view of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Wilson's view, as he expresses it here, is rather wishy-washy. Which is unusual for him. A Lutheran, Matthew N. Petersen, has been very deftly defeating Wilson in the comments.
Actually, Petersen goes beyond the Lutheran view when he says "I say Christ used a trope to say the Wine is quite literally his Blood." -- I always thought that Lutherans denied this (?), saying instead that the blood was co-located with the wine, not identical with it. So when the wine literally passes into our mouth, so does the literal blood of Christ, in such a way that there are two distinct substances literally passing into our mouth -- wine and blood -- rather than only one (blood and not wine, as the RC church says) or the only the other (wine and not blood, as every other Protestant church says). Petersen seems to think there is one substance which is, a la fois, both blood and wine. This position has a rather serious problem: it directly contradicts the obvious fact that blood and wine are different substances!
Petersen tries to avoid this by pointing to the dual nature of Christ. Jesus is a la fois both God and man, so why can't what's in this cup be both blood and wine? But the analogy doesn't hold. "God is man" isn't like "blood is wine". The term 'blood' refers to a physical substance of a sort that, by it's very definition, is different from the physical stuff that 'wine', by its definition, refers to. 'God' does not refer to a physical substance of any sort. Our apprehension of the meaning of what we're talking about when we say 'God' isn't based on our grasping, in some positive way, what sort of a thing God is. So we can't pretend to know that a person of that sort couldn't possibly be the same as a human-being. But we can pretend to know -- indeed we do know -- that the sort of thing blood is couldn't be the same sort of thing as the wine in this cup: blood and wine have different molecular structures!
Unlike Petersen's view, the traditional Lutheran view (unless I've misunderstood it) is at least coherent: two distinct substances occupy the same space at the same time, one of which is made imperceptible to our senses (we don't taste blood in our mouth when we partake) and is known to be locally present only by faith. There's no reason that couldn't happen in a miracle. But there's also no reason to believe such a miracle takes place. The Lutheran view isn't self-contradictory; it's just wrong.
But what Wilson says is wrong in the other direction. It's downright baptistic. And I'm using that word 'baptistic' in the quasi-technical way that Wilson himself does. It refers to a view that, without being quite baptist, is a departure from robust, red-blooded Calvinism in a baptist direction, a departure influenced by baptist religious habits of thought, especially as those developed in America during and after the Second Great Awakening. Wilson writes:
The third view [which he defends] is the covenantal view. One of the features of God's covenant is attendant blessings and curses. As we consider the teaching of Scripture, we should clearly see that God connects both to His covenant meal with us. The Lord's Supper, approached in godly faith, is a clear means of blessing and grace on the one hand, and chastizement on the other. First, the blessing -- "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, through many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread" (1 Cor. 10:16-17). But there is also the covenantal cursing that is possible. "For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body."This is covenant reality because the Lord Himself is present with us in the meal. Because we are Protestants, we deny that He is locally present in the bread and wine, but because we are Reformed Protestants, we do affirm that the Lord is really present with us in the meal. We must affirm this because we deny the doctrine of "real absence." But His presence with us is spiritual and covenant, not material, and we feed on His presence by faith. So with God's blessing and cursing in mind, we must come to the Table with joyful solemnity. We must discern the Lord's body in one another. We must judge ourselves. We must submit to God's judgments, thankful we will not be judged with the world. We must seek God's blessing on us in the body.
First off, presenting something called the "Covenantal view" as a tertium quid in this debate is a bit misleading: wouldn't all agree that the sacrament is a Covenant sign? Surely they would. That's not what the controversy is about. Nor is it about what the nature of the Covenant is. There's a real debate there, but it's not this debate. This debate is about what relation that Covenant sign has to the physical body and blood of Christ. So let's skip to the next paragraph.
Wilson seems to think he is affirming the "real presence", but where exactly is the real presence in what Wilson affirms? "The Lord Himself is present with us in the meal." But this is something baptists also affirm. No Christian is going to deny that "wherever two or three are gathered in my name ..." The doctrine of the "real absence", if it means that the Lord Himself is absent, is a mere strawman.
The traditional, robust Calvinistic view says far more than Wilson says here. It says that the literal, physical body and blood of Christ are really present. This is, moreover the biblical position. As Petersen ironically puts it (in a classic FV move, to boot) the Covenant is
kinda like a marriage, and no one wants to be physically present with their wife, we just want "spiritual and covental union"--you know the kind St. Paul had with the absent Colossians--with her.
Classic, robust Calvinism agrees with Luther that the very body and blood of Christ -- those physical realities -- are really present, and are really fed upon by the faithful partakers. The disagreement is this: Christ's body and blood are not ubiquitous: they remain in heaven, they not located anywhere on earth. The supernatural work of the Holy Spirit makes us able really to feed upon what is distant from our physical bodies, but not absent from us.
Wilson sort of maybe gets around to saying this:
"I believe in the real presence, but I don't need to assert that Christ's body is physically present (local presence) in order to feed on His body and drink His blood."
But only at the end of a long back-and-forth. Why didn't he say it earlier? Why didn't he say it in his post (which was ostensibly about the Real Presence)? Why didn't he say it right after Petersen introduced the marriage analogy? Because Wilson is just a little bit baptistic, and the hallmark of baptistic theology is not what is said but what is left unsaid. Baptistic presbyterians are very good at saying what the sacraments are not. It's not transubstantiation, it's not consubstantiation, and it's not "merely" a symbol and memorial. What is it then? What do we mean when we say this is the body of Christ, broken for us; the blood of Christ, shed for us? ... to which the baptistic Presbyterian answers: "Let's change the subject and talk about the Covenant."
Hooray for Covenant realism. We are indeed federally united with Christ, what is true of him, as the Second Adam, is really true of us who are united with him. And the Supper is indeed effectual in maintaining and embodying that spiritual union. All good stuff. But what do we mean when we say this is the body of Christ, broken for us; the blood of Christ, shed for us? If, as an answer to that question, you say that the Supper is an effectual means of maintaining our covenant union with Christ, then you will be understood as DENYING that the physical body and blood of Christ are really fed upon by those who eat the bread and drink the wine.
Has anyone else noticed how often scholars who aren't themselves part of the Calvinistic tradition get Calvinism so egregiously wrong -- I mean when they are writing as scholars specifically about Calvinism and Calvinists? Two quick examples -- one a blatant error of fact on a specific doctrine, the other a myopic inability to "get" the most basic ground-motive of the Reformed faith:
The Calvinists took the bread and wine as symbols only, simple reminders of the Last Supper. When Calvin was questioned about the Real Presence, he said that Christ was everywhere and hence present at the sacrament also. (p. 29 From Dawn to Decadence. Jacques Barzun. Harper-Collins, Perennial: 2001.)
Independence of mind ... was stimulated by the new Calvinistic faith. The Kirk had removed from its members any assurance of eternal salvation by the work of the Church and its sacraments. On the contrary, a man's salvation depended on himself: he must prove himself to be one of God's elect -- a congenial doctrine to people who had always believed in self-reliance and a man's importance to himself. (p. 70 The Scotch-Irish: A Social History. James G Leyburn. Chapel Hill U of NC Press: 1962.)
If scholars are so befuddled when it comes to a tradition that still exists contemporary with their scholarship, how much can we trust the conclusions of modern scholars when they tell us about the mindset of, say, second-temple Jews? Don't take that question as more cynical than it was meant to be. I think such scholarship needs to be given a serious look. But I also want to be cautious: the potential for unnoticed (and perhaps uncorrectable) mistakes needs to be taken into account. Stepping back from the work of examining the scholarship itself to see how compelling it is -- even the most compelling-seeming (from our vantage point) scholarship may face a reliability issue. I assume it is not completely unreliable. It is, then, "somewhat" reliable. What are we to make of this somewhat-reliable historical scholarship? What role should it play in our interpretation of Scripture?
It started when R.S. Clark challenged FVers to repent of "trying to enlarge faith in the act of justification to be more than simply 'receiving and resting' on Christ and his finished work, of trying to include fruit and sanctity in the act of justification in either faith or the ground of justification rather than simply allowing them to be fruit and evidence of justification."
There is potential ambiguity in this language of faith in the act of justification". Does he mean 1. faith when it plays its role in justification; or 2. faith insofar as it plays its role in justification. From what he says later it is clear that he meant 2. But as the debate continued Wilson kept taking him to mean 1, in spite of his clarifying remarks.
Clark never denied that regeneration precedes faith. That notion came from an argument Wilson was making against a thesis he wrongly took Clark to hold. Clinging to interpretation 1, Wilson figured Clark was saying that faith had no holiness about it when justification happened. Wilson argued against this by using the premise that regeneration precedes faith and drawing the conclusion that justifying faith is, from the start, obedient faith; He then "dared" Clark to deny the premise. But Clark does not deny the premise. In fact, he accepts the whole argument as sound, but he thinks it misses the point. And on this I agree with Clark.
What is at issue here is not chronology. Clark calls that a "red herring". What is at issue is not whether justifying faith IS always already living faith. Yes, Wilson's argument proves that to be the case, but that was never in question. What is at issue is not a matter of IS but a matter of BECAUSE (as Clark put it in a later response to Wilson). The issue is: Does faith play the role it plays in justification [which we all agree is an instrumental role only] in part BECAUSE it is a living, obedient faith. Wilson says yes:
The fact that my faith is alive makes it possible to see Christ, the sole basis or reason for anyone's justification. If my faith were dead, it would be blind also, and incapable of looking to Christ as the sole ground of justification.Faith looks to Christ, and sees Christ for justification, according to Wilson, BECAUSE IT IS ALIVE. It is this proposition that Clark thinks is heretical, and that I think is within the bounds of orthodoxy as long as you don't go further and affirm the proposition I labelled (b) in my prior post.
(Clark's response to Wilson's argument by analogy, by the way, is just that the analogy fails. While in some respects the analogy of the seeing eye is a good one; like all analogies, when pressed too far, it falls apart; as my alternative analogy shows: although it is because it is alive that an eye can see, it is not because the compasses are red that they aid in navigation of the ship, and it is not because faith is active, obedient, and holy that it plays its role as instrument of justification.)
Here is Clark in his own words:
There's no question whether faith obeys. The question is why and to what effect and what are the logical (not chronological - that is a red herring) relations between my obedience and my justification? Yes, obedient faith is the only kind of faith that God gives to his elect, Amen, but faith doesn't justify because it obeys. To say that is to forfeit the Reformation. Faith obeys because it unites to Christ, because of God's grace. That is why all the Reformed confessions are structured: guilt (law), gospel (grace) and gratitude (sanctification). The last flows logically from the former. No one is defending dead faith. ...
It's as simple as the difference between is and because. The accompanying graces and virtues are a matter of "is." They do exist. They must exist, but they don't play any role in justification other than evidence and fruit.
I have long wished to engage with Xon Hostetter's blog, Post Tenebras Lux, which has been represented by a link on my side-bar for quite some time now. Most of his recent posts have been in defense of Federal Vision Theology. My attitude toward "FV" is mixed. I don't think it's heretical; I do strongly disagree with some of the stances they take; I am very sympathetic with them on some other points; and I see reason to worry that a small number of individual participants in the FV conversation (not the FV as a whole) may be rejecting something that is at the heart of the Reformed understanding of sola fide. The ultimate judge of Christian doctrine is, of course, not what the Reformed understanding has been. But if the Reformers were wrong in their understanding of the Bible on that point -- not just wrong about some details, but centrally wrong -- then we ought to be clear that that is what is being claimed, if indeed that is what is being claimed. (Whatever may be the case with those few individuals, FV proponents in general are not making such a claim, as far as I can see.)
But even if FVers are far worse than I have made them out to be, there is no excuse for the unjust treatment they have received at the hands of many of their detractors. They have been misrepresented, often grossly. Among those who have not studied this directly, but get their info from their non-FV pastors and elders, I have met several who who think FV = it's possible to lose your salvation. That's a sorry situation, and those charged with oversight of Christ's sheep have some responsibility here. When faithful, orthodox ministers are widely rumored to teach a false doctrine, which they do not in fact teach, that constitutes an injustice. If I am going to criticize the FV in this atmosphere, I feel that I have a duty to say this, but I also want to say it in a way that is properly respectful. I'm certainly not in a position to say that all opponents of FV are guilty of willful misrepresentation. Misunderstanding can in some cases be due to honest mistake.
Obscured behind the smoke of misrepresentation, rhetorical bombast, and political machinations, there are genuinely interesting theological issues. The best place to start, if you want to get a sense of what it is that FVers share in common (as opposed to the idiosyncrasies of particular proponents) is the joint FV statement. In the rest of this post I am going to comment on some of the affirmations and denials contained in that statement. This will give a broad overview of my complaints and sympathies.
I. The first section is titled, "Our Triune God":
We affirm that the triune God is the archetype of all covenantal relations. All faithful theology and life is conducted in union with and imitation of the way God eternally is, and so we seek to understand all that the Bible teaches—on covenant, on law, on gospel, on predestination, on sacraments, on the Church—in the light of an explicit Trinitarian understanding. We deny that a mere formal adherence to the doctrine of the Trinity is sufficient to keep the very common polytheistic and unitarian temptations of unbelieving thought at bay.
There is obviously much to agree with here. But there may also be -- here as in several other places -- a genuine difference between FV and their opponents, which perhaps has not been clearly articulated. It's also not clear to me how differing attitudes in this locus are related to disagreements elsewhere.
II. The next section concerns postmillennialism.
We affirm that God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but rather so that the world through Him would be saved. Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world—He is the Savior of the world. All the nations shall stream to Him, and His resting place shall be glorious. We affirm that prior to the second coming of our Lord Jesus, the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. We deny that eschatological views are to be a test of fellowship between orthodox believers, but at the same time we hold that an orientation of faith with regard to the gospel’s triumph in history is extremely important. We deny that it is wise to imitate Abraham in his exercise of faith while declining to believe the content of what he believed—that through him all the nations of the world would be blessed, and that his descendants would be like the stars in number.
I come down somewhere in the range of optimistic amil to cautious postmil. What I most object to in this section is the apparent implication that amils "declin[e] to believe the content of what [Abraham] believed—that through him all the nations of the world would be blessed, and that his descendants would be like the stars in number." The dispute between amil and postmil is less significant than FV would make it out to be. It is not a dispute about whether the church will triumph, or whether the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. It is only a dispute about whether this will be accomplished before or after the second coming. Let the dispensationalists spend their energies arguing interminably about the befores and afters of future eschatological events. We Reformed folks have better things to spend our energies arguing interminably about.
III. I agree with the general import of the next section, called, "The Next Christendom". When I have no substantive comments, I won't quote.
IV. Next, the FV document asserts that Scripture cannot be broken
We affirm that the Bible in its entirety, from Genesis to Revelation, is the infallible Word of God, and is our only ultimate rule for faith and practice. Scripture alone is the infallible and ultimate standard for Christians. We affirm further that Scripture is to be our guide in learning how to interpret Scripture, and this means we must imitate the apostolic handling of the Old Testament, paying close attention to language, syntax, context, narrative flow, literary styles, and typology—all of it integrated in Jesus Christ Himself. We deny that the Bible can be rightly understood by any hermeneutical grid not derived from the Scriptures themselves.
While I agree that Scripture is relevant to hermeneutics, I don't think one's hermeneutics can simply be "derived" from Scripture, as if Scripture provides the axioms and the rest is inferred by logical deduction.The problem of circularity should be evident here: you can't derive your hermeneutics from Scripture unless you correctly understand Scripture; and you can't correctly understand it unless you've properly interpreted it; but you can't properly interpret it (says FV) until you've derived your hermeneutics from Scripture.
The way it actually works, I think, is that we begin by interpreting Scripture in light of the hermeneutic we have inherited from tradition, a hermeneutic which contains some elements faithful to the prophetic-apostolic origin of our religion, and others unfaithful to it. We then revise that imperfect hermeneutic in light of what Scripture (thus imperfectly interpreted) seems to be saying. The hermeneutic circle that results is non-vicious, whereas it would be viciously circular to say that the Scriptures cannot ever be rightly understood except by a hermeneutical grid already derived from the Scriptures themselves.
It may be that FV people have merely expressed themselves poorly here; It wouldn't surprise me if they were willing to revise this.
V. There seems to be an incoherence to the next section.
We affirm that God's Spirit has chosen the best ways to express the revelation of God and reality, and that the divine rhetoric found in Holy Scripture is designed to strike the richest of all chords in the hearers of the Word of God. For this reason, we believe that it is pastorally best to use biblical language and phrasing in the preaching and teaching of the Bible in the Church. We deny that it necessarily unprofitable to “translate” biblical language into more “philosophical” or “scholastic” languages in order to deal with certain problems and issues that arise in the history of the Church. At the same time, we do deny that such translations are superior to or equal to the rhetoric employed by the Spirit in the text, and we believe that the employment of such hyper-specialized terminology in the regular teaching and preaching of the Church has the unfortunate effect of confusing the saints and of estranging them from contact with the biblical use of the same language. For this reason we reject the tendency to privilege the confessional and/or scholastic use of words and phrases over the way the same words and phrases are used in the Bible itself.How can the use of "philosophical" or "scholastic" language be profitable for "deal[ing] with certain problems and issues that arise in the history of the Church" if the laity, who live in history and face those problems, never learn anything of that language? And how can they learn that language if it never enters into the regular teaching and preaching of the church? Or are we supposed to believe that those "problems and issues" do not affect the laity?
I don't think it makes sense to speak of language or rhetoric as being objectively "the best". The authors of Scripture wrote with the language and rhetoric that was best for the times in which they were speaking. Although the Bible is for the whole church throughout the ages, and not just for the original audiences, its language and rhetoric bears the marks of its original contexts. The fact that it was written in Greek and Hebrew does not imply (I'm sure FVers would agree) that those languages are the best for expressing the Gospel in. And they certainly are not the best languages to use if you're preaching to Americans. Indeed English is superior to Koine Greek, if your goal happens to involve communicating with English speakers. It seems to me that the same could be said for higher-level language issues. The particular terminological decisions of the apostles were made in light of issues the church faced in the first century. Modern Christians face different issues (as well as some of the same issues). So it is at least possible that, in some cases, different terminology may be more effective in communicating the same gospel in a different historical context.
So far I have been assuming that the term "hyper-specialized" refers to all the "philosophical" and "scholastic" language referred to above (as the grammar of the sentence suggests), and that the prefix "hyper" is simply an unfortunate question-begging epithet. If, on the other hand, they only mean to say that you shouldn't get into theological esoterica ('hypostatic union', 'perichoresis') when teaching your average layman, then I doubt anyone will disagree. But that's not what the controversy is over. The controversy is over terms like 'justification' and 'election'. The theology that goes with these terms may be too much for the very youngest Christians. But one hopes that the laity make some progress in their years of being taught, and I think quite a few of them can handle at least the rudiments of systematic theology.
For these reasons I disagree with the claim that the use of technical theological terminology in the regular teaching and preaching of the Church "has the unfortunate effect of confusing the saints and of estranging them from contact with the biblical use of the same language." The reason the saints are estranged from contact with the biblical use of certain terms is that they don't read the Bible much. I would have things as they were in centuries past, among the Reformed, when ordinary people studied deeply both the Biblical texts and the theology by which the church tried to understand the prophetic-apostolic teaching systematically.
VI. I don't see anything in the next section that I disagree with.
VII. The next section is titled "Decrees and Covenant". Nothing in it is clearly wrong. But I'm not sure what it would mean to say the decrees "trump" the covenant, so I don't think it is very clear what they are denying there.
VIII. I agree with the section on the Church.
IX. I agree with the following section as well. And I also share the concern that the FV has about the way the visible/invisible distinction is used in some 19th/20th c. Reformed theological traditions in America. I disagree with anyone who denies that the visible church is the bride of Christ.
X. I agree with the section on Reformed Catholicity.
XI. But I'm not happy with the FV stance on the prelapsarian Covenant.
We affirm that Adam was in a covenant of life with the triune God in the Garden of Eden, in which arrangement Adam was required to obey God completely, from the heart. We hold further that all such obedience, had it occurred, would have been rendered from a heart of faith alone, in a spirit of loving trust. Adam was created to progress from immature glory to mature glory, but that glorification too would have been a gift of grace, received by faith alone. We deny that continuance in this covenant in the Garden was in any way a payment for work rendered. Adam could forfeit or demerit the gift of glorification by disobedience, but the gift or continued possession of that gift was not offered by God to Adam conditioned upon Adam’s moral exertions or achievements. In line with this, we affirm that until the expulsion from the Garden, Adam was free to eat from the tree of life. We deny that Adam had to earn or merit righteousness, life, glorification, or anything else.
I don't mind calling Adam's trust in God and in his promises "faith". But it is misleading to speak of him receiving the blessings of the Covenant of life by "faith alone". The traditional Protestant doctrine of sola fide, when it says that we receive salvation (under the new Covenant) by faith alone, means to deny that we are in a situation like the one Adam was in, in which his "trustful" obedience was a precondition for his receiving the blessing. In the Covenant of Life, there was no monergistic act of God that guaranteed the reception of the blessings. If Adam had remained faithful to the Covenant, this would have been through the synergistic activity (which, like our sanctification, and like everything else that comes to pass, would have been forordained by God, but would also have involved Adam's genuine moral activity) by which Adam would have had the graciously promised blessings. I think this is a significant disagreement, because of potential implications for what sola fide means under the new Covenant. If sola fide means nothing more, for us, than what (according to FV) was true of Adam, then I've got a serious problem. Our justification (which guarantees eternal life) is not dependent on our behavior. Though we shall be judged in accordance with our behavior, the verdict of that final judgment is guaranteed by the justification we already posess, irrespective of our behavior. But, if God had not forordained the fall, Adam's reception of glory would not have been guaranteed by anything irrespective of his behavior. It would have been guaranteed by a divine decree, but not one irrespective of his behavior; rather the decree would have been a decree about how he would behave.
For this reason, when FVers tell us they believe in sola fide, they have not yet distanced themselves from heresy in the Pelagian vicinity (even if they have shown that they don't believe exactly what Pelagius believed). That doesn't mean that FVers are heretics. It does mean that they should say more to assure us of their orthodoxy. For, by redefining sola fide, they have put themselves in a position where the question naturally arises: do they believe what was traditionally meant by sola fide? Or do they at least believe something close enough to it to guard against the sorts of heresy that sola fide, as traditionally undestood, guarded against? We cannot assume they are heretical, as has too often ben done, but we can ask the question. I see no evidence that FV as a whole is guilty of heresy here. (Section XVI elaborates further on this)
In addition, there seems to be a contradiction in saying, "Adam could forfeit or demerit the gift of glorification by disobedience, but the gift or continued possession of that gift was not offered by God to Adam conditioned upon Adam’s moral exertions or achievements." If Adam could demerit the gift by disobedience, then the gift (or the continued possession of it) was conditioned upon Adam's not demeriting it by disobedience. Certainly this is not work of supererogation -- it wouldn't give Adam a "positive" balance, so to speak. But I know of no Reformed thinker who says otherwise. Those who speak (contrary to FV) of Adam's "meriting" eternal life make it clear that he would have merited this, not by supererogation, but simply by maintaining a "zero" balance, so to speak. This is why they insist on the phrase "pactum merit". Here is their reasoning: If God promises "as long as you don't do wrong, I'll give you X" then, if you don't do wrong, God in some sense owes you X. Not because your behavior in itself deserves X as a reward, but solely because of the (conditional) promise God made -- that is, solely because of the pact. God owes you (in the non-absolute, pactum sense) X because he owes it to himself (in the absolute sense) to keep his promise. The only way I can see for FVers to maintain consistency here is if what they mean when they say "the gift or continued possession of that gift was not offered by God to Adam conditioned upon Adam’s moral exertions or achievements" is that it was not conditioned upon any positive, supererogatory, moral exertions or achievements. But in that they have not distinguished their view from the view of their opponents.
XII. I agree with the substance of the section on baptism. In the statement, "But we deny that trusting God's promise through baptism elevates baptism to a human work," there seems to be the hint that some Reformed people think otherwise. None do. For that reason, I would have left that sentence out. Though of course, I agree with what the sentence says.
XIII. I agree with everything in the section on the other sacrament, except for the bit about paedo-communion. I think they could have said more here to distinguish their high view of the sacrament's efficacy (which is in line with Calvin and most of the older Reformed tradition) from the views of some bits of more recent American Presbyterianism theology. And I would still agree with them if they had done so.
XIV. Union and Imputation: I agree with this section. But I would have a problem with most FV proponents when they start further elaborating on their particular views.
XV. Law and Gospel:
We affirm that those in rebellion against God are condemned both by His law, which they disobey, and His gospel, which they also disobey. When they have been brought to the point of repentance by the Holy Spirit, we affirm that the gracious nature of all God’s words becomes evident to them. At the same time, we affirm that it is appropriate to speak of law and gospel as having a redemptive and historical thrust, with the time of the law being the old covenant era and the time of the gospel being the time when we enter our maturity as God’s people. We further affirm that those who are first coming to faith in Christ frequently experience the law as an adversary and the gospel as deliverance from that adversary, meaning that traditional evangelistic applications of law and gospel are certainly scriptural and appropriate. We deny that law and gospel should be considered as a hermeneutics, or treated as such. We believe that any passage, whether indicative or imperative, can be heard by the faithful as good news, and that any passage, whether containing gospel promises or not, will be heard by the rebellious as intolerable demand. The fundamental division is not in the text, but rather in the human heart.
I'm not entirely clear on what it means to speak of law and gospel as a hermeneutic. But I do agree with FV in rejecting the Lutheran-ish view of law/gospel that some Reformed people take. As in many other loci, I line up with Calvin here. I don't think this is an earth-shattering issue.
XVI. Sola Fide:
We affirm that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone. Faith alone is the hand which is given to us by God so that we may receive the offered grace of God. Justification is God’s forensic declaration that we are counted as righteous, with our sins forgiven, for the sake of Jesus Christ alone. We deny that the faith which is the sole instrument of justification can be understood as anything other than the only kind of faith which God gives, which is to say, a living, active and personally loyal faith. Justifying faith encompasses the elements of assent, knowledge, and living trust in accordance with the age and maturity of the believer. We deny that faith is ever alone, even at the moment of the effectual call.Certain opponents of the FV want to say that it is not as living that faith justifies. Justifying faith is indeed living and active, but, they say, it is not as active that it justifies, but only as passive and receptive. According to them, faith justifies only because by it we receive Christ. (analogy: suppose every working compass on this ship is painted red; the only non-red compasses are broken. This enables us to distinguish compasses that will function in helping the ship find its way from those that will not. Still, it is not as red things that the working compasses function in the navigation of the ship; it is only as indicating north that they play that role. In the same way, the fact that justifying faith is always living and active doesn't show that its life and activity have anything to do with our being justified by it, though it does enable us to distinguish true, justifying faith from false faith.)
The FV statement seems to be mounting an implicit argument against this. God gives only one kind of justifying faith, that justifying faith cannot be understood as anything other than justifying faith; anyone who understands it to be something other than what it really is misunderstands it. And justifying faith really is a living and active faith. FVers may wish to infer from these things that it is as living and active that faith is the sole instrument of justification. That would be unsound. To see why, without getting into logical details, think about red compasses.
I don't know whether the FVers or their opponents are right here. All I'm saying is that the implicit argument that FVers seem to be making doesn't work.
What if the FVers are right? What if it is as living and active that faith plays its role as instrument of justification? The more important question then arises: does this mean a) it plays this role by producing an obedience that is distinct (but not separate) from the living faith that produces it, so that obedience does not itself become an aspect of the instrument of justification, or b) is obedience itself included in the aliveness of faith, so that that faithful obedience functions, together with the rest of what faith is, as instrument of justification?
It seems to me that (b) is wrong, and is seriously unReformed. But the statement doesn't affirm (b). I think there is a legitimate worry that some people associated with FV might hold to something like (b). But, as far as I can see, that position cannot be pinned on FV as such. An FVer who affirms (a) has relieved us of the worry I raised in section XI. He has already affirmed (in XVII) that "those who have been justified by God’s grace through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are saved to the uttermost and will spend eternity with Christ and his saints in glory forever." From this it follows that whatever is the sole instrument of justification is that through which alone (instrumentally speaking) eternal life is forensically guaranteed. And since, in affirming (a), he has said that obedience is not part of, but is rather a result of, the faith that is the sole instrument by which eternal life is forensically guaranteed, he has distinguished our situation from that of Adam by telling us that we have a guarantee Adam didn't have -- a guarantee that is not only unmerited, but also undemeritable, and this not simply because of God's sovereign decree that we will continue in faithful obedience, but because we have received Christ, by faith, and in receiving him we have received that irrevocable guarantee, our faithful obedience playing no instrumental role in our reception of Christ or of that guarantee that is in Christ. This is what was important in sola fide, which was left out of FV use of that term.
XVII Assurance: No disagreement from me here.
XVIII Apostacy: I agree with this as well.
XVIV. Intramural: I have disgreements with certain segments of the FV. In particular, I disagree strongly with any one who won't affirm the meritorious character of Christ's work on our behalf. And I disagree strongly with anyone who denies that human beings have a nature or essence, or who denies that there is, in any sense, a change of nature involved in the passage from darkness to light. (We were, by nature, objects of wrath.)
[this post is unpolished, in progress, needs further editing]
It's been a while since Kevin posted his piece, "The Apotheosis of God." He expresses partial agreement with what I wrote here. He also says some things that I didn't say, (but which I agree with) and that are more important that many of the things I did say. Principally: Our apotheosis is rooted in the apotheosis of Christ.
It is my habit to spend most of my time talking about our disagreements. I sometimes get the awkward feeling that this gives the misleading impression that we disagree more than we agree, or that I regard our disagreements as more important than our agreements. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Where we agree, Kevin said it so very well that I have nothing to add. Where we disagree, I'm eager to get into the argument so that we both may come closer to the full truth of the matter.
First, I'm going to accuse Kevin of a historical error. He writes, "Under the intellectualist school, God had been a cosmic manager who, himself, bowed to an even higher authority." The problem with this is that the intellectualists all held to a robust understanding of divine simplicity: according to them, God's justice was not some exterior standard, existing independently of God. Rather, God's justice is God. He himself is the justice by which he is just, He himself is the highest standard, the ultimate authority, and it is precisely because his character is such that he cannot fail to give creatures their due: God cannot send an innocent person to hell because he will not do so, because justice is his essence. On this question, I believe that, while Kevin rejects what he says the intellectualists thought, he agrees with what they actually thought: "justice is an integral part of who God is."
But there is a difference. Like the voluntarists, and unlike the intellectualists, Kevin sees divine justice (vis a vis creatures) as always
(?) in the context of covenant. In this he follows Meredith Kline. I'm not familiar with Kline's work first-hand, but Lee Irons sumarizes the Klinean way of approaching this issue here. One of the problems I have with this approach is that I believe it overemphasizes the influence of late medieval Aristotelian philosophical theology on Reformed soteriology. Irons writes,
It was left to the Reformation to take the fundamental covenantal insights put forward by the via moderna ["voluntarists" -cm] and develop them several steps further. Justification was now by the imputation of the righteousness of another -- a purely covenantal act with no ontological aspects. Original sin inherited from Adam was further developed and refined to become an immediate imputation of the guilt of Adam’s covenant breach instead of an Augustinian realist participation of the human race in Adam’s sin. The ontological elements in the medieval view of the sacraments were removed, so that they became signs and seals of the covenant rather than rites which ex opere operato infused the divine nature into the soul. All of these developments flow from the nominalistic development of the notion of pactum. And, therefore, to a certain extent we in the Reformed camp today are all the theological heirs of the via moderna.
I contend that the Reformers got their notion of pactum, or covenant, not primarily from the philosophical theology of the scholastics, but from the Bible. "Dixitque ei Deus ego sum et pactum meum tecum erisque pater multarum gentium." (Gen 17:4) If we must look for a more recent historical influence, the ad fontes movement in Rennaissance classical studies influenced the way the Reformers read the Bible, and the superior role of the Bible in Reformed theology came about as a reaction to the medieval hierarchy's claimed authority to define the apostolic tradition.
Why did the Reformers get rid of the ontological aspect of medieval theologies of justification? It wasn't primarily because of how the voluntarists dealt with a puzzle in philosophical theology. It was because the Reformers read Paul, and tried to understand what he meant in his original context. And they discovered that he used the term "justification" in a forensic sense, not an ontological sense. From there, they followed the parallel Romans 5 draws between the way we recieve righteousness from Christ, and the way we are made sinners in Adam. That too is understood in forensic terms. Similarly with the sacraments. I think it is misleading to say that the ontological elements were removed. Calvin and Luther at least allowed a high degree of what we would call covenantal realism in their understanding of the sacraments. The reason they are viewed as signs and seals of the covenant is that Scripture ties them to the covenant ("this is the new covenant in my blood"), and they don't work ex opera operato because they are signs and seals of faith -- (Romans) -- and tied in that way to justification.
One may wish to criticize the Reformers interpretation of Scripture. But it was from their interpretation of scripture that these doctrines primarily flowed, not from the speculative theology of the via moderna. That's not to say that voluntarism had no influence at all. It is simply to recognize that the things the Reformers themselves felt were most important provide the the best place to look for the sources and principles of their theology.
If I'm right about this, then I'm, probably also right to find the following argument-sketch unconvincing: "The dubious voluntaristic presuppositions of the Reformation had set the course for Protestantism in general. Either maintain technical orthodoxy by retreating into the anti-intellectual propositions of fundamentalism; or go soft on doctrines the contrary of which do not pose an immediate logical contradiction to salvation." To the extent that general Protestantism is afflicted with this dilemma (and it is), I believe that it derives from the influence of anabaptistic and Enlightenment sources, not from anything in the theology of the Reformers.
But to come nearer the heart of the issue: What I think Kevin needs most of all for his reasoning to go through is the idea that justice requires that God act a certain way toward man, simply because God had already created man in his own image, and God owes it to himself not to treat his own image in a way that would dishonor him. The concept of justice involved in this claim does not require us to have read Vos or Kline. It is available to those who would restrict the notion of covenant to a pact imposed after man was created. We do not have to say that justice is always in the context of covenant. All we have to do is say that God is his own standard of justice and owes it to himself to honor his own name.
I would like to respond, briefly, to one other thing Kevin said,
Contrary to what Chris’ says further down in his post, the incompatibilist libertarian claim that libertarian free will is possible (because they are using these words to define the will as the person choosing) is not true. Nor is it the case that the force of my assertion that libertarian free will is impossible is lost against the incompatibilist. I may have conceded free agency, which is all that they mean by free will, but I have not conceded everything that the incompatibilist includes in the concept of free agency. Their idea of free agency is, in my estimation, far too broad. It is not enough that a person is able to act according to his desires, but, in order to be held morally responsible for his actions, it must have been possible for him to desire any one of the full range of natural options related to that choice.
Remember the context of my claims to which Kevin is responding: Edwards argued that libertarian freedom is impossible. He therefore concluded that the libertarian is wrong to ascribe libertarian freedom to human beings. But this argument won't work if, in fact, libertarian freedom is possible. Kevin grants that libertarian freedom is possible, so he can't use this argument.
Kevin is quite right to point out that he still has an important disagreement with the incompatiblist. But not over the question of whether libertarian-free agency is possible. My point is not that Kevin grants free agency. Of course he does. So does Edwards. My point is that Kevin grants something more than Edwards, something more than free agency: Kevin grants the possibility of libertarian-free agency. Kevin and I both agree (with Edwards against the incompatiblist libertarian) that libertarian-free agency is not the same as free agency simpliciter. But we also both agree (with the libertarian incompatiblist against Edwards) that libertarian-free agency is possible -- indeed actual. God has it. Thus, Kevin's claim that libertarian-free will is impossible (using the word "will" differently than the libertarian) is of no force against the libertarian. To be sure, there still is disagreement between Kevin and the (typical) libertarian about free will/agency ("free" simpliciter): they disagree about whether it is compatible with pre-determination. But they don't disagree about whether libertarian-free will/agency is compatible with pre-determination. It isn't. By definition. That's what "libertarian-free" means. And they both agree further that this incompatiblist kind of agency is possible.
Agreements:
1. Libertarian-free will/agency is possible
2. Libertarian-free will/agency is incompatible with predetermination
3. Human beings have free will/agency ("free" simpliciter)
Disagreements
4. Free will/agency = libertarian free will/agency.
5. Free will/agency is incompatible with predetermination.
6. Human beings have libertarian-free will/agency.
If the incompatiblist libertarian insists on making his incompatiblism (4) part of the meaning of his use of the term "free will" and "free agency", then 3 will not be an agreement after all. It will be (in his mouth) equivalent to 6. But if we let the incompatiblist get away with defining "free" this way then we will have to move 4 and 5 into the area of Agreements: 4 will be true by definition, and 5 will be equivalent to 2 (which is also true by definition). Because this would be confusing, I don't recommend we let our common enemy get away with defining words that way. But that doesn't matter w/r/t the point I was making, which was that there is no disagreement over 1, and that therefore Kevin cannot derive ~6 from ~1, as Edwards would do.
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.
The following fictional dialogue represents my attempts to crystallize the hermeneutical issue that divides me from Rome. I think many of the same things could be said, mutatis mutandis, regarding Eastern Orthodoxy; and much of what I say will be a reflection of Kevin's discussion of sola scriptura with Clifton; but, as you will see, I want to approach it in a different way. My character, Thomas, speaks for Rome rather than Byzantium because I know Rome a bit better, and am more likely to give her a fair representation. That being said, corrections are welcome from Roman Catholics, who, of course, know their own tradition better than I do.
THOMAS: I can understand, and agree with, your desire to have theology rooted in Scripture. What I don't understand is the idea that the interpretation of Scripture should be ultimately up to the individual, placing each Christian's own interpretation over the consensus fidelium. Surely such a doctrine is destructive of the unity of the Church. Can you explain to me why you think this is the right way to interpret Scripture?
JOHN: I'm afraid I can't.
THOMAS: Um, ... why not?
JOHN: Because that's not what I believe.
THOMAS: Oh, well I guess I did describe the doctrine in a negative way, not as you would. But you do believe in sola scriptura, don't you?
JOHN: No.
THOMAS: What? Do you then believe, as I do, that we are not permitted to depart from Holy Tradition?
JOHN: Yes, I agree with you there.
THOMAS: Do you believe that the Church is infallible?
JOHN: Yes, I believe that too.
THOMAS: Have you undergone a conversion since last we spoke? For I know that you used to hold beliefs that were quite contrary to the teaching of the Church.
JOHN: You know no such thing. I remain a Protestant. Our protest is not against the Church but against some of her officers, principally the bishop of Rome. But let me ask you a question: if, as we agree, the Church is infallible, who speaks for the church? Priests?
THOMAS: Well, yes. That's part of their job: to convey the content of Tradition to the laity.
JOHN: But you don't hold that everything a priest says is infallible, right?
THOMAS: Right: I don't hold that. Just because a priest says that something is the teaching of the Church doesn't mean it is. Priests are supposed to be faithful in that, but they aren't always, and sometimes they just make mistakes.
JOHN: So can we agree that, whether we call them priests or presbyters, they transmit fallibly an infallible Tradition.
THOMAS: Yes, I think that captures it. But when all the Bishops of the church agree in ecumenical council, or when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, that's a different story.
JOHN: So our disagreement concerns the question: Which officers of the church can speak for the church officially, in the sense that their teaching defines the Church's position.
THOMAS: Which officers do you think play that role?
JOHN: The Apostles.
THOMAS: But the Apostle's aren't here. Their Tradition must be transmitted to us. Of course, it is transmitted in Scripture, but Scripture needs to be interpreted, and I think I already heard you reject sola scriptura.
JOHN: Yes, that's right: I do reject sola scriptura. The Apostolic teaching was entrusted to the Church, and she is to hand it on as her Tradition. It was written down to help her in this, not so it could be interpreted by individuals apart from that Tradition. Tradition is the natural home of Scripture and it cannot be properly interpreted apart from that. But let me ask you another question: do you make a distinction between Apostolic Tradition, and traditions that have grown up within the Church that are not infallible?
THOMAS: Yes, there is such a distinction.
JOHN: So, if a particular tradition is not of Apostolic origin, we should not regard it as infallible.
THOMAS: I'm not sure what you mean by "Apostolic origin". There is such a thing as development of doctrine. I agree that the only infallible tradition in the church is that founded by the Apostles, but the foundation is not the whole house. Not that the Apostles were inadequate for their time, but Christians face different problems (as well as some of the same problems) now. The Church must speak to those problems, not de novo, but in a way that is rooted in the Apostolic teaching, and grows organically out of it.
JOHN: While we might disagree somewhat on what sort of development is appropriate, I certainly agree that the Church needs to speak to contemporary issues, and needs to do so in a way that is rooted in and grows out of the Apostolic foundation. It's not just a matter of repeating what they said and finding out how it was understood in its original context. That's important, but not the whole story.
THOMAS: You seem to be in a strange half-way house between Protestant and Catholic beliefs about the Church and her Tradition. Can you remind me again what in Catholic teaching you agree with and what you don't.
JOHN: I agree entirely with genuinely catholic doctrine of the church, as I understand it. But I presume the question you wished me to answer was: Where do I disagree with Rome?
THOMAS: Indeed, you have begun to answer it.
JOHN: Whereas Rome holds that the infallible Apostolic Tradition was entrusted to an infallible episcopacy, I hold that the infallible Apostolic Tradition was entrusted to a fallible episcopacy. (and I would identify episcopacy with presbytery, but that's a bit of a tangent.) Thus, whenever a question arises whether a given tradition is Apostolic in origin, and thus infallible, the only way to answer that question is to examine the tradition, look at its history, and, most importantly, compare it to the one thing that conveys the infallible Apostolic Tradition infallibly: Holy Scripture.
THOMAS: This sounds like sola scriptura to me.
JOHN: As a matter of fact, I think it is in line with what the Reformers meant by "sola scriptura", but, nowadays, most people think it means: Tradition is not infallible; the Church is not infallible; and the individual conscience is the final court of appeal, in this life, for questions of scriptural interpretation. I don't accept any of those things. That's why I said I don't believe in sola scriptura. I want to emphasize our agreement with Rome, and our disagreement with the Anabaptists and their heirs, whereas the Reformers put the emphasis the other way 'round. These days, Rome is a bit more encouraging than she used to be when it comes to laymen studying Scripture, and I think the Anabaptist error is a bigger problem for the Church today.
THOMAS: But it seems to me that your position in practice amounts to pretty much the same thing as the Anabaptist position. If the episcopacy to which infallible Tradition was entrusted cannot convey it infallibly, then it's ultimately up to the individual to distinguish Tradition from tradition, and the individual has to do that by interpreting Scripture apart from Tradition. He can't interpret from within Tradition, because, on your view, he has no way of knowing what Apostolic Tradition is, prior to his interpretation of Scripture. So it sounds like you are simply adding the label "Tradition" to the result of your individualistic interpretation.
JOHN: There is a world of difference between the Anabaptist position and mine. I do not envisage the individual interpreting Scripture apart from tradition. And we can know what Tradition is on the basis of a fallible transmission. We can't know it infallibly on that basis, but we can't know anything infallibly. All we need for knowledge is reliable, not infallible. I envisage the Church engaged in a hermeneutical circle. She begins with her tradition as she knows it, and with Scripture as she understands it. From within this standpoint she seeks to better understand the Apostolic teaching, interpreting Scripture from within tradition, and subjecting her tradition to critique on this basis, purging it from unApostolic accretions. It's a dynamic process, which every Christian is involved in, and which the episcopacy oversees. At no point is the individual interpreting apart from tradition. Notice what I said: "when the question arises," whether a given tradition is of Apostolic origin, one consults Scripture. Such questions arise within the context of a self-critical tradition in a hermeneutic circle. That's my position. By contrast, the Anabaptist position either ignores the hermeneutic circle altogether, or else enjoins the individual to enter the circle with his own first reading, regardless of tradition; the ideas of other Christians, living or dead, are, at most, sage advice.
THOMAS: OK, I can see how those are different, in theory at least. But I don't see how you can say that the episcopacy oversees the process. How can the episcopacy do this in any authoritative manner if it is just as fallible as each individual Christian?
JOHN: It might help you to understand my position if you consider your own view of what goes on when an ordinary priest helps a layman to understand Scripture and Tradition. Suppose the priest gets it wrong, and the layman discovers this, say, by reading a papal proclamation himself. Surely the layman should bring this to the attention of the priest. It's possible the layman misunderstood the pope, so he should listen submissively. The priest is in authority over him. But it's also possible the priest is wrong, which means the priest's authority is not absolute. Well, I think laymen are in something like that situation with regard to every post-Apostolic officer of the church.
THOMAS: But the priest's oversight can only work because the priest is himself overseen by an infallible episcopacy. I mean, this disagreement between priest and layman can be settled, if it comes to that, definitively, by higher authorities.
JOHN: And that's where the analogy breaks down. While, on my view, the Holy Spirit is at work, guiding the church into all truth, His relationship to the fallible episcopacy is not like the way your infallible episcopacy relates to its priests.
THOMAS: Ah, so you admit that our episcopacy is infallible!
JOHN: No, that was just a manner of speaking.
THOMAS: I know, I was joking with you. But in all seriousness, this conversation began with me asking you to explain why you hold to sola scriptura. Now that you've explained what your view is, can you explain why you hold it?
JOHN: Yes. And since my view is partly in agreement with yours, I'll give my reasons for the part we disagree about, which is ...
THOMAS: Was Holy Tradition entrusted to a fallible or an infallible episcopacy?
JOHN: Precisely. Now, it would be question-begging for me to presuppose that there is no infallible episcopacy, just as it would be question-begging for you to presuppose that there is.
THOMAS: But the doctrine of an infallible episcopacy is part of tradition, which you say you start with.
JOHN: It's part of the tradition of your branch of Christendom, my branch has a different tradition. The question then arises, who's right?
THOMAS: But didn't your tradition originate in Martin Luther's individual interpretation, in opposition to tradition?
JOHN: I don't believe it did. I think Luther was engaged in precisely the kind of project I outlined above: it was a self-criticism of tradition in a hermeneutic circle with Scripture.
THOMAS: But how do you justify that project? I mean, there is much in it that I agree with, but how do you justify that aspect of it that conflicts with prior tradition?
JOHN: Do you agree that if there is no infallible episcopacy, the only way Tradition can operate is as I described?
THOMAS: Let's see, that's a conditional statement: "If there is no infallible episcopacy ..." Since I think there is an infallible episcopacy it's kind of hard to say how things would be if there weren't. I suppose if there were no infallible episcopacy then Tradition couldn't operate at all.
JOHN: But what I'm trying to get at is this: if we can answer the question of whether there is an infallible episcopacy, then what we both agree upon concerning Tradition is enough to give us something like what I described. There could be details to be ironed out, but if you're going to subscribe to a high view of tradition without an infallible episcopacy, you're going to end up somewhere in the neighborhood of what I described. To put it another way, my view is about as high a view of tradition as could possibly be retained without an infallible episcopacy.
THOMAS: I'm not sure your view is really a very high view of tradition; I'm not convinced that, carried to its logical conclusion, it's all that much different from the Anabaptist view, in practice. But I'll grant that it might be. And I take your point: settling the question of whether there is an infallible episcopacy would settle the question of hermeneutic method. But I'm not sure how you can settle the former without presupposing a hermeneutic method.
JOHN: I can't. That's the hermeneutic circle. Which is not at all a vicious circle. I'm not presupposing that there isn't an infallible episcopacy, I'm simply not presupposing that there is. Because it is in question whether that doctrine is the teaching of the Church.
THOMAS: I have the feeling that "not presupposing an infallible episcopacy" is going to involve a hermeneutics indistinguishable from what you would have if you presupposed the absence of an infallible episcopacy.
JOHN: In practice, yes. Because, in our discussion, the only hermeneutic principles we can use are those we agree upon. I'm not assuming there couldn't be other valid principles, but such principles cannot be used without begging the question, so long as they are in dispute.
THOMAS: But isn't relying on a hermeneutic stripped of those principles just as question-begging as using them?
JOHN: Not at all. It's certainly possible that, using only methods we agree upon, we will discover that there is an infallible episcopacy, at which point other methods become available. There's nothing question-begging about that.
THOMAS: So we are starting with ...
JOHN: only what we both believe to be genuine Tradition, true to its Apostolic origin: those great ecumenical doctrines that the Reformers and their opponents agreed upon. We cannot rely upon those things about which our traditions differ. So you cannot rely upon your church's interpretation of scripture, except where that agrees with what the Reformed churches say. And I cannot rely upon my tradition either. Both of us have to argue for it using only what we agree upon.
...
Here I am in doubt as to whether Thomas can consent to this. What is Rome's position here? Does Rome have a position on this? Can the infallibility of the episcopacy be demonstrated from Scripture using only interpretive principles that we Reformed folks agree with? That is, not apart from all Tradition, but apart from those aspects of her t/Tradition that distinguish Rome from us "separated brothers"?
If not, then belief in an infallible episcopacy can only be a basic faith commitment. In which case John, to answer Thomas's question of why he does not share this basic faith commitment, will point to history, and talk about how, at the end of the middle ages, people lost faith in the episcopacy. It was acting in a manner that tended to undermine people's faith in it. Did its bad behavior then -- does its bad behavior now -- prove that it wasn't an infallible teacher? No. But we are not here in the realm of proof, but of basic faith commitments, and faith -- trust -- must be engendered by trustworthiness. If the infallibility of the Roman magisterium is a basic faith commitment, if we are asked to take their word for it that they speak infallibly for Christ, ... well, I can't see my way to trusting them that much. My faith in Christ himself is of an utterly different character: by his life he showed himself to be entirely trustworthy.
This is what must be said if faith in the infallibility of the episcopacy -- as teacher -- cannot be derived from Scripture using only what we all agree upon. If it can, then there is no need to regard it as a basic faith commitment. It will be a faith comitment resting upon faith in Christ and the Holy Spirit. It will be faith that Jesus was true to his word when he established his Church as an institution with an infallible episcopacy. The belief that Christ in fact did that will not be based upon a prior trust in the episcopacy that says he did (saying that these passage are to be interpreted thus). Rather, it will be the other way around.
I have yet to meet a Roman Catholic brother who was able to give a convincing demonstration of this. In my experience, the exegetical debate always comes down to "This is how the Roman Catholic church interprets it, and it is not right to interpret Scripture apart from Tradition," at which point begins something like the above discussion on the proper role of t/Tradition in interpreting Scripture, a discussion that really needs to be settled before the exegetical debate can be fruitfully entered into.
At the end of the day, I think the Roman Catholic believer must face this dilemma: either a basic faith commitment to the Roman communion (and, sorry, but I don't trust your bishops that much); or else prove it using hermeneutic principles a Protestant can agree with (that is, a Protestant who respects ecumenical tradition, but not Rome's distinctives).
Sans the assumption of Rome's infallibility, Reformed exegesis seems more convincing to me.
I wrongly accused Kevin of making an "unargued claim that Adam could not have acted as I say he did: without motive to disobey, per se, but simply on a motive to do something that, as he well knew, was per accidens sinful." In fact, Kevin did not make such an unargued claim because he did not make such a claim at all. My attention had lapsed after reading all of that stuff with the Xs and Ys. Kevin wasn't talking about motivations or dispositions at all, but about inclinations in what he calls the narrow sense. In this sense, an inclination is something like a personal act of inclining the will. If this is distinguished from the act of willing itself, as Kevin would have it, then I have no opinion on the issues discussed in those paragraphs, for I cannot make sense of such a distinction. The only thing I can understand as prior to the act of willing are motivations (along with things prior even to them). [Well, I guess you could also say the person himself is prior to his act of willing. And of course the divine decree is too.] As far as the act of willing itself goes. There is no question but that a man always wills as he wishes, or as he prefers, which is to say he wills as he wills. If that's all Kevin means, well, who could disagree with that? The interesting question is why he wills, wishes, or prefers this rather than that. And whether that question always has an answer.
I think I finally understand why Kevin does not wish to call God's libertarian free agency "freedom of will". He writes,
"The Father freely chose to elect with nothing determining whether or not he would. But I will not call this libertarian free will. The will cannot choose at all, much less in a libertarian sense. It is a faculty and not a person. It moves in whatever direction the person has inclined it."
I think he is saying that to speak of libertarian free will means, by definition, that the faculty of will -- as distinct from the person -- is actually making its own choices. I certainly never intended, and I doubt that any one ever intended, to say this. When people speak of the will choosing, it is shorthand for "the person chooses by will (i.e., voluntarily)", or else the word "will" is being used to refer not to the faculty but to the person choosing, so that all that was being affirmed was that the person choosing chooses. Which is not in dispute. Kevin seems to think there is a substantive issue here: is the will "really" the person choosing or the faculty by which choice is possible? To my eyes it looks as if this is quibbling. If by "will" you mean "person choosing", then the will is the person choosing, and if you mean the faculty, then the will is the faculty. Does it make sense to ask what the will "really" is? Only if we have some prior way of fixing the meaning of the term "will". I am at a loss to know what this is.
Whatever anyone else may have intended, I certainly never intended to say that anything other than the person chooses. This should have been clear from my definition of libertarian free will in the third paragraph of my comments on Kevin's Divine Freedom and Human Nature: "a voluntas is libertarian free if and only if it enables the person to make some libertarian free choice".
In my previous post, I very briefly waved my hands in the direction of an argument for God's libertarian free will. I didn't expand upon it because I didn't regard it as important issue. As a result, my meaning didn't really get across. I still don't think there is substantive disagreement here, but I think further explanation could help clear up confusions in other areas. When I speak of God's freedom in election, my question is about the earliest "whatever-it-was" by which the decision to elect particular persons was determined. If the decree was determined, say, by God's prior love for the elect, then what determined this love? At some point we get back to X, where we must say that nothing determined X. And the only question is whether or not X is voluntary. If it is voluntary, I call it "of will".
Some things have their origin in God's nature: they are as they are because of what God is by nature -- i.e. what God is just by being God. Other things have their origin in God's will -- and by this I mean they originate in an act of will (volens), that is, a voluntary act. They do not originate in the divine faculty of will (voluntas) -- not in the sense in which I am speaking. The divine voluntas only makes the choice to elect possible. It equally makes possible the choice not to elect, or to elect different persons. But the actual election of the definite elect has its origin NOT in the faculty of will, which is part of God's nature, but in an ACT of will. This act of will is not part of God's nature, though it is made possible by a part of God's nature (namely, the voluntas). I deployed Occam's razor to eliminate any other origin for the decree of election distinct from (a) God's nature (what God is just by being God), or (b) a voluntary divine act.
Since I call any voluntary act an act of will, I say that God has libertarian free will in election. This does not mean that something other than a divine person makes libertarian free choices. It means only that election was both voluntary and libertarian free.
Now we come to the complexities Kevin has introduced into his theory of will. Much of what he says I do not understand, and I certainly do not see the motivation for introducing so many distinctions. He asks "If making a decision and inclining the will are so closely related, why not just choose the simpler option and say that they are the same thing"? Indeed, why not? He he answers, "The seemingly simpler view does not account, however, for the total depravity of unregenerate man or of the impossibility of God to do evil." Here Kevin implies that to identify the decision and the inclination gives rise to some incompatibility, or at least is in tension with, total depravity and divine impeccability. But it is hard for me to see how. From my point of view, it looks like making a decision and inclining the will are one and the same. In complete harmony with this (as far as I can see), I also affirm that the possibilities for how I can incline my will in a given situation (i.e., what decisions I can make) depend on what sort of a person I am. God cannot incline his will toward unrighteousness, and a sinner cannot incline his will in any direction without sinning (i.e., cannot choose good). Where is the problem supposed to be?
In the rest of the paragraph, Kevin goes on to argue against the incompatiblist view (i.e., moral responsibility requires libertarian freedom) -- a view which both he and I reject. I'm not clear on how this fits into the discussion we are having.
Throughout Kevin's post, I find the discussion to be very metaphorical, and I wonder if the metaphors are leading us astray. Can the will move other than as the person inclines it? How can this possibly be in question? Why is Kevin arguinng about it as if it weren't just a matter of definition? What else do we mean when we speak (metaphorically) about the "motion" of the will, unless it refers to a person voluntarity choosing or consenting? And what does it mean to say that a person inclines his will, if not that a person chooses or consents? When Kevin speaks of the will as a "faculty", perhaps he means more than I a willing to admit.
I say only this: some beings are able to choose and consent, they are able to act voluntarily; other beings are not; whether a given being is able to will or not depends upon what sort of being it is -- its nature. This ability does not itself do anything -- it does not move, nor is it moved. We use such expressions as "the motion of the will", but this is only a manner of speaking. A person does not have to do something to something before he can will. To will just is to act voluntarily. The will is not acted upon by the person, for there is nothing there to act upon. What there is is an ability, not a mechanism.
Prior to his clarifications, I thought that his "inclinations" referred to a person being inclined toward an act of will, rather than a will being inclined by a person. What I was arguing against was the view that I take to be Edwards's: in Kevin's terms, that a person's choices are always determined by the strongest disposition (or conjunction of dispositions). But even here I should be careful, since I'm not absolutely certain that I understand what Kevin means by "disposition". Let me rather use Edwards's word, "motivation", since it is his view to which I primarily object. I take it that what is motivated is not, strictly speaking, a will, but a person. And a person is motivated to act voluntarily, or to exercise or incline his will. However this works, the important thing is that once a person actually exercises or inclines or moves his will, the action has already been done, or at least it is inexorably determined which action will be done. Prior to this action, there are the motivations. According to Edwards, the motivations have various degrees of strength, and that action for which the motivation is strongest (all things taken together) always and by necessity determines what the person will do -- how he will incline or move or exercise his will. If, as Kevin seems to think, the motion of the will is something other than a person's act of inclining his will, then motivations precede not only the motion of the will, but also the person's act of inclining his will.
It is possible that Kevin actually agrees with me in rejecting this Edwardsian view. Certainly, it cannot apply to God, since his libertarian freedom conflicts with it. God's act of election, or his inclining his will toward that act, was not determined by the relative strength of preceding motivations. This follows from what Kevin and I agree upon: that act -- the earliest personal act from which election follows -- was libertarian free, and hence was not predetermined by anything. Kevin doesn't want to call this act an act of will. On this basis he can continue to assert that libertarian free will is impossible. But that assertion now looses its force against the incompatiblist. The incompatiblist libertarian is interested in defending human libertarian free agency. Whether we call this libertarian free will or not hardly matters. In fact, libertarians will typically define the will as the person choosing, rather than the facutly -- so their claim that libertarian free will is possible is true (the words as they use them express a truth). So Kevin cannot take up Edwards's argument against the impossibility of libertarian free will (defined as libertarian free agency), since he agrees that libertarian free agency is possible. Thus I still think that the issue of divine libertarian freedom is not relevant to the rest of the discussion, except insofar as it may help us to clarify the meanings of certain expressions we have been using.
Now, when it comes to the human will: I say that Adam fell when he first engaged in a personal act of inclining his will. I would identify inclining the will with willing, but if you say that the willing was posterior to the inclining, then I say the fall happened when he inclined, not when he willed. I'm not sure how there can be a voluntary act that is not an act of will, but Adam's act of inclining his will was certainly a voluntary act. This act was sin. Prior to this act, Adam's motivations were properly ordered. None of his motivations was stronger than his motivation to obey God. To the extent that his motives were comensurable, he was at least as highly motivated to obey as to do anything else. However, not being confirmed in righteousness, his motive to obey was not so much stronger than his other motives that obedience was necessary for him. If he were confirmed in righteousness, disobedience would still be in his power, but obedience would be necessary for him (disobedience would be impossible). Since he was not confirmed in righteousness, it was possible for him to incline his will either toward obedience or disobedience. In order for this to be the case, he had to be motivated toward the obedient action and toward the disobedient action. But his motive toward the disobedient action did not have to be a motive toward disobedience as such. It only had to be a motive toward an action that was, per accidens, disobedient. This motive was not sinful. His choice to incline his will toward that action was sinful, not because it had a sinful motive, but because it was a disobedient act. The only things that had real influence on his action were good motives: the motive to eat what is good for food, etc. The fact that the act was disobedient, although he was aware of it, had no influence in motivating him to disobey. If anything, it motivated him not to disobey -- only it did not motivate him overwhelmingly in that direction, so he was able to choose to incline his will otherwise.
Kevin goes through several possibilities other than the one I presented. In each of them it is rather obvious that Adam did not disobey without motive to disobey -- But when it comes to the situation I actually presented, all we have is Kevin's unargued claim that Adam could not have acted as I say he did: without motive to disobey, per se, but simply on a motive to do something that, as he well knew, was per accidens sinful.
Let me use another analogy. Suppose I willingly drink some foul-tasting liquid in order to cure a disease I have. I have absolutely no motive to drink something foul-tasting. I would much rather the medicine tasted good. But it is not up to me how the medicine tastes. In such a situation, I cannot do what I would most like (be cured, and not drink something foul-tasting). So I must settle for second best. I don't have to acquire any additional motive in order to drink the liquid. My motive to be cured, together with my knowledge that this alone will cure me, is sufficient to motivate me to drink. I do not need and do not acquire a motive to drink this liquid under the description "foul-tasting liquid". It is enough that I have a motive to drink the liquid under the description "liquid that will cure me". In the same way, at the moment of the fall, disobedience was distasteful to Adam. He would much rather have both eaten and remained in submission to God. But that wasn't in his power. He had to choose to incline his will either toward eating or not eating. He inclined his will toward the act of eating the fruit with good motivations. He was motivated to eat under the description "this fruit that is good for food", and not under the description "act of disobedience". He knew it was sinful to act as he did, but he wasn't motivated by the sinfulness of the act. He acted in spite of the fact that it was sinful and distasteful to him to disobey. It was not in his power both to find out what it was like to eat this fruit and to remain in submission to God. He had to choose one, and the relative strengths of his motivations left it open which he would choose. He fell as soon as he fixed his will upon what was per accidens sinful -- as soon as he chose a natural good over a supernatural good.
Here I am trying to describe things in such a way that Kevin will be able to conceptualize acting on a motivation other than the strongest. He will certainly need to do so if he is to say what he says in the last paragraph. There, he accurately translates my question to him:"What causes the person to incline the will in only one of two conflicting directions?" He thinks he can respond as I do:
"My answer is: in some case at least, nothing apart from the secret will of God. Since I have conceded the libertarian free agency of God in election, why not allow this for other acts of God or even acts of other persons? The inclination of the will is an effect and so, I must insist on sufficient causation. But it is not necessarily true that inclining the will is an effect. Unless someone can show that this is incoherent, I can deny libertarian free will and affirm libertarian free agency at the same time. Either the causal chain is broken as soon as we move back from the inclined will to the person, or the person was free to have broken it. "
But not without any motivation. A person's act of inclining his will must have some motivations. It cannot simply be an absurd, brute event. But these motivations need not determine it. It cannot be libertarian free because a person's act of inclining his will is something that comes to pass, and God forordains whatsoever comes to pass. But it can be undetermined by secondary causes, in which case the relative strengths of motivations will not determine the direction in which a person inclines his will.
But I get the impression that Kevin is not entirely comfortable with that last paragraph. I think he prefers to say that there is an unbroken chain of causal connection among secondary causes. He briefly argues for this, saying,
"if I hold to the secret will of God and do not link it to such a causal chain, then I am at a loss to explain how it is has anything to do with what happens in the world."
If sound, this argument proves much more than Kevin wants. The initial coming to be of the created world is not preceded by any secondary causes. Yet it certainly has something to do with what happens in the world. All chains of secondary causes eventually come back to a first link. Why can't there be mutiple, interlocking chains? There is no particular reason to think that miracles are determined by secondary causes going all the way back to the initial conditions of the universe. Certainly, the incarnation cannot have been thus determined. Of course, once the miracle occurs, the resulting effects fit themselves right into the causal processes that are already going on. Miraculously created wine intoxicates for the same reason ordinary wine intoxicates -- they are, in fact the same stuff. In the same way, the results of a non-determined choice fit right in to the causal processes already going on. Indeed, they fit more tightly. For they are also limmited (though not determined) in their origin. I cannot choose to bring about just any effect, only what is both in my power and possible for me. Preceding causal processes put limits on what is in my power, and preceding motivations put further limits on what is possible for me.
The problem with the idea of a single unbroken chain of necessary causation is precisely that it has the logical consequence that Adam's fall was determined by the "set up" of the universe, and that there was something morally wrong with Adam from the beginning. If his choice was determined by the relative strength of