Commentary on Romans; Systematic Theology

Thirdly, The word cause is no less ambiguous. It sometimes means the mere occasion; sometimes the instrument by which something is accomplished; sometimes the efficiency to which the effect is due; sometimes the end for which a thing is done, as when we speak of final causes; sometimes the ground or reason why the effect or action of the efficient cause is so rather than otherwise. To say that motives are the occasional causes of volition, is consistent with any theory of agency, whether of necessity or indifference; to say that they are efficient causes, is to transfer the efficiency of the agent to the motives; but to say that they are the ground or reason why the volitions are what they are, is only to say that every rational being, in every voluntary act, must have a reason, good or bad, for acting as he does. Most of the arguments against the statement that motives are the cause of volitions, are founded on the assumption that they are affirmed to be producing causes, and that it is intended to deny that the agent is the efficient cause of his own acts; whereas, the meaning simply is that motives are the reasons which determine the agent to assert his efficiency in one way rather than another. They are, however, truly causes, in so far as they determine the effect to be thus, and not otherwise. Parental love may induce a mother to watch by a sick child, and in this sense is the cause of her devotion, but she is none the less the efficient cause of all her acts of tenderness. Reid says, "either the man is the cause of the action. and then it is a free action, and is justly imputed to him, or it must have another cause, and cannot justly be imputed to the man."¹ This supposes that the word cause has but one sense. In the case just supposed, the mother is the efficient, her love the rational cause or reason of her acts. Is it a denial of her free agency to say that her love determined her will in favour of attention instead of neglect?

Fourthly, No little ambiguity arises from confounding liberty of the will with liberty of the agent. These forms of expression are often used as equivalent. The same thing is perhaps commonly intended by saying, "The will is free," and "The agent is free." It is admitted that the same thought may be properly expressed by these phrases. As we speak of freedom of conscience, when we mean to say that the man is free as to his conscience; so we may speak of freedom of the will, when all we mean is, that the man is free in willing. The usage, however, which makes these expressions synonymous is liable to the following objections: (1.) Predicating liberty of the will is apt to lead to our conceiving of the will as separated from the agent; as a distinct self-acting power in the soul. Or, if this extreme be avoided, which is not always the case, the will is regarded as too much detached from the other faculties of the soul, and as out of sympathy with it in its varying stales. The will is only the soul willing. The soul is of course a unit. A self-determination is a determination of the will, and whatever leads to a self-decision leads to a decision of the will. (2.) A second objection to confounding these expressions is, that they are not really equivalent. The man may be free, when his will is in bondage. It is a correct and established usage of language, expressive of a real fact of consciousness, to speak of an enslaved will in a free agent. This is not a mere metaphor, but a philosophical truth. He that commits sin is the servant of sin. Long-continued mental or bodily habits may bring the will into bondage, while the man continues a free agent. A man who has been for years a miser, has his will in a state of slavery, yet the man is perfectly free. He is self-controlled, self-determined. His avarice is himself. It is his own darling, cherished feeling. (3.) There is no use to have two expressions for the same thing; the one appropriate, the other ambiguous. What we really mean is, that the agent is free. That is the only point to which any interest is attached. The man is the responsible subject. If he be free so as to be justly account able for his character and conduct, it matters not what are the laws which determine the operations of his reason, conscience, or will; or whether liberty can be predicated of either of those faculties separately considered. We maintain that the man is free; but we deny that the will is free in the sense of being independent of reason, conscience, and feeling. In other words, a man cannot be independent of himself, or any one of his faculties independent of all the rest.

Fifthly, Another fruitful source of confusion on this subject, is confounding liberty with ability. The usage which attaches the same meaning to these terms is very ancient. Augustine denied free will to man since the fall. Pelagius affirmed freedom of will to be essential to our nature. The former intended simply to deny to fallen man the power to turn himself unto God. The latter defined liberty to be the ability at any moment to determine himself either for good or evil. The controversy between Luther and Erasmus was really about ability, nominally it was about free-will. Luther's book is entitled "De Servo Arbitrio," that of Erasmus, "De Libero Arbitrio." This usage pervades all the symbols of the Reformation, and was followed by the theologians of the sixteenth century. They all ascribe free agency to man in the true sense of the words, but deny to him freedom of will. To a great extent this confusion is still kept up. Many of the prevalent definitions of liberty are definitions of liberty are definitions of ability; and much that is commonly advanced to prove the liberty of the will, is really intended, and is of force only as in support of the doctrine of ability. Jacobi denies liberty to be the power to decide in favour of the dictates of reason in opposition to the solicitations of sense. Bretschneider says it is the power to decide according to reason. Augustine, and after him most Augustinians distinguished, (1.) The liberty of man before the fall, which was an ability either to sin or not to sin. (2.) The state of man since the fall, when he has liberty to sin, but not to good. (3.) The state of man in heaven when he has liberty to good, but not to evil. This last is the highest form of liberty, a felix necessitas boni. This is the liberty which belongs to God. In the popular mind perhaps the common idea of liberty is, the power to decide for good or evil, sin or holiness. This idea pervades more or less all the disquisitions in favour of the liberty of indifference, or of power to the contrary. The essence of liberty in a moral accountable being, according to Reid, is the power to do what he is accountable for. So Cousin, Jouffroy, Tappan, and this whole class of writers, make liberty and ability synonymous. The last-mentioned author, when speaking of the distinction between natural and moral inability, says, "when we have denied liberty in denying a self-determining power, these definitions, in order to make out a quasi liberty and ability, are nothing but ingenious folly and plausible deception."² Here liberty and ability are avowedly used as convertible terms.

Other writers who do not ignore the distinction between liberty and ability, yet distinguish them only as different forms of liberty. This is the case with many of the German authors. As for example with Müller, who distinguishes the Formale Freiheit, or ability, from the Reale Freiheit, or liberty as it actually exists. The former is only necessary as the condition of the latter. That is, he admits, that if a man's acts are certainly determined by his character, he is really free. But in order to render him justly responsible for his character, it must be self-acquired.³ This is confounding things which are not only distinct, but which are admitted to be distinct. It is admitted by this class of writers, and, indeed, by the whole Christian world, that men since the fall have not power to make themselves holy; much less to effect this transformation by a volition. It is admitted that saints in glory are infallibly determined by their character to holiness, yet fallen men and saints are admitted to be free. Ability may be lost, yet liberty remain. The former is lost since the fall. Restored by grace, as they say, it is to be again lost in that liberty to good which is identical with necessity. If liberty and ability are thus distinct, why should they be confounded? We are conscious of liberty. We know ourselves to be free in all our volitions. They reveal themselves to our inmost consciousness as acts of self-determination. We cannot disown them, or escape responsibility on account of them, even if we try; and yet no man is conscious of ability to change his own heart. Free agency belongs to God, to angels, to saints in glory, to fallen men, and to Satan; and it is the same in all. Yet in the strictest sense of the words, God cannot do evil; neither can Satan recover, by a volition, his lost inheritance of holiness. It is a great evil thus to confound things essentially distinct. It produces endless confusion. Augustine says, man is not free since the fall, because he cannot but sin; saints are free because they cannot sin. Inability in the one case destroys freedom; inability in the other is the perfection of freedom! Necessity is the very opposite of liberty, and yet they are said to be identical. One man in asserting the freedom of the will, means to assert free agency, while he denies ability; another means by it full ability. It is certainly important that the same words should not be used to express antagonistic ideas.

Confusion of thought and language, however, is not the principal evil which arises from making liberty and ability identical. It necessarily brings us into conflict with the truth, and with the moral judgments of men. There are three truths of which every man is convinced from the very constitution of his nature. (1.) That he is a free agent. (2.) That none but free agents can be accountable for their character or conduct. (3.) That he does not possess ability to change his moral state by an act of the will. Now, if in order to express the fact of his inability, we say, that he is not a free agent, we contradict his consciousness; or, if he believe what we say, we destroy his sense of responsibility. Or it we tell him that because he is a free agent, he has power to change his heart at will, we again bring ourselves into conflict with his convictions. He knows he is a free agent, and yet he knows that he has not the power to make himself holy. Free agency is the power to decide according to our character; ability is the power to change our character by a volition. The former, the Bible and consciousness affirm belongs to man in every condition of his being the latter, the Bible and consciousness teach with equal explicitness does not belong to fallen man. The two things, therefore, ought not to be confounded.

Sixthly, Another source of confusion is not discriminating between self-determination and self-determination of the will. Those who use the latter expression, say they intend to deny that the will is determined by the antecedent state of the mind, and to affirm that it has a self-determining power, independent of anything preexisting or coëxisting. They say that those who teach that when the state of the mind is the same, the volition will inevitably be the same, teach necessity and fatalism, and reduce the will to a machine. "I know," says Reid, "nothing more that can be desired to establish fatalism throughout the universe. When it is proved that, through all nature, the same consequences invariably result from the same circumstances, the doctrine of liberty must be given up."⁴ The opposite doctrine is, that the will is "self-moved; it makes its nisus of itself, and of itself it forbears to make it, and within the sphere of its activity, and in relation to its objects, it has the power of selecting, by a mere arbitrary act, any particular object. It is a cause all whose acts, as well as any particular act, considered as phenomena demanding a cause, are accounted for in itself alone."⁵ Thus, if it be asked why the will decides one way rather than another, the reason is to be sought in its self-determining power. It can by an arbitrary act, choose or not choose, choose one way or another, without a motive or with a motive, for or against any or all influences brought to bear upon it. But when these writers come to prove their case, it turns out that this is not at all what they mean. It is not the self-determining power of the will, but the self-determining power of the agent that they are contending for. Reid says that all that is involved in free agency is that man is an agent, the author of his own acts or that we are "efficient causes in our deliberate and voluntary actions."⁶ "To say that man is a free agent, is no more than to say that, in some instances, he is truly an agent and a cause, and is not merely acted upon as a passive instrument."⁷ Dr. Samuel Clarke, in his controversy with Leibnitz, says, "the power of self-motion or action, which, in all animate agents, is spontaneity, is, in moral or rational agents, what we properly call liberty." Again, he says, "the true definition of liberty is the power to act." Now, as all the advocates of the doctrine of moral certainty admit self-determination of the agent, and deny the self-determining power of the will, the greatest confusion must follow from confounding these two things; and, besides this, undue advantage is thereby secured for the doctrine of the self-determining power of the will, by arguments which prove only self-determination, which every man admits. On the other hand unfair prejudice is created against the truth by representing it as denying the power of self-determination, when it only denies the self-determining power of the will. Thus President Edwards is constantly represented as denying that volitions are self-determinations, or that the mind is the efficient cause of its own acts, or that man is an agent, because he wrote against the self-determining power of the will as taught by Clarke and Whitby. These two things ought not to be confounded, because they are really distinct. When we say that an agent is self-determined, we say two things. (1.) That he is the author or efficient cause of his own act. (2.) That the grounds or reasons of his determination are within himself. He is determined by what constitutes him at the moment a particular individual, his feelings, principles, character, dispositions; and not by any ab extra or coercive influence. But when we say that the will is self-determined, we separate it from the other constituents of the man, as an independent power, and on the one hand, deny that it is determined by anything in the man; and on the other, affirm that it determines itself by an inherent self-moving, arbitrary power. In this case the volition ceases to be a decision of the agent, for it may be contrary to that agent's whole character, principles, inclinations, feelings, convictions, or whatever else makes him what he is.

§ 3. Certainty Consistent with Liberty.

Although the doctrine of necessity subverts the foundation of all morality and religion, our present concern is with the doctrine of contingency. We wish simply to state the case as between certainty and uncertainty. The doctrine of necessity, in the proper sense of the word, is antichristian; but the Christian world is, and ever has been divided between the advocates and opponents of the doctrine of contingency. All Augustinians maintain that a free act may be inevitably certain as to its occurrence.. All Anti-Augustinians, whether Pelagians, Semi-Pelagians, or Arminians, and most moral philosophers and metaphysicians, take the opposite ground. They teach that as the will has a self-determining power it may decide against all motives internal or external, against all influences divine or human, so that its decisions cannot be rendered inevitable without destroying their liberty. The very essence of liberty, they say, is power to the contrary. In other words, a free act is one performed with the consciousness that under precisely the same circumstances, that is, in the same internal as well as external state of the mind, it might have been the opposite. According to the one doctrine, the will is determined; according to the other, it determines itself. In the one case, our acts are or may be inevitably certain and yet be free. In the other, in order to be free, they must be uncertain. We have already proved that this is a fair statement of the case; that the advocates of moral necessity mean thereby certainty; and that the advocates of contingency mean thereby uncertainty. We have admitted that the use of the word necessity, even when qualified by saying negatively, that it is not "absolute, physical, or mechanical," and that it is merely philosophical or moral, is unfortunate and inappropriate. And if any opponent of Augustine or Edwards say that all he denies is an absolute or physical necessity, and that he has no objection to the doctrine of certainty, then the difference between him and Edwards is merely verbal. But the real controversy lies deeper. It is not the word, but the thing that is opposed. There is a real difference as to the nature of free agency; and that difference concerns this very point: may the acts of free agents be rendered inevitably certain without destroying their liberty?

It may be well before proceeding further, to state the points as to which the parties to this controversy are agreed.

1. They are agreed that man is a free agent, in such a sense as to be responsible for his character and acts. The dispute is not about the fact, but the nature of free agency. If any one denied that men are responsible moral agents, then he belongs to the school of necessity, and is not a party to the discussion now under consideration.

2. It is agreed as to the nature of free agency that it supposes both reason and active power. Mere spontaneity does not constitute free agency, because that is found in brutes, in idiots, and in maniacs. There is no dispute as to what is meant by reason as one of the elements of free agency; and so for as active power, which is its second element, is concerned, it is agreed that it means or includes efficiency. In other words, it is agreed that a free agent is the efficient cause of his own acts.

3. It is admitted, on both sides, that in all important cases, men act under the influence of motives. Reid, indeed, endeavours to show that in many cases the will decides without any motive. When there is no ground of preference, he says this must be the case; as when a man decides which of fifty shillings he shall give away. He admits, however, that these arbitrary decisions relate only to trifles. Others of the same school acknowledge that no rational volition is ever arrived at except under the influence of motives.

4. It is further agreed that the will is not determined with certainty by external motives. All Augustinians deny that the internal state of the mind which determines the will, is itself necessarily or certainly determined by anything external to the mind itself.

5. It may be assumed, also, that the parties are agreed that the word will is to be taken in its proper, restricted sense. The question is not, whether men have power over their affections, their likes and dislikes. No one carries the power of the will so far as to maintain that we can, by a volition, change our feelings. The question concerns our volitions alone. It is the ground or reason of acts of self-determination that is in dispute. And, therefore, it is the will considered as the faculty of self-determination, and not as the seat of the affections, that comes into view. The question, why one man is led to love God, or Christ, or his fellow men, or truth and goodness; and another to love the world, or sin, is very different from the question, what determines him to do this or that particular act. The will is that faculty by which we determine to do something which we conceive to be in our power. The question, whether a man has power to change his own character at any moment, to give himself, in the language of Scripture, a new heart, concerns the extent of his power. That is, it is a question concerning the ability or inability of the sinner; and it is a most important question: but it should not be confounded with the question of free agency, which is the one now under consideration.

The whole question therefore is, whether, when a man decides to do a certain thing, his will is determined by the previous state of his mind. Or, whether, with precisely the same views and feelings, his decision may be one way at one time, and another at an other. That is, whether the will, or rather the agent, in order to be free, must be undetermined.

Argument that Certainty suits all Free Agents.

It is certainly a strong argument in favour of that view of free agency, which makes it consistent with certainty, or which supposes that an agent may be determined with inevitable certainty as to his acts, and yet those acts remain free, that it suits all classes or conditions of free agents. To deny free agency to God, would be to deny Him personality, and to reduce Him to a mere power or principle. And yet, in all the universe, is there anything so certain as that God will do right? But if it be said that the conditions of existence in an infinite being are so different from what they are in creatures, that it is not fair to argue from the one to the other, we may refer to the case of our blessed Lord. He had a true body and a reasonable soul. He had a human will; a mind regulated by the same laws as those which determine the intellectual and voluntary acts of ordinary men. In his case, however, although there may have been the metaphysical possibility of evil (though even that is a painful hypothesis), still it was more certain that He would be without sin than that the sun or moon should endure. No conceivable physical law could be more certain in the production of its effects than his will in always deciding for the right. But if it be objected even to this case, that the union of the divine and human natures in the person of our Lord places Him in a different category from ourselves, and renders it unfair to assume that what was true in his case must be true in ours; without admitting the force of the objection, we may refer to the condition of the saints in heaven. They, beyond doubt, continue to be free agents; and yet their acts are, and to everlasting will be, determined with absolute and inevitable certainty to good. Certainty, therefore, must be consistent with free agency. What can any Christian say to this? Does he deny that the saints in glory are free, or does he deny the absolute certainty of their perseverance in holiness? Would his conception of the blessedness of heaven be thereby exalted? Or would it raise his ideas of the dignity of the redeemed to believe it to be uncertain whether they will be sinful or holy? We may, however, come down to our present state of existence. Without assuming anything as to the corruption of our nature, or taking for granted anything which Pelagius would deny, it is a certain fact that all men sin. There has never existed a mere man on the face of the earth who did not sin. When we look on a new-born infant we know that whatever may be uncertain in its future, it is absolutely, inevitably certain that, should it live, it will sin. In every aspect, therefore, in which we can contemplate free agency, whether in God, in the human nature of Christ, in the redeemed in heaven, or in man here on earth, we find that it is compatible with absolute certainty.

A second argument on this subject is derived from those doctrines of Scripture which necessarily suppose that free acts may be certain as to their occurrence.

1. The first and most obvious of these doctrines is the foreknowledge of God. Whatever metaphysical explanation may be given of this divine attribute; however we may ignore the distinction between knowledge and foreknowledge, or however we may contend that because God inhabits eternity, and is in no wise subject to the limitations of time, and that to Him nothing is successive, still the fact remains that we exist in time, and that to us there is a future as well as a present. It remains, therefore, a fact that human acts are known before they occur in time, and consequently are foreknown. But if foreknown as future, they must be certain; not because foreknowledge renders their occurrence certain, but because it supposes it to be so. It is a contradiction in terms to say that an uncertain event can be foreknown as certain. To deny foreknowledge to God, to say that free acts, because necessarily uncertain as to their occurrence, are not the objects of foreknowledge any more than sounds are the objects of sight, or mathematical truths of the affections, is to destroy the very idea of God. The future must be as dark to Him as to us; and He must every moment be receiving vast accessions of knowledge. He cannot be an eternal being, pervading all duration with a simultaneous existence, much less an omniscient Being, to whom there is nothing new. It is impossible, therefore, to believe in God as He is revealed in the Bible, unless we believe that all things are known unto Him from the beginning. But if all things are known, all things, whether fortuitous or free, are certain; consequently certainty must be consistent with freedom. We are not more assured of our existence than we are of our free agency. To say that this is a delusion is to deny the veracity of consciousness, which of necessity not only involves a denial of the veracity of God, but also subverts the foundation of all knowledge, and plunges us into absolute scepticism. We may just as well say that our existence is a delusion as that any other fact of consciousness is delusive. We have no more and no higher evidence for one such fact than for another. Men may speculate as they please, they must believe and act according to the laws impressed on our nature by ur Creator. We must believe, therefore, in our existence and in our free agency; and as by a necessity scarcely less imperative we must believe that all things are known to God from eternity, and that if foreknown their occurrence is certain, we cannot deny that certainty is consistent with free agency without involving ourselves in palpable contradictions. This argument is so conclusive that most theistical advocates of the doctrine of contingency, when they come to deal with it, give the matter up, and acknowledge that an act may be certain as to its occurrence and yet free. They content themselves for the time being with denying that it is necessary, although it may be certain. But they forget that by "moral necessity" nothing more than certainty is intended, and that certainty is precisely the thing which, on other occasions, they affirm to be contrary to liberty. If from all eternity it is fixed how every man will act; if the same consequences follow invariably from the same antecedents; if the acts of men are inevitable, this is declared to be fatalism. If, however, it be indeed true that the advocates of indifference, self-determining power of the will, power of contrary choice, or by whatever other name the theory of contingency may be called, really do not intend to oppose the doctrine of certainty, but are simply combating fatalism or physical necessity, then the controversy is ended. What more could Leibnitz or Edwards ask than Reid concedes in the following passage: "It must be granted, that, as whatever was, certainly was, and whatever is, certainly is, so whatever shall be, certainly shall be. These are identical propositions, and cannot be doubted by those who conceive them distinctly. But I know no rule of reasoning by which it can be inferred that because an event certainly shall be, therefore its production must be necessary. The manner of its production, whether free or necessary, cannot be concluded from the time of its production, whether it be past, present, or future. That it shall be, no more implies that it shall be necessarily than that it shall be freely produced; for neither present, past, nor future, have any more connection with necessity than they have with freedom. I grant, therefore, that from events being foreseen, it may be justly concluded, that, they are certainly future; but from their being certainly future it does not follow that they are necessary."⁸ As all things are foreseen all things are inevitably certain as to their occurrence. This is granting all any Augustinian need demand.

2. Another doctrine held by a large part of the Christian world in all ages which of necessity precludes the doctrine of contingency, is that of the foreordination of future events. Those who believe that God foreordains whatever comes to pass must believe that the occurrence of all events is determined with unalterable certainty. It is not our object to prove any of these doctrines, but simply to argue from them as true. It may, however, be remarked that there is no difficulty attending the doctrine of foreordination which does not attach to that of foreknowledge. The latter supposes the certainty of free acts, and the former secures their certainty. If their being certain be consistent with liberty, their being rendered certain cannot be incompatible with it. All that foreordination does is to render it certain that free acts shall occur. The whole difficulty is in their being certain, and that must be admitted by every consistent theist. The point now in hand is, that those who believe that the Bible teaches the doctrine of foreordination are shut up to the conclusion that an event may be free and yet certain, and therefore that the theory of contingency which supposes that an act to be free must be uncertain, is unscriptural and false.

3. The doctrine of divine providence involves the same conclusion. That doctrine teaches that God governs all his creatures and all their actions. That is, that He so conducts the administration of his government as to accomplish all his purposes. Here again the difficulty is the same, and is no greater than before. Foreknowledge supposes certainty; foreordination determines it; and providence effects it. The last does no more than the first of necessity presupposes. If certainty be compatible with freedom, providence which only secures certainty cannot be inconsistent with it. Who for any metaphysical difficulty — who, because he is not able to comprehend how God can effectually govern free agents without destroying their nature, would give up the doctrine of providence? Who would wish to see the reins of universal empire fall from the hands of infinite wisdom and love, to be seized by chance or fate? Who would not rather be governed by a Father than by a tornado? If God cannot effectually control the acts of free agents there can be no prophecy, no prayer, no thanksgiving, no promises, no security of salvation, no certainty whether in the end God or Satan is to be triumphant, whether heaven or hell is to be the consummation. Give us certainty — the secure conviction that a sparrow cannot fall, or a sinner move a finger, but as God permits and ordains. We must have either God or Satan to rule. And if God has a providence He must be able to render the free acts of his creatures certain; and therefore certainty must be consistent with liberty. Was it not certain that Christ should, according to the Scriptures, be by wicked hands crucified and slain, and yet were not his murderers free in all they did? Let it be remembered that in all these doctrines of providence, foreordination, and foreknowledge nothing is assumed beyond what Reid, one of the most able opponents of Leibnitz and Edwards, readily admits. He grants the prescience of future events; he grants that prescience supposes certainty, and that is all that either foreordination or providence secures. If an act may be free, although certainly foreknown, it may be free although foreordained and secured by the great scheme of providence.

4. The whole Christian world believes that God can convert men. They believe that He can effectually lead them to repentance and faith; and that He can secure them in heaven from ever falling into sin. That is, they believe that He can render their free acts absolutely certain. When we say that this is the faith of the whole Christian world we do not mean that no individual Christian or Christian theologian has ever denied this doctrine of grace; but we do mean that the doctrine, to the extent above stated, is included in the Confessions of all the great historical churches of Christendom in all ages. It is just as much a part of the established faith of Christians as the divinity of our Redeemer. This being the fact, the doctrine that contingency is necessary to liberty cannot be reconciled with Christian doctrine. It has, indeed, been extensively held by Christians; but our object is to show that it is in conflict within doctrines which they themselves as Christians must admit. If God can fulfil his promise to give men a new heart; if He can translate them from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son; if He can give them repentance unto life; if there be no impropriety in praying that He would preserve them from falling, and give them the secure possession of eternal life, then He can control their free acts. He can, by his grace, without violating their freedom, make it absolutely certain that they will repent and believe, and persevere in holiness. If these things are so, then it is evident that any theory which makes contingency or uncertainty essential to liberty must be irreconcilable with some of the plainest and most precious doctrines of the Scriptures.