2     Man’s Primitive State

 

Preliminary Considerations

Holiness, in the order, is prior to sin. Man must be holy before he can be sinful. “The good,” says Plato (Protagoras 344), “may become bad; but the bad does not become bad; he is always bad.” Similarly, Aristotle (Categories 9.5) remarks that “the man of former times was reputed to be better and more honorable by nature.”¹ The golden age of the poets is the echo and corruption of the biblical account of man’s original state. Tacitus describes the earliest generation of men as follows: “The oldest among mortals used to act with no evil desire, without disgrace or wickedness, and therefore without punishment or restraints. Nor were rewards necessary, since they would strive to do what is right by their own noble character. Since they would desire nothing against what is moral, they were forbidden nothing through fear”² (Annals 3.26).

The Westminster statement is the common one in the Augustino-Calvinistic creeds: “God created man after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness” (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 10). “God said, Let us make man in our own image. So God created man in his own image” (Gen. 1:26–27). “God has made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions” (Eccles. 7:29). “The new man is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Col. 3:10).

Holiness is more than innocence. It is not sufficient to say that man was created in a state of innocence. This would be true if he had been destitute of a moral disposition either right or wrong. Man was made not only negatively innocent, but positively holy. Man’s regenerate condition is a restoration of his primitive state; and his righteousness as regenerate is described as kata theon³ (Eph. 4:21) and as “true holiness” (4:24). This is positive character, not mere innocency.

Concreated holiness is one of the distinguishing tenets of Augustinianism. Pelagianism denies that holiness is concreated. It asserts that the will of man by creation and in its first condition is characterless. Its first act is to originate either holiness or sin. Non pleni nascimur:⁴ we are not born full of character. Adam’s posterity are born, as he was created, without holiness and without sin (Pelagius, quoted by Augustine, Concerning Original Sin 13). Semipelagianism holds the same opinion excepting that it concedes a transmission of a vitiated physical nature, which Pelagianism denies. So far as the rational and voluntary nature of man is concerned, the Semipelagian asserts that holiness like sin must be self-originated by each individual. Tridentine anthropology is a mixture of Pelagianism and Augustinianism. God created man in puris naturalibus,⁵ without either holiness or sin. This creative act, which left man characterless, God followed with another act by which he endowed man with holiness. Holiness was something supernatural and not contained in the first creative act. Creation is, thus, imperfect and is improved by an afterthought. In the modern church, Calvinists and early Lutherans adopted the Augustinian view. Arminians and some later Lutherans reject the doctrine of concreated holiness. (See supplement 4.2.1.)

Two Phases of Holiness: Knowledge and Inclination

Holiness has two sides or phases. (1) It is perception and knowledge. As such, it relates to the understanding. God and divine things must be apprehended in order to holiness. (2) It is inclination and feeling. As such, it relates to the will and affections. God and divine things must be desired and delighted in in order to holiness.

The knowledge in which man was created was the knowledge of God. It was conscious and spiritual, in distinction from speculative. It was that immediate and practical apprehension spoken of in 1 Cor. 2:14: “The things of the Spirit are spiritually discerned.” This is proved (a) by the fact that regeneration “is a renewal in knowledge” after the divine image (Col. 3:10); but regeneration restores what man had by creation; and (b) by the fact that being associated with love and reverence, it must have been experimental.

The knowledge possessed by Adam and Eve before the fall was different from what it was after. This is proved by Gen. 2:25: “They were naked and were not ashamed.” They were conscious of holiness and had no consciousness of sin. But apostasy brought with it the conscious knowledge of evil: “The eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (3:7). “God said, Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil” (3:22). God knows good consciously and evil, not consciously but, intuitively by his omniscience. Thus his knowledge of both good and evil is perfect; although his knowledge of the former is by a different method from that by which he knows the latter.⁶ Unfallen man knew good consciously and evil only speculatively and theoretically. Hence his knowledge of sin was imperfect. On the other hand, fallen man knew evil consciously and good only speculatively and theoretically: “The eyes of both of them were opened, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden” (3:7–8); “the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him” (1 Cor. 2:14). (See supplement 4.2.2.)

There are two ways of knowing sin: (a) as the sinner knows it and (b) as the saint knows it. A sinful man knows vice by the immediate consciousness of it; a holy angel perceives it as the contrast of his own virtue and purity. The latter knowledge of sin is far inferior in thoroughness to the former. Thus it appears that in Adam the conscious experimental knowledge of holiness implied only a speculative and inadequate knowledge of sin; and the conscious experimental knowledge of sin implied only a speculative and inadequate knowledge of holiness. Holy man was ignorant of sin; and sinful man was ignorant of holiness. Consciously to know good is a good; consciously to know evil is an evil.

The inclination and moral disposition with which man was created consisted in the perfect harmony of his will with divine law. The agreement was so perfect and entire that there was no distinction between the two in holy Adam’s consciousness. Inclination was duty, and duty was inclination. Unfallen Adam, like the holy angels, did not feel the law to be over him as a taskmaster, but in him like a living actuating principle. In a perfect moral condition, law and will are one; as in the sphere of physical nature, the laws of nature and the forces of nature are identical. It is in this reference that St. Paul (1 Tim. 1:9) affirms that “the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners.” Law coupled with the threat of punishment is law in a form suited only to a will at enmity with it. Law when proclaimed at Sinai to rebellious man is accompanied with thunders and lightnings; but not when proclaimed in heaven to the holy and obedient (Shedd, Sermons to the Spiritual Man, 212–24). (See supplement 4.2.3.)

Proof That Man Was Created Holy

The positive holiness, then, with which man was endowed by creation consisted in an understanding enlightened in the spiritual knowledge of God and divine things and a will wholly inclined to them. The following are some of the rational proofs that man was so created.

The maturity and perfection of man suppose it. Adam was not created an infant, but an adult. To suppose him to be vacant of the knowledge of God, and of moral character in this advanced stage of existence contradicts the idea of complete and mature manhood. A perfect man who has neither the knowledge nor the love of God is a contradiction.

The idea of the will as a mental faculty implies a concreated holiness. Inclination enters into the definition of the will, as necessarily as triangularity does into that of a triangle; as intelligence does into that of an understanding; as properties do into that of a substance. To create a will, therefore, is to create an inclination also. If we should suppose God to create a certain faculty which at the instant of its creation was uninclined and undetermined either to good or evil, it would not be a voluntary faculty. For a voluntary faculty is one marked by voluntariness. It is determined and inclined and evinces thereby that it is a will. If it is destitute of inclination, it is involuntary; and an involuntary will is a solecism. To say that it will become voluntary by becoming inclined does not relieve the difficulty. This is to concede that at present it is not voluntary.

The human will is by creation voluntary, as the human understanding is by creation cognitive. When God creates the understanding, he endows it with innate ideas and laws of thought, by virtue of which it is an intelligent faculty. These are the content of the understanding. And when he creates the human will, he endows it with an inclination or a disposition or a self-determination, whatever be the term employed, by virtue of which it is a voluntary faculty. This is the content of the will. As the understanding without this created intelligence in its constitution would not be an understanding at all, so the will without this created voluntariness in its constitution would not be a will at all.

The creation of a finite mind or spirit implies the creation of holiness. Spiritual substance is distinguished from matter by the characteristic of self-motion or motion ab intra.⁷ Matter must be moved from without, by another material substance impinging upon it. But mind moves from within. Its motion is not from external impact, but is self-motion. Adam was created a spirit. The instant, therefore, that he was created, he had all the characteristics that distinguish spirit from matter. One of these, and one of the most important, is self-motion. But self-motion is self-determination, and self-determination is inclination.⁸ The Scriptures asserts that Adam was created a “living soul.” Life implies motion; and the motion in this case was not mechanical or material, but the motion of mind. Thus in creating a rational spirit, God creates a self-moving essence, and this is a self-determining will.

If holiness is not created, the creature improves the Creator’s work. Augustine (City of God 12.9) thus argues:

Was the good inclination of the good angels created along with them, or did they exist for a time without it? If along with themselves, then doubtless it was created by him who created them; and as soon as ever they were created, they attached themselves to him who created them with that love which he created in them. But if the good angels existed for a time without a good inclination and produced it in themselves without God’s interference, then it follows that they made themselves better than he made them. We must therefore acknowledge that not only of holy men, but also of the holy angels, it can be said, that “the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts, by the Holy Spirit which is given unto them.”

The dependent nature of finite holiness implies that it is created. Uncreated, independent holiness is possible only in a self-existent and self-sustaining being. Holiness in the creature is ultimately suspended upon the action of the Creator. It is derived from him. In its first beginning, it must be given both to angels and men. Says Edwards (Efficacious Grace §§43-51):

The nature of virtue being a positive thing can proceed from nothing from God’s immediate influence and must take its rise from creation or infusion from God. There can be no one virtuous choice unless God immediately gives it. Reason shows that the first existence of a principle of virtue cannot be given from man himself nor in any created being whatsoever; but must be immediately given from God. God is said, in Scripture, to give true virtue and purity to the heart of man; to work it in him, to create it, to form it; and with regard to it, we are said to be his workmanship: “I am the Lord which sanctify you” (Lev. 20:8); “there shall come out of Zion the deliverer and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob” (Rom. 11:26–27).

Anselm (On the Fall of the Devil 12) argues similarly for the derivation of holiness in the finite will. He contends that if the will of man or angel be supposed to be created in a state of indifference, without any inclination whatever, it could not begin any self-motion at all. It would remain indifferent forever and never have any inclination. A creature with no character will never originate a character. Consequently, the first inclination of the will must be given to the will when the will is made ex nihilo; and since the holy Creator cannot give to his own work a bad inclination, he must give a good one.

That holiness is creatable in man is proved by the facts of regeneration and sanctification. The regeneration of the soul is the origination of holiness a second time, within it. This is described in Scripture as “giving a heart of flesh,” “renewing a right spirit within,” “working in you to will.” This phraseology teaches that God produces a holy inclination. Again, such terms as “creating anew,” “fathering,” and “quickening” imply the creation of holiness.

Sanctification likewise proves that holiness is creatable. Sanctification is the increase of holiness; and the increase is by derivation, not by original production. No Christian augments his own holiness by his own isolated decision. The law of sanctification is stated in John 15:4: “Abide in me and I in you: as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can you except you abide in me.” The vine branch bears fruit spontaneously (aph’ heautou).⁹ The grape is a vital, not a mechanical product. But this spontaneity is possible to the branch only in case it is in the vine. Similarly, sanctification is spontaneous and free, yet only as it is derived from Christ the source of holiness. Another passage in point is 2 Cor. 9:8: “God is able to make all grace abound toward you, so that having all sufficiency (autakreian)¹⁰ in all things, you may abound to every good work.” This “sufficiency” is that genuine and spontaneous inclination to holiness which impels to good acts; but this inclination is “made to abound” in the Christian by the grace of God. These facts prove that the spontaneous motion of the will may be a product of God as well as a characteristic of man; in other words, a good inclination, while it is the personal quality of a man, may be likewise a created quality in him.

Voluntariness as Self-Determination

The arguments that have been presented for the creatability of holiness assume the correctness of the Augustinian definition of voluntariness or free agency, namely, that it is the spontaneous self-determination of the will. This can be created along with the will, if the will itself can be created. Consequently, it is necessary to establish the correctness of this definition. The freedom of the will is its self-motion. That which is self-moved is not forced to move; and that which is not forced to move is free. Simple self-motion or self-determination, therefore, is the freedom of the will: “God has endued the will of man with that natural liberty that it is neither forced nor by any absolute necessity of nature determined to good or evil” (Westminster Confession 9.1); “to be moved voluntarily is to be moved by oneself and not by another”¹¹ (Aquinas, Summa 1.105.4).

It is indispensable to voluntary freedom that the motion shall proceed from an ego or true self. The falling of water and the rising of sap is only seeming self-motion. One globule pushes another by mechanical law or by vital force. No globule is self-moved. Could a man demonstrate that his action, either internal or external, is not the energy of his own personal essence but that of another personal essence or is caused by some physical law or force, he would demonstrate that his action is neither voluntary nor free. But if this indispensable characteristic exists, the substance of moral freedom is secured. Many things may still be out of the power of the will, for omnipotence is not necessary in order to freedom, yet if the will be really self-inclined and self-determined in its activity, internal and external, it is a free will. It is important, here, to notice that the central as well as the superficial activity of the will must be self-activity in order to freedom and responsibility. The central action of the will is its steady inclination; and the superficial action is its momentary volition in a particular instance. The murderer’s hate is the central activity of his will; the murderer’s act is the superficial. Both must be self-moved in order to responsibility and guilt. And both are self-moved. The murderer is not forced to hate. He is willing in his hatred and in all his moral desires and feelings: willing in anger, envy, malice, pride, and all forms of sinful inclination. While, however, the central and the superficial activity of the will are alike in regard to free self-motion, they differ in regard to the power to the contrary. The superficial activity or the volition is accompanied with this power; the central or the inclination is not. The murderer can refrain from the outward act of murder by a volition; but he cannot refrain from his inward hatred by a volition. A volition can stop another volition; but a volition cannot stop an inclination. A man can reverse his sinful volition but not his sinful inclination. This is an indisputable fact of consciousness.

It follows from this that the power to the contrary or of antagonistic action is not necessary in order to the freedom of the will. Simple self-determination, without the additional power to antagonize the existing self-determination, is enough to constitute voluntariness. If the will move in the direction of holiness by its own self-motion, this fact alone demonstrates the freeness of its action. It is not necessary to add a power to act in opposition to the existing self-motion in order that the existing self-motion may be self-motion any more than it is necessary to add the power to fly in order that the power to walk may be a power to walk.¹² When holy Adam was self-determining in holiness, it was not necessary to give him the power to self-determine to sin in order that he might be self-determining in holiness. The possibilitas peccandi¹³ was associated with Adam’s primitive state, not in order to his freedom, but in order to his probation. If God, by the operation of his Spirit, had preserved Adam from the exercise of an antagonistic and contrary self-determination, Adam would still have been self-determined and spontaneously inclined to holiness. And the same is true upon the side of sin. If the will of Satan or of fallen Adam is spontaneously self-inclined to sin, this fact alone demonstrates the unforced nature of its sinful action. It is not necessary to add the power to the contrary, that is, the power to self-incline to holiness in order that the existing sinful self-inclination may be self-inclination. It is not necessary in order to responsibility for a sinful inclination that the sinner be able to reverse his sinful inclination. It is only necessary that he was able to originate it and that he did originate it. (See supplement 4.2.4.)

That self-determining or inclining is compatible with inability to the contrary is proved by the following examples. A man wills to be happy. He is free in thus willing because the action of his will is self-action. It is his own spontaneous inclination. Yet he cannot will the contrary. No man is able to will to be miserable. If the power to the contrary necessarily enters into the definition of freedom along with the power of inclining or self-determining, then this man who wills to be happy is not free in so willing. But if self-determination alone and simply is the proper definition of freedom, then this man is free in his will or inclination to be happy because it is his real and genuine spontaneity.

Another instance of moral freedom with inability to the contrary is that of the unregenerate sinner. His sin is voluntary self-determination. It issues out of the self, and it is the working of the self. It is not another man who sins, but this very man and no other. This fact establishes his free agency in this sin. He is inclined to sin, and inclination is free agency. Yet he is unable to overcome and eradicate this sinful inclination. This is a well-established fact of consciousness. It is also the teaching of revelation: “No man can come unto me except the Father which has sent me draw him” (John 6:44); “whosoever commits sin is the slave of sin” (8:34); “without me you can do nothing” (15:5). Here are two facts: (a) the will wills its own sin; this is self-determination; (b) having so willed, it cannot unwill its own sin; this is inability.

It is false to infer that the will does not will its own sin if it cannot unwill it, that a person does not act freely if he cannot recall his act. If the fact of self-determination has been established by conclusive proofs, the fact must stand. A man throws himself off a precipice. This is an act of the self. He was not flung off by another self or by a physical force in nature. It was his own spontaneous act. This makes it a free act. Yet he cannot undo his act. He has no power to the contrary at any point of his fall. Nevertheless, his fall from top to bottom is chargeable to him as his own responsible act. At no point in his fall is he innocent of suicide. He is guilty of self-murder at every inch in the descent. An inability that results from an act of the self is as absolute as that which results from the act of another. A man who kills himself is as dead as a man killed by another. In like manner, an inclination to sin that is originated by the self is as insuperable by the self that originated it and which now has it as it would be if it were originated by a third party and forced upon him. Moral inability is as real inability as natural inability; but the former is guilty inability because it is the product of the will itself, while the latter is innocent inability because it is the product of God in creation and providence. In every act of transgressing the law of God, there is a reflex action of the will upon itself, whereby it becomes unable perfectly to keep that law. A man is not forced to sin, but if he does, he cannot of himself get back where he was before sinning. He cannot get back to innocency nor can he get back to holiness of heart.

Another instance of self-determination without power to the contrary is that of God. The Supreme Being is self-moved. But he is unable to sin. This is taught in James 1:13: “God cannot be tempted.” A being who is intemptable is impeccable. Yet in the Supreme Being is to be found the highest form of moral freedom. The more intense the self-determination in any being, the more intense the freedom. Consequently, a will self-determined to holiness in an infinite degree is marked by a higher grade of freedom than one self-determined in only a finite degree. But in proportion as self-determination increases, the power to the contrary diminishes. In God, the infinitude of self-determination excludes the possibility of a change in the self-determination, that is, excludes a power to the contrary. Freedom and moral necessity are one and the same thing in the Supreme Being.

Freedom in the infinite being is immutable self-determination; in a finite being it is mutable self-determination. God is free in his holiness because he is self-moved in the righteous action of his will. That this motion is eternal and unchangeable in one and the same direction does not destroy the self-motivity and convert it into compulsion. Man also was free in his holiness yet could sin. He was free because self-moved in the right action of his will. That this self-motion was mutable and could take another direction did not destroy the self-motivity and convert it into compulsion. Thus it appears that the power to the contrary or the power to reverse the existing self-determination of the will is not the substance of freedom, but only the accident. The freedom of both the infinite and the finite will is in the self-motion of mind or spirit as diverse from matter. That God cannot alter his self-determination to good does not diminish his self-determination. That man could alter his self-determination to good did not increase his self-determination. The freedom in both instances is in the existing action of the will, not in a conceivable or possible action. The present inclining is willing unforced agency. (See supplement 4.2.5.)

Inclination or self-determination excludes indifference. A will that is determined or inclined toward God is not indifferent toward God. Indifference is the exact contrary of inclination or self-determination.

It is here that the two principal theories of moral freedom find their starting point. The Augustinian asserts that the essence of voluntariness is self-determination merely and only. The Pelagian asserts that indetermination or indifference, with power to will in either direction, is the essence of voluntariness. Unless this power of alternative choice continually exist, there is no freedom. Hence it perpetually accompanies the will, both here and hereafter. The Augustinian affirms that if a will be really self-moved in a particular activity, such as hatred of a fellowman, for example, it is free even though it be not able to start another activity of a contrary nature, such as love of that fellowman. A man who is walking is really and truly walking, though he is not able to fly. His inability to fly does not affect the nature of the act of walking. And similarly man’s inability to love does not destroy the spontaneity and self-motion of his hate.

The Pelagian contends that such self-motion is insufficient. There must be an indefectible, inalienable power of alternative choice in order to freedom of the will. But in order that there may be this constant power, the will must have no inclination in either direction. Consequently, indifference or indetermination, not positive self-determination, is the sine qua non of moral freedom for the Pelagian. The text Deut. 30:19 is quoted to prove indifference and the power of alternative choice: “I have set before you life and death: therefore choose life.” But no alternative between these two final ends—and no indifference—is allowed. Only one final end is permitted. Men are not bidden to choose either life or death, but to choose life. Death is set before them that it may be rejected, not that it may be elected. Life is set before them that it may be elected, not that it may be rejected. Simple self-determination to good is required. Indifference is forbidden. “Choose life.” The election of good is ipso facto the rejection of evil and vice versa. The holiness of Immanuel is described in a similar manner in Isa. 7:16: “Before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good.” He is not indifferent, choosing either evil or good, but positively inclined to good and ipso facto disinclined to evil. In brief, the difference between the Augustinian and the Pelagian doctrine of freedom is this: The Pelagian asserts that the will as uninclined and indifferent chooses. He postulates a volition antecedent to any inclination. The Augustinian asserts that the will is never uninclined or indifferent. There is no volition prior to inclination. The former places freedom in an act of the will prior to inclining; the latter places it in the very act itself of inclining. (See supplement 4.2.6.)

Refutation of the Theory That Freedom Consists in Indetermination or Indifference

The objections to the theory that freedom is indetermination or indifference are the following.

The free will, in this case, has no contents. The power of choosing either one of two contrary ways implies that as yet there is no action of the will at all. The will is undetermined. But we have seen that an undetermined will is a contradiction in terms. “A freedom of indifference is impossible,”¹⁴ says Leibnitz (Concerning Freedom, 669 [ed. Erdmann].¹⁵

The freedom of indifference is never found in actual existence. There is no example of it. The so-called formal freedom is indifference. It is defined by Müller (Sin 2.28) as “the ability, from an undetermined state, to self-determine.” This supposes the faculty to be in equilibrio. It is uncommitted either to right or wrong. From this position of equilibrium and indifference, it starts a decision in one direction or the other. Such a condition and such an act of the human will never occurred within the domain of human consciousness. Consciousness always reports an inclined will, never an indifferent one. Hence Müller places the first act of self-determination to evil from an undetermined state of the will back of consciousness and beyond time. Müller, however, differs from the Pelagian, in holding that formal freedom is confined to a particular instant. It is not a perpetual accompaniment of the will. Having out of the indifferent state of formal freedom taken a determination, the will afterward is inclined and the indifference ceases. Starting with the Pelagian view of freedom, Müller ends with the Augustinian view of sin.

The freedom of the will is primarily a self-determination to a single end, not a choice between two yet unchosen contrary ends. The central and deepest activity of the will is to incline or tend, not to select or choose. It moves forward by self-motion and self-decision to one point. Two contrary objects or ends are not requisite in order to self-determination. It is not necessary that there should be a comparison of one object with a contrary one and a choice of the one rather than of the other in order to the self-determination of the will. If the will should know of but one object, say, its Creator, it might tend or incline to that object, and the tendency or inclination would be the free voluntariness of the will. It is true that the will, in this case, would not be forced to incline to the one object before it. It would have an option to incline or to disincline to the one object. But this is already said in saying that the inclining is self-motion. This liberty to incline or to disincline to one object is very different, however, from the liberty to choose either of two contrary objects. In the latter case, there is a comparison of one object with another; in the former, there is no such comparison. But what is far more important, in the latter case there is indifference toward both objects; but in the former, there is no indifference toward the single object. For if there is not inclination to it, there is aversion to it; if there is not desire for it, there is hatred of it; if the will does not incline to God, it disinclines and is at enmity with him; if there is not the spiritual mind, there is the carnal mind; if there is not holy self-determination, there is sinful self-determination. The will, in this instance, is not indifferent as in the other, but is committed to an ultimate end; if not to its Creator, then to itself.

That self-determining or inclining is the ultimate fact in the freedom of the will is evident from considering the relation of motives to the will. The will, it is said, is determined by motives. This is often understood to mean that the will is efficiently and ultimately determined by a motive out of itself and other than itself. This is an error. The will is only proximately and occasionally determined by external motives. Take a case. A man’s will is determined by wealth as a motive. But only because his will is already so self-determined or inclined is wealth a motive for him, that is, desirable to him. Were his will self-determined or inclined to ambition instead of avarice, wealth would not be a motive for him, but power would be. Again, were his will inclined or self-determined to sensual pleasure, this would be the motive that would move or determine it, and neither wealth nor power would be. Thus it is evident that the motivity of a motive, that is, its power to move or influence the will, depends primarily and ultimately upon the will’s prior inclination or self-determination. The inclination makes the motive, instead of the motive making the inclination. But the inclination itself is self-made in the sense of being self-motion. If the will is inclined to the Creator as an ultimate end, then the only motives that influence and move it are spiritual and heavenly. If the will is inclined to the creature as an ultimate end, then the only motives that influence and move it are carnal and earthly. The motives in each instance are determinants, only because of the prior bias or self-determination of the will; they influence the person, only because of his existing inclination. They are only the proximate and occasional, not the ultimate and efficient cause of the will’s action.

The first activity, therefore, of the will, considered as a faculty, is inclination, not volition. Man is always disposed or biased in his will before he exerts choices. The will does not incline because it first chooses from out of a state of indifference; but it chooses because it has already inclined. Inclining or self-determining is the primary and central action of the will, and volition or choice is the secondary and superficial. The will, therefore, in its idea and nature is causative and originative rather than elective. Hence guilt is denoted in Greek by aitia.¹⁶ It implies causation. “The notion of pure will,” says Kant (Practical Reason, 205 [trans. Abbott]), “contains that of a causality accompanied with freedom, that is, one which is not determinable by physical laws.”

The truth of this view of voluntary freedom is evident from considering the case of Adam, first as holy and second as sinful. First, the will of holy Adam was by the creative act inclined to God as the chief good before it exerted any volitions and made any choices. Adam as a created spirit was self-determined to God and goodness the instant he was created and in consequence of this internal bias and disposition chose the various means of gratifying it. Holy Adam at the instant of his creation did not find himself set to choose either the Creator or the creature as an ultimate end, being indifferent to both, but he found himself inclined to the Creator and choosing means accordingly. He was committed to one and only one supreme end of existence, God and goodness, and selected means corresponding. That Adam’s self-determination to God was created with his will itself is not inconsistent with its being self-determination. His will if created at all must have been created as voluntary; since it could not be created as involuntary or uninclined. This inclination was self-motion. It was the spontaneity of a spiritual essence, not an activity forced ab extra.¹⁷ God necessarily creates a self-determining, self-moving faculty in creating a will. Consequently, holy inclination is both a creation and a self-determination, according as it is viewed. Viewed with reference to God, it is created: inclinatio originata.¹⁸ Viewed with reference to the voluntary faculty, it is spontaneous and self-moving: inclinatio originans.¹⁹ Holy inclination is at once the Creator’s product and the creature’s activity. (See supplement 4.2.7.)

Second, the will of sinful Adam by his own act had been inclined to the creature as the chief good before it exerted sinful volitions and made sinful choices. Adam as fallen was self-determined to evil and in consequence of this inward bias of his will chose the various means of gratifying it. The first of these choices was plucking and eating of the tree of knowledge. But there is this important difference, namely, that the evil inclination was not created by God but originated by Adam. Sinful inclination is both the creature’s product and the creature’s activity. It is referable to the creature both as inclinatio originans²⁰ and inclinatio originata.²¹

Thus the term self-determination has two significations. It may mean that the self-motion is in the self, but not from the self as the ultimate author. This is created self-determination, which is always holy. Or it may mean that the self-motion is both in the self and from the self as the ultimate author. This is sinful self-determination. Holiness is self-determined, but not self-originated. Sin is both self-determined and self-originated.

Created self-determination or holy inclination is only relatively meritorious or deserving because man is not the efficient in its origination. Being either concreated in creation or recreated in regeneration, the reward due to a holy inclination of the will is gracious: “Eternal life is the gift of God” (Rom. 6:23). Self-originated self-determination or sinful inclination, on the contrary, is absolutely demeritorious or ill deserving. Man is the sole efficient in its origination, and therefore the retribution due to it is a strict debt: “Eternal death is the wages of sin.” Justice owes retribution to the sinner. Man is absolutely rewardable for transgression, but only relatively rewardable for obedience. (See supplement 4.2.8.)

S U P P L E M E N T S

4.2.1 (see p. 495). The statement in the text that “the Arminians reject the doctrine of concreated holiness” needs qualification. Some of the elder Arminians do not. Wesley (Original Sin) opposes Taylor of Norwich, who asserted that “Adam could not be originally created in righteousness and true holiness, because habits of holiness cannot be created without our knowledge, concurrence, or consent.” He reasons as follows: “Holiness is love. Cannot God shed abroad this love in any soul without its concurrence? God could create men or angels endued from the very first moment of their existence with whatsoever degree of love he pleased. Your [Taylor’s] capital mistake is in defining righteousness as ‘the right use and application of our powers.’ No; it is the right state of our powers. It is the right disposition of our soul, the right temper of our mind. Take this with you, and you will no more dream that ‘God could not create man in righteousness and true holiness.’ ” Watson (Institutes 2.18) defends Wesley’s view and quotes approvingly Edwards’s answer to Taylor on this same point in his treatise on Original Sin. In his Institutes (2.77), Watson asserts that “Limborch and some of the later divines of the Arminian school materially departed from the tenets of their master in denying man’s natural tendencies to be sinful until they are complied with and approved by the will [in executive volitions]; and affirms a universal pravity of will [inclination] previous to the actual choice [of means to gratify it].”

4.2.2 (see p. 495). Stillingfleet (Origins 1.1.2) thus describes the knowledge with which man was created: “If we consider that contemplation of the soul which fixes itself on that infinite being who was the cause of it and is properly theoria,²² it will be found necessary for the soul to be created in a clear and distinct knowledge of him, because of man’s immediate obligation to obedience unto him; which must necessarily suppose the knowledge of him whose will must be the rule. For if man were not fully convinced, in the first moment after his creation, of the being of him whom he was to obey, his first work and duty would not have been actual obedience, but a search whether there was any supreme, infinite, and eternal being or not; and whereon his duty to him was founded, and what might be sufficient declaration of his will and laws, according to which he must regulate his obedience. For man, as he first came from God’s hands, was the reflection of God himself on a dark cloud. His knowledge then was more intellectual than discursive, not so much employing his faculties in the operose deductions of reason, but immediately employing them about him who was the fountain of his being and the center of his happiness. There was not then so vast a difference between the angelic and the human life; the angels and men both fed on the same dainties; all the difference was, they were in the hyperōon,²³ the upper room in heaven, and man in the summer parlor in paradise.”

These descriptions of the superior knowledge of man as created, like those of his sinless perfection which the elder theologians, together with the reformed creeds, often gave and which are regarded as extravagant by many, apply only to the specific nature as it existed in Adam before the fall, not to Adam and Eve after the fall or to any of the individuals that were propagated out of it. Neither Cain nor Abel nor Seth nor Enoch nor fallen Adam and Eve possessed the knowledge and holiness belonging to the original nature. No such knowledge and no such sinlessness have characterized any of the generations of mankind and constitute no part of secular human history. This latter exhibits only the consequences of the apostasy of the specific nature, namely, willing ignorance of God and alienation from him, the substitution of polytheism and idolatry for monotheism, and all the dreadful development of human depravity in individual and national life. Had the original unity, namely, Adam and his posterity, remained as created, this description of man as endowed with an intelligence and character like that of the angels would have been applicable to all the individual persons as well as to the common nature. For this reason the scriptural data respecting the creation of mankind in and with the first pair and their fall in Eden from their created and ideal position are of the utmost importance in constructing the theodicy of sin. If they are overlooked or denied it is impossible to justify the penalty of eternal death upon the posterity of Adam or to make it evident that redemption from the guilt and pollution of original sin by the incarnation and sufferings of incarnate God is real unobliged mercy. Man must have had original holiness and perfection in order to be responsible for subsequent sinfulness and imperfection; and he had these in Adam or not at all.

4.2.3 (see p. 496). Will in unfallen Adam is thus described by Augustine: “The first man had not that grace by which he should never will to be evil; but assuredly he had that in which if he willed to abide he would never be evil and without which also he could not by free will be good, but which nevertheless by free will he could forsake. God, therefore, did not will him to be without his grace, which he left in his free will. Because free will is sufficient for evil [without aid], but is too little for good unless it is aided by omnipotent good. And if that man had not forsaken that assistance of his free will, he would always have been good; but he forsook it and then was forsaken [of that assistance]. Because such was the nature of the aid that he could forsake it when he would and that he could continue in it if he would, but not such that it could be brought about that he [infallibly] would continue. The first is the grace which was given to the first Adam; but more powerful than this is that in the second Adam. For the first grace is that whereby it is effected that a man may have righteousness if he will; the second can do more than this, since by it it is effected that he [infallibly] will—and will so intensely and love with such ardor, that by the will of the Spirit he overcomes the will of the flesh that lusts in opposition to it” (Rebuke and Grace 31). In the unfallen Adam there was no “will of the flesh that lusts in opposition to the Spirit.” Had the unfallen will persisted in the perfect holiness in which it was created, that struggle with indwelling sin described in Gal. 5:16–24 and Rom. 7:14–8:26 would not have been experienced. The indefectibility that would have resulted would have been only the intensification of Adam’s original righteousness to that point where it becomes the non posse peccare,²⁴ without any of that fight with inward lust which occurs when the regenerate will is enabled to persevere and reach indefectibility after a severe conflict with remaining corruption.

It should be noticed that Augustine in this extract, as often elsewhere, employs the term grace to denote that which is given to man by God in creation in distinction from that which is bestowed in redemption. Unfallen man was not a sinner and did not need “grace” in the latter sense. But Augustine regards all the endowments of unfallen Adam (his faculties of reason and will, his enlightened understanding, and his holy heart and inclination) as a gracious bestowment because the Creator is under no obligation of indebtedness to the creature whom he originates from nonentity. It was a sovereign and unobliged act on the part of God to make man “after his own image in righteousness and true holiness.” The creature cannot bring the Creator under an original obligation to him, because this would require him to do a service that he did not owe the Creator and which he rendered to him from an independent position—neither of which things characterize the action of a creature. See Luke 17:7–10; Job 22:3; 35:7; Ps. 16:2–3; Rom. 11:35; 1 Cor. 4:7; 9:16–17.

4.2.4 (see p. 500). Owen (Holy Spirit 3.3) teaches that the freedom of the will consists in its self-motion only and not in the power to begin another motion contrary to the existing self-motion. “It is will,” he says, “and not power [to the contrary] that gives rectitude or obliquity to moral actions.” That is to say, it is simple spontaneity or self-determination and not an ability to do contrary to the existing self-determination that constitutes voluntariness and imparts responsibility to the action of the will. Owen in this place is combating the Pelagian doctrine of freedom.

4.2.5 (see p. 501). The possibility of the fall of a holy finite will is explicable by the finiteness of its power. If self-motion to good is not omnipotent, but only a certain degree of finite energy, it is plain that it may lapse from holy to sinful self-motion. But when self-motion is almighty, as in the case of God, a change of motion is not conceivable. Omnipotent energy is immutable energy. The infinite is the unchangeable in every particular because it is the omnipotent; hence God’s infinite self-determination to good is eternal and unalterable, but man’s and angel’s finite self-determination to good is mutable.

4.2.6 (see p. 502). Scripture defines freedom as choosing the one particular thing that is commanded by God and refusing the contrary: “I have set before you life and death: therefore choose life” (Deut. 30:19); “before the child shall know to choose the good and refuse the evil” (Isa. 7:16). Pelagian psychology defines freedom as choosing either the one particular thing commanded by God or its contrary. In this instance the contrary is not refused but may be chosen; in which latter case the thing commanded by God is refused. If the will chooses the spiritual good which is commanded and refuses the contrary spiritual evil, it virtually chooses all varieties of spiritual good and refuses all varieties of spiritual evil. But if it chooses either spiritual good or spiritual evil, it refuses no variety of the latter. The Scripture’s definition of freedom, which is that of Augustine and Calvin, connects freedom with moral obligation in making it to be the spontaneous inclining of the will to what the divine command enjoins and the spontaneous aversion of the will to what it forbids. The Pelagian definition wholly disconnects freedom from moral obligation by making it to be the indifference of the will to both divine command and its contrary.

The command of God is to choose and refuse, not to choose or refuse. The former allows no alternative; the latter does. The former requires only one object or ultimate end because the choice of good is the rejection of evil; the latter requires two objects because the choice of good still permits the choice of evil. The former excludes indifference; the latter supposes it. He who chooses good and refuses evil is positively inclined and has moral character. He who chooses either good or evil has no positive inclination to either and no moral character.

Furthermore, if simultaneous refusal of evil does not accompany the choice of good, the will dallies with evil; and dalliance with evil is evil desire itself. Eve’s nonresistance and nonrejection of Satan’s suggestion to eat of the tree of knowledge implied a wish, more or less strong, for the forbidden knowledge. It is a maxim of the world that “the woman who deliberates is lost.” The reason is that in this deliberation and delay there is toying and playing with the temptation and no instantaneous rejection of what is proposed. In a yet higher sense the woman in Eden who deliberated respecting Satan’s proposition lost herself and her race. That pause and parleying of her mind, instead of resistance and rejection, when temptation was presented, in order to consider and reason about it with Satan, was fatal.

This important feature in the fall of the will and the origin of sin did not escape the wonderful insight of John Bunyan. In his Holy War he represents the town of Mansoul first as listening to the falsehoods of Diabolus and while listening as losing by a shot from the ambush “Mr. Resistance, otherwise called Captain Resistance. And a great man in Mansoul this Captain Resistance was; and a man that the giant Diabolus and his band more feared than they feared the whole town of Mansoul besides.” In bringing this about, Diabolus is assisted by “one Ill-pause, who was his orator in all difficult matters. When this Ill-pause was making of his speech [in support of the suggestions of Diabolus] to the townsmen, my Lord Innocency, whether by a shot from the camp of the giant Diabolus or from a sinking qualm that suddenly took him, or rather by the stinking breath of that treacherous villain old Ill-pause (for so I am most apt to think), sank down in the place where he stood, nor could he be brought to life again. Thus these two brave men died; brave men I call them, for they were the beauty and glory of Mansoul so long as they lived therein; nor did there now remain any more a noble spirit in Mansoul, they all fell down and yielded obedience to Diabolus and became his slaves and vassals as you shall hear. And first they did as Ill-pause had taught them; they looked, they considered, they were taken with the forbidden fruit, they took thereof and did eat; and having eaten they became immediately drunken therewith; so they opened the gate, both Ear-gate and Eye-gate, and let in Diabolus with all his bands.” This allegory translated into a philosophy of the human will means that instantaneous resistance and refusal of the contrary must accompany the choice of good and that the absence of this refusal and resistance, which is implied in the Pelagian indifference and liberty to choose either good or evil, is a false definition of human freedom.

The regenerate and sanctified soul offers immediate resistance and refusal to temptation instead of dalliance. Bunyan indicates this in saying that in the fighting by which the town of Mansoul was recaptured by Emmanuel “Mr. Ill-pause received a grievous wound in the head; some say that his brainpan was cracked; this I have taken notice of, that he was never after this able to do that mischief to Mansoul as he had done in times past.”

The difference between the Augustinian freedom of positive self-determination and the Pelagian freedom of negative indetermination or nondetermination is the same as that between inclination and option. The will may be freely inclined by its self-motion and yet be unable to reverse its self-motion. It has no option in this case. That is to say, it cannot incline or disincline by a resolution or volition, which is implied in optional power. It is not optional with a miser to make himself generously inclined, and yet his avaricious inclination is voluntary and uncompelled. He is willing in his avarice because he is self-moved in it. It is not optional with a sinner to convert his supreme love of self into supreme love of God, and yet his selfish love is the self-activity of his will. It is necessary in order to responsibility for sin that the will incline freely to sin and continue so to incline; but not necessary in order to responsibility for sin that it have an optional ability to overcome sin after its voluntary origination. In having power to apostatize, holy Adam had a kind of “power to the contrary,” but it differed greatly from the Pelagian “power to the contrary” (1) in that it was not exerted from a state of indifference, but of positive holiness and (2) in that there was not equal facility to choose good or evil. It was easier for Adam to remain holy than to begin sin. He had an inclination to good and was happy in it.

The Pelagian idea of the will makes its action consist wholly in volitions. The will really has no inclination because it is constantly indifferent. It is undetermined, not self-determined upon this supposition. The volitions occur without any ground or source for them in a permanent disposition or character of the will. But to omit that central action of the will which consists in a steady self-motion to an ultimate end and resolve all its agency into a series of superficial volitions or choices over which the man has the same optional control that he has over the movement of his muscles and which have no basis in an inclination or disposition of the faculty is to omit the most important part of the contents of the will and the most essential element in voluntariness. Employing Kant’s phraseology, it is denying will as noumenon or the real thing itself and affirming will only as phenomenon or as it appears to the senses in a series. Or using the category of cause and effect, it is to recognize the effect and overlook the cause. The inclination of the will is the cause of all the volitions exercised by it, and to postulate these latter without the former is to postulate effects without a cause, a tree without a root.

4.2.7 (see p. 504). That the holy self-movement of the human will is both the Creator’s product and the creature’s activity is taught in 1 Chron. 29:14: “Who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of you and of your own have we given you.” The benevolent disposition of the will is a “willing” disposition. It is the spontaneity of the man; his own personal activity. But that the man is “able” thus to energize is due to divine impulse and actuation. God “works in him to will” in this manner. The holy will is compared by our Lord to a vine branch which bears fruit “of itself” (aph’ heautou);²⁵ but in order to do so it must “abide in the vine.” The holy will is spontaneous and self-moving, but in order to this the Holy Spirit must be under and behind the self-motion. This important truth, which precludes human egotism and pride, is abundantly taught in revelation and from thence has passed into all orthodox theology. Paul like David teaches it: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12–13); “not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything [holy] as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; who has made us able ministers of the new testament” (2 Cor. 3:5–6); “I labored more abundantly than they all; yet not I but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Cor. 15:10). The Son of God teaches it more repeatedly than any of his prophets and apostles: “All that the Father gives to me shall come to me; and him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37); “no man can come to me except the Father which has sent me draw him” (6:44); “no man can come unto me except it were given unto him of my Father” (6:65); “I give unto my sheep eternal life. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all” (10:28–29); “you have given your Son power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him” (17:2); “I have manifested your name unto the men which you gave me out of the world” (17:6); “I pray not for the world, but for them which you have given me” (17:9); “holy Father, keep through your own name those whom you have given me” (17:11); “those that you gave me I have kept” (17:12); “Father, I will that they whom you have given me be with me where I am” (17:24).

Milton (Paradise Lost 3.173–81) states the doctrine:

Man shall not quite be lost, but saved who will;

Yet not of will in him, but grace in me,

Freely vouchsafed; once more I will renew

His lapsed powers, though forfeit and enthralled

By sin to foul exorbitant desires;

Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand

On even ground against his mortal foe;

By me upheld, that he may know how frail

His fallen condition is, and to me owe

All his deliverance, and to none but me.

4.2.8 (see p. 505). The Pelagian inference that because the human will can originate sin by solitary self-determination it can originate holiness in the same way is contained in the common remark that “the sinner is responsible for accepting or rejecting the invitations of the gospel.” He is responsible only for rejecting, not for accepting them, because the latter act is right and the former wrong. Responsibility is an idea that is properly associated only with sin and guilt. To hold a man responsible implies that he has committed an offense of some kind. We never say that a person is responsible for an innocent and virtuous action. Whenever a man’s responsibility is inquired into, it is with reference to some fault with which he is charged. If the sinner voluntarily rejects the offered mercy of God, he is culpable for so doing and is therefore amenable to the charge of culpability and responsible before the divine tribunal because of it. But if under the operation of the Holy Spirit he accepts the divine offer of mercy, he is not culpable for so doing any more than he is meritorious for it, nor is he liable or responsible to a criminal charge. In the former instance, in which his voluntary action is sinful, the action is his alone; in the latter instance, in which his voluntary action is holy, it is the consequence of God’s “working in him to will.” Man is responsible for sin because he is both the author and the actor of it; but he is not responsible for holiness because he is only the actor and not the author. In the above-mentioned statement the term free instead of responsible is the proper one: “The sinner is free in accepting or rejecting the invitations of the gospel.” If he accepts them, he does so freely under the actuation of the Holy Spirit. If he rejects them, he does so freely without this actuation and solely by his own self-determination.

Scripture marks the difference between holiness as having God for its author and sin as having the creature alone for its author by denominating sin “works of the flesh” and holiness “fruits of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:19, 22). Augustine (Grace and Free Will 21) says of the use of “wages” for the one and “gift” for the other: “The apostle says that ‘the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord,’ having just said that ‘the wages of sin is death.’ Deservedly did he call it ‘wages,’ because everlasting death is awarded as its proper due to diabolical service. Now when it was in his power to say and rightly to say, ‘But the wages [recompense] of righteousness is eternal life,’ he yet preferred to say, ‘The gift of God is eternal life,’ in order that we may hence understand that God does not for any merits of our own, but from his own divine compassion prolong our existence to everlasting life. It is not, however, to be supposed that because he said, ‘It is God who works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure,’ that free will is taken away. If this had been his meaning, he would not have said just before, ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.’ For when the command is given to ‘work,’ their free will is addressed; and when it is added, ‘with fear and trembling,’ they are warned against boasting of their good deeds as if they were the original authors of them.” Man is self-moving and self-determined in sin only by reason of God’s preserving and upholding agency, not by reason of his inworking and actuating energy; but he is self-moving and self-determined in holiness by reason both of God’s preserving and actuating power. In the first instance, nothing is requisite but to keep the will in being; the inward nisus and motion to evil being the agency solely of the will itself. In the last instance it is not sufficient merely to sustain the will; it must also be influenced and incited to motion, yet spiritually, not physically. Though actuated by the Holy Spirit, the holy will is nevertheless a self-moving and uncompelled faculty. Holy inclination is the will’s right self-motion because of divine actuation or “God’s working in the will to will.” Sinful inclination is the will’s wrong self-motion without divine actuation. But the motion in both instances is that of mind not of matter, spiritual not mechanical, free not forced motion.

The other view of the will and freedom, namely, that both in holiness and sin the will is merely sustained in being and by an act of its own alternative choice originates either by its solitary efficiency, is not supported by self-consciousness, which always reports bondage to evil and inability to good, nor by Scripture.

This important difference is sometimes overlooked, and sin seems to be placed in the same relation with holiness to God. The following from Zanchi (Predestination, 29 [trans. Toplady]) is an instance: “We are hereby taught not only humility before God, but likewise dependence on him. For if we are thoroughly persuaded that of ourselves and in our own strength we cannot do good or evil; but that being originally created by God, we are incessantly supported, moved, influenced, and directed by him this way or that as he pleases; the natural inference from hence will be that with simple faith we cast ourselves entirely as on the bosom of his providence.” This phraseology is not sufficiently guarded; for taken by itself it teaches that the human will needs divine help in order to sin, in the same way that it needs it in order to obedience; the truth being that in the former instance it needs only to be left to itself, while in the latter it requires the positive inworking of the Holy Spirit. But that Zanchi only means, here, that the human will, when sinning, requires to be upheld in being and to have its power of free will maintained by God is evinced by his statements elsewhere in this treatise: “God as the primary and efficacious cause of all things is not only the author of those activities done by his elect as actions, but also as they are good actions; whereas, on the other hand, though he may be said to be the author of all the actions done by the wicked, yet he is not the author of them in a moral sense, as they are sinful, but as they are mere actions abstractedly from all consideration of the goodness or badness of them” (“Introduction,” 25). “God does not mock his creatures; for if men do not believe his word nor observe his precepts, the fault is not in him, but in themselves; their unbelief and disobedience are not owing to any ill infused into them by God, but to the vitiosity of their depraved nature and the perverseness of their own wills” (“Introduction,” 5). “Augustine, Luther, Bucer, the Scholastic divines, and other learned writers are not to be blamed for asserting that ‘God may in some sense be said to will the existence and commission of sin.’ For were this contrary to his determining will of permission, either he would not be omnipotent or sin could have no place in the world; but he is omnipotent and sin has place in the world, which it could not have, if God had willed otherwise. No one can deny that God permits sin; but he neither permits it ignorantly nor unwillingly; therefore knowingly and willingly. Luther maintains this, and Bucer and Augustine. Yet God’s voluntary permission of sin lays no man under any forcible or compulsive necessity of committing it; consequently God can by no means be termed the author of sin; to which he is not in the proper sense of the word accessory, but only remotely or negatively so, inasmuch as he could, if he pleased, absolutely prevent it” (“Introduction,” 13). “Since all things are subject to divine control, God not only works efficiently in his elect in order that they may will and do that which is pleasing in his sight, but does likewise frequently and powerfully suffer the wicked to fill up the measure of their iniquities by committing fresh sins” (“Introduction,” 22). These extracts show that Zanchi means by his statement that “we cannot do good or evil in our own strength” that we are not self-existent and self-sustaining beings.