3     Human Will

 

Definition of the Will

In discussing the subject of original sin, much depends upon the definition of the will; whether it be taken in a wide or in a narrow sense. The elder psychology divides the powers of the soul into understanding and will; the later psychology divides them into intellect, sensibility, and will. The former includes the moral affections and desires in the will; the latter excludes them from it. For the former, inclination is the principal characteristic of voluntariness; for the latter, volition is the principal characteristic. In classifying the powers of the soul under two modes, it is not meant that there is a division of the soul into two parts. The whole soul as cognizing is the understanding; and the whole soul as inclining is the will.

Locke laid the foundation for the later view of the will, by excluding moral desire and affection from the faculty:

I find the will often confounded with several of the affections, especially desire, and one put for the other. This, I imagine, has been no small occasion of obscurity and mistake in this matter and therefore is, as much as may be, to be avoided. For he that shall turn his thoughts inward upon what passes in his mind when he wills, shall see that the will or power of volition is conversant about nothing but that particular determination of the mind whereby, barely by a thought, the mind endeavors to give rise, continuation, or stop to any action which it takes to be in its power. This, well considered, plainly shows that the will is perfectly distinguished from desire, which may have quite a contrary tendency from that which our will sets us upon. A man whom I cannot deny may oblige me to use persuasions to another, which, at the same time I am speaking, I may wish may not prevail with him. In this case, it is plain the will and desire run counter. I will the action that tends one way, while my desire tends another, and that the direct contrary. (Essay 2.21)

Here “will” denotes a particular act of the faculty, namely, a volition, and excludes a general act of it, namely, desire or inclination. A man’s desire, according to Locke’s use of terms, is involuntary. If “will” means only volition, then a man’s inclination is not “will” because inclination is the same as desire.

Edwards (Will 1.1) combats Locke and contends that

a man never wills anything contrary to his desires or desires anything contrary to his will. In the instance cited, it is not carefully observed what is the thing willed and what is the thing desired: if it were, it would be found that will and desire do not clash in the least. The thing willed, on some consideration, is to utter such words; and certainly, the same consideration so influences him that he does not desire the contrary: all things considered, he chooses to utter such words and does not desire not to utter them. And so, as to the thing which Locke speaks of as desired, namely, that the words, though they tend to persuade, should not be effectual to that end; his will is not contrary to this; he does not will that they should be effectual, but rather wills that they should not, as he desires. In order to prove that will and desire never run counter, it should be shown that they may be contrary one to the other in the same thing; but here the objects are two; and in each, taken by themselves, the will and desire agree.¹

Kant, on the other hand, defines the will as the faculty of desire: Begehrungsvermögen. He says: “The notion of the chief good determines the faculty of desire” and “the will may be defined as the faculty of ultimate ends (das Vermögen der Zwecke), since these are always determinants of the desires.” Kant also denominates the will the practical reason “because the objects of the practical reason are good and evil. By good is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by evil, one necessarily shunned according to a principle of reason” (Practical Reason, 210 [trans. Abbott]). Green (Prolegomena to Ethics, 152) contends that will is desire toward a moral end: “The man as desiring or putting himself forth in desire for the realization of some object present to him in idea is the same thing as willing. Will is desire having the action of a self-determining self upon and within it.”

We regard the elder psychology as correct in including the moral desires and affections in the total action of the will and in making two faculties of the soul, namely, understanding and will.²

The understanding is the cognitive faculty or mode of the soul. It comprises the intellect and the conscience. These are percipient and perceptive powers. They are destitute of desire and inclination; and they are not self-determining and executive powers. The intellect perceives what ought to be done, and the conscience commands what ought to be done, but they never do anything themselves. They do not incline to an end. They have no love and desire for what is commanded; and no hatred and aversion toward what is forbidden. The intellect neither loves nor hates, neither desires nor is averse. The conscience approves and disapproves; but approbation is not love and desire, nor is disapprobation hatred and abhorrence (Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 15).

The understanding is the fixed and stationary faculty or mode of the soul. It can be vitiated and injured, but not radically changed. The operation of the human intellect cannot be totally reversed and revolutionized, as that of the human will may be. After the apostasy, the understanding of man obeys the same rules of logic as before and possesses the same mathematical and ethical ideas and intuitions. And the same is true of the human conscience, as involving the perception of right and wrong. Its structure and laws are unaltered by apostasy. After the fall, man does not have moral perceptions that are exactly contrary to those he had before it. He does not perceive that the love of God is evil or that the love of sin is good. He does not approve of disobedience of law and disapprove of obedience. The energy with which both intellect and conscience operate after apostasy is, indeed, greatly diminished; but the same general mode of operation continues. The effect of sin upon the cognitive side of the human soul is to darken, dim, and stupefy, but not radically to change. This fixedness of the understanding is in striking contrast, as we shall see, with the mobility and mutability of the will.

The will is that faculty or mode of the soul which self-determines, inclines, desires, and chooses in reference to moral and religious objects and ends. These objects and ends are all centered and summed up in God. We say moral and religious objects and ends because there is a class of propensities and desires that refer to nonmoral and nonreligious objects. They are the natural or instinctive desires, which are involuntary. Speaking generally, the voluntary and moral desires relate to God. They are either inclined or averse to him; they are either love or hatred. The natural and instinctive desires, on the other hand, relate to the creature. Of these latter, there are four kinds: (a) physical appetites, (b) family affections, (c) social affections, and (d) esthetic feeling. These all relate to some form or phase of the finite and therefore are not in themselves of the nature of virtue or religion, because religion relates to the infinite. They may be sanctified by the moral and religious desires and are so sanctified when the religious desires coexist with them; but they are in themselves neither sinful nor holy. They are constitutional, nonmoral propensities, flowing necessarily from man’s physical and mental structure. Unregenerate men have them, as well as regenerate. They are none of them the object of a divine command or prohibition, like the moral and religious desires. When husbands are commanded to “love their wives” (Col. 3:19) and wives to “love their husbands and children” (Titus 2:4), they are commanded to love “in the Lord.” The mere instinctive love itself is not commanded. This is provided for in the created relation of husband and wife, of parent and child. The instinctive affection as sanctified by a connection and union with the religious affection of supreme love of God is what is enjoined. The same is true of the love and obedience of children toward their parents (Col. 3:20), of the love and care of parents toward their children (3:21), of the relation of the citizen to the state (Rom. 13:5; 1 Pet. 2:13–14), of the relation between master and servant (Col. 3:22; 1 Tim. 6:1–2), and of the physical appetites (Rom. 14:6; 1 Cor. 10:31). None of these are commanded merely as natural instinctive desires and affections, but as sanctified instinctive desires and affections.

The instinctive or natural desires and affections are transient. They relate to the temporal, not the eternal. The family and the state are institutions that are confined to earth and time. This fact shows that they are nonmoral in their nature. The moral and religious is eternal. None of the natural and instinctive desires were lost by the fall, though all of them were vitiated and corrupted by it. None of them were converted into their contraries by the apostasy of Adam (cf. Edwards, Nature of Virtue, 5–8; Calvin 2.2.13).³

The elder theologians include the moral and religious desires and affections in the will. Edwards (Affections, 1) states the view in the following terms: “The will and the affections of the soul are not two faculties; the affections are not essentially distinct from the will, nor do they differ from the mere actings of the will and inclination of the soul, but only in the liveliness and sensibleness of exercise.” Again he says (Will 3.4), “The affections are only certain modes of the exercise of the will.” “The inclination of the will is a leading act of the will.” In this sense of the term Will, the religious affections are voluntary affections. Edwards identifies the will with the heart and contradistinguishes it from the understanding: “In the former case is exercised merely the speculative faculty or the understanding strictly so called, in distinction from the will or disposition of the soul. In the latter, the will or inclination or heart is mainly concerned” (Spiritual Light in Works 4.442). Augustine’s psychology is the same: “The love or stronger delight is the will”⁴ (On the Trinity 15.21.41); “what are desire and joy, but a will inclined toward the things we desire and rejoice in? And what are fear and hatred, but a will disinclined toward the things we fear and hate?” (City of God 14.6). Clement of Alexandria (Miscellanies 2.15) says that “what is voluntary is either what is by desire or what is by choice.” It is the common view among the elder theologians: “Feelings (affectus) in God are nothing other than the acts of the divine will”⁵ (Van Mastricht 2.15.19); “the will of God, according to its divers objects, has different names, to wit: of holiness, goodness, love, mercy, and such like” (Ross, Wollebius, 17). The elder Calvinists often defined the will as rational appetency: “The will, which is the rational appetite, is always conjoined with the sensitive appetite, in such a way that in man, the sensitive appetite itself responds proportionally to the will”⁶ (Keckermann in Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, locus 15). Consequently, they regarded the inward motions of this rational appetency as sinful and punishable and refused to call them involuntary: “These very motions are not totally involuntary, because we have attracted them by our will. Nothing prevents us from attributing these motions to actual sin, because obviously concupiscence is actual sin. Moreover, these motions are either parts of, or the starting points of, concupiscence”⁷ (Keckermann in Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics); “as the will does now work upon that object [namely, God] by desire, which is as it were a motion toward the end as yet unobtained, so likewise upon the same hereafter received, it shall work also by love” (Hooker, Polity 1.11); “the knowledge of man is of two kinds: the one respecting his understanding and reason, and the other respecting his will, appetite, and affections; whereof the former produces position or decree, the latter action or execution” (Bacon, Advancement of Learning, 2); “the difference of men is very great; you would scarce think them to be of the same species; and yet it consists more in affection than in intellect” (Selden, Table Talk, 71 [ed. Auber]). (See supplement 4.3.1.)

The terms inclination, desire, and affection are interchangeable. The “desire” of the psalmist’s heart is one and the same thing with the “inclination” of his will. He often asks God to “incline” his heart. The inclination of the will is its constant self-determination. The affections or desires are the various phases or aspects of the inclination. Love of God is an affection of the heart; but it is also one variety of the disposition or inclination of the Christian. Hatred of sin is the aversion of a good man’s will, its disinclination to evil: “To will is nothing other than a certain inclination toward an object of the will, which is universal good”⁸ (Aquinas, Summa 1.105.4).

In the Authorized Version, “willing” sometimes means “desiring” and sometimes “purposing,” according as it translates thelō⁹ or bouleuō:¹⁰ “What if God [though] willing (thelōn)¹¹ to show his wrath [yet] endured” (Rom. 9:22); “willingly (thelontas)¹² ignorant” = desiring to be ignorant (2 Pet. 3:5; cf. 1 Tim. 2:4); “the centurion willing (boulomenos)¹³ to save Paul” (Acts 27:43; cf. 1 Tim. 2:8; 5:14; 2 Pet. 3:9). In Eph. 2:3, the “lusts” (epithymiai)¹⁴ are called “inclinations” (thelēmata).¹⁵ St. James (4:2) represents sinful desire to be the same as sinful inclination, when he says, “You lust (epithymeite)¹⁶ and have not, you desire to have (zēloute)¹⁷ and cannot obtain.” When Christ (John 5:6) asks, “Will you be made whole?” “will” means desire.

The will, unlike the understanding, is mutable. It is capable of a radical and total change or revolution. It has met with such a change in the apostasy of Adam. Man now is inclined exactly contrary to what he was by creation. In respect to moral and religious ends and objects, he inclines, desires, loves, and acts directly contrary to what he did when he came from the Creator’s hand. This great change is denominated a “fall.” It is an overthrow, a catastrophe. It is not a mere difference in the degree or intensity with which the will operates, but it is an entire alteration of the direction of its activity. The fall of the will was a revolution, not an evolution.

The elder psychology, by regarding the moral desires and affections as modes of the inclination of the will, brings them within the sphere of responsibility and distinguishes in kind between the moral (or voluntary) and the natural (or involuntary) desires. In this way, it precludes necessitating theories of human nature and agency. Spinoza, for example, breaks down the distinction between the natural and the moral, the instinctive and the voluntary, by rejecting Descartes’s view of the moral affections as voluntary inclination and contending that “the affections of hatred, anger, envy, etc., considered in themselves, follow from the same necessity and force (virtus) of nature as other things” (Ethics, 3). The physical appetites together with the family, social, and esthetic desires and affections are clearly different from such affections as envy, pride, hatred, and malice in their origin and nature. The report and verdict of conscience concerning them is wholly different. They are instinct, not will. That a man craves food is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy. That he feels love and desire toward his kindred, his country, and artistic beauty is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy. But to feel love and desire when God is presented as the supreme object and end is holiness and to feel hatred and aversion is sin. These latter are not instinctive and constitutional affections, but modes of the man’s moral inclination, for which he is approved or condemned. (See supplement 4.3.2.)

Moral desires and affections are the self-activity of the will; its inclination and tendency showing itself in the phases of love or hatred of God, of desire or aversion toward goodness. They are commanded or prohibited by the moral law, which proves that they are voluntary. The feelings of supreme love toward God and of equal love toward a fellow creature are not instinctive, but voluntary. Such love and inclination is not, like the storgē¹⁸ of the parental relation or the involuntary affection of the citizen for his country, a merely natural and necessary efflux from the human constitution, deserving neither praise nor blame; but it is the free determination of the human will. To have it is meritorious. Not to have it or to have its contrary is guilt requiring atonement and remission. Again, the feeling of aversion toward God or of hatred toward a fellowman is not like the shrinking of animal life from death or the recoil of a child from a viper, an involuntary activity of the soul which stands in no relation to law and justice and is deserving of no punishment. This aversion toward God is called “enmity” (Rom. 8:7), the positive hostility of the inclination, the disinclination of the will in its deepest recesses. This hatred of a fellow creature is the repugnance of the will and is murderous in its quality; for “he that hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15). Accordingly, in Scripture, holy desire is holy inclination: “My soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you” (Ps. 63:1); “so pants my soul after you” (42:1). Such desire is the object of command: “Delight yourself in the Lord” (37:4). The sum of the moral law is a command to love: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.” And evil desire is evil inclination: “The desire of the wicked shall perish” (112:20); “grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked” (140:8); “the expectation of the wicked shall perish” (Prov. 10:28); “depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of your ways” (Job 21:14).

Objections to the More Recent Psychology

Recent psychology distributes the faculties of the soul into three divisions: intellect, sensibility, and will. The objections to this classification are the following.

The moral desires and religious affections must, if anywhere, be included under sensibility by this arrangement. But this is too narrow and shallow a term to denote those profound feelings, desires, and inclinations that relate to religion. “Sensibility”by its etymology refers to the five senses. Properly speaking, it comprises only sensuous feelings and desires. Hence it is wholly inadequate to denote feelings and desires that have no connection at all with the five senses, such as the holy affections of reverence, faith, hope, humility, joy, peace, and love or the sinful affections of pride, envy, malice, hatred, and the like. Both holy and sinful affections, in their deeper forms, are mental and disconnected with a physical organism. They have no connection with the sensuous sensibility. The seraph who adores and burns does not inherit flesh and blood. His religious desires and feelings are purely mental. The fiend, also, is intellectual in his depravity. Lucifer, the ethereal son of the morning, was not tempted to apostasy by any sensuous appetite; and his existing moral condition is mainly intellectual. The wickedness of the fallen angels is denominated by St. Paul “spiritual wickedness” (Eph. 6:12). “Sensibility,” therefore, is an inadequate term to cover that wide domain which includes the moral desires of the heart and the inclination of the will and which is entirely distinct from the physical and fleshly side of man.

The explanation of the moral desires and religious affections is inadequate by this classification. According to this division, the will excludes inclination and desire and is only the power of exerting volitions; and the sensibility includes only the physical appetites, together with certain instinctive, involuntary, and innocent desires. The love of approbation and the love of happiness are mentioned as the principal of these latter. When these physical appetites and involuntary desires are “adopted” and strengthened” by a volition or are weakened and rejected by it, then sinful or holy affections arise. Virtue and vice thus differ only in degree, not in kind. The love of approbation intensified by volition becomes pride, diminished by volition becomes humility. The love of happiness strengthened by volition becomes selfishness, weakened by volition becomes benevolence. The rudimental base of virtue and vice is neither virtuous nor vicious. Thus there is no positive intrinsic morality upon this theory. Those sinful affections mentioned in Gal. 5:19–20, “hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders,” instead of being regarded as the simple and immediate inclination of the will and therefore culpable in their own intrinsic nature, are regarded as complex and compounded. They are made out of innocent and involuntary material derived from the “sensibility,” which when intensified by volitions or particular choices becomes guilt.

Furthermore, when a list of involuntary and innocent sensibilities sufficiently large to account for all the virtuous and vicious moral affections is asked for, it is not forthcoming. It is impossible to find innocent bases for “malice, envy, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, murders, and such like.” Neither can “the fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance” (Gal. 5:22)—be explained out of involuntary and characterless materials.

The theory, moreover, breaks down when the so-called innocent sensibility, the “love of approbation,” is examined. This is really nothing but the love of human applause, the sinful desire mentioned by St. John (5:44; 12:43) when he speaks of those who “receive honor one of another and seek not the honor that comes from God only” and who “love the praise of men more than the praise of God” and by St. Paul, in 1 Cor. 4:3, affirming that “it is a very small thing to be judged of man’s judgment.” This desire for popular approbation is not the same thing as the desire for self-approbation or the approval of conscience. The latter is virtuous and proper; but the former is the base of all egotism, pride, and ambition. It is exactly contrary to the meekness and lowliness of Christ and utterly opposed to that poverty of spirit and humbleness of mind which every sinful man ought to have and upon which Christ pronounces a blessing. Such a “sensibility” as this cannot be the elementary base of holy affections. And the other “sensibility,” also, the “love of happiness,” is essentially selfish. It underlies the selfish theory of morals, which is ethically unsound. No mere modification of the love of happiness can possibly produce the love of God or the love of holiness or the love of man. This scheme, in reality, derives and explains virtue out of vice. Pope describes the method, with his usual condensation and brilliancy:

As fruits ungrateful to the planter’s care,

On savage stocks inserted, learn to bear;

The surest virtues thus from passions shoot,

Wild nature’s vigor working at the root.

What crops of wit and honesty appear

From spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear!

See anger, zeal and fortitude supply;

E’en avarice, prudence, sloth, philosophy;

Lust, through certain strainers well refined,

Is gentle love, and charms all womankind;

Envy, to which th’ ignoble mind ’s a slave,

Is emulation in the learn’d or brave;

Nor virtue male or female can we name,

But what will grow on pride, or grow on shame.

—Essay on Man 2

Spinoza represents all affections, good and bad, as alike springing out of “the endeavor of a thing to persevere in its being.” From this one source he derives the affections of anger, revenge, jealousy, ambition, sensuality, covetousness, love, benevolence, humility, compassion, hatred, joy, grief, envy, contempt, hope, fear, self-distress, pride, repentance, etc. (Ethics, part 3).

Scriptural Passages and Terms Defining the Will

The elder psychology agrees with Scripture in its definition of the will. In the biblical psychology, the will includes the moral desires and is antithetic to the understanding. In the New Testament kardia,¹⁹ thelēma,²⁰ and boulē²¹ are terms for the voluntary side of the soul; and in the Old Testament lēb²² denotes the same. The cognitive side of the soul is designated in the New Testament by pneuma,²³ nous,²⁴ and phrēn;²⁵ and in the Old Testament by nepeš²⁶ and rûaḥ²⁷ (Girdlestone, Synonyms of the Old Testament).

The primary and dominant meaning of kardia²⁸ is will, as antithetic to understanding. It includes the inclination, together with the moral desires and affections: “lusts of the heart” (Rom. 1:24); “impenitent heart” (2:5); “purposed in the heart” (2 Cor. 9:7); “with the heart man believes” (Rom. 10:9–10); “turn the hearts” (Luke 1:17); “if you seek with all your heart” (Deut. 4:29); “love with all your heart” (6:5); “I have inclined my heart” (Ps. 119:112); “the heart of her husband does trust her” (Prov. 31:11); “does not afflict willingly (Hebrew: from the heart)” (Lam. 3:33).

These passages evince that in biblical psychology the will comprehends the heart. It comprises all that moral activity of the soul which is manifested in loving, hating, inclining, desiring, purposing, seeking, repenting, turning, delighting, trusting, hoping, believing. Each and all of these affections are phases of the will. They are modes of a man’s inclination and self-determination. If they are conformed to the moral law, they are right affections and the will is a holy will. If they are contrary to the moral law, they are evil affections and the will is a sinful will. This species of psychical activity is not intellectual and percipient, but affectionate and executive. “The kardia²⁹ or heart,” says Owen (On the Spirit 3.3), “in Scripture, is to praktikon³⁰ in the soul, the practical principle of operation, and so includes the will also. It is the actual compliance of the will and affections with the mind and understanding, with respect to the objects proposed by them.”

Thelēma³¹ denotes inclination and desire in distinction from volition: “your will be done” (Matt. 6:10); “do the will of my Father” (7:21); “it is not the will of your Father” (18:14); “the will of him that sent me” (John 4:34); “know his will” (Rom. 2:18); “good pleasure of his will” (Eph. 1:15); “the desires (thelēmata)³² of the flesh and of the mind” (2:3). In these passages, the “will” is the will of desire and delight (see Bruder in voce).

Boulē³³ and boulēma³⁴ denote volition in distinction from inclination and desire: “The same had not consented to the counsel [decision] of them” (Luke 23:51); “I will be [decide to be] no judge of such matters” (Acts 18:15); “when Paul would have [purposed to] entered” (19:30); “I would [decide] also hear the man myself” (25:22); “I was minded [purposed] to come unto you” (2 Cor. 1:15); “the determinate counsel [purpose] of God” (Acts 2:23); “God willing [purposing] to show more abundantly unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his council” (Heb. 2:17) (see Bruder, under the appropriate words). In these passages, boulē³⁵ denotes, not a continuous and steady inclination of the will, but its single decision or volition in a particular instance. This decision may agree or disagree with the inclination. When Christ was crucified by God’s will of purpose (Acts 2:23), it was contrary to his will of desire and delight.

The primary and dominant meaning of pneuma³⁶ and its cognates nous³⁷ and phrēn³⁸ is understanding as antithetic to will. It comprises all the perceptive agencies of the soul: “Knowing in his spirit” (Mark 2:8); “what man knows the things of a man, save the spirit of man that is in him?” (1 Cor. 2:11); “be not children in understanding (phresin)”³⁹ (14:20); “opened their understanding (noun)”⁴⁰ (Luke 24:45); “sing with the understanding (noi)”⁴¹ (1 Cor. 14:15); “my soul (nepeš)⁴² knows right well” (Ps. 139:14); “that the soul be without knowledge is not good” (Prov. 19:2); “keep your soul diligently, lest you forget” (Deut. 4:9); “the spirit (rûaḥ)⁴³ of my understanding” (Job 20:3); “they that erred in spirit shall come to understanding” (Isa. 29:24); “the spirit of wisdom” (Exod. 28:3).

As the understanding and will are one soul or person, the terms for each are frequently interchanged. Kardia⁴⁴ is put for pneuma⁴⁵ in the following: “reasoning in their hearts” (Mark 2:6); “the law [of conscience] written in their hearts” (Rom. 2:15); “shined in the heart to give the light of the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 4:6); “God is greater than our heart [conscience] and knows all things” (1 John 3:20); “wise in heart (lēb)”⁴⁶ (Job 9:4); “void of understanding (lēb)”⁴⁷ (Prov. 7:7); “I have understanding (lēb)⁴⁸ as well as you” (Job 12:3); “she spoke with him all that was in her heart,” that is, all she knew (1 Kings 10:2) (Gesenius in loco; Hodge, Ephesians, 249).

Similarly, pneuma⁴⁹ is put for kardia⁵⁰ in the following: “poor in spirit” (Matt. 5:3); “spirit of meekness” (1 Cor. 4:21); “newness of spirit” (Rom. 7:6); “mind (phronēma)⁵¹ of the spirit” (8:6); “he who searches the heart (kardia)⁵² knows what is the mind (phronēma)⁵³ of the spirit (pneumatos)”⁵⁴ (8:27); “rejoiced in spirit” (Luke 10:21); “in whom my soul (nepeš)⁵⁵ delights” (Isa. 42:1); “my soul thirsts for God” (Ps. 42:2); “if it be your mind (nepeš)”⁵⁶ (Gen. 23:8; 2 Kings 9:15); “with a willing mind (nepeš)”⁵⁷ (1 Chron. 28:9). In the Old Testament nepeš⁵⁸ is very often used to denote the heart and will.

Inclination vs. Volition

The distinction between the will’s inclination and its volition is of the highest importance in both psychology and theology. The key to the distinction is found in the following discrimination by Descartes (Passions 1.18): “Our acts of will are of two kinds. One are the actions of the soul which terminate on the soul itself; as when we will to love God. The other kind are the actions of the soul that terminate on the body; as when from the mere will to take a walk, there follows the movement of our limbs, and we go forward.” The first of these acts of will is inclining; the last is the exertion of a volition. The same distinction is referred to by Constant: “I am able to do good and sound deeds, but I cannot find the good means of accomplishing them.”⁵⁹

When I say, “I will pick up that stone,” this is volition. The action of the will terminates on the body. I am conscious of ability to do it or not. In this instance, there is a power of alternative choice. I can do one as easily as the other. But when I say, “I will love God supremely,” this is inclination. The action of the will terminates on the will. I am not conscious of ability to do it or not. In this instance, there is not a power of alternative choice. I cannot do one as easily as the other. And the reason is that I am already loving myself supremely. I am already inclined or self-determined. I am already doing the contrary of loving God supremely. And the existing inclination precludes the other. I can do the one which I am doing, but not the other which I am not doing. But when I said, “I will pick up that stone,” I was not already inclined to the contrary act—namely, not to pick it up. In this instance, I was indifferent and undetermined in regard to the act of picking up the stone. Consequently, I could do one thing as easily as the other. In the instance of a proposed change of self-determination or inclination, there is a contrary self-determination or inclination already existing and opposing. In the instance of a change of volition, there is indifference or the absence of inclination or self-determination. (See supplement 4.3.3.)

The difference between inclination and volition is seen by considering the moral desires and affections. The desire of human applause or ambition does not rise by a volition. In this sense, it is involuntary, and those who resolve all the action of the will into volition so denominate it. Yet it is free and unforced activity. It rises by spontaneous inclination. In this sense, it is voluntary. The man is willingly proud and ambitious and is punishable for it. His desire for fame is the determination of the self. If it is not self-determination, it must be determination by some cause other than self. But in this case, the sense of guilt which accompanies it is inexplicable. The same reasoning applies to envy, hatred, malice, and all other sinful desires. They are not volitionary, but they are voluntary; they are the inclination of the will, not its volition.

The following particulars mark the difference between inclination and volition.

Inclination is the central action of the will; volition is the superficial action. The inclination is the source of volitions. “It is,” says Edwards (Original Sin 2.1.1), “the general notion, not that principles derive their goodness from actions, but that actions derive their goodness from the principles whence they proceed.” By “principles” Edwards means, as he teaches in the context, the disposition or inclination; and by “actions” he means particular choices or volitions. That the inclination is more profound action than a volition is proved by the fact that a man cannot incline himself by a volition or resolution. When he is already inclined, no exertion of that volitionary power by which he lifts a hand or applies his mind to a given subject, like geometry, for example, can originate a contrary inclination. He may by volitionary effort fix his thoughts upon God as the being toward whom he ought to incline, but this is as far as he can go, if he is not already inclined. No conceivable amount of resolution, even though it rise to spasm, can start that profound and central action of the will which is its inclination and is identical with its moral affection and disposition. The central action of the will in inclining is better denominated “voluntary,” and the superficial action in choosing “volitionary.” The voluntary is the spontaneous. Milton speaks of “thoughts that voluntarily (i.e., spontaneously) move harmonious numbers.” If the term voluntary is made to do double duty and designate both the central and the superficial action of the will, both inclination and volition, it leads to confusion. Some things are predicable of a volition that are not of an inclination. Volitions can be originated at any instant and in any number; an inclination cannot be. If, however, the term choice be used to denote the inclination, it should be qualified as the choice of an ultimate end in distinction from the means to it and also as not proceeding from an indifferent state of the will.⁶⁰

The volition has the same moral quality with the inclination. This is taught by Christ in Matt. 7:17: “Every good tree brings forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit.” Hence the volition has been denominated “executive volition” and the inclination “immanent volition” by those who do not discriminate technically between inclination and volition.

All the volitionary acts of particular choice are performed in order to gratify the prevailing inclination or determination of the will. A man is inclined to ambition; and he endeavors to attain the ambitious end to which he is self-determined by thousands and tens of thousands of volitions. These are all of them of the same moral quality with the inclination. They are vicious, not virtuous. Self-seeking or selfishness is the generic character of human inclination; pride, envy, malice, covetousness, etc., are varieties of this. These are modes of man’s inclination, all of which have the creature not the Creator for the ultimate end. Volitions are exercised in choosing and using means in order to gratify these varieties of inclination. In their moral quality, they are the same as the inclination. A volition exerted to attain an ambitious end and gratify an ambitious inclination is ambitious. A volition exerted to attain a malignant end is malignant. And so through the entire list. Volitions cannot be morally different from the inclination which prompts them. This also is taught by our Lord in Matt. 7:18: “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.”

The volition sometimes seems to run counter to the inclination, but really it does not. A drunkard, from fear or shame, may by a volition reject the cup that is offered to him. He acts contrary, in this particular instance, to his physical appetite for alcohol, but not contrary to the central inclination of his will to self. By the supposition, he is still determined to the creature as the ultimate end, not to the Creator. He still loves himself supremely. The motive, consequently, from which he rejects the intoxicant in the instance supposed is a selfish one: shame, pride, fear of man, or some other merely prudential consideration. He is still controlled by his inclination to self. The volition by which he rejected the cup agrees in its moral quality with the state of his heart. It is not holy, because not prompted by the desire and determination to please and obey God. Had he rejected the intoxicant from regard to the divine command against drunkenness, this would prove him to have obtained a new inclination of the will. But in the case supposed, his volition, though counter to his physical appetite, yet agrees with his moral character and disposition of will. He has carried out his selfish inclination by his volition, only in a different manner from common. His volition in this instance ministered to his pride instead of to his physical appetite.⁶¹

The inclination of the will is the result of self-determination, not of a volition, because the inclination is the self-determination viewed objectively. Consider the facts. Adam as created was inclined to holiness. This inclination, although created with his will, was at the same time the self-motion of his will. Viewed with reference to its first author and origin, it was the product of his maker; but viewed with reference to his own will, it was the activity of his will and in this secondary sense the product of his will. This holy inclination was both concreated and self-determined; the former, because it was a created voluntariness; the latter, because of the intrinsic nature of voluntariness.

Now it is evident that this holy inclination was not the product of a volition exerted prior to the inclination and when there was no inclination, but it was the simple self-motion of the will. The will of Adam moved spontaneously to God as a supreme end, and this spontaneity of the will was identical with the will’s inclination. The will as uninclined did not choose to incline and by this choice made an inclination, but it simply inclined, and this inclining was its inclination.

And the same is true of Adam’s evil inclination. This, also, was the result of self-determination, not of a volition. Adam, in the act of apostasy, did not make a choice between two contraries, God and the creature, to neither of which was he yet inclined; but he passed or “lapsed” from one inclination to another, from one self-determination to another. This instant, he is wholly inclined to good; the next instant, he is wholly inclined to evil. Such a fall of the will cannot be accounted for by an antecedent choice from an indifferent state of the will. It is explained by the possibilitas peccandi.⁶² This is the power of self-determining to evil, implied in the mutable holiness of a creature who is not self-sustaining and omnipotent. When God created Adam’s will with a holy inclination, this inclination, because finite, was not immutable. Mutable Adam, unlike his immutable maker, could lose holiness. He was able to persevere in his holy self-determination, and he was able to start a sinful self-determination. God left it to Adam himself to decide whether he would continue in his first created inclination or would begin a second evil inclination. This was his probation. The first sin was the self-determining of the will to evil, which expelled the existing self-determination to good, and not a volition in a state of indifference. It was self-determination to an ultimate end, not a choice of means to an ultimate end. Sinful inclination began in Adam immediately by self-determination and not mediately by a foregoing volition. He did not choose to incline to evil, but he inclined.

In the instance of regeneration, also, a new inclination is begun immediately by the Holy Spirit, not mediately by the exertion of a human volition. The Holy Spirit regenerates the fallen will instantaneously, and the effect is a new inclining or self-determining of the faculty. The will is “powerfully determined,” as the Westminster Confession phrases it. The sinner does not choose or resolve to incline to God, but God the Spirit immediately inclines him. The inclination or self-determination of regeneration differs from that of apostasy in that it is the effect of God “working in the will to will.” God in this instance determines the will by renewing it, while in the instance of the apostasy Adam determined himself to evil without any immediate operation of God. Yet there is no compulsion of the will in regeneration, because the Holy Spirit operates as spirit upon spirit, that is, in accordance with the nature of a mental and self-moving substance and not as matter operates upon matter. The new inclination of the will is real and true spontaneity or self-determination. But, there are two beings concerned in it, namely, the Holy Spirit the efficient and the human spirit the recipient. In the case of the sinful self-determination in the apostasy, there was only a single being concerned, namely, man.

Consequently, inclination or self-determination may be viewed either subjectively or objectively, as an activity or as a result, as an act or as a fact. Holy inclination, viewed subjectively, is the activity of the will, its voluntary spontaneity: justitia originans.⁶³ Viewed objectively, it is this spontaneity as originally created or subsequently recreated by God: justitia originata.⁶⁴ Sinful inclination, viewed subjectively, is the activity of the will, its voluntary spontaneity: peccatum originans.⁶⁵ Viewed objectively, it is this spontaneity considered as an abiding state of the will originated by the will itself in Adam’s fall:⁶⁶ peccatum originatum.⁶⁷

Inclination differs from volition as the end differs from the means. Inclination is self-determination to an ultimate end, God or the world. When Adam apostatized, his will inclined to self and the creature as the supreme end. This was a self-originated self-determination. When this new inclination to self and sin had begun, then began a series of choices or volitions by means of which he might attain the new end of existence which he had set up. And the first of these choices, the first volition that succeeded the origination of the inclination, was the reaching forth of the hand and taking the forbidden fruit. This volitionary act was the means of attaining the selfish end he had now assumed. He gratified his new inclination by a choice. For Adam had fallen in his heart and will before he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He was already inclined to self prior to this outward act; and the volition by which he reached forth the hand and took the fruit was executive of his new inclination. It did not originate his inclination, but expressed and exhibited it.

The term choice, as has been observed, is applied indiscriminately to the election of the end as well as of the means by those who do not distinguish between voluntary and volitionary action. Adam, they say, chose self as the ultimate end instead of choosing God. But this indiscriminate use of the term is confusing. It is preferable to appropriate each term to its proper act. The will “inclines” to an end and “chooses” a means. Edwards sometimes appropriates the term choice to volitions and uses the term disposition or affection to denote inclination. “It is agreeable,” he says (Original Sin 2.1.1), “to the sense of the minds of men in all nations and ages, not only that the fruit or effect of a good choice is virtuous, but the good choice itself from which that effect proceeds; yea, and not only so, but also the antecedent good disposition, temper, or affection of mind from whence proceeds that good choice is virtuous.” In this passage three elements are mentioned: (a) the outward act: “the fruit or effect of a good choice”; (b) the choice or volition that caused the outward act; and (c) the “disposition, temper, or affection” which produced the volition. Edwards’s position in regard to each of them is (a) that the outward act is preceded and produced by the volition; (b) that the volition is preceded and produced by the disposition or inclination; and (c) that the disposition or inclination, if holy, is either concreated with the will or else reoriginated in regeneration; if sinful it is originated in Adam’s apostasy. But inasmuch as Edwards does not formally and technically appropriate the term choice to volitions, but employs it oftentimes to designate the inclination; and still more, because he uses the term voluntary, as his Arminian opponents did, to denote alike what is volitionary or “caused by antecedent choice” (Works 2.122) and what is bias or inclination, he has exposed himself to the misinterpretation which his views have sometimes met with.⁶⁸

Julius Müller (Sin 1.31) remarks that “the true conception of the will does not lie in the element of self-determination alone. This we must attribute in a certain sense to creatures without rational intelligence. Self-determination becomes will only when it is conscious of itself.” But it is incorrect to call the volitions of animals “self-determination” and to make the only difference between human and animal will to lie in an act of knowledge. There is a difference in the kind of activity. Will in man is rational, unnecessitated self-activity toward a moral end. Will in animals is irrational, necessitated activity in choosing means to a physical end necessitated by physical instinct. The former is real self-determination; the latter is not. The animal is forced by the law of his physical nature to the end aimed at in his volitions; the man is not. The brute must attain the end of his creation; the man may or may not. Instinct in the animal is involuntary; inclination in man is voluntary.⁶⁹

Volition is common to man and the animal creation; inclination or self-determination belongs only to man and other rational beings. The movements of the fingers of a pianist are each caused by an act of choice, in distinction from an act of self-determination to an ultimate end. There are thousands of volitions exerted in a few moments. Volition is also seen in insects and is inconceivably rapid in them. Volition here is innervation. Excitement of the nerve results in excitement of the muscle. If the molecular theory of vitality were true, volition in insects would be rightly defined as Haeckel defines will: “the habit of molecular motion.” It would be the molecular process in the nervous-muscular system. A gnat, according to a French naturalist, vibrates its wings five hundred times in a second. The vibrations of the wings of the common fly, according to an English naturalist, are as many as six hundred in a second (Pouchet, Universe, 112). These are each and every one of them volitionary, not voluntary acts—choice not self-determination—and are the same in kind with those by which the pianist plays a tune or a drummer beats a tattoo. For if the vibrations of the gnat’s wing were not caused by volitions, it could not stop flying. The motion would be mechanical and animals would be machines, as Descartes asserted in his curious theory. Naturalists are now distinguishing between vegetable (or passive) life and active (or willful) life. The vegetable puts forth no volitions; the animal does.

But volition in the animal or the insect has something behind it as its ground and cause, as volition in man has. This background and originating source in the animal is instinct. This takes the place of self-determination or inclination in man. All the volitions of an animal or an insect are exerted for the purpose of attaining the end prescribed by animal instinct, just as the volitions of a man are exerted for the purpose of reaching the end prescribed by his moral inclination. Volitionary action in man is responsible because the disposition or inclination prompting it is self-moved. But in the animal, volitionary action is irresponsible because instinct is not self-moved. Instinct is the necessitated motion of physical substance in accordance with physical properties and laws. Inclination is the free motion of mental and spiritual substance, which is not controlled by physical law. (See supplement 4.3.4.)

Inclination or self-determination is inherited; volitions or choices are not. The bias of the will is born with the individual. His choices or volitions are not born with him and do not begin until self-consciousness begins. The sinful self-determination began in Adam prior to birth; sinful volitions begin in the individual after birth.

Inclination is free because it is self-determined; volition is necessitated because it is determined in its morality by the inclination of which it is the executive. The selfishly inclined drunkard may drink or not drink in a particular instance and thus seems to be free in regard to volition, but in either case his volition is selfish like his inclination. Apparently and formally it is free, but really it is necessitated. No volition can be holy if it is the executive of a sinful inclination or sinful if it is the executive of a holy inclination. Hence man’s freedom must be sought for in his inclination, not in his volitions. Moral necessity can be predicated of volitions, but not of inclination. There is a necessary connection between volitions and the foregoing inclination of which they are the index and executive; but no such necessary connection exists between an inclination and a foregoing inclination or between and inclination and a foregoing volition. It is improper to say that a person must incline in a certain manner, but proper to say that he must choose in a certain manner. If he has an evil inclination, his choices are necessarily evil; but his inclination itself is not necessarily evil. Inclination has no antecedent, but constitutes an absolute beginning ex nihilo; but a volition does not.

This is what Kant means when he asserts that the will as noumenon or “thing in itself” is free, but as phenomenon is necessitated (Practical Reason, 269–89 [trans. Abbott]). The law of cause and effect or of the antecedent causing the consequent operates in regard to the phenomenal series of volitions in time, but not in regard to the abiding inclination which underlies them and which is referable to no particular moment of time. The inclination is not a series, but a unit. There is only one inclination (noumenon), but myriads of volitions (phenomena).⁷⁰ The inclination is not caused either by an antecedent inclination or by a volition, but is self-caused. And the inclination is the real will of the man: the Ding an sich.⁷¹ Ritschl (History of Justification, 7) states Kant’s doctrine as follows: “Freedom denotes the will as unconditioned causality out of time, in distinction from the phenomena of will that run on in time, and are subject to natural necessity. The reason why every recollection of an act committed long ago calls forth sorrow is that reason in all that pertains to our moral existence recognizes no distinctions of time, but asks only if the action was really mine.” Edwards teaches the same truth in his doctrine of moral necessity—according to which the volition in its moral quality necessarily follows the inclination. M. Hopkins, also, says that “choice” is free but “volition” is necessary (Study of Man, 212, 231, 257). (See supplement 4.3.5.)

Self-determination is causative and originative of character. It starts a bias or disposition in the will. Volition is unproductive of character and disposition. A volition leaves the man’s inclination exactly as it found it. It makes no alteration in the bias of the will. This is seen in the futile attempt of the moralist to change his inclination by volitionary resolutions. Inclination is a positive determination of the will in one direction and toward one final end. Volition or choice is the selection of one out of two or more things, not from any interest in one rather than another, but because it is best adapted to the end in view. A volitionary choice is indifferent toward the thing chosen. If the drunkard could gratify his selfish inclination to physical pleasure better by water than by alcohol, he would choose water.

Inclination is spontaneous; volition is nervous and often spasmodic. Inclination is easy and genial; volition is more or less an effort, whether exerted against the inclination or in accordance with it. When the drunkard by a volition refuses the cup because of his selfish inclination in the form of shame or fear, this volition costs him a great effort. When the drunkard by a volition takes the cup because of his selfish inclination in the form of desire of sensual pleasure, the volition is still an effort, though not a great one. He is, at least, compelled to exert his will sufficiently to move his muscles and limbs. Volition moves the body; and this requires a distinct and separate resolution of the will back of the bodily movement. Inclination moves the will itself; but this does not require a distinct and separate resolution of the will back of the mental and voluntary movement. The inclining is itself the mental activity; the cause and the effect are one and the same thing. But the volition is not itself the muscular bodily action; the cause and the effect are two different things. When a person loves or hates, he does not need to resolve to do it. But when he picks up a pin or applies his mind to a geometrical proposition, he must resolve to do so. Love and hatred are easy because spontaneous; volitions are more or less an effort.

To recapitulate, then, we say that the total action of the will is to be distinguished into voluntary and volitionary action, according as we speak of the central abiding inclination or the superficial momentary choice. “Voluntary” action both originates and is inclination, according as the action is viewed as subjective or objective, as originans⁷² or originata.⁷³ It has only three points at which it may begin: (1) the instant of creation, when a holy inclination commenced by being concreated in the will of the specific Adam; (2) the instant of apostasy, when a sinful inclination commenced in the will of the specific Adam by solitary self-determination without divine cooperation; or (3) the instant of regeneration, when a holy inclination is reoriginated in the sinful will of the individual man by the Holy Spirit. The beginning of a self-determined inclination is consequently an epoch in the history of the human will, and epochs are infrequent and rare from the nature of the case. Creation, apostasy, and regeneration are the great epochal points in man’s existence.⁷⁴ But volitions are beginning continually and are numberless. “Volitionary” action has innumerable points of beginning and in every instance supposes a prior inclination to an ultimate end.⁷⁵

This distinction between “voluntary” and “volitionary” action or between inclination and choice is marked in German by Wille and Willkühr, in Latin by voluntas and arbitrium, and in Greek by thelēma⁷⁶ and boulē⁷⁷ (cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.6). The neglect of the distinction results in confusion and misunderstanding. If he who makes this distinction asserts that “original sin is voluntary but not volitionary,” he is understood to say that original sin is the inclination of a man and not a successive series of single choices, that it is the constant and central determination of the will to self and sin and not the innumerable outward transgressions that proceed from this. But if one who does not make this distinction between voluntary and volitionary action asserts that “original sin is voluntary,” he may be understood to mean that there is no sin but that of volitions, that original sin is the product of a volition and can be removed by a volition. (See supplement 4.3.6.)

Theologians who in fact agree with each other appear to disagree in case the distinction is not recognized. Owen, for example, remarks (Indwelling Sin, 12) that “the will is the principle, the next seat and cause of obedience and disobedience. Moral actions are unto us, or in us, so far good or evil as they partake of the consent of the will. He spoke truth of old who said: ‘Every sin is so voluntary, that if it be not voluntary it is not sin.’ ” In this statement “will” is employed in the comprehensive sense as antithetic to the understanding, and “voluntary” does not mean “volitionary.” Owen would not say that “every sin is so volitionary, that if it be not volitionary it is not sin.” Hodge (Theology 1.403), on the other hand, asserts that “freedom is more than spontaneity” and that “the affections are spontaneous but not free. Loving and hating, delighting and abhorring do not depend upon the will.” This agrees with the modern psychology, not with the elder. For by “will” Hodge here means the volitionary power and by “freedom” the power to the contrary in the exercise of single choices.⁷⁸ If this is the true psychology and freedom means the power of contrary choice, then it is correct to say that “the affections are not free” because they are most certainly not the product of volitions. Yet Hodge holds that evil affections are guilty and punishable. But this requires that they be free in the sense of inclination or disposition; that they are not the product of compulsion and necessity. And in saying that “the affections are spontaneous,” he implies that they are from the will (ex sponte). For spontaneity in a rational being is free will. Spontaneity in an animal is mere physical instinct; but in man it is rational self-determination. Leibnitz (Concerning Freedom, 669 [ed. Erdmann]) says, “Freedom⁷⁹ is the spontaneity of intelligence. Thus, that which is spontaneous in man or another rational substance rises higher than what is spontaneous in a brute or other substance lacking intellect and is called freedom.”⁸⁰ Instinct in a brute is necessitated because it is grounded wholly in sense and animal nature; inclination in man is free because it is grounded in reason and a spiritual essence. Inclination is the subject of command and prohibition. Man is bidden to have a good inclination and forbidden to have an evil one. The commands to love (Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18; Matt. 28:39–40), to “make the tree good” (Matt. 12:33), to love not (1 John 2:15), to lust not (Exod. 20:17) are examples. (See supplement 4.3.7.)

The great question in anthropology and in reference to sin and holiness relates to inclination rather than volition is the true subject of inquiry: How does an inclination (either holy or sinful) begin? Had unfallen man power to change his holy inclination? Has fallen man power to change his sinful inclination? That man has power over his volitions is undisputed.

S U P P L E M E N T S

4.3.1 (see p. 512). Edwards (Religious Affections in Works 3.4–5) defines the moral desires as being the same thing as voluntary inclination, in much the same terms with Augustine: “What are commonly called affections are not essentially different from the will and inclination. In every act of the will whatsoever, the soul either likes or dislikes, is either inclined or disinclined to what is in view. These are not essentially different from those affections of love and hatred; that liking or inclination of the soul to a thing, if it be in a high degree and be vigorous and lively, is the very same thing with the affection of love; and that disliking and disinclining, if in a greater degree, is the very same thing with hatred. As all the exercises of the inclination and will are either in approving and liking, or disapproving and rejecting, so the affections are of two sorts; they are those by which the soul is carried out to what is in view, cleaving to it or seeking it; or those by which it is averse from it and opposes it. Of the former sort are love, desire, hope, joy, gratitude, complacence. Of the latter kind are hatred, fear, anger, grief, and such like.”

There are two criticisms to be made upon Edwards’s definition: (1) “Approbation” and “disapprobation” of an object are the action of the conscience not of the will and come under the head of the understanding; but “liking” and “disliking” are the action of the heart and affections and belong to the will. Edwards here confounds understanding and will, which he has distinguished from each other elsewhere when he says that “the exercises of the inclination and will are either approving and liking or disapproving and rejecting.” A man may like what he disapproves of and dislike what he approves of. The will and conscience are different faculties and in fallen man are in direct antagonism. (2) It is not necessary that the “liking” and “disliking” or the moral affections of love and hatred should “be in a high degree,” or “vigorous and lively,” in order to be the inclination of the will. It is not the degree of a thing that makes the kind, but the kind itself. If the moral affections are the same thing as the voluntary inclination, as Edwards affirms, there is no need of bringing in the intensity or laxity of either in the definition. Moderate hatred is as really hatred as immoderate.

4.3.2 (see p. 514). When the will is defined as desire, it is of the highest importance to observe the difference in kind between sensuous and mental desire. The former was denominated “animal appetite” and the latter “rational appetite” by the elder Protestant divines. There is an appetency or craving in both instances, but the one is in the physical nature and the other in the spiritual. The former is involuntary; the latter is voluntary. Eve’s desire for the fruit of the tree of knowledge as “good for food and pleasant to the eye” is an example of the first; her desire for “the knowledge of good and evil” to be obtained by eating of the fruit is an example of the last. The former was innocent; the latter culpable.

This expresses the general relation of involuntary physical appetite to voluntary self-moving desire or moral inclination. The appetite for food is physical, organic, and involuntary; but the desire to satisfy it for the purpose of self-enjoyment is mental and voluntary. The former is instinctive; the latter is not. The latter is the gluttonous inclination of the will; its disposition to please self by means of the physical appetite for food. The sexual appetite is physical, organic, and involuntary; but the desire to satisfy it for the purpose of self-enjoyment is mental and voluntary. This desire is the voluptuous inclination or self-determination of the will; the wish to please self by the indulgence of sexual appetites instead of pleasing God by obeying his command to deny it. It is not the mere existence of the appetite for food or of sexual appetite that evinces the existence of sin in the human soul, but the existence of an inclination in the will to use these physical and involuntary appetites for the purpose of personal enjoyment in contradiction to the divine command forbidding such a use. The sin is in this inclination of the will or disposition of the heart to disobey God, not in the mere physical appetite itself. The physical appetite is indeed made inordinate and difficult to control by habitual indulgence; but its nature is not thereby changed. It is still physical and involuntary appetite, not mental, moral, and voluntary inclination.

Mental and moral desire is self-moving and therefore voluntary and responsible, but physical and sensuous desire is the operation of physical law, not of self-determination. The desire for fame or wealth is wholly disconnected from the physical nature, so that it might be experienced by a disembodied spirit. But the desire for food or alcohol or the sexual desire requires a physical nature. These latter are appetites in distinction from desires; although the older divines sometimes denominated the desires of the mind, in distinction from those of the body, rational appetites, the others being animal appetites. St. Paul mentions both in Eph. 2:3: “lusts of the flesh and wills or desires of the mind.” Rational or mental desire seeks (appetit) an end, but the end is wholly mental. An animal or physical desire seeks an end, but the end is wholly sensuous. The motion or action in the former instance is that of mind or spirit and is self-motion, which makes it voluntary and responsible. The motion or action in the latter instance is that of organized vital matter, which moves necessarily by reason of physical properties and in accordance with a physical law to which it is subject. When the body desires food, this is a necessary craving or appetency which never changes. It is not voluntary self-determination which might become the contrary by a revolutionary act of the physical nature. No such revolutionary change is possible within this physical sphere. Man’s sensuous and material nature always hungers and always thirsts. But when the rational mind or spirit desires fame, this is a self-moving craving or appetency, which may be changed by grace into its contrary. The ambitious and proud spirit may become a meek and lowly one and vice versa. This species of desire is not sensuous and physical, occurring by reason of the law of animal and material life, but rational and mental, occurring by the pure self-motion and self-determination of spirit. Mental desires may be lost and restored, and this proves that they are modes of the will. The desire after God and holiness with which man was created was lost in the fall and is restored in regeneration. It is not so with the involuntary physical desires. The appetites for food, etc., existed after the fall in the same manner as before. The degree of the appetite for food, etc., is increased by the apostasy of the will and becomes gluttony, but the kind remains the same. There is no revolutionary change into an aversion to food, drink, etc. But in the instance of a rational and moral appetite, or mental desire proper, the change is one of kind and not merely of degree. The desire after God and goodness becomes hatred of them. These facts show that the desires of the mind or spirit are voluntary, and those of the body and the material part of man are involuntary. The former are modes of the will; the latter are modes of instinct and sense. Sensuous desires are merely the operation of physical properties and laws in an individual man or animal and are no more self-moving and voluntary than the operation of the properties of matter and the law of gravitation when a stone falls to the earth. The molecules of inorganic matter in the stone when it falls and the molecules of organic matter in the man when he craves food are moved by a physical law that forces their movement. But when the immaterial and spiritual will inclines or determines to an immaterial and moral end, there is no movement of molecules of matter, either inorganic or organic, in accordance with a physical law, but the self-motion of spirit as the contrary of matter in all its modes. The doctrine of Plato and of the Greek theism generally—that mind and matter are diverse in kind and that the motion of the former is self-motion but that of the latter is not, being instinctive and necessitated by physical properties and laws—is the key to the true doctrine of the will. The self-motion of spirit is free and responsible motion, because it is the product of spirit; and yet, though it be self-motion it may be bondage in reference to the power to reverse itself. Evil self-motion left to itself is endless self-motion for the reasons given on pp. 591–93.

4.3.3 (see p. 519). He who confines his attention to volitions or choices will not discover the secret of the will any more than he will discover the secret of anything by confining his attention to the effect and overlooking the cause. The defect in many modern treatises on the will arises from regarding the power to choose between two contraries as a complete definition of the voluntary faculty. A choice between two contraries is an effect of an existing bias or inclination of the will as a cause. This bias constitutes the motive to the choice. A comprehensive view of the whole subject of voluntary action requires, therefore, the consideration of both of these modes of the will’s action. To study the numerous and constantly changing volitions and choices of the will while neglecting the one single and permanent inclination that prompts and explains them is to omit the most important part of the problem. It also leads to an erroneous conception of the nature of freedom, because a choice or resolution is indifferent toward its object and may take or reject it with equal facility because of its indifference. There is no inclination or desire for the object in a mere volition. The drunkard does not desire the alcohol by his volition, but only desires to take it as a means of gratifying his inclination or desire for sensual pleasure. If water were as good a means as alcohol for this end, he would choose water. The real will of the man is in the central inclination or self-determination to sensual pleasure and not in the superficial choice of the means of attaining it. But this inclination is not, like the volition, indifferent to the end aimed at by it, namely, sensual pleasure. It is the self-motion of the entire will to this one end, in which it is absorbed with an intense energy and interest that opposes and precludes a contrary self-motion. The person in inclining cannot incline or disincline to the end with the same facility that he can choose or refuse the means. The distinction between inclination and volition is continually being made in common parlance. “I will do it though not inclined,” is often said. This means that the speaker wills by a volition or a choice of means in a particular instance to do an act that is contrary to his abiding disposition. By a volition he can decide to have a limb amputated contrary to his desire not to suffer pain. “I am inclined to do it, but will not,” is often said. This means that the speaker is in his heart disposed in a certain way but lacks energy or resolution to execute his inclination by a volition. An example of this is St. Paul’s, “The good that I would (thelō),⁸¹ I do not, but the evil which I would not (ou thelō),⁸² that I do (prassō)”⁸³ (Rom. 7:19). By reason of his regeneration and the implanting of the new life he is centrally and steadily inclined to holiness and disinclined to sin, but in a particular instance, under the stress of a temptation addressed to the remainders of his sinful inclination derived from his fall in Adam, he commits by a volition or choice, a single sin. His inclination is right, but his volition is wrong. And, be it observed, the volition in this instance gets its sinful quality from the remainders of sinful inclination, of which it is the executive, and not from the holy inclination, of which it is not the executive and with which it conflicts.

The distinction between inclination and volition explains moral ability. A holy angel can tell a lie if he so desires or inclines to lie; otherwise, not. Yet as holy and without the inclination to lie, he could still speak the words of a lie with his vocal organs by the exertion of a volition that does not agree with his truth-loving disposition. He could formally tell a lie, but not really, because real lying consists in the desire and inclination to deceive. The question is not whether a holy being can control the muscles and organs of his body, but whether he can desire and incline to sin. It is possible for a holy person to fall from God and become a sinful person, and then he can desire to lie; but so long as he remains unfallen he cannot so desire: “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit.” Before it can do this it must undergo a radical change and become an evil tree. The same is true of a sinful person. So long as he is sinful in his disposition and inclination he cannot incline to holiness. Hence in the creeds inclination and ability are convertible terms: “The Lord promises to give unto all those that are ordained unto life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe” (Westminster Confession 7.3); “when God converts a sinner he enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good” (9.4); “the elect are enabled to believe” (14.1); “redemption is effectually communicated to those who are by the Holy Spirit enabled to believe” (Westminster Larger Catechism 59); “the elect are made willing and able freely to answer the call” (67); “effectual calling, by renewing the will, persuades and enables us to embrace Jesus Christ” (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 31).

Suppose the following propositions to be made by the advocate of “natural ability.” (1) I am able to lift a hundred pounds weight, but I am not doing it. (2) I am able to love God supremely, but I am not loving him. In the former instance I must move my muscles by my will. In the latter, I must move my will by my will. In the former instance a volition will move the body and convert the asserted ability into actual lifting. In the latter instance a volition will not move the will and convert the asserted ability into actual loving. In the first instance I do not need to start an inclination to lift in order to lift; a mere volition is sufficient to move the muscles that move the limbs. In the latter instance I need to start an inclination to love in order to love, because love is inclination. In the former instance I lift by resolving, not by inclining; in the latter I love by inclining, not by resolving. There is nothing in lifting, more than in not lifting, that requires feeling or affection. I do not love lifting and hate not-lifting. I am indifferent to both and would choose one as soon as the other if it would be as good a means to attain my end. But in inclining I am not indifferent but interested. I love the inclining to good or evil and hate the contrary.

Inclination and volition may be illustrated by the deep Gulf Stream current and the surface waves of the ocean. Both of the former are the movement of the will, as both of the latter are the movement of the ocean. But as the surface undulations have no control over the central current, so the superficial volitions have no control over the inclination.

Augustine marks the difference between inclination and volition as follows: “There are two things: will (velle)⁸⁴ and ability (posse)⁸⁵. Not everyone who has will (vult) has ability (potest); nor everyone that has ability has will. For as we sometimes will (volumus)⁸⁶ what we are unable to execute (non-possumus), so also we sometimes execute what we do not will (volumus).⁸⁷ Will (velle) is derived from willingness (voluntas), and ability (posse) from ableness (potestas). As the man who inclines (vult)⁸⁸ has will (voluntas), so the man who can (potest) has ability (potestatem). But in order that a thing may be done by ability (potestatem), there must be volition (voluntas). [Augustine here uses voluntas to denote volition, though arbitrium would be better. In the previous sentences he has employed it to denote inclination. It is like the indiscriminate use of “will” in Edwards, for example, to denote either inclination or volition.] For no man is said to do a thing with ability, if he did it without any act of will whatever (invitus).⁸⁹ Although, if we observe more precisely, even what a man is moved to do against his inclination he nevertheless does by his volition; only he is said to act unwillingly in this instance because he prefers or desires something else. By some unfortunate influence (malo aliquo) he is made to do what he does by a volition, though inclined to avoid the doing of it. But if his inclination is so strong that it overrides such influence, then he resists and does not exert the volition. If, however, contrary to his inclination, he does perform the act by a volition, while it is not performed with a full, free-will (voluntas)⁹⁰ yet it is not performed without will [volition]” (Spirit and Letter 53). Augustine also describes inclination as desire and affection: “Our will or love or pleasure (dilectionem), which is a stronger will [i.e., its deeper movement], is variously affected according as various objects [i.e., ultimate ends] are presented to it, by which we are attracted or repelled” (On the Trinity 15.41).

4.3.4 (see p. 524). The inclination of the will must originate in self-motion and continue to be self-moving in order to human freedom, and man’s liberty and responsibility must be found in his inclination or nowhere. It cannot be found in the volitions that execute it, because these cannot change the inclination and have no control over it. Hence that definition of freedom which makes it to be merely the acting out of the inclination by volitions is inadequate. Edwards (Remarks on Principles of Morality in Works 2.182) defines liberty as follows: “Liberty is the power that anyone has to do as he pleases, or of conducting in any respect according to his pleasure; without considering how his pleasure comes to be as it is.” That is to say, liberty is the mere power of exerting a volition in accordance with the inclination or “pleasure” of the will, whether the inclination be self-moved or necessitated ab extra.⁹¹ Edwards correctly maintains that the moral connection between a choice or volition and the inclination behind it is as necessary as the physical connection between cause and effect in the physical world. Liberty or freedom, therefore, cannot be found in this fixed nexus between the inclination and the volition. It must, therefore, be found at a prior point, namely, in the inclination or “pleasure” itself, and this requires raising the question how pleasure comes to be as it is. For if the inclination or “pleasure” of the will is not voluntary in the sense of self-originated and self-moving, then the volition which follows the inclination and has not the least control over it has nothing of freedom in it.

It is for this reason that the free origin of man’s sinful inclination in Adam is a doctrine of the utmost importance. If the fall of human nature in Adam was involuntary and man’s sinful inclination was not and is not self-motion, then the mere volitionary power to act in accordance with this inclination or “pleasure” of the will is no more liberty than is the power of gunpowder to explode if a spark is applied to it.

The allegation is common among opponents of Augustino-Calvinism that original sin and corruption of nature, ascribed to man by this theology, are something not originated by the human will but created and necessitated by God. Watson, who is one of the most candid of Arminians and has more in common with Calvinism than many of this school, so represents the subject. His argument against unconditional election and preterition depends chiefly upon the assumption that men are arbitrarily predestinated to life or death from a state of inherited depravity which is wholly involuntary and forced upon them by the action of God. The following extracts from his Theological Institutes show this: “In whatever light the subject of reprobation be viewed, no fault, in any right construction, can be chargeable upon the persons so punished or, as we may rather say, destroyed, since punishment supposes a judicial proceeding which this act shuts out. For either the reprobates are destroyed for a pure reason of sovereignty without reference to their sinfulness and thus all criminality is left out of the consideration or they are destroyed for the sin of Adam to which they were not consenting or for personal faults resulting from a corruption of nature which they brought into the world with them and which God wills not to correct and they have no power to correct themselves” (Theological Institutes 2.342 [ed. McClintock]). “The doctrine of predestination comes to this, that men are considered in the divine decree as justly liable to eternal death because they have been placed by some previous decree, or higher branch of the same decree, in circumstances which necessitate them to sin. This is not the view which God gives us of his own justice; and it is contradicted by every notion of justice which has ever obtained among men. Nor is it at all relieved by the subtlety of Zanchi and others, who distinguish between being necessitated to sin and being forced to sin and argue that because in sinning the reprobates follow the motions of their own will they are justly punishable, though in this they fulfill the predestination of God. They sin willingly, it is said. This is granted; but could they ever will otherwise? [Augustine answers, ‘Yes, in Adam.’] According to this scheme they will from necessity, as well as act from necessity” (Theological Institutes 2.396–97). “Upon a close examination of the sublapsarian scheme, it will be found to involve all the leading difficulties of the Calvinistic theory as it is broadly exhibited by Calvin himself. In both cases reprobation is grounded on an act of mere will, resting on no reason. It respects not in either, as its primary cause, the demerit of the creature. Both unite in making sin a necessary result of the circumstances in which God has placed a great part of mankind which by no effort of theirs can be avoided. How either of these schemes can escape the charge of making God the author of sin, which the Synod of Dort acknowledges to be ‘blasphemy,’ is inconceivable. For how does it alter the case of the reprobate whether the fall of Adam himself was necessitated or whether he acted freely? They, at least, are necessitated to sin; they come into the world under a necessitating constitution which is the result of an act to which they gave no consent; and their case differs in nothing except in circumstances which do not alter its essential character from that of beings immediately created by God with a nature necessarily producing sinful acts” (Theological Institutes 2.401). “It is manifestly in vain for the Dort synodists to attempt in article 15 to gloss over the doctrine of reprobation by saying that men ‘cast themselves into the common misery by their own fault,’ when they only mean that they were cast into it by Adam and by his fault” (Theological Institutes 2.405). “It is most egregiously to trifle with the common sense of mankind to call it a righteous procedure in God to punish capitally, as for a personal offense, those who never could will or act otherwise, being impelled by an invincible and incurable natural impulse over which they never had any control. Nor is the case at all amended by the quibble that they act willingly, that is, with the consent of the will; for since the [sinful] will is under a natural and irresistible power to incline only one way, obedience is full as much out of their power by this state of the will, which they did not bring upon themselves, as if they were restrained from all obedience to the law of God by an external and irresistible impulse always acting upon them. President Edwards, in his well-known work on the will, applied the doctrine of philosophical necessity (namely, that the will is swayed by motives; that motives arise from circumstances; that circumstances are ordered by a power above us and beyond our control; and that therefore our volitions necessarily follow an order and chain of events appointed and decreed by infinite wisdom) in aid of Calvinism. But who does not see that this attempt to find a refuge in the doctrine of philosophical necessity affords no shelter to Calvinism. For what matters it whether the will is obliged to one class of volitions by the immediate influence of God or by the refusal of his remedial influence, which is the doctrine of the elder Calvinists; or whether it is obliged to a certain class of volitions by motives that are irresistible in their operation, which result from an arrangement of circumstances ordered by God and which we cannot control?” (Theological Institutes 2.439).

We believe that the explanation of original sin and inherited depravity adopted by those Calvinistic schools which deny the natural and substantial union of Adam and his posterity and which justify the imputation of the first sin to the posterity by vicarious representation and vicarious sinning gives ground for this assertion of Watson that Calvinism teaches that original sin and inherited depravity are involuntary in the posterity; that “they did not bring it upon themselves” and “gave no consent to it”; and that “their case differs in no essential particular from that of beings immediately created by God with a nature necessarily producing sinful acts.” It was this type of Calvinism which Watson had in view when making the charge of fatalism against Calvinism. But the doctrine of Augustine and the elder Calvinists, of the natural and substantial unity of Adam and his posterity and the voluntary fall of this entire unity from holiness to sin and their consequent responsibility for this one act of apostasy, is not liable to this charge. According to this theory the responsible and guilty origin of sin and all the retributive suffering that follows it is to be sought for at the beginning of human history, as Moses in Genesis and Paul in Romans teach, and not later down in the individual choices of individual men. It is possible for the opponent to deny that there was any such natural and specific unity between Adam and his posterity; in which case he is bound to establish the truth of his denial. But upon the supposition of the truth of the Augustino-Calvinistic theory it is impossible for the opponent to deny that the charge of a created and involuntary depravity in the posterity of Adam is unfounded.

4.3.5 (see p. 525). According to Kant the categories of the understanding when applied by the understanding to a rational and spiritual faculty like the human will yield only subjective and relative truth, not objective and absolute. For illustration, bring the will under the category of causality. Affirm that it is a true and real cause in the sense that it originates motion and action and produces effects by free self-determination. When the category of causality is empirically applied by the understanding to the will as phenomenon, that is, as choosing means to ends and producing an observable series of volitions, no true first cause and real freedom is found. There is only a succession of antecedents and consequents. In this connected chain of phenomena there is no real beginning of motion. One volition is caused by a preceding one and so backward forever. There is no causation of the kind required, namely, self-causation or self-motion. This volitionary movement is ab extra,⁹² according to the same law of physical cause and effect which prevails in the physical world. But when the category of causality is applied intuitively by the practical reason to the will as noumenon, that is, as inclining or self-moving, the action of the will is not seen as a numerous series of movements, but as one single and steady self-movement; not as a multitude of volitions following each other and dependent upon each other and upon outward circumstances and motives, but as a single and abiding inclination which constitutes the character or disposition of the person himself. This real and true self-motion is instantaneous, not sequacious: un certain élan libre⁹³ (Foullée, Freedom, 217). As such it is one and indivisible. As such it is timeless, that is, free from successions in time. This does not mean that the person who is thus inclining is not a creature of time and in time, but that his will in this act of inclining or self-motion does not act seriatim⁹⁴ according to the common law of physical cause and physical effect, but immediately and instantaneously. According to the law of cause and effect in the physical world, the cause and the effect are two distinct things. The motive is the cause, and the volition is the effect. But in the instance of inclining, the cause and the effect are one and the same thing in two aspects. The self-motion is the cause, and the self-motion is also the effect. The self-motion or inclining is not preceded by something that produces it, such as a motive that is presented by a previous inclination or by a volition that causes it, but is itself the very first thing from which all motives and volitions issue. There is no character behind the character; no disposition back of the disposition. In this way freedom for the method of the understanding is impossible; but for the method of the practical reason is certain. The understanding proceeds from the phenomena of volitions viewed under the categories of cause and effect, antecedent and consequent, time and place; the practical reason proceeds from the direct intuition of the inclination as the underlying noumenon of freedom or the thing in itself, apart from all these categories.

Kant regards the “speculative” reason as reason cognizing by means of the categories of the understanding, which are adapted only to the physical world, not to the moral and spiritual, and as being hampered and limited by them, but the “practical” or “moral” reason as cognizing directly and intuitively without them. The latter is reason in its highest form. Hence Kant maintains that the will and the practical reason are the same thing. This, it is true, was the original and normal relation of the will to the reason as they were created at first, but it is not the actual and present relation. By the fall the human will was thrown into antagonism with the human reason, so that the primary unity and harmony of both have become duality and disharmony. The philosophical in distinction from the theological definition of sin would be this: the schism and conflict between will and reason, between inclination and conscience. In saying that the will and the practical reason are identical, Kant means that the will, as ideal and perfect, is one with the moral law written in the moral reason. He proves it thus: The will is a free faculty. But if it were governed by something other than itself, it would not be free because it would not be self-governed. The law that properly controls the will must therefore be in and of the will. But the true and proper law for the will is the reason. Reason, therefore, must be one with the will in such a manner that the will when governed by reason is also self-governing and self-controlling. Consequently, when the will receives its governing law from something that is not reason, namely, sense and sensual appetite, this is not ideal and true will and there is no ideal and true freedom. There is self-determination, but not self-government. The will receives its law from that which is not the true and proper self, the reason and conscience (see Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals).

It is noteworthy that Milton also identifies will and reason. God asks respecting the worth of Adam’s obedience, in case he had not been left to decide for himself whether he would stand or fall:

What pleasure I from such obedience paid,

When will and reason (reason also is choice)

Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled,

Made passive both, had served necessity,

Not Me?

—Paradise Lost 3.107–11

The following extract from Kant’s Practical Reason, 269–73 (trans. Abbott) contains his own account of his distinction between will as noumenon and phenomenon or between will in its inward and real nature and will as it appears in its manifestations. The former, as we have said, is will as a single abiding inclination, which because it is a unity having no sequences in it is timeless or out of relation to time, which always implies a series. The latter is will as a series of choices or volitions, which is in time because it has sequences. Will as phenomenon is a series of antecedents and consequents. Will as noumenon is not a series of antecedents and consequents, but is one steady unbroken volume of self-motion. Respecting a choice or volition, the question “what caused it?” is proper, because as one of a series of antecedents and consequents it has a cause other than itself, namely, preceding volitions and ultimately the inclination of the will. Respecting the inclination of the will, the question “what caused it?” is improper, because it has no cause other than itself. It is self-caused, that is, is self-moving. It is not caused either by an antecedent volition or an antecedent inclination. It cannot be explained, as volitions can be, by the method of antecedents and consequents or of cause and effect. The reasoning of Kant is close and requires strenuous attention.

“The notion of causality,” says Kant, “as physical necessity, in opposition to the same notion of causality as freedom, concerns only the existence of things so far as they are determinable in time, and consequently as phenomena, in opposition to their causality as things in themselves. Now if we take the attributes of things in time [i.e., as a series of antecedents and consequents] for attributes of things in themselves [i.e., as single and without sequences], which is the common error, then it is impossible to reconcile the necessity of the causal relation with freedom; they are contradictory. For from the former it follows that every event and consequently every action that takes place at a certain point of time is a necessary effect of what existed in time preceding. Now as time past is no longer in my power, it follows that every action of this kind that I perform must be the necessary result of certain antecedents which are not in my power, that is, at the moment in which I am acting in this manner I am not free. Nay, even if I assume that my whole existence is independent of any foreign cause (for instance, God), so that the determining principles of my causality and even of my whole existence were not outside of myself but within me, yet this would not in the least transform that physical necessity into freedom. For at every moment of time I am still under the necessity of being determined to action by that which is not in my power; and the series of antecedents and consequents, infinite a parte priori,⁹⁵ which I only continue according to a predetermined order and could never actually begin of myself, would be a continuous physical chain, and therefore my causality of this kind could never be free causality.

“If, then, we would attribute freedom to a being whose existence is determined in time [i.e., by a series of antecedent and consequents instead of by pure and simple self-motion], we cannot except him from the law of necessity, as to all events in his existence and consequently as to his actions also; for that would be to hand him over to blind chance. Now as this law of necessary sequence inevitably applies to all the causality of things, so far as their existence is determinable in time [i.e., as a series], it follows that if this were the mode in which we had also to conceive of the existence of these things in themselves [i.e., as a unity without series], freedom [in the sense of self-motion] must be rejected as a vain and impossible conception. Consequently, if we would still save it, no other way remains but to regard the action of the will so far as it is determinable in time [i.e., is one of a series of antecedents and consequents, like the volitions of the will], and therefore its causality, according to the law of physical necessity, as belonging to appearance only [i.e., as merely the phenomenal manifestation] and to attribute freedom to the will as the thing in itself [i.e., as the noumenon or underlying bias or inclination]. This is certainly inevitable if we would retain both of these contrary concepts [of free inclination and necessary volitions] together; but in application, when we try to explain their combination in one and the same action, great difficulties present themselves which seem to render such a combination impracticable.

“When I say of a man who commits a theft that by the physical law of causality or of antecedent and consequent this deed is a necessary result of the determining causes in preceding time, I say that it was impossible that it could not have happened. How then can the judgment, according to the moral law, make any change and imply that it could have been omitted because the law says that it ought to have been omitted; that is, how can a man be called entirely free at the same moment and with respect to the same action in which he is subject to an inevitable physical necessity? Some try to evade this by saying that the causes that determine his causality are of such a kind as to agree with a comparative notion of freedom. According to this explanation, that is sometimes called a free effect, the determining physical cause of which lies within, in the acting thing itself; e.g., that effect which a projectile produces when it is in free motion, in which case we use the term freedom, because while it is in flight it is not urged by anything external; or as we call the motion of a clock a free motion because it moves its hands itself and therefore does not require to be pushed by external force; so although the volitionary actions of man are necessarily determined by causes which precede them in time, we yet call them free because these causes are ideas produced by our own faculties whereby desires are evoked on occasion of circumstances, and hence actions are wrought according to our own pleasure. This is a wretched subterfuge with which some persons still let themselves be put off and so think they have solved with a petty word-jugglery that difficult problem at the solution of which centuries have labored in vain and which can therefore scarcely be found so completely on the surface. In fact, in regard to the question about the freedom which must be the foundation of all moral laws and of moral responsibility, it does not matter whether the principles which necessarily determine causality by the physical law of antecedents and consequents reside within the subject or without him; or in the former case, whether these principles are sensuous and instinctive or are conceived by reason, if, as is admitted by these men themselves, these determining ideas have the ground of their existence in time and in an antecedent state, and this again in an antecedent, etc. Then, again, it matters not that these are internal; it matters not that they have a psychological and not a mechanical causality, that is, produce actions by means of ideas and not by bodily movements; they are still determining principles of the causality of a being whose will is determinable in time and therefore under the necessitation of antecedents in past time, which therefore, when the person has to act, are no longer in his power. This may imply psychological freedom (if we choose to apply this term to a merely internal chain of ideas in the mind), but it involves physical necessity and therefore leaves no room for transcendental, i.e., spiritual freedom, which must be conceived as independence of everything empirical and consequently of nature generally, whether it be an object of the internal sense considered in time only or of the external sense in time and space. Without this freedom in the latter and true sense, which alone is practical a priori, no moral law and no moral responsibility are possible. Just for this reason the necessity of events in time, according to the physical law of causality, may be called the mechanism of nature, although we do not mean by this that things which are subject to it must be really material machines. We look here only to the necessity of the connection of events in a time series of antecedents and consequents, as it is developed according to the physical law of cause and effect, whether the subject in which this development takes place is called automaton materiale⁹⁶ when the mechanical being is moved by matter or with Leibnitz is called automaton spirituale⁹⁷ when it is impelled by ideas; and if the freedom of our will were no other than the latter (say the psychological and comparative, not also transcendental, that is, metaphysical and absolute), then it would at bottom be nothing better than the freedom of a turnspit, which when once it is wound up accomplishes its motions of itself.

“Now in order to remove in the supposed case the apparent contradiction between freedom and the mechanism of nature in one and the same action, we must remember what was said in the Critique of the Pure Reason or in what follows therefrom, namely, that the necessity of nature which cannot coexist with the freedom of the subject or will appertains only to the attributes of the thing, that is, subject to time conditions, consequently only to those of the subject acting as phenomenon [i.e., as exerting volitions and choices]; that therefore in this respect the determining principles of every action of the same subject reside in what belongs to past time and is no longer in his power (in which must be included his own past actions, and the character which these may determine for him in his own eyes as a phenomenon). But the very same subject being, on the other hand, conscious of himself as a thing in himself [in distinction from the manifestation of himself] contemplates his existence also, insofar as it is not subject to time conditions and as determinable only by laws which he gives himself through reason; and in this his [noumenonal] existence nothing is antecedent to the self-determination [inclination] of his will, but every [volitionary] act and in general every modification of his being varying according to his internal sense, even the whole series of his existence and experience as a sensible being, is in the consciousness of his supersensible [spiritual] existence nothing but the result, and never the determinant, of his causality as a noumenon. In this view [of the absolute self-motion of the will as inclining] the rational being can justly say of every unlawful [volitionary] action which he performs that he could have left it undone; although as a phenomenon it is fully determined in the past and in this respect is infallibly necessary; for it, with all the past which determines it, belongs to the one single phenomenon of his character which he makes for himself and in consequence of which he imputes the causality of these phenomenal manifestations of the will to himself as a cause independent of sense.”

Kant speaks of a “combination in one and the same action (Handlung) of the freedom of the noumenon with the necessity of the phenomenon. By the “same action” he must mean the action or agency of the same subject or agent. One and the same action, strictly taken, could not have both of these contrary qualities; but one and the same actor might. The whole aim of Kant’s abstruse discussion is to show that one and the same man is free when contemplated in one aspect and necessitated when viewed in another; that the action of the will when it inclines or self-determines to an ultimate end is absolutely free because depending upon no antecedents, and when it exerts a volition is not free because depending upon something foregoing. It is evident that both of these modes of action cannot be combined in a single act of the will.

Schelling, in his Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, adopts and defends Kant’s doctrine of the will as not being within the sphere of physical cause and effect and with him marks the difference between will as inclination (Wille) and as arbitrary volition (Willkühr). “The ideal philosophy,” he says, “was the first to lift the doctrine of freedom into that sphere where alone it is comprehensible. According to this philosophy the intelligible [spiritual] nature of everything, and especially of man, is out of all causal connection, as well as out of or above all the sequences of time. Hence it [i.e., the inclination of the will] can never be determined by any antecedent, since itself as an absolute unity which must be whole and complete in order that the separate and numerous volitions that manifest it may be possible is antecedent to everything that is or will be in itself, not only as to time but to nature and conception. We here express the Kantian conception of freedom, not in his exact words but as we believe he must have expressed himself in order to be understood.” Schelling then proceeds to combat the doctrine of the indifference of the will.

Respecting this tract of Schelling, Müller (Sin 2.95 [trans. Urwick]) says that “Schelling was the first to take up the thread of the investigation where Kant had left it, in a work which is unquestionably the most important contribution to modern speculation respecting freedom and evil and which in profundity and wealth of thought, in nobleness and power of exposition, has seldom been equaled in philosophical literature.” It is, however, vitiated by a dualistic view of the nature of the Supreme Being and his relation to good and evil. Schelling maintains that “there are two equally eternal principles, darkness and light, the real and the ideal, the particularizing self and the universalizing intellect, both of which are in God and the union of which is the condition of all life.”

Aristotle’s distinction between the voluntary and the involuntary is this: “Those things that are done by compulsion or through ignorance are involuntary; and that is done by compulsion, of which the principle is external, and of such a character that the agent or patient does not at all contribute toward it. That is voluntary, on the contrary, of which the principle is in the agent; and the doing or not doing of the action is in himself also” (Ethics 3.1). Similarly, Cicero (Dream of Scipio) defines the physical as that which is moved by external impulse and the spiritual as that which is moved by its own interior self-motion: “An inanimate (inanimatum, i.e., soulless) thing is everything that is acted upon by external impulse. On the other hand, the soul is that which is moved by an interior motion and of itself.”⁹⁸ The “inanimate” here does not mean the lifeless, but that which is destitute of the rational spirit (anima); the anima denoting the rational spirit, which is the same thing as the will.

It is important to remember that the fall of the will, while destroying its power to good, does not destroy its self-motion. The will, be it holy or sinful, is immutably a self-moving faculty. Satan is as self-determining in disobeying as Gabriel is in obeying. Respecting this point Coleridge (Works 1.276, 281, 285) describes the corruption of nature by the fall as “the admission of a nature into a spiritual essence by its own act” and asserts that “a nature in a will is inconsistent with freedom” because there is “no free power in a nature to fulfill a law above nature” and because a will which has received a nature into itself “comes under the mechanism of cause and effect.” This abolishes the guiltiness of sin by transmuting spirit into nature or, as Coleridge uses terms, a voluntary self-moving essence into an involuntary necessitated substance or mind into matter. But the apostasy of the will still leaves the finite spirit unchanged as spirit. Original sin in the will is self-motion still and not mechanical motion according to the law of cause and effect. The inability of overcoming it by the will itself arises from the fact that a volition cannot change an inclination and not from the fact that, as Coleridge states it, “spirit” has been transmuted into “nature.” The philosophical use of “nature” as the contrary of “spirit” is wholly different from its theological use as denoting the natural inherited disposition of the will.

Drummond in his Natural Law in the Spiritual World adopts the same error and destroys the distinction between the natural and the supernatural, the involuntary and the voluntary. To assert, as he does, that the spirit or will of man operates like a law of nature is the same as asserting that the human mind operates like gravity. The present popularity of this writer has greatly promoted the antisupernaturalism of the day.

4.3.6 (see p. 526). Carpenter (Physiology §666) discriminates between the voluntary and the volitionary: “The term volitional was some years since suggested by Dr. Symonds in an excellent essay on the Connection between Mind and Muscle as expressing more emphatically than voluntary the characteristics of an action proceeding from a distinct choice of the object and from a determined effort to attain it. The word voluntary may perhaps be applied to that wider class of actions in which there is no very distinct choice or conscious effort, but in which the movement flows as it were spontaneously from the antecedent mental state.”

4.3.7 (see p. 527). The neglect of many modern Calvinists to mark the distinction, as the elder did, between inclination and volition and the adoption of the modern psychology respecting the will leads to the positions (1) that self-determination means volitionary action only and (2) that the state of the will as seen in the disposition or character of the man, in distinction from single acts of the will, is not voluntary agency. The following from Hodge (Theology 3.52) is an example: “If we take the word voluntary in the sense which implies volition or self-determination, it is evident that faith cannot be defined as voluntary assent. It is not true that in faith as faith there is always, as Aquinas says, an election ‘voluntarily shunning one way more than another.’⁹⁹ To tell a man he can believe if he will is to contradict his consciousness. He tries to believe. He earnestly prays for faith; but he cannot exercise it. It is true, as concerns the sinner in relation to the gospel, that this inability to believe arises from the state of his mind. But this state of his mind lies below the will. It cannot be determined or changed by the exercise of any voluntary power. On these grounds the definition of faith, whether as generic or religious, as a voluntary assent to truth must be considered unsatisfactory.” Here what is affirmed is true, but what is denied is erroneous. It is true that “the state of the [sinner’s] mind cannot be changed by the exercise of any voluntary power” which he has; but not true that the state of the sinner’s mind “lies below the will” and is therefore involuntary. For “the state of the sinner’s mind” is the same thing as the state of his will. Mind is often put for will in English usage. The “carnal mind” (phronēma tēs sarkos;¹⁰⁰ Rom. 8:6–7) is the carnal will, that is, the carnal inclination or disposition or character of the will; the same that Turretin means by “the inclination fighting with God’s law”;¹⁰¹ the same that Rivetus means when he defines concupiscentia¹⁰² as inclinatio voluntaria;¹⁰³ the same that Charnock means by “the sin which is voluntary not by an immediate act of the will [a volition], but by a general or natural inclination”; the same that Owen means when he declares that “original sin as peccatum originans¹⁰⁴ was voluntary in Adam and, as it is originatum¹⁰⁵ in us, is in our wills habitually [as a habitus or inclination] and not against them”; and the same that Baxter (Dying Thoughts) means when he says: “As the will is the sinner, so it is the obstinate continuance of a will to sin which is the bondage and the cause of continued sin; and a continued hell is continued sin, as to the first part at least. Therefore they that continue in hell do continue in a sinning will and so continue in a love and willingness of so much of hell. So far as God makes us willing to be delivered from sin, so far we are delivered; and our initial, imperfect deliverance is the way to more.” According to these extracts the “character” is the same thing as the permanent state or disposition of the will. When the character or state of the will is sinful, the origin of it must be sought for in the self-determined fall of Adam and his posterity. But when the character or state of the will is holy, the origin of it must be referred to the Holy Spirit in regeneration, who in this case as he does not in the other “works in the human will to will.” But in both instances the human character is the abiding state and inclination of the human will and in this use of terms and this psychology is voluntary. It is the free activity of a rational spirit, not the instinctive and necessitated activity of an animal soul.

Again, it is true that “to tell a man that he can believe if he will is to contradict his consciousness,” but not true “that faith cannot be defined as voluntary.” That it is more than a “voluntary assent to truth” is certain. It is a voluntary, that is, willing and affectionate reliance and rest upon Christ’s person and work, to which the sinner is “made willing and able” in effectual calling (Westminster Larger Catechism 67). But after the Holy Spirit has thus made the sinner “willing in the day of his power,” it is self-contradictory to say that the faith that results is not voluntary. Whatever is “willing” is certainly voluntary. It is the central and spontaneous movement of the will to Christ as the object of faith. It is true freedom: “If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.”

Owen (Justification, chap. 2) defines saving faith as voluntary. Speaking of the spurious faith of Agrippa (Acts 26:27) he declares that “as it included no act of the will or heart, it was not that faith whereby we are justified.” Defining justifying faith he says: “(1) It includes in it a sincere renunciation of all other ways and means for the attaining of righteousness, life, and salvation. (2) There is in it the will’s consent, whereby the soul betakes itself cordially and sincerely as to all its expectation of pardon of sin and righteousness before God unto the way of salvation proposed in the gospel. This is that which is called ‘coming unto Christ’ and ‘receiving of him.’ (3) There is an acquiescency of the heart in God, as the author and cause of the way of salvation prepared and as acting in a way of sovereign grace and mercy toward sinners.”

Those who adopt the view of the will and of freedom expressed in the above extract from Hodge lay the foundation for the charge often made that Augustino-Calvinism is fatalism. The volitionary acts of a man unquestionably proceed from the disposition and character of his will and have the same moral quality with it. But if that disposition and character itself is not voluntary in the sense of self-moving, in distinction from moved ab extra¹⁰⁶ and compelled, the volitions that issue from it are not; and the disposition or character is certainly not voluntary if it “lies below the will” and outside of it. This kind of fatalistic “determinism” is not chargeable upon the anthropology which is founded upon the elder psychology. According to this, while the sinful volitions necessarily agree with the sinful “state of the will” or the sinful “character,” this state of the will or character itself is the will’s self-motion and self-determination: a self-motion that began in the fall of Adam and his posterity and continues by propagated transmission in each and every individual of them. If the whole unindividualized human nature in Adam self-determined or inclined to sin, this self-determination or inclination might be propagated along with the individual soul, which is a propagated fractional part of it, and still remain self-determination and inclination. In this way original sin in the individual, though derived and inherited, is voluntary and responsible agency.

In an article on regeneration commonly ascribed to Hodge (Princeton Essays), there is a better statement of the extent of the will and of the voluntariness of its disposition and state. “There is a continual play,” it is said, “upon the double sense of the word voluntary. When the faculties of the soul are reduced to understanding and will, it is evident that the latter includes all the affections. In this sense all liking or disliking, desiring or being averse to, etc., are voluntary or acts of the will. But when we speak of the understanding, will, and affections, the word Will includes much less. It is the power of the soul to come to a determination [decision] to fix its choice on some object of desire. In the latter sense will and desire are not always coincident. A man may desire money and not will [choose] to make it an object of pursuit. When we speak of a volition, of a choice, of a decision or self-determination of the will, the word Will is used in the restricted sense. There are a thousand things capable of ministering to our happiness: riches, honor, sensual pleasure, the service of God; the selection which the soul makes is made by the will in the narrower sense [i.e., by a separate volition]. This is a voluntary act in one sense of the term. But in another the desire itself which the soul has for these objects, and not merely its particular decision or choice, is a voluntary act. For, according to Edwards, ‘all choosing, refusing, approving, disapproving, liking, disliking, directing, commanding, inclining, or being averse, a being pleased, or displeased with,’ are acts of the will. In this sense all the affections and all the desires are voluntary exercises, whether constitutional or not, and not merely the decisions [choices or volitions] to which they lead. Hence self-love, the love of children, the love of society, the desire of esteem are all voluntary, although springing from native tendencies of the mind.” In this use of ” the writer of this would grant that “faith is voluntary.”

In saying, however, that the “constitutional” desires are voluntary, the writer abolishes the distinction commonly made between the two. The “love of children” and the “love of society” are not voluntary, but natural and instinctive. They belong to the fixed constitution of man and not to his changeable will. Hence they were not reversed by the fall of man. They are not moral and responsible. They do not deserve praise or blame. They exist in the unregenerate as well as the regenerate (see pp. 511 and 578–79)

 

 

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