I have not heard whether or not we are actually meeting face-to-face today, so I will briefly review some questions/objections that I have encountered as I have read the first 94 pages of this tome.
Edwards seem to think of the will as a sort of physical entity within a person that experiences causes (motives) that move it to act. He frequently uses illustrations that smack of the physics of inertia and momentum. He exemplifies a series of causations as a chain of links, such that moving the first link effectively moves the last link. The idea that each man, when confronted by a constellation of events, ALWAYS chooses the action that does him the most good makes him the slave of those events. It makes him a self-centered biological organism.
It seems to me that a person acting in the flesh will do this most of the time, BUT maybe not all of the time. Though Edwards assumes that heroic acts of parents to sacrifice for their children to a be in their procreative good or of soldiers to sacrifice for their comrades to be in their communal good, I find these to be questionable assumptions to dismiss the idea that human beings can choose to place the good of others above their own good.
Man has been created in the image of God, and so he has the ability to be creative. He cannot create physical matter as God did, but he can create.
Man has a spirit that is greater than the spirit of animals, so though brute beasts MUST act according to the flesh man can rise above it. An animal must fight and kill to guard territory, but man can rise above this animal desire. An animal will procreate at any opportunity, but man can live in mongamy. An animal will tear at the flesh of a fallen animal as soon as it is safe, but man can wait at a table until all plates have been served. Rather than experiencing a chain of causes, wherein the first link is inexorably connected to the last, man may be able to choose a thought, an attitude, or an act at any point in the sequence. We were created to rule the universe, as stewards of God, not to be ruled by it.
If I understand Scripture correcting the will of man is not separate from the soul of man, but an expression of the man. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three in one and all three are expressions of God working in concert. The Son did NOT work individually from God. The Holy Spirit does NOT work individually from God. Neither does the will work individually from the soul of the human being. The will is an expression of the human being. Writing that the will causes its willing as an absurdity assumes that the will is analagous to a physical object like a hammer. Of course I agree that a hammer cannot instigate hammering. But the will of a man that sees a physical object like a hammer may, because of many motives, may choose to hammer with it.
This same line of argument extends to the soul of man. The soul, created to manage the universe, is not driven by it and may express creativity in response to it. I grant that most of the time our choices seem follow a pattern of creating the most agreeable consequences for our existence in this world. I can't yet grant that this is true for all situations, so that one can conclude that the motives present in our circumstances DRIVE those choices. Influences do NOT decide the matter! Influences ONLY influence our choice.
What does this mean to me as a teacher? I'll weigh in with my opinion. When I can help a student understand right choices, then I will instruct and counsel as possible. When a student does not believe my counsel pre-act, then the consequences of the action provide opportunities for post-act discussion.
The nature of my pre-act instruction and counsel will affect my ability to provide post-act instruction and counsel. Students may be more ready to hear my counsel, when they are suffering negative consequences.
Students may be too immature to face certain choices. Wise mentoring chooses when the time is right for students to make choices. When I feel that the student or community would suffer consequences (that students cannot yet understand) that are too disastrous to accept, then I may refuse the student the opportunity to choose.
I look forward to the time when we can meet face-to-face to share our thoughts on these ideas. Until that time, I will continue reading and writing in the margins.
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Vinny,
Thanks for your post! I’ll be in Alabama until July 7. I’m also looking forward to our discussions together face-to-face. Until then, let the virtual conversations continue.
To use Edwards’s language, it would be “absurd” to believe that the first act of choice is the product of an act of choice that went before it since there isn’t, in fact, an act of choice before the first act of choice. What exists before the first act of choice [effect] is cause. This is the common and natural basis for our knowledge of the being of God [Romans 1.20]:
“Nothing ever comes to pass without a cause. What is self-existent, must be from eternity, and must be unchangeable; but as to all things that begin to be [including acts of the will or that by which the mind chooses any thing] they are not self-existent, and therefore must have some foundation of their existence without themselves. That whatsoever begins to be, which before was not, must have a cause why it then begins to exist, seems to be the first dictate of the of the common and natural sense which God hath implanted in the minds of all mankind, and the main foundation of all our reasonings about the existence of things past, present, or to come” [p. 48].
The will then is not self-determining as the Arminians would define self-determination. The will is rather as the greatest apparent good is [pp. 7-8]. The implications of seeing effect apart from cause [even in stating that cause influences effect without necessarily determining effect] are devastating to an understanding of the freedom [without constraint] of the first efficient Cause or God Himself:
“But if 0nce this grand principle of common sense be given up, that what is not necessary in itself, must have a cause; and we begin to maintain, that things may come into existence and begin to be, which heretofore have not been, of themselves, without any cause; all our means of ascending in our arguing from the creature to the Creator, and all our evidence of the being of God is cut off at one blow. In this case, we cannot prove that there is a God, either from the being of the world and the creatures in it, or from the manner of their being, their order, beauty and use” [p.50].
The theological implications are enormous. Edwards will help us with those further along in the treatise. Section 11 [p. 111] looks full of theological help. Edwards does, however, give us a terse summary statement at the end of section X.
“There can be no act of will, choice, or preference of the mind without some motive or inducement, something in the mind’s view, which it aims at, seeks, inclines to, and goes after; so it is most manifest, there is no such liberty in the universe as Arminians insist on; nor any such thing possible or conceivable” [p. 110].
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