Mere Machines and Edwards's Doctrine

Here is a great article entitled, “James D. Strauss' Critique of Jonathan Edwards' Freedom of the Will” by John Piper.

Here’s the link: http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Articles/ByDate/1976/1481 It’s good in that there is some interaction on:

1. Motive as not the same as the mind’s judgment of it
2. Mechanistic view of Edwards’s philosophy

Here’s Edwards on why he does not believe his doctrine makes men no more than mere machines. Piper states that Strauss completely ignores this passage. If we come back to mechanism, it might be good to mark this section for conversation:

“As to the objection against the doctrine which I have endeavored to prove, that it makes men no more than mere machines; I would say, that not withstanding this doctrine, man is entirely, perfectly and unspeakably different from a mere machine, in that he has reason and understanding, and has a faculty of will, and so is capable of volition and choice; and in that his will is guided by the dictates or views of his understanding; and in that his external actions and behavior and in many respects also his thoughts, and the exercises of his mind, are subject to his will; so that he has liberty to act according to his choice, and do what he pleases; and by means of these things is capable of moral habits and moral acts... [FOTW, pp. 255-256].”

Who can see them?

Edwards argues from pages 111-148 that God's certain foreknowledge makes impossible the notion that the wills of moral agents are contingent events or not connected with anything foregoing.

There is a great summary of the above section on pp. 144-145 and again on p. 147. I quoted this section in our worship folder last Sunday as an expository help for our public reading of Luke 6 where in v. 8 we read that Christ "knew their thoughts." I found that Edwards's last quotation in Latin is from Boethius. This section is theologically glorious:

“There is no event, past, present, or to come, that God is ever uncertain of; he never is, never was, and never will be without infallible knowledge of it; he always sees the existence of it to be certain and infallible. And as he always sees things just as they are in truth, hence there never is a possibility that they may not exist . . . For if the known event should fail of existence, and not come into being, as God expected, then God would see it, and so would change his mind, and see his former mistake; and thus there would be a change and succession in his knowledge. But as God is immutable [unchangeable], and so it is utterly infinitely impossible that his view should be changed; so it is, for the same reason, just so impossible that the foreknown event should not exist; and that is to be impossible in the highest degree: and therefore the contrary is necessary. Nothing is more impossible than that the immutable God should be changed by the succession of time; who comprehends all things, from eternity to eternity, in one most perfect and unalterable view; so that his whole eternal duration is vita interminabilis, tota, simul, et perfecta possessio [a life, without beginning or end, or succession, and of the most perfect kind].”