I just finished the last five pages of the City of God (Hurray!!!) and came across Augustine's answer to a philosophical question that has always puzzled and intrigued me. If there will be no sin in heaven, and no possibility of sinning and rebelling against God as Lucifer and the demons did, and as the first humans did in Eden, how could there possibly be free will in the New Jerusalem? Here's how Augustine navigates this issue:
"Also [in the City of God] they will then no longer be able to take delight in sin. This does not mean, however, that they will have no free will. On the contrary, it will be all the more free, because set free from delight in sinning to take a constant delight in not sinning. For when man was created righteous, the first freedom of will that he was given consisted in an ability not to sin [posse non peccare] but also in an ability to sin [posse peccare]. But this last freedom of will will be greater, in that it will consist in not being able to sin [non posse peccare]. This, however, will not be a natural possibility, but a gift from God. For it is one thing to be God, and another to be a partaker of God: God is by nature unable too sin; but he who partakes of God's nature receives the impossibility of sinning only as a gift from God. Moreover, in the divine gift of free will there was to be observed a gradation such that man should first receive a free will by which he was able not to sin, and finally a free will by which he was not able to sin: the former being given to man in a state of probation, and the latter to him in a state of reward. But because human nature sinned when it had the power to sin, it is redeemed by a more abundant gift of grace so that it may be led to that state of freedom in which it cannot sin." (XXII. 30)
Augustine's answer here about human freedom in the Eschaton solves another tricky issue related to Adam's Fall in the Garden. If God has foreordained the future such that Adam's decent into sin is an integral part of His eternal decree, how is God not the author of sin?? In a real sense this is the big, uncomfortable question that makes most Calvinists squirm when pressed to give an answer. Augustine's answer here is that Adam in the Garden had the ability not to sin [posse non peccare] which entails full freedom of the will, but for some reason unknown to us, God in his sovereignty chose to withhold his grace from Adam. (a passive, rather than an active response on God's part) According to Augustine's logic, the restored order in the Eschaton will be even better than the Garden of Eden, because at that time God will extend grace to all of the elect so that they will not be able to sin [non posse peccare]. Augustine therefore shifts the issue from any blasphemous notion we may have of a defect in the human will placed there by God, to the giving/ withholding of a divine "gift" of grace which guarantees that the will chooses what is Good. Since God is under no obligation to give grace to even a single person (grace by definition is 'unmerited favour'), withholding this gift from Adam even prior to the first sin does not implicate God in that first terrible act of rebellion. Adam used his own free will to rebel against God, and God, acting in accordance with His eternal decree, did not prevent Adam from sinning even though He could have done so. Quite an ingenious solution to a very difficult theological problem!
Interesting take on the issue. I've never been a fan of the concept of free will because it seems to be largely illusionary. Human behaviour seems to be predictable, if complex. People react to their environment and when they act in ways we don't expect they can always give reasons for it. This suggest that even if I personally can't predict behaviour, reasons exist and the behaviour is predictable.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that you can't choose, to pick a banal example, to somersault to work every morning, but I could probably predict that you won't because our will is not free enough to do that given that it would be intensely unpleasant. You would need to be a compelling reason to do this, like if you were participating in a competition or believed it to be an act of devotion. You wouldn't do it just because.
I therefore like the explanation that the constraints on our will come from desire or urge, and appreciate Augustine's take on the desires being different in the Eschaton. There are a few questions that Augustine's explanation brings up, however.
Assuming for a moment, that everything that you/Augustine just described is accurate, the implication is that God's inaction when he had power to change things does not imply responsibility. This is especially important because we also have the concept of God having a plan since the very beginning that hasn't been changed.
It's a bit like if you tell your kid not to touch the hot stove. Then a neighbour kid comes over and says to touch it because it'll tickle. And you're standing and watching. Next thing you know, he has a burnt hand, and you're saying "didn't I tell you not to do that?" But as a parent wouldn't you share responsibility if you had the power to prevent it?
The reason given in the story itself is that God just wasn't there. That he went somewhere else for a while and then came back. Again if he really didn't want that tree eaten from but for some reason needed that tree right there, a nice glass dome around it would have helped. It seems to imply either that God didn't think of that, or that his first priority wasn't making sure that tree wasn't eaten from.
The explanation that probably sits best is the cop-out answer: That we're projecting human motivations on God who is not human. It's a cop-out because it leaves us not knowing what God's motivations are in the story which is unsatisfying. It's nevertheless more appealing to most Christians than the alternative explanation that the account is inaccurate.
Hey Nathan - I've thought a bit about your example with the stove before and I think it does create some difficulties as you've mentioned - especially at an emotional level as we think about God's justice and goodness. I think that the unavoidable conclusion is that God did allow Adam to 'touch the stove' for some reason that is totally beyond my comprehension. God's motivations for creating the kind of world He chose to create (one with the potential for horrific acts of evil) and why He ordained that sin would enter into the world through a secondary cause (the free will of man) are impenetrable mysteries that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to answer. Ultimately, I need to trust in the goodness of God and rest in the fact that He knows better than me - after all, wasn't this exactly what God said to Job?? Isn't this how Paul responds to anticipated emotional objections about the sovereignty of God in Romans 9?? God's ways are higher than ours and His thoughts higher than our thoughts.
ReplyDeleteThere are many questions like this that we cannot easily answer because we are not omniscient. Why does God not save all of humanity when He has the ability to do so? Why does God place some children into Hindu and Muslim families and others into Christian families? Why does one child who grows up in a Christian home follow Jesus while another child commits apostasy? Why does God ordain natural disasters that wipe out thousands of lives when He could intervene and prevent them? These are all great mysteries to me that lie locked up in the hidden decree of God - although East of Eden, the proximate cause of all of these things is not God but Adam's sin which messed everything up in the world. The most difficult thing to explain is how Adam's sin lies within God's decree (following Eph 1:11) but that God is not responsible for that sin. However we navigate this philosophically, we must not deny God's sovereignty in Eden, nor can we implicate God in Adam's sin.
The philosophical alternatives to an Augustinian form of determinism or 'compatibalism' are not at all appealing to me either biblically or philosophically. On the one hand, we could say that God is not omnipotent - he would help out if he could, but he's unable to stop all of the evil in the world. We could also say that God is not omniscient - the future is open and God cannot guarantee the outcome of the process he's started. This too, is a very dangerous line of reasoning - one, unfortunately which has made its way into some Evangelical Seminaries as 'Open Theism' and into many Liberal Seminaries as 'Process Theology'. My preference is to hold a very high view of divine sovereignty, and to confess that there are many things about God's actions (or inaction) in this world that I do not understand because of my human limitations.
I just wanted to chime in and let you know that I'm still reading your blog, John. Even if I don't really comment anymore.
ReplyDeleteI was going to mention that Augustine's solution only pushes the problem one step back, but Nathan beat me to the punch.
How much of Edwards have you read? Piper makes it sound like Edwards found a solution to the apparent contradiction between the absolute sovereignty of God, and His complete justice with respect to the fall of the angels and humanity.
I bring up Edwards because I wonder how philosophers do explain this. I wonder whether there's a reformed philosopher who's argued that with our blinders on (viz., our sin), we'll never be able to see the solution. I think that's where I'm at, but it's more an argument of arrogance: "If I can't solve it (and if Calvin and Carson can't solve it), then no one can."
Keep blogging, please.
Hey Peter hope all is well in Ottawa! I have read most of Edwards' major treatises and don't recall a solution to this problem. Edwards' major innovation in Calvinism was his distinction between moral inability and natural inability in his 'Freedom of the Will'. This helped hyper-calvinists get over their hesitancy to call people to repentance and faith, but I don't think that it helped answer the tough question about Adam's initial sin. Do you know of a resource Piper has written on this??
ReplyDeleteHey,
ReplyDeleteOttawa's great. Thanks.
Which church are you off to? Where is it?
Piper summarizes Edwards on a harmonization of the moral accountability of man in light of the absolute sovereignty of God on the other hand in a few places. I've tried reading his (Piper's) response to Packer's "antinomy" in Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God several times before, but whenever I do try to read it, I'm reading at a level of concentration that isn't high enough. It goes over my head every time.
Some time I'll need to plan ahead to read that article with paper and pen in front of me to take notes and try to figure out what he's saying and whether Edwards is coherent.
Either way, in that article Piper asserts that Edwards makes and defends the argument that "'God's moral government over mankind, his treating them as moral agents, making them the objects of his commands, counsels, calls, warnings, expostulations, promises, threatenings, rewards and punishments, is not inconsistent with a determining disposal of all events, of every kind, throughout the universe, in his providence: either by positive efficiency, or permission' (The Freedom of the Will, Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. Inc., 1969 p. 258 . . .)."
What do you think of Piper's summary? He definitely uses the terms "moral inability," "moral necessity," "natural inability" and "natural necessity" in the article, as you mentioned were present in Freedom of the Will.
Is it possible that one harmonization of man's moral responsibility and God's absolute sovereignty doesn't necessarily harmonize all events. That is, even if Edwards has a way of harmonizing God decreeing my sin, while not being responsible for it, is it possible that explanation might not explain God's goodness in creating Adam just so that he would fall?
Sorry if I'm now not being coherent.