Freedom of the Will

A Wesleyan Response to Jonathan Edwards

Daniel Whedon, John D. Wagner, Wagner

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9781556359811
  9781498251655
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498273039
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Is the human will in bondage to sinful motives, to the point that people cannot make truly free decisions? Daniel D. Whedon, a prominent nineteenth-century Wesleyan theologian, takes aim at this central thesis of the famed theologian Jonathan Edwards. In this new edition of his widely admired 1864 work, Whedon offers a step-by-step examination of Edwards's positions and finds them lacking in Biblical and logical support. Within his position against Edwards, he argues that the difference between natural ability and moral ability is meaningless, that Edwards's deterministic "necessitarian" argument makes God the author of sin, and that people frequently act against their strongest motives. He concludes that, without a free will, "there can be no justice, no satisfying the moral sense, no moral Government of which the creature can be the rightful subject, and no God the righteous administrator."

part second

The Necessitarian Argument Considered

section i

The Causational Argument

I

The Necessitarian Paralogism

It has been said that the sum total of the arguments for necessity, especially in the treatise of President Edwards on the Will, consists in the application in all its phases of the axiom that “every event has its cause.” But perhaps a closer analysis will show that the necessitarian argument is founded not upon this axiom, but upon the assumption of another proposition that is neither equivalent to this axiom, nor in itself axiomatic and self-evident, nor justifiably assumed without proof, namely, the proposition that “every cause is nonalternative or unipotent”; that is, that every cause will produce but one sole possible effect, to wit, that effect which always follows, and no other.

It is implied that, in volitions or physics, for every infinitesimal point of effect there must be the correlative sole infinitesimal point of cause and vice versa. This is identical with the ordinary physical maxim that “like causes produce like effects.” This maxim is the precise contradiction of the proposition that “some causes (namely, volitional causes) are alternatives or pluripotent”; that is, “capable of putting forth either of several effects.” Now the assumption of the above necessitarian proposition is the assumption of the whole point in question. If it were granted, the whole discussion is foreclosed before it starts.

That the maxim that “every cause is unipotent” is not self-evident; that it is not, like the maxim that “every event has a cause,” granted by every honest and intelligent mind as soon as its terms are fairly understood and fully weighed, may appear from the following consideration. Let us suppose the existence of two or more individuals so precisely alike in all qualities of character, that in a given set of circumstances, they are each a reduplication or repetition of precisely a similar volitional experiment. If there is within them the power of alternative choice, there is no proof, from the nature of the cause (though there may be assumption), that each will put forth precisely the same volition. And this not because of any chance, but from the most opposite principle—the mysterious responsible self. It is from the fact that, however alike, each is a distinct responsible Ego; and that in each responsible self is the equal power of alternative choice.

We can recollect but one passage in which Edwards hits upon the thought of directly proving, as well as assuming, that a volitional cause is unipotent; and even in that, as usual, he assumes the point to be proved. Omitting clauses irrelevant to the present purposes, and directed to a point to be hereafter discussed, we quote the passage: “That the soul, though an active substance, cannot diversify its own acts . . . is manifest by this, that if so, then the same cause, the same causal power, force, or influence, without variation in any respect, would produce different effects at different times.” (79) That is, if the soul can diversify its own acts, the same cause, in possession of the same power, can produce diverse effects; in other words, if the soul can diversify it can diversify; if free Will is, then it is. We avow both antecedent and consequence, both being the same. Our view (which seems not to be invalidated by the above argument) implies that in the soul is a sum of power, by different exertions of which it can produce different acts. The soul, with its power, is “without any variation in any respect” until the initial instant of such exerting. The power for either exertion is power for either act; and the soul, in view of a given set of motives, possesses one sum of sufficient power for either.

Edwards Adds

“But if it be so,” Edwards adds, “that the soul has no different causality or diverse causal force in producing these diverse effects, then it is evident that the soul has no influence, no hand in the diversity of the effect, and the difference of the effect cannot be owing to anything in the soul, or which is the same thing, the soul does not determine the diversity of the effect.” (79) That is, if it is not by a diverse causal power in the soul that the diverse effect is produced, then it is produced by nothing in the soul. Why not? Why may it not be produced by the same causal power in the soul, and yet be produced by “something in the soul?” We should suppose that the two things not only could agree, but also were identical. If there be, as we affirm, in the soul the power of producing either of several effects, then that same singular, or unchanged power, can “determine the diversity of the effect,” can fix which effect shall exist, and either effect would be from something in the soul.

Why, according to Edwards, does the soul require diverse causalities, or causative powers, to produce diverse effects? Plainly because a single causality, or causal agent, can produce only a single and sole effect, is unipotent. How is it shown that a single causality is capable of but a single effect? By assumption only of the thing to be proved. And this is the bottom, the fundamental assumption on which necessitarianism is based. This it does not prove, but takes for granted, and uses to prove the system. But it is, also the sum total of the system itself; so that the system is assumed to prove itself. The premise and the proposition are identical—an elaborate paralogism.

It is no doubt undeniable that if all cause is unipotent, then any supposed diverse effect is superfluous, and so causeless. Causation then runs in single direct lineages; and every event lying out of the inevitable direct line is parentless, and cut off from possibility. If every cause has its one sole possible effect, any other supposable effect is one too many; it is severed from any cause, and drifts loose in the world. Now Edwards first assumes unipotence to prove diverse effect causeless and then proves unipotence by the causelessness of diverse effect.

We also make our counter assumption. In our very definition of freedom of Will we assume in the volitional sphere the inapplicability of the maxim that “like causes ever and always produces like effects.” We assume that either one of several effects is legitimate from the same cause. And while we admit that in non-volitional causation the law that “every event must have a cause,” means that every event must have its own peculiar cause, adequate for itself alone, in volitional causation an event may have a cause adequate either for it or for other events; and whichever event exists, the demands of the laws of causation are completely satisfied. If these assumptions, made in the First Part of our treatise, can hold good against the objections met in the Second, they will scarce need the affirmative argument of our Third to establish their validity forever.

II

Cause of Particular Volition

Against alternative causation the main amount of necessitarian argument may be reduced to the four following questions:

I. What causes the Will to act?

II. What causes it to put forth the particular volition; or the particular volition rather than another?

III. Why does the volition (or rather nolition) for which there was adequate cause not take existence?

IV. What cause for this contingent diversity of happenings (by which result for which there is adequate cause) does and does not take existence?

These questions we shall consider in their order.

I. To the preliminary question: What causes the Will to act? It is competent to reply that every agent in his proper conditions is under a general necessity of action, even while free in the particular choice. Thus an agent with three alternatives before him must choose one of the three or refuse to choose either. But this refusal is but a fourth alternative, and the refusing act or nolition is as true a volition as either of the three. So that the necessity is that he is compelled to take some one of the four; the freedom lies in his equal power of selecting either one of the four.

II. But what causes the Will to put forth the particular volition and no other? This is the crucial question that constitutes, it is supposed, the vital force of the entire necessitarian argument, which it claims as the unanswerable point, and by the complete answer of which it must confess itself conquered. “The question,” says Edwards:

is not so much, How a spirit endowed with activity comes to act, as Why it exerts such an act and not another, or why it acts with such a particular determination. If activity of nature is the cause why a spirit (the soul of man, for instance) acts and does not lie still, yet that alone is not the cause why its action is thus and thus limited, directed, and determined. Active nature is a general thing; it is an ability or tendency of nature to action, generally taken, which may be a cause why the soul acts as occasion or reason is given; but this alone cannot be a sufficient cause why the soul exerts such a particular act, at such a time, rather than others.1 (77)

So also Dr. Day in his work on the Will:

Some writers speak of the power of willing, as being the sole and sufficient cause why the mind wills one way rather than another. But it is evident that the mere power of willing is not, of itself alone, even the reason why a man wills at all, unless the term power be used in the broad and unusual sense which includes every antecedent on which his willing depends. Is a man’s power to walk the only reason why he actually walks? Does a man always speak when he has the power to speak?2

But whatever may be assigned as the reason why he wills at all, the main inquiry will still return upon us: Why does the mind will one way rather than another? Why does it choose one object rather than its opposite? An equal power to will any way indifferently, is not surely the only ground of willing one way rather than another.3

To this we reply, 1. Though a general activity or power is a general thing, and accounts only for action generally, yet a particular power or cause is a particular thing and accounts for a particular action; and moreover an alternative power or cause is an alternative thing, and accounts for the coming into existence of either one of several effects. And that is the thing to be accounted for, and so at once and for all the crucial question is answered.4*

Imperfect Cause

“A general activity” or cause is an imperfect cause inadequate to any specific effect without the addition of some further causal or conditional element to render it particular and possibly resultant. When it is thus made specific and possibly causative of particular effect, the question may still remain to be settled not à priori, but experientially whether the cause be unipotential or adequate to an effect solely possible, or whether it may account for either one of several results.

And in the latter case the existence of the single result and the non-existence of the others are as truly accounted for as in the former. For a cause capable of either effect is in nature as in our definition, the cause of whichever effect results. If consciousness cognizes a class of causes of which each one is a sufficient cause for either of several effects exclusive of opposite effect, then whichever effect results has a sufficient cause for its existence excluding all effects contradictory to itself. If there be a cause as fully sufficient for either of several effects as a unipotent cause is of its own sole effect, then whichever effect results has as sufficient, as full, as complete and adequate a cause as any physical or necessary effect whatsoever.

2. Every cause, like every other thing, is to be tested by the conditions of its own existence and nature. A unipotent cause is to be held to the conditions of its own nature. An alternative cause also must be held only to the conditions of its own nature; it cannot be held impossible because it does not comply with the conditions of unipotent cause. If a cause is by the condition of its own nature sufficient for either one of several effects, then either one of those several effects may be brought into existence in accordance with the conditions of the nature of that cause without requiring it to fulfill the conditions of another kind of cause. Now the necessitarian repudiates the alternative cause because that fulfills not the conditions of unipotent cause. He infers that because a unipotent cause cannot produce other effects than one without the introduction of a new antecedent, therefore an alternative cause cannot; and therefore an alternative cause cannot exist.

But experience may show a class of causes from which either one of several effects may result, without the introduction of any new antecedent. In such a case, therefore, to demand a new antecedent, that is, to ask what causes the particular volition, or what prevents the counter, is illegitimate. It is to require conditions not belonging to the nature of the subject.

And this reasoning is good for whichever of the several alternatives occurs: for C as for B or A. If C results, then the assignment of an alternative cause of which C is a possible alternative effect, is just as true an accounting for C as if it were the result for which we can assign a general cause rendered unipotent by th...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Part First: The Issue Stated
• Part Second: The Necessitarian Argument Considered
• Part Third: The Positive Argument Stated