ment is concerned is simply the necessity of being true to His own nature.
2. That man is a free agent is not stated in so many words in the NT, but is assumed everywhere. Surely when our Lord said (Mt 11-") 'Come unto me all ye that labour,' and (Jn 5^") ' Ye will not come to me that ye might have life,' He accepted the freedom of man as a reality. No doubt He also said (Jn G'"), ' No man can come unto me except the Father which hath sent me draw him.' But in sajang so He did not mean that men were mere passive instruments, but simply that all that appealed to the heart in favour of spiritual living was from on lii;jh, Mh.iue also all spiritual aids came. Tlios(.. wh,, hoM th.at_ the will is not free, or, as we sliouM laihci put it, that men are not free to will, do not as a rule argue so much from Scripture, although they may do that in part, as from philosophical grounds, and what they regard as experience. No doubt those «ho regard liberty as incompatible with predestination may argue that predestination is the plain doctrine of Scrip- ture, but the conclusion that because predestination is the doctrine of Scripture m.an cannot be free is their own, and is not taught in Scripture. Whether man is free or not is to a large extent a question of merely academic interest, although not wholly so. We all act upon the hypothesis that we are free. Certainly the conclusion that men are not free operates against contrition for sin and repent- ance,— hinders one from feeling that he is guilty before God, — and perhaps it is partly with the desire to get rid of the sense of sin th.it some men
argue against our possession of fi lom. lUit in a
general way we proceed on \\\i\ assumption that men are free agents, hence tlic ilisciission of free- dom is mainly one, as we have said, of academic interest. Scripture, as before remarked, accepts man's freedom as a fact, and we all have the consciousness of being free. It is argued, however, on various gnumds (hal tin- smsc of freedom which we have is illusive. In his itidliur .;/' Cliri-ili^ni Thcolorfi/lh. \V. N. Claike iiieiil urns four .uroumls on which the doctrine of human freedom is dial- lenged : viz. (a) Fatalism, (i) I'redestinarianism, (c) Necessitarianism, (rf) Determinism.
(«)_ There is perhaps no need of seriously discuss- ing Fiifr'Jhm, which seems to be a mere philosophy of cle-p,iir. W'r all at times feel the strange in- evitalileui -~ of tilings, but fatalism cannot com- mend itself lo us as a reasoned philosophy.
(Ij) Fni/rs/i,iiirn/iii\-iii in some form or other we can hanlly avoid .accepting, if we believe in an ordered univer-e ; .-nid to resolve predestina- tion, in so far as r:ition:il and moral beings are concerned, into simple foreknow Icdt^e, dues not materially, or at least very maieri.illy. help us. Of course it may be argued that the knowledge that a thing is to occur docs not necessarily inijily that the doer of it must do it. From the .intece.h'uls of a man we may judge tolerably veil what his course of action in given circum- stances \y\\\ he, hut. our knowledge as to how he is likely to act does not .illect his freedom, — does not compel hini to .ui in (he way foreseen. And so, it may be argued, the limine foreknowledge of an action docs not ni.ike (he action inevitable, does not make it one that must be done. And this is perhaps fonn.illy fine, hut it is only formally so. What God foresees will he done has a material in- evitableness about it, and will just as surely be done as if it had been predestinated. And if an action is predestinated, or even Divinely foreseen as being sure to occur, how can it be said that a
it freely ? Freedom ; ordination, — even v no reasoning, ho%\i ever make us lose I
does natible with fore- cnowledge. Yet nay apjiear, can dum. We may
FREE WILL
FRIENDSHIP
try to persuade ourselves tliat we are not free, but the sense of freedom will remain with us notwith- standinj;, and w'c shall go on acting as if we were free.
(c) Wc may say about Necessitarianmii, or the doctrine that every volition is caused by its ante- cedents, that it is in a way true, but that, as urged against the freedom of the will, it neglects con- sideration of the fact that we ourselves are contri- buting all along to the antecedents which so far determine every volition.
{d) And with regard to Determinism, or the doctrine that all volitions are determined by motives acting on the will, it majr be said that it also is true, but that motives acting on the will are not like forces acting on a body and pro- ducing a resultant which may be mathematically calculated. Our motives are our own feelings and desires, however these may be affected by objects without us, and our decisions to act depend upon what we are, though that is not simply what, as we might say, nature has made us, but what to a large extent we have made ourselves. To suppose that we can act without motive of some kind would be to suppose what is contrary to all ex- perience, for we are always more or less conscious of being influenced by motives, but the action of motives is no mere mechanical action. Our free- dom, indeed, as Martensen {Christian Ethics, § 31, pp. 109, 110) well points out, is conditioned, not absolute. We are not free save within certain limits, and many things— our native tendency to sin, heredity, environment, above all the force of habit — operate against our acting freely in accord- ance with our consciousness of what is best. But the sense of freedom which we possess is not illusive. We need, doubtless, the Divine aid in order to true religious living. But we are bound by no iron chain of necessity. We are, save in .so far as we may have ourselves enslaved our wills, bound by no outward or inward constraint to will other than the good. And even the enslaved will can be made free by Divine grace.