AVILL, CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE 994
WILLARD
the denial of God's foreknowledge of future contingent events.
V. The Edwardean /)oc<?iV«'.— Edwards wrote against the I'elas^ianizing Arminians represented h\ Whitby, and in a theological interest, as he supposed. He pro- posed to settle forever, by strictly logical process, all the questions at issue, lie argued that the act of the will is by a rigid law of causation determined by the strong- est motive. " He does not carefully distinguish between the different usages of the word 'cause;' he seems to limit freedom too exclusively to executive volition; at times he implies that tlie whole causal power, producing volition, resides in the motives; his conception of cau- sation is derived from the sphere of mechanics rather than from that of living spontaneous forces; and he is so in earnest in arguing against the self-determining power of the will as to neglect that element of self-de- termination which is undeniably found in every person- al act" (Smith [Dr. Henry B.], in the Amer. Presb. and Tkeol. Review, Jan. 1865). Yet he never intended to deny that essential freedom of choice which is witnessed for in consciousness, and that he conducted his argument with consummate power is witnessed to by his most earnest opponents. lie '-set up a philosophy of the will which is not consonant with the doctrine that had been held by the main body of Augustinian theologians. . . . The doctrine of Augustine, however, and the more general doctrine, even, of Calvinistic theologians, the doctrine of Calvin himself, and of the Westminster Assembly's creeds, is that a certain liberty of will (ad utrumvis), or the power of contrary choice, had belonged to the first man, but had disappeared in the act of transgression, which brought his will into bondage to evil. It was the common doctrine, too. that in mankind now, while the will is enslaved as regards religious obedience, it re- mains free outside of this province in all civil and secular concerns. In this wide domain the power of contrary choice still remains" (Fisher [Rev. Prof. George P.], in the Xorth A merican Review, jMarch, 1879). Calvin says, in writing against Pighius, "If force be opposed to free- dom. I acknowledge and will always affirm that there is a free will, a will determining itself, and proclaim ever}' man who thinks otherwise a heretic. Let the will be called free in this sense, that is, because it is not con- strained or impelled irresistibly from without, but deter- mines itself by itself" (Henry, Life of Calvin, transl. by Stebbing, i, 497). Dr. Thomas Reid, the founder of the Scottish philosophy, was a Calvinistic minister, and in his Active Poivers taught the freedom of the will. Sir William Hamilton, who was a member of a Calvinistic Church, and a believer in foreknowledge and foreordi- nation, taught the same (see his Notes on Reid, and his Discussions). Dr. !M'Cosh (Divine Government, bk. iii, ch. i, § I and 2) plainly enters his dissent from Edwards, althougli he regards the problem as to the consistency of the admitted self-determining power of the human soul and the universal reign of the law of causation to be at present insoluble. Henry P. Tappan has ably criticised Edwards in the interest of the " doctrine of a self-determined will," while he remains a consistent Calvinist.
There is no doubt that Edwards's celebrated treatise is an amazing monument of genius. In certain special directions its argument has never been answered, and, as far as can now be seen, never will be. Dr. Whedon's new view of the will is a practical testimony to the con- vincing power of Edwards's logic. His (Edwards) In- finite Series remains a triumphant refutation of the old doctrine of the liberty of indifference. The position of the treatise before the public in the present age, how- ever, is maintained not by its Calvinistic defenders, but by its persistent critics, who attack it because they be- lieve it to be the citadel of Calvinistic theology. This is, and has always been, an entire mistake. Calvinists, as such, are independent of, and indifferent to, the psy- chological theory it advocates, and the fate of the argu- ment on which that theory rests.
VI. rsycholopy of the Subject.— Tho question as to the human will and the laws of its action should be in- vestigated purely as a psychological, and not as a theo- logical, question. In this respect both Edwards and Whedon have equally erred. The opinion of most modern theologians, founded purely on psychological considerations, and independent of all theological bias, is, upon the whole, as follows, (ireat confusion has been imported into this difficult problem by the usage, common to both parties, of considering the will as a sep- arate organ or agent, exterior to the reason, affection, desires, conscience, and other faculties of the soul. Con- sciousness affirms that the human soul is an absolute unit, not like the body a system of organs. The whole soul is the one organ of all its functions; the whole soul (Ego) thinks, desires, judges, feels; and the whole soul wills. The soul, that is, the person, is an original sell-prompted cause, and is the sole and sufficient cause of all its volitions. In every free volition the soul is self-determined only, and had power to the contrary choice. The will, however, is not separate from the reason, but includes it; includes all the soul includes; is self-decided bj' its own contents and its own charac- ter; and hence is rational and moral, free and respon- sible. ,