RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Will, Freedom of The
Epicurus, in spite of his atomic philosophy and his doctrine of blind fortuity, advocated the sense of freedom, perhaps as a postulate of hap- 1. Classical piness; and Aristotle consented to the Antiquity. preponderance of free moral practise to mere understanding. The doctrine of the Sophists that man is the measure of all things favored freedom. The Stoics emphasized the independence of man from external influences, but at the same time held to the fixedness of the basic character. The problem how to reconcile freedom and necessity they tried to solve by the use of the Socratic conception of providence and by moral education for voluntary submission to the cosmic purpose. The Neoplatonists distinguished between the servitude of the sensuous life with its imagined freedom and the contemplative transport of the soul to participation in the divine life. Plato taught that virtue uncoerced was free to every one. Whoever chooses it, chooses life, to which he then is attached of necessity; and not God but the individual is responsible for an evil destiny. This became the basis for the predeterminism of Origen. Interesting were the distinctions of Aristotle: (1) between the free and the necessary; (2) the indifferent mean, not perceived as necessity and not taking place by design; (3) the free act under involuntary circumstances; (4) the purpose ripening from rational premeditation; (5) the future subject to decision in contrast with the past as apparently the result of necessity; and (6) in double contrast with necessity the contingent and the free volitional, both involving alternative possibilities. An ascending series is thus formed as follows: (1) necessity to nature, (2) partial freedom, (3) entire freedom but with unripe judgment, and (4) deliberate design with ripened judgment. Enlightened freedom is a goal, only to be reached by practise, and every man is responsible for his own acts. Plato and Aristotle coined the terminology for the future. From the time of Boethius the Christian influence prevails in speculative philosophy. Only the personal God is free; man’s reason thinks in terms of time and the human will is complicated with temporal change.
According to the Greek Fathers freedom of will formed the central characteristic of the divine image in man. But between this divine gift of the good and human independence there is only a formal difference: on the one hand, the incipient freedom of choice is to be considered a gift of God by creation, and the goal or complete conscious conformity
with the divine will, as a purposive
2. Greek human object; on the other hand, the
Patristics. beginning in moral development seems
more a matter of human freedom, and the providential consequence more a matter of divine concern. ‘The human subject, exercising the primal gift of God in choosing the good, happens to choose, at the same time, in conformity with the will of the giver, God. According to Chrysostom (q.v.), choice and decision belong to man, the fulfilment to God. According to Clement of Alexandria (q_v.) Adam was only “adapted for virtue,” not “perfect’; without free consent there is no salvation; self-determination is the nature of the soul. Cyril of Jerusalem (q.v.) remarks that grace needs a willing-
ness to believe as the stylus requires the hand that writes. Gregory Nazianzen (q.v.) comments on Rom. ix. 16, stating that “not merely human willing” was of more importance than ‘willing and running.” The Antiochians (see ANTIOcH, SCHOOL or) taught that faith and faithfulness were wholly matters of self-resolution, in spite of the grace of providence. Gregory of Nyssa strongly emphasizes objective purpose as independent volition. Origen’s predeterminism, the doctrine of the pretemporal fall, only offers a peculiar expression to the conviction of individual self-determination. The typical representative of extreme indeterminism was Isaac of Antioch (c. 450). According to him the whole struggle of life rests upon freedom; even regeneration is the personal act of man. Man in his freedom ranks higher than the angels and is more free than Satan who lacks the power of execution, although his will is capable of taking up every concept of evil. On the contrary man, by moral dietetics, may intensify his moral power to a godlike perfection. However, this virtue of moral independence, by which man resembles God, isnot by nature but grace. The Greek position transmits itself to the Pelagian controversy, except that it blunts the assertion of freedom by emphasis on grace. The analogy of the physician and the free acceptance of his remedies by Origen and Clement returns in Semi- Pelagianism (q.v.).
In the West other motives enter with the Biblical, corresponding to the stern sense of Roman law, the Stoic basic necessity, and the Platonic-Manichean
dualism with the consequence of the
3- Latin doctrine of the hereditary corruption of
Patristrics; man, of the exclusiveness of grace, and
Pelagian the necessity of a vicarious atonement.
Controversy. The line of thought becomes more so-
teriological than anthropological. Tertullian (q.v.) admits, beside the omnipotent freedom of God, limited human freedom; but holds that human volition, in so far as it is good, is the work of God. Cyprian (q.v.) accedes that grace is received in proportion to the “capacity of faith” offered by man, but presupposes everything, even the latter, as determined in God’s will. Ambrose perceived that the idea of freedom lies in the conception of obedience as wellas in that of transgression, but emphasized that the efficient work of redemption demands the initiative of God. The first scientific discussion of the problem of the will within the history of the development of the Christian dogma was occasioned by the Pelagian controversy (see PELAGIUS, PELA- GIAN CONTROVERSIHS). Pelagius and Celestius were offended by Augustine’s formula of prayer: “Give what thou commandest and command what thou wilt”’; because of the apparent elimination of all human freedom. The Council at Ephesus (431) consented to the rejection of the Pelagian doctrine according to which man also after the fall retained the capacity to choose the good, since man has kept some commandments while Adam kept none; and without the freedom of good or evil there can be no imputation of guilt. Conscience, it maintained, shows a certain sanctity of the nature made by God, from which issues responsibility. Sin is not nature, for man shall do the good; therefore he can: but it is a
Will, Freedom of The