RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Will, Freedom of The
calculation of future actions. Experience attests the comparison of different representations of the possibility of an action of which the one executed was in no way accompanied by the consciousness of singularity.
The reconciliation of omniscience and freedom is vital to theology; namely, the fact of being eternally known of God, or how in the creation of the individual he appoints its conditions of development, preforms its character, and imparts a potential selfdetermination which may divert to hostile conduct and in the aggregate with others challenge his universal plan. The fundamental harmony in the divine will of grace and the aspiration to redemption do not provide a solution; in part, because such aspiration is the work of grace—in part, because grace has a preference, amidst natural differences, for the most fitted for improvement. There thus results a reciprocation between divine determination, which at the same time produces the differences of the tend-
encies of will and penetrates them in 3. Omnis- their attitude by omniscience (Isa. xliii. cience and 1, xlv. 3-4), and responsible human
Freedom. self-activity. If this free attitude it-
self were a work of omnipotence, the value of human personality might be considered problematical. On the threshold of free personality determining omnipotence voluntarily resigns; but not omniscience, the all-effective justice and wisdom. Of extreme theories, the doctrine of predestination annihilates human freedom; the doctrine of total depravity, also of the spiritual nature, deprives the pedagogical effect of providence of its starting-point. On the other hand, the theories which favor the idea of freedom, at the expense of omniscience, also err; like that of the Socinians, R. Rothe, and C. F. Callisen, who maintained that God foresees the various conditions and circumstances subject to which man must act, and he adapts his counsels to man’s various possible transactions. J. A. L. Wegscheider (q.v.) proposed that the human spirit rising above the order of things is led to secure its freedom by colliding with the limits of nature divinely appointed. Heinrich Lang (q.v.) maintained that, God being the immanent ground of all being, to be determined by him means to be determined by one’s own being, thus representing pantheism of personality. Johann Gerhard (q.v.) correctly says: ‘‘God is not the author of the evil tendency of will, but he orders it in harmony with his universal purpose.’ The fewness of the elect able to perceive this theodicy might bring the plan of providence into question; but the Biblical basis of faith in the final victory of the kingdom of God, or the realization of the universal plan of redemption, is indisputable. While the thought of predestination is repugnant to the feeling of freedom, faith, on the contrary, in the fact of being eternally known by God is not at all disturbing, if only beforehand the truth of the microcosmic feeling of independence is securely implied. As regards the total organism of humanity, providential determination is unassailable. Empirical statistics rises only to a generalization revealing that order prevails in freedom, law amidst free choice, and reason in the causal; it imposes no law of nature or teleological law of reason inevitably upon the
Will, Freedom of The William of Champeaux
individual will. The problem defies solution. Ethics as well as logic evades a psychological deduction, for it is not possible by observation and experiment to dismember the free subject, in order to ascertain what is the active unanalyzable principle in every act of ethical volition or attentive cognition, becoming the more mysterious the more intensively the reflecting subject is itself made the object of inspection. An intellectual perception is precluded. In the free self-disclosure of the soul the individual ego, in and with its freest special existence, knows itself absolutely conditioned by the universal supreme Ego; and no less the fascination of the consciousness of freedom will always remain precisely for the pious heart. (G. Runzz.)
IV. Supplement: The problem of freedom is complicated by two other interests: (1) theological, derived from early Christian thought, involving the reconciliation of omniscience and omnipotence with moral acts; and (2) moral, arising from the conflict of ethical presuppositions with psychology and scientific notions of mechanical causation. For two centuries and a half (1600-1850) in England and America the discussion continued along lines traced above in continental thought. Indeterminism was advocated by S. Clarke (q.v.) in A Collection of Papers which passed between Dr. Clarke and Mr. Leibnitz (London, 1717), by T. Reid, who claimed that free will was proved by universal consciousness of active power and of accountability (Essays on the Active Powers of Man, 1788), and this general position has been characteristic of Socinian and Arminian writers since that date. The most recent upholder of free will in the interest of a pluralistic universe asserts that ‘‘free will means nothing but real novelty; so pluralism accepts the notion of free will’ (W. James, Some Problems of Philosophy, New York, 1911; cf. idem, The Will to Believe, ‘‘ The Dilemma of Determinism,’ pp. 145 sqq., ib. 1897).
Until the last third of the nineteenth century deterministic theories of the will were influenced by Locke, who provided the mold in which the theological considerations of Calvinism as related to the will were run. According to him, the will is always moved by the greatest present uneasiness. Jonathan Edwards held that although the will is guided by the last dictate of the understanding, yet this dictate depends upon the prevailing inclinations, these upon the moral necessity of habits and dispositions, while habits and dispositions in turn are caused by the providential disposing of the sovereign will of God (Works, vol. ii., New York, 1830; cf. W. G. T. Shedd, Calvinism, Pure and Mized, ib. 1893). This doctrine received its first serious modification at the hand of N. W. Taylor (q.v.), who sought to guard both divine foreordination and ability to obey God by the formula that moral action is characterized by “ certainty with power to the contrary.” The sinner can, if he will, and “ he can if he won’t! ” (cf. G. P. Fisher, Discussions in. History and Theology, p. 313, ib. 1880).
Determinism has received support from a materialistic basis of the mind (cf. J. Priestley, A Free Discussion of the Doctrine of Materialism, Birmingham, 1782; H. Maudsley, Body and Will, New York, 1884; A. Bain, Mind and Body, ib. 1887).