Born to Sin?

Do we have free will? Can we make whatever choices we want? When the moment of choice comes, whichever is the stronger is the one we follow. That doesn't deny freedom, but that's the essence of freedom, that is to have the power or the ability to choose according to your inclinations, to choose what you want. It certainly seems like we have free will. I chose the shirt I'm wearing today, and I chose what I ate for breakfast. But did I choose to become a Christian? We've been examining questions like this all week on Renewing Your Mind, and one of the questions that always comes up in this discussion of free will is, are we born to sin? Here's our teacher, Dr. R.C.

Sproul. We come now in our historical reconnaissance of the controversies that have ensued over the question of free will to the man I believe is the most prodigious scholar to address this problem of all time, and that, of course, is Jonathan Edwards. In 1754, Edwards published his classic work on the freedom of the will. And if some of you have had the opportunity to read that, you know that it is very technical, very abstract, and very philosophical. It mixes a study of biblical texts along with a great deal of philosophical argumentation and is arguably Jonathan Edwards' greatest work.

I personally believe that it's the greatest treatment on this subject of free will that's ever been done and has not ever been refuted in my judgment. You remember that Edwards was the pastor for many years at his congregation in Northampton, Northampton, and when slanderous charges were leveled against him by an unscrupulous man in the community, Edwards was discharged from his responsibilities as pastor of that church in a heartbreaking episode in church history, whereupon leaving Northampton, he went to Stockbridge and became a missionary to the Indians. And in his spare time while ministering to the Indians, he took the time to write Freedom of the Will, which he composed and completed in a period of three months.

And that in itself is mind-boggling. Now, in this very important resource for studying this question, Edwards deals with the question, what is the will anyway? Because it was customary for scholars and anthropologists and philosophers historically to make sharp distinctions among three aspects of our humanity, the mind, the affections, and the will, or sometimes the mind, the heart, and the will. And Edwards agreed with the necessity of distinguishing between the faculty of thinking, which is the mind, and the faculty of choosing, which is the will. So, he does distinguish between mind and will. But in the making of that distinction between mind and will, Edwards warned against separating them. And he is arguing that the mind and the will are intimately interrelated.

In fact, he defines the will as the mind choosing. And that's an important consideration, because Edwards, in analyzing the operation of the will, the making of human decisions, and the exercising of choices, that is, what is involved in volition, involuntary choices, he looked at it, first of all, from the perspective of the law of causality, which takes that every effect must have an antecedent cause, that it is impossible for an effect to just happen spontaneously ex nihilo without a cause. And when he looked at human choices, he analyzed human choices as effects, which require causes.

And that's what caused him to focus his attention on the whole question that we've touched on already at different points in our course, of inclination, of bent, and of disposition. That is, that the choices that we made are made for a reason, and the mind supplies the reason. And so, the choices that we make, according to Edwards, are choices based upon what we deem to be good for us.

Now, when he uses the term good there, he doesn't mean necessarily that which is morally good, but rather what is pleasing to us in the making of our choices. We deem that the good for me at this moment is to choose what is most pleasing to me and to choose what I want. So, in simple terms, what Edwards is speaking of here is the role that is played by desire in the making of choices. By desire in the making of choices. But again, desire is not something that can be reduced simply to a physical appetite, like an experience of hunger, but rather the mind is involved in here. If, for example, I have a physical craving, an urging by my body to eat, and I feel hungry in terms of appetite, I'm aware of that consciously. And for me to eat, or to choose to eat, it is because my mind is making a judgment about what is good for me at the moment, or what will be pleasing to me at the moment. And of course, the mind's judgment of what is going to be pleasing to me at the moment may indeed be influenced by my physical appetite.

But nevertheless, in the choice to eat, the mind is not bypassed. And so, the mind deems or considers a particular action to be good and pleasing to us, and on that basis, the choice then is made. Now, of course, it's also Edwards who, in analyzing this whole process of making choices, comes to the conclusion that all choices are caused by something. They don't just happen, ex nihilo, as I said, and that which causes choices, in the final analysis, are inclinations. So, that's the first point we have to understand, that choices are motivated or driven by inclinations. Now, Edwards understood that as human beings, we are complex creatures.

We have complex ideas in our mind. We have, at times, opposing value systems, and we also have complex motives and desires within our lives. Looking back to the Apostle Paul, for example, when he spells out his struggles in the seventh chapter of Romans, he says, the good that I would, I do not, and that which I would not, that is what I do.

And it sounds as if Paul is saying that he has the ability in and of himself to do something he really doesn't want to do. Is that what the Apostle is saying, or is the Apostle saying, I have a war going on inside of me between conflicting desires and conflicting inclinations, all things being equal? I want to always obey Christ. I want to always do what is pleasing to Him. I do have a desire for God.

I do have a desire for obedience. However, my flesh has contrary desires to the Spirit, and sometimes I follow the desires of the flesh rather than the desire of the Spirit. And so, in that sense, when Paul is explaining in that sense, when Paul is acknowledging that he sins and surrenders to the desires of the old man, he is not at that time saying that he's completely vacant of any contrary desires to the things of God.

No, the war goes on. And that's how Edwards would understand the way Paul speaks of this situation by saying, the good that I would, I do not. Now, Edwards would fill in the blanks there to say to the Apostle, the reason why the good that you would do you do not is because you have a stronger would not at the moment of your sin than you have of doing it. That is, there's a conflict of inclinations. Now, Edwards' pressing point is this, that we always and everywhere in this very volitional situation we find ourselves choose according to our strongest inclination at the moment.

Now, that's important, the strongest inclination at the moment. Now, some people look at this and say, well, doesn't that mean that we are determined? Well, as I've spelled out earlier in this course, there's a difference between determinism, whereby our choices are controlled by external forces that coerce us, between determinism and self-determination, whereby the choices that we make are determined by us, not by something outside of ourselves. But still, what Edwards is getting at is that choices are determined in the sense that they're caused by something. And what they are caused by is you and your desires and what your mind deems to be most good for you at the moment or most pleasing. And so again, Edwards says, we always choose according to the strongest inclination that we have at the moment. Now, we understand that desire is a variable thing, and there is a continuum of desires in our hearts.

Some things occasion intense, flaming desires in us, others only mild inclinations. But when the moment of choice comes, whichever is the stronger is the one we follow. That doesn't deny freedom, according to Edwards, but that's the essence of freedom, that is, to have the power or the ability to choose according to your inclinations, to choose what you want, to choose what the mind deems to be good for you at the moment. If your mind considered something to be preferable and you had an inclination to choose it but were not able to choose it, then indeed you would not be free. But the very essence of freedom is to be able to choose according to what you want at the moment. Now, the idea that we always choose according to our strongest inclination has in its view this idea of the continuum.

Let me give a couple of examples of that. I go on a diet because all things being equal, I know it would be better for me, the doctor doesn't have to argue with me at length to convince me, that it would be better for my general health if I would lose thirty pounds, not only for my general health but also for my backaches and all the rest, that my physical rest, that my physical condition would improve dramatically if I lost thirty pounds. Not only that, cosmetically I would look better, my clothes would fit better. I can give you a host of positive reasons why it would seem good to me to lose thirty pounds. And so, if the doctor said, do you want to lose thirty pounds? I would say, yes, I have a desire to do that.

And that desire, however, changes in its degree of intensity from moment to moment. After having a huge feast on Thanksgiving Day, and my stomach is sated, and I have completely satisfied my hunger, I am not feeling a strong urge to eat. And at that moment, my desire to lose weight increases and intensifies. And so, I don't eat for the next six hours. But six hours later, my desire for food changes. And all things being equal, I don't want to add any more weight.

I want to lose weight. But suddenly, all things aren't equal anymore. There comes a moment when my desire for that chocolate sundae is greater than my desire to lose weight.

And the minute that happens, what do I do? I eat the chocolate sundae, because that's what I want to do. And it seems good to me at that moment to do it. That's how the conflict of desires work out.

Now, that's easy to see when you have a conflict of physical desires like that. But you made a choice, those of you who are in the audience here or who are watching it by video, presumably you're seated somewhere in a chair. Why are you sitting where you are sitting?

You say, well, it was completely arbitrary. I didn't think about where I wanted to sit. I came in and just sat where I wanted to, and then the cameraman came and made me move, you know, he coerced me and so on. But why are you sitting in the back of the room or on the end of the aisle or in the middle of the aisle or in the front of the room?

Why? It wasn't because you came to this meeting and you were sitting in the back of the room. The cameraman came to this meeting four hours early and stood outside, waiting for the doors to open to make sure you could have just the seat you wanted. You may do that if you go to hear the three-tenors or go to a basketball game or something like that, take extraordinary steps to satisfy your desire to have a particular seat. But in a lecture like this where you sit in the back of the room, you see a seat that's free, you're going to take it.

No big deal. Well, I'm suggesting to you that there is a reason for that choice, and the reason may be motivated by a tiny, weak inclination in your desire. It may be that you don't like to sit in the front of the room because you may get called on and you're more comfortable in the back of the room, or it may be that you like to sit on the edge of the row because you are squeezed in the middle or whatever. There are all kinds of reasons why people choose to sit. In fact, they've done studies of empty park benches in Central Park where they will have an empty park bench and a hidden camera, and they will watch people who come down and sit down, and so many of them will sit on the end. Others will sit right in the middle, and then they begin to interview people and find out why they sat on the edge of the bench when they were the only person there, why they sat in the middle. The guy that sat in the middle says, well, I was hoping somebody else would come along and sit down because I was looking for some companionship, some conversation.

The other guy said, I want to be left alone, so I stayed on the edge of the bench. There are reasons why we do these apparently innocuous things. They may not be intense, but the point that Edwards is making is without an inclination, there wouldn't be a choice. Now, at that point, he is arguing with pagan philosophers and with some theologians who argue that man is not really free unless the will is totally indifferent. If the will is not totally indifferent but has a prior bent disposition or inclination, it cannot truly be said of it that it is free.

That is, that unless it has the equal power or opportunity to go to the left or to the right, it's not really free. It reminds you of the story of Alice in Wonderland when she comes to the fork in the road, and she hesitates. She doesn't know whether to go to the left or to go to the right. And while she's musing over her condition, she looks up and she sees the Cheshire Cat grinning at her from the tree. And so, she says to the Cheshire Cat, which way should I go? The Cheshire Cat said, that depends.

Where are you headed? And Alice says, I don't know. And the Cheshire Cat says, then it doesn't matter. That is, if you have no end in view, if you have no reason for going one way or the other, what difference does it make? That would be a completely indifferent matter.

So, you might as well just go either way. But Edwards says an indifferent choice is an irrational concept for two reasons. One, if I chose one thing over another for no reason whatsoever in a completely arbitrary fashion, how would that have any moral significance to it? Because Edwards understood that biblically the whole question of intent and intentionality is essential to a moral decision, to a voluntary act. We don't choose to have our hearts beat at a certain rate.

That is an involuntary action of our bodies. For it to be a moral decision, there has to be a reason or intent behind it. But Edwards goes beyond that and says, if there is no inclination one way or the other, not only would it be impossible to have a moral choice, but it would be impossible to choose at all because now the choice would have no cause.

It would be in effect without a cause, and that's impossible. And so, he's saying that philosophically as well as theologically, the idea of an indifferent choice is a nonsensical concept. Finally, Edwards is perhaps most famous for his distinction between what he calls our natural ability and our moral ability. This distinction is very similar to the distinction Augustine made centuries earlier between free will and liberty. Edwards says we have the natural ability to make choices. As human beings, it is part of our nature to be volitional creatures. We have a faculty of choosing that is called the will, and the will is not forced or coerced by outside actors. So, insofar as we have the ability by nature to make choices, we have natural ability.

We don't have the natural ability to fly through the air unaided by machines because we have not by nature been equipped with wings and feathers and all of that sort of thing. But as human beings with a will, we have the natural ability to make choices. What we lack, according to Edwards, is the moral ability to choose the thing. Moral ability to choose the things of God.

Why? Because in the fall, we have lost our disposition, our desire, and our inclination for God. The reason why man can't choose God unless God first chooses Him is simply because man won't choose God, and we cannot choose what we don't want. So that the problem with us in our original sin is located, according to Edwards, at the want to. As the Bible said, the desires of the hearts are only wicked continually. We have no natural instinct, inclination, or disposition to God until the Holy Spirit creates that within our soul.

It's important to remember that as fallen people, we do not have the moral ability to choose the things of God. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind and another lesson from Dr. R.C. Sproul's teaching series, Willing to Believe.

And as we've heard, it is God who makes us willing to believe. We're airing five of the twelve lessons from this series this week, but we will send you the complete series on three DVDs when you contact us today with a donation of any amount. You can make your request and give your gift at renewingyourmind.org, or if you prefer, you can call us at 800-435-4343. I hope you're making plans to join us for our 2023 National Conference next March. Our theme is timely, Stand Firm. All of our teaching fellows are scheduled to be there, along with special guest speakers, Dr. Michael Reeves and Vody Baucom. In the past few years, we've had to cut off registration well in advance of the conference due to limited space. This year, though, we are pleased to announce that we are moving to a larger location, the Orange County Convention Center here in Orlando. It's located just 15 minutes from our previous venue, and it will provide room for many more people to come together for biblical teaching and fellowship. These conferences are a wonderful time of fellowship around the Word. As our President and CEO, Chris Larson, says, it's a family reunion.

So I hope you'll head over to ligonier.org slash conferences to find out more. Well, I think if you polled most Christians today, unfortunately, most would say that we have free will and salvation. One 19th-century figure more than any other influenced the modern church in that direction. His name was Charles Finney, and Dr. Sproul will examine the negative impact of Finney's theology tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. I hope you'll join us for that.