Morphemics

Locating Free Agency

In his Inclinations, Dispositions, Motivations, Chris accurately explains my reason for denying freedom of the will in any circumstance. As he expresses my view, “...libertarian free will means, by definition, that the faculty of will– as distinct from the person– is actually making its own choices.” He then goes on to state that neither he nor, he doubts, any one else ever intended to say this. The affirmation of [libertarian] free will is nothing more than a statement that “the person choosing chooses.” And he’s right. I can’t think of any self respecting libertarian who would try to argue that a faculty, rather than a person, is doing all the choosing. But that wasn’t my point. I do recognize the validity of linguistic shortcuts and colloquial forms of speech. However, when the question itself concerns a definition of the will, it is better to be precise about what is meant. It appears to Chris that I’m quibbling here and filling my idea of the will with too many complexities. Hopefully, I will be able to offer a clearer explanation in this post and show that this is not the case.

I have described the will as a faculty that cannot move or be moved except as the person inclines it. Chris writes, “From my point of view, it looks like making a decision and inclining the will are one and the same.” I could say the same thing. In speaking of inclining the will, I am looking into just what happens when a decision is made. Reading further into his post, though, it seems that Chris and I do not mean the same thing. Evidently, he understands “inclining the will” as a figure of speech or just another way of saying “making a decision.” He writes, “To will just is to act voluntarily. The will is not acted upon by the person, for there is nothing there to act upon. What there is is an ability, not a mechanism.”

Perhaps Chris is correct, but I don’t believe that this was the Church’s view of the will when it condemned monothelitism (which is the belief that Clifton has accused monergists of holding). Recall that monothelitism is the doctrine that Christ has only one will. Considered in itself, this shouldn’t be that important, since “will” can be taken several ways. In this case, however, all parties to the controversy understood will as something associated with the natures, or, as some would have it, nature of Christ. Monothelitism was an indirect means of affirming monophysitism, i.e., the doctrine that Christ had only one nature. Had it been understood that the will was an ability, the same conclusion would not have followed. Natures do not have abilities, persons do. Consequently, rather than reflecting orthodox doctrine, Christological dithelitism would have implied Nestorianism, i.e., the doctrine that Christ was two persons. If Chris’ view of the will is correct, if there really is nothing there to act upon, then some form of monothelitism should be deemed orthodox. The important point is that the one person to two natures ratio be maintained as far as our understanding of Christology. Even so, I think that the Church had it right. The will is connected to the nature and, as such, is something that can be acted upon. “Inclining the will” is not a figure of speech for “making a decision.” It is a description of what happens when a decision is made.

Earlier in his post, Chris had mentioned a point that we both reject, which is that moral responsibility requires libertarian freedom. In denying this, however, I do not mean to imply that moral responsibility is possible for anyone other than a free agent. I affirm free agency for all morally responsible persons. Libertarians may wish to deny me the term, not only over our difference concerning compatibility with the decree of God (although, this is by no means insignificant) but also over the question of moral limitations on natural ability. When I speak of free agency, I am describing the unimpeded connection between what a person wants to do and the subsequent movement of his will toward that end. As long as a person is able to incline his will according to his desires, he is a free agent and morally responsible for whatever he may do. A person can be excused of moral responsibility for his actions, or lack thereof, if and only if something stands between his desires and the inclination of his will. An able bodied man next to a swimming pool can be blamed for not jumping in to rescue a drowning child. This is not the case if the man is lame.

Compatibilism recognizes the distinction between natural and moral inability. Chris, it appears, does as well when he writes, “I also affirm that the possibilities for how I can incline my will in a given situation (i.e., what decisions I can make) depend on what sort of a person I am. God cannot incline his will toward unrighteousness, and a sinner cannot incline his will in any direction without sinning (i.e., cannot choose good).” Here, the libertarian disagrees. True free agency, with its corresponding moral responsibility, is only the case when all possibilities for a given decision are open. Contrary to what Chris’ says further down in his post, the incompatibilist libertarian claim that libertarian free will is possible (because they are using these words to define the will as the person choosing) is not true. Nor is it the case that the force of my assertion that libertarian free will is impossible is lost against the incompatibilist. I may have conceded free agency, which is all that they mean by free will, but I have not conceded everything that the incompatibilist includes in the concept of free agency. Their idea of free agency is, in my estimation, far too broad. It is not enough that a person is able to act according to his desires, but, in order to be held morally responsible for his actions, it must have been possible for him to desire any one of the full range of natural options related to that choice.

I have placed free agency in the unimpeded connection between personal desire and the inclination of the will. The libertarian, however, does not recognize this distinction. Instead, personal desire and the inclination of the will are both wrapped up into the singular event “the person choosing.” Understandably then, free agency, for the libertarian, cannot be found in the same location. Instead, it is placed in the unimpeded connection between the person choosing and the full compliment of possible options related to that choice. Chris may claim that the possibilities for how a person inclines his will depend on what sort of person he is. However, by viewing the inclination of the will as nothing more than a figure of speech for “the person choosing,” he loses the force of any argument he may have against the libertarian that a choice from this limited range of possibilities constitutes free agency, free will, or whatever else he or they may want to call it. Any distinction that a libertarian may recognize between natural and moral inability must, for all practical purposes, be a distinction without a difference. Both prevent the individual from accessing the full range of natural possibilities. By accepting the relatively vague notion of “the person choosing,” Chris has opted to play according to non-compatibilist rules. Should the libertarian object that limitations based on nature or the sort of person one is are actually infringements of free agency; should they claim that these limitations describe, not freedom of choice, but de facto determinism, Chris has no strong counter-argument.

The relevant difference between natural and moral inability lies, not in what these are, but in whether or not they prevent a person from acting according to his desires. Natural inability, which interferes precisely at the point where personal desire would otherwise have been translated into action, is exculpatory. Moral ability and inability, on the other hand, account for who or what a person is. This, in turn, accounts for what a person is capable of desiring. If free agency is properly located in the unimpeded connection between personal desire and subsequent action, then moral inability, because it cannot affect this connection, is no impediment to free agency.

To summarize up to this point, I do not view the will as a mechanism for the mere thrill of complicating matters and defying Occam. Instead, I believe that it is better described as a mechanism rather than an ability because a) this description is more consistent with how the Church must have viewed the will when it condemned monothelitism, and b) it provides a more satisfying harmonization between free agency and compatibilism.

In an earlier post, I had conceded (and still do) to the idea that God’s choice to elect whom he elected was libertarian free in a sense that our choices and even the rest of his choices (with the arguable exception of creation) are not. That is because this choice precedes (or is a part of), and, therefore, does not need to be compatible with, the divine decree. Everything else that God does, such as actually doing something about those whom he has elected, must conform to what he has decreed. Everything that we do must and does conform to what God has decreed. That being said, conformity to the divine decree does not fully encapsulate the essence of compatibilism. Against the libertarian, who argues that free agency is only possible in the absence of all constraints, the compatibilist argues that free agency is compatible with the moral limitations of the agent himself. That which applies to one free agent rightly applies to all. If sinners should not be blamed for their sin because they are morally incapable of not sinning, neither should God, because he is morally incapable of doing otherwise, be praised for his righteousness. To get back to the point, my concession that election was a libertarian free act as far as the divine decree is concerned does not imply that it was not also an example of compatibilism. To whatever extent I have portrayed compatibilism as actions that are determined by the nature of the agent, this has been inaccurate. On the contrary, compatibilism simply means that an agent’s actions must be compatible with his nature. Libertarian choice, which can be defined as full access to all conceivable options for a given decision, is entirely possible when all of these options just happen to be compatible with the nature of the agent.

Now to Adam’s will before the fall. Contrary to most Reformed theology, which defines the fall in terms of a change in human nature and a forensic declaration of guilt, I have kept the forensic declaration but have substituted the change in human nature with the removal of the Holy Spirit. Recall that the claim launching this debate was Clifton’s assertion that monergism implies monothelitism. According to monergists, synergism in regeneration is impossible because the unregenerate man, by his very nature, cannot will the good necessary to cooperate with his salvation. The natural man cannot not sin. Since Christ has a human nature, but he cannot sin, it follows according to a monergistic understanding of human nature that Christ must be acting against his human nature. His human will has been so subdued as to be irrelevant. And so we have virtual monothelitism. The immediate Protestant response to this is to point out that Christ and other people do not have the same nature. Whereas other people have a fallen human nature, Christ’s human nature was unfallen. Problem solved.

Well, no . If there is any doctrine in which Eastern Orthodoxy has displayed a better understanding than the rest of Christianity it is in this point of Christology: that which is not assumed is not healed. If there is a substantial difference in human nature as it existed before the fall and as it exists after the fall, and if Christ did not assume the human nature that we actually possess, then his incarnation does not benefit our humanity. It cannot be the case that Christ assumed a pre-fall human nature that is not the same as that human nature, which is currently ours. Yet, to say that Christ assumed a post-fall human nature brings up another problem. According to standard Protestant understanding, which can be traced back at least as far as Augustine, our corrupted human nature constitutes original sin. We can’t very well have Christ being sinful by virtue of his incarnation. Reformed theology emphasized a concurrent concept of original sin, which was the forensic declaration of the guilt of Adam’s transgression upon all who were in him. To address the problem of Christ’s incarnation, I have suggested that we move our understanding of original sin to an exclusively forensic concept. The question of pre- or post-fall human nature is no longer relevant for the simple fact that, in the fall, no such change occurred.

We still have to account for the dispositional difference between fallen man and Adam. While it is the case that man in his natural and fallen state cannot not sin, this could not have been true of Adam. If Adam was created in such a way that he had to sin, then he was undoubtedly ill-made. For the reasons mentioned above, though, something other than a change in human nature must account for the difference. The only thing that comes to mind is to place this difference in the presence or absence of the Holy Spirit. Adam was not created in confirmed righteousness; otherwise, he could not have fallen. Instead, he was created with a nature that was compatible with a wide variety of choices. I do not believe that Adam’s nature was such that he could have kept from falling without the aid of the Holy Spirit; however, this is not a statement against the craftsmanship of his nature. Rather, it is a recognition both of design and of the necessity of the Holy Spirit to righteousness. If the Holy Spirit is necessary to righteousness, and not a mere convenience toward that end, then it is impossible for any created being to achieve an acceptable standard of righteousness without his assistance.

Other than my previously mentioned confusing account of nature determining action when I should have been speaking in terms of nature being compatible with actions, I see no reason why my understanding of Adam’s condition before the fall implies that he had to sin and was, therefore, ill-made. On the contrary, leaving aside the decree of God for the sake of argument, I believe that the choices compatible with Adam’s nature when it came to whether or not he would keep the covenant of works did, for all practical purposes, approach libertarian standards. To put it another way, the fall was among the least determined decisions in human history.

Finally, Chris has been presenting the fall in terms of Adam choosing to do something that, though good in itself, was per accidens sinful. He prefers this over the idea that Adam’s motivation was to do something sinful. I have two points of response. First, assuming that this scenario is possible, what about my account of Adam’s nature before the fall would make it impossible? All options are equally open to Adam yet he falls by choosing an option that is per accidens sinful. The second point concerns my disagreement with the distinction that Chris has made. I do see the theoretical distinction between doing something because it is sinful and having good motivations for doing something that is per accidens sinful. As I understand him, though, Chris is saying that, when Adam fell, he did not intend to sin. But I can only equate lack of intent with ignorance of the status of his action. If this was invincible ignorance, then how is God just in condemning him? As to vincible ignorance, it’s not as if God didn’t tell Adam outright what he expected. We may live in a complex society where we have to do a some digging to discover what is expected of us, but this was not true of Adam. If he didn’t know what was expected of him, then the intelligence of the clay was not substantially altered when God breathed life into it. I do not doubt that, when Adam fell, this involved good motivations towards an act that was, in itself, good. I cannot conceive of a being created by God and empowered by the Holy Spirit opting for pure evil (so Adam’s condition wasn’t that libertarian after all). Nevertheless, along with these good motivations, Adam knew what he was doing, he knew that the action he was about to take was against the express command of God, he had both the moral and natural ability not to act, and yet he chose to sin anyway. The fall was not determined and God was just in judging it as he did.

Posted by kcourter at dezembro 31, 2006 07:53 PM | TrackBack