Jonathan Edwards’s Turn from the Classic-Reformed Tradition of Freedom of the Will [1 ed.] 9783666560248, 9783525560242

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New Directions in Jonathan Edwards Studies Edited by Harry S. Stout, Kenneth P. Minkema and Adriaan C. Neele

Volume 2

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Philip John Fisk

Jonathan Edwards’s Turn from the Classic-Reformed Tradition of Freedom of the Will

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISBN 978-3-525-56024-2 You can find alternative editions of this book and additional material on our Website: www.v-r.de © 2016, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen/ Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Bristol, CT, U.S.A. www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Printed in Germany. Typesetting by Konrad Triltsch GmbH, Ochsenfurt Printed and bound by Hubert & Co GmbH & Co. KG, Robert-Bosch-Breite 6, D-37079 Göttingen. Printed on aging-resistant paper.

For Cynthia Joy

Preface

How we present Jonathan Edwards and his intellectual relationship to his classicReformed tradition matters. Our approach to historical theology must consult and interpret the primary sources for an honest appraisal of where Edwards stood in this vigorously guarded tradition.There are scholars who contend that Edwards was a ‘Calvinist’ but who differ on whether that means Edwards was a static thinker and necessitarian or whether he was an innovator and early dynamic process thinker. Others point to the distinction between the historical Calvin and the confessional developments after Calvin, developments which reached back to medieval thinkers, such as Duns Scotus. These scholars hold that authors in the classic-Reformed line after Calvin made use of Scotistic innovations, in answer to the challenges of their day, for instance, by the Jesuits, Arminians, and Socinians. There are at least three previous studies that I wish to mention which have understood the historical relevance of studying the Harvard and Yale curricula in order to understand the extent to which the medieval-European model of education stands behind the New England schools. Samuel Eliot Morison produced a two-volume study called, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936). The Appendix B to Part Two contains all extant Harvard commencement theses and quaestiones and is as such invaluable. An important study in 1955 by William S. Morris, The Young Edwards, A Reconstruction, Chicago Studies in the History of American Religion (New York: Carlson Publishing, 1991) was re-printed in The Jonathan Edwards Classic Studies Series (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005). His study focused on how Edwards came to think both as a theologian and philosopher, helpfully reconstructing Edwards’s early Reformed scholastic milieu, pointing especially to the influential place of Adriaan Heereboord. Norman Fiering, in 1981, published two studies on Edwards. His aim was to write a historical and intellectual history of the development of Edwards’s moral thought. Like other studies before him, he made use of some primary sources, such as Yale commencement broadside theses. His work shows that this present study is not the

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first to see the relevance of analyzing the theses and quaestiones in the Harvard and Yale curricula. This book, however, goes further than those previously mentioned by analyzing the fundamental philosophical and theological concepts used by the Reformed authors who directly or indirectly informed the New England curricula. For this task I wish to acknowledge the benefit derived from the published writings of The Research Group John Duns Scotus and The Research Group Classic-Reformed Theology, the latter of which recently published a LatinEnglish edition of the first of three volumes of the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae (1625) in Dolf te Velde, ed., Synopsis of a Purer Theology, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2015). In addition, the research in Richard Muller’s four-volume set of Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003) is set to transform our understanding of Edwards’s classic-Reformed heritage. This book asks whether Edwards turns from the classic-Reformed tradition on the much contested topic of freedom of the will. Given the various interpretations by scholars of what exactly Edwards’s tradition taught on this topic, the study is as much about establishing that from which Edwards departs as whether he departs. The study examines the degree to which his notion of freedom of will, necessity, and contingency represents his own tradition by turning to the primary sources in the Harvard and Yale curricula. These sources include a presentation, interpretation, and conceptual analysis of all extant Harvard, Yale, and Princeton commencement broadside theses and quaestiones, between the years 1642–1765, which have to do with necessity, contingency, and freedom of the will. Other primary sources from the curricula that are presented and analyzed are relevant disputations from Heereboord’s Meletemata (1654), a student notebook containing texts on God’s knowledge and human freedom of the will taken from Ethicks and Pneumaticks, purportedly written by Charles Morton, and Edwards’s extracts and transcription from his contemporary, the Reformed author, Johann Friedrich Stapfer’s Institutiones Theologiae Polemicae (1743–7). The result of the investigation claims that Edwards indeed departs from and significantly transforms the classic-Reformed tradition of freedom of the will from within the tradition itself. A project of this nature incurs debts, to institutions, family, friends, and in my case to mission organizations as well. My visit to the Jonathan Edwards Center and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and Manuscripts and Archives,Yale University, in 2010, 2011, and 2015 paid rich dividends. I want to thank Kenneth Minkema at the JEC for his help, the Edwards’ tour and visit to Forbes library, Northampton. My thanks also to the archival specialists at Harvard University, for their help and permission to photograph the many commencement broadsides on my visit in 2011. My visit to Princeton in 2013 fulfilled

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my wish to visit the Mudd Manuscript Library and photograph the extant commencement broadsides there. A special word of gratefulness is owed to my promoters, Prof. Dr. Antoon Vos and Prof. Dr. Andreas J. Beck, for introducing me to this fascinating field of studies. Professor Vos deserves my special praise for illuminating for me the crucial importance for Christian freedom of the classic-Reformed tradition’s teaching on synchronic freedom and an ontology of true contingency. I am also grateful for all I have learned from my colleagues in the Research Group ClassicReformed Theology, chaired, until his heavenly “promotion” in 2014, by Prof. Dr. Willem J. van Asselt. A word of gratitude is also due Dr. J.M. Bac, docent in classical languages in Gorinchem, the Netherlands for reviewing the Latin translation. Any mistakes, of course, remain my own. Prof. Dr. Martin Webber made editorial suggestions, for which I am grateful. I would like to thank my missionary friends and supervisors in the past with EFCA ReachGlobal, Ben Beckner and Mike Davis, for encouraging me along the way. And my thanks to Commission To Every Mission (CTEN) for encouraging our present work and ministry at ETF, Leuven. On a technical note, I would like to thank Steve at Nota Bene for his expertise. Inestimable gratefulness is due my parents for their Christian example to all of us, and unbounded support for all of my life’s endeavors, especially this one. And I owe a debt of thanks to my wife’s parents, Darwin and Annette Adams, for their constant encouragement and support of my literary ambitions. My brother Steve has encouraged me all along the way, for which I am grateful. My visits with him in Chicago allowed me to profit from The Newberry, Chicago’s Independent Research Library. I give special thanks to our daughter Ashley, and our son-in– law David, and our sons Zachary and Jonathan, for the many discussions about necessity, contingency, and whether Jonathan Edwards remains one of my heroes, after all is said and done. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Cynthia Joy, for her patient endurance throughout the course of this extensive research and writing project. “For in him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28 “For it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Philippians 2:13

ETF Leuven, Belgium

Philip John Fisk, March, 2016

Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Preamble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Historical perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Eighteenth-century reception of Edwards’s Freedom of Will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Nineteenth-century reactions to Edwards’s Freedom of Will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Twentieth-century strands in Edwards studies . . . . 3. A brief sketch of Jonathan Edwards’s context, life and academics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. A brief sketch of three opposing sets of conditions considered requisite for freedom of will . . . . . . . . . . . . Heereboord’s classic-Reformed freedom ad utrumlibet Whitby’s freedom ad utrumlibet . . . . . . . . . . . . Edwards’s synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. Methodological assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Scholastic method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Latin idiom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. ‘Stoic fate’ and Edwards’s Freedom of Will . . . . . . . . . . 8. Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part One. the Harvard and Yale Curricula on Freedom of Will 1. Commencement broadside theses and quaestiones . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.1 Harvard and Yale connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.2 Princeton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Survey of select Harvard, Yale, and Princeton commencement broadside theses and quaestiones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.1 (Structural) order of nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.2 Moral necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.3 Contingency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.4 The will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.5 Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.6 Free choice and indifference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.7 Cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.8 Propositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.9 Intuitive evidence and assent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.10 Causes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.11 Possibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.12 Foreknowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.13 Decrees and God’s will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.14 Virtue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.15 Newtonian physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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69 69 70 73

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74 75 77 80 81 85 86 89 93 96 98 100 101 102 103 104 105

2. Adriaan Heereboord on Reformed freedom ad utrumlibet 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 The acts of the will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Elicited acts and commands . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 The will and the desired end . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 Whether a neutral act of the will be permitted? 2.2.4 Choice and consent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 The objects of the will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 The motives of the will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.1 Blind power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.2 Duplex esse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.3 Concurrence of object with the will . . . . . . . 2.4.4 Cognition of object concurring with the will . . 2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Free choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6.1 The nature of free choice . . . . . . . . . . . .

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107 107 109 109 110 110 112 112 115 116 116 117 118 119 120 120

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2.6.2 The relation of liberum arbitrium to the intellect . . . . . 2.6.3 The will seeking the good necessarily and free choice seeking the good freely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6.4 Indifference belongs more to the judgment and arbitrium than the will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6.5 Why free choice is given to humans in both the understanding and the will. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6.6 Philosophers’ common definition of free choice . . . . . . 2.6.7 Heereboord’s requisites for humankind’s free action . . . 2.6.8 Heereboord’s definition of free choice . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Adriaan Heereboord on necessity and contingency . . . . . . . . 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Kinds of necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 Four kinds of necessity: one independent and three dependent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 A twofold internal and a fourfold external kind of necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.3 The division of efficient causes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Contingency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1 Definition of contingency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.2 A fivefold division of contingency . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.3 Contingent causality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Divine free causes and kinds of indifference . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.1 Negative indifference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.2 Privative indifference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.3 Active indifference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Divine and humankind’s willing and indifference . . . . . . . 3.5.1 Divine willing and indifference . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5.2 Humankind’s willing and indifference . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Indifferent free causes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6.1 The Jesuit line of compossibility and incompossibility 3.6.2 An alternative line of compossibility, incompossibility, and the divine prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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136 138 139 140 141 142 144 149 149 150 151 151 151 152 153 155

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167 167 170 171 173 173 175 176 178 182 183 185 187

5. Charles Morton on freedom of will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Charles Morton’s “Ethics” and “Pneumaticks” texts for students 5.3 Morton’s Pneumaticks, chapter eight “Of Science in God.” . . . . 5.3.1 Definitions of God’s knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morton and Heereboord’s use of verbum mentis and speculum trinitatis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.2 God’s twofold knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . God’s simple knowledge of understanding . . . . . . . . . God’s knowledge of vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Necessity and contingency of future states of affairs . . . Necessity and contingency of secondary causes in the compound and divided sense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Future contingent states of affairs either absolute or conditional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.3 No middle knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.4 Morton’s comments and reply to middle knowledge . . . 5.3.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Divine will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The primary object of love is God . . . . . . . . . . . . . The secondary objects of love are creatures and states of affairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . There is nothing good or true antecedent to the divine will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Verity, or truth-value, as object of the divine will . . . . . Complex verity of propositions (enunciationis) . . . . . .

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4. Adriaan Heereboord on divine ideas and exemplar causality . . 4.1 Introduction to divine ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.1 Whether there be the notion of idea in God . . . . . 4.1.2 What idea in God is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 The Ames and Heereboord line on divine ideas . . . . . . . William Ames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Heereboord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 God knows his divine essence as imitable . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 The meaning of states of affairs (res) and of idea . . . . . . 4.5 God has in himself ideas of all possible states of affairs . . Are the essences of states of affairs eternal? . . . . . 4.6 Different senses in which truths in God’s mind are eternal . 4.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5.5 Liberty is a property of the divine will . . . . . . . . . . . . God’s act of self-love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . God’s act of love towards his creation . . . . . . . . God’s act of willing as decreeing is free . . . . . . . . Morton’s interpretation of liberty as property of the divine will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 Divine decrees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6.1 Heereboord’s definition of the divine decrees . . . . 5.6.2 Three “instants” in the act of decreeing . . . . . . . 5.6.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 Morton’s Ethics, chapter three “Of the Liberty of the Will” 5.7.1 Morton’s definition of humankind’s freedom of will 5.7.2 Prerequisites to humankind’s free acts of will . . . . Freedom from compulsion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freedom from necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freedom of exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freedom of specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7.3 Opponents’ view of freedom of exercise . . . . . . . 5.7.4 Morton’s claim that Reformed philosophy locates freedom in rational spontaneity . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7.5 Summary analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part Two. The Position of Jonathan Edwards on freedom of will 6. Jonathan Edwards’s “Controversies” Notebook on predestination . . 6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Divine decrees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.1 Remonstrant Proposition Six . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Remonstrants do not see how to reconcile foreseen faith and an independent decree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Supposed-scripture language of conditioned foreknowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.2 Response to conditioned knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . Response α . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Response β . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Purely possible states of affairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Futurition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Divine mental representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . If the latter occurs, then the former also happens (ut si hoc fit etiam illud fiat) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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God knows all other possible sequences of events, not just those that happen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stapfer’s caveat on conditionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . God’s ordering of events does not destroy human freedom of will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.1 Remonstrant Proposition Four: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.2 Edwards’s response: the stronger the inclination, the freer one is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sequences of events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.1 Synchronic representation of sequences of events in the divine mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.2 The sequence of states of affairs is best because God willed it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.3 God’s willing of bad states of affairs that belong to a series of events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Analysis of two technical terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.1 Signum rationis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.2 Repraesentare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . States of affairs passing on from one status to another . . . . 6.6.1 Stapfer’s scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6.2 Edwards’s scheme against the Arminian scheme . . . . Summary analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7. Daniel Whitby on freedom ad utrumlibet and Edwards’s reply . . . . 7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.1 Whitby’s account of the turn from his ‘Calvinist’ education to the view of the early church on the doctrine of freedom of the will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.2 The structure of Whitby’s argument . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.3 Whitby’s argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Free choice (autexousia) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A state of trial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Not essential to humankind as such, only to a state of trial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freedom void of necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freedom from a “divine physical influx” . . . . . . . . . . Freedom ad utrumlibet is an inferior freedom . . . . . . . 7.2 Whitby’s claims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 Whitby’s claim from the early church fathers . . . . . . .

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6.3

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7.3

7.4

7.5 7.6

7.2.2 Whitby’s claim that ‘Calvinists’ show affinities to the ‘Stoics’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.3 Whitby’s claim for support from philosophers . . . . . . Observations and analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.1 On Whitby’s free choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.2 On Whitby’s state of trial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.3 On Whitby’s freedom void of necessity . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.4 On Whitby’s freedom from the divine influx . . . . . . . Edwards’s replies to Whitby’s claims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.1 Edwards’s reply to Whitby’s claim for support from early church fathers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.2 Edwards’s reply to some aspects of ‘Stoic’ doctrine . . . . 7.4.3 Edwards’s reply to the ‘Arminian’ set of conditions requisite for freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.4 Edwards’s reply to three ‘Arminian’ evasions . . . . . . . The determining act structurally precedes an act of volition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The determining act does not structurally precede the act of volition, the two acts occur simultaneously. . . . . . . The act of volition comes to pass without a cause . . . . . Analysis of “order of nature” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

8. Fundamental concepts in Jonathan Edwards’s Freedom of Will . . . . 8.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Edwards’s and his interlocutors’s definitions of terms . . . . . . 8.2.1 The acts of the will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.2 Volition and preference and the acts of the will . . . . . . 8.2.3 Objects of the will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.4 The greatest apparent good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 Necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.1 Absolute necessity, the necessity of the consequence, and of the consequent: Calvin’s line, Edwards’s line, and the classic-Reformed line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The classic-medieval and early-modern line on implication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Calvin’s levels of necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Analysis of Calvin’s levels of necessity . . . . . . . . . . . Edwards’s levels of necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edwards on the necessity of the consequence . . . . . . .

278 279 280 281 284 285 289 292 292 294 296 297 297 298 299 299 300 304 304 306 306 308 310 311 320

324 325 327 329 333 336

18

Contents

The causal function of the antecedent in an “If-then” conditional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.2 Natural and moral necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4 Heereboord and Edwards: an analysis of acts of the will . . . . . 8.4.1 Heereboord and Edwards on free choice . . . . . . . . . . 8.4.2 Heereboord and Edwards on the relation of objects to the will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

341 342 344 347 347 347 349

. .

351 351

. .

353 360

. . .

365 369 369

.

371

. .

373 374

.

374

.

375

.

378

.

379

. .

381 383

10. Jonathan Edwards’s “universal determining providence” . . . . . . . 10.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

386 386

9. Jonathan Edwards’s argument for freedom of perfection . . . . . . 9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.1 Edwards’s argument for moral necessity as a freedom of perfection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.2 Analysis of Edwards’s notion of freedom of perfection . Challenges to Lee’s account of Edwards’s dispositional ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 The transformation of natural principles into moral causes . . 9.2.1 Natural inclinations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.2 Edwards rejects a notion of natural necessity in favor of progressive growth of habits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3 Other sources on the notion of moral necessity as freedom of perfection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3.1 Descartes on freedom of perfection . . . . . . . . . . . . A brief sketch of Descartes’s notion of freedom of the divine will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A sketch of Descartes’s view of human freedom of perfection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3.2 Heereboord on the classical notion of ‘habit’ and freedom of perfection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3.3 Turretin on the classical notion of “seeds of virtue” and “moral necessity” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3.4 Van Mastricht on a classic notion of freedom of perfection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Contents

10.2 Edwards’s argument for God’s universal determining providence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2.1 The argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2.2 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The principle of superior fitness and Edwards’s universal determining providence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edwards and Newton on infinite space and duration . . . Edwards’s reply to Isaac Watts on the notion of God’s superior fitness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3 Edwards’s universal determining providence: a theory of will transforms itself into a theory of causality . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.1 The principle of sufficient reason (PSR): “There cannot be anything coming to pass without a cause.” . . . . . . . 10.3.2 The principle of the predicate in the subject (PPS), or, propositional containment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.3 The principle of the noble cause (PNC): “There cannot be more in the effect than in the cause.” . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

19

387 387 392 392 396 397 399 402 403 405 406

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

409

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Primary sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Secondary literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

422 422 427

Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

436

Abbreviations

BRBML DLGTT

EB HUA JETE

LCC

PRRD

PUL RPP

SOED

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Muller, Richard A., Dictionary of Latin and Greek theological terms: Drawn principally from Protestant scholastic theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1985. Evans bibliography. Readex. Early American imprints, series I: Evans 1639–1800. Harvard University. Commencement theses, quaestiones, and orders of exercises, 1642–1818. HUC 6642, Harvard University Archives. Minkema, Kenneth P. and George G. Levesque. Jonathan Edwards tercentennial exhibition: selected objects from the Yale collections 1703–2003, collection housed at Yale. New Haven, CT: Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University, 2003. Leibniz, G.W., and Samuel Clarke. The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence together with extracts from Newton’s Principia and Opticks. Edited and compiled by H.G. Alexander. Manchester University Press, 1956. Muller, Richard A., Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. The rise and development of Reformed orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725. 2nd ed. 4 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003. Princeton University Library. Commencement Records 1747–present AC 115, MUDD Library. Religion Past and Present. Encyclopedia of theology and religion. Edited by Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browning, Bernd Janowski, and Eberhard Jüngel. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Shorter Oxford English dictionary: on historical principles. 6th ed. 2 vols. Edited by Angus Stevenson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

22 WJE 1

Abbreviations

Works of Jonathan Edwards. vols. 1–26. Yale Univ. Press, 1957–2008. Works of Jonathan Edwards. Vol. 1, Freedom of the Will. Edited by Paul Ramsey. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957. WJEO 27 Works of Jonathan Edwards Online. vols. 27–73. Vol. 27, Works of Jonathan Edwards Online. “Controversies” Notebook. Jonathan Edwards Center, Yale University, 2008. YUL Yale University Library. Manuscripts and Archives.

Introduction

1.

Preamble

This study asks whether Jonathan Edwards (1703–58), commonly regarded as New England’s premier Reformed theologian, departs from the classic-Reformed tradition of freedom of the will. The study is as much about establishing that from which Edwards departs as whether he departs. It examines the degree to which his notion of freedom of will, necessity, and contingency is representative of his own tradition. Studies in historical theology, companions to Reformed orthodoxy, essays in historical anthologies, and Jonathan Edwards studies have given appraisals of the development of this theological tradition, and Edwards place therein.1 There is broad consensus that there was a “New Divinity,” centered 1 Books and chapters: Paul Helm, “Francis Turretin and Jonathan Edwards on contingency and necessity,” in Learning from the past: Essays on reception, catholocity, and dialogue, eds., Jon Balserak and Richard Snoddy (London: T & T Clark, forthcoming); Aaron Clay Denlinger, ed., Reformed orthodoxy in Scotland: essays on Scottish theology 1560–1775. (London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2015); Oliver D. Crisp, Deviant calvinism:broadening reformed theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014); Joel R. Beeke, “Reformed orthodoxy in North America,” in Herman J. Selderhuis, ed., A companion to Reformed orthodoxy, Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition: A series of handbooks and reference works on the intellectual and religious life of Europe, 500–1800, 40 (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott, The theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Oliver D. Crisp and Douglas A. Sweeney, eds., After Jonathan Edwards: The courses of the New England theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); W. J. van Asselt et al, eds., Reformed thought on freedom: the concept of free choice in early modern Reformed theology, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010); Hans Dieter Betz et al., Dev – Ezr, vol. 4 of Religion Past and Present: Encyclopedia of theology and religion (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Stephen J. Stein, ed., The Cambridge companion to Jonathan Edwards, Cambridge companions to religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Sang Hyun Lee, ed., The Princeton companion to Jonathan Edwards (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); E. Brooks Holifield, “Jonathan Edwards,” in Theology in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 102–26; Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The rise and development of reformed orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, 2d ed. 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003); Idem, After Calvin: Studies in the

24

Introduction

around Edwards and his followers. There were the “Old Calvinists” and the “New Calvinists,” the “Elder Calvinists,” who represented an “Augustino-Calvinist” line, and there were so-called “Modern Calvinists.” But there is less agreement on whether “new” means that there was “A parting of ways,” a “philosophical shift,” or “sea-change” by Edwards, in his theory of freedom, away from his Reformed tradition. Max Lesser’s Annotated bibliography (2008) further confirms the lack of consensus, showing that authors gave a mixed and varied reception to Edwards’s Freedom of Will (1754) in the generations following its publication, whether in Boston in 1754, London in 1762, Utrecht in 1774, or Glasgow in 1790.2 This study asks what precisely was “new” in Edwards’s theory of freedom of will, and what was the “older” view. The Westminster Confession (1647), the Synod of Dordt (1618–19), and the Leiden Synopsis of a Purer Theology (1625) belonged to Edwards’s Reformed development of a theological tradition, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Mark A. Noll, America’s God: from Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); W. J. van Asselt and E. Dekker, eds., Reformation and Scholasticism: an ecumenical enterprise, gen. ed. Richard A. Muller, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001); Joseph A. Conforti, “The New England theology from Edwards to Bushnell,” in Encyclopedia of American cultural and intellectual history, Mary Kupiec Cayton and Peter W. Williams, eds., (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2001), 1:205–14; Sang Hyun Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Rev. and exp. edition, 2000); Jan Ridderbos, “De theologie van Jonathan Edwards” (Ph.D. diss., ‘SGravenhage: Vrije Universiteit te Amsterdam, 1907), 329; Allen C. Guelzo, Edwards on the Will: A century of American theological debate, (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989; reprint, Jonathan Edwards Classic Studies, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008). Journal articles: Richard A. Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and Francis Turretin on necessity, contingency, and freedom of will. In response to Paul Helm,” Jonathan Edwards Studies 4, no. 3 (2014): 266–85; Paul Helm, “Turretin and Edwards once more,” Jonathan Edwards Studies 4, no. 3 (2014): 286–96; Idem, “Jonathan Edwards and the parting of ways,” Jonathan Edwards Studies 4, no. 1 (2014): 42–60; Richard A. Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and the absence of free choice: a parting of ways in the Reformed tradition,” Jonathan Edwards Studies 1, no. 1 (2011): 3–22; Idem, “Reassessing the relation of reformation and orthodoxy: A methodological rejoinder,” American Theological Inquiry 4, no. 1 ( January 2011): 3–12; Paul Helm, “‘Structural indifference’ and compatibilism in Reformed orthodoxy,” Journal of Reformed theology 5, (2011): 184–205; Idem, “Reformed Thought on Freedom: Some further thoughts,” Journal of Reformed Theology 4 (2010): 185–207; Idem, “Synchronic contingency in Reformed scholasticism: a note of caution,” Nederlands theologische tijdschrift 57 ( juli 2003): 207–22; Philip J. Fisk, “Divine knowledge at Harvard and Yale: From William Ames to Jonathan Edwards,” Jonathan Edwards Studies 4, no. 2 (2014): 151–78; Willem Van Vlastuin, “A retrieval of Jonathan Edwards’s concept of free will: the relevance for neuroscience,” Jonathan Edwards Studies 4, no. 2 (2014): 198–214; Oliver D. Crisp, “Jonathan Edwards on the divine nature,” Journal of Reformed theology 3 (2009): 175–201. 2 Max X. Lesser, Reading Jonathan Edwards: An annotated bibliography in three parts, 1729– 2005 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008); David W. Kling and Douglas A. Sweeney, eds., Jonathan Edwards at home and abroad: historical memories, cultural movements, global horizons (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 304–5.

Preamble

25

heritage, and yet the nature of these standards has been contested. Thomas Torrance characterizes their “scholastic theology” as embodying an inadequate “rational framework,” “rigid dogmatism,” “a logicalized system,” which is “methodologically erroneous and inadequate,” marked by a qualified “determinism,” “hyper-Calvinism,” “a hard logico-causal understanding,” rather than as representative of a robust view of human freedom, and an “evangelical non-scholastic way,” such as he finds in the Scots Confession (1560). But more recent scholarship has contested this characterization of these standards.3 Suffice it to say, there has been a lack of consensus on the question of whether the Reformed standards and the earlier orthodoxy held a more robust view of freedom than previously thought, from which Edwards departed. This study attempts to establish that what is new in the “New Divinity,” and what helps explain Edwards’s departure from the classic Reformed formulation of free choice, is Edwards’s synthesis of Newton’s laws of motion and action, “acquired habits,” “moral necessity” as a freedom of perfection, and a “universal determining providence.”4 Our claim is that, in his Freedom of Will, there is evidence that Edwards incorporates physical laws of motion into his notion of freedom of will, comparing human action with planetary motion, and expressing his notion in dynamic and deterministic Newtonian-like terms. Edwards writes,

3 Thomas F. Torrance, Scottish Theology: from John Knox to John McLeod Campbell (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 49, 57, 60, 126–7, 133, 135, 140, 230; Cf. the reappraisal of the Torrance thesis by Carl R. Trueman, “Introduction,” in Reformed orthodoxy in Scotland, ed., Denlinger, 1–6.; Christian Moser, Herman J. Selderhuis, and Donald Sinnema, eds, Acta of the synod of Dordt, vol. 1 of Acta et documenta synodi nationalis Dordrechtanae (1618–19) (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014); Dolf te Velde, ed., Synopsis purioris theologiae/ Synopsis of a purer theology: Latin text and English translation: Volume 1, Disputations 1–23, gen. eds. Willem Van Asselt and William Den Boer, Studies in medieval and reformation traditions, 187 (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Aza Goudriaan and Fred van Lieburg, eds., Revisiting the Synod of Dordt (1618–1619), Brill series in church history, 49 (Leiden: Brill, 2011). Krop, in his essay—representative of the other essays—refutes the opinion that Dordt represents “rigid, austere Calvinism,” attributing that view to “nineteenth-century liberal church historians,” 51–2; Cf. Chad B. Van Dixhoorn, “Reforming the reformation: Theological debate at the Westminster Assembly 1643–1652” (Cambridge University, 2004); On the Westminster Assembly Project, see www.westminsterassembly.org. 4 WJE 1: 155–9, 324, 431, 433; On Edwards’s supposed departure from his Reformed heritage, see Paul Helm, “A different kind of Calvinism?: Edwardsianism compared with older forms of Reformed thought,” in Crisp and Sweeney, eds., After Jonathan Edwards, 91–103. William Morris noted Edwards’s reading of Newton’s Principia and Optics, his appropriation of Newton’s principles of motion and action, applied to human psychology, and mentioned Edwards’s need to shape a synthesis of the “new” and “old” ontologies, pre and post-Newtonian studies, given the variegated background of his reading, in Morris, The young Jonathan Edwards, 52–8, 127, 171, 173, 252, 281, 284, 290, 306, 310, 314, 319, 333, 334, 472, 534–5, 557, 565, 569, 572–78.

26

Introduction

Acts of volition or choice, and their causes, are not so sensible and obvious as in corporeal and sensible things…Choice often interposes, interrupts, and alters the chain of events, causing them to proceed otherwise than they would do, if let alone, and left to go on according to the laws of motion. Hence, the principle of motion is distinct from nature.5

Ryan Tweney makes the case that Edwards not only “reset the Calvinist debate upon psychological grounds, opening the way to the so-called ‘New Divinity,’” but also approaches the problem of freedom of the will via a “Newtonian world view” and a universal attraction acting at a distance, extending to infinity, which “constitutes an affirmation of the deterministic character of everything that exists and everything that happens…in the final analysis, Edwards thus advocated a kind of causality that works in exactly the same fashion whether we are considering human actions or planetary motions.” Furthermore, “In Freedom of the Will (1754),” writes Tweney, “Edwards adapted a sophisticated version of Newtonian determinism to the understanding of human thinking and action.”6 Likewise, Sang Hyun Lee argues that Edwards’s Freedom of Will evinces the shift in language that occurred in the Newtonian world, such that Edwards speaks of habits as “ontologically real,” moral causes, and “lawlike powers.”7 Lee argues that Newton broadened the view of the conception of motion and causation, and suggests that Edwards’s reading of Newton may have inspired his understanding of “the dispositional principle of habit,” which plays “the key role” in Edwards’s epistemology and ontology.”8 Although this study claims that Edwards’s synthesis departs from the synthesis of his classic-Reformed heritage, it is not as if he traded in one form of determinism (Calvinistic) for another—the former of which was alleged to agree with Stoic and Hobbist fate. On the contrary, the formulation of freedom as presented by the Reformed theologian Heereboord, whom Edwards studied, is not deterministic, or necessitarian, but characterized by an ontology of true contingency. That is, there is a conception of a structural order of nature by which one can analyze divine and human volition, which includes a “previous concurrence” and a divine “physical influx” in its set of requisites for freedom, and a robust use of scholastic method and distinctions. In Part One, we frame the question of whether Edwards departs from his Reformed heritage by establishing the teaching content of the Harvard and Yale curricula, the commencement broadside theses and quaestiones, and two instructors: the Reformed Leiden 5 WJE 1: 158–9. See chapter 9 of this present study. 6 Ryan D. Tweney, “Jonathan Edwards and determinism,” Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences 33, no. 4 (Fall 1997): 365, 374. 7 Sang Hyun Lee, ed., Writings on the Trinity, grace, and faith, vol. 21 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, gen. ed. Harry S. Stout (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 5–7. 8 Lee, Philosophical theology of Edwards, 31–2.

Preamble

27

University Professor Adriaan Heereboord (1614–61), and the Cambridge and Oxford educated Presbyterian dissenter, Charles Morton (1627–98). Framing the question in this way affords us a non-arbitrary and often overlooked vantage point from which to assess, in Part Two, Edwards’s continuity and discontinuity with his Reformed heritage and his education. In Part Two, we begin with Edwards’s transcription around the year 1750 of extracts on the topic of predestination from the Institutiones (1743–7) of his contemporary, the Reformed continental theologian, Johann Friedrich Stapfer (1708–1775). This transcription offers a non-arbitrary, contemporary benchmark by which to judge Edwards’s continuity and discontinuity with his classic-Reformed heritage. The remaining chapters of Part Two examine Edwards’s argument in his Freedom of Will (1754), and that of his main interlocutors. We proceed below (in §2) by presenting a historical overview of how Edwards scholars and church historians have appraised the reception of Edwards’s Freedom of Will by philososphers, professors, and literary critics in Edwards’s own and succeeding generations. We present a brief sketch of Edwards’s context, life, and education, with a particular view to his connection with Yale and his presence at commencement day proceedings (in §3). In the next chapter, we present a fuller picture of commencement day proceedings and commencement broadside theses and quaestiones. We briefly introduce the subject of logic in the curriculum, and its background in William Ames (in §4). We summarize three opposing sets of conditions that were considered requisite for freedom of the will (in §5). We state our methodological assumptions for this study, briefly mentioning the importance of understanding the genre of writing to which Edwards’s Freedom of Will belongs, namely, scholastic method, and the importance of understanding the Latin and English idiom in scholastic discourse and argumentation (in §6). We recognize the use, and address the problem, of derogatory markers and labels used by Edwards’s interlocutors in their polemical discourse, labels such as ‘Stoic’ ‘Calvinist’ ‘Hobbist’, giving particular attention to the charge by Daniel Whitby that the ‘Calvinist’ line, such as Edwards’s doctrine of freedom and necessity would later take up, has strong affinities with Stoic fate (in §7). We present an overview of each chapter (in §8). We now turn to consider historical perspectives on the reception of Edwards’s Freedom of Will.

28

Introduction

2.

Historical perspectives

2.1

Eighteenth-century reception of Edwards’s Freedom of Will

In his appraisal of the reception of Jonathan Edwards’s thought in Britain in the late eighteenth century, Richard Muller notes an “absence of free choice” in Edwards’s scheme of freedom and suggests a “parting of ways in the Reformed tradition.”9 He demonstrates that although the philosopher Joseph Priestly (1733–1804) gives Edwards a positive appraisal, since his position affirms his own necessitarian views, he nevertheless points out Edwards’s discontinuity with his own Reformed tradition.10 To illustrate the association of Edwards with Priestly, a reviewer in the New Haven Christian Spectator of an essay by principal William Brown of Aberdeen University, published in 1816, wrote that Edwards and Joseph Priestly are both “universally regarded as necessarians,” not in terms of “acts of will,” but in causal necessity.11 Thus, already in the late-eighteenth century, one finds in Priestly’s remarks a benchmark distinction being made between what we can call “older” Calvinist theologians juxtaposed with “newer,” with Edwards associated with the new ‘Calvinists’ and their necessitarian philosophical necessity. Muller further underscores the index of this “philosophical shift in Protestant thought” from the vantage point of St. Andrews’ professor of divinity, George Hill (1750–1819), who credited Leibniz with shaping an alliance between philosophical necessity and Calvinism, and who claimed that Wyttenbach, Stapfer, and Edwards “applied the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolfius to explain and vindicate the doctrines of Calvin.” But unlike Priestly, according to Muller, Hill viewed Edwards as in line with Wyttenbach and Stapfer, giving Reformed theology a “new” and “sounder philosophical footing.”12 What is significant is that Muller identifies from the eighteenth-century itself talk of an older and newer Reformed or Calvinist tradition, the latter of which is exemplified in Jonathan Edwards’s Freedom of Will. Although the later Reformed tradition on providence, writes David Fergusson, “eschewed both Stoic and Epicurean accounts,” the latter was its “primary target,” which resulted in “a theology of providence that was much closer to the 9 Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and the absence of free choice,” 3–22. 10 Ibid., 5–8. 11 Anon, “Review of Dr. Brown’s Essay,” An essay on the existence of a Supreme Creator, possessed of infinite power, wisdom and goodness, containing also, the refutation, from reason and revelation of the objections urged against his wisdom and goodness, and deducing from the whole subject the most important practical inferences, The Christian Spectator 1 (November 1819): 584. 12 Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and the absence of free choice,” 8–10. Cf. chapter 6 and Edwards’s transcription of Stapfer.

Historical perspectives

29

determinism of the Stoics than the indeterminism of the Epicureans.”13 This is evidenced in Edwards’s statement that “the Stoic philosophers were no atheists, but the greatest theists, and nearest akin to Christians…And Epicurus, that chief father of atheism, maintained no such doctrine of necessity, but was the greatest maintainer of contingence.”14 Edwards reasoned that his opponents were no better off arguing that his doctrine of necessity agreed “in some respects with the doctrine of the ancient Stoic philosophers” than in arguing that their doctrine was akin to the Epicureans. For, in his view, the Epicureans were the “very worst heathen.”15 Fergusson observes that “recent scholarship, however, has pointed to ways in which the Reformed orthodox were more nuanced and surprisingly bold in their affirmation of human freedom, by contrast with later negative stereotypes of that tradition.”16 The editors of Religion, Past and Present (2008) corroborate Fergusson’s point that a later strand of the Reformed tradition had more affinities with Stoic philosophy, when they state that Edwards “replaced the classical-modern ontology of substances and subjects with a Stoic-Ramist ontology.” The entry in RPP points to the importance of chapter 10, below, “Jonathan Edwards on a universal determining providence,” which addresses the charge against Edwards that his philosophical necessity amounts to Stoic-like fate.17 Moreover, these comments, taken together, identify Edwards as representative of a later, more determinist Reformed tradition. Given his leading role in New England at the head of a “New Divinity,” what we consider as Edwards’s synthesis on freedom of will represented a major turning point in the classicReformed tradition.

13 David Fergusson, “Providence in the Reformed tradition: from Calvin to Barth,” in Van God gesproken over religieuze taal en relationele theologie, eds., Theo Boer (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2011), 240. 14 WJE 1: 420. 15 WJE 1: 373. 16 Fergusson, “Providence in the Reformed tradition,” 240, fn. 17. He refers to Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom. 17 Hans Dieter Betz et al., Dev–Ezr, vol. 4 of Religion Past and Present: Encyclopedia of theology and religion (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 352; On the “old” ontology: quality, motion as a kind of becoming, formal and final causes, and the “new” Newtonian ontology: quantity, motion as a kind of being, efficient and material causes, motion and rest as relational, see Alexandre Koyré, Newtonian studies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 20.

30 2.2

Introduction

Nineteenth-century reactions to Edwards’s Freedom of Will

In Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Der christliche Glaube (1821), Antonie Vos notes a rejection of the “contingency approach of Reformed Scholasticism,” in favor of the determinism of Luther and Calvin, wherewith Vos takes notice of a profound change of course in the Reformed tradition and a new beginning in historical theology by Schleiermacher’s followers.18 To further illustrate that scholars themselves at the turn of the nineteenth century were taking notice of a change of course, we know that Coleridge raised the specter of the “necessitarian scheme” of Edwards that subjected to its “mechanism” the world of moral agency and the universal law of cause and effect. “The doctrine of modern Calvinism,” wrote Coleridge, “as laid down by Jonathan Edwards and the late Dr. Williams, which represents a will absolutely passive, clay in the hands of a Potter, destroys all will, takes away its essence and definition.” He goes on to say that the opinion of Edwards is not to “be confounded with the New-England System, now entitled Calvinistic.” The difference between an “enslaved Will, and no Will at all” is the difference, he says, between “the Lutheranism of Calvin and the Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards.”19 The disdain for Edwards’s theory of the freedom of will by those who held to the “Old Calvinist” view has been noted by E. Brooks Holifield, who writes that next to his admirers, other “conservative Calvinists” viewed his theology as a “source of heresy.”20 On the doctrine of original sin, Holifield writes that “Edwards diverged from Reformed orthodoxy,” since humankind lost the power of formal freedom—which turns on a distinction between power and disposition— leaving them with only “‘natural’ principles, such as self-love.”21 His Freedom of Will, “evoked spirited rebuttals and revisions throughout the nineteenth century.”22 Edwards, writes Holifield, wanted to show that “a Calvinist form of determinism remained compatible with praise and blame.” He writes that, although Edwards’s hallmark distinction between “natural necessity” and “moral 18 Antonie Vos, “Reformed orthodoxy in the Netherlands,” in A companion to Reformed orthodoxy, 172–6. 19 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, in the Formation of a Manly Character, on the Several Grounds of Prudence, Morality, Religion: Illustrated by Select Passages from the Elder Divines, Especially from Archbishop Leighton., First American Edition, from first London ed., ed. James Marsh (Burlington, VT: Chauncey Goodrich, 1829), 105–7. Cf. Stuart Piggin and Dianne Cook, “Keeping alive the heart in the head: the significance of ‘eternal language’ in the aesthetics of Jonathan Edwards and S.T. Coleridge,” Literature & Theology 18, (December 2004): 383–414. Ironically, Piggin and Cook favorably compare Coleridge to Edwards. 20 Holifield, Theology in America, 102. 21 Ibid., 116. Cf. Dekker, Eef, and Henri Veldhuis. “Freedom and sin: some systematic observations.” European Journal of Theology 3, no. 2 (1994): 153–161. 22 Ibid., 120.

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necessity” was common to “Reformed circles, among both traditionalists like Turretin in Geneva” and “revisionists like Amyraut at Saumur,” nevertheless, “other Calvinists often deplored it.”23 By way of illustration of those who positively viewed the “elder Calvinists” prior to Edwards, William G.T. Shedd (1820–94), Professor at Union Theological Seminary, wrote that in Edwards’s Freedom of Will, in an attempt to “aid Calvinism,” he applied the doctrine of “philosophical necessity,” which, Shedd explained to mean that the motives sway the will, circumstances make motives arise, and a “Power above us, and beyond our control,” orders circumstances; “therefore our volitions necessarily follow an order and chain of events appointed and decreed by infinite wisdom.” Shedd concluded that anyone should see that the doctrine of philosophical necessity “affords no shelter to the Calvinian system.”24 This philosophical necessity, which Shedd rejected in favor of what he called the Augustino-elder-Calvinist line, is encapsulated in the medieval model, of power, movement, and efficacy that descends from God to and through the Primum mobile, “which is moved by its love for God, and, being moved, communicates motion to the rest of the universe.”25 In his chapter on anthropology, Shedd gave an extensive review of Edwards’s theory of the will, and claimed that Edwards conceived of the will in a way that “the elder Calvinists denied.”26 “Both Augustine and the elder Calvinists, however,” wrote Shedd, “were more careful than Edwards was to avoid such seeming denials of free moral agency to the sinner, because they did not, even for the sake of argument, temporarily adopt their opponents’ idea of the will and moral agency.”27 23 Ibid., 121–2. 24 William G.T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 2nd ed., vol. 3, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1980), 314. Shedd finds Edwards’s theory of the will, based on an analysis of his notion of “inability,’ to be “inconsistent” and “self-contradictory,” in Shedd, Dogmatic theology, 2:229; 3:366–7. Shedd says Edwards equivocates on his use of “ability,” and Shedd then turns to Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo, II.17, and his two senses of the term “power,” (1) disposition and (2) outward act, where Anselm said, “Though Christ had the power to lie externally and verbally, he was so disposed (a seipso habuit) that he could not lie inwardly and from inclination,” in Shedd, Dogmatic theology, 3: 368. 25 C. S. Lewis, The discarded image: an introduction to medieval and renaissance literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964; reprint, 2005), 113; Cf. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: a study of the history of an idea (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1936), 59, 183–2–7; Simo Knuuttila, ed., Reforging the great chain of being: studies of the history of modal theories, Synthese historical library: texts and studies in the history of logic and philosophy (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 2010). 26 Shedd, Dogmatic theology, 2: 220. For Shedd, Turretin marked the transition from the elder Calvinist line to the newer line, (Idem 2:36). 27 Shedd, Dogmatic theology, 3: 374.; Cf. Hodge points out that the lack of clear distinction between “will” and “desire” is the “great defect” of “President Edwards’s celebrated work,” in Charles Hodge, Anthropology, vol. 2 of Systematic theology, reprinted from facsimile (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1993), 289.

32

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In the nineteenth century, according to Muller, the Scottish metaphysician William Hamilton (1788–1856) and the Scottish philosopher Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) claimed that Edwards’s philosophical necessity placed him in line with Anthony Collins’s (1676–1729) necessitarian views; and in Hamilton’s assessment, Edwards’s view of necessity and freedom was at best “heterodox,” even “heretical.”28 In his time, Hamilton viewed such necessitarianism as being far afield from the “Calvinism” of the Church of Scotland. Muller points out that, although the Scottish theologian William Cunningham (1805–61) “felt the sting of Hamilton’s claims,” he attempted to find space for philosophical necessity in the Westminster Confession, even though the Confession itself does not mention it, in order to accommodate such necessitarian views of Edwards and others.29 The problem is that the Confession affirms the “contingency of second causes,” and Edwards denies it.30 What is of significance for this study are Muller’s conclusions that underscore Cunningham’s attempt, in his time, to make Edwards’s determinism rhyme with what he thought was representative of the “older Reformed orthodoxy,” which had been replaced by “various orthodoxies” in the “deconfessionalization” of the “early eighteenth century.”31 Moreover, Cunningham’s attempt to show Edwards’s affinities indicates that already in the midnineteenth century, authors were not aligning Edwards with his Puritan Reformed heritage, with Reformed authors such as Ames, Voetius, and Van Mastricht. Nor were mid-nineteenth century writers able to draw on the scholastic distinctions that the earlier Reformed authors had made in support of a robust view of human freedom. By then, the substance of the “older” Reformed view of freedom and contingency had been lost and replaced by the New Divinity.

2.3

Twentieth-century strands in Edwards studies

In 1907, Jan Ridderbos (1879–1960) defended his dissertation, De theologie van Jonathan Edwards, Vrije Universiteit te Amsterdam.32 He devoted six out of fourteen chapters to Edwards’s doctrine of freedom of will and the question of whether it represented a change in Reformed theology. The most frequently cited Reformed authors against which he weighed Edwards’s doctrine on freedom of will were, Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676), Francis Turretin (1623–87), Bernhard 28 29 30 31 32

Muller, “Edwards and the absence of free choice,” 16. Ibid., 17. Ibid., 18. Ibid., 20. Jan Ridderbos, De theologie van Jonathan Edwards (‘S-Gravenhage: Johan A. Nederbragt, 1907). (All translations mine, unless otherwise indicated.) See also, Ridderbos, Jan. “Jonathan Edwards.” In Christelijke Encyclopedie, II: 544–5. Kampen, 1957.

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De Moor (1710–1765), W. G.T. Shedd, and Herman Bavinck (1854–1921) and his Gereformeerde Dogmatiek (Reformed Dogmatics). Ridderbos identified the law of causality as a key argument that Edwards adapted and used against what Edwards perceived to be three key ideas of the Arminian notion of freedom: (1) A self-determining power, (2) The indifference of the will prior to the act of will, (3) A contingent act of the will that excludes every kind of necessity.33 According to Ridderbos, in using the law of causality, Edwards associated the cause with antecedent natural or moral dependency, in either a divine positive efficiency, or a permissive will, and he identified the law of causality with the logical ground of existence as to why something is rather than not.34 In Ridderbos’s analysis, generally speaking, Edwards’s position on necessity in the divine will and the freedom of divine grace, where “God’s motive, which determines his choice, lies not in the person self, but in God’s end purpose for that person, does not substantially differ from the position of other Reformed thinkers.”35 However, Edwards’s “more radical position” is that “God always wills the most fitting and most wise state of affairs, while other Reformed thinkers preferred to state that God can never will something other than that which itself is good, or good because of something else.”36 Ridderbos concluded that “Edwards’s causality doctrine as such does not contradict the doctrine of concurrence, as long as one understands concurrence as a constant influence of divine power in the second causes and as assisting and leading these secondary causes in their working.”37 Ridderbos referred to Herman Bavinck who gave the technical term, (praecursus), by which he said God moves a second cause into action, accompanies it in its working, and leads it to its effect (concursus).38 Nevertheless, Ridderbos concluded that Edwards’s “doctrine of concurrence comes under pressure” when he infers his doctrine of a “universal determining providence from his doctrine of causality.”39 But from Edwards’s universal determining providence one cannot infer concurrence, writes Ridderbos.40 In the end, Edwards’s positive and permissive divine will has no 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40

Ibid., 59, 64. Ibid., 64. Ridderbos, De theologie van Jonathan Edwards, 181. Ibid. Ridderbos cites Gisbertus Voetius, Disputation I:387 “De jure et justitia Dei” from Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek (1897) II: 215. See the English translation, “To us a thing is good for the sole reason that God wills it. God himself can never have willed anything unless it is either good in itself or for some other reason,” in Herman Bavinck, God and creation, vol. 2 of Reformed dogmatics, gen. ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 239. Ridderbos, De theologie van Jonathan Edwards, 186. Ibid., 187. Ridderbos cites Bavinck, Ger. Dogmatiek III (1898), 27. See Bavinck, Reformed dogmatics, ed., Bolt, 2: 614. Ridderbos, De theologie van Jonathan Edwards, 186–7. Ibid., 187.

34

Introduction

place for the Reformed doctrine of divine concurrence, according to Ridderbos. He points out that one cannot excuse Edwards as if he were talking about general providence, since clearly he expresses himself in terms of a determining providence.41 Ridderbos claimed that Edwards, in his “Conclusion” chapter to Freedom of Will, deviated from Reformed theology when he attempted to explain what “Calvinists mean by efficacious and irresistable grace.”42 He pointed to Edwards’s claim that the doctrine of a “universal determining providence” followed from moral necessity, such that “God does decisively, in his providence, order all the volitions of moral agents, either by positive influence or permission,” and that “God’s assistance or influence, must be determining and decisive.”43 This claim, Ridderbos contended, “is truly not in agreement with the Reformed doctrine of efficacious grace, but more with the proposal of the Congruists in the Roman Church, such as Bellarmine.”44 In Ridderbos’s conclusion, he stated that Newton’s developments in the natural sciences, reducing phenomena in nature to mathematical laws, shed light on new ways in philosophy, which Edwards eagerly pursued with his notion of the law of causality in the service of Reformed theology. For, Newton, observed Ridderbos, considered his laws to have shown the wisdom of how God had established the world.45 There were, however, two dangerous avenues in the new philosophy to avoid, on the one hand, “Hobbes mechanical worldview,” and on the other, “Spinozism (Malebranche and Geulincx) and its denial of secondary causes.”46 Edwards’s position was, according to Ridderbos, “insufficiently thought through,” leaning sometimes to the side of the Hobbesean mechanical worldview, and at other times to pantheism.47 Whereas D.W. Bebbington, in The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Edwards, noted these last remarks by Ridderbos, Ridderbos himself had specified that Edwards, as far as his Freedom of Will is concerned, when taken together with his doctrine of causality, was free from pantheistic tendencies.48 41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48

Ibid., 187. Ibid., 139. WJE 1: 434. WJE 1: 433–4. Ridderbos, De theologie van Jonathan Edwards, 139. Ridderbos’s footnote refers to Bavinck, Gereformeerde dogmatiek III 91898), 441. See Bavinck, RD, 2:199. Bavinck lists Suárez, Bellarmine, Lessius as examples of the “Congruists.” (Ridderbos only named Bellarmine). Ridderbos explains that Bellarmine “let the efficacity of grace be determined by praevisa gratiae congruentia or incongruentia (the congruence or incongruence of foreseen faith).” Ridderbos, De theologie van Jonathan Edwards, 311–2. Ibid., 312. Ibid. Ibid., 114. Ridderbos finds a pantheistic pull in Edwards’s doctrine of continuous creation and God as “Being of beings,” 293–4. Ridderbos remarks that there is a close connection

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Jonathan Edwards studies, as such, arguably began with Perry Miller’s Jonathan Edwards (1949), in which Miller called Edwards a “docile Newtonian,” drawing attention to what Edwards found in Newton, illustrations of the truths which Edwards himself observed in the phenomena of nature, namely, “two primary conceptions: atoms and gravity.”49 There was “nothing in Edwards’s mind” that was “more original or more exciting than this insight,” that “by seeing the universe as a system of stable ideas,” writes Miller, “Edwards could see exactly why gravity should have the same proportions across the immensities of space without any material medium.”50 Had Edwards proclaimed this, “New England’s Calvinism” would have deemed him a “traitor,” since it would have appeared that he had identified the laws of nature with the decrees of God.51 Edwards studies were further invigorated by Miller’s broader descriptive analysis of The New England Mind wherein Puritanism was emboldened as “a major expression of the Western intellect,”52 and where for the first time in New England, there was “a mind”—Edwards—“capable of sustained independent speculation.” The hegemony of the Perry Miller theses exerted their influence on Edwards studies in the following decades, one thesis of which was the claim that Edwards’s reading of Locke’s Essay (1690) was “the central and decisive event in his intellectual life.”53 The hegemony of the Miller thesis broke down with Conrad Cherry’s reappraisal of Edwards’s theology. Cherry acknowledged the debt of Edwardsean and Puritan studies to Miller, but pointed out that Miller minimized the influence of Edwards’s Reformed forebears and was embarrassed by Ed-

49 50 51

52 53

between Edwards’s doctrine of will and doctrine of continuous creation, and claims that “Edwards fails to emphasize that even though my act of will is necessary, it remains mine.” This lack on Edwards’s part is due to insufficient attention to the distinction between God’s part and humankind’s part in choice, a lack which the doctrine of continuous creation exposes, 188; See D.W. Bebbington, “The reputation of Edwards abroad,” in Stephen J. Stein, ed., The Cambridge companion to Jonathan Edwards, Cambridge companions to religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 255. Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1949), 82, 95. Ibid., 93. Ibid. That Edwards, in Freedom of Will, (WJE 1: 158, 393) did publish his views in Newtonian terms, such as the “new principle of motion and action” and the “insensibility” of effects, such that there is an “attraction of an atom, at the distance of one of the furthest stars,” will be taken up in chapters 9 and 10 below. Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939; repr., Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), viii. Miller, Jonathan Edwards, 52. “ Edwards stood rigorously faithful to Locke’s original discovery that faculties are modes of motion. Perhaps Edwards was obliged to make his break with scholasticism the cleaner because, his society having so complacently accepted it, he had to reject it either entirely or not at all,” 252. See also, Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 305. Edwards’s Freedom of will is “the chief critic of Arminianism forging a weapon out of the very Lockean materials which ‘enlightened’ theologians and deists had claimed as their own.”

36

Introduction

wards’s love for the Bible. With historical perspective, Cherry, in his new introduction in 1990, says the earlier “taken for granted” Miller interpretation of Puritans and Edwards has seen its demise since the renaissance of scholarship in these two fields.54 In 1955, William Morris offered a counter-proposal to the Miller thesis. In his dissertation for the University of Chicago, Morris found what he believed to be the clue to Edwards’s thought, which was not in the Miller thesis, but in the early influence provided by “two Dutch Suaresian Scholastic Calvinist thinkers,” Franco Burgersdijk (1590–1635) and Adriaan Heereboord, and in particular, the latter’s structured thought.55 Edwards studies have focused on five areas, according to Morris, 1) systematic, 2) historical, 3) analytical, 4) descriptive, and 5) biographical.56 Focusing on how Edwards came to think both as a theologian and philosopher, the question of intellectual history and biography interested Morris most and resulted in a corrective to Edwards studies and a helpful construction of Edwards’s early Reformed scholastic milieu. Although Morris noted many times Edwards’s reading of Newton, while at Yale, he made no proposal of how Edwards might have appropriated Newton’s laws of motion into his notion of freedom of will. In 1981, Norman Fiering published two studies on Edwards. His principal objective was the intellectual, historical background to moral philosophy in eighteenth-century New England. His research uncovered three themes, the first of which was the history of moral philosophy as reflected in the seventeenthcentury Harvard College curriculum. The second theme was the transformation of the “Scholastic inheritance” as evidenced by the seventeenth-century “transition from medievalism to modernism.” The third theme is the origin and development of the “sentimentalist school of eighteenth-century British ethics,” typified by Sir Francis Hutcheson, and the emphasis on feelings or affections over reason or intellect. Fiering finds much affinity, though not dependence, between Edwards and Hutcheson.57 Contrary to Miller’s thesis that Edwards was a docile Newtonian and thoroughgoing atomist, Fiering objects to Miller’s “ahistorical” 54 Conrad Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal (1966; repr., Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), xxiii, 3. Marsden calls the Miller thesis “Miller’s myth.” See George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 62. 55 William Sparkes Morris, The Young Jonathan Edwards: A Reconstruction (Chicago Studies in the History of American Religion, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1991. Reprint, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005), 3. 56 Ibid., 4. 57 Norman Fiering, Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth-Century Harvard: A Discipline in Transition, Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia (Chapel Hill, NC: Univerity of North Carolina Press, 1981), 3–5. His sequel is Norman Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’s Moral Thought and Its British Context (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981; Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006).

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approach which results in many “dubious statements” on his part, and leads one to falsely conclude, according to Fiering, that Edwards’s method in natural philosophy begins a posteriori, rather than a priori.58 Rather than engaging in a systematic theological analysis of Edwards’s synthetic ethics, Fiering aims to write a historical and intellectual history of the development of Edwards’s moral thought. His chapters on the “intellectual context” and “morality and determinism” provide a backdrop to the concerns of this study, wherein we attempt to give conceptual analysis of primary sources and conduct a historical-theological inquiry.59 Fiering notes that the Hobbes-Bramhall debate (begun in 1645) and the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (published in 1717) play in the background of Edwards’s Freedom of Will. He claims, however, that Edwards never read the latter correspondence, without giving any reason.60 To the contrary, Tweney is of the opinion that Edwards certainly had opportunity to read the correspondence, which was “widely available in New England at the time.”61 Editor Paul Ramsey noted that one “cannot rule out” the possibility that Edwards had read the exchange.62 This present study attempts to demonstrate that, for example, the issues in the Hobbes-Bramhall debate are taken up in Daniel Whitby’s Discourse on freedom of the will of man, and thereby enter into Edwards’s Freedom of Will and must be taken into account when analyzing Edwards’s Freedom of Will. Likewise, all the major issues in the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence are taken up by Edwards in his Freedom of Will, a fact which strongly suggests more than mere familiarity with the correspondence.63 In 1989, Allen Guelzo made a crucial contribution to Edwards’s studies with his work, Edwards on the Will. He did more than just suggest that Edwards was familiar with the celebrated Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence. He made observations on how Edwards, “like Leibniz,” used, for example, the principle of sufficient reason, to argue against Daniel Whitby and Isaac Watts. As Guelzo puts it, Edwards reduced Watts’s argument to say one of two things. Either there is something “glorious” and apparently attractive in having no sufficient reason why God does something, or there is something shameful in God not having a reason why he does what he does.64 By sufficient reason Edwards, like Leibniz, 58 Fiering, Edwards’s British context, 343Fn48. Cf. WJE 1: 182, where Edwards begins his method by first ascending “a posteriori” and in a final third step descends “a priori.” 59 Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’s British context, Chapter 1, “An intellectual context,” 13–47; chapter 6, “Morality and determinism,” 261–321. 60 Ibid., 273, 295. 61 Tweney, “Jonathan Edwards and determinism,” 378fn22. 62 WJE 1: 114fn3. 63 For the case that is made in favor of Edwards’s familiarity with the issues in the Correspondence (LCC), see the introduction to chapter 7 on Whitby, and chapter 9 on Edwards. 64 Allen C. Guelzo, Edwards on the will: a century of American theological debate (Middletown,

38

Introduction

meant, why something is as it is, rather than otherwise.65 The discussion by Guelzo on Edwards, Whitby, and Watts, against the background of Leibniz, anticipates the detailed discussion we will give on Whitby’s argument, and Watts’s, in chapters seven and ten, respectively. Guelzo characterized Whitby and Watts as representing variant forms of voluntarism, calling them “voluntaristic libertarians.”66 As such, suggests Guelzo, Chubb, Whitby, and Watts held a twofold “symbolic value” for Edwards’s polemics. First, Edwards believed that his form of “reconciliationist Calvinism,” and no variant of “libertarianism”—Guelzo’s term— was the best defense against “atheistic materialism.”67 Second, by making a Church of England scholar, Whitby, one of his chief opponents, Edwards could exploit the feared-association between Anglicans and Arminians—as anachronistic as that may appear to us today. Guelzo, like Paul Ramsey, the editor of the editor of Freedom of Will, also recognized Watt’s radical “liberation of God’s will.” Guelzo observes that Watt’s view of the will was not unlike that of Samuel Clarke, in contradistinction to that of Leibniz, in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence.68 Edwards, however, notes Guelzo, made no serious attempt to argue the case for freedom of will against Clarke, on the one hand, nor Hobbes, on the other. Nevertheless, Edwards must have been alert to the fact that his argument in Freedom of Will would sound as if it were Hobbes, writes Guelzo. Edwards, therefore, could ill afford to name his opponent, the beloved hymn-writer Isaac Watts, lest people conclude that Edwards was more in line with Hobbes.69 The way the allegiances appeared to line up was that Edwards played “Leibniz to Watts’s Clarke.”70 To understand Watt’s view of the human will, Guelzo points to Edwards’s famous chessboard illustration. Whereas Edwards attributes the choice to put one’s finger on a square to a previous preponderating motive, Watt’s view of the will is that there is no reason to choose one over the other; thus, the will determines itself. Or, as Guelzo writes, the will’s action is “autonomous.”71 On the divine will, Guelzo characterizes Watt’s position as “voluntarist,” whereas Edwards’s reply to Watts had a “strikingly Leibnizian

65 66 67 68 69 70 71

Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 1989; reprint, Jonathan Edwards Classic Studies [Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008]), 70. (Pages cited are from the ariginal edition). This amounts to a best of all possible worlds theory. But Edwards does not entertain the alternate notion that the “sufficient reason” itself can be contingently willed, rather than willed necessarily. Guelzo, Edwards on the will, 71. Ibid., 72. Ibid., 67. Ibid., 68, 71. Ibid., 68. We note that an autonomous will is a description more suitable to the Dutch context of Arminius’s day, and has the sense of, “leave me be.”

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ring.” The latter observation underscored, for Guelzo, the probability that Edwards was well aware of The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence in his writing Freedom of Will.72 The conceptual, syntactical features of Reformed scholastic texts have not gone unnoticed by scholars. Whereas this present study attempts to show the importance of these features for the classic Reformed tradition, from the primary sources of the Harvard and Yale curricula, Paul Helm, on the other hand, has voiced a “note of caution” concerning these features, and terms, such as “synchronic contingency,” conceptual terms which are intended to help understand the features of Reformed scholasticism. Nevertheless, Helm’s exchange with the contributors to Reformed Thought on Freedom (2010) has the merit of pinpointing the importance of certain syntactical functions in conceptual analysis.73 Helm holds to the view that Edwards develops a compatibilist view of anthropology “purely on philosophical grounds,” thereby differing from the Reformed orthodox, who concern themselves with Scripture arguments, and secondarily with conceptual distinctions. Helm argues that structural indifference, moments, synchronic contingency, and levels in the ontology of freedom represent an “imported apparatus.”74 Moreover, in his view, synchronic contingency is incompatible with Reformed scholastic views of ‘time’. For example, the adjective “synchronic” has a temporal meaning. God is atemporal. Therefore, in his view, one cannot characterize contingent divine willing as synchronic. Edwards’s arguments in Freedom of Will, however, are not purely philosophical, but often turn on syntactical, conceptual features that require an understanding of scholastic terminology. Moreover, his arguments for freedom of will, like his Reformed forebears, include propositions built on Scriptural evidence, such as, “it 72 Guelzo, Edwards on the will, 69–70. See the LCC in this study’s chapter 9 §9.1. 73 Paul Helm, “Synchronic Contingency in Reformed Scholasticism,”207–222. Idem, “Synchronic Contingency Again,” 234–38. Andreas J. Beck and Antonie Vos, “Conceptual Patterns Related to Reformed Scholasticism,” Nederlands Theologische Tijdschrift 57 ( juli 2003): 223– 33; Helm, “Reformed Thought on Freedom: Some Further Thoughts,” 185–207; Idem, “Structural Indifference,” 184–205; Idem, “A Different Kind of Calvinism?” in Crisp and Sweeney, eds., After Jonathan Edwards; Antonie Vos, “Paul Helm and medieval scholasticism.” Journal of Reformed theology 8 (2014): 263–83; Paul Helm. “Necessity, contingency, and the freedom of God.” Journal of Reformed theology 8 (2014): 243–62; Oliver D. Crisp, “The debate about Reformed thought on human free will,” Journal of Reformed theology 8 (2014): 237–41. 74 Helm, “Structural indifference,” 205. The term “synchronic contingency” is becoming more widely accepted for its capacity to express Scotus’ and Reformed orthodox theologian’s modal concept that “a logically possible state of affairs is something to which to be is not repugnant, though it may not be compossible with other possibilities.” Cf. John Marenbon, Medieval Philosophy: An Historical and Philosophical Introduction (2007; repr., London: Routledge, 2009), 307, 317. Marenbon speaks of “synchronous alternative possibilities.” And the term is used by Stephen Dumont, “The Origin of Scotus’s Theory of Synchronic Contingency,” Modern Schoolman 72 (1995): 149–67.

40

Introduction

was impossible that the acts of the will of the human soul of Christ should…be otherwise than holy.”75 His inquiry presents itself well within the Reformed scholastic tradition of stating a thesis, naming the opponents—Pelagians, Jesuits, Socinians, Arminians—engaging interlocutors, citing Scripture, and expositing the Reformed position.76 That Edwards parts ways with his Reformed tradition—Voetius, Turretin, Van Mastricht, and the Westminster standards—has been argued by Richard Muller, who identifies a shift in semantics in Edwards’s formulation of freedom of will away from traditional Reformed distinctions. Tracing a line of influence on Edwards back through Locke to Hobbes, Muller points to a post Edwards rise in “Calvinistic philosophical determinism.”77 In his response to Muller, Paul Helm concludes that in this discussion a careful treatment is needed of terms such as “contingency,” “could have done otherwise,” and indifference.” Helm contests Muller’s identification of these terms and his explanation of their use in the Reformed tradition.78 Muller has replied that the descriptive use of modern terms such as philosophical compatibilism for Edwards’s view of freedom, are unsuitable, given the transitional period in which we must place Edwards, between the classic Reformed tradition and an “Enlightenment-era form of compatibilism.”79 That Edwards education reflects the older, more robust classicReformed tradition’s view of freedom, and use of distinctions in faculty psychology—different kinds of contingency, necessity, and an ontology of true contingency—and that in writing Freedom of Will Edwards takes a different approach, marked by an ontology of necessity, is argued by Muller, as well as this present study.80 In the same vein as Helm on Edwards’s concept of divine knowledge, will and necessity, Oliver Crisp applies tools of conceptual analysis to Edwards’s doctrine of the will of God, assessing how he implausibly transfers the problem of God’s foreknowledge and humankind’s freedom from natural necessity to moral necessity. He argues that, if the Arminian accepts Edwards’s notion, in defence of foreknowledge, that a proposition is accidentally necessary, if and only if, the sentence that denotes it refers to something which grammatically is akin to the meaning of the present perfect tense, then he is committed to the view, that there is no distinction between the past, present, or future states of affairs, due to the

75 76 77 78 79 80

WJE 1: 281. WJE 1: 203. Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and the absence of free choice, 11–15, 19–22. Helm, “Jonathan Edwards and the parting of ways,” 59. Muller, “Edwards and Turretin,” 266–285. Ibid.

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transfer of necessity principle. In that sense, Crisp concludes, Arminian freedom is no less deterministic than Edwards’s compatibilist scheme.81 Reading Edwards against the Western theological tradition, Crisp picks up what at first sight appears to be a view that is irreconcilable with his tradition. The Edwardsean twist, according to Crisp, on “Anselmian perfect being theology” and the classic notion of actus purus, is that God is essentially omnipotent and that this attribute must find expression in creation. It is necessarily the case that God create some world, and that he actualize it, given his essential dispositional understanding of omnipotence. Though a “peculiar” view of the Trinity, Crisp holds that Edwards “developed his doctrine of God in the teeth of the classical commitment to both divine simplicity and the Trinity held by his teachers in Reformed theology.” He concludes that Edwards’s dispositional language on God’s need to create a world is consistent with a nuanced view of actus purus.82 Promoting the medieval and scholastic background to Edwards, Avihu Zakai is to be applauded for seeking out the medieval sources to Edwards’s thought,83 which serves as a corrective to Wallace Anderson.84 The affinities he finds, however, between Edwards and medieval and ancient thought—such as the “great chain of being”—differ markedly from the affinities Edwards’s Reformed forebears have with classic, medieval thought on freedom, necessity, and contingency. In The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, McClymond and McDermott show that Edwards identifies the human will as “the root of nearly all that had gone wrong in theology.”85 Although the authors read Edwards’s view on liberty against the background of “the Protestant scholastics whom Edwards read— Turretin, Burgersdijk, Voetius and Van Mastricht”—claiming that they adopt the 81 Oliver Crisp, Jonathan Edwards and the Metaphysics of Sin (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 83, 89, 91–95. 82 Oliver Crisp, “Jonathan Edwards on the Divine Nature,” Journal of Reformed Theology 3, no. 2 (2009): 185, 200. God according to Edwards must create and it must be the best possible world. The “superior fitness” of the object of choice determines this. Edwards, according to Crisp, “embraced panentheism, the idea that the world is the necessary product of the divine creativity,” in Idem, “Jonathan Edwards’s Ontology: A Critique of Sang Hyun Lee’s Dispositional Account of Edwardsian Metaphysics,” Religious Studies 46, no. 1 (March 2010): 20, note 39. See also, Idem, “Jonathan Edwards on Divine Simplicity,” Religious Studies 39, no.1 (March 2003): 23–41. 83 Avihu Zakai, “The Theological Origins of Jonathan Edwards’s Philosophy of Nature,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60, no. 4 (2009): 708–24. Zakai claims Edwards had more affinities with “medieval theology and scholasticism” than with “the premisses of modern scientific thought.” See his monograph length treatment of Edwards where he identifies his affinities with scholasticism: Avihu Zakai, Jonathan Edwards’s Philosophy of Nature: The ReEnchantment of the World in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (London: T & T Clark, 2010). 84 Wallace E. Anderson, ed., WJE 6:47. Anderson writes that there are “little or no traces” of “scholastic science” in Edwards’s writings. 85 Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 472.

42

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intellectualist position and that “Augustine, Scotus, and the Franciscans, and Puritan divines John Cotton and William Ames,” adopt the voluntarist perspective,86 by way of contrast, this present study builds on scholarship which, by close conceptual analysis, establishes an alternative view on liberty, exploring contrasting views between Edwards and his Puritan, Reformed heritage, such as found in Ames, Voetius, Turretin, and Van Mastricht.87 Tweney has argued that “American colonial thought was heavily influenced by the Newtonian synthesis” of mathematics and experiment, that the laws of motion could be applied to all realms of knowledge, including the human psychology of thought and action.88 He is one of the few recent authors who has approached the issue of determinism in Edwards’s Freedom of Will with the argument that Edwards adapted Newtonian laws of motion and action to the understanding of “human thinking and action.”89 Tweney looked at Newton’s laws of motion that govern the flight trajectory of a cannonball, the “effect” of which, once in flight, does not depend upon the “cause.” The motion is not “mechanistic;” rather, the cannonball is part of a “deterministic system in which the laws of motion relate the observed motions in time to the dynamic unfoldings of the relevant forces and masses.”90 This is the sense of “Newtonian determinism.” His notion of universal attraction at a distance implies that his view, unlike that of Cartesian physics, is non-mechanistic. Tweney noted that Fiering, on the contrary, argued for a view which Tweney finds unsupportable, namely that “everything Edwards ever said about causation and the order of the universe was already to be found in the philosophical speculations of the Cartesians before Newton published a word.”91 Tweney, however, is not alone in claiming that Newton’s physics displaced Cartesian physics, and concludes that Edwards was a determinist, but neither a materialist, nor a mechanist.92 86 Ibid., 473. 87 “Es erscheint verfehlt, Voetius’ Theologiebegriff als Ausdruck eines aristotelischen Intellektualismus zu deuten und mit Amesius’ voluntaristischem Theologiebegriff zu kontrastieren (It is a mistake to explain Voetius’s theological concept as an expression of an Aristotelian intellectualism and to contrast him with Ames’s voluntaristic theological concept), in A. J. Beck, Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676): Sein Theologieverständnis und seine Gotteslehre, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte, 92 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 429. 88 Tweney, “Jonathan Edwards and determinism,” 366–7; Cf. Alexandre Koyré, Newtonian studies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 7, 15, 20–1. 89 Tweney, “Jonathan Edwards and determinism,” 365. Cf. editor Paul Ramsey, of volume One of the WJE, does not discuss Sir Isaac Newton in his introduction; Newton’s name has no separate listing in the index. 90 Ibid., 369. 91 Tweney, “Edwards and determinism,” 371; Fiering, Edwards and the British context, 343fn48. Fiering was arguing against Perry Miller’s thesis on how Edwards appropriated Newton. 92 Tweney, “Edwards and determinism,” 369–71. Cf. Koyré argues that the world view of Newton

Historical perspectives

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Zakai claims, contrary to the opinion of Tweney, that Newton propounded the “mechanization of the natural world,” and that, “in response, Edwards constructed his own theology of nature;” and that Edwards was “anti-Newtonian.”93 Contrary to Zakai’s characterization of Newton’s physics, Koyré argues that Newton’s physics distinguish between “homogenous matter” (Descartes) and “homogenous void” (Newton). Koyré points out that the function of Newton’s law and of universal attractions in his “corpuscular philosophy” are not mechanical, and “not real forces, but only ‘mathematical’ ones; Newton himself, as we well know, never admitted attraction as a ‘physical’ force.”94 Finally, contrary to Zakai, whose opinion about mechanization better fits the later Laplace, for “the first generation of Newtonians, as well as for Newton himself,” writes Koyré, “God had been, quite on the contrary, an eminently active and present being, who not only supplied the dynamic power of the world machine but positively ‘ran’ the universe according to his own, freely established laws.”95 Of significance for this study, Tweney argues that “for Edwards all thought and all action must be understood as determined,” that “the will” is part of a “causal nexus” of the understanding and the inclinations.96 The explanation above of Newton’s laws of motion applied to a cannonball also applies to Edwards’s notion

93 94 95 96

(matter, motion, space, attraction) corrected the world view of Descartes (extension and motion) and “Cartesian laws of impact,” in Koyré, Newtonian studies, 9, 12, 13, and chapter 3 “Newton and Descartes,” 53–114. Zakai claims , contrary to the opinion of Tweney, that Newton propounded the “mechanization of the natural world,” and that, “in response, Edwards constructed his own theology of nature,” and that Edwards was “anti-Newtonian,” in Avihu Zakai, “The age of Enlightenment,” in The Cambridge companion to Jonathan Edwards, Stephen J. Stein, ed., Cambridge companions to religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 86–88. Contrary to Zakai’s characterization of Newton’s physics, Koyré argues that Newton’s physics distinguish between “homogenous matter” (Descartes) and “homogenous void” (Newton), 12, 13. And, Koyré points out that the function of Newton’s law and of universal attractions in his “corpuscular philosophy” are not mechanical, and “not real forces, but only ‘mathematical’ ones.” “Newton himself, as we well know, never admitted attraction as a ‘physical’ force,” in Koyré, Newtonian studies, 15fn1, 16. Finally, contrary to Zakai, whose opinion about mechanization better fits the later Laplace, for “the first generation of Newtonians, as well as for Newton himself,” writes Koyré, “God had been, quite on the contrary, an eminently active and present being, who not only supplied the dynamic power of the world machine but positively ‘ran’ the universe according to his own, freely established laws,” 21. “Space for Newton,” writes Koyré, “(as for Henry More or Thomas Bradwardine) is the eternal realm of God’s presence and action – not only his sensorium but also, if one may say so, his actorium,” 13Fn1. Avihu Zakai, “The age of Enlightenment,” in The Cambridge companion to Jonathan Edwards, Stephen J. Stein, ed., Cambridge companions to religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 86–88. Koyré, Newtonian studies, 12, 13, 15fn1, 16. Ibid., 21. Tweney, “Edwards and determinism,” 371.

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of human thought and action, to wit, “The will always is as the greatest apparent good is.”97 Edwards, according to Tweney, thus argues for a “systemic determinism in which a variety of causal factors operate continuously to produce the proximal, moment-by-moment, phenomena of human action.”98 He concludes that Edwards approaches the problem of the will by way of a “Newtonian world view.”99 The question, then, of whether Edwards’s notion of freedom of will departed from the Reformed formulation of freedom and from formulations in the Harvard and Yale curricula, will take into account the shifting Latin idiom of words used to describe freedom essential to virtue and vice, as well as the scholastic method and syntactical features of propositions, as Muller indicated. This present study will attempt to establish that what best explains what is new in the “New divinity,” are the principles of action and motion in Edwards’s synthesis of physical laws with moral necessity as a freedom of perfection, and a universal determining providence—a synthesis void of contingency. Before turning to chapter one to begin a defense of this claim, we proceed with a brief sketch of Edwards’s context, life, and education.

3.

A brief sketch of Jonathan Edwards’s context, life and academics

New England was experiencing the consequences of Louis XIV’s revocation in 1685 of the Edict of Nantes, with persecuted Protestant Huguenots fleeing and arriving in Boston in Edwards’s day to tell their tales. In England, the question of succession was unsettled, despite the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, which saw William and Mary succeed James II to the throne of England, and which brought toleration of dissenters and non-comformists by the Church of England, or at least, a suspension of persecution. The threat to liberty in New England for the heirs of the Puritans arose due to Queen Anne’s war, between England and France (1702–13). At stake for these Protestant heirs was an enduring freedom to found and maintain schools, such as Yale, founded in 1701.100

97 98 99 100

WJE 1: 144. Tweney, “Jonathan Edwards and determinism,” 371. Ibid., 374. George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, A life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 12; G. R. Cragg, Puritanism in the period of the great persecution 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 248–58; Brooks Mather Kelley, Yale a history, The Yale scene university series (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 3; See also, Bishop Gilbert Burnet, Bishop Gilbert Burnet: History of his own time, introduction by David Allen, ab-

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This war affected the Edwards family, when in 1711, Jonathan’s father, Timothy, left for Canada to serve as a chaplain, in service of the Queen, on military expeditions. Edwards’s biographer, George Marsden notes how Timothy sent letters home out of concern for his children and especially Jonathan’s Latin studies. Later on, as father himself, Jonathan would write to his son Timothy, on July 17, 1753, advising him to postpone his “freshman” year one year, and first improve his proficiency in the languages. Writing from Stockbridge, Jonathan said, “I hardly think it will be best for you to enter the College (of New Jersey)… one of the chief things that is the ruin of New-England scholars is their going to College before they have a thorough aquaintance with the languages.”101 After having given birth to four daughters, Esther Stoddard Edwards (1672– 1770) gave birth to Jonathan Edwards on October 5, 1703 in East Windsor, Connecticut. She bore her husband, Timothy (1669–1758), six more daughters, and she would outlive her son Jonathan by twelve years. Jonathan’s father, Timothy, had taken his Master’s degree from Harvard in 1694. At commencement, presided over by Increase Mather, Timothy disputed and denied the following quaestio—which, as we shall see, Jonathan would take up in his Freedom of Will—“Whether indifference be essential to freedom of choice?”102 Jonathan was ordained into ministry at Northampton February 15, 1727, at the age of twenty-three; and that same year on July 28th, he married Miss Sarah Pierpont, who was seventeen years old. Sarah bore him nine daughters and three sons. He matriculated at the young Connecticut Collegiate School in 1716, attending the Wethersfield branch. Clergymen had established the school to educate “learned and orthodox men.”103 Jonathan’s tutor while at Wethersfield (1716–1719), was Elisha Williams (B.A. Harvard 1711; M.A. 1714), the fourth rector of Yale (1726–1739), and a relative of the family on the Stoddard side.104 Once Edwards and the other students finally relocated to New Haven in 1719,

101 102 103 104

ridged by Thomas Stackhouse, Everyman History (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1906; Introduction, 1979). WJEO 16: 598–9. Letter A174; Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, 17–8. Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), II: 629, “Appendix B.” Richard Warch, School of the prophets Yale College, 1701–1740 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 186. Kelley, Yale a history, 37–45; John Langdon Sibley, 1701–1712, vol. 5 of Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 18 vols. (Cambridge: Charles William Sever, 1873–1999), 588–98; Kenneth P. Minkema and George G. Levesque, Jonathan Edwards tercentennial exhibition: selected objects from the Yale Collections 1703– 2003, _ collection housed atYale (New Haven, CT: Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University, 2003), 29 (Henceforth JETE).

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Edwards’s Yale class of 1720 would count ten students. By comparison, there were twenty-one at Harvard that same year.105 Under Williams’s tutelage, a plausible case can be made that a Harvard student notebook, transcribed by Ebenezer Williams, came into Elisha’s possession, and that Elisha used the textbook in tutoring Jonathan. The Harvard University Archives notes the inscription on the inside cover that it was inherited by Rev. Elisha S. Williams. The student textbook was “A system of ethicks. Of moral philosophy in general and in special,” originally from the English educator, Charles Morton, who had emigrated to Massachusetts in 1686.106 Both Kenneth P. Minkema and George G. Levesque have written sketches of Edwards’s life for a commemorative Yale exhibition in 2003, in which there are descriptions of select objects, including Jonathan’s Yale 1720 oratio valedictoria, translated by Levesque, and the Yale 1720 commencement broadside.107 As Minkema and Levesque have shown, a year after rector Timothy Cutler announced at commencement that he had turned Anglican, which in the context of the day implied turning Arminian, Jonathan delivered his 1723 Master’s Quaestio, “A sinner is not justified in the sight of God except through the righteousness of Christ obtained by faith.”108 His thesis was that “God receives the sinner into his grace and friendship” (amicitia Dei), based solely on a monopleuric covenant and the entire soul receiving Christ in an “absolutely gratuitous fashion.”109 He targeted a neonomian “sincere,” but “imperfect obedience,” as a supposed “condition of justification.”110 The neonomian claims imply, says Edwards, that if they had been under the first covenant, they would have passed

105 The Yale class of 1718 was eight, of 1717 five, and of 1715 and 1716 three, and nine in 1714, from Yale 1718 commencement broadside, “Honoratissimo Gurdono Saltonstall,” (New London, Timothy Green, 1718). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. 106 Harvard University Archives, HUC 8707.394, http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.ARCH:10919374 (accessed June 22, 2015). See flyleaf at sequence 2. We will make the case in chapter 5 that the text is not original with Morton, but he extracted and translated all but one chapter from Adriaan Heereboord’s Pneumatica. The significance of this student textbook is the window it opens for us to see the content of theological topics, copied down by students, such as freedom of will, both of God and humankind, and God’s knowledge and power. 107 JETE: 5–7; 33; 29–38; Valedictory speech, 39–41. 108 Ibid., 20. See also, Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Volume 14, Sermons and discourses, 1723–1729, ed. Kenneth P. Minkema ( Jonathan Edwards Center,Yale University), 55. (Henceforth WJEO 14: 55). (Latin text) and 060 (English translation), 060–064. 109 WJEO 14: 061. On “amicitia Dei”, see W.J. van Asselt, The federal theology of Johannes Cocceius (1603–1669), Studies in the history of Christian thought (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 10, 39, 315; W.J. Van Asselt, Amicitia Dei: Een onderzoek naar de structuur van de theologie van Johannes Coccejus (1603–1669) (1988). 110 Ibid., 062. On Remonstrant conditioned decrees, see discussion (in chapter 6 §6.2).

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the state of trial, and thus their imperfect obedience is more worthy than the demand of perfect obedience under the first covenant.111 Turning Anglican implied Arminian leanings and a defection from the contested Saybrook Platform of 1708, which shifted authority from a colonial, congregational church polity, to regional “consociations,” with Presbyterian-like rule, under which ministers declared their allegiance to the Westminster Confession of Faith.112 In 1722, after Cutler’s defection, the Yale trustees swiftly acted, likely in an attempt to safeguard the orthodoxy of the school and required rectors and tutors to declare assent to the Saybrook Platform.113 That Edwards was present at several Yale commencement days finds support in the exchange of letters with family and friends. “Edwards customarily attended the Yale commencement each year during the 1730s and early 1740s” according to editor George Claghorn.114 We can piece together evidence and place him at the following Yale commencements, in 1720 (his Bachelor’s degree), in 1723 ( his Master’s Quaestio), in 1725, when he likely was present as a tutor. In 1729, he was present at the Valedictory Oration by John Sergeant, who addressed him in his opening remarks, and in 1738, 1740, 1741, and 1743.115 He also attended the College of New Jersey (Princeton) commencements in 1752 and 1755.116 The attendance of prospective publishers at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton commencement exercises demonstrates the pivotal role that publishing played in advancing the literary debates on the current theses of the day. Edwards was keen on making the necessary connections to launch his sermons and treatises into the 111 WJEO 14:062–063. 112 Richard L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee: character and the social order in Connecticut, 1690–1765, Harvard University center for the study of the history of liberty in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 147–153; Kelley, Yale a history, 31, 61; Williston Walker, The creeds and platforms of congregationalism (New York: Scribner, 1893; reprint, HardPress, 2013), 337–9. Editor David Hall says the Platform secured a “staterecognized system of ministerial consociations,” in Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Volume 12, Ecclesiastical writings, ed. David D. Hall, ( Jonathan Edwards Center,Yale University); Richard Warch, School of the prophets Yale College, 1701–1740 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 170–1; WJEO 12:13. 113 Franklin Bowditch Dexter, ed., Documentary History of Yale University: under the original charter of the collegiate school of Connecticut 1701–1745 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916), 233; Kelley, Yale a history, 61; See also, WJEO 13:209. (Fn 8) . 114 WJEO 16:86. (Letter 28). 115 Kenneth P. Minkema, “A chronology of Edwards’ life and writings,” Research, Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University, http://edwards.yale.edu/research/chronology (accessed June 22, 2015). (Henceforth, “Chronology.” In 1725, see Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Scientific and philosophical writings, Volume 6, ed. Wallace E. Anderson, ( Jonathan Edwards Center, Yale University, 1980), 32; in 1729, see WJEO 40: John Sargeant Valedictory, 1729 (Excerpt), in 1738, 1740, 1741, 1743, see “Chronology.” 116 See Minkema, “Chronology.” And, WJEO 16:539, (Letter 159. To the reverend John Erskine.) He mentions having attended the public commencement in the College.

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public arena of theological dicussion, as is evident in a letter to Edwards’s literary agent, namely, Thomas Foxcroft.117 Edwards wrote letters on the backside of commencement broadsides. He wrote a letter to Joseph Paice, February 24, 1752, on Yale and Princeton 1750 Bachelor theses commencement broadsides and a letter to speaker Thomas Hubbard, March 19, 1753 on the back of a 1751 Yale Master Quaestiones broadside. He also penned a letter to secretary Andrew Oliver, February 18, 1751/ 2 on the back of a Yale Master’s Quaestio.118 Of significance for this study are the theses printed on the broadsides, theses with which Edwards appears to disagree, as well as the interplay between Edwards’s Freedom of Will and commencement theses, before and after Freedom of Will (1754). In chapter 1 §1.2.4, we will see that the College of New Jersey 1750 (Princeton) metaphysics theses 5 and 6—the broadside on which he wrote a letter —are directly contravened in his Freedom of Will, as well as the Yale 1740 logic thesis 12, a commencement at which he was present. On the other hand, we will see that the Yale 1759 metaphysics thesis 19 unmistakably reflects Edwards’s statements in Freedom of Will. And Edwards will write four years later in Freedom of Will the opposite opinion of the Yale 1750 broadside, on which he wrote his letter, metaphysics thesis 1, “The will is not always determined by the greatest apparent good.”119 The Yale trustees offered Edwards a tutorship at Yale, which, upon arrival in New Haven, he began in June 1724 until September 1726.120 And in the wake of the Cutler defection, the trustees asked him, along with another tutor, to take on administrative and teaching duties. Of interest to this study are the books he would have catalogued in the library.121 The honorable Elihu Yale sent books to the College in 1718.122 And there is evidence that, in addition to specific requests 117 Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Volume 10, Sermons and discourses 1720–1723, ed. Wilson H. Kimnach ( Jonathan Edwards Center, Yale University, 1992), 118–9. 118 On his use of broadsides for letters, see WJE 8:634. For the Paice letter, see WJEO 32: A141. Letter to Joseph Paice, February 24, 1752. Paice sent Edwards’s letter describing strategic Indian affairs to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Herring, see WJEO 16:435, footnote 1. The letter to speaker Thomas Hubbard is in Trask library, see WJEO 16: 563 (Letter 164. To speaker Thomas Hubbard). Further evidence of Edwards’s access to commencement broadsides is his notes on Scripture Prophecies of the Old Testament. “This notebook (BRBL, f. 1248) is seven leaves, some of which are constructed from a cut-up commencement broadside from the College of New Jersey for 1754,” in WJEO 30 “Prophecies of the Messiah,” Ed. Jonathan Edwards Center. 119 PUL 1750 broadside, box 1; EB Yale 1750 broadside. 120 JETE: 6, 37–8.; Minkema, “Chronology.” 121 Ibid., 38. 122 BRBML GEN MS Vault Sect. 17 Box 2, folders 51–101. A select few titles are Henry More’s Philosophical collection, Calvin’s Institutions, Downame’s, Sum of divinity, Rutherford’s Exercitationes apologetica pro divina gratia, Keckermann’s Systema theologia, Burgersdijk’s

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by the rectors, the commencement theses guided collectors, such as Jeremiah Dummer, in their selection.123 Among the Dummer collection of books, which survived the journey from Saybrook to New Haven, were authors whom Edwards would engage as interlocutors in Freedom of Will, such as Daniel Whitby and John Locke.124 Warch says that Edwards, like the other students, had to choose which logic text and method to learn, Peter Ramus’s Dialecticae partitiones and its simpler dichotomies, or Franco Burgersdijk’s Institutionum Logicarum, and its definitions, divisions, and syllogisms. Edwards chose the latter and Heereboord’s Institutionum logicarum synopsis (1632).125 In 1719, Edwards possessed a copy of the Cartesian “Compendium of Logic,” by William Brattle, passed on from Harvard student William Partridge (Class of 1689), then used by Warham Mather (Harvard, 1685), whose half-sister married the Rev. Timothy Edwards. He may have used the text when he taught at Yale.126 Scholars suggest Edwards read and taught from Locke’s Essay during his tutorship.127

123 124

125

126

127

Institutione metaphysical disputations, Hobbes’s Elementa philosophica, Ames’s Bellarminus Enervatus. Warch, School of the prophets, 194. BRBML Douname, George GEN MSS Vol. 159. A few select authors from the 800 listings are: Bishop Burnet’s Exposition of the 39 Articles, John Locke’s Essay on human understanding, The Confession of Faith with the Larger Catechism, Ursinus’s Summa, Johannes Maccovius’s Loci communes theologici, Dr. Edwards’s Theologia reformata, William Ames’s Bellarminus Ennervatus, De conscientia, Responsio ad Grevinchovium, Coroni ad Collationem Hagiensis, Medulla theologiae, Dr. Daniel Whitby’s Five discourses, Plato’s Opera omnia, Cicero’s Opera omnia, Augustine’s Opera omnia, Bernard de Clairvaux, Opera omnia, Descartes’s Opera omnia, and Johannes Clerici, Logica et ontologia, physica et philosophia, Zanchi’s Opera omnia, and Twisse’s Scientia media. GEN MS Vault Sect. 17. Box 2, Folder 94. “A list of the books given to the College of Connecticut in New England with the names of the benefactors. Collected by Jeremiah Dummer.”; Louise May Bryant, Mary Patterson, “The list of books sent by Jeremiah Dummer,” in Papers in honor of Andrew Keogh: librarian of Yale university by staff of the library 30 June 1938, gen.ed. Mary C. Withington (New Haven: Privately Printed, 1938); Anne Stokely Pratt, “The books sent from England by Jeremiah Dummer to Yale College,” in Papers in honor of Andrew Keogh, 7–43. Warch, School of the prophets, 204. Editor Peter J. Thuesen writes that Jonathan probably had read Burgersdijk and Heereboord. See Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Volume 26, Catalogues of books, Edited by Peter Thuesen ( Jonathan Edwards Center, Yale University, 2008), 6,7. BRBML Douname, George GEN MSS Vol. 159. Douname, George GEN MSS Vol. 159. Brattle’s “Compendium of Logick” was copied by William Partridge, 1686–88. Jonathan Edwards’s signature is inside the cover. See the text-critical edition, Rick Kennedy, ed., Aristotelian and Cartesian logic at Harvard: Charles Morton’s A logick system & William Brattle’s Compendium of Logick, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 67 (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts and University Press of Virginia, 1995), 255–327; Warch, School of the prophets, 205. Warch, School of the prophets, 207; William Sparkes Morris, The young Jonathan Edwards: A reconstruction (Chicago Studies in the History of American Religion, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1991. Reprint, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005), 79–81.

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In the Spring of 1726, Edwards resigned his tutorship, following a call to serve alongside his then octogenarian maternal grandfather, Solomon Stoddard (1643–1729). Stoddard took his BA from Harvard in 1662, and MA in 1665. Stoddard’s notebook of his library holdings listed eighty titles in 1664. By the time Jonathan came to Northampton to assist him, Stoddard owned 462 books. Of note for this study is the listing of Heereboord’s Meletemata, likely the 1654 or 1659 edition, the disputations of which we will discuss below in chapters two through four. Fiering notes that Arthur Norton’s study of Harvard textbooks shows that the earliest edition of the Meletemata, signed by a student, was that of 1665.128 Edwards began his own catalogue of books in 1722. Of significance for this study are the entries of authors whom we will engage in the chapters below, Stapfer’s Institutiones in chapter 6, Van Mastricht’s Theoretico practica theologia, in chapter 9 §9.3.4, and Whitby’s Five discourses in chapter 7.129 Given Edwards’s visits to Yale commencements in the 1740s, he likely visited the library for research. Rector Thomas Clap ordered the newly catalogued “1742 Yale library” with an “introduction to philosophy, which will give you a general idea or scheme of all the arts and sciences…this catalogue will direct you to many of the best books…and I would advise you, my pupils, to pursue a regular course of academic studies in some measure according to the order of this catalogue.”130 Of interest to this study are authors with whom Edwards will engage in his Freedom of Will, such as Watt’s Philosophical Essays (Watt’s Essay on freedom of the will dates to 1732), On soul and will, metaphysicks and ontology, Clarke On Being and attributes of God, and Cudworth’s Intellectual system, Isaac Newton’s Principia, or, mathematical principles, 2 vols, systema mundi (in English), and Daniel Whitby’s On the five points.131 In the two letters sent from Northampton to Joseph Bellamy, one in January 1746/7, and the other in January 1748/9, Edwards wrote that he was thoroughly engaged in the study of the “Arminian controversy,” that he had written much in his “private papers,” and was preparing to write something upon the controversy, 128 Norman Fiering, “Solomon Stoddard’s library at Harvard in 1664,” Harvard Library Bulletin 20 (1972): 255–269. 129 Thuesen, Catalogues of books, WJEO 26:121 (Van Mastricht), WJEO 26:135 (Stapfer), WJEO 26:177 (Whitby); We know Edwards was reading Whitby in preparation for his reply in Freedom of Will, from Letter 73, and we know he esteemed Van Mastricht and Turretin on the subject, from both letters to Joseph Bellamy, Letter 73, January 1746/7 and Letter 91, January 1748/9. See WJEO 16:217, 266. 130 James E. Mooney, ed., Eighteenth-Century Catalogues of the Yale College Library (New Haven: Yale University Beinecke Library, 2001). Advertisement to students. 131 Ibid. Also catalogued by 1743 were Voetius’s Dissertationes Theologicae, 3 vols, Altenstaig’s Lexicon Theologicum, The Synopsis theologiae [Synopsis purioris theologiae, 1625], Suárez, Opera omnia, Bradwardine’s De Causa Dei, Aquinas’s, Summa, and Dr Watt’s Miscellaneous essays.

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presumably, Freedom of Will. He wrote to the Rev. John Erskine on August 31, 1748 asking for the best books written in defense of Calvinism, since he knew of nothing notable yet written on his side of the Atlantic. With a clearer view of his anthropological focus on the controversy, he wrote to Erskine from Stockbridge on July 7, 1752 indicating that he would resume writing on “the nature of that freedom of moral agents, which makes them the proper subjects of moral precepts, counsels…praise and blame.” He said he would examine “modern notions” and bring the latest “outcries against the Calvinistic divinity …to the test of the strictest reasoning.” He takes aim at Whitby and Chubb, the former of which will receive our attention in this present study. By April 14, 1753, in a letter to Erskine, he was relieved to say that he was about to send off a first draft of his Freedom of Will to Boston.132 Stephen Crocco has made a convincing case that significant lines of argument lead to Edwards strong interest in Princeton for the last fifteen years of his life.133 After a committee expelled David Brainerd from Yale in 1743—the year of the last Yale commencement which Edwards attended—Brainerd, a friend to the Edwards’s family, would arguably become the first student of Princeton. Crocco mentions that historians trace the origins of Princeton to 1746 in the parsonage of New Light Presbyterian minister Jonathan Dickinson, in Elizabeth New Jersey. Within four months, upon Dickinson’s death, the trustees appointed Aaron Burr to the presidency in 1748 and the College was relocated to his parsonage in Newark. The marriage of Edwards’s daughter Esther to Aaron Burr in 1752, Edwards’s commencement address in Newark that same year, his son Timothy preparing to matriculate at the College in 1753, correspondence as early as 1745, and subsequent letters, expressing the need to establish the College to defend against Arminianism, and the spiritual awakening at the College in 1757 are lines that point to the significance of Princeton to Edwards. In 1752, the trustees selected Princeton over New Brunswick as the permanent site for the College. In 1757, exhausted from work and travels, President Aaron Burr dies, leaving a vacancy that Edwards would fill, assuming office on February 16, 1758. Wishing to be an example to the public, the then President Edwards had himself inoculated against smallpox on February 23, 1758. A little over one month after 132 WJEO 16:217, 247, 266, 489, 594. See editor Ramsey’s “Edwards’s life while writing the Inquiry,” in WJE 1: 2–8. For what Edwards had written in his “private papers” on the Arminian controversy on free will, see The “Miscellanies,” entries on Free will: 31,71, 16a., 291, 573, 631, 657, 761, 830, 1154, 1155, Fall and free will 363, Freedom of the will 1075b, and 1263 “God’s immediate and arbitrary operations,” in Jonathan Edwards Center, Yale University, “Miscellanies” Index. 133 Stephen D. Crocco, “Jonathan Edwards and Princeton,” in Jonathan Edwards as contemporary: essays in honor of Sang Hyun Lee, ed. Don Schweitzer (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), 223–38.

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assuming the office of President of Princeton, he died of complications, on March 22, 1758.134

4.

Logic

In the previous section, one of the purposes was to establish the connection between Edwards and his education at Yale, by way of commencement days and the broadside theses. Any serious approach to Edwards’s education at Yale, the commencement broadside theses, and to reading and understanding the theses in Edwards’s Freedom of Will, will raise questions about likely sources of New England logic. This section therefore attempts to establish a framework for understanding the Yale curriculum and analyze the key sources for the logic theses as well as conceptions of predication, all of which would have been mediated to Edwards at Yale. We establish interpretations of universal principles and necessary premises by Peter Ramus and William Ames (1576–1633). The significance of analyzing these premises and conceptions of logic is the language they provided educators in the curriculum for communicating ontological truths and the logical status of states of affairs. Scholars have shown that interpreters of Aristotle’s Organon, like Ramus, mediated to Harvard and Yale a three-fold interpretation of universal principles, and necessary premises, adapted from Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, for a humanist reform of the arts curriculum. In his introduction to Ames’s Technometry, Lee Gibbs writes that some “interpreters of Aristotle’s Organon” understood logic as “argumentation that is syllogistic and argues necessarily from universal principles; it was based on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics. Ames derived his understanding of “universal rules” from Ramist logic, which interpreted Aristotle, and formulated “universal and necessarily true premises from which demonstrative knowledge proceeds.”135 Aristotle’s opening state134 Crocco, “Jonathan Edwards at Princeton,” in Jonathan Edwards as contemporary, 223–38; Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, A life, 493–4. 135 William Ames, Technometry, trans. and ed. Lee W. Gibbs (University of Pennsylvania, 1979); Originally published as Technometria, Omnium et singularum artium fines adaequatè circumscribens, London, 1633), 23, 99 (Theses §40, §78, §80), 144. A study by Bruyère on Ramus’s concept of method and dialectic notes a high recurrence of the “lexical key” of the three laws, “kata pantos, kath’ auto, kath’ olon prôton,” derived from Aristotle’s An. Post., in Nelly Bruyère, Méthode et dialectique dans l’oeuvre de La Ramée renaissance et age classique, De Pétrarque a Descartes, 45 (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1984), 267. “Aristotle teaches three marks of skillful material,” writes Ramus, “κατα παντὸς, καθ’αὑτό, καθόλου πρῶτον, from which one understands the theorem of the dignity of the place of universal art and instruction. The first mark is such that the precepts of the art of grammar must be not only true, but altogether necessary and true,” from his Peter Ramus, Scholae in liberales artes: quarum elenchus (Basil: Eusebius Episcopium, 1569), 5. “Tres

Logic

53

ment is, “All instruction given or received by way of argument proceeds from preexistent knowledge.”136 In addition to the very first Harvard commencement broadside, in 1642, Logic thesis 12, there is also a Yale 1718, Technology thesis 2, and 1720 broadside, Technology thesis 4, all of which reflect the influence of Ramist logic and Ames’s Technometry, namely, universal laws (regulae catholicae), and “necessary premises”—with a universal character.137 The Ramist and Amesian three laws are reflected in the Harvard 1642, Logic thesis 12, (1) (κατα παντὸς) (De omni), (2) (καθ’αὑτό) (per se), (3) (τὸ καθόλου) (universale).138 Ramists called these three rules, (1) “The law of truth,” (2) the law of justice,” and (3) “The law of wisdom.”139 However, under Cutler at Yale in 1720, and under John Leverett at Harvard in 1722, the “Old logic” would be challenged by the “New learning.” Edwards and the other students were asked to dispute some new Lockean theses, such as Locke’s rejection of the Aristotelian thesis that all reasonings are “ex praecognitis et praeconcessis.”140

136

137

138

139 140

artificiosae materiae notas Aristotelis tradit, “κατα παντὸς, καθ’αὑτό, καθόλου πρῶτον, unde theorema catholicum artis ac doctrinae loco dignum intelligatur. Prima nota praeceptiones artis Grammaticae, non solum verae, sed omnino necessarioque verae esse debebunt.” (Translation mine). Aristotle, An. Post. 71a1. English translation used is Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941), 110. “Omnis doctrina & omnis disciplina dianoëtica fit ex antecedente cognitione,” cited from Julio Pacius, ed., Aristotle’s Organon: Gracè & Latine, 2nd, ed. (Frankfurt: Wecheli, Marnium, & Aubrium, 1597), 413. The characteristics of this pre-existent knowledge are given in Posterior Analytics: (1) “unqualified scientific knowledge of a thing, (unamquamque rem simpliciter)” An. Post. 71b9, (2) which “cannot be other than it is,” (non potest aliter se habere) An. Post. 71b15; 88b30–35, (3) “necessary basic truths” (ex necessariis principiis), An. Post. 74b5, upon which demonstrative knowledge rests, 4) “principia”(principia) An. Post. 100b9, 5), apprehended by “intuition” (intelligentiam) An. Post. 100b7. Samuel E. Morison, The founding of Harvard college (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1935; 1963; 1995), 439. “Praecepta artium debent esse κατα παντὸς, καθ’αὑτό, καθόλου πρῶτον” 439. (Appendix D). Cf. Franco Burgersdijk, Fr. Burgersdicii Institutionum Logicarum, Libri Duo. Ad Juventutem Cantabrigiensem. (London: Rogeri Danielis, 1651), 131. “Primus gradus necessitatis est, κατα παντὸς de omni: alter καθ’αὑτό, per se: tertius καθόλου πρῶτον, universaliter primúm.” William Ames, for his purposes of an entire Christian vision of the one genus of art, transforms these three Ramist rules into, 1) lex veritatis, 2) lex justitiae, 3) lex sapientiae, in his Demonstratio logicae verae, thesis No. 83, p. 143, which is his commentary on Ramus’s Dialectica. Gibbs, Technometry, 144. John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding (2d ed. London: Printed for Albutham and John Churchil, 1694), IV.7.8. Cf. Michael Ayers, Locke: epistemology and ontology, The arguments of the philosophers (London: Routledge, 1991), 15, 92, 306 fn. 4. From the commencement broadsides, EB: Yale 1720 Logic thesis 21. “Omnis cognitio non est ex praecognitis et praeconcessis.” Harvard 1722, Logic 6. “Omnis Cognitio non est ex Praecognitis et Praeconcessis.” (Italics in the orginal). “Not all cognition proceeds from preexistent knowledge and prior concession.” See discussion below in section (3.7).

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A brief sketch of Ames’s transformation of Ramus’s three rules into regulae catholicae shows that while Ramus had a more modest goal of first reforming the medieval trivium, then quadrivium, Ames developed an entire philosophical framework for the arts. Ames, in his Technometria, christianizes an interpretation of the three laws into (1) Lex veritatis “law of truth,” (2) Lex justitiae the “law of justice,” and (3) Lex sapientiae “the law of wisdom,” stating that they are first and most true in God.141 Ames builds his exposition of these three rules on Ramus, and both derive these laws from their interpretation of Aristotle’s exposition on necessary premises, from which demonstration is an inference. In fact, Ames’s Demonstratio Logicae Verae is a commentary on Ramus’s Dialectica. Ames’s concern is to establish rules of logical propositions, and ultimately he conceives of the above three rules, plus the law of prudence, as encompassing all of theology, which he folds into art. In Ames’s Technometry, question 3 asks: “In summary, What does technometry teach?” Answer: “The general nature and use of universal and particular arts.” Question 5: “How therefore is art defined?” Answer: “Art is the idea of Eupraxia [doing the good] delineated methodically from universal rules.”142 “The ‘universality’ of the rules of art implies their eternity, unchangeability, necessity, certainty, and infallibility.”143 Gibbs explains that Ames derives his first law (rule, or logical proposition, even axiom) from Aristotle’s usage wherein “the predicate of a strictly scientific proposition must be true of every case of the subject.”144 Ames’s usage reflects both Ramus’s interest in one harmonious and homogenous view of the law of truth as well as the Medieval and post-Reformation usage, which indicates that the consequent truly inheres in the antecedent. The significance of showing how the curriculum taught the extraction of universal rules of art from the force of demonstration, and the nexus of subject and predicate in propositions, anticipates chapter eight and ten, where we will discuss how Edwards views the mind’s assent to necessary propositions, and the inference to causality that he draws from them.

141 The three rules are found in Book I of Technometria, theses 40 (introduces the three), th. 42 (law 1), 78 (law 2), 80 (law 3), in Ames Technometry, trans., Gibbs, 144; The three laws are also in, William Ames, Philosophemata (Amsterdam: Joannem Janssonium, 1651), Bk. II “Alia technometriae delineatio per quaestiones & responsiones ad faciliorem captum instituta ac proposita,”45. Thesis 47. “Quales debent ista regulae esse? … κατα παντὸς, καθ’αὑτό, καθόλου πρῶτον, catholicae.” 142 Ames, Philosophemata, Bk. II “Alia technometriae delineatio per quaestiones & responsiones ad faciliorem captum instituta ac proposita,”45. “3. Quid docet summatim technometria? Omnium et singularum artium in genere naturam et usum; 5. Quomodo ergo definis artem? Ars est idea ευπραχιας regulis catholicis methodice delineata.” 143 Ames Technometry, trans., Gibbs, 145. 144 Ibid.

A brief sketch of three opposing sets of conditions

5.

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A brief sketch of three opposing sets of conditions considered requisite for freedom of will

The following three sets of conditions which were considered requisite for freedom of will essential to virtue and vice, are those of Adriaan Heereboord, Daniel Whitby (1638–1726), a Church of England scholar, and Jonathan Edwards. Heereboord and Whitby are two principal authors in this study, the former of which is representative of the Reformed position as far as the Harvard and Yale curricula is concerned, and the latter was one of Edwards’s chief interlocutors in his Freedom of Will, and as such, represents, in Edwards’s view, the ‘Arminian’ position. Each approach to freedom attempts to reconcile God’s sovereignty with human freedom, without psychological or physical coercion, but with different explanations of a kind of divine-human concurrence of first and second causes of human action, with the understanding that God is the first cause. We will attempt to identify the features, which make each approach unique. The purpose here is only to provide an overview of each set’s distinct features, that we may see the diversity of the sets, each of which will receive exposition and analysis in the respective chapters.145 Heereboord’s classic-Reformed freedom ad utrumlibet Heereboord harnessed a classic-Reformed freedom ad utrumlibet (related to two alternatives) scheme to a seeds of virtues ethic. The conditions, requisite for freedom essential to virtue and vice, are: (1) God’s internal or efficacious decree (decretum ejus internum); (2) God’s incorrigible foreknowledge of the future act (praescientia actus futuri); (3) God’s influx and previous concurrence (influxus ac concursus ejus praevius), by which he premoved a free cause (praemovet causam liberam) to a particular act. As we shall see (in chapter 2 §2.6.8), Heereboord defined humankind’s freedom of will as the faculty of doing what one pleases (facultas faciendi quod lubet). By “faculty,” he understands a real or natural, (facultas physica seu naturalis), not an ethical or moral faculty. In other words: It is the faculty of the intellect and the will, related to two alternatives (ad utrumlibet).”146 145 For Heereboord, see chapter 2 §§2.6.8, and 2.7; Whitby chapter 7 §7.1.3; Edwards chapter 9 §9.1.1. 146 Adriaan Heereboord, Meletemata Philosophica (Amsterdam: Joannem Ravesteinium, 1665). “Collegium ethicum,” Disputation 11 (D11) “De libero arbitrio,” (thesis 6), 53. (Henceforth, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic.) For discussion, see below chapter 2 §2.6.8; On prerequisites, see Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 155, 159, 165–6, 228; J.A. Van Ruler, “Franco Petri Burgersdijk and the Case of Calvinism Within the Neo-Scholastic Tradition,” in Franco Burgersdijk (1590–1635) Neo-Aristotelianism in Leiden, Studies in the History of

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Whitby’s freedom ad utrumlibet Whitby framed his argument for freedom of the will, which is worthy of praise or blame, with six identifiable qualifications: (1) Free will (autexousia), which is neither an act, nor a habit; for an act concerns the exercise of the will and a habit inclines to action. Free will is a faculty or power. (2) Freedom of lapsed humankind in a state of trial, not a glorified state of the perfection of human nature; (3)This freedom is not essential to what it means to be a human being, as such; (4) Freedom from coercive necessity; (5) Freedom from a divine “physical influx,” which determines an human act to one choice; (6) Freedom ad utrumlibet.147 He contended that the early church fathers and classic philosophers had advocated freedom ad utrumlibet in the first four centuries.148 Edwards’s synthesis Edwards’s synthesis adapted physical principles of action and motion to shape a dynamic view of the will, characterized by “moral necessity,” “acquired habits,” and a “universal determining providence.”149 His synthesis led him to formulate a dynamic and deterministic view of the will, such that, “the will always is as the greatest apparent good is.”150 Human action was bound up with antecedent causal forces. He shaped a synthesis with strands from a classic seeds of virtues ethic, habits of the heart, natural principles transformed by moral necessity as a freedom of perfection, which was void of contingency and void of freedom ad utrumlibet. Freedom of perfection had the sense that the more perfect or stronger the inclination of will was, the freer one was. In his scheme, the essence of freedom essential to virtue or vice lay not in the cause of dispositions of the heart

147

148 149 150

Ideas in the Low Countries, eds E.P. Bos and H.A. Krop (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), 44–65; In SOED, the editors state that the adjective “classic,” in its first sense, can mean, “remarkably typical, outstandingly important,” and came into English usage between 1600–29. Here it is used in this sense to describe the outstanding characteristics and precision of Reformed scholastic theology, built upon the developments of the medieval universities, represented by Heereboord. Whitby, Five discourses, 297–305. See chapter 7 §7.1.3. On condition (2), Whitby means that this freedom is unique to a state of trial and as such is an inferior freedom when compared to a perfected freedom, which humankind will exercise in a state of glory. On the contrary, we will see that Edwards freedom of perfection finds continuity between the so-called states of trial and of glory. On (3), free from that which is “necessary to be done one way which cannot be done otherwise. On (4), the Latin idiom “physical” means in its own nature, or natural, not corporeal. Ibid., 314, 325–7, 328–9, 350–1, 370; Swinburne shares Whitby’s view about freedom in the first three centuries, in Richard Swinburne, Providence and the problem of evil (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 45–6. WJE 1: 156–7, 324, 431, 433. WJE 1: 144.

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and acts of the will, but in their nature. The nature of habits of the human heart was such that a person attained full actuality, and increased in the strength of propensity of will, to the degree that his or her powers of motion and action were actualized. For Edwards, none of these points was inimical to a state of trial, wherein one is subject to laws and commands.151

6.

Methodological assumptions

Anyone who approaches the text of Edwards’s Freedom of Will, which devotes the first of Four Parts entirely to the explanation of technical terms, called “terms of art,” will appreciate the need for a better understanding of what today is almost an inaccessible genre of writing. The definition of terms and their distinctions, such as, “the determination of the will,” “act of the will,” “necessary,” “natural and moral necessity,” “necessity of the consequence,” “necessity of the consequent,” “contingency,” “infallible connection of subject and predicate,” “infallible certainty,” “freedom of indifference,” and so forth, was commonplace in the education at Harvard and Yale, and in the writings of authors that students had to read. This practice of using and distinguishing terms of art in writings, disputations, and in the curricula in general, took place in both Universities and academies in Europe in the post-Reformation period, which in turn was a development of scholastic method, which originated in the medieval universities.152 It is arguably the case that underlying the English text of Edwards’s Freedom of Will, and especially the above-mentioned terms of art, is the Latin idiom, which students would have learned at Yale. Edwards himself was sensitive to the approachability of this genre of writing, which included Latin idiom, asking near the end of his book for patience on the part of the reader for argumentation that included “nice scholastic distinctions,” “abstruse metaphysical subtleties,” and the language of “the science of metaphysics.”153 Ironically, although Edwards took a scholastic approach to his inquiry, and made use of scholastic distinctions, he also claimed to use the common or vulgar understanding of terms, and the 151 See chapter 9 and 10 of this present study. 152 Te Velde, Synopsis of a purer theology, 3–5; W. J. van Asselt et al., Scholastic Discourse: Johannes Maccovius (1588–1644) on theological and philosophical distinctions and rules, Publications of the institute for Reformation Research (Apeldoorn: Instituut voor Reformatieonderzoek, 2009), 23–4. 153 WJE 1: 423. Latin was not only the written, but also the spoken language for students while at school. See Edwards admonition to his son Timothy to first learn “the languages.” WJEO 16: 598–99. Letter 174. To Timothy Edwards. Stockbridge, July 17, 1753; James J. Walsh, Education of the founding fathers of the Republic: Scholasticism in the colonial colleges, A neglected chapter in the history of American education (New York: Fordham University Press, 1935), 8, 11.

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result of his inquiry was quite critical of the scholastic method and tradition. It will not do however to stand by the older Latin idiom and semantic meanings of technical terms used by seventeenth-century authors, whom Edwards either read, or whose terms and meanings were passed on to him in the Yale curriculum. The reason is that there is in Edwards’s Freedom of Will, 1754, a perceptible shift in Latin idiom and semantics. It is therefore a methodological assumption that one approach Edwards’s Freedom of Will with an appreciation for reading with understanding the genre of scholastic argumentation in context, recognizing shifts in Latin idiom. In what follows we briefly explain what is meant by scholastic method and Latin idiom and indicate their relevance for reading with understanding Edwards’s Freedom of Will.

6.1

Scholastic method

When reading Edwards’s Freedom of Will, one encounters lengthy sections that amount to an extended disputation-type of argument, for example, on whether indifference be essential to freedom of will. The style of argument repeatedly attacks the question, but from different angles, and in Edwards’s case, he often takes up more space arguing the absurdity of his opponents position, which makes it difficult for the reader to discern whose voice and opinion he or she is hearing. This science, as it were, of argumentation and scholastic method dates back to the medieval universities. The example of Edwards, which we have in Freedom of Will, reflects to a measurable degree the practice of the medieval university, and universities in post-Reformation Europe. L.M. de Rijk defined medieval scholastic method as including concepts, distinctions, definitions, propositional analysis, reasoning techniques, and a philosophical method of disputation.154 It was an academic form of conducting theological exercises. By 154 L.M. De Rijk, Middeleeuwse Wijsbegeerte, 2nd ed. (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981), 111. Cf. W. J. van Asselt, ed., Inleiding in de Gereformeerde Scholastiek (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1998), 16. The updated, English edition is Willem J. van Asselt and Albert Gootjes et al., Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism, Reformed Historical-Theological Studies (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011); Beck, Voetius; A.J. Beck and Antonie Vos, “Conceptual patterns related to Reformed scholasticism,” Nederlands theologische tijdschrift 57 ( juli 2003): 223–33; Muller, Richard A. After Calvin: Studies in the development of a theological tradition. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology, 25. Oxford: OUP, 2003; Antonie Vos, “Scholasticism and reformation,” in Reformation and scholasticism: an ecumenical enterprise, eds. W.J. van Asselt and Eef Dekker, Texts and studies in Reformation and postReformation thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 99–119; Muller, PRRD: 1; John A. Trentman, “Scholasticism in the Seventeenth Century,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism 1100–1600, ed. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (1982; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 818–37.

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way of analogy, just as “New Critics” use an array of tools and methods to perform a close reading of poetry, to uncover structural and essential ironies, paradoxes, and ambiguities, so too did authors of scholastic discourse use a battery of tools in scholastic method to explicate a disputation, tools which included ontological concepts, anthropological terms, and logical distinctions, which we will use in our close readings of scholastic discourse.155 Edwards, likewise, framed Freedom of Will in a scholastic-like structure in terms familiar to medieval and post-Reformation disputation, to wit, with propositions, subject and predicate analysis, distinguishing the modalities of different kinds of necessity, impossibility, and possibility. He structured Freedom of Will by proposing quaestiones, followed by setting out the argument of his interlocutors, followed by his own exposition and statement of corollaries. His interlocutors were mostly contemporaries, but his opponents were the older—commonly cited by the Reformed—Pelagians, Jesuits, Socinians, and Arminians.156

6.2

Latin idiom

When reading Edwards’s use of Latin-English idiom in Freedom of Will against the background of an author like Adriaan Heereboord, one needs to appreciate the Latin meaning of terms and be able to perceive any shifts in the meaning of key terms. For example, when Edwards writes of a “physical operation on the heart,” the reader intuitively knows that he is not speaking of heart surgery.157 But the reader is not likely to perceive that this term “physical” was a highly contested term, since in its technical usage it referred to a Reformed understanding of a divine influx and movement by God upon a human soul, will, and heart, performed by God in the reality of this world.158 The Latin idiom in Reformed writings of a divine “physical” influx versus “moral” suasion sees the Latin idiom at work, since “physical” means “natural,” or “real,” not “corporeal.” The Latin idiom is in evidence in the Harvard 1737 technology thesis 4, “The last act of the understanding is not the physical cause of the act of volition, but the moral 155 Hazard Adams, ed., Critical Theory Since Plato, rev.ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1992), 960–74; Cleanth Brooks, The well wrought urn: studies in the structure of poetry (London: Methuen, 1968), 1–16. Brooks fully exemplifies the method of New Criticism; On the use of scholastic tools, see Van Asselt et al., Scholastic Discourse; W.J. van Asselt, “The theologian’s tool kit: Johannes Maccovius (1588–1644) and the development of Reformed theological distinctions,” Westminster Theological Journal 68, no. 1 (Spring 2006). 156 WJE 1: 203. For his statement about his own “scholastic distinctions,” see 423. 157 WJE 1: 220, 332. 158 Cf. Leibniz who made the comment that this notion of a “physical influence,” in its scholastic sense, was a fiction, in LCC: (Leibniz’s fifth paper, 96 §127).

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cause.”159 However, when Heereboord describes free choice, following the GreekLatin semantic relation, as “physical or natural, or, real” (physicam seu naturalem), Edwards does not follow suit.160 Edwards defines freedom in terms of moral necessity, not physical (real) and natural.161 In most chapters, we will observe the Latin idiom at work and give attention to the “semantic biography of words;” that is, we will take into account the fact that words have, as it were, a life and the same terms can be used differently by a later author, as in the case of Edwards.162 The methodological assumption is that one must take into account not only the shift that occurs when Edwards moves from the Latin idiom of his sources to the English idiom, but also that he uses terms in what he perceives to be the common understanding on the street. Paradoxally, his approach is in contradistinction to the scholastic understanding of a ‘term of art’. The syntactical features of Scholastic Latin idiom are such that, if neglected, they result in ambiguity and leave the reader unable to follow the author’s intended argument.163

7.

‘Stoic fate’ and Edwards’s Freedom of Will

Our method is to read the historical sources that Edwards read and to understand them in their historical context. When Whitby charges ‘Calvinists’ as being no better than ‘Hobbists’ and ‘Stoics’, and when Edwards responds to the charge, we must understand these derogatory markers and labels as belonging to their time.164 The recognition of these derogatory markers in their discourse takes Edwards’s exchange with his interlocutors out of the realm of how present-day specialists in the field would contest the meaning of ‘Calvinist’ and ‘Stoic’, differentiating, for example, Stoicism from necessitarianism.165 The polemical ex-

159 Harvard University, “Commencement Theses, Quaestiones, and Orders of Exercises, 1642– 1818,” HUC 6642, Harvard University Archives. H1737 Technology thesis 4 “Ultimum intellectus judicium non est actus volitionis causa physica sed moralis tantum.” 160 See chapter 2 §2.6.8. 161 WJE 1: 156–7, 360–1. Edwards holds a human accountable for action, and worthy of praise or blame, on the principle of “moral necessity,” not “natural necessity.” 162 C.S. Lewis, Studies in Words, 2nd ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 2, 10, 75, 210. 163 Lewis, Studies in Words, 19–21, 39 (on phusis), 71; Idem, The discarded image; Gabriel Nuchelmans, Studies on the History of Logic and Semantics, 12th – 17th Centuries, Variorum Collected Studies Series, ed. E.P. Bos (Aldershot, Hampshire, GB: Variorum, 1996). 164 Whitby, Five discourses, 350; WJE 1: 372. 165 Muller, After Calvin, chapters 4 and 5, “Calvin and the ‘Calvinists’”; Idem, PRRD 1: 68, 362, 376; Idem, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 224fn11; Antonie Vos, “Reformed orthodoxy in the Netherlands,” in A companion to Reformed orthodoxy, ed. Herman J. Selderhuis, Brill’s

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changes in that day raise the hermeneutical question of what Edwards would have understood as ‘Stoic’ thought. It is not as though there were ‘histories of the development of logic’, or ‘Anthologies of critical thought and intellectual history’ from which to draw. Such ‘histories’ only began to be written in the nineteenth century. To say that Edwards was a ‘Stoic’ would be a historical anachronism. Marcus Aurelius, for example, may have admired Providence and the order of the universe, but his Stoic, statesman-like manner belonged to a different ‘world’ than Edwards’s world; Edwards’s Christian love for the beauty of God’s ordered universe was more akin to Dante’s medieval renaissance delight in the universe.166 In chapters 9 and 10, we argue that the issues debated in the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence not only play in the background, but also inform much of Edwards’s synthesis of physical laws of motion and action and, as Edwards states it, a “universal determining providence.”167 One of those issues is the likeness both Leibniz and Clarke make between Newton’s much debated term, the “sensorium” of God, whereby he perceives what passes in the world, and the term, “the soul of the world.” Newton mentions the latter in his statement about God in his “General scholium,” to wit, that “This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world.”168 This correspondence is arguably the context from which Edwards understands and uses the term “soul of the world,” rather than the use in antiquity, and which likely informs Edwards’s reply to Whitby, wherein Edwards writes, almost verbatim, of “an intelligent wise agent, that presides, not as the soul of the world, but as the sovereign Lord of the universe, governing all things by proper will, choice and design.”169 Thus it is arguably more appropriate to look to Edwards’s immediate context in order to understand how he uses these terms in a discussion where he defends against the charge of Stoic fate.

8.

Overview

The approach taken to verify whether Edwards departs from the classic-Reformed tradition of freedom of the will divides the study into two parts. Part One establishes a non-arbitrary framework for understanding the classic-Reformed tradition with which Edwards is familiar, namely, the Harvard, Yale, and Princeton doctrine of freedom of the will, as represented in the commencement broadside theses and quaestiones, and in the disputations and textbooks of two

166 167 168 169

companions to the Christian tradition, 40 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 124; Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 237–8. Lewis, The discarded image, 203. WJE 1: 431, 433. LCC: (Leibniz’s fifth paper, 82); (Newton’s General scholium, 166). WJE 1: 374.

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instructors of the curricula, Adriaan Heereboord and Charles Morton. In Part One, we also see that Morton’s argumentation differs from that of Heereboord. Morton shows signs of a shift away from the classic-Reformed tradition of freedom of the will, which Heereboord represents. Part Two turns from the curricula towards Edwards’s published argument in Freedom of Will and the arguments of his interlocutors. Part Two asks whether Edwards’s position departs from the classic-Reformed tradition set out in Part One. Edwards’s decision around the year 1750 to transcribe sections from his contemporary, the Reformed continental theologian, Johann Friedrich Stapfer, on the topic of predestination and freedom of the will, eliminates the issue of whether it is fair only to compare Edwards’s publication in 1754 with authors of the curricula in Part One, who date to a much earlier period of time. Part Two, thus, begins with a presentation of Edwards’s transcription of Stapfer in Edwards’s “Controversies” Notebook. Our analysis concludes that Stapfer, even in the mid-eighteenth century, in contrast to Edwards, holds to an ontology of true contingency, and the classic-Reformed tradition of freedom of the will.170 In Part One, we introduce the content of the curricula and the commencement day program, which was the culmination of efforts by rectors, tutors, and students publicly to display their learning and ability to defend theses and dispute quaestiones. Chapter 1 §1.2 surveys the commencement theses and quaestiones, and sees the Latin idiom at work as we explain different terms relevant to this study, such as moral necessity, contingency, freedom, and intuitive assent. The influence of the theses upon Edwards’s Freedom of Will and of the latter upon the theses will be made apparent. The analysis of the principles of intuition, assent, and cognition that passed into the Harvard and Yale curricula enables us better to understand how Edwards arrives at the position he stakes out in his own writings, and enables us to understand moves and inferences he makes from propositional language about reality to causality. Heereboord, Morton, and Edwards, in their respective chapters, apply the principles of cognition and assent in order to communicate the conditions essential to their schemes of freedom. The Yale 1718 logic thesis on contingent propositions will afford us opportunity to set out views on the ontology of contingency. An analysis of the Yale 1720 commencement “Physics” theses, the 170 See Muller, PRRD 3: 141–3, 453–4. Muller often cites Adriaan Heereboord (1614–61), for instance on the topic of God’s will, as standing alongside other authors in the Reformed orthodox line, which is the same line as what we are calling the classic-Reformed tradition. Muller states that the Swiss-Reformed dogmatician, Johann Friedrich Stapfer (1708–75), attempts to remain fully orthodox while also offering a new philosophical underpinning for the Reformed tradition, taking up the Wollfian principle of sufficient reason. We will report and analyze (in chapter 10 §10.3.1) how Edwards also takes up the principle of sufficient reason.

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year of Edwards’s graduation, shows that Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion were studied and some were indicated for public defense. This is a significant fact given our claim that Edwards’s synthesis appropriates physical laws of motion and action into his theory of the will. In chapters 2, 3, and 4, we present and analyze the collegiate exercises and disputations of Adriaan Heereboord’s Meletemata, which Edwards would have learned to dispute at Yale. “That a state of affairs is and can be otherwise at the same time, in the divided sense, but not in the composite sense,” demands a level of conceptual analysis and syntactical precision, which Edwards would have acquired from studying Heereboord’s disputations. In chapter 2, we set out the principles of what we call classic-Reformed freedom ad utrumlibet, marked by synchronic contingency. Heereboord’s definition of free choice (in §2.6.8) serves as a benchmark against which to evaluate Edwards’s own definition in chapters eight and nine. We give attention to the shift in meaning of the Latin idiom, ‘natural or physical (real)’, between Heereboord and Edwards. In chapter 4, we consider the different cases of the eternal, yet contingent nature of propositions, in God’s mind, and explain the basis of why, in Heereboord’s view, one ought not infer causal necessity from them. In addition, there is a significant difference between the ontology of true contingency in Heereboord’s explanation of what idea in God is, with two acts of understanding in God, and the essentialist dispositional ontology of Sang Hyun Lee, which we consider in chapter 9. In chapter 5, Charles Morton, while transcribing Heereboord’s Pneumatics, interprets the Latin idiom of three structurally ordered moments or “instants” (instantia rationis) differently than does Heereboord.171 Morton dismisses as “impertinent distinctions” the classic-Reformed terms: “indifference to opposites” and “freedom of specification and exercise.” Unlike Heereboord, Morton locates freedom of the will in “rational spontaneity,” without any sense of a freedom of indifference. Part Two begins with chapter 6 and the preparations that Edwards takes in developing his position on freedom of will. We select passages from Edwards’s “Controversies” Notebook, Part V “predestination,” which introduce us to the Remonstrant set of requisites essential to virtue and vice. We see that Stapfer’s replies are very much in line with Heereboord and the classic-Reformed ontology of true contingency. We consider the replies that capture Edwards’s interest, and those which he skips over. Edwards shows considerable interest in transcribing passages from Stapfer’s Institutiones that concern a “synchronism of the decrees” and structural “order of nature.” Edwards encounters these conceptions in the term, signum rationis, a term which Stapfer, in turn, had cited from Leibniz’

171 See discussion (in chapter 5 §5.6.2).

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Theodicy.172 Leibniz was describing a synchronic representation of sequences of events in the divine mind, and these sequences of events are of major interest to Edwards. Chapter 7 takes up Whitby’s challenge that ‘Calvinist’ compatibilist freedom has more affinities with what he would call ‘Stoic’ freedom and necessity than with the early church fathers of the first four centuries. Whitby writes, at least in part, against the background of the Hobbes-Bramhall debate on liberty and necessity, arranged by the Marquis of Newcastle while in exile at his house in Paris in 1645, and the exchange of discourses which followed (1645–1658). The chapter gives an account of Whitby’s turn from the “Calvinist” position that he had learned at Oxford to what he later claimed to be the position of the Church of England. It identifies six elements that are essential to Whitby’s argument: (1) Free will (autexousia) which is neither an act, nor a habit, but a power, (2) Freedom which concerns lapsed humankind in a state of trial, not in a perfected state of nature, (3) This kind of freedom is not essential to what it means to be human, (4) Freedom from necessity, (5) Freedom from a divine “physical influx,” which Whitby understands as determining a human act to one choice, and (6) Freedom ad utrumlibet, which is placed in discontinuity with a perfected human freedom in the eternal state. Chapter 7 also considers the sources to which Whitby lays claim for freedom ad utrumlibet. Our approach recognizes that when Whitby cites and interprets classical sources, the early church fathers, and when Edwards makes reference to “Arminians” and the “Stoics,” they assume a method that can be characterized by a polemical use of terms. It also means that we do not constantly correct, as it were, their use of terms, as if they should have known and worked with a presentday specialist’s perspective in those fields. For it is not as if they had the perspective of ‘histories’ of the development of logic and semantics, or anthologies of theory and criticism with which to work. We also consider Edwards’s reply to Whitby. Edwards conceives of three different relations of time and causality in the structural “order of nature,”one option of which concerns non-temporal structural acts in an order of nature.173 In chapter 8, we see that Edwards’s arguments often turn on syntactical, conceptual features that require an understanding of scholastic terminology. In 172 G.W. Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil, ed. Austin Farrer, trans. E.M. Huggard, Rare Masterpieces of Philosophy and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952), 167 §84; Johann Friedrich Stapfer, Institutiones theologicae polemicae universae, ordine scientifico dispositae, vol. 4 (Tiguri (Zurich): Heideggerum et socios, 1756), 5:185; Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (Paragraph beginning after footnote 10, beginning with “Non possumus non hic allegare illustris Leibnitii …”). 173 WJE 1:177–79.

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the beginning of his Freedom of Will, we see that he explains the Latin idiom that he later uses in his work. In contrast to Part One of this study, Edwards’s interpretation of Latin idiom shifts away from the meanings he had learned at Yale. This becomes evident in his use of terms such as ‘natural’, ‘necessity’, and ‘contingency’. He formulates his arguments for freedom of will, without using any sense of freedom ad utrumlibet. He argues with logical propositions, and an essentialist use of the principle of sufficient reason, which allows no contingent reason for why something is, when it is, rather than otherwise. For instance, he writes, “It was impossible that the acts of the will of the human soul of Christ should…be otherwise than holy.”174 Unlike Heereboord and Morton, we see that Edwards’s scheme is void of contingency. Like Morton, there is no freedom of indifference, relative to two alternatives. The chapter also compares and contrasts Edwards’s notion of the greatest apparent good with that of Watts and Leibniz. After explaining the classic-Reformed line on levels of necessity, we view Calvins’s line, and then Edwards’s understanding. In chapter 9, we present the argument for Edwards’s synthesis, which consists of an adaptation of physical laws of motion and action to moral necessity as a freedom of perfection. Although we find support in Sang Hyun Lee’s observation that there are dispositional law-like forces in Edwards’s synthesis, we challenge Lee’s claim that the Reformed tradition and background to Edwards’s education is the Aristotelian-Thomistic line. Our presentation shows that it is, rather, the classic-Reformed line, presented in Part One of this study. Edwards defines moral necessity in contradistinction to natural necessity in the beginning of Freedom of Will and argues throughout that the stronger the inclination of will the greater the virtue. The chapter takes into account evidence which suggests that Edwards writes his argument for freedom of perfection, at least in part, against the background of the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, written in the years 1715–16, published in 1717. There is also the question of the affinity between Edwards and Descartes on the principle, as Descartes expressed it: “The more I incline in one direction, the freer is my choice” (quo magis in unam propendeo, tanto liberius illam eligo). The chapter investigates how Edwards transforms the classical view of habit and natural principles into moral causes. For him, the habits of the heart are not implanted by nature itself, but rather are acquired. Due to Edwards’s high regard of Turretin and Van Mastricht, we also consider their use of semina virtutum, and contrast it with that of Edwards. And given Heereboord’s place in the Harvard and Yale curricula, we also look at the disputations that speak of primordial seeds of virtue (semina ac primordia virtutum). As the Scholastics say, “Virtue is

174 WJE 1: 281.

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inchoate by nature, but not perfected by nature,” which invites inquiry into the manner in which Edwards has adapted this dictum into his synthesis.175 Chapter 10 focuses on the end of Edwards’s Freedom of Will, Part Four §§ 6– 13, that is, his own “Conclusion.” We give the argument for the part of Edwards’s synthesis which concerns what he calls God’s “universal determining providence.” We evaluate his appropriation of the notion of a causal nexus into his scheme of moral necessity, which he applies to a divine freedom of perfection. We see that his argument for God’s power, and determining providence, is void of a self-determining power of the will. His interpretation and adaptation of physical laws of motion and universal attraction renders his scheme of the divine will void of the possibility of simultaneous alternatives, and is marked by teleological determinism. We see how Edwards formulates his theory of the will as a theory of causality, and explain the steps he takes in inferring superior fitness and causal necessity from the principles of sufficient reason—that there is a reason why an effect should be so, rather than otherwise—from essential predication, and from the principle of the noble cause. Given Edwards’s opponent in Freedom of Will, Daniel Whitby, and Whitby’s accusation that ‘Calvinists’ are no different than the ancient ‘Stoics’, we consider Edwards’s reply, in which he uses Isaac Watts, Samuel Clarke, John Locke, and Andrew Baxter as a foil to develop his own argument. Throughout the chapters, we harness the Latin idiom to a method of close analysis of passages and words, in their historical context. The benefit is an immediate view of the development that terms essential to virtue and vice underwent in the different contexts of our authors. One contextual shift that is crucial to our understanding of Edwards’s synthesis is the displacement of the classic-Reformed tradition’s ontology of true contingency with an ontology of necessity, void of any contingency. Edwards’s shift away from the classic-Reformed ontology to a new ontology is arguably in part due to his synthesis that adapts physical laws of motion and action, attempting to fit them to a scheme of moral necessity as a freedom of perfection, essential to virtue and vice.

175 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., (D17) “De virtutis moralis causis,” 73 § 3.

Part One. the Harvard and Yale Curricula on Freedom of Will

1.

Commencement broadside theses and quaestiones

The approach taken to verify whether Edwards departs from the classic-Reformed tradition of freedom of the will divides the study into two parts to enable a comparison between, in Part One, the Harvard, Yale, and Princeton presentation of the doctrine of freedom of the will, and in Part Two, Edwards’s published argument in Freedom of Will. Part One, thus, establishes a non-arbitrary framework for understanding, and in Part Two, engaging Edwards and his position on freedom of the will. Chapter one begins by gathering in one place the broadside theses and quaestiones of the Harvard, Yale, and Princeton curricula. In chapters two through five, we present the disputations and argumentation of two principle instructors, Adriaan Heereboord and Charles Morton. Part One attempts to establish an obvious benchmark, set in Edwards’s own New England context, by which to study the schools’ position, albeit a much nuanced and variegated position, on the doctrine of freedom of the will. Part One enables us to view the theological heritage of the schools, their continuities and discontinuities with medieval and post-Reformation confessional developments. Part One also establishes the Latin idiom of highly-nuanced scholastic distinctions and terminology. One implication is that the argumentation of the classic-line’s ontology of true contingency arguably sets forth a robust, innovative doctrine of divine and human freedom in response to movements in the early-modern centuries, such as Socinianism, Molinism, Arminianism, Cartesianisn and Spinozism. In Part Two, we will see that Edwards acknowledges, in Freedom of Will, that these movements shape the long-standing background to his education at Yale.

1.1

Introduction

The Harvard University archive’s inventory of extant commencement theses and quaestiones is extensive, and when combined with other sources, affords us a view into the curriculum from 1642 through the student years of those who would

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go on to become the first five rectors of Yale. For our purposes, we survey theses and quaestiones through the year 1754, the date of Edward’s publication of Freedom of Will. As for the Harvard curriculum itself, Harvard President Henry Dunster (1640–1654) intended to “model the college after European universities.” The printed commencement theses were the end product, as it were, of a joint effort by faculty and students, with the intent to display the scope of the student’s learning and the orthodoxy of the school. Learning to dispute the theses in “public discourse” by way of “syllogistic debate” formed a crucial part of the curriculum, “ranging between approximately 50 and 250 propositions in most years,” culminating in a public discourse and display of debate on commencement day.1 “Commencement” at the New England schools meant “the taking of an academic degree; the ceremony of degree conferment.”2 First, we will establish the connection between Harvard and Yale, whose students recited Ames’s Marrow and Heereboord’s Meletemata. Some theses from Jonathan Edwards’s Yale 1720 Bachelor commencement broadside will be looked at with a view to what they tell us about the curriculum and the interpretation of “universal rules” (regulae catholicae). Second, an impression of the first commencement proceedings at Princeton will also come into view. Then, in section two, we will analyze the commencement theses and quaestiones by arranging them thematically, as an end-product of the colleges, as it were, which give a view into the curricula. The commentary we give on the theses will serve as an entry into the discussion of the disputations in the chapters that follow.

1.1.1 Harvard and Yale connection At Harvard, sophomores recited “Burgersdijk’s Logic” and both sophomores and junior sophisters learned to dispute “Heereboord’s Meletemata,” the latter of which will figure prominently in this study, due to the many disputations related to the subject of freedom of will. Senior sophisters recited Ames’s Marrow, which Heereboord cites in his Meletemata.3 1 For a description of the broadsides and commencement days, see especially, the “Historical Note,” in the online article: Harvard University, “Commencement Theses, Quaestiones, and Orders of Exercises, 1642–1818,” HUC 6642, Harvard University Archives, http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hua03010 (accessed June 22, 2015); Richard Warch, School of the prophets Yale College, 1701–1740 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 186ff, chapters 8 and 9. 2 SOED 1: 462. 3 See John Noble, “An Old Harvard Commencement Programme, 1730,” in Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. 6, Transactions 1899, 1900 (Boston: Published by the Society, 1904), 277. On Heereboord’s Meletemata and broadside theses, see Norman Fiering, Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth-Century Harvard: A Discipline in Transition, Institute of

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The Yale college trustees “intended the course of study to be the same as the classic curriculum of the great European universities…the ancient trivium and quadrivium,” writes Warch.4 Any preconceived ideas the young aspiring ministers may have had about the curriculum such that the neophyte underclassmen in the arts and sciences would dispute what was the domain of the upperclassmen and especially Masters students, to wit, theological quaestiones, had to be tempered by the realities of the daily exercises of the mind in the trivium (logic, grammar, and rhetoric) and the art of reasoning. The commencement broadside itself indicates that under the auspices of rector Timothy Cutler,” the “young neophytes in the arts had to defend these first fruits of doctrine (doctrinae primitiae).”5 The Yale College 1720 commencement broadside theses, presided over by Timothy Cutler, show the eclectic nature of the curriculum, and their varied provenance. They indicate that students in the bachelor of arts program—one of which was Jonathan Edwards—learned from the Puritan Technometry of William Ames, who modified Bartholomew Keckermann’s “precognitions” and Peter Ramus’s Technologia, that “Art is the intellectual arranger of acts.” In the grand scheme of things, “Knowledge is the pure contemplation of things well ordained.”6 The young scholar would first learn to Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 96–103; Morris makes the case that Edwards recited Heereboord’s Meletemata, in William Sparkes Morris, The Young Jonathan Edwards: A Reconstruction (Chicago Studies in the History of American Religion, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1991. Reprint, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005), 79–81, 538ff; Morison records the popularity of Heereboord’s Meletemata at Harvard. Sir Sewall dictated it to students in 1673– 74, and it was prescribed in the “programme of 1723 and used as late as the 1740’s,” in Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, vol. Part I, II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), I:234. 4 Richard Warch, School of the Prophets Yale College, 1701–1740 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 193, 195. 5 YUL: Praecellenti et celeberrimo viro, D.D. Gurdono Saltonstallo, Armigero, [Yale College Commencement broadside,] (New London, Timothy Green, 1720). “Collegii Yalensis Rectori Timotheo Cutler, (cujus sub Auspiciis hae Doctrinae Primitiae sunt defendendae … Theses sequentes … Nos Juvenes in Artibus Neophyti, … summo Molimine defendendae aggredimur.” On commencement at Yale, see WJE 14:4; Franklin Bowditch Dexter, ed., Documentary History of Yale University: Under the Original Charter of the Collegiate School of Connecticut 1701– 1745 [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916], 7, 158; JETE: 34; Kelley, Yale a History,11–36; James J. Walsh, Education of the founding fathers of the Republic: Scholasticism in the colonial colleges, a neglected chapter in the history of American education (New York: Fordham University Press, 1935), Chapter 4 Oviatt, Edwin. The beginnings of Yale, 1701–1726. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916; repr. Wellhausen Press, 2008; Thomas Clap, The annals or history of Yale-college, in New-Haven, in the colony of Connecticut, from the first founding thereof, in the year 1700, to the year 1766: (New Haven: Printed for John Hotchkiss and B. Mecom, 1766). 6 YUL. Theses technologicae. 2. Ars est ordinatrix intellectualis actionum, 3. Scientia est mera contemplatio rerum bene ordinata, from Praecellenti et Celeberrimo Viro, D.D. Gurdono Saltonstallo, Armigero … [Yale College Commencement broadside,] (New London, Timothy

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appreciate the synoptic harmony of the arts and sciences, that “The universal rules (regula catholica) are the constituent principles of all the arts.” Then, the young scholar would contemplate the well-ordained universe of all arts and sciences, that the “relation of states of affairs is to a degree a proper type of art.”7 Two years prior, Yale’s second rector pro tem Samuel Andrew also presided over the regula catholicae thesis, “Art is a compendium constituted from universal rules,” along with“Eupraxia [good action] as the common end of all the arts.”8 Yale’s archival record not only confirms by way of founding documents, the well-known fact that the trustees patterned the Yale curriculum after Harvard; but there are also student notebooks that demonstrate which authors were recited and which questions disputed.9 In February 1750, Eleazer May disputed, “Whether the moral nature of actions depend upon the divine will, to which I answer in the negative.” In February 1752, “Whether the Calvinistical doctrine concerning grace destroys the freedom of the will, to which I answer in the affirmative.”10 In 1754, perhaps alarmed by such answers at Yale commencements, Edwards would publish Freedom of Will and attempt to justify so-called “Calvinistic doctrine” on divine freedom of will. The questions posed by the student Eleazer May serve to preview Edwards’s Freedom of Will, which we will consider in chapters seven through ten. We now take a look at another kind of broadside, a gazette, in order to get an idea of commencement day proceedings at the College of New Jersey (Princeton).

7 8

9

10

Green, 1720). Timothy Cutler was Yales’s third President (1719–1722). On Keckermann and Ramus, see William Ames, Technometry, trans. and ed. Lee W. Gibbs (University of Pennsylvania, 1979); Originally published as Technometria, Omnium et Singularum Artium fines adaequatè circumscribens, London, 1633), 29, 31–2. Ibid., Theses technologicae 4. “Regulae Catholicae sunt omnium Artium principia constituentia. 5. Relatio rerum est Tantum proprius Typus Artis.” EB: 1. “Technologia est omnium & singularum Artium, universale Summarium.” 2. “Ars est compendium, ex Regulis catholicis constitutum.” 3. “Eupraxia est communis omnium Artium Finis.” Samuel Andrew was Yale’s second President (1707–1719). On Ames’s influence upon the Harvard theses, and as one can observe the Yale 1720 theses, see Ames Technometry, trans., Gibbs, 42–3. Dexter, Documentary History of Yale University, 16–23. “An act for founding a collegiate school,” wherein the model of education at Harvard is mentioned, as well as the reciting of “The Westminser Confession of Faith” and Ames’s Medulla Theologiae, Ibid, 16–19. The “Charter of the Collegiate School,” however, does not mention these two curriculum items, Ibid, 20–23. See BRBML GEN MSS 360, Eleazar May. In his papers, there is a book spine with the title, “Yale Theses 1750–52.” The Commonplace book is dated 1749–50 and has notes in English and Latin on a disputation question he was preparing to answer. He also mentions that he has “recited Ames’s Medulla in his junior year.”

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1.1.2 Princeton The public character of the college of New Jersey commencement exercises was recorded by the editor of the Pennsylvania Gazette, on the occasion of the graduation of the young scholar, Mr. Jonathan Edwards, Edwards’s son, 25 September 1765.11 The Gazette reports his Latin oration “On the evils to which a people is liable, when involved in debt, delivered with great propriety and spirit, by Mr. Jonathan Edwards, one of the candidates for Bachelors Degrees.” The reporter distinguishes between “syllogistic disputes in Latin, and forensic in English.” He records that the theses debated in the afternoon were, (1) “Necessarily, the more one acts by his moral sense, the more freedom there is.” And, (2) “There cannot be true friendship but among the good.”12 The former in the syllogistic, the latter in the forensic way, which is a thesis setting out one side of a question. The New York Gazette, November 21, 1748, reported the first college of New Jersey commencement.13 His excellency, Jonathan Belcher, Esq. governor and commander in chief of the province would leave the President’s house, with the President at his left hand, preceded by candidates in pairs, unhooded, followed by trustees, two by two, covered. They entered the hall in reverse order. The procession was repeated in the afternoon. After distributing the broadsides to “the learned in the audience,” the candidates “entered the public disputations in Latin, in which six questions in philosophy and theology were debated.” The Gazette records the following question, “An libertas agendi secundum dictamina conscientiae, in rebus mere religiosis, ab ulla potestate humana coerceri debeat? “Whether the liberty of acting according to the dictates of conscience, in matters merely religious, ought to be restrained by any human power?” After the candidate concluded his answer, “No,” the President asked the tustees in Latin if it pleased them to admit them to the degree of Bachelor of the arts. According to the royal charter, and after the manner of academic England, he conferred degrees upon six young scholars.14 On that same day, the President admitted Jonathan Belcher to the degree of Master of arts. Then, the orator salutatorius, one of the Bachelor graduates from the morning, Daniel Thane, ascended the rostrum and addressed the audience in Latin, from memory, for thirty minutes.15 11 ”The Pennsylvania Gazette” (10 October 1765). 12 Ibid. The reporter gave the first, which was in Latin: (1). “Quo magis necessario sensu morali, eo libertas, agit homo.” (2) The second was reported in English, since it was debated in English. 13 New York Gazette, “College of New Jersey Commencement,” 1748–1860, Commencement records, Original housed in Princeton University Library, AC 115, Box 1 (1748). 14 Ibid. 15 Princeton Unversity, “College of New Jersey Commencement,” The first commencement.

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An archival document, “A Princeton commencement in old times,” contains notes purported to be the writing of President Finley, entitled “The process of the public commencement in Nassau Hall, September A.D. 1764.” The praeses would introduce the English dispute, and ask, “Who undertakes the defense of this position?” “Miller,” and then the praeses would ask, “Whoever has any objections, let him speak?” And in order to maintain decorum, the praeses would ask, “Who judges it fit to answer the objections?”16 Having briefly considered the public character of commencement day proceedings, we now turn to a major section on the broadside theses and quaestiones, first to display the content of the theses and quaestiones that have to do with the subject of this study, then to analyze and comment on their content.

1.2

Survey of select Harvard, Yale, and Princeton commencement broadside theses and quaestiones

A survey of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton commencement broadsides reveals that the philosophical and theological theses and quaestiones at the end of the seventeenth century and first half of the eighteenth century, specifically those in logic, metaphysics, and theology, still share significant philosophical and methodological continuity with medieval as well as post-Reformation Reformed issues and concerns. In this section, we will survey theses from Harvard and Yale commencement broadsides that deal with cognition (§3.7), propositions (§3.8), and intuitive evidence and assent (§3.9) of predication, among other themes. Students at Harvard in 1726 would have learned that they have knowledge of their own existence by intuition, knowledge of God by demonstration, and knowledge of other things by the senses.17 The theses that describe the nature of the relationship between a subject and predicate in a proposition, and theses that make a distinction between the laws of causality and the language of propositions, are crucial to understand before we discuss, in chapters eight and ten of this study, inferences that Edwards’s makes from propositions to causality. He will draw conclusions about the indissoluble bond of a divine decree and God’s foreCollection housed in Princeton University Library. Commencement Records (Mudd Library, 1748). The corporate seal was agreed upon that day, An open Bible in the upper part of the circle, Vitae lumen mortius reddit. The text in view was, “Who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” New York, July, 1872, based upon the Gazette record above. 16 PUL: Originally housed in Princeton University Library. Princeton Commencement records, 1747-present AC 115. “A Princeton commencement in old times.” 17 See section on “cognition” §1.2.7 below, H1722, technology thesis 8.

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knowledge of an event, which will take place in the course of time, from the indissoluble bond between the subject and predicate of a proposition. The logical nexus of inference between subject and predicate of a proposition is a matter of language saying something about reality. Likewise, the theses on intuitive evidence and assent to axiomatic truths will help us evaluate Edwards’s exposition where he gives assent to both mathematical axioms and the truth of metaphysical propositions in the same sense, which informs his theory about natural necessity. For example, “It is necessary in its own nature, that two and two should be four,” that radii in a circle be equal, and that people follow the golden rule of treating each other as they should like to be treated.18 Throughout the study we will see authors use the language of propositional truth to express the reality they wish to grasp. Reality has to do with the ontological status of states of affairs. As such, their exposition moves between propositional language and the ontological status of actualized states of affairs. This section will give analysis of the principles of intuition, assent, and cognition that passed into the Harvard and Yale curricula in order to establish whether or not Edwards departed from the teaching that was mediated to him at Yale. The selected theses and quaestiones below are pertinent for this study and are arranged by theme, date, and school. The subsequent observations will enable us to see in Part Two, whether Edwards departs from the teaching content of the curricula, or not.19

1.2.1 (Structural) order of nature Yale • Y1738 Technology 6. In terms of structural order, metaphysics enjoys a priority to all knowledge. • Y1751 Metaphysics 2. The moral nature of actions precedes the divine will in terms of structural order. • Y1751 Quaestiones 5. Whether the account of moral actions precedes the divine will by a structural order. Daniel Hubbard affirms it.

18 WJE 1: 153, 157, 182. 19 The letter “H” “Y” or “P” before the year stands for Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. Bachelor theses are listed under subject area, Quaestiones with “Q.” The theses and Quaestiones are from Evans bibliography (EB) unless otherwise indicated, such as Harvard University (HUA), Yale Manuscripts and Archives (YUL), or Samuel Morison, Harvard College in the seventeenth century, volume 2, “Appendix B,” 580–638 (SMHC). The, Commencement Theses, Quaestiones, and Orders of Exercises, 1642–1818. HUC 6642, Harvard University Archives, are henceforth marked as HUA. When we state that a thesis was chosen for debate, it is due to a mark, the symbol of a pointed finger, on the broadside sheet itself.

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• Y1753 Metaphysics 3. Cause precedes effect by a structural order, but not always by a temporal order. • Y1762 Quaestiones 2. Chosen for debate: Whether there is any difference between possible and actually existing states of affairs in the divine mind? Albericus Hall denies it. • Y1765 Metaphysics 14. God’s decrees precede his foreknowledge in the structural order.20 The term “order of nature” is perhaps misleading since it has nothing to do with “nature,” or the natural order, in modern idiom. In scholastic Latin idiom, and in these contexts, ordine naturae referred to a logical, structural order, such as, for instance, in the logical priority of God’s decree, which structurally precedes his knowledge of vision, or intuitive knowledge.21 Thus, for example, God sees what he has decreed, but without any “time” having elapsed. We see (in chapter 6 §6.5.1) that Edwards transcribed the term “order of nature” from Stapfer, who in turn was quoting Leibniz, and his use of the term, in the sense of a “synchronism of decrees.” The Y1753 thesis gives both the temporal and non-temporal sense of the term. Edwards also understood the term in these two senses and discussed the meaning and legitimate use of the technical term against the so-called evasions of his opponents, which we will consider (in chapter 7 §7.4.4).22 Eleazer May, (Yale AB 1752), has a commonplace book wherein a transcript appears of a response to Y1751 Metaphysics thesis 2. It is dated May AD 1752, and it includes use of the technical term, “order of nature.” He supposes his opponents will allow that “foreknowledge in order of nature is prior to the decree.”23 May’s notes show what is perhaps a transcript of a response to Y1751 Metaphysics 20 Y1738 Tech. 6.“Metaphysica ordine naturae prior est omnibus scientiis”; Y1751 Meta. 2.“Natura actionum moralis, in ordine naturae, voluntati divinae antecessit”; Y1751 Q. 5 “An moralium actionum ratio, ordine naturae, voluntati divinae antecedat?” affirmat respondens Daniel Hubbard; Y1753 Meta 3. “Ordine naturae, sed non semper temporis, causa effecto antecedit.” Cf. WJE 1: 177; Y1762 Q. 2. “An inter res possibiles et actualiter existentes, in mente divina, ulla detur differentia?” Negat respondens Albericus Hall; Y1765 Meta 14. “Decreta divina, in ordine naturae, praescientiae antecedunt.” 21 For Edwards’s use of “order of nature,” see WJE 1: 177, 376 and this present study chapter 7 §7.4.4 and §7.5. 22 Cf. “order of nature” in, Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretico-Practica Theologia, Qua, Per Singula Capita Theologica, Pars Exegetica, Dogmatica, Elenchtica et Practica, Perpetuâ Successione Coniugantur. (Utrecht: Thomae Appels, 1699), 278, 663. (Henceforth, ThPrTh); Leibniz, Theodicy, 167. 23 BRBML. Eleazer May, GEN MSS 360, Box 1, folder 3. (Eleazer May’s name is on Y1752 Bachelor theses broadside). The transcript reads that he supposes his opponents will allow that “foreknowledge in order of nature is prior to the decree from whence I think it plainly appears that God in his decree of election has reference to the actions of men knowing entirely well what they would be, but time failing I leave all to the judgment of the judicious moderator.”

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thesis 2. It is dated May AD 1752, “Question. Whether God in his decree of election had any respect to the actions of men to which I answer in the affirmative.” It is not the purpose here to evaluate the student’s apparent unorthodox prioritizing of God’s decree and foreknowledge, but rather to underscore the availability to the student of this technical term and logical device in disputational discourse.

1.2.2 Moral necessity Harvard • H1729 Quaestiones 21.Whether moral necessity is incompatible with freedom? The respondent John Emerson denies it.24 Yale • Y1738 Metaphysics 5. Moral necessity does not destroy natural liberty. • Y1749 Metaphysics 6, 7. Moral necessity is the foundation of natural liberty. Hence, God is by nature an infinitely free agent. • Y1749 Ethics 14. Chosen for debate: Moral necessity according to the mode of acting is proportional to the degree of perfection of each being. • Y1751 Metaphysics, 11. Moral necessity denies neither moral obligation, nor natural liberty. • Y1756 Metaphysics 11, 12. Chosen for debate: The goodness or depravity of action increases according to moral necessity. The goodness or depravity of action decreases according to the indifference of the soul. • Y1758 Metaphysics 13 Chosen for debate: The necessity of the perfections of God and his moral actions are perfectly in harmony with freedom. • Y1762 Quaestiones. 24. Whether there is any difference between physical and moral necessity?” The respondent John Phelps affirms it.25

24 H1729 Q. 21. “An Necessitas Moralis Libertati repugnet?, Negat respondens Johannes Emerson.” Under the moderation of John Leverett. 25 Y1738 Meta 5. “Moralis necessitas non destruit libertatem naturalem;” Y1749 Meta 6,7 “Necessitas moralis est libertatis naturalis fundamentum. Unde, Deus est agens naturaliter infinite liber.”; Y1749 Ethics 14. “Necessitas moralis secundum rationem agendi, est cujusvis entis gradui perfectionis proportionalis.”; Y1751 Meta 11. “Necessitas moralis nec tollit Obligationem moralem, nec Libertatem naturalem.”; Y1756 Meta 11, 12. “Bonitas vel pravitas actionis secundum necessitatem moralem augetur. Et bonitas vel pravitas secundum animi indifferentiam minuitur.”; Y1758 Meta 13. “Dei perfectionum et actionum moralium necessitas, perfectissime competit libertati;” Y1762 Q. 24. “An inter necessitatem physicam et moralem ulla detur differentia?” Affirmat respondens Johannes Phelps.

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Princeton • P1755 Metaphysics 7. Physical necessity cannot be inferred from moral necessity. • P1755 Ethics 1. God exists from eternity by real necessity. • P1760 Pneumatology 1. They who act by moral necessity enjoy maximal freedom. 2. Whatever is absolutely simple cannot change.26 As indicated (in the Introduction §3), Edwards was present at the Yale commencement in 1738 and would have met his former tutor Elisha Williams, who as rector moderated Metaphysics thesis 5 on “moral necessity.” Rector Williams had students distinguish between “natural liberty” and “moral necessity,” as did rector Clap in the 1749 Metaphysics theses 6 and 9, and the 1751 Metaphysics thesis 11. In both cases, the point is made that moral necessity can consist with natural liberty, the former grounds the latter. In fact, the argument of Metaphysics theses 6 and 7 is that God’s moral necessity grounds his natural liberty, which is evident as one considers the nature of God, that he cannot but be holy, yet he possesses and exercises a natural liberty, which is essential to who he is. Whereas Williams and Clap put forth these theses that hold moral necessity in tension with natural liberty, Edwards did not mention “natural liberty” in Freedom of Will, and therefore did not make this distinction. Edwards distinguished between “natural necessity” and “moral necessity.” He expounded a “moral necessity” as a liberty of perfection in both God and humankind. He inferred liberty of perfection from moral necessity, not natural liberty. For Edwards, moral necessity is proportionate to “the strength of inclination,” which arises from “habits and dispositions of the heart.27 No one with either a good or bad “natural disposition” can be held accountable for good or bad action, according to the principles of natural necessity; there is no virtue or vice to be attributed to such dispositions “implanted in the hearts of men by nature.”28 Edwards distinguishes between natural and moral necessity. The principle Edwards gives is that what is “natural” is “necessary,” since “nature is prior to all acts of the will whatsoever.”29 The example Edwards gave of “natural necessity” in this context was, as “the wind that blows” and “fire that burns.”30 By saying “nature is prior,” he means a previously “implanted,” or inborn disposition, which, as such, is a natural disposition and not a reason on 26 P1755 Meta 7. “Necessitate morali, physica necessitas inferri nequit.”; P1755 Ethics 1. Naturali necessitate, ab aeterno Deus existit.” P1760 Pneuma. 1. “Qui necessitate morali agunt, maxima fruuntur libertate.; 2. “Quicquid absolute simplex est, non potest mutari.” 27 See WJE 1: 156–7. Cf. chapter 9 §9.1.1. 28 Cf. WJE 1: 361. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., 362.

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account of which someone is counted more or less virtuous. But Edwards holds someone accountable for action according to the principles of “moral necessity,” not natural necessity, since moral necessity is “acquired and established by repeated free acts;” that is, it is based on the repeated active tendency and choice of habits of the heart.31 Rector Clap moderated the Y1749 Ethic’s thesis 14, chosen for debate, which advocated a dynamic relationship between moral necessity in acting and perfection. There is growth in perfection of one’s being in proportion to moral necessity, the latter of which arguably is built upon habits, choice, and strength of inclination of one’s heart. This thesis in itself supports Edwards’s development of a dynamic relationship between moral necessity and freedom of perfection, which we unfold in chapter 9. Edwards was present at the College of New Jersey commencement in 1755, and thus he would have been aware of the Metaphysics thesis 7 on “moral necessity.” If by “physical necessity” (physica necessitas) the authors of the Princeton thesis 7 meant, ‘as fire burns, as the breeze blows’, then there is a mutual agreement between Edwards’s sense of natural necessity and Princeton’s sense of physical necessity. As we have seen, Edwards infers freedom of perfection from moral necessity and marks it off from natural necessity. On the same broadside, when the authors of Princeton Ethics thesis 1 speak of God, they use the term “natural necessity” (naturali necessitate), since they are speaking about God, not nature or animals. The P1760 Pneumatology thesis 1 can be inferred from Edwards’s Freedom of Will and his notion of freedom of perfection. It appears to take up and express Edwards’s notion of strength of exercise of freedom proportionate to strength of moral necessity, if the latter sees habits of the heart as moral causes and an active tendency. The thesis consists with the notion that the stronger the habits of the heart in moral necessity, the freer one is. And the freest being is the one who acts from the greatest degree of moral necessity. Although we have seen other theses on moral necessity from years prior to Edwards’s Freedom of Will, the Y1756 Metaphysics 11,12 appear two years after the publication of his Freedom of Will, and clearly represent Edwards’s thesis of proportionately stronger and stronger habits of the heart, such that, the further one’s inclination of the heart is removed from indifference in choice, the greater the freedom and accountability for action. The stronger the inclination, the freer one is. It appears then that there was a mutually beneficial interaction between Edwards, as an author, and the Yale rectors, as authors of theses.

31 WJE 1: 324; 361–3. See Chapter 9 for a fuller explanation of Edwards’s moral necessity as a freedom of perfection.

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1.2.3 Contingency Harvard • H1702 Quaestiones 1. Whether the existence of good care be contingent? Jonathan Belcher affirms this; • H1704, Quaestiones 14.Whether the root of contingency in second causes is God’s will itself. Samuel Wiswall affirms this; • H1713 Quaestiones 8. Whether contingent propositions about the future fall under the knowledge of God. Elisha Callender affirms this; • H1718 Quaestiones 3. Whether contingent propositions be subsumed under providence? Benjamin Marston affirms this; • H1725 Quaestiones 8. Whether God’s providence concerns contingent propositions? The respondent Josias Cotton affirms this; • H1759 Metaphysics 3. Necessarily, the infallibility of foreknowledge does not remove contingency and freedom from second causes; • H1760 Quaestiones 8 Whether knowledge belongs to God of all particulars, even of contingent particulars? Edward Brooks affirms this quaestio.32 Yale • Y1718 Physics 33. Chosen for debate: All astrological predictions of future contingents are fallacious and vain; • Y1762 Quaestiones 28 Whether there be anything contingent with respect to infinite knowledge? Simon Waterman denies it.33 Our survey of the Bachelor theses and Master quaestiones shows that, for the most part, it is the quaestiones of the Master’s program that consider contingency. Quite exceptionally, the Y1718 Physics thesis 33 implies that the Bachelor program discussed contingency, albeit to deny it with respect to astrology. Samuel Wiswall confirmed the H1704 quaestio, which when taken together with the other quaestiones, encapsulates the role of contingency by subsuming it under God’s providence, and by rooting it in God’s will. The H1759 metaphysics thesis underscores the point that necessity, such as the necessity of 32 H1702 Q.1. “An curaturae existentia sit contingens?” Affirmat Jonathan Belcher, in (SMHC); H1704 Q. 14.“An Radix contingentiae in causis Secundi sit ipsa Dei Voluntas? Morison II:634; H1713 Q.8. “An Futura Contingentia cadant sub scientia Dei; H1718 Q. 3. “An Contingentia subsint Providentiae?”; H1725 Q 8. “An Dei Providentia, circa Contingentia, versetur” (Moderated by Benjamin Wadsworth. The respondent Caleb Hithcock affirms the same Quaestio in H1746 Q. 20. under Edward Holyoke; H1759 Metaphysics 3, Infallibilitas Praescientiae Contingentiam et Libertatem Causarum Secundarum, necessario non tollit; H1760 Q. 8. An Scientia omnium singularium etiam contingentium, Deo competit. 33 Y1718 Physics 33. “Praedictiones omnes astrologiae de futuris contingentibus sunt fallaces ac vanae.”; Y1762 Q. 28, “An detur aliquod contingens, respectu Scientiae infinitae.”

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the consequence of God’s decree, can consist with the contingency of human free will. Edwards, however, will develop his freedom of perfection theory along the lines suggested in the Y1749 Ethics thesis 14, and the Y1749 Metaphysics theses 6 and 7. He will, however, not give place to contingency in his scheme of freedom. Edwards, thus, will negotiate with H1759 Metaphysics thesis 3 by affirming that necessity of the consequence rhymes with free human action, but at the expense of contingency. The Y1762 quaestio raises the issue of whether God knows anything contingently. For if one admits that God wills events contingently, then does not God know them in a contingent sense? We addresss the issue of “contingent causality” (in chapter 3 §3.3) where Heereboord says the philosophers of Coimbra, the Jesuits, would not dare say that “God acts contingently,” for that would suggest imperfection in God. But Heereboord will give the opinion that God does will contingently. If Y1762 Q. 28 concerns (1) God’s simple knowledge of understanding, structurally prior to the will, then we will see Reformed authors agree, since the language of contingency belongs to (2) God’s visionary knowledge, structurally after the divine will and decrees, not to the language of possibles, which belongs to divine knowledge (1).34

1.2.4 The will Harvard • H1642 Ethics 4. The will is essentially free. • H1678 Physics 16. The will is always determined by the last judgment of the practical intellect. • H1717 Logic 4. Can (possibility) is inferred by the term, disposition, but not necessarily the act. • H1727 Technology 7. The highest good does not always determine the will. • H1768 Quaestiones 44. Whether the will can elicit one or the other out of two equal goods? Joseph Currier denies this.35 34 Cf. Van Mastricht, ThPrTh, lib. 2.13.13, 146. “By his omniscience, God knows himself in himself … universals and particulars … everything, past, present and future … by a necessary cause … or by a contingent cause, by itself, not determined to its effect; or by a free cause, operating by free choice (προαιρέσει).” (Translation mine). (Per suam omniscientiam, novit seipsum in seipso … universalia & singularia … praeterita, praesentia & futura … per causum necessariam … seu per causam contingentem, per se, ad istum effectum, non determinatam; seu per causam liberam, προαιρέσει operantem.) 35 H1642 Ethics 4.“Voluntas est formaliter libera,”(Cf. H1653a Physics 15); H1678 Physics 16. “Voluntas semper determinatur ab ultimo intellectus practici judicio”; H1717 Logic 4. “Ex habitu infertur potentia, actus non necessario.” H1727 Tech 7. “Summum bonum voluntatem non semper determinat”; H1768 Q 44. An voluntas, ex duobus bonis aequalibus, alterutrum eligere potest, Negat respondens Josephus Currier.

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Yale • Y1718 Physics 24. The will is not subjected to coercion. • Y1733 Metaphysics 6. Every act of a human being is an act of will, knowledge being excepted. • Y1733 Metaphysics 7. An act of knowledge by which a person makes a judgment of his or her action precedes an act of will. • Y1735 Metaphysics 7. The will is the power of the mind to determine itself. • Y1735 Metaphysics 8. The understanding does nothing else than direct the will. • Y1740 Logic 12. Between the will and consequent actions, there is no necessary connection. • Y1740 Ethics 9. The certainty of an event does not bring about the will in determining. • Y1745 Metaphysics 2. The uneasiness of the mind often determines the will. • Y1747 Metaphysics 4. The desire of the mind always determines the will. • Y1750 Metaphysics 1. The will is not always determined by the greatest apparent good. • Y1755 Metaphysics 13. The will does not always follow the last dictates of the intellect. • Y1759 Metaphysics 19. The will is always determined by a preponderating incitement. • Y1759 Metaphysics 20. That an agent acts involuntarily implies a contradiction. • Y1761 Quaestiones. 30. Whether the will and affections be distinct faculties of the soul? Ebenezer Parmele denies this.36 Princeton • P1750 Metaphysics 5, 6. All things are necessary by the necessity of the consequence. But this necessity has no influence whatsoever upon the will of moral agents. 36 Y1718 Physics 24. “Voluntas coactioni non subjicitur” (Cf. P1760 Pneumatology 6.); Y1733 Metaphysics 6. “Omnis actus hominis, intellectione excepta, est volitio”; Y1733 Meta 7. “Actus intelligendi, quo homo judicium fert de actione sua, volitioni antecedit”; Y1735 Meta 7.“Voluntas est mentis sese determinandi potestas”; Y1735 Meta 8.“Intellectus non aliud quam dirigit voluntatem; Y1740 Logic 12. “Inter voluntatem et actionem consequentem, nulla datur connexio necessaria.” Y1740 Ethics 9. “Eventus certitudo, voluntatem in determinando non efficit”; Y1745 Meta 2. “Mentis inquietudo voluntatem saepe determinat”; Y1747 Meta 4. “Mentis desiderium volitionem semper determinat”; Y1750 Meta 1. “Voluntas per maximum bonum apparens non semper determinatur”; Y1755 Meta 13.“Voluntas, ultima intellectus dictamina non semper sequitur”; Y1759 Meta 19. “Voluntas Incitamentis praeponderantibus semper determinatur”; Y1759 Meta 20. “Agentem involuntario agere, Contradictionem implicat;” Y1761 Q. 30. “An voluntas et affectiones sint animi distinctae facultates?” Negat respondens Ebenezer Parmele.

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• P1750 Ethics, 4, 5. Without the consent of the will, sin cannot exist. Therefore, the abuse of freedom was the origin of moral evil. • P1755 Metaphysics 5, 6. Chosen for debate: There is no determination of the will without a moving cause. Therefore, the power of determining itself does not belong to the will. • P1760 Pneumatology 8. Every suspension of the will is an act of the will.37 Although Edwards was not present at the Princeton 1750 October commencement, we know that he had obtained a copy of the broadside, since he used the blank side to write a letter to Joseph Paice on February 24, 1752.38 Of interest here is P1750 Metaphysics 5, 6, where we again encounter a thesis that Edwards will contest. Ironically, though he regularly uses thesis 5, he does not make the deduction in thesis 6, since for him, necessity in thesis 5 is bound up with acts of the will.39 Let us examine Edwards’s claim that his version of the necessity of the consequence belongs to controversy on acts of the will.40 Aaron Burr presided over the Metaphysics theses 5 and 6 in 1750. The two are to be read together. The theses state that the will of moral agents is necessary by the necessity of the consequence, but this kind of necessity does not impact the will such that it becomes necessary itself. The theses presuppose that the antecedent must be contingent, and thus there is no transferal of necessity by virtue of the necessary relationship. There is rather an implicative relation between antecedent and consequent.Thus, in the above example, “Peter will believe,” Peter’s free choice is not violated, because the necessity operator falls outside the implication, and not exclusively upon the Peter’s consequent belief. This is the proper use of the distinction between the necessity of the consequence and consequent. However, Edwards’s commentary points to a system of closed causality, as we have seen. Another commencement broadside thesis that can be adduced to state the question and the school’s position is from 1740. Jonathan Edwards was present at this commencement. In the Yale 1740 Logic thesis 12, Rector Clap shows that, contrary to Edwards’s system of causality, one ought not infer necessity from the acts of the will, since the acting agent retains the intrinsic possibility understood 37 P1750 Meta 5,6. “Omnia, Necessitate Consequentiae, sunt necessaria. 6. Sed haec Necessitas, in Voluntatem Agentium moralium, nullam Influentiam habet”; P1750 Ethics 4,5. “Sine voluntatis consensu peccatum existere nequit. Ergo, 5 Libertatis abusus mali moralis fuit origo”; P1755 Meta 5. “Voluntatis determinatio, sine causa movente, non datur. Ergo, 6. Voluntati, sese determinandi, potestas non competit”; P1760 Pneuma 8. “Omnis suspensio voluntatis, est actus voluntatis.” 38 WJE 16:435. If held up to light, one can see through the broadsides Y1750 and P1750 to the backside, and see Edwards’s handwriting. For the letter itself, see WJEO 32 A141. Letter to Joseph Paice, February 24, 1752. 39 Cf. WJE 1: 217. 40 WJE 1: 154.

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in freedom of exercise and freedom ad utrumlibet. Nevertheless, in 1754, Edwards will take the opposite view to logic thesis 12, due to his theory of causality, and inferences he makes from the language of propositional truth about how he sees reality. We will see that Edwards draws inferences about acts of the will from propositional inner coherence and the deductive force of the necessity of the consequence.41 We consider the steps he takes in transforming principles of sufficient reason and subject-predicate theory into a theory of causality and a freedom of perfection (in chapter 10 §10.3). H1717 Logic 4 shares the same principle of election as does P1750 Metaphysics thesis 6. Y1759, Metaphysics, thesis 19 appears to be an other example of the mutual influence of Edwards and the Yale theses upon each other, in this case, Edwards uses the term “preponderating inducement” in his chessboard illustration.42 It is possible that Y1759 Metaphysics thesis 20 agrees with Edwards’s notion of moral necessity as well as with Ursinus’s statement, which we will see in chapter 7. Whitby quotes Ursinus as representative of the Reformed position. Ursinus states, “Freedom is called voluntary or spontaneous…opposed to involuntary and coercion. But freedom is not opposed to what is necessary. For what is voluntary can consist with what is necessary, but not with that which is involuntary.”43 The P1755 Metaphysics theses 5 and 6 state, in effect, that every determination of the will has a cause; significantly, we construe this to mean that the will has no power of self-determination. These theses appear to reflect Edwards’s argument in Freedom of Will against self-determination (autexousia), the notion of which he attributed, rightly or wrongly, as we shall see, to his Arminian opponents.44 P1760 Pneumatology 8 reflects Edwards’s own response to Locke, namely, every suspension of the will is an act of the will.45 For Edwards, where there is no preference, there is no volition. Morton called the notion of suspending the act of the will a useless figment. Heereboord will expose the notion of imperfect willing, “woulding,” to be characterized by suspending the will and an incomplete will. The Jesuits and Remonstrants defined it as that by which God would will that all people and individuals be saved, but ultimately grounding election in human action.

41 42 43 44 45

Cf. WJE 1: 217. WJE 1: 199. Ursinus, Corpus Doctrinae Orthodoxae, 56. Cited in chapter 7 §7.3.3. See this present study’s chapters 6 §6.2 and 7 §7.4. WJE 1: 210.

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1.2.5 Freedom Harvard • H1674 Quaestiones 2. Whether the necessity of a decree denies liberty and contingency of a creature? The respondent Peter Thachery denies the claim. • H1702 Quaestiones 4. Whether the immutability of the decree denies the freedom of a creature? Francis Goodhue denies this. • H1729 Logic 11. Freedom consists in the possibility of acting and not acting according to the determination of the will. • H1732 Logic 21. Judgment determining the will does not deny freedom.46 Yale • Y1739 Metaphysics 10. The freedom of moral agents is essential. • Y1733 Metaphysics 8. Human freedom presupposes that a decision by the last dictate of the intellect is necessary. • Y1746 Ethics 3, 5. Chosen for debate. Every agent is free. The freedom of acting rationally is the only freedom to be desired. • Y1752 Metaphysics 8. Particular providence is consistent with the natural freedom of agents. • Y1756 Metaphysics 7, 9. Absolute freedom is contrary to all governing. Freedom of acting consists not in the power of willing, but in the power of acting according to the decision of the will.47 Princeton • P1760 Ethics 17. The freedom of a creature does not require the faculty of doing whatever it wills.48 Samuel Willard, acting vice-president at Harvard from 1701–07, presided over H1702 Quaestiones 4. George Keith was in the audience and there ensued an exchange of reply and answer between him and Willard. Willard answered by 46 H1674 Q. 2.“An necessitas decreti tollat libertatem et contingentiam creaturae? Negat respondens Petrus Thacherus, in (SMHC); H1702 Q.4. “An immutabilitas decreti tollat libertatem creaturae? Negat Franciscus Goodhue; H1729 Logic 11. “Libertas in potentia agendi et non agendi secundum voluntatis determinationem, consistit”; H1732 Logic 21. “Judicium voluntatem determinans, non tollit libertatem”. 47 Y1739 Meta 10. “Libertas agenti morali essentialis est”; Y1733 Meta 8. “Libertas humana supponit determinationem per ultimum dictamen intellectus esse necessariam”; Y1746 Ethics 3, “Omnis agens est liber,” 5. “Libertas agendi secundum rationem est sola libertas appetenda”; Y1752 Meta 8. “Providentia particularis, cum Agentium libertate naturali consistit”; Y1756 Meta 7. Libertas absoluta, omni gubernationi est contraria.”; 9. “Libertas agendi, non in potentia volendi, sed agendi, secundum voluntatis deteminationem, consistit.” 48 P1760 Ethica 17. “Libertas creaturae, facultatem quicquid velit agendi, non exigit.”

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bringing scholastic distinctions to bear on the question, distinguishing, for instance, between an absolute necessity and the necessity of infallibility, God’s immanent act versus God’s transient act ad extra.49 We will consider many of these distinctions concerning divine and human action in detail in the chapters that follow. The rest of the above theses are representative of the anthropological focus of the curricula on human freedom and action. Thomas Clap presided over Y1752 Metaphysics thesis 8, which anticipates Edwards’s claim, but with a subtle, crucial distinction. Thesis 8 speaks of “particular providence” consisting with “natural freedom.” Arguably, as we will see (in chapter 2 §2.6.8), natural freedom points to freedom necessarily inherent in humans for action. Heereboord’s definition of human free choice reminds us that there is an essential dimension to freedom that is “natural” or “physical,” not ethical or moral, as Edwards holds. Edwards will speak of “a providential disposing and determining” of human moral action.50 But he infers a “moral necessity” of those actions that consist with human freedom. For Edwards, “common sense” teaches us to infer moral necessity from moral agency, which he holds to be consistent with necessity.51 Y1756 Metaphysics thesis 7 speaks of “absolute freedom” being contrary to all sovereignty, meaning human action, which is independent from God, such as in the Arminian and Remonstrant scheme. The Reformed set of requisites for human action will exhibit a dependent relation of human action upon God. This thesis adumbrates the discussion on conditioned decrees (in chapters 5 §5.3.4 and 6 §6.2).

1.2.6 Free choice and indifference Harvard • H1691 Physics thesis 29. Indifference is essential to free choice. Presided over by John Leverett and William Brattle. • H1694 Quaestiones 7. Whether indifference be essential to freedom of choice? Timothy Edwards denies this. Presided over by Increase Mather.52 49 YUL Tracts by Samuel Willard, Z32w68, (1701–35). George Keith, A refutation of a dangerous and hurtful opinion (New York: 1702); Samuel Willard, A Brief Reply to Mr George Keith: In answer to a script of his, entitled “A refutation of a dangerous and hurtfull opinion, maintained by Mr. Samuel Willard” (Boston, 1703); Keith, An answer to Mr. Samuel Willard, his Reply to my printed sheet, A dangerous and hurful opinion maintained by him (New York, 1704). See also, Samuel Willard, Compleat body of divinity in two hundred and fifty expository lectures on the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism (Boston: Green and Kneeland, 1726). 50 WJE 1: 405–6. 51 Ibid. 406. 52 H1691 Physics 29. “Indifferentia est de essentia liberi arbitrii.”; H1694 Q. 7. An Indifferentia sit de Essentia liberi Arbitrii?, Negat respondens Timotheus Edwards, in (SMHC).

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Yale • Y1747 Metaphysics 3. There is no absolutely indifferent act of the will. • Y1751 Quaestiones. 23. Whether the perseverance of the saints depends on their free choice? Elijah Sill denies this. • Y1761 Quaestiones. 34. Whether free choice consists only in indifference? John Gillit denies this. • Y1762 Quaestiones. 14. Whether freedom of the will consists in indifference? Samuel Gilbert denies this. • Y1762 Quaestiones. 38. Whether the application of redemption depends on the free choice of men? Asahel Hathaway denies this.53 We know Edwards was aware of the Y1751 theses since he wrote a letter to speaker Thomas Hubbard on March 19th, 1753 (from Stockbridge) on the back of two broadsides, one of which was the Y1751 Master’s broadside.54 Suffice it to say here that Y1751 Q. 23 adumbrates the discussion in Edwards’s “Controversies” Notebook, chapter 6, on the Remonstrant propositions, and the subtle distinction between whether God wills not to grant (or nills granting) people faith and perseverance to overcome sin. The former is the Remonstrant position, the latter the Reformed position. Solomon Stoddard possessed editions of Descartes’s Meditationes de prima philosophia and Opera philosophica, which included “Replies to objections Vand VI, wherein Descartes states, “Indifference does not belong to the essence of human liberty.”55 The H1691 Physics thesis 29, argued under Leverett and Brattle, is in contradistinction to the opinion of Descartes, despite the opinion that William Brattle’s “Compendium of Logick” is generally characterized as Cartesian. Rick Kennedy, the editor of Brattle’s “Compendium of logic,” in Aristotelianism and Cartesianism at Harvard, takes note of a letter from Nathaniel Mather to his brother Increase wherein he peruses the Master’s Quaestiones and perceives the rise of Cartesianism.56 Timothy Edwards, in the Harvard 1694 quaestio, argued against the notion that indifference be the essence of free choice. The thesis on indifference, which figures prominently in Edwards’s Freedom of the Will, cannot be decided without more technical qualifications. Fiering 53 Y1747 Meta 3. “Nulla datur actio voluntatis absolute indifferens”; Y1751 Q. 23. “An sanctorum perseverantia e libero suo arbitrio pendeat?, Negat respondens Elijah Sill; Y1761 Q. 34. “An liberum arbitrium constet sola in indifferentia?” Negat respondens Johannes Gillit; Y1762 Q. 14. “An voluntatis libertas in indifferentia consistat?” Negat respondens Samuel Gilbert; Y1762 Q. 38. An Redemptionis applicatio pendeat de libero hominis arbitrio; 54 Cf. WJE 16:563. Letter 164. 55 Norman Fiering, “Solomon Stoddard’s Library at Harvard in 1664,” Harvard Library Bulletin 20 (1972): 262–3. 56 Kennedy, ed., Aristotelian and Cartesian Logic at Harvard, 52, 93–4.

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draws lines between what he calls the voluntarist theory, where liberty of indifference he says is the “battle cry” of the Jesuits, which he opposes to what he calls the intellectualism of the broadly defined Thomists and the determinism of the voluntarist Protestants.57 It is, however, neither accurate nor possible to make such alignments without first making distinctions, such as indifference in the first act, in the divided sense, as opposed to in the second act, in the composite sense. The student notebook of Daniel Newell (Yale BA 1718) confirms that the scholastic distinction between divided sense and composite sense was taught at Yale in Edwards’s day and that contingency was to be understood with respect to the syntactical feature of the divided sense of a proposition.58 Newell takes down the following notes: Q. 24 “What is contingency?” R. “Contingency is as such a state of mind (disposition) or relation, quality or condition, according to which the reality of the courses of things can behave otherwise than it does.” Q. 25 “In which respect does the reality of something behave otherwise than it does? R. “The course of reality can behave otherwise than it does according to the divided sense, with respect to the circumstances and separate attendant circumstances.”59

Questions 24 and 25 above can be put in the following propositional form: A state of affairs p obtains at t1 in one sense and can obtain otherwise at t1. In what other sense can it obtain? A state of affairs can not obtain at the same moment, or a different state of affairs can obtain at the same moment. The “other sense” is indicated to be the “divided sense” with respect to circumstances. The divided sense is a syntactical feature that says that things can be otherwise than they are. For example, the difference in reading the following two statements: (1) “A person can write-while-he-is-not-writing,” and (2) “A person can write while he is not writing.” In statement (1), one cannot conceive of someone writing and not writing at the same time. Either someone is or is not writing at the same instant of time. This is the composite sense of reading the statement. However, in the divided sense, statement (2), one can conceive of someone possessing the ability to write even though at the moment he is not writing.

57 Fiering, Moral Philosophy, 118. 58 Newell, Daniel, 1700–1731. Notebook GEN MSS Vol. 17 59 Ibid. Q. 24 Quid est contingentia? R. Contingentia est natura affectio secundum quam natura potest aliter se habere qua habet. Q. 25 “Quibus respectibus natura dicitur se aliter habere quam habet?” R. (Natura potuit se aliter habere sensu diviso respectu circumstantiarum et adjunctorum separibilium).

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1.2.7 Cognition Harvard • H1722 Logic 6. Not all cognition proceeds from what already has been known and granted. • H1722 Logic 24. At every level of demonstrative knowledge there must be intuitive knowledge. • H1726 Technology 8. We have knowledge of our existence by intuition, we have knowledge of God by demonstration, and of other things, by the senses. • H1728 Logic 15. Intuitive cognition is clearer than mathematical knowledge. • H1729 Logic 15. All cognition flows either from intuition or demonstration. • H1732 Logic 6. The essences of states of affairs are not known by intuition.60 Yale • Y1720 Logic 21. Not all cognition proceeds from what already has been known and granted. • Y1720 Logic 23. Intellectual cognition is more certain than knowledge by the senses. • Y1728 Technology 6. Scientific knowledge doesn’t originate from the experience of particulars, but from the absolute necessity of known truth. • Y1728 Logic 6. Intuitive cognition doesn’t differ from the truth of perception. • Y1728 Logic 7. The same truth is the object of both demonstrative and intuitive cognition. • Y1735 Logic 19. Demonstrative cognition is not as clear as intuitive cognition. • Y1737 Metaphysics 2. Our cognition is partly of the will, partly necessary. • Y1738 Logic 8. Cognitive certainty does not depend upon the existence of a states of affairs. • Y1743 Logic 12. Intuitive cognition neither demands nor admits argumentation. • Y1753 Logic 10. There is nothing certain except by cognition, intuition, and demonstration. • Y1756 Technology 1. Cognitive intuition is the foundation of the certainty of all knowledge.61 60 H1722 Logic 6. “Omnis cognitio non est ex praecognitis et praeconcessis”; 24. “In omni gradu cognitionis demonstrativae debet esse cognitio intuitiva”; H1726 Tech 8. “Cognitionem existentiae nostrae, per intuitionem; Dei per demonstrationem, et aliarum rerum, per sensationem, habemus”; H1728 Logic 15 Cognitio intuitiva est clarior mathematica; H1729 Logic 15. “Omnis cognitio ab intuitione vel demonstratione fluit; H1732 Logic 6. “Essentiae rerum non cognoscuntur per intuitionem.” 61 Y1720 Logic 21 “Omnis cognitio non est ex praecognitis et praeconcessis.” Y1720 Logic 23 “Cognitio intellectualis est certior sensitiva.” Y1728 Tech 6. “Cognitio Scientifica non Oritur

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In Edwards’s idiom, he uses knowledge for cognition, and he divides acts of cognition into demonstrative cognition and intuitive cognition. For him, humankind’s knowledge of any existence of being has as its foundation the common sense principle of sufficient reason; that is, every effect has a cause. Each of us as human beings, has begun to be. We do not know we exist by immediate intuition, but by the principle of sufficient reason; we know that we begin to be. On this principle, he appears to follow Arnauld’s and Nicole’s method of analysis, which they say is foundational to faith.62 Likewise, “We first ascend, and prove a posteriori, or from effects, that there must be an eternal cause; and then secondly, prove by argumentation, not intuition, that this being must be necessarily existent.”63 This second step is demonstrative cognition. Edwards, thus, understands cognition, in the sense of seeking the causes of things, not the essence of things.64 And he distinguishes demonstrative knowledge from the “immediate intuition” of things, things which are necessary in themselves. Under Cutler at Yale in 1720, and under John Leverett at Harvard in 1722, the “Old logic” (Ramus) would be challenged by what some scholars call the “New learning,” (Bacon, Newton, Descartes, and Locke).65 For example, Edwards and the other students were asked to dispute what appears, at first sight, to be new “Lockean” theses, such as Locke’s rejection of the Aristotelian thesis that all

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ab Experimentia particularibus sed ex absoluta veritatis cognitae Necessitate”; Y1728 Logic 6. Cognitio intuitiva vera perceptione non differt; Y1728 Logic 7. “Eadem veritas sit objective ac demonstrativae et intuitivae cognitionis”; Y1735 Logic 19. “Cognitio demostrativa non tam clara est, quam intuitiva”; Y1737 Meta 2. Cognitio nostra est partim voluntatis, et partim necessaria”; Y1738 Logic 8. Cognitionis certitudo non pendet e rerum existentia.”; Y1743 Logic 12. “Cognitio intuitiva arguments nec exigit nec admittit.”; Y1753 Logica 10. “Cognitio certa, nisi per intuitionem et demonstratium, non datur”; Y1756 Tech 1. “Cognitio intuitiva, omnis scientiae, certitudinis est Fundamentum.” WJE 1: 181–2. Cf. Jill Vance Buroker, ed. and trans., Logic or the Art of Thinking: containing, besides common rules, several new observations appropriate for forming judgment, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 250–1. On Edwards’s use of the principle of sufficient reason, see this present study, chapter 10 §10.3.1. Y1720 Logic thesis 23 is also found in Arnauld and Nicole, “The things known by the mind are more certain than whatever is known by the senses,” 227. Ibid., 182. Cf. Buroker, ed., Arnauld and Nicole Logic, 237–8. Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), 238–43. Stump makes the case that scientia is a special species of a broader genus, cognitio. Thus, translating with “cognize” or “cognition”, points to cognizing the causes of things, not just searching the conclusion of demonstrations, at least in Aquinas’s interpretation of Aristotle’s Posterior analytics. Antonie Vos points out that Scotus speaks of scientia as an act of cognition, an epistemic act, with a dispositional character, related to an object. However, whereas Edwards speaks of intuitive knowledge of things, and propositions about those things, such as mathematical truths, as necessary in themselves, Scotus introduces the contingency of things now necessary in themselves, in A. Vos, The Philosophy of John Duns Scotus (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 347–8. Ames Technometry, trans., Gibbs, 47–8.

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reasonings are “ex praecognitis, et praeconcessis.”66 But just because a thesis is found in Locke, does not mean that it is new. There were medieval developments, which went beyond Aristotle, such as in the Y1720 Logic thesis 21 and the theses below on intuitive cognition (in §1.2.9).67 For example, there is nothing between me and the whiteboard in front of me, which somehow mediates knowledge to me; on the contrary, I intuit its existence. Gassendi, on the other hand, placed the senses between the person and the object, which gave a high degree of certainty of knowledge. Ayers writes that Locke was closer to an intellectualist position, in the sense that, knowledge that the whole is greater than the part, is known a priori. But the perception of the relation between two ideas, mediated through the senses, as in the use of geometric drawings, is needed to yield knowledge of actual existence.68 H1722 Logic thesis 6, and Y1720 Logic thesis 21, imply that in addition to knowledge by way of demonstration, we also have knowledge from another source; for example, we have knowledge of our existence by intuition, and of other things by our senses, according to H1726 Technology thesis 8.69 But, H1729 Logic 15 states, all cognition flows either from intuition or demonstration. And Y1728 Logic thesis 6 states that intuitive cognition doesn’t differ from true perception. Y1728 Technology thesis 6 appears to dispute Gassendi’s thesis that all our knowledge rests on the senses, and all evidence and certainty derived from a general proposition, depends on induction from particulars.70 H1728 Logic thesis 15 implies that there is a distinction between knowing, “That something is the case,” and “Why it is the case that.” A student can intuit that an axiom in geometry is true, but be less certain why, in comparison with an axiom in mathematics.71 There are degrees of certainty of cognition, such that, for Aqui66 John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding (2d ed. London: Printed for Albutham and John Churchil, 1694), IV.7.8. Cf. Michael Ayers, Locke: epistemology and ontology, The arguments of the philosophers (London: Routledge, 1991), 15, 92, 306 fn. 4. From the commencement broadsides, EB: Yale 1720 Logic thesis 21. “Omnis cognitio non est ex praecognitis et praeconcessis.” Harvard 1722, Logic 6. “Omnis Cognitio non est ex Praecognitis et Praeconcessis.” (Italics in the orginal). “Not all cognition proceeds from pre-existent knowledge and prior concession.” 67 Vos writes that Franciscan thinkers introduced the notion intuitio at the end of the thirteenth century. Duns Scotus’s theory of knowledge was built on the characteristic feature of intuitive cognition, which “rejected any intermediate entity between the act of knowing reality and the things to which it is related,” in Vos, Philosophy of Scotus, 322–8. Cf. in this present study, chapter 3 §3.2 and chapter 5 §5.3.1 and §5.3.2. Heereboord and Morton both explain a special use of “intelligible species” (a principal of intellection), but agree that God has no need of it since he has immediate intuition of his own essence. 68 Ayers, Locke, 1: 94. 69 Ayers, Locke, “Intuition and innate knowledge,” 1:264–68. 70 Ayers, Locke, 1:15. 71 Stump, Aquinas, 230.

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nas, but not Scotus, a person cannot cognize with certainty, “What is, but can be otherwise.” The significance of these theses for this study and our understanding of Edwards’s Freedom of Will is the view from the Harvard and Yale theses on the cognition of necessary things, that what is necessary in itself, one knows by immediate intuition. In Edwards’s theory of knowledge, however, intuitive cognition differs from the school’s theses in the sense that his theory arises from causal forces that appear to act upon the agent. When Edwards classifies the kinds of propositions to which he gives assent, he appears to attribute the same level of intuitive certainty to the truth of mathematical propositions as to philosophical propositions. This leads him, for example, to give an equal level of necessity to “two and two makes four” as to “men should do to others, as they would that they should do to them.”72 Moreover, Edwards appears to make these kinds of inferences in his theory of causal necessity. Chapter 10 will develop Edwards’s theory of causal forces and show the steps he takes to arrive at his position. We will see that Edwards’s theory of causality seeks causes, which are sometimes indiscernible. Suffice it to say here, in this chapter on the commencement theses, that Edwards will develop a theory that goes beyond the theses presented here. The theses on intuitive cognition and assent, below (in §1.2.9), will help us further understand why Edwards intuitively believes that the certainty of states of affairs infallibly obtain. The significance of these theses about cognition not proceeding from prior concession, such as Y1720 Logic 21, H1722 Logic 6, and Y1737 Metaphysics 2, which says our cognition is partly of the will (partim voluntatis), is their break away from the necessitarian thought of ancient Greek philosophy.73 But already in Heereboord, which we consider in the next chapter, we see that in cognition, there is both a contingent act of the understanding and of the will, and an alliance, as it were, between the two. The two acts are distinct, but inseparable. How does cognition of objects presented to the mind relate to the human will, the divine will? The notion of intuitive cognition helped students infer from the human condition the doctrine of divine simplicity, to wit, that whatever God understands, he knows in one incommutable intuition (incommutabili intuitu). 72 WJE 1: 153, 157. 73 Y1720 Logic 21 and H1722 Logic 6 represent Locke’s challenge to the interpretation of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics 71a1. The break from Greek philosophy and necessitarian thinking occurred in the medieval universities, with the development of logica modernorum, see Vos, “Scholasticism and reformation,” in Reformation and scholasticism:107–10; Marenbon, Medieval philosophy, 288–293, 319; See John A. Trentman, “Scholasticism in the seventeenth century,” in The Cambridge history of later medieval philosophy: from the rediscovery of Aristotle to the disintegration of scholasticism 1100–1600, ed. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (1982; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 818–37.

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In other words, his knowledge does not vary. Intuitive reason is also counted among the natural endowments given to humans and this plays into the theory of freedom of perfection developed in chapter 9. There we will how Edwards developed the idea that freedom is rooted in natural endowments and inclinations, and bestowed in embryonic form in the beginning of spiritual life, like seeds of virtues.

1.2.8 Propositions Harvard • H1642 Logic 11. A contingent axiom is, what is true in such a way, that it can be false at some time. • H1687 Logic 25. A disjunctive axiom concerns a necessary truth existing out of non necessary parts. • H1687 Logic 22. A contingent axiom regards both the future and the past. • H1691 Logic 27. A necessary axiom produces knowledge, a contingent axiom produces belief. • H1722 Logic 22. An axiom is a proposition, the truth of which originates from the immediate comparison of two ideas. • H1726 Logic 19. Argumentation is an operation of the mind, by which a lesser known proposition is deduced from a better known. • H1732 Logic 14. Propositions in general are dubious in which there occurs no evidence of truth, or falsity. • H1738 Logic 16. The truth of a hypothetical proposition depends on the certain connection of the antecedent with the consequent. • H1745 Logic 15. Propositions about any future contingent are determinately true or false.74 Yale • Y1718 Logic 20. A proposition about the past can be contingent. 74 H1642 Logic 11. “Axioma contingens est, quod ita verum est, ut aliquando falsum esse possit”; H1687 Logic 25. “Axioma disjunctum est necessariae veritatis ex partibus non necessariis”; H1687 Logic 22 “Axioma contingens respicit et futurum et preteritem”; H1691 Logic 27. “Axioma necessarium parit scientiam, contingens opinionem”; H1722 Logic 22 “Propositio, cujus veritas ex immediata duarum idearum comparatione oritur, est axioma”; H1726 Logic 19. “Argumentatio est mentis operatio, qua propositio minus nota, ab aliis notioribus, deducitur.” H1732 Logic 14. “Propositiones in genere sunt dubiae, in quibus nulla occurit evidentia veritatis, aut falsitatis”; H1738 Logic 16. “Propositionis hypotheticae veritas a connectione certa antecedentis cum consequente pendet”; H1745 Logic 15. “Propositiones de futura ulla contingenti, sunt determinate verae aut falsae.”

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• Y1737 Logic 8. To the extent the coexistence of ideas is known, so far can universal propositions be certain. • Y1737 Logic 9. The antecedent is not always the cause of the consequent, but of the consequence. • Y1737 Logic 10. The consequent always follows the truth of the antecedent. • Y1737 Logic 13. The mind is not merely passive in its dissent or assent to a proposition. • Y1744 Logic 10. There is no purely hypothetical proposition. • Y1745 Logic 3. If there were no propositions that are per se evident, there would be no certain knowledge. • Y1751 Logic 10. The truth of a hypothetical proposition depends not upon the truth of its parts, but of their connection. • Y1756 Logic 5 The certainty of a proposition is according to the congruent perspicuity of two ideas which are comprised of a subject and a predicate.75 Edwards has this same thesis, H1722 Logic 22, as an entry on “truth” in his scientific notebooks, located after entries on “perception” and “certainty.”76 A hypothetical proposition, H1738 Logic 16, is otherwise called conditional. For example, Heereboord calls on Burgersdijk’s example, “If islanders want to trade with other nations, they will have to use ships,” in his discussion on hypothetical necessity and external causes.77 However, although hypothetical propositions and hypothetical necessity are related, there is a distinction between the language of propositions and the laws of causality. Y1744 Logic thesis 10 points to the distinction between “If p, then q” conditionals and “hypothetical” propositions. The propositional truth function of p and q in “p implies q” differs from the 75 Y1718 Logic 20. Propositio de praeterito potest esse contingens, in (YUL); Y1737 Logic 8. “Quatenus idearum coexistentia cognoscitur , eatenus propositiones universales certae esse possunt”;Y1737 Logic 9. “Antecedens non semper est causa consequentis, sed consequentiae”;Y1737 Logic 10. “Consequens antecedentis veritatem semper consequitur.” Y1737 Logic 13. “Mens in ejus dissensu vel assensu propositioni, non est mere passiva”; Y1744 Logic 10. “Nulla datur propositio mere hypothetica”; Y1745 Logic 3. “Si non essent propositiones per se evidentes, cognitio non esset certa”; Yale 1751 Logic 10. “Propositionis hypotheticae veritas, non e partium veritate, sed earum connexione pendet”; Y1756 Logic 5. “Propositionis certitudo, est secundum duarum idearum perspicuam congruitatem, quae subjecto et praedicato continentur.” 76 Cf. Mark Garrett Longaker, “Idealism and Early-American Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Society Journal, Summer 2006, 6. This entry is in Edwards’s writings (WJE 6:340), and Longaker writes that Edwards “proposed to locate truth not in immediate recognition but rather in the labored location and comparison of ideas.” He concludes that Edwards “advocated complicated thinking in abstract categories (the kind of exercise promoted by scholastic and-to a lesser extent-Ramistic logic) as a necessary way to ‘penetrate and come by the prime reality of the thing.’” Cf. Locke, Essay, IV.15. 77 Cf. Burgersdijk, Institutionum metaphysicarum, 198.

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conditional “If-Then,” since the latter does not determine the truth-value of p and q, the former does. A necessary condition for the truth of “If p, then q” is that it is not both the case that p and not q. Two years prior to Edwards’s own Bachelor commencement, Rector Samuel Andrew presided over the Yale commencement theses in 1718: The Y1718 Logic thesis 20 states: (A). “A proposition from the past can be contingent”78 First, a decision has to be made on whether to translate de praeterito as “from the past” or “about the past.” The proposition concerns contingency and the past. Contingency can be approached methodologically by way of a structural diachronic look in contrast with a structural synchronic look. The proposition describes a contingent state of affairs that can most readily be conceived by considering an accidental feature that changes over time. The Yale proposition can be restated as follows: (1) A state of affairs p was true at t1 and no longer true at t2. An alternative approach to the contingent aspect of this proposition is to look at the synchronic structure of the proposition, which comes into view in an alternative translation of the proposition. Suppose that de praeterito were understood as “about the past,” instead of “from the past,” then, the second alternative translation is: Y1718, Logic 20 (B) “A proposition about the past can be contingent.” The Yale proposition can be restated as follows: (2) A state of affairs p that was true at t1 could, seen at t2 … n, not be true at t1. This state of affairs does not trace a diachronic change from a time in the past to a more recent time, but rather it signals that a change in status is possible at the same instant of time, what has been called “synchronic contingency,” or, “simultaneous alternatives.” In case (2), the state of affairs is contingent in the sense that a human being is blind, but can see at the same instant of time. And what is striking is that the focus on the synchronicity of the event brings two features of the proposition into sharper relief. One of those features is the same instant of time of the contingency feature of proposition (2) over against the two different instants of time featured in proposal (1). The other is the syntactical modal feature potest, which points to the possibility of a change in status, and in this case, at the same synchronic instant of time. “That a human being is blind and can see at the same instant of time” is a proposition describing a synchronically, contingent state of affairs. It consists of a conceptual pattern that is brought into 78 YUL. Y1718 Logic thesis 20. “Propositio de praeterito, potest esse contingens.”

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view by the present tense, indicative mood “is,” and the present tense, subjunctive mood modal “can” combined with “the same instant of time.” The subjunctive modal harnesses “simultaneous alternatives” to the same instant of time, resulting in a reality conceived by simultaneous powers. The harnessing of the indicative to the subjunctive results in an alternative state of affairs, at the same instant of time, which is mutually exclusive. It is arguably the case that Yale taught the main-line robust Christian view of contingency, based on the analysis of Y1718 Logic thesis 20. The argument underlying the disputation likely makes use of the term, ad utrumlibet, to express indifferent alternatives. In Edwards’s Freedom of Will, he will associate the term with so-called ‘Arminian’ schemes of freedom. However, the term appears in Heereboord’s Reformed definition of freedom, which we will consider below in chapter 2 §2.6.8. This discussion adumbrates chapter 8 §8.3.1 where we give a detailed presentation of the classic medieval and early-modern line on implication and synchronic contingency/freedom.

1.2.9 Intuitive evidence and assent Harvard • H1726 Logic 16. The criterion of truth is evidence. • H1727 Logic 18. The highest perspicuity elicits our assent necessarily. • H1727 Logic 21. Axioms are not conducive at all to communicate new knowledge.79 Yale • Y1730 Logic 10. Assent can be equally firm without actual intuition of evidence. • Y1742 Logic 10. Both moral evidence and demonstration can liberate the mind from doubt. • Y1749 Logic 10. Evidence cannot deceive. • Y1750 Logic 6. Intuitive evidence is necessary in all degrees of demonstrative science. • Y1750 Logic 7. The mind cannot suppress assent to intuitive evidence. • Y1750 Logic 9. Assent can be equally firm, without actual evidence of intuition. • Y1753 Logic 9. Intuition is the highest grade of science.80 79 H1726 Logic 16. “Veritatis criterion est evidentia”; H1727 Logic 18. “Summa perspicuitas assensum nostrum necessario elicit.”; H1727 Logic 21. “Axiomata ad scientiam novam communicandum nihil prorsus conducunt.” 80 Y1730 Logic 10. “Assensus potest esse aeque firmus sine actuali evidentiae intuitu.” ; Y1742

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Edwards writes that intuitive evidence concerns things we see that are “necessary in themselves,” the contrary of which would be absurd. He gives as an example, “We see that twice two is four…a circle has no angles.”81 As we saw under “cognition (§1.2.7) above, humankind, however, has not “the strength of mind,” says Edwards, to immediately intuit the truth of every kind of necessary premise. For example, humankind cannot immediately intuit the idea of “universal infinite entity.” Rather, one must first ascend and prove inductively from effects that there is an eternal cause, and secondly, prove by argumentation that God’s existence is necessary, but not by intuition; then thirdly, one descends and “proves many of his perfections a priori.”82 Rather than having as its startingpoint Lockean intuition, the analysis of Edwards’s theory of knowledge starts with the principle of sufficient reason, that is, that every effect has a cause.83 His method is one of analysis, first ascend, then descend. Whatever begins to be, is not necessary in itself; it is not self-existent, and therefore must have a cause. Intuitive assent, for Edwards, is a “natural necessity,” a natural causal force, like feeling pain, as he puts it; as when one’s eyes are opened, so one “assents to the truth of certain propositions,” such as “two and two make four.”84 But natural necessity is stronger than a deductive necessity of the consequence. Edwards’s necessity is a demonstrative, necessity of the consequent. Edwards takes up these theses on intuitive evidence, and the principle of sufficient reason, that every effect has a cause, and concludes that without it, we would only have intuitive evidence, and be without the principle by which to prove God’s existence. Edwards says “we have not the strength and extent of mind” to know God exists by humankind’s intuitive evidence alone.85 Moreover, a natural necessity of assent figures prominently in Edwards’s understanding and explanation that the will is as the greatest apparent good. For the degree of firmness of assent is in proportion to what is most agreeable.86 Thus, although Y1750 Logic thesis 7 says, “The mind cannot suppress assent to intuitive evidence,” and the truth of a proposition, such as two and two make four, Edwards goes further and infers a natural necessity; natural forces force themselves upon him, and he therefore rules out any contingency. That is, the act of cognition and intuitive assent, and

81 82 83 84 85 86

Logic 10 “Evidentia moralis aeque ac demonstratio, mentem e dubio liberare potest.”; Y1749 Logic 10. “Evidentia decipere nequit”; Y1750 Logic 6. “Evidentia intuitiva, in omnibus gradibus scientiae demonstrativae, est necessaria.”; Y1750 Logic 7. Evidentiae intuitivae, mens non potest cohibere assensum.”; Y1750 Logic 9. “Assensus potest esse aeque firmus, absque actuali evidentia intuitus.” ; Y1753 Logic 9. “Scientiae summus gradus est intuitio.” WJE 1: 182. Ibid. Ayers, Locke, 1: 88, 128, 264. Ibid., 157, 182. Ibid., 182. WJE 1: 145.

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its relation to the object to which it assents, cannot be otherwise than it is, for Edwards. But this position curtails freedom of will, alluded to in Y1737 Metaphysics thesis 2, seen above under cognition (in §1.2.7), which stated that “our cognition is partly of will (partim voluntatis), partly necessary (partim necessaria).” Even if one grants Y1750 Logic thesis 7, that the mind cannot suppress assent to intuitive evidence, nevertheless, unlike in Edwards’s scheme, the relation of the will to the object is such that the will can not assent.

1.2.10 Causes Harvard • H1715 Quaestiones. 1. Whether there is in every action the concurrence of a prime cause with a second cause? Nathanael Appleton affirms this. • H1729 Logic 18. God is not the cause of the eternal truth of propositions.87 Yale • Y1728 Physics 24. There is no necessary connection admitted between natural causes and effects. • Y1737 Metaphysics 4. Sense is not the cause of ideas, but the object of reasoning. • Y1737 Metaphysics 8. An independent cause is demonstrated by the subordination of causes and effects. • Y1745 Metaphysics 7. All events proceed from the eternal truth of causes. • Y1752 Metaphysics 6. There must be a necessary nexus between a proper cause and effect. • Y1765 Metaphysics 8. Chosen for debate. All events are necessarily connected with their causes.88 Princeton • P1755 Metaphysics 2. There is no infinite regression in successive causes.

87 H1715 Q 1. “An Detur Concursus Causae Primae cum Secunda in omni actione?” Affirmat respondens Nathanael Appleton; H1729 Logic 18. “Deus non est causa eternae veritatis propositionum.” 88 Y1728 Physics 24. “Inter causas naturales et effectus nulla datur connexio necessaria”; Y1737 Meta 4. “Causa idearum non est sensus, sed rationis objectum”; Y1737 Meta 8. “Causa independens, e causarum et effectuum subordinatione demonstratur”; Y1745 Meta 7. “Omnes eventus ab aeterna veritate causarum procedunt.”; Y1752 Meta 6. “Inter causam proprie dictam, et effectum, necessarius debet esse nexus”; Y1765 Meta 8. “Eventus omnes, cum eorum causis necessario connectuntur,” in (YUL).

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• P1760 Ethics 22–24. Moral obligation presupposes a reason and congruency of things. But, God is the cause of all things, and on this account, of their relations. Therefore, God is both cause and exemplar of reason and congruence of all states of affairs.89 The H1715 Quaestio 1 raises the issue of one of the requisites for free human action, namely, concurrence. The thesis does not specify what kind of concurrence, general, universal, or the Reformed use of a “previous concurrence” and “influx.” But student Eleazer May’s notebook of quaestiones refers to one of the requisites for action, the “divine influx,” which means students, and presumably Edwards, who was following the development of commencement theses, were discussing the different requisites for free human action.90 There is a subtle distinction and change between Y1728 Physics thesis 24, presided over by Elisha Williams, and Y1752 Metaphysics thesis 6, presided over by Thomas Clap. Whereas there was no necessary connection between cause and effect in 1728, there is one in 1752. In fact, already in 1745, also under Thomas Clap, there is a causal nexus from eternal truths, the very kind of nexus we find in Edwards’s scheme. In his “Controversies” Notebook, we will see Edwards’s interest in a causal sequence of events which he transcribes from Stapfer (in chapter 6 §6.4). H1729 Logic thesis 18 raises the issue of the identity and source of eternal truths, and clearly appears directed against Descartes.91 Can one infer the reality of eternal essences from these propositions? Heereboord rejected the inference from propositions to the reality of eternal essences. He argued that their truth does not depend on the existence of things. For propositions can still be true, even though they do not exist. That there is a proposition only means that there is a necessary connection of the predicate with the subject. The truth of the proposition does not depend upon the existence of states of affairs. Moreover, Heereboord said that there are philosophers who fold the second kind of per se necessity into a first kind of independent necessity, which Heereboord reserves for God alone.92 In this manner of thinking, if “God is not the 89 P1755 Meta 2. “In causis successivis non sit progressio infinita”; P1760 Ethics 22. “Obligatio moralis rationem et congruentiam rerum supponit. 23. Sed, Deus est causa rerum, idcirco et earundem relationum. Ergo, 24. Deus est causa et exemplar rationis et congruentiae rerum.” 90 LSF GEN MSS 360 Eleazer May, Box 1, folder 4, p. 40. 91 To the question, “What necessitated God to create these eternal truths,” Descartes answered that nothing necessitated God. Heereboord opposed Descartes’s radical freedom, wherein he held that God could “make it not true that all the radii of the circle are equal,” in John Cottingham et al., The philosophical writings of Descartes, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984–91), III: 25. 92 Heereboord elsewhere names the philosophers as Suárez, Fonseca, Lessius, Molina and Jesuits.

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cause of eternal truth of propositions,” then the reasoning is that just as God cannot be otherwise than he is, so eternal truths, they cannot be other than they are, such as humans are risible. These philosophers fold demonstrations and essential propositions of the first and second kind of necessity into their definition of independent necessity. The significance of this thesis for Edwards is that he also conflates these distinct kinds of per se necessity into what others reserve for God’s independent necessity.93

1.2.11 Possibility Yale • Y1747 Metaphysics 5–7. The possibility of change implies imperfection. In God, the natural power of acting does not always imply possibility. That can only exist from eternity which does not have any (merely) possible cause.94 Princeton • P1750 Metaphysics 4. Natural possibility can exist apart from moral possibility.95 These theses anticipate the “twofold state of affairs,” a state of possibility, structurally prior to the decree, and a state of futurition, after the decree, the notion of which Edwards transcribed into his “Controversies” Notebook from Stapfer, and appropriated, but on different terms—removing contingency. This will receive discussion in Morton, chapter 5, and in Stapfer in chapter 6 on the “Controversies” Notebook. Y1747 Metaphysics 6 clarifies that God’s “natural” power of acting points to the possibilities God can, if he wills, bring a state of affairs into a status of futurition. We see that Heereboord distinguishes between “natural power” of choice in humans and natural power in God; it is a freedom ad utrumlibet, that is, God can choose between alternate possibles (in chapter 2 §2.6.5 and §2.6.8).96 93 See WJE 1: 153. 94 Y1747 Meta 5. “Mutationis possibilitas imperfectionem implicat. 6. In Deo potentia naturalis agendi possibilitatem non semper implicat. 7. Id solum existere potest ab aeterno cujus nulla datur causa possibilis. 95 P1750 Meta 4. “Possibilitas naturalis absque Possibilitate morali existere potest,” in (Princeton University Commencement Records 1747-present AC 115). 96 Cf. on “state of possibility” in, Francis Turretin, Institutio Theologiae Elencticae, C. 18. q. 12. De scientia Dei, 232; q. 13, De scientia media, 234; Petrus van Mastricht, ThPrTh, c. 13 De scientia media, 23. q. 5, 149; Samuel Rutherford, Disputatio Scholastica de Divina Providentia, c. 3 De scientia media, 15.

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1.2.12 Foreknowledge Yale • Y1735 Metaphysics 6. Divine foreknowledge doesn’t deny human liberty. • Y1740 Quaestiones 9. Whether divine foreknowledge implies the certainty of the event? Robert Silliman affirms this. • Y1756 Metaphysics 8. Chosen for debate. Foreknowledge of free acts does not imply a contradiction.97 Edwards agrees that it is possible to rhyme divine foreknowledge with human freedom and with the necessity of the consequence of the decrees.98 But unlike H1759 metaphysics thesis 3 and H1760 quaestio 8, above under contingency, which affirmed the reconciliation of God’s foreknowledge with contingency and human free action, we will see that Edwards’s scheme has no room for contingency.99 In his Freedom of Will, he will countravene the above Yale theses, taken together with the theses on contingency (§1.2.3), which call human agent’s acts of will contingent, and roots those contingent acts in God’s will, and he will state that God’s infallible foreknowledge of events precludes any contingency. He pins the certainty of decreed events, which God then “foresees,” upon God’s infallible knowledge of the event, rather than on the divine decree.100 Whereas the two Reformed authors that we will consider on this topic would say that the event is necessary in the sense of the necessity of the consequence of the decree, Edwards makes it sound as if the necessity of the event is due to God’s foreknowledge of the event. His concern seems to be to diminish or eliminate the notion of contingency, thinking that the nub of his opponents argument rests upon it. But in doing so he actually weakens the Reformed argument, which acknowledges a contingent divine decree and will as reason for the event to occur in the course of history, and as a result, that God will see what he freely has decreed, by his knowledge of vision, or intuitive knowledge. Instead, Edwards states what his opponents also state, to wit, that because God foresees events, they necessarily occur.101 But this doesn’t root the event in God’s will (H1704 Quaestiones 14), but in humankind’s will. 97 Y1735 Meta 6. “Praescientia divina non tollit libertatem humanum”; Y1740, Q. 9 An Praescientia divina eventus certitudinem implicet? Affirmat respondens Robertus Silliman; Y1756 Meta 8. “Actionum liberarum praescientia, contradictionem non implicat.” 98 WJE 1:257. 99 WJE 1: 239. Cf. Van Mastricht, ThPrTh, Bk. 2, c. 13 (§§17, 19, 22), 147–9; William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, ed., and trans., John D. Eusden. 3rd Latin edition 1629. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1968), Bk. 1, c. 7 (§§23–27), 96; Turretin, Institutio, Q. 12 De scientia Dei (§26), 233. 100 WJE 1: 239, 257. 101 This adumbrates the discussion in chapter 6 §6.3.1, on “Remonstrant proposition four.”

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1.2.13 Decrees and God’s will Yale • Y1740 Quaestiones. 5. Whether whatever God has willed, he would have willed from eternity? Eli Colton affirms this. • Y1740 Quaestiones. 10 Whether the necessity of the decrees denies freedom in creatures? Timothy Judd denies this. • Y1748 Quaestiones. 20. Whether the divine decree denies human freedom? Thaddeus Betts denies this. • Y1750 Quaestiones. 20. Whether something future could be certain, without a preceding decree? John Hubbard denies this. • Y1753 Quaestiones. 8 Chosen for debate. Whether the purpose of God can finally be frustrated? Ebenezer Dyer denies this.102 Quaestio 20 Y1750 demonstrates the need for a structural “order of nature,” in order to understand what “a preceding decree” means. It is not as if one ought interpret God’s decree as chronologically prior in time, but rather prior in order of God’s decree, which precedes his visionary foreknowledge of what he has decreed. John Hubbard denies the quaestio, as stated, since it would imply that an event could be certain without God’s decree. It is God’s decree that makes the event certain. The above quaestiones confirm what we have seen, namely, that God’s will and decree do not violate free human action, which nevertheless, is in a dependent relation to God, the structure of which is explained by placing divine knowledge, will and decrees and human action in an order of nature. Y1740 Quaestio 9 (foreknowledge) examined together with Y1750 Quaestio 20 above shows that divine foreknowledge implies the certainty or the necessity of the consequence, but it is the decree (Quaestio 20) that makes it certain or necessary, not knowledge. Moreover, the above theses and quaestiones clarify that God’s decree imposes no necessity upon secondary causes, which remain free, but rather certainty, as in the case of the prophecy that the bones of Christ would not be broken. But the soldiers freely wielded their spears and swords and the bones remained real bones, breakable that is.103 At issue in Y1753 Quaestio 8 is one of the requisites for a Reformed understanding of human action, namely, the divine influx. We will see in chapter 7 that 102 Y1740 Q. 5. “An quicquid Deus voluit voluerit ab aeterno?” Affirmat respondens Eli Colton; Y1740 Q. 10. “An decretorum necessitas, libertatem in creaturis tollat?” Negat respondens Timotheus Judd; Y1748 Q. 20. “An decretum divinum tollat libertatem humanam?” Negat respondens Thaddeus Betts; Y1750 Q. 20. “An aliquid possit esse certo futurum, absque decreto praecedenti?” Negat Respondens Johannes Hubbard; Y1753 Q. 8. “An finale Dei propositum possit frustrari?, negat respondens Ebenezer Dyer.” 103 See Ames, Marrow, (§§ 47–50), 99.

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Whitby rejects it since he views it as an operation that cannot be frustrated, and thus violates requisites for humankind’s freedom in a state of trial. Edwards was present at this commencement and he would have approved of these quaestiones, with the proviso of removing contingency from the answer. Edwards, however, would have learned from Wollebius while at Yale, that “The necessity of the divine decrees does not deny freedom in mind-gifted creatures.”104

1.2.14 Virtue Harvard • H1739 Technology 10. Virtue is an eternal law, implanted in the mind, which obliges conscience to pursue that which is maximally consonant with right reason.105 Yale • Y1749 Ethics 3. The moral rectitude of the divine nature is the highest obligation to virtue. • Y1765 Ethics 9. The virtue of all actions consists in their nature, not in their cause.106 Edwards locates the essence of virtue or vice in one’s nature.107 He contends that his opponents’s requisite for genuine free human action is located in a free cause, which they understand as independent of God’s physical influx. Edwards’s proposal is consistent with his theory of freedom for excellence or perfection, which we take up in chapter 9. Together with Y1749 Ethics thesis 14 on the proportionate degrees of perfection and Y1749 Metaphysics 6, 7 on moral necessity, Edwards’s scheme is one based on the nature and internal disposition of virtue and acts of the heart and mind.108 Noone can excuse himself or herself due to one’s “bad nature.” In Edwards’s scheme, the worse the nature, the greater the blame. We see where Heereboord says, “Virtue is inchoate by nature, but not 104 “Necessitas decretorum Dei, non tollit libertatem in creaturis rationalibus. Nec tollit contingentiam in causis secundis,” in Johannes Wollebius, Compendium theologiae christianae, (Amsterdam: Aegidium Janssonium Valckenier, 1655), C. 3. §§6–7, 26. 105 H1739 Tech. 10. “Virtus est lex aeterna, in mente insita, quae obligat conscientiam ad prosecutionem illius, quod rectae rationi est maxime consonum.” 106 Y1749 Ethics 3. “Moralis naturae divinae rectitudo est summa ad virtutem obligatio”; Y1765 Ethics 9. “Actionum virtus omnium, in natura, et non in causa earum constat.” 107 WJE 1:337. 108 Ibid. Cf. Ames’s (§ 5), where he calls virtue a habit with various debrees of perfection, in Marrow, Bk II, c. 2. “Virtue.”

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perfected by nature” (in chapter 9 §9.3.2). Edwards would add that a God-given principle of new life needs to be implanted in us for perfection of habits of the heart and mind. We explore Turretin’s and Van Mastricht’s appropriation of the “seeds of virtues,” and how they integrate virtue with their requisites for divine and human action (in chapter 9 §9.3.3 and §9.3.4). This is in view of understanding how their set of requisites differ from Edwards’s requisites for freedom of perfection.109

1.2.15 Newtonian physics Harvard • H1693 Physics 2. All matter is uniform. • H1708 Physics 22. All motion is local.110 Yale • Y1718 Physics 2. Matter is divisible, impenetrable, and passive substance. • Y1718 Physics 4. Where no place is, there is space. • Y1720 Physics 2. Action and reaction are always equal. • Y1720 Physics 3. The difference of weight in bodies of equal dimensions indicates a vacuum. • Y1720 Physics 4. The same force that has generated motion destroys it. • Y1720 Physics 4a. All matter is the same. • Y1720 Physics 4b. All motion is local.111 At Harvard, Increase Mather presided over Cartesian theses, where Descartes attempted to explain the universe as made up of homogenous matter, not diversly formed bodies in empty space. In a letter to Buitendijk, in 1643, Descartes wrote that he “does not admit various kinds of motion, but only local motion.”112 109 Cf. on lex aeternae, see Cicero, De legibus, I.6. 18ff; Augustine, Against Faustus, 22.27; On seeds of virtues, Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, 3.1; Burgersdijk, Idea philosophiae, 137; Keckermann, Systema Ethicae, Praecognita, 23; Turretin, Institutio, Q.3 §9 An detur theologia naturalis, 637; Walaeus, Compendium, Part 2. Quae agit de virtutis natura in genere, 270; Cf. Ames, Marrow, Bk 2: 224. c. 2 “Virtue.” 110 H1693 Physics 2. “Omnis materia est uniformis;” H1708 Physics 22. “Omnis motus est localis.” 111 Y1718 Physics 2. “Materia est divisibilis, impenetrabilis, ac substantia passiva”; Y1718 Physics 4. “Datur spatium ubi non datur locus”; Y1720 Physics 2. “Actio et reactio sunt semper aequales”; Y1720 Physics 3. “Differentia ponderositatis in corporibus aequalium dimensionum vacuum indicat”; Y1720 Physics 4 “Eadem vis destruit motum quae genuit”; Y1720 Physics 4a. “Omnis materia est eadem”; Y1720 Physics 4b. “Omnis motus est localis.” 112 The Philosophical writings of Descartes, Cottingham et al., 3: 230.

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After having explained the “relativity of space,” Descartes wrote, that there is no other motion “to be feigned in rerum natura” than “local motion.”113 The Yale 1718 Physics thesis 2, presided over by Samuel Andrew, is clearly Newton’s definition of matter.114 Timothy Cutler presided over theses from Newtonian physics, such as Newton’s third law, in Physics thesis 2, “To any action there is always an opposite and equal reaction; in other words, the actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal and always oppposite in direction.”115 On the attractive force of spherical bodies, the Yale 1720 Physics thesis 4 is likely taken from Newton’s explanation that “the attractions, therefore, being made equally in opposite directions, annul each other.”116 The significance of the appearance of Newton’s physics on the Yale broadside in the year Edwards graduated with his bachelor’s degree will become clearer when we demonstrate (in chapters 9 and 10), that Edward’s incorporated Newton’s ”new principle of motion and action” into his understanding of active, lawlike forces impacting the movement of the will.117 We will also see in chapter 10 that Edwards stops short of adapting Newton’s principles of “infinite space and infinite duration,” and the consequences thereof for Edwards’s understanding of God’s universal determining providence.118

1.3

Summary

The affinities and perhaps self-conscious interaction between Edwards and commencent theses and quaestiones becomes likely, particularly with 1754, the year of Edwards’s Freedom of Will, as a benchmark. We have seen that there are commencement theses before 1754 that Edwards also has in mind and works out in his Freedom of Will. And there are theses and quaestiones that clearly reflect Edwards’s wording in his Freedom of Will, such as in Y1756 metaphysics 11, 12. This interaction suggests not just mutual influence, but also an attempt by Edwards to stay engaged on these issues, and significantly, it helps justify the approach taken in this study of giving a central place to the commencement theses and quaestiones—in addition to disputations in the curricula—as end-

113 Alexandre Koyré, Newtonian studies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 80. 114 Koyré, Newtonian studies, 110, 113. 115 Isaac Newton The Principia: Mathematical principles of natural philosophy, trans. Bernard I. Cohen and Anne Whitman (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 417. 116 Newton Principia, Bk. 1§12. Proposition 70. Theorem 30, 590. 117 WJE 1: 158–9, 392. 118 WJE 1: 386.

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products of the school’s curricula by which to measure their standards of orthodoxy. Student notebooks, curricula theses, and Edwards’s Freedom of Will show that the “order of nature” was a technical term in the theologian’s toolchest, and it proves itself useful in making distinctions between the Reformed and the Arminian set of requisites for divine and human human. The Y1753 Metaphysics thesis 3 clearly indicates the usefulness and application of the temporal and nontemporal features of the term. The Latin idiom, physica, is at work in Y1761 quaestio 13—God’s pure natural (physica) act of regeneration, and in Heereboord’s definition of freedom as physical, natural, not moral, in chapter 2 (§2.6.8), and in one of the Reformed requisites for free action, physical influx. In that chapter, we will see that the term means “in its own nature,” “natural,” or real, not physical as in corporeal. It also is juxtaposed with ethical or moral. Unlike Edwards’s necessitarian freedom of perfection scheme, the commencement quaestiones clearly appropriate contingency, and assume that contingency and freedom in human action can be reconciled with the necessity of the consequence of God’s decree. The language of contingency belongs to God’s visionary knowledge. But in Edwards’s theological language, it finds no voice. Commencement theses such as Y1749 Ethics thesis 14 and Y1756 theses 11, 12, taken together with Edwards’s scheme of locating the essence of virtue in one’s nature—clearly reflected in Y1765 Ethics 9—underscore the development of a “seeds of virtue” ethic in the Christian tradition.

2.

Adriaan Heereboord on Reformed freedom ad utrumlibet

2.1

Introduction

The Leiden University professor of philosophy, Adriaan Heereboord (1614– 1661), who occupied the chair of philosophy beginning in 1643, was also known outside of the universities for his philosophical exercises, the Meletemata, which is a kind of précis of select disputations used by tutors in dissenter academies in England, and by tutors at Harvard College, in Cambridge, New England and Yale College.1 The course of study at Harvard, with Yale following its pattern, required sophomores and juniors to recite disputations from Heereboord’s Meletemata.2 Students indirectly became familiar with Heereboord through the texts extracted by Charles Morton in his précis, “A System of Ethicks” and “Pneumatics,” which were then copied in various student notebooks at Harvard. Heereboord’s “Collegiate ethics” first appeared in 1648. His select disputations, otherwise known as the philosophical exercises, or Meletemata, first appeared in 1654. In 1664 Solomon Stoddard registered his books with Harvard, which shows he owned a copy of the Meletemata, either the 1654 or 1659 edition.3 In the disputations relevant to the discussion in the next three chapters on acts of the will, freedom, necessity, and contingency, we shall see that Heereboord adduces authorities much like other Reformed authors of his day, drawing on 1 For a brief discussion of Heereboord’s biography in a work that is relevant to this study on Reformed freedom, see Norman Fiering, Moral philosophy at seventeenth-century Harvard: a discipline in transition, Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 96–103. On the question of “concurrence” at Leiden University, comparing Heereboord with his predecessor Burgersdijk, see E.P. Bos and H.A. Krop, eds., Franco Burgersdijk (1590–1635), Studies in the History of Ideas in the Low Countries (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), 48–53. 2 See John Noble, “An Old Harvard Commencement Programme, 1730,” in Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. 6, Transactions 1899, 1900 (Boston: Published by the society, 1904), 277. 3 Fiering, Norman. “Solomon Stoddard’s library at Harvard in 1664.” Harvard Library Bulletin 20 (1972): 261.

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Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Scotus, Suárez, Francisco Zumel, Scipio Agnello, and William Ames, among others. And, much like his contemporaries, he does not hesitate to respectfully disagree on certain points with those whom he highly regards, which we will see in the case of William Ames. Despite his being dubbed a friend of the Cartesian new philosophy, and the “first Leiden Cartesian,” Heereboord’s scholastic method and eclectic use of sources show that he still gave prominent place to the main-line tradition of Christian philosophy in his ethics courses on the subject of divine and human freedom of will. His plea in his day at Leiden University was for academic freedom of philosophy.4 In his disputations in “Collegiate ethics,” Heereboord structures his disputations around Aristotle’s Nichomachean ethics, and Aquinas’s ST Ia IIae q. 8. By structure, we do not, however, mean the content of Heereboord’s teaching. These are introductory level disputations on these topics on which he will give more detailed discussion and answer objections in another set of disputations, called “Exercises in ethics.” Both were bound and published with the more advanced discussions of the “Select disputations” under the title of the Meletemata (Exercises in philosophy).5 In this chapter we will establish that power ad utrumlibet is intrinsic to the main Christian line of thought on freedom essential to virtue and vice. We begin with select passages from Heereboord’s “Collegiate ethics” and “Exercises in philosophy” on the topic of acts of will, which he breaks down along the lines of 4 On Heereboord’s influence on Edwards, see William Sparkes Morris, The Young Jonathan Edwards: A Reconstruction (Chicago Studies in the History of American Religion, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1991. Reprint, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005), 102; Leen Spruit, Species intelligibilis: from perception to knowledge. II. Renaissance controversies, later scholasticism, and the elimination of the intelligible species in modern philosophy, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 49 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 429–30; On Heereboord as the first Leiden Cartesian, his eclectic method, and the controversy of his day at Leiden University, see Willem Frijhoff and Marijke Spies, Dutch culture in a European perspective: 1650 hard-won unity, vol. 1 of Dutch culture in a European perspective (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004), 306–9; Theo Verbeek, Descartes and the Dutch: early reactions to Cartesian philosophy, 1637–1650, Journal on the History of Philosophy (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University, 1992), chapter 3, “The Leiden crisis”; Herman De Dijn, “Figures de la philosophie néerlandaise. Adriaan Heereboord et le cartésianisme néerlandais,” Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 75, no. 1 (1983): 56–69. For bibliography, See Scholasticon, http://www.scholasticon.fr/Database/Scholastiques_fr.php?ID=666, (accessed June 22, 2015); See Heereboord’s summary of the Cartesian crises at Leiden in his “Epistola ad curatores” reprinted in the beginning of the Meletemata. Descartes’s Opera philosophica, 4 tomes, and Meditationes de prima philosophia were part of both the Dummer collection gift to the new Yale College and Solomon Stoddard’s library in 1664. 5 Adriaan Heereboord, Meletemata Philosophica (Amsterdam: Joannem Ravesteinium, 1665). Henceforth, in the present chapter 2, and chapters 3 and 4, we will indicate whether the footnote refers to Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic. (Collegiate ethics), Meletemata, Disp. Exercit. Ethic. (Exercises in ethics), or Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select. (Exercises in philosophy), with page numbers from the Meletemata (1665) Amsterdam edition. (Translation is mine).

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Aquinas’s commentary in the Summa into the acts, objects, and motives of the will. This chapter also introduces Heereboord’s set of requisites for humankind’s freedom, which, along with his definition of freedom (in §8), will serve as a benchmark for the Reformed scheme of freedom ad utrumlibet. We now turn to the exercises on the acts and motives of the will and understanding.

2.2

The acts of the will

2.2.1 Elicited acts and commands Heereboord begins by distinguishing the different powers that are involved in the psychology of eliciting an act of the will. He divides the acts of the will (actus voluntatis) into elicited (elicitos) and commanded (imperatos) acts.6 His definitions require an elementary knowledge of proximate and immediate causes. A proximate cause is an auxiliary cause, not a principle cause, and as a proximate cause, a command can, for example, give sight to the blindness of the will, which can elicit an act. Heereboord says there is a sense in which a command belongs to both the practical understanding and the will. Just as the sight of colors stir the senses, so can a command of the understanding give sight to the will to guide it, and, as a command of the will, produce an act. An elicited act is when a human agent elicits an act of the will proximately and immediately and thereby the will itself produces an act. For example, willing and nilling (velle et nolle), loving and hating, signify an elicited act of the will. That an agent elicits an act means there is a latent power in the will, as if hiding, which the agent summons. A command, as an act of the will, proceeds or goes out from the will. However, the act of command does not inhere in the will, but in other faculties, from which it proceeds proximately, such as sight and speech.7 For example, when someone plays the harp, Heereboord says, she does not issue countless specific commands to the fingers, but a general or implicit command to strum. A general command implies the coordination of mind and body in playing. Therefore it is an implicit command. There are not explicit commands of the will and understanding interceding at every movement of the fingers.8

6 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 38 (§2). 7 Ibid., 38–9. On how Heereboord viewed intellectual cognition, see Leen Spruit, Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge. II. Renaissance Controversies, Later Scholasticism, and the Elimination of the Intelligible Species in Modern Philosophy, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 49 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 429. 8 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 39.

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2.2.2 The will and the desired end Heereboord divides an elicited act of the will into two terms, the will (boulesin) and choice (prohairesis). In Latin, he says, the former is called the appetite (the Scholastics say volition) and the latter is called election or pre-election (electio or praelectio). Boulesis, or appetite (appetitus), is willing considered apart from previous deliberation (absque praevia deliberatione). Human beings, for example, desire and will the ultimate end (finis ultimus) in this way. The ultimate end is that than which nothing better can be proposed to the will (quo cum nihil melius proponi possit voluntati). The will is, as it were, carried to this end. A person need not deliberate about what appears best or most attractive to him or her. However, the will does not desire the ultimate end without previous judgment (sine praevio judicio).9 An agent wills the means within his or her power to achieve the desired end. When a patient visits a doctor one assumes that she wants to get healthy. There is no deliberation about the desired end. Neither does the doctor deliberate about means or options not available to him. When the truth of a statement is so clear such that the intellect is convinced that, “The whole is greater than its part,” or “the goodness of a thing is so manifest,” the intellect immediately recognizes this (goodness) and judges that it must be pursued. For example, “That human beings ought to worship God,” is a judgment of ours without deliberation. But when the truth or goodness is not so clear, an agent’s judgment needs to deliberate. In this case, choice (prohairesis) or (electio) follows preceding deliberation.10

2.2.3 Whether a neutral act of the will be permitted? With regard to the willing of the means and the ends of an act, the question arises “whether a neutral act of the will be permitted, which be oriented neither to the end, nor the means?”11 Heereboord expresses concern over the difficulty of the question. Duns Scotus affirms a neutral act, writes Heereboord, but Aquinas denies it (affirmativa a Scoto, negativa a Thomas defenditur). Heereboord says he stands in part with Thomas and disallows a neutral act of will (Nos a Thomae partibus stamus, et negamus, dari actum neutrum in voluntate). However, he does go on to admit the possibility of a neutral act, given one caveat. But first he argues that there is no third act of will, and therefore, one cannot permit a neutral act of 9 Ibid., (§3). 10 Ibid. 11 “An non detur voluntatis actus neuter, qui nec sit finis, nec mediorum” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Exercit. Ethic., 48 (§6).

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the will, which concerns neither the end, nor the means. Since they are immediately juxtaposed, they do not admit a third, and yet to be willed for its own sake, and to be willed for the sake of something else, that is, desired as an end, rather than a means, shows that the two are immediately opposed to one another, and “therefore there is no third appetite or act admitted.”12 Up to this point, Heereboord has claimed that his opinion conforms to Aristotle, “every volition is either for its own sake, or for the sake of something else (omnem volitionem, aut propter se esse, aut propter aliud).”13 And what need is there for a third kind of act? Just as there is no third or neutral assent in the science of knowing, of principles, of conclusions, so neither is there a third or neutral appetite or desire. For that would imply a desire without an end in mind, nor a means to an end. But here is the crux of the matter. The end has as it were two duties (Finis duplex habet quasi officium): one, that which is to be loved for its own sake (quod ametur propter se), the other, that other things are loved for its sake (quod alia amentur propter ipsum). The first has the end, insofar as it has goodness in itself, the second has it insofar as it is the final cause. The final cause is that whose grace seeks something so that something be the cause of it and yet it does not cause in the act. And thus, something can be the end, and desirable for its own sake, the duty being performed to the first end, because it is a good thing, and yet it does not cause finally. It does not exercise causality in an act to an end, and the duty is not performed to the latter end, so that the means of the deed, and act are not sought on account of the end. “If the end be taken in the first way, for the fact that it is desirable for its own sake, there is no neutral act of the will permitted.”14 But here is Heereboord’s caveat on a neutral act of will. If one considers the end as for the sake of something else, “perhaps one can permit a neutral act of the will” (fortasse dari possit actus neuter voluntatis), which be neither the end, nor the means, which Heereboord thinks Scotus would have wanted. “In God, at least,” writes Heereboord, “there is such a neutral act” (in Deo saltem talis actus neuter est), because God desires nothing that in itself exercises causality to the end, which moves, draws, or pulls God’s own desire.15

12 “Ergo non datur tertius appetitus aut tertius voluntatis actus,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Exercit. Ethic., 48 (§6). 13 Ibid. The text reads “Aristoteli qui 2 Phys tex 29,” but it is found in Eth. nic. Book I:c. 2 (1094a18). 14 “Si finis accipiatur priori modo, pro eo, quod est appetibile propter se, non datur actus voluntatis neuter,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Exercit. Ethic., 49 (§6). 15 Ibid.

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2.2.4 Choice and consent The good as means to an end concerns the will and there are two terms that need definition for this discussion, namely, choice and consent. (1) First, choice (electio), in the Latin translations of Aristotle in the schools and academies, says Heereboord, is “the acceptance of some good by and in the will (ab et in voluntate) on the basis of rational council (ex rationis consilio) insofar as it conduces to the attainment of the end.”16 (2) Second, consent (consensum) is “the complacency by which the will approves the good, prescribed and accepted by reason, and acquiesces in it (in eo acquiescit).”17 Properly speaking, the understanding both consents and dissents while judging a state, whether it be good or not. Likewise the understanding approves (comprobat) or disapproves. Still, the Scholastics call this act of the will, “complacency,” (complacentia) because the means is prescribed by rational council (ratio consilio praescriptum). The act of the will finds it pleasing. The will consents because the useful good pleases (complacet) and so the will acquiesces in it. Since, properly speaking, consent (consensus) pertains to the understanding, Heereboord says it is more fitting to use the term “complacency” (complacentia) when the will acquiesces in a means or fitting good. In short, the understanding shows the will the good, the will acquiesces in it, and approves the judgment of the understanding, and is pleased with it.18

2.3

The objects of the will

As Heereboord will explain further in Exercitatio ethicarum, humans do not will evil as evil (malum qua malum); they can will evil, not under the aspect of evil, but under the apparent good. It is technically incorrect to say that a person wills hatred. “To hate one’s neighbor is not willing hate. Hating is not willing, but nilling (nolle). Hatred refers to nolition (odium refertur ad nolitionem), to avoiding.”19 For example, to nill a neighbor’s well-being does not imply volition of evil, as evil. True enough, when a person has an aversion to will his neighbor good, he or she wills him evil. But this, seen on balance and overall, is only “the material object of volition” (objectum materiale volitionis). It is not “the formal object of volition” (objectum formale volitionis). “For to will to a neighbor evil in 16 17 18 19

Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 40. Ibid. Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 40. “Tertio, responderi potest nulla est sequela, qui odit proximum vult malum sub ratione mali, quia odisse non est velle, sed nolle: odium refertur ad nolitionem, ad fugam,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Exercit. Ethic., 56 (§5).

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which nothing is good (and to will from hate), is, for the one himself who wills, fitting (commodum), pleasing ( jucundum), and has an aspect of goodness (rationem boni).”20 Here we use the standard convention of the noun “evil” as the object of the verbs willing and nilling, and “bad” as an adjective. Given what Heereboord has said about human agents desiring the good, either as an end to desire or as means to an end, and that humans do not will evil as evil, the question arises whether in any sense the object of the will desired, be bad. Heereboord shapes his response with an eye to Aquinas, Ia IIae q. 8. a. 1. Heereboord has made clear that the will wills the good that the mind presents to the will. Positively, an agent wills the good and so volition relates to the good. Volition concerns willing, desiring, pursuing. Negatively, with respect to evil, an agent nills evil and so nolition relates to bad states of affairs. Nolition is turning away, shunning evil. With regard to both the good and the bad, there are, what Heereboord calls, acts of suspension, namely, either not willing (non volendo), or not nilling (non nolendo). He names the classic four opposing acts of the will, with regard to good and evil. Positively, there are the opposing contraries to will (velle) and to nill (nolle), for example, to love and to hate; and there are the opposing contradictories, to will (velle) and not to will (non velle), and to nill (nolle) and not to nill (non nolle). In this way, he says, the Scholastics distinguish “freedom and indifference of the will,” which they have called “the freedom of specification” (specificationis sive contrarietatis-velle and nolle), and “the freedom of exercise” (exercitii seu contradictionis-velle and non velle).21 Freedom of specification concerns contrary acts of volition (velle) and nolition (nolle), distinguishing between pursuing and avoiding, loving and hating. The volition and nolition of objects “differ by species,” which means the object offered to the mind and desired as good differs in the form produced from the object, which, on the contrary, can also be avoided. They are further characterized by “positive acts” (positivos) or “a veto” (vetos).22 Freedom of exercise concerns contradictory acts of volition (velle) and nonvolition (non velle), distinguishing between pursuing and not pursuing, loving and not loving one person, for example, but perhaps loving another person. Likewise, it concerns acts of nolition (nolle) and non-nolition (non-nolle), avoiding and not avoiding, for example, “hating and not hating.” They are further characterized by “act and negation of an act” (negatio actus).23 Heereboord says the question arises in regard to the object of the will, “Whether the will can be moved to love and will evil as evil, under the aspect of 20 21 22 23

Ibid. Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 40–1 (§5). Ibid., 41. Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 41.

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evil (sub ratione mali)?” And, the corollary, “Whether the will can be moved to avoid and nill the good as good, under the aspect of good (sub ratione boni)?”24 He denies both notions.The will “cannot nill the good as good, neither can it will evil as evil.” There is a sense though in which he agrees that the will could will evil and nill good, and that is in the case of “willing the apparent good” (bonum apparens). Again, an agent does not will moral evil, but he or she can will bad states of affairs that appear, on balance and overall, good to them. Likewise, they can nill good states of affairs that appear, on balance and overall, bad to them. But that is not the same case as willing “evil as evil” (malum qua malum).25 A moral agent, however, does not take a choice without the council of the understanding. Suppose the last judgment of the understanding knows and judges an object of choice to be evil and it presents it to the will as such. It does not make sense and “it is in fact impossible,” says Heereboord, that the will nill the judgment of the understanding and go ahead and will evil as evil. Neither does the will nill what the intellect knows to be good.26 He gives Aristotle’s opening principle in the Nicomachean Ethics, “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action (electio) and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared” by the ancients “to be that at which all things aim.”27 Just as there is the object of the act of the will in willing the good, so there is the object of the understanding in assenting to the truth of the good. The understanding cannot assent to a falsehood that it believes to be false anymore than the will desire what is evil. Heereboord also lays down the principle that each faculty operates within its boundaries and sphere of activity. And the sphere of the activity of the will is to seek the good. Heereboord notes that experience teaches us that we do not will and love evil as such. Even “the demons” in hell, “when they blaspheme God, and commit other very serious crimes,” they do so “under the notion of the apparent good.” They desire bad states of affairs believing that they desire what is good. That is, “the apparent good.”28 That the will is carried along by willing not only the true good, but also the apparent good, has been stated, but not yet fully explained. In what sense does Heereboord call the object of the act of the will the apparent good? He says a human agent desires and inclines to some object based on some kind of consent 24 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 41. He notes that Aquinas treats this question in ST Ia IIae q. 8. 25 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 41 (§6). 26 Ibid. 27 “Omnis inquit, ars, et disciplina, itidem ac electio, bonum aliquod appetere videtur: qua propter bene Veteres dixerunt, bonum esse quod omnia appetunt,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 41 (§6). Heereboord cites Eth. nic. 1094a1–2. English translation from W.D. Ross “Ethica Nicomachea,” in Richard McKeon, ed., The basic works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941), 935. 28 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 41.

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and agreement with the thing (consentaneum et conveniens rei) according to form (secundum illam formam).29 In his commentary, Heereboord combines the rational understanding and the will of humans, saying, just as natural appetite is suited to the natural form of a thing, so the rational appetite (appetitus rationalis) or the will (seu voluntas) is suited to the apprehended form. In other words, the knowledge of the object (notitiam objecti) is possible due to an apprehended form of the object (forma objecti).30 For Heereboord, the understanding and volition are synchronized in their acts of understanding and acts of volition with respect to the form of the object. We will go into more of his detailed discussion of this synchronization below (in §2.6.2). It suffices for now to say that the understanding grasps the form of the desired object as does the will. There is, thus, “a form of the thing understood and a form of the thing willed” (forma rei intellectae et forma rei volitae). Again, just as there is “a natural appetite suited to the natural form of an object,” so there is “rational appetite suited to the apprehended object and the understanding,” that is, “the judgment of reason” ( judicium rationis). The point Heereboord makes is that for a natural and rational appetite, it is necessary and sufficient that their object is convenient according to the natural form/essence of the thing. Now, only the fact is given.31 All this is to say that the mind does not operate irrationally, rejecting without reason, the good, as it were, and somehow misjudging the goodness of objects presented to the mind. That is not what the apparent good means. Whether what is understood as good truly be good, is not to the point, says Heereboord. For example, although stealing is a bad state in itself, presumably a person has a “good” reason for doing it. At least he or she is convinced of that. The form that the “bad state” presents to the thief ’s mind is desirable (formam appetibilis). A person, therefore, knows and judges “the formal nature or rational account” (rationem formalem) of the desired state of affairs “as good” (ut bonum); and the thief knows and judges it “an apparent good.”32

2.4

The motives of the will

Heereboord structures his commentary around Aquinas’s ST Iª–IIae q. 9 a. 1 and he defines the motive of the will as “that which moves the will, what makes it will, and translates it into power to act.” He grants the object of the will to be “in part the cause of willing (ex parte causam volendi), but not the full cause of willing 29 30 31 32

Ibid., 42 (§7). Cf. Eth. nic. 1114a31. Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 42. Ibid. Ibid.

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(sed tamen non est plena causa volendi), however.” For the mere object of desire or the will (nudum objectum voluntatem) does not suffice to render action from inaction. Heereboord raises four points concerning the will as a blind power and its relation to the understanding. These points have to do with the concurrence of cognition and volition.33

2.4.1 Blind power First, “The will is said to be a blind power (potentia caeca), because the will itself does not understand, and whether it wills this or that, rightly or wrongly, it needs guidance from the understanding, because it is the eye of the will, just as a blind person is led along the way by the eye of one who sees.”34 As a blind power, the will does not act alone in inclining an agent to an object of choice. It appears then that the understanding moves the will to will.35 The power of the will is such that unless the understanding show the object to it, it cannot direct itself, since it has no desire for what is not known.

2.4.2 Duplex esse Second, the object relates to the human mind as a good or bad state of affairs in two ways of being. That is, there is a duplex esse attributed to states of affairs. (a) There is the real being (esse reale) of a state and (b) there is the objective being (objectivum esse) of a state. Objective being is what is understood in the mind of humans by intelligible being (esse intelligible). For example, food has objective being (objectivum esse) insofar as the mind knows it is needed to sustain life. But Heereboord says that in the case considered the object is viewed in sense (a), as esse reale, which is being the state has outside the soul, which is the principle of life. Esse reale refers to what the states of affairs have in themselves, by which they are what they are, and they possess the properties appropriate to their nature. Again, for example, food, has some esse reale in itself insofar as it is nourishment for life.36 However, the object does not concur (concurrere) effectively with the act of the will. It is not as if it were an object that effects an act of the will. This is because the “effective principle of volition (principium volitionis) is the will itself 33 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., (D10) “De motivo voluntatis,” 42ff. 34 “(a) Voluntas dicitur potentia caeca, quia ipsa non intelligit, et, ut hoc vel illud velit, recte vel male, eget ductu intellectus, quia est voluntatis tanquam oculus, quemadmodum Caecus in via ducitur per oculum videntis,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 43 (§1). 35 Ibid. He formulates the question much as in Aquinas’s ST Iª–IIae q. 9 a. 1. 36 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 43.

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(voluntas ipsa), which wills properly and per se, and elicits volition (elicit volitionem).”37

2.4.3 Concurrence of object with the will Heereboord introduces the third point by asking about the relation of the object to the will, “How does an object concur with volition, and the act of volition?” He replies that the object can be said to concur, either formally (formaliter) or finally (finaliter) with an act of the will. When the object concurs formally it is as if the object opens the eyes of the act of the will, by giving it sight (species). Without the object, the will would remain blind and thus there would be no act of the will. Heereboord says that this is the common opinion of the schoolmen.38 Heereboord states their opinion as follows: “The act of the will receives sight (speciem) from the object (ab objecto), as it were, by external formal principle” (a principio formali externo).39 That is, the object is outside the act. But in the case where the object concurs finally (finaliter) with the act of will, it is proposed to the will by way of the end-goal, or subordinate goal, or ultimate goal. Heereboord reminds us that “the object of the will is the good and the good is the desired-end.” In a sense, the good and the end are reciprocal. In other words, when the object is proposed to the mind as good it is also proposed as the end-goal. “Every good whether true or apparent is an end, whether subordinate or ultimate, in general or absolutely.”40 So the will is moved (movetur) and impelled (impellitur) to act by the object (ab objecto). Nevertheless, the object does not always act upon the will by means of the end-goal (per modum finis in voluntatem agit).41 This is because sometimes a person does not focus on the end-goal; he or she desires the means and wills the end to enjoy the means.

37 38 39 40

Ibid., (§2). Ibid. Ibid. See Aquinas, ST Ia IIae q. 10. a. 1–4. “Nam omne bonum seu verum seu apparens finis est, seu subordinatus seu ultimus, vel in suo genere vel absolute,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 44. 41 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 43 (§2).

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2.4.4 Cognition of object concurring with the will Heereboord introduces the fourth point by asking, “How does cognition itself of the object concur with the act of the will, effectively, or in some other way?”42 He gives the example of fire, which effectively concurs with heat, because it produces heat. In other words, when a human agent takes cognizance of an object by way of the understanding, what is the relation of the concurrence of acts of the understanding and acts of the will? Heereboord offers three opinions of the philosophers. Some assert that “cognition of the object effectively concurs with the act of the will (actum voluntatis),” both with respect to freedom of exercise (quoad exercitium) and freedom of specification (quoad specificationem). But Heereboord rejects this opinion because it implies that it is “the intellect that would will by the intellect (sic enim intellectus intelligendo vellet).” But it is “not the intellect that wills, but the will,” says Heereboord. Contrary to the example of fire making heat, the intellect does not cause the will. Therefore, “cognition, which is an act of the understanding, does not concur effectively to willing.”43 Others also want “cognition of the object to concur effectively with the act of will, with respect to its freedom of specification (willing or nilling different objects), but not with respect to freedom of exercise” (willing or not willing opposite acts).44 On their view, they believe that the cognition of the object is “from the will alone,” and so they rule out freedom of exercise since, on their view, it appears that different objects play a role in whether the will wills to choose, for example, to love one person, or perhaps not that person, but another. On the contrary, says Heereboord, freedom of specification of action in the will does not concur with the understanding in the way they think. It is not “from the intellect’s cognition of the object” (a cognitione objecti), “but rather from the object itself” (sed ab ipso potius objecto). As seen in point §4.3 above, the object itself can either “formally” give sight to the blind will, which is an external principle at work on the will, or “finally,” which is the object as end-goal, moving and causing an act of will. And so just as there are different objects presented to the intellect, so are there “different specific acts of the will.” And so the will does not act alone, but with the intellect.45 Heereboord’s opinion is that “notional judgment” (notitiam judicativam) of the object is the necessary “requisite sine qua non” condition both that the object 42 ”Quaeritur, quomodo ipsa cognitio objecti concurrat ad actum voluntatis, an etiam effective, an alio modo?” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 43. 43 “At intellectus non vult, sed voluntas: Ergo cognitio, actio intellectus, non concurrit effective ad volitionem,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 43. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid.

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concurs with the act of will and that the will itself effectively elicits its own act. And the act of the will is the “sufficient principle” of its own act. For “the will effectively elicits its act.” He clarifies that by saying that the sufficiency of the human will does not exclude “God’s influx” (influxum Dei) from the concurrence of the divine and human will. As seen above, he says the object in question can be viewed in the sense of its real being, as in the example of food, which when viewed in itself, has the properties necessary for nourishment. The object can concur either “formally” or “finally” (seu formaliter seu finaliter).46 Having briefly outlined opposing views on this topic, Heereboord sets out his view more broadly. The topic of concurrence is not only on the conceptual plane of human cognition and volition. There is also the intersection of divine and human concurrence in free acts of the will, a much debated topic between the Jesuits (generally opposing the requisite of a previous concurrence and its implications for human freedom) and Reformed authors (who, like Heereboord, use it as a device to explain humankind’s dependence upon God). Heereboord says that God, who is the “first cause (causa prima), effectively moves the will to will, flowing into the will (influens in voluntatem) and its action, with both previous and simultaneous concurrence (tum praevio tum simultaneo).” Indeed, “the will is moved by God.”47 The will does not first move itself. There is an oftcited scriptural principle that points to some kind of divine and human concurrence of wills: “In him we live and move and have our being,” Acts 17: 28. It is these technical terms, “a previous concurrence” and “a divine influx,” which especially distinguish the Reformed set of requisites for divine and human free action from all other early modern movements.

2.5

Summary

In his conclusion to “Collegiate ethics,” disputation ten “On the motive of the will,” Heereboord cites Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics, and therefore we must recall that he equates Aristotle’s term appetitionem with volition, and electio with choice. The three steps of the operating powers of judgment that Heereboord gives in disputation ten point to an alliance of the faculty of the understanding and of the will. In cognition (in cognitione), step two, the understanding affirms and negates states of affairs; in desire (appetitione), or volition, one pursues or avoids the state, according to the last dictate of the understanding. The character or habitus of a moral agent lies in choosing (eligendo), and choice lies in desire, which has been deliberated in the judgment of the understanding. Choosing the 46 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 43. 47 “Voluntas a Deo mota,” in ibid., 44.

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good, then, is the result of both true reasoning (rationem veram) and right desire (appetitionem rectam). For the choice to be good, right desire or volition pursues (persequi) what the true reason asserts (dicere). It is therefore the alliance of intellect (cogitatio) and truth (veritas) that results in acting or in producing (agendo). The principle (principium) of action is choice (electio). And the principle of choice is the alliance of the understanding and the will with a view to the end-goal. The principle of action (actionis) and motion (motus) is the efficient cause, not the final cause. Heereboord adds to what Aristotle has said, pointing out that choice (electio) is of means and it is the comparative judgment that considers means and elects (eligitur) what is optimum or best. Thus, the alliance of the understanding and the will is such that the former proposes to the latter what is best. This is what choice (electio) does; it chooses the best (nam electio est optimi).48 Having summarized Heereboord’s preliminary sections on terms concerning the topic of the will, we now turn to the crucial topic of free choice, its nature and powers. Heereboord also considers the philosopher’s definition of free choice, commonly accepted, but to be rejected. Heereboord will give his own definition (which we will see below in §2.6.8).

2.6

Free choice

In disputation eleven De libero arbitrio, Heereboord comments first on the nature of free choice; second, its formal relation to the understanding; third, the distinction between the will seeking the good necessarily and free choice seeking the good freely; fourth, why free choice is given to humans in both the understanding and the will; fifth, what that free choice is; sixth, free choice in a twofold composite sense and the distinction between the power of simultaneity and simultaneous powers; seventh, reconciling the divine prerequisites with free choice; and eighth, Heereboord’s definition of free choice.49

2.6.1 The nature of free choice Heereboord begins his discussion on the nature of free choice by breaking the term down into its two words, free (liberum) and choice (arbitrium). The word liberum has several meanings. (1) It can signify “that which is subject to noone, or 48 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 48. Heereboord cites Eth. nic. 1139a20–1139b4. 49 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., (D11), 48–54.

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which depends on noone.” In this sense, God alone is free.50 (2) It can also mean that which is exempt from “servitude and bondage.” In this sense, there is no obligation to another. Heereboord is not referring to either of these meanings. Concerning (1), since he is writing about ethics, he is dealing with human beings. And human free choice is “subject to and depends upon God.”51 Concerning (2), the discussion of free choice already precludes bondage and coercion. Moreover, even freedom (2) applies to animals, which are free in this sense to eat freely and move about as they choose insofar as they are not coerced, and “insofar as they are not necessitated by external principle to do this.”52 But Heereboord is dealing with human free choice. (3) Heereboord makes use of a third sense, namely, free choice that is devoid of natural necessity, having one’s own power to act or not to act, or to do another thing. Heereboord defines natural necessity (naturalis necessitas) as “that by which some cause acts necessarily; that it cannot not act by its nature, or natural inclination.” For example, just as fire burns by natural necessity, because this is the nature of fire; it is inclined to burn. The sense of human freedom, which is without natural necessity, does not apply to animals. Animals act spontaneously, of their own accord, and not by constraint, but that is not to act freely in the sense that is applied to human freedom.53 The word arbitrium is “derived from the word arbiter, which means a private judge, a negotiator or intermediate, one who decides private lawsuits.” It is therefore a decision, “the decision of a judge, a private judgment,” or the arbitration of practical reason. So these two terms, liberum and arbitrium, relate to the will and the intellect, respectively.54

2.6.2 The relation of liberum arbitrium to the intellect Given the combination of two words in one term, Heereboord asks whether free choice belongs partly to the intellect and partly to the will? Although the term denotes at the same time an act of reason and of the will, in the case of liberum arbitrium, however, Heereboord does not understand the term as having to do with acting (pro actu). For if that were the case, there would be no free choice for those who are sleeping, and therefore, no acting. The term speaks, rather, of free moral agents eliciting acts of the will. Neither does the term signify habit as if the will were already disposed or inclined one way or the other. “For habits incline 50 Ibid., 48. 51 Ibid. 52 “Quatenus a nullo externo principio necessitantur ad id agendum,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic.,” 48. 53 Ibid., 49. 54 Ibid.

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power to certain kinds of actions, good habits to good actions, evil to evil.” But “free choice does not incline of itself (ex se) to a certain kind of action, rather it holds itself indifferently (indifferenter se habet) to diverse actions.” Note that he does not speak of indifference in relation to states of affairs or objects, but indifference towards acting or not acting. For the will does incline itself to the good. But free choice itself is not inclined, but indifferent. Heereboord believes that liberum arbitrium is simultaneously a faculty or power “with the intellect and the will.” Insofar as it is called “choice” (arbitrium), that is, “the faculty of arbitrating, it does not differ from the intellect,” namely, the practical understanding. And insofar as it is said to be “free” (liberum), “it does not differ from the will.” Although free choice comprises both the will and intellect, nevertheless, it differs “formally from the will” and from “both the intellect and the will together.” For the will has a broader application in regard to objects and actions than free choice.55 What kind of relation then does free choice have to the will and to the intellect? Heereboord answers by distinguishing between a formal distinction and a real distinction of faculty powers. Formally speaking, he says “the intellect and the will do not constitute two distinct powers, but only differ by definition, (discriminating by definition does not infer a real distinction).”56 Those who make a real distinction (reale discrimen) between the faculty of the understanding and the faculty of the will do not make a distinction between free choice and the will. Whereas the real distinction predicates two distinct powers, the formal distinction only predicates conceptual distinctions of one power. Heereboord holds that there is a formal distinction, characterized by a conceptual relation (ratio ratiocinata). He uses the example of the sun to illustrate the formal conceptual differences between free choice and the will. The sun does not have many faculties or diverse powers, like melting, hardening, and heating, but “it is one and the same power.” This power also has relations to objects. For “in the degree to which the sun orients itself to the object of clay, it is said to harden it.” And “in regards to wax, it melts it. And in regards to cold water, it heats it.” Likewise, “when the rational soul orients itself towards the truth, it is called intellect. When it orients itself towards the good, it is called will.” And these faculties differ only with respect to diverse objects.” The distinction of ratio ratiocinata, therefore, bases itself on the conceptual distinction between these powers and their relation to objects.57 55 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 49. 56 “Discrimen Definitionum non infert Realem distinctionem,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 50. Heereboord says others wrongly say that liberum arbitrium is only a part of the faculty by which we understand and by which we will, rather than that it be a fully intergrated faculty. 57 Ibid.

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2.6.3 The will seeking the good necessarily and free choice seeking the good freely Heereboord proceeds to explain how it is the case that a human agent both freely chooses means (but not by means necessarily connected to the ultimate end), and necessarily wills the ultimate good. The standard prerequisites to the case are the removal of coercion and the inclusion of the last dictate of the understanding and rational judgment. With these in place, the scholastics formulate human freedom (libertas) as rational spontaneity” (spontaneitas cum ratione). A human agent desires the means from free choice (a libero arbitrio). And in the particular case of desiring means from free choice, the formula of free choice is such that the agent can not desire the means, or desire other means. In other words, the case of free choice involves the powers of velle, nolle, and non velle. “The will,” by contrast, “necessarily wills the ultimate end with rational spontaneity.” In other words, the will wills such that “it cannot not will the ultimate end.”58 Again, liberum arbitrium desires the means freely, not necessarily (non necessario). This is due to the meaning of arbitrium; thus, as an arbiter, an agent’s choice is such that it can judge (potest judicare) the means that is desired. The relation of the arbitrium to the desired means is such that what is desired does not have to be desired (quod appetitur, non esse appetendum). Something else can be desired in its place.59

2.6.4 Indifference belongs more to the judgment and arbitrium than the will What Heereboord has said about the role of the arbitrium above points to the characteristic of indifference in arbitration. Indifference therefore belongs more to the practical understanding, and its role of judging, than to electing, which belongs to the will. The understanding in arbitration is indifferent towards means, approving one means, disapproving another. But is there indifference in the will towards means? He has said the will necessarily wills the end, but what is its disposition towards means? As we have seen, the will itself is a blind power and an indifferent power, to will and not to will. Heereboord says there is a sense in which the will too is indifferent to objects and actions as the intellect leads the will. In this sense, then, “the understanding and the will are called free choice.”60 But if one removes “indifference” from the formula, the case alters. For example, 58 “Voluntas finem ultimum, quem non coacte, sed sponte cum ratione appetit, vult necessario, ut non possit non eum velle,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 50. 59 Ibid. 60 “Et sic, ac tum, intellectus et voluntas dicuntur liberum arbitrium,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 50.

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if one were to remove indifference from deliberation about whether a state be good or bad, and if one were to remove indifference from the will as it follows the lead of the intellect, then at that time it is not called free choice. Heereboord concludes that “in one sense free choice is said to be the same with the intellect and the will, and in another sense it differs from them.” Therefore, indifference plays a key role in free choice and is, in a sense, essential to it.61

2.6.5 Why free choice is given to humans in both the understanding and the will. Having shown that there is indifference in both the arbitration of the practical understanding and in the will, Heereboord explains why free choice belongs to both the understanding and the will. If one steps back and considers the human experience, experience itself teaches that a human being is indifferent and free in judging, in arbitrating, in desiring, and in acting. He or she has command (imperium) and power over his or her actions, the power of pursuing and avoiding, acting and not acting. In fact, this is by design. That this is so goes back to the creation mandate. Just as God “has the most free choice in creating, governing, choosing, and in other actions, which tend outside of God” (ad extra), so he has willed that humans have free choice in governing and ruling over all that God has subjected to humans in this world.” God has not given this kind of power and dominion to animals. God gave these powers in order that humans can carry out the creation mandate.62 However, not all things are subject to humans. The ultimate end (finis ultimus), the highest good (bonum supremum), and supernatural actions (actiones supernaturales) are not subject to humans, but are seated in God’s dominion power alone (solius Dei potestate sitas). In the present curriculum of practical disputations, Heereboord is only addressing human free choice, the natural actions seated in human power (actiones naturales in hominis potestate sitas). He is not addressing supernatural acts seated beyond human powers. For there are superior things (res superiores) that are only subject to God. For example, in addition to creating humans, God also infuses the power of spiritual gifts in humans, received by faith. But those are not in view in this discussion. His discussion concerns human dominion insofar as it is “part of the divine image.” In other words, he does not discuss cases that concern uncreated being and goodness (ens et bonum increatum).63 61 “Clarissimum ergo est, quo modo et sensu liberum arbitrium dicatur idem esse cum intellectu et voluntate, quo modo et sensu ab iis differat,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 50. 62 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 50. 63 Ibid., 51.

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2.6.6 Philosophers’ common definition of free choice Heereboord has briefly sketched the context and dominion wherein human free choice plays a role and he has examined the key components that belong to free choice. It remains now to define free choice and answer the question what it is (quid sit). He says Philosophers (he refers to the Jesuits in the same paragraph) commonly define it in this way: “Given all the requirements to act, both antecedent and concomitant, it is a faculty that can act and not act, or can do one thing in such as way that it can do the contrary.64 Heereboord proceeds to show the serious limitations of this definition.65 For example, the Jesuits and Remonstrants attempt to apply this definition in the composite sense. There is a logic to the composite sense that Heereboord does not want to rule out. In other words, given the prerequisites for human free choice, this definition allows for the interpretation that free choice could, in the composite sense, perform an act, or not, or elicit an opposite act. They infer from this definition, however, that it is possible that God move the human will to consent and it is possible that the human will not dissent, at the same time. That is, when God moves a human to act, he or she can, nevertheless, not act. And they 64 “Vulgus Philosophorum sic definit, quod sit facultas, quae positis omnibus ad agendum requisitis, tum antecedenter, tum concomitanter, potest agere et non agere, aut ita agere unum ut contrarium agere possit,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Colleg. Ethic., 51. In a note, Heereboord gives the three antecedent requirements to human free choice. On God’s part: “the decree, both effective and permissive, intuitive knowledge of the prior decree, and a previous concurrence.” The concomitant requirements, on God’s part are: “Both his simultaneous concurrence and his actual permission, the former (concurrence) operating well with human free choice, the latter (permission) with evil. On humankind’s part, the antecedent requirements are: “Both faculty of doing and the object of the act.” The concomitant requirements are: “Concurrence of other causes, an approach corresponding to the object, and the disposition of an instrument or suitable power.” ((a) Requisita antecedenter ad actum liberi arbitrii humani, ex parte Dei sunt, ejus decretum, tum effectivum, tum permissivum, ejus scientia visionis, quae decretum sequitur, et concursus ejus praevius; requisita concomitanter sunt, ex parte Dei, tum concursus ejus simultaneus, tum actualis ejus permissio, ille, cum liberum hominis arbitrium operatur bene, haec, cum male: requisita antecedenter ex parte hominis, sunt, tum facultates, seu potentiae agendi, tum objectum, in quod agant: requisita concomicanter ex parte ejusdem sunt, tum aliarum causarum concursus, tum debita objecti approximatio, tum idonea potentiae aut organi dispositio). Cf. Bac’s use of this definition of the philosophers—which is not Heereboord’s own definition. For that, see below (in §2.6.8)—in J. Martin Bac, Perfect Will Theology: Divine Agency in Reformed Scholasticism as Against Suárez, Episcopius, Descartes, and Spinoza, Brill’s Series in Church History (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 274. 65 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 51–2. He says it has led to three fundamental errors of the Jesuits, (1) middle knowledge of God (scientia media), (2) conditional decrees (decreta conditionata), and (3) universal concurrence and indifference (concursus universalis atque indifferens).

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hold that this is quite often the case. In this composite sense they think they guard human freedom.66 In order to clear up misunderstandings about the composite sense, Heereboord gives two understandings of the composite sense, (1) first in the sense of simultaneous powers (simultas potentiae), (2) second in the sense of the power of simultaneity (potentia simultatis).67 The first he accepts, the second he rejects. The first understanding of composition occurs between prerequisites for acting and the power to act. This is the composite sense in which Heereboord will place free choice, namely, in simultaneous possibility. In order to understand the distinction, we need to look at the use of the term “simultaneous.” Simultaneous possibility means that it is possible for an agent to do something different. “Simultaneous possibility is called the possibility by which someone has simultaneously in himself the possibility of either not doing so, or doing something else, when he is doing something.”68 To perform something and not to perform it is simultaneously composed in the power itself, but the performance would occur at another time (sed tempore alio). Even so, when the operation which of itself is effected, some power of operating to the contrary, or not operating consists and is composed in itself at the same time (simul stat et componitur in ipso). But, as pointed out, the actual outworking of both acts would be at another time (sed utrumque tempore alio).69 This is the true understanding of the composite sense. For example, when someone is speaking about the weather, at the same time, he or she has the power not to speak about the weather. Or she can speak about sports, rather than the weather. All one has to do is stop talking about the weather, and be quiet, or begin talking about sports. (The syntax differs from saying that someone can both speak and not speak at the same time). In this composed understanding, this power can be fully reconciled with not speaking, and speaking about other topics. The act of speaking about the weather, does not remove the possibility either of not speaking, or of speaking about other things. This understanding of the composite sense is not contradictory.70

66 Ibid., 52. 67 Ibid., 53. On the divided syntactical sense of “simultaneous powers” versus the composite syntactical sense of “the power of simultaneity,” see chapter 3 §3.6.2. 68 “Simultas Potentiae dicitur, qua quis, cum operatur aliquid, simul in sese habet potentiam vel non operandi, vel operandi aliud, non quidem pro illo tempore, quo operatur, quasi simul in ipso componantur operari et non operari, sed tempore alio, ut quamvis non in se inveniat aliquam potentiam ad operandum aliquid simul et non operandum, quam id quod operatur, tamen cum ipsa operatione hujus effecti, simul stat et componitur in ipso, potentia aliqua operandi contrarium, aut non operandi, sed utrumque tempore alio, qui sensus compositus est verus,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 53. 69 Ibid., 53. 70 Ibid.

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The second sense of composition occurs between divine prerequisites structurally prior to performing an act.71 This second understanding of composition concerns the power of simultaneity (potentia simultatis) such that one and the same agent can both will p and nill p, pursue p and avoid p, act and not act at the same time. This contravenes the nature of free choice as sketched above by Heereboord. Given all the divine prerequisites and human requirements to act, it is not the case that, at the same time, one and the same agent can perform an act and not perform it, or that another be done, in the composite sense. An agent’s free choice does not consist in the power of simultaneity. The problem is that “there is no potentia,” in the sense of “that can,” such that it is possible that an agent do and it is possible that an agent not do, at the same time; for that would imply a contradiction in the composite sense of the terms. Therefore, “free choice cannot be placed in the power of simultaneity.”72

2.6.7 Heereboord’s requisites for humankind’s free action There are three divine prerequisites for any human act: (1) God’s internal or efficacious decree (decretum ejus internum), (2) his foreknowledge of the future act (praescientia actus futuri) that will follow the decree, and (3) his influx and previous concurrence (influxus ac concursus ejus praevius) by which he premoves a free cause (praemovet causam liberam) to a particular act. All given causes and conditions, which are prerequisite to an agent’s action, are simultaneous (simul sunt) and composed in the same subject, namely, an agent’s free choice (libero arbitrio).73 Given the anthropological focus of Daniel Whitby’s scheme of humankind’s freedom and Edwards’s extended anthropological response in Freedom of Will, we will devote the following exposition to the third requisite for humankind’s free action, which is an intersection of divine and human action, otherwise called, premotion, previous concurrence, and the divine influx. The three divine prerequisites for eliciting an act by free choice establish and reconcile, according to Heereboord, the absolute and efficacious production from God’s decree of a free act of human choice.74 The movement and influx of 71 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 52. 72 “Potentia simultatis dicitur, qua simul et eodem tempore quis potest, operari, et non operari, quae cum non detur, (nam nulla datur Potentia, qua simul quis operetur, et non operetur, est enim illa contradictio) utique liberum arbitrium, in ista potentia simultatis collocari non potest, et hic est sensus compositus falsus,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 53. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid., 52.

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God, for example, upon Peter’s faculties is structurally and logically prior to Peter’s choice. God premoves (praemovet) Peter’s faculties in time to produce an act of belief. Given the three divine prerequisites, and assuming God moves upon Peter’s faculties at a given moment of time, such that he elicit an act of faith, can it be that Peter not elicit an act of faith at the same given moment of time? In terms of freedom of specification, can Peter nill the act? In terms of freedom of exercise, can Peter not will faith, not nill faith, but will another act at that same given moment of time? In the composite sense, Heereboord’s answer to both questions is “No.” In other words, Peter cannot not elicit an act of faith. Neither can Peter elicit an act to postpone belief to another time. Nor can he will to go fishing at that same given moment of time. Again, the context of the question is the composite sense. He is not considering the divided sense. For then the answers would be that an agent who believes, can not believe, in the divided sense. In a separate series of disputations, Exercitatio Ethicarum, Heereboord answers objections against human freedom. He gives the example of someone speaking. Someone freely speaks and although she cannot not speak—since God has decreed and prescribed her to speak and teach—God concurs with her speaking. Hence, the necessity of speaking rises in her (oritur in me), but it does not remove her freedom from her. This is because an agent’s will, as a free cause, retains intrinsically the possibility of not willing (potentia non volendi), a logical capacity, such that he or she not will to speak, in the divided sense (in sensu diviso) of the construction of the sentence.75 Heereboord proceeds to defend the syllogism: Whatever God does in the course of time, he has decreed to do from eternity. Moreover, every free act of a creature, God performs in the course of time. Therefore, necessarily, the same possibility and free cause can be carried out in its act. He explains this by introducing the notion of divine fiat and that God wills that there be free human fiat. Whatever God wills by fiat necessarily comes to be. Moreover, God does not only will, that there be some fiat act (fiat actus), but that there be free fiat in particular (sed in specie ut fiat liber). It is not only in the act of a person, but in a particular free act that it necessarily comes about. Therefore, the possibility, by which one elicits a free act, simultaneously acts necessarily (simul necessario agit).76 When I speak, the necessity of speaking rises in me, but does not deny my freedom. My free act concurs with God’s decree that I freely do what I do at that moment. This is reconciled in our minds by remembering that God wills by divine fiat what occurs simultaneously in the willing; he wills that my particular

75 “At voluntas, causa libera … retinet adhuc intrinsece et habet potentiam ad non volendum, in sensu, ut loquuntur, diviso,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Exercit. Ethic., 58 (§2). 76 Ibid., 59 (§2).

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act freely come about. Thus, at the moment I possess the possibility to speak, I speak, necessarily.

2.6.8 Heereboord’s definition of free choice Having dismissed the philosopher’s common definition of free choice (above under §2.6.6), he now gives his own definition and explains its special terms. We define this term as follows: The faculty of doing what one pleases (facultas faciendi quod lubet). By “faculty,” we understand a real or natural, (facultas physica seu naturalis), not an ethical or moral faculty. In other words: The faculty of the intellect and the will, related to two alternatives (ad utrumlibet).77

For Heereboord, free choice in the sense of the term utrumlibet must not always or necessarily be understood as about moral freedom, that is, acts linked to good and bad states of affairs. For, if that were the case, then neither in devils, nor in the damned, nor in angels and beatified souls would there be free choice and free acts of will, since the acts of will would always be linked to states of affairs and objects, which presumably in heaven, would mean only good states of affairs. Rather, Heereboord understands freedom ad utrumlibet in the sense “either of acting or not acting, or doing this or that,” and includes the notion of indifference, but not in relation to “diverse objects of free choice”—the latter is the view of the Jesuits. The indifference of which Heereboord speaks in the term ad utrumlibet concerns the act of will itself; the act alone is what is free with possibility to act to the contrary, such that a human “can will and nill, will the good and nill the bad.”78 Heereboord’s definition of free choice ad utrumlibet refers, not to a moral attribute, but to a real or natural attribute of the will. The term “real” (physica) does not mean, of the flesh, but rather points to the structural effectiveness or efficacity of the faculty of the will itself. The structural attribute refers to the “synchronic contingency,” or, simultaneous alternativeness of the term ad utrumlibet, without reference to good or bad states of affairs. Again, Heereboord points 77 “Nos id definimus, Facultatem faciendi quod lubet. Facultatem intelligimus Physicam seu naturalem, non Ethicam seu moralem: aut, facultatem intellectus, voluntatis ad utrumlibet,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 53 (§6). He presumes as a given, that this definition includes all the prerequisites for acting. 78 “(e) Quando libertas ponitur in facultate intellectus et voluntatis ad utrumlibet, significatur quidem aliqua indifferentia, sed non quoad objecta, quod volunt Adversarii, quasi homo, qui est liberi arbitrii, debeat eodem actu volendi versari circa bonum et malum; verum intelligitur indifferentia quoad actus, ut homo possit velle et nolle, velle bonum, et nolle malum. Utrumlibet non respicit diversa Liberi Arbitrii objecta, sed diversos ejus Actus volendi, aut non volendi, et volendi, aut nolendi circa objecta diversa, tum bonum, tum malum.” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 53 (e).

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out that it does not have to do with moral or ethical aspects of choosing, but the real, physical nature of choosing. This is another reason why acts of the will are indifferent to good and bad states of affairs.79 But what are the definitions of the real and ethical faculties? The “real or natural faculty” (facultas physica) is a power whereby a person can do something by natural powers, by feelings, by use of one’s body, or even making use of one’s good fortune. The “ethical faculty” (facultas ethica) is a power whereby a person can do something because it is legally or morally permitted. “Physical freedom, not ethical, consists in the faculty or possibility of acting.”80 For example, if Peter has a stronger body than Paul, he has the power or physical faculty to kill Paul, but he does not have the faculty or ethical power to do it, because to do this is not legally permitted. This example gets to the heart of the definition of free choice; given all divine and human prerequisites to act, a human agent possesses physical or natural possibilities (velle, nolle, non velle), to which the term ad utrumlibet applies before any consideration of the objects and states of affairs in view.

2.7

Summary

Heereboord defines free choice in terms of both the faculty of the intellect and the will, of choosing whichever way a mind-gifted individual pleases, with freedom ad utrumlibet. Some object and say that if God determines human choice, he or she is not free with a freedom ad utrumlibet. Heereboord replies that, for example, while someone speaks, she is maximally determined to speak), but nevertheless she retains the intrinsic possibility and indifference not to speak. He distinguishes between free choice in relation to the act, and free choice in relation to possibility. These two conspire well together, free choice as regards the act of speaking, and free choice with respect to the possibility not to speak. In the latter there remains indifference to do as one pleases. And whoever does this act, at the same time has possibility by which he can not produce this act or produce the contrary. However, he does not have power to do acts having contraries at the same time, or to have an act and simultaneously its negation. That is, one cannot simultaneously hold M (p & ~p). For two contrary simultaneous acts, or an act and the negation of the act cannot be simultaneous in the same possibility. 79 Cf. Heereboord’s synchronic freedom ad utrumlibet with the classic notion of what Antonie Vos has called: “synchronic contingency,” in Antonie Vos et al, eds., John Duns Scotus: Contingency and freedom, lectura I 39. Introduction, translation, and commentary, The New Synthese Historical Library 42 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1994), 26–28; 108–117, 123–27; Vos, Philosophy of Scotus, 224–32, and chapters 7, 14, 16. 80 “Libertas consistit in facultate seu potentia agendi physica, et non ethica,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 53 (d).

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There is in human free choice, when it is determined to work and is already at work, a simultaneous possibility (simultas potentiae) to work and not to work. For by the fact that it does one act, it does not deny its free faculty and possibility not to work, or to do another act. As for the opposite, from the fact that it does not do a work, the possibility to do is not taken away, and to do such an act. But indeed the possibility of simultaneity (potentia simultatis) is not in human free choice, that is, to do contraries or contradictories. For these cannot be at the same time. For it cannot happen, that the will, while it acts, simultaneously not act. Or, that while it does one thing, simultaneously it does something else. Heereboord locates freedom in both the faculty of the intellect and the will, as a freedom ad utrumlibet. The element of indifference refers only to the act itself, it is not with respect to objects. For that is what the Jesuits want to argue. They argue that a human agent has free choice in the sense that he or she can both will and nill the same good state or object in view, at the same moment of time, that is, in the composite sense. Heereboord holds that indifference relates to acts, not to objects or states of affairs. Only in that sense can a human agent will (velle) and nill (nolle), will what is good, and nill what is bad. Again, utrumlibet is not with respect to diverse objects of free choice, but its different acts of willing, or not willing. The meaning of utrumlibet can be illustrated by the case of the soldier at the cross who pierces Jesus’ side. The question is whether the soldier can freely thrust the spear, refrain from thrusting the spear, or not thrust the spear, but do something else. It does not concern whose side he pierces of the three men hanging on crosses. In other words, it is not about which of the three men he pierces. Utrumlibet is about whether the soldier wills piercing Jesus’ side (velle), nills piercing his side (nolle), or wills not to do this but to do something else (non velle). They are intrinsic possibilities that humans possess. Of crucial significance for this study is that Heereboord has defined and used the technical term freedom ad utrumlibet in a way that is in line with the Reformed tradition and its development of medieval and post-Reformation Scotistic innovations. In chapter seven we will see how Whitby understands and uses the term ad utrumlibet in a manner more consistent with the Jesuit line, given Whitby’s rejection of Reformed requisites for freedom, a divine “physical” real influx and previous concurrence. In chapters eight through ten, we will see how Edwards consistently rejects any use of the notion of freedom ad utrumlibet, whether Reformed or Arminian. Heereboord’s definition (in §2.6.8), plus his set of requisites for rhyming divine and human freedom, has set down an important benchmark for the rest of the study. The Reformed line of distinctions set forth here is crucial for evaluating how robust an answer others, like Edwards, give in response to the same nagging questions about freedom of will.

3.

Adriaan Heereboord on necessity and contingency

3.1

Introduction

The significance of this chapter on necessity and contingency for this present study on freedom of will is the essential framework it gives for understanding how the Christian tradition held necessity and contingency, not against each other, but in healthy tension. By the end of this present chapter we will better understand how one representative of the Reformed tradition, standing in a long line of Christian thinkers, explained the tension, and nevertheless maintained a robustly contingent worldview. The distinctions Heereboord sets down will serve as a benchmark for understanding and interpreting Edwards later on from within his own tradition. This is especially the case with these two notions, necessity and contingency, since Edwards interprets them differently than does Heereboord, and since Edwards gives no space to contingency in his worldview. Necessity and contingency, Heereboord says, are frequently mentioned by the philosophers (Suárez, Fonseca, Lessius, Molina and other Jesuits), who apply these terms broadly to the fields of being (ens), efficient cause (causa efficiens), and predication (enuntiatio). He intends to vindicate these terms from abuse and proceeds in disputation seventeen to examine the notion and sort out the various legitimate meanings of necessity. In disputation eighteen he will do the same with contingency.1 A classic illustration of the tension between necessity and contingency is the prophecy that the bones of Christ will not be broken (non fractio ossium). The prophecy brings into play divine prerequisites, the divine decree and divine foreknowledge, and the prophecy that the bones of Christ will not be broken, the nature of bones, which is that they are breakable, the freedom of the soldier at the cross, and the contingency of the event, whether the soldier can freely swing a club and break the legs of Christ, or freely refrain from breaking the legs. This prophecy about the bones of Christ will also serve to illustrate the scheme of 1 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 61 (D17).

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causality developed further by Aquinas from Aristotle, and passed on by Burgersdijk, which Heereboord employs: (1) the efficient cause, (2) the material cause, (3) the formal cause, and (4) the final cause. The prophecy also serves the analysis of the fourfold kinds of necessity: (1) independent, (2) dependent, (3) natural, and (4) hypothetical.

3.2

Kinds of necessity

3.2.1 Four kinds of necessity: one independent and three dependent Heereboord begins disputation seventeen,”On necessity,” with a structural orientation to what he calls the common understanding of necessity. But Heereboord is keen on giving his interpretation and exposition on necessity within the immediate context and orientation of his predecessor Burgersdijk. The common approach of others, says Heereboord, is to define necessity along a natural line, as that which cannot be otherwise than it is (Quod aliter se habere non potest).2 In the sense of being existing, it is necessary, as God is. God is said to be necessary Being in existence (Ens necessarium in existendo), because he cannot not exist. On the natural level, there is a sense of causing, it is the efficient cause (causa efficiens) which is said to be necessary, as in fire burning. The natural cause (causa naturalis) is said to be necessary, as in the sun rising. In the sense of predication, it is divided into necessary and contingent. A certain true proposition is necessary (enunciatio quaedam vera est necessaria), because it is true, such that it cannot be false, and so it cannot fail to be true, such as, the nature of bones is that they are breakable, or to be human is to have the capacity to laugh.3 The term necessary, says Heereboord, can be divided into dependent and independent, and further in terms of four kinds of necessity, of which the first is the highest, which God alone possesses, and the second grade belongs to humans. The third is the necessity of nature, and the fourth is hypothetical necessity. We begin with the first grade of necessity, which applies to God alone. The first, an independent necessity (necessarium independens), owes its necessity to nothing, and receives it from nothing. This is the highest kind of necessity, which applies to God alone, who said, “I am that I am.” In this sense God declared his independent necessity of being. (2) Dependent necessity (necessarium dependens) owes all its necessity to God and can be further divided into external or internal according to the principles at work. These principles are

2 Ibid. 3 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 61.

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seen at work in definitions and demonstrations, in nature, and when explaining hypothetical necessity.4 The necessity seen in definitions illustrated by, “Humans are risible,” and demonstrations, is the highest in mind-gifted creatures. It is a second grade of necessity, for example, where, if the opposite is supposed, it involves a contradiction. In the definition of a human being, one understands necessary in the sense that it is necessary that a human is an animal, rational (mind-gifted), and risible (capable of laughing).5 But not all share this opinion of how to distinguish dependent from independent, says Heereboord. Some of the philosophers include definitions and demonstrations and essential propositions of the first and second kind of necessity in their definition of what is independent necessity. They have made them similar to divine necessity. This is because just as it is necessary that God exist, since the contrary involves a contradiction, so is it of the same kind of necessity to say the whole is greater than its parts, or that humans laugh. They assert that the terms of the proposition, “God cannot be otherwise than he is,” is the same as the terms of the proposition, “A human is risible.” In other words, one speaks a contradiction if he or she claims the subject does not adhere necessarily in the predicate. That is, they make the second grade of necessity, like that of per se propositions, analagous to the first grade, namely, independent necessity, for example, the proposition “I am that I am.” However, Heereboord says, it does not follow therefore that the kind of independent necessity which belongs to God be the same as that of the coherence of a subject in a predicate in propositions. He gives two reasons. First, essential attributes, either in their constitutive domain or consecutive domain, necessarily cohere with the essence, but each domain must be kept distinct. For example, if a person, having been struck with lightening, dies, there is a consequential connection. Second, the kind of necessity whereby humans laugh is an imposed necessity from without and therefore humans are dependent upon another, namely, God.6 With God, this is not the case, since there is no necessity imposed upon God from without. The proposition as a whole about necessity, such as, “Humans are capable of laughter,” is itself dependent. In other words, that A inhere in B in (A & B) does not imply that the parentheses (A & B) is independent or without an externally imposed necessity operator. Once again, in the second grade of necessity, “Necessarily, a human is risible,” is such that he cannot not be risible. This principle of necessity depends upon 4 Ibid. See The independence of God and the ad intra distinctions in, Muller, PRRD 3: 238, 453. 5 “Ita necessarium est, hominem esse animal, esse rationalem, esse risibilem,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 61. See Muller, DLGTT, “Independentia.” 6 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 62.

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God, who created him or her as such, whose essential attributes constitute him or her a human being. For it is not the human being himself who has given essence to himself, neither can he give the being of existence to himself. Heereboord says, “If you ask whether God could have created a human being who is not mind-gifted, and not capable of laughter—which is necessary as per the definition of a human —this ought not be asked, nor ought one rashly to inquire into the divine possibility.”7 Heereboord relates this principle to that of the necessity in “propositions of eternal truths,” whether per se in the first manner or in the second, which are from God alone. “God is the origin of this necessity, the cause, the principium, because he is the most wise architect of the universe and maker of all such essences, the wisest legislator of such propositions,” as it were.8 That is, this kind of necessity depends ultimately on God. It is not an absolute, independent kind of necessity. The necessity of eternal truths neither exist outside of God, nor is it of the essence of God, but rather depends on God. The third kind of necessity (necessitas naturae) is that of nature and it follows the necessity of definitions and demonstrations of nature, by which some cause is permanent in its nature, instituted by God. Unlike the second kind of necessity, the third necessarily produces the effect of such a thing, and this necessity is so great that it cannot not produce its effect, from itself, on its own, says Heereboord. Nevertheless, it can be affected and changed by God, so as not to produce. And so what is heavy descends, the sun moves itself, fire burns, everything, necessarily, by itself and by force of its own nature, though their action can be stopped and prevented by God, even without any contradiction (licet a Deo sisti in agendo & inhiberi possint, etiam absque ulla contradictione).9 Some call the necessity of nature an absolute necessity, others assume an absolute necessity, independently, and others call an absolute necessity that whose negation or opposite involves a contradiction. In this sense it includes an independent necessity of definitions and demonstrations and they call it a necessity of nature, that is, a necessity in a restricted or conditional sense, and they distinguish this necessity from the fourth kind of necessity, namely, a hypo-

7 “Si roges, an Deus potuerit creare hominem, qui non esset rationalis, non risibilis, si homo talis est necessario, quia Deus voluit eum talem creare, respondeo, hoc rogandum non esse, nec temere in divinam potentiam,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 62. 8 “Nos id pro certo tenemus, necessitatem in aeternae veritatis propositionibus, ut vocant, sive in primo modo per se sive in secundo, esse a solo Deo, qui istius necessitatis est origo, causa, principium, quia ipse ut sapientissimus omnium rerum opifex res talis essentiae fecit, quae talem necessitatem propositionum fundaret, atque ita ipse tanquam prudentissimus legislator tales propositiones tanquam leges tulit,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 62. 9 Ibid.

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thetical necessity. Heereboord points out that this is the case with his predecessor and teacher Burgersdijk, in his Metaphysics.10 The fourth kind of necessity is called hypothetical necessity (necessitas hypothetica), by which something is not in se; it is not of itself necessary. The hypothesis is placed outside the thing, which is said to be necessary. Burgersdijk says there are those who confuse necessity of nature and consider it in a restricted or conditional sense (secundum quid). But the latter is a hypothetical necessity, because this kind of necessity acts constantly, indeed immutably, and is instituted in nature from a hypothetic order by God. It is best, in Heereboord’s view, to distinguish the necessity of nature from hypothetical necessity, because hypothetical speaks of some extrinsically necessary thing. Neither would Heereboord confuse necessity of nature with absolute necessity, or a state of affairs that is simply (simpliciter) absolute.11

3.2.2 A twofold internal and a fourfold external kind of necessity Necessity can be further explained by distinguishing between internal and external principles of necessity. That necessity is internal means a thing is (1) necessary by its nature or (2) by an intrinsic principle. To be dependent means that there is a restriction, or a condition (secundum quid). In the latter case, although the opposite cannot naturally come about, nevertheless, if the opposite does come about, there is no contradiction involved.12 Burgersdijk passed on this twofold manner of necessity: absolute and secundum quid. The former in the sense that the negation of a state of affairs implies a contradiction (such that either it is not or can not be), for example, the negation of the following propositions: “God exists,” or “humans are animals.” On the contrary, the negation of a secundum quid necessity does not imply a contradiction, as in the case: “The sun rises and sets,” which if God wills to impede, he can.13 That necessity is external means the thing is necessary not from its own nature, nor from an intrinsic principle—it is contingent (sic enim est contingens) —but it is necessary on account of an external condition or hypothesis. Before going into more detail about efficient and contingent causes, Heereboord first divides external necessity into its various meanings, and lists a fourfold manner of external necessity.

10 11 12 13

Ibid., Heereboord refers to Burgersdijk’s Institutionem metaphysicarum, chapter 29. Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 62. Ibid. Burgersdijk, Institutionem metaphysicarum, 197.

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The first kind of external necessity is a hypothetical necessity based on a supposition of something else (hypothetica ex suppositione). The external condition is either a cause, an antecedent condition, the supposition of an an act or existent state of affairs. There are hypothetical causes, efficient causes, or final causes.14 An example Burgersdijk gives of an external hypothesis is “If islanders want to trade with other nations, they will have to use ships.” This also illustrates necessity “in the composite sense” in the way the connection of a conditional proposition is constructed, and therefore it would not hold if taken “in the divided sense.”15 The second manner of external necessity is based on the supposition of an efficient cause (necessitas externa ex suppositione causae efficientis est). For example, human sin can be viewed as an external efficient cause of calamities in the sense that calamities are a consequence of sin, that is, by the necessity of the supposition. Thus, says Heereboord, when the human race suffers punishment from great disasters, it is, in this sense, an external necessity of the consequence of sin.16 Before listing the third division, Heereboord says that that which they call coercion can be referred to as necessity, as when a sick person gets weaker against his will. Likewise with determination, what is determined cannot not act, and therefore it is necessary.17 And indeed it is effected by a hypothetical cause because that which determines, acts in that which is determined. The will, for example, necessarily desires the highest good, and all things that come with the highest good, which are prescribed by way of the judgment of the practical understanding, because the will is determined by the judgment of the practical understanding.18 External necessity that is based on the supposition of a final cause is said by others to be the necessity of the expediency of the event (necessitas externa ex suppositione causae finalis, aliis dicitur necessitas expedientiae et eventus), such as, the fact that it is necessary for someone to eat who desires to live well and maintain good health. In itself, the “event” is contingent.19 A fourth manner of external necessity is based on an antecedent supposition, either from the divine decree, or divine foreknowledge, or divine prophecy, as in the prophecy that the bones of Christ will not be broken (necessitas externa ex 14 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 62. 15 “Si insulani cum aliis gentibus commercia velint exercere, debent uti navibus. Dicitur vulgò, quae necessaria sunt ex hypothesi, esse necessaria in sensu composito, sed non in sensu diviso,” in Burgersdijk, Institutio metaphysicarum, 198. 16 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 63. 17 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 63. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.

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suppositione antecedentis, est necessitas ex suppositione vel decreti, vel praescientiae, vel praedictionis divinae, ut ossa Christi non confringerentur). Theologians call it the necessity of foreknowledge, or infallible necessity, or the necessity of the decree, or immutability, although, Heereboord says, some theologians confuse these. His point is that external necessity speaks of a hypothetical existence or supposition of an act, by which a thing, when it is, necessarily is; when it happens, it necessarily happens.20

3.2.3 The division of efficient causes Before Heereboord goes on to give a more detailed explanation of the term necessary in the division of efficient causes, he clarifies at length that the division of efficent causes is not to be understood as hypothetical necessity, the latter of which can be reconciled with contingency and freedom. In other words necessity and contingency are not opposing divisions. Hypothetical necessity and contingency or liberty are not opposed to one another (sed necessitas hypothetica contingentiae aut libertati non opponitur). Neither does it remove contingency or freedom, but one can reconcile the two in an optimal way. For example, “Since I already write or read, necessarily, I write or read.” This is hypothetical necessity based on the supposition of the act, of existence, of time, which three elements are conjoined in the state of affairs. When someone writes, he or she writes none the less freely because they write whatever, however much, and whenever they want. The act of writing is therefore contingent. “But neither hypothetical necessity, on account of an antecedent supposition, nor divine foreknowledge, nor divine decree, nor divine prediction—which is necessity preceding the state of affair without causality—none of these are contrary to liberty or the contingency of states of affairs.”21 Now if the charge is that only internal necessity is understood when it is said that an efficient cause is necessary, and not external necessity, Heereboord objects and says, first (1), hypothetical or external necessity is not the way in which he has said that it is necessary that God exists. To say “God exists” is to speak of an internal necessity; God exists in a way that is absolute and independent. Second (2), the kind of necessity he has spoken about is not internal, absolute, in20 “Necessitas externa ex hypothesi existentiae seu actus est, qua res, cum est, necessario est, cum sit, necessario sit,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 63. See the similar meaning of “infallible necessity” as understood and used by Bishop Bramhall in this present study chapter 7 §7.3.1 and §7.6. 21 “Sed neque necessitas hypothetica ex suppositione antecedentis sive praescientiae, sive decreti, sive praedictionis divinae, quae est necessitas rem praecedens sine causalitate, libertati aut rerum contingentiae repugnat,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 63–4.

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dependent necessity of definition and demonstration in the way in which he has said that it is necessary that humans be rational (mind-gifted) or risible. Third, (3), he clarifies that internal necessity is dependent in a restricted or conditional sense, whether of nature or of physics, or natural necessity. It is dependent in the sense that to speak of a human is to speak of an animal; that is necessarily the case. Contrary to the kind of necessity about which he has spoken, “this necessity of nature alone, proceeds from an intrinsic principle of nature, whether material, or formal, and constitutes a necessary cause that indeed is opposite to the contingent or free cause, about which he has spoken.”22

3.2.4 Summary The distinctions about these kinds of necessity will serve as a Reformed benchmark on how to reconcile necessity and freedom of human action. They also exploit conceptual distinctions serving as a foil upon which to explain God’s twofold kind of knowledge. And significantly, the kinds of necessity enter into our understanding of Edwards’s exposition on necessity and contingency, in chapter eight. These distinctions also serve to help us interprete the commencement theses and quaestiones, from chapter 1, on necessity §1.2.2 and contingency §1.2.3. The language of contingency, which is that a state of affairs obtains and that it is possible that it does not obtain, and the language of hypothetical necessity, are consistent with the conceptual plane of God’s knowledge of intuition, which structurally follows the divine decree. The example of “Since I read, necessarily I read,” is an example consistent with a course of events that obtains, as Heereboord says, in time. The language of hypothetical necessities is not the language of possibles, which belongs to God’s simple knowledge of understanding, structurally preceding the divine decree. The divine decree that a prophecy shall be given which states that the bones of Christ will not be broken is contingent due to, structurally speaking, the preceding supposition of divine intuitive knowledge. After the divine decree, necessarily, the course of events unfold in the course of time at the foot of the cross. The soldier, who has been ordered to break Christ’s legs, freely decides whether to swing his club or not. Although the soldier does not break the legs of Christ; nevertheless, it is possible that he chooses to do so. This kind of necessity can be reconciled with contingent freedom.23

22 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 64. 23 Ibid., 63.

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There is a sense in which it was necessary that the Jews crucify Christ, and yet they crucified him freely and contingently. Ultimately, the hypothetical necessity —with a view to its final cause under whose terms the crucifixion happened— does not remove freedom or contingency from the means.24 For example, it is necessary that one studies if she wants to be educated and she studies nonetheless freely. The act of studying is contingent. In short, neither hypothetical necessity based on the assumption of an efficient cause, nor a hypothetical necessity that precedes from true causality is inimical to contingency or freedom, says Heereboord. This is the case whether it is a causality of constraint, whether determination, or non determination, for although human beings be determined by the greatest good, nevertheless, they freely desire it. And the act of willing is contingent, and the consultation that weighs and considers what ought to be done occurs contingently. Likewise, after one’s understanding judges to go forward with an act, it is the person herself who navigates the affair. She elects the means necessarily, and yet freely, and the action of the progress is contingent. There is no coercion, because the understanding and the will, which are the seat of freedom and the root of contingency (quia intellectus et voluntas, sedes libertatis et contingentiae radix), cannot be forced. A thief, for example, who is forced to walk to the gallows, experiences and undergoes necessity, but nevertheless he or she goes freely. His or her going is contingent.25 The objection that necessity of coaction contradicts freedom and contingency is to be understood only of commanded actions. There can be no coercion in the actions elicited, still less does it destroy the freedom or contingency of the action. Therefore he concludes “that no kind of hypothetical or external necessity is incompatible with freedom or contingency.”26

3.3

Contingency

In Disputation eighteen, Heereboord begins his discussion of contingency. Contingency (to endexomenon) means that a state of affairs can be otherwise than it is.27 In fact, says Heereboord, contingency is alluded to in many ways, as that which is necessary and not necessary, and that which is possible. But this significance is alien to the term, says Heereboord. Aristotle testifies in Interpretation that that which is necessary is contingent in an equivocal sense. Some 24 “Nam istoc triplici modo necessarium erat ut Judaei Christum crucifigerent, et tamen libere crucifixerunt, et crucifigendi actio Judaeorum respectu fuit contingentissima,” in Ibid., 64. 25 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 64. 26 “Nullam speciem libertatis hypotheticae aut externae repugnare libertati aut contingentiae,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 64. 27 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 64 (D18).

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do the same thing with contingent because things happen contingently in some way by coincidence or chance. For example, in the ancient world, people gathered in an ampitheater would cast their vote by literally casting a tile up on to the stage. The tossed tile could accidentally hit someone in the head and cause a head wound. The discussion on contingency is more than these kinds of accidental cases of misfortune, it includes the notion of freedom.28

3.3.1 Definition of contingency In the opening thesis, Heereboord makes a crucial point about the confused language people use when talking about contingency, such as when people say that contingency is that which is “both necessary and not necessary, and that which is possible.” This manner of description is “alien” to a correct understanding of contingency.29 Heereboord’s point here is consistent with the language that is distinct to each of two kinds of God’s knowledge. There is, on the one hand, structurally prior to God’s will and decree, God’s simple knowledge of understanding, which speaks of possible states of affairs, and on the other, God’s intuitive knowledge, which speaks of contingent future states of affairs. It is against the broader background of the language proper to the latter, God’s intuitive knowledge of contingent states of affairs, that concerns Heereboord in this disputation. It will not do, in other words, to allow imprecision to creep into the language and syntax of the discussion about contingent reality. If one does, the distinction of kinds of necessity and the distinction of kinds of God’s knowledge collapse. Once collapsed, it would be impossible for Heereboord to make distinct points in the following sections about how to reconcile God’s action with human action in contingent reality. Having clarified that contingency refers neither to “chance, nor misfortune” (non casum tantum aut fortunam), Heereboord says that he understands contingency, in general, as subject to change (pro mutabili), just as he understands necessity as not subject to change (pro immutabili). And he defines necessity as that which cannot be otherwise than it is; likewise, he defines contingent as the opposite, to wit, “that which can be otherwise than it is.” This sense includes whether one speaks of reality (in essendo) or existence (existendo) such that a being is said to be something contingent, like a creature. Or it refers to causality in which sense an efficient cause is said to be something contingent, as a person who is walking, or who while digging in the ground finds a treasure. Efficient causality is contingent in the sense that someone who is walking, can not be walking; that 28 Ibid., 64–5. 29 Ibid., 64.

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is, by his definition, contingency means that, what is, can be otherwise than it is. Contingency also applies to making statements (in enuntiando), since in speech, something true is contingent, such as in the case, writes Heereboord, that “Peter is learned.” The reason is that it is equally the case that that statement can be false. “It can happen that Peter is not learned.”30

3.3.2 A fivefold division of contingency We note at the outset of this section that in chapter five of the present study— Morton’s transcription (with some interpretation) of Heereboord’s Pneumatica, we will see that Heereboord gives more detailed exposition to the topics of complex and non complex (simple) propositions in relation to the divine will. Suffice it to say that his treatment here in the disputations in “Exercises in philosophy” gives less depth of insight. In thesis two of disputation eighteen, Heereboord begins by saying that just as necessity was divided into a dependent and independent sense of the term, likewise, contingency can also be divided, not into cases of independent reality (essendo)—Reformed orthodoxy stated that there is no independent contingence in reality—but rather into cases of causing (causando). For God, insofar as he operates freely to the outside, in the external world (ad extra), can be said to be working contingently. Moreover, freedom is a species of contingency, as will be said in the majority of cases, and yet God, who operates contingently in this sense, also operates independently from others. Heereboord’s first point is on contingency and the semantics of propositions.31 The distinction Heereboord makes here has to do with a hermeneutical rule going back to Augustine, which concerned the thing (res) and the thing signified. Medieval thinkers developed the res theory in different ways, and Reformed orthodoxy also made use of the theory. One use of the res theory is to distinguish the contingent human perspective when talking about concepts in contradistinction to the truth status of the thing in question. From the human perspective, standing in time, that which is contingent can be described as either complex or non complex. Incomplexio, or the res simplex, refers to the thing signified, simply considered in and of itself. The two instances Heereboord gives are the concepts of drinking and running, in and of themselves. A complexio refers to a proposition about the contingent thing or contingent cause. The language used to express what the object of faith is in the instance of “Christ’s 30 “Quod aliter se habere non potest, sive in essendo aut existendo … Creatura dicitur ens contingens in existendo, quia potest non existere … enunciato aliqua vera dicitur contingens, quia ita vera est ut possit esse falsa; potest enim fieri ut Petrus non sit doctus,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 65. 31 Ibid.

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birth,” when viewed as an incomplexio, can express the object of faith without respect to tenses of verbs. Whether prior to Christ’s birth or thereafter, the object of faith is the same. Thus, the object of faith is expressed without the complexity of tensed verbs in a proposition. Heereboord elaborates on complex contingency in his fifth division.32 Contingency is understood either in an absolute sense, or in a qualified, conditional or relative sense (secundum quid), which is not so much a division into contingency in general, than into contingency in reality (essendo). For instance, a creature is a contingent being. Contingence in a qualified sense is, for example, a created being, because although by nature it be extrinsically dependent upon God and mutable, and can determine itself, nevertheless, it does not determine itself intrinsically (in sese tamen et ab intrinseco non definit), except by the extraordinary action of God. An angel is an example of a contingent, created being, an extraordinary person, which is simply (simpliciter) mutable and which can determine itself (ex sese potest definere).33 Contingency ought to be understood in terms of causality, contingent in the sense of being equal to or unequal to an effect, indefinite or definite, intrinsic or extrinsic. Causes are not understood and determined by their nature to produce an effect; rather, they are equally related to this or that effect, and so they regard both parts equally, and indefinitely, both opposites of contrariety or contradiction. There are other causes, which are definite and determined courses of action that agents have taken. Other times, their courses of action are prevented by other extrinsic causes. In that sense, then, they can be related unequally to the effect and can produce an effect that is more or less apt, more this, less that. Because of this, there are contingent effects. But this contingency in action does not apply to God, but only to human agents.34 From the preceding division, there is not much change in the fourth division which is a distinction between deliberation and chance. The former of which is 32 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 65. Cf. the development in the Middle Ages in Kretzman, Norman, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, eds. The Cambridge history of later medieval philosophy: from the rediscovery of Aristotle to the disintegration of scholasticism 1100–1600, 201–2. 1982; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Cf. In early Reformed Orthodoxy, Johann Alsted (1588–1638) wrote in chapter 28, on the topic “De necessitate et contingentia.” He cited Duns Scotus, Super 1 Sent. D40. Q.1, on contingency: “When it is in willing agents, it is called contingency with alternativity. It is called alternativity (ad utrumlibet) because it determines to alternate opposites” (quando est in agentibus voluntatis, vocatur contingens ad utrumlibet. Ad utrumlibet dicitur, quia determinatur ad utrumque oppositorum), in Alsted, Johann Heinrich. Metaphysica, tribus libris tractata; per praecepta methodica: theoremata selecta: & commentariola dilucida. Herborn, 1616, cap. 28 “De necessitate et contingentia,” 232. 33 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 65. 34 Ibid.

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appropriate to free causes and essential (per se) operations, and is called, freedom. The latter pertains to accidental (per accidens) causal operations, which are either free and called luck (fortuna), or necessary, and called chance (casus).35 The fifth kind of contingency is complex contingency. This has to do with analyzing propositions and is further divided into formal and material. By formal, Heereboord is pointing to the essential mode of these propositions. By material, he is stating that the parts of a proposition cohere in a dissoluble and contingent connection. The following statement can be evaluated formally and materially: “It is contingent that a human being is mind-gifted.” As to the formal structure of the statement, it is valid. But materially, the proposition is false, because the statement does not agree with the nature of the subject. This is because a human being is by definition mind-gifted.36

3.3.3 Contingent causality In Disputation eighteen, thesis three, Heereboord addresses the question whether God is a contingent cause and acts contingently.37 Heereboord says an intrinsically perfect agent, such as God, can cause a state of affairs to come about and not cause a state of affairs to come about. With God as the divine agent, what he causes cannot be impeded or hindered by other agents. But an objection arises which says that contingency suggests mutability and imperfection in the agent, and therefore one dare not attribute contingency to divine causality. The philosophers of Coimbra, the Jesuits, would not dare say that “God acts contingently, because contingency suggests mutability and imperfection in the operator.”38 Heereboord speaks of imperfection, but in creatures. Heereboord pinpoints what he calls the most noble question to be discussed, namely, what is the root, the reason, and the first cause of contingency in contingently acted second causes, is it the divine will? Or is it actually second causes? He gives the Reformed tradition’s answer, namely, that the root (radix), reason (ratio), and first cause of contingency (prima causa contingentiae) in second causes, and all contingency in created things, is the will of God itself.39 The reason 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., 65–6. 37 “An satis tuto dicatur Deus causa contingens et contingenter agere,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 66. 38 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 66 (D18). Heereboord gives an in-text reference to the philosophers of Coimbra: Conimbricenses commentarii in octo libros physicorum Book 8. c.2.q. 5 art. 1. resp. to 1. “Non fuerunt ausi, Deum agere contingenter, quod contingentia mutabilitatem et imperfectionem in operante innuat.” Cf. contingent causality and divine foreknowledge, in Muller, PRRD 3: 403–4. 39 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 66.

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that agents have the power of operating contingently is due to God who has willed that they can act this way. The logical ability of an agent “to act with alternative possibilities” (agunt alterutrum) is consistent with the view that God can will that a state of affairs occur in a way which includes that an agent act that way. This logical move by Heereboord raises a challenge to Jesuits, who charge that the notion he is presenting is such that the divine will decrees an event that is unchangeable, entailing a loss of human freedom. In other words, God wills that some effects be contingently produced (quia Deus voluit effectus quosdam contingenter produci), and for this reason he has chosen and decreed to make certain causes contingent, from which these contingent effects are produced. Therefore contingent causes and effects do not arise independent of God’s will and intention—there is no independent contingency in reality. Heereboord, thus, holds to God contingently willing states of affairs.40 Neither is it the case that there be any contingent state of affairs or effect whose contingent cause is not God. For if there were, then plausibly one could conclude that second causes can modify and hinder divine causality, a notion which Heereboord rejects. God causes contingently and orders all things sweetly (suaviter), as Bernard de Clairvaux said. Moreover, God elects contingent causes for contingent effects, necessary causes for necessary effects. He has willed not only things to exist as to the substance of the matter, but that they exist in their own manner, and God has willed not only that secondary causes and agents operate, but that they operate in such and such a manner.41 There is a scholastic distinction of two acts, concerning distinct levels of contingent reality, which Heereboord indicates is not an independent reality, but dependent upon God as first cause. Actus primus deals with the reality of an individual’s nature and how it corresponds to action. What is essential to this level is the individual’s possibility to act. But this possibility is distinct from the act of will in the actus secundus. The second level concerns actual reality, that is, the actualization of acts of will, willing this and not that. What is it that concerns the Jesuits, Remonstrants, and Arminians about these two levels, and the topics in the following sections, such as the Reformed emphasis on a previous motion, or influx of power, upon an individual in a first act? What they oppose is God’s 40 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 66. Cf. the Harvard broadside of 1704, see chapter 1 §1.2.3, raised and answered the same question in the same way. 41 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 66. On the reference to the Fathers use of “suaviter,” see Bernard de Clairvaux, L’Amour de Dieu et la Grâce et le Libre Arbitre, Sources Chrétiennes, 393 (Paris: CERF, 1993), 316–6; §33. Wisdom 8:1 and Aquinas, Summa Ia, q.22, obj.5. “Whether everything is subject to the providence of God.” The context of the remark by Bernard is the Primum Mobile, where, as he says in the sentence quoted, God disposes sweetly “from the highest heaven till the lowest parts of the earth.” Ephes. 4:9 is the source in the biblical text.

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working upon an individual’s soul and will in the reality of this world, in an efficacious manner. They think this removes their individual, self-determining freedom and contingency. They therefore focus attention on the actus secundus, not the actus primus. They speak of an individual’s cooperation with God in the second act; thus, a simultaneous concurrence of divine and human activity. That God’s will is the root source of all contingency (primus radix contingentiae) can be understood in two ways: First, (1) by way of participation. All power of causing contingently, which is in second causes and agents, is imparted by the first cause, God. Consequently, every contingency of effects is grounded in God, as in the first root of contingency. Second ,(2) not only because all power and causality of causing contingently sprouts and descends from God, but because all contingent causation (causatio contingens) is directly from him. The first (1) is the first act. The second (2) is the second act. Heereboord says that the second act presents more difficulties and is usually disputed by the Jesuits.42 Ames states that God works upon individuals in the first act, endowing individuals, for instance, with the power to believe. There are instances where the individual exercises that power, and thus believes, in a second act. The two acts can occur simultaneously in a structural order of first and second acts. The individual’s freedom in the first act is not removed by God’s action, but rather the individual’s freedom is perfected (perficitur in actu secundo). God, as it were, fits the individual’s will for the second act of will. But the individual is not the prime agent (primum agens). Crucially, Ames counters the Remonstrant’s concerns, and says that “in the very moment of time (in eo ipso temporis momento) in which the act is determined to one choice or object, the individual retains true sovereign power, if he or she were to will otherwise.”43 The contingent causality of secondary causes can be considered materially and formally. In the material sense, one views the total concurrence of God’s causal act and the agent’s causal act as indivisible and one and considers how the two are commensurate (adaequate) to one another. The material sense supposes not only simultaneity, but also unity of the concurrence of God and the secon42 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 66 (§5). William Ames refers to Martin Becanus as one who disputes the Reformed orthodox understanding of first and second acts. According to Ames, Becanus holds that the primary root out of which grace is called in the second act must be accepted as coming from the consequence, or, from the free cooperation of a human being (De auxil. grat.c.3.5), Ames, Rescriptio Scholastica et brevis ad Nicolaus Grevinchovii, (originally Amsterdam, 1615; Leiden, 1617; Harderwijk: Nicolai a Uvieringen, 1645), 95 (1645 edition). See Becanus, Opuscula theologica, vol. 1, IX. c. 3(§6), p. 371–2. 43 Ames, Rescriptio Scholastica, 146–7. Cf. Scholastic Discourse, 308. There are also instances where the two acts are separated by time. Van Mastricht, for instance, gives the example of God giving John the Baptist power to believe in a first act, before he is born in the course of time, and he exercises faith later in life in a second act. For Van Mastricht’s examples, see chapter 9 §9.3.4.

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dary cause of an agent. Nevertheless, although there is simultaneous concurrence, God is the primary source of contingency, just as it is certain that he is the first cause of all action. For it is not because there is a second cause that God acts; but, rather, because God acts, the second cause of action is taken.44 In the formal sense, one considers concurrence from the viewpoint of how the two causes are incommensurate (inadaequate) in the sense that the secondary agent acts and can not act. Even in the formal sense, Heereboord says, the Thomists believe that God is the first source of contingency, in such a way that the secondary cause or agent stands indifferent to act, and is pre-moved efficaciously by God (praemoveri), in a logically previous sense, and predetermined to work (praedeterminari ad operandum).45 This secondary action of the causal agent is nevertheless to be resolved in a logical sense in the efficacious divine power and will which is characterized by previous motion (praevia motione).46 Heereboord says that the question raised at this stage is “Whether, if God were to act by necessity, there were, nevertheless, contingent effects/states of affairs.”47 (1) First, the hypothesis is impossible, he says, because God not only does not act (Deus non modo non agit) of a necessity of nature in his acts to outside himself (ad extra); but neither can he so act (sed ne quidem sic agere potest). For this manner of acting would derogate from his highest perfection, because it implies an imperfection. (2) Second, on this hypothesis, if God, as first cause, were to act necessarily to the outside, it would remove contingency of created things and agents (sublatum iri contingentiam in rebus creatis). All effects, on this hypothesis, would happen from the nature of the first cause. Secondary causes and agents could not act unless moved by the first, in a way quite different from the way of first and second acts described previously. This is because if God, as first act, already acts out of necessity of nature, it would flow in a most powerful influx into the secondary causes and agents and determine it to one thing, and the result would be the removal of contingency and removal of indifference of action in agents. This indifference to act was noted above under the formal sense of contingent causality. Thus far, Heereboord has explained why he rejects the implications of the hypothesis, since it would remove the contingency that be44 “Non enim quia causa secunda agit, Deus agit, sed quia Deus agit, causa secunda agit,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 66–7. This is the interpretation of the Thomist expression “Deus vult hoc esse propter hoc, sed non propter hoc vult hoc,” from Summa, Ia, q.19, a.5. (God wills this to be as means to that; but does not will this on account of that). Ames quotes Aquinas’s terminology, but interprets him and uses the language for his own more radical purposes, as far as the will is concerned, against the Remonstrants, in Rescriptio scholastica, cap. III. “De volendi causa in Deo,” 18. 45 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 67. 46 Ibid. 47 “Utrum, si Deus ageret necessario, effectus nihilominus darentur in rerum natura contingentes?,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 67.

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longs to secondary causes, within a framework of a previous concurrence of first and second causes, which give structural priority to God, the first cause, and at the same moment, guard the freedom and contingency of secondary causes.48 If the first cause, God, moves contingently, then the succeeding causes move contingently. But “if the first cause, God, causes necessarily, necessarily it will impact second causes.” God causes contingently when he acts ad extra, according to Heereboord: Suppose there is a secondary cause B; B is therefore moved necessarily from the first cause A. But B is moved in the same way in which the first cause A moves. It moves the next proximate cause, C. And C will move D and so on. In this case, if God necessarily causes or enacts the first cause, no effect would be moved or caused contingently.49

In sum, Heereboord answered the most noble question by answering that the root, reason, and first cause of contingency in second causes, and all contingency in created things, is the will of God itself. We saw in chapter one that a Harvard 1704 quaestio took up this same issue and gave the same answer. This section has shown that contingency serves an indispensible role in explaining the Reformed set of requisites for humankind’s freedom of action. Although the Jesuits’ set of requisites holds to a simultaneous concurrence of divine and human freedom, they deny the divine prerequisites of premotion or predetermination of a secondary agent’s freedom. In order to guard human freedom, they say that secondary causes and agents are to determine themselves and so the proximate source of the contingently proceeding effect is found in the secondary agent. Their move, however, roots freedom in the secondary agent and makes the effect independent of God, a notion which is rejected by the Reformed tradition. The Jesuits’ tendency is to remove the dynamic presence of God.50

48 “(2) Si prima causa ageret necessario ad extra, sublatum iri contingentiam in rebus creatis,” Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 67. 49 “Porro, si prima causa necessario causat , necessario se habebit influendo respectu causae secundae: Illa esto B : igitur B necessario movetur a prima causa A: at B eodem modo, quo movetur a prima causa A, movet proximam sibi causam C. et C. movebit D. et sic in omnibus causis procedendo nihil contingenter movebitur aut causabit, si Deus prima causa necessario causat aut agit,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 67. 50 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 67. Van Mastricht says that the Pelagians, Jesuits, and Remonstrants conveniently introduce “independent indifference of freedom of choice.” They acknowledge, on the one hand, “some concursus or influx in all things, but on the other hand, it is nevertheless a general indifference, which gives essence, life, motion to all things, according to Acts 17:28.” Their understanding of a general indifferent providential influx is “determined” and “specified by each particular being’s own choice,” in Van Mastricht, ThPrTh, Book III.10.33, 398.

Divine free causes and kinds of indifference

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Divine free causes and kinds of indifference

Heereboord goes to great lengths in disputation forty-seven to explain different types of indifference.51 There are two kinds of indifference that Heereboord treats with respect to divine free causes, the one is (1) negative, which he allows, and the other is (2) privative, which he does not ascribe to God.

3.4.1 Negative indifference Negative indifference means an agent is no more determined to one object than to another, nor to produce one over another. This sense applies to God before he creates the world. In order for humans to conceive of this sense of “before” creating, Heereboord uses the tool of structural moments (signum rationis), since he is not talking about the priority of time, and since the decrees of God are no less eternal than God Himself.52 Negative indifference speaks of a logical or structural moment prior to the decree and act to create the world (statuisset actu creare mundum).53 God himself was indifferent to create or not to create, or even to create another world than this one. Nothing determined God’s will one way or the other. Heereboord is careful to point out that this indifference does not imply, however, some imperfection or privation of any perfection in God. To create or produce some effect outside himself does not in some way complete God.54 God therefore freely produced creatures, and freely loved creatures. There is no necessary connection (necessaria connexus) between creation and achieving the divine good, as if creation somehow benefits God. And so, writes Heereboord, the Scholastics rightly say, “the divine will, which he necessarily has from himself, insofar as it is naturally and necessarily determined to love the divine good, has freely determined itself to the object to which it has no necessary relation (habitudo non necessaria).”55

51 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 175 (D47). In vol. 2: 232 (D14), also on Causa Libera, Heereboord refers back to D47, and adds that D47 concerns free causes in “God, angels, and humans.” Cf. Alvarez, Diego. Operis de auxiliis divinae gratiae & humani arbitrii viribus, & libertate, ac legitima eius cum efficacia eorundum auxiliorum concordia. Summa ab ipso authore collecta & in IV libros distincta, lib. 4 c. 15.,624. Cologne: Petrum Henningium, 1621. Beginning at (§2), Heereboord extracts paragraphs from Alvarez, but also enlarges on concepts, such as the signum rationis. 52 Cf. chapter 6 §6.5.1 on signum rationis. 53 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 176. 54 Ibid. 55 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 176. The statement is excerpted from Aquinas’s Summa Ia. q. 19. a.3 ad. 5.

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3.4.2 Privative indifference Privative indifference cannot be ascribed to God since it presupposes some imperfect or potential power. But God is in actu, not in potentia. Privative indifference only applies to created powers (potentia creata), whether passive or simultaneously active and passive. It concerns passive powers. On the natural level, it is when substantial forms configure prime matter. A substantial form rises, for example, from wax which configures prime matter, which relates to a signet ring in that it has the potential to form an insignia. Privative indifference is also illustrated by the relation of a subject to whiteness or blackness, which receives it. In fact this indifference is only passive, in which prime matter is neither an efficient cause that produces substantial form, nor does the subject matter concur actively with producing whiteness, but only in receiving a kind of material cause. This indifferent power is partly active, partly passive (pars activa et pars passiva). Thus the human understanding in relation to intelligible species (species intelligibilis) is that by which the understanding understands something. When the understanding understands an extrinsic objective state it has the form (ratio) of power and passive indifference from the object it produces in the mind. Heereboord likely includes this Thomistic principle here because it has to do with an act of understanding (actus intelligendi), which has power and active indifference.56 Just as there are acts of the will, likewise, the understanding has freedom of exercise and freedom of specification. It can exercise an act, or not, and exercise this or that (quia potest intellectionem exercere vel non , et exercere hanc vel illam). In like manner, the will (similiter voluntas), insofar as it produces free acts of willing or not willing and nilling (volendi et non volendi et nolendi), has power and active indifference. Insofar as the same immanent acts are concerned, which it produces, receives, it has power and passive indifference, because it can receive and not receive, and receive this or that.57 God, like humans, possesses the power of free causes and formal freedom. But privative indifference, which is passive, cannot be ascribed to God, but neither is it essential to a formal free cause. Neither can a partly active and partly passive power be ascribed to God, since it would impute some imperfection to God. Heereboord admits no indifference in God, whether passive only, or active and passive at the same time, since then God would not be pure act (purus actus), and not be infinitely perfect. But God possesses genuine freedom, which is simple perfection, and thereby formally in God, just as wisdom is formally in God. There is nothing in God but what pertains to God formally, essentially, and intrinsically. 56 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 176. 57 Ibid.

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But neither of these two kinds of indifference are essential to God having the formal power of free causes.58

3.4.3 Active indifference In addition to negative indifference, Heereboord also attributes active indifference to God. For example, God is like an artificer who chooses to make some work or not to make it, to make this artificial work or another. There is no imperfection in negative and active indifference. They belong to causes that are formal and free. In fact, a free cause is always indifferent. Whereas God does not possess passive indifference, humans do. But humans are not pure act, as God is. Humans are free by participation (per participationem) in God. Humans have potentiality and can be completed by means of various acts. And in this sense they are passively indifferent in relation to the same acts. Therefore, in every free created cause, in addition to any active indifference, there is some passive indifference. But, there is no passive indifference in God. This whole framework of negative and active indifference entails ontology of true and radical contingency.59

3.5

Divine and humankind’s willing and indifference

3.5.1 Divine willing and indifference Heerboord observes these four propositions about God’s freedom of indifference, which differ in humans: (1) “God cannot will indifferently with respect to the freedom of exercise. Neither can God suspend an act of free choice.” (2) He adds to point (1) that “God’s will is not indifferent to the act of willing insofar as it denotes an ordering of God towards an object,” which is intrinsically and ab58 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 176. Cf. the contemporary definitions: “Formal freedom is a property of the human subject, namely the freedom to will or not to will or to will the opposite of a state of affairs—a freedom which is there regardless of whether the state of affairs (or its opposite) can or cannot be actualized.” Formal freedom, in formula is: MsWa at t¹ & Ms~Wa at t¹ & MsW~a at t¹. Formal freedom’s essentiality can be expressed as: N(sWa at t¹ → (MsW~a at t¹ v Ms~Wa at t¹)). (→ is a material conditional, or, implication). And, “material freedom is freedom with regard to objects of choice. ‘Material’ refers to the material field of possible objects of choice which can be effectuated by free choice,” in Dekker and Veldhuis, “Freedom and sin: some systematic observations,” 153–61. 59 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 177. Cf. Ames, William. Conscience with the power and cases thereof. Translated out of Latin into English for more public benefit, 23–4. N.p. 1639: Puritan reprints, 2010.

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solutely necessary, given his “essence, wisdom, goodness, and so on.” For “God neither can, nor could not will this.” (3) God can will indifferently with respect to freedom of specification. Willing or nilling, electing and refusing, insofar as willing and nilling denote similar acts of God ordered to an external objective state and its existence, are not absolutely necessary, but indifferent. For God can nill the states of affairs he has absolutely willed, and will what he has nilled. What he elects he can refuse, and what he refuses, he can elect. Although hypothetically, a state that he wills or nills, he cannot simultaneously not will, or not nill. This would contravene the immutability of his will. (4) Heereboord adds a caveat to (3) and says “God’s will is not indifferent with respect to freedom of specification when it is ordered to a good or evil act.” God, who is the supreme good (summum bonum), “can only morally will good states of affairs and just states of affairs (tantum potest moraliter bona et justa velle),” likewise God can only “morally nill evil states of affairs and what is unjust.” However, concerning good states of affairs (bona), “doing this or that good state, or not doing this or that good, impeding or not impeding this or that evil state, God is absolutely indifferent (absolute indifferens).”60

3.5.2 Humankind’s willing and indifference Heereboord briefly sets out the fourfold state of humans with respect to freedom and the necessity of immutability: (1) Before the fall they are in a state of created integrity and innocence. (2) After the fall, humans are marked by defection, sin, and corruption. (3) After regeneration, they are marked by grace and renewal. (4) After the resurrection, they will be marked either by glory or condemnation. (1) In the state of creation and grace there is no necessity of immutability, in which there is either good only, or evil only, such that humans would will both immmutably. (2) But in a state of sin and condemnation there is the necessity of immutability to evil alone; (4) in the state of glory, there is necessity of immutability to good alone. That is, if it is a given that infinite duration is eternity, then, the saints in heaven, in a material sense, enjoy a perfected material freedom, of infinite duration, as well as retaining formal freedom, at each ‘moment’ material freedom is exercised.61 Heereboord then makes three points concerning human freedom of indifference in these different states of affairs: (1) In the state of creation as well as the state of regeneration, humans are indifferent enjoying both freedom of specifi60 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 178. 61 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 177–8 (D47). Cf. Dekker and Veldhuis, “Freedom and sin: some systematic observations,” 153–61. Cf. Muller, PRRD 3: 354–64.

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cation and freedom of exercise concerning good or bad states of affairs. They relate to these states of affairs indeterminately (indeterminate). (2) In a state of sin and condemnation, humans are not indifferent concerning good and bad states of affairs. They are determined to evil. Likewise, the saints in heaven are not indifferent to good and bad states of affairs, but are determined to the good. In this they have lost their indifference of freedom of specification. (3) But they keep the same freedom of specification in a state of sin and condemnation, insofar as they are willing this or that or another kind of individual bad state. Likewise, in a state of glory, the beatified retain freedom of specification insofar as they are willing this or that or another kind of individual good state.62 But Heereboord does not say whether the beatified can will to do something other than think about beatitude, that is, whether they can will to not think about God, according to the freedom of exercise. While the beatified cannot nill the beatific vision, can they will to turn their attention elsewhere? This would be so in the freedom of exercise, but he does not address the issue here.63

3.6

Indifferent free causes

This section concerns different lines of interpretation on how to rhyme divine and human free causes. By way of general introduction, since “we live, and move, and have our being” in God, both lines of interpretation, Jesuit and Reformed, had to take certain (pre)requisites into account when attempting to make them rhyme with free human causes.64 When Heereboord speaks of prerequisites (praerequisitis) to human action he is referring to the divine decree, foreknowledge, and the motion of God (praevia motio Dei)—both in a structually previous as well as in a simultaneous sense—moving upon human faculties.65 He defines an efficacious decree of God as that by which God has decreed, from all eternity—not in time—that a person would produce an act, certainly and infallibly. Both lines of interpretation were keen to defend the certainty and infallibility of God’s efficacious decrees. We will return to this point when discussing “compossibility.” Suffice it to say at this point that Heereboord, despite claims to the contrary, holds that the alternative line of interpretation of the 62 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 178. 63 Ibid. Cf. Simon Francis Gaine, Will There be Free Will in Heaven? (London: T&T Clark, 2003), 98. Gaine says that Suárez holds that while the saints in heaven lose freedom of specification, they retain freedom of exercise, that is, they do not necessarily think about their happiness. And he says Scotus says that while the saints cannot nill (will that not) the beatific vision, they can exercise their freedom to turn the will away from God to something else, without sinning. 64 On these divine prerequisites, see Beck, Voetius, 419–20. 65 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 236 (§7).

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divine prerequisites “establishes infallibility and certainty.”66 Pre-motion, he says, refers to God who premoves (praemovet), in a logically or structurally prior manner of speaking, the will of an individual to act. Both the Jesuit line and Heereboord’s use of an alternative line of interpretation address the issue of God’s actual movement in reality upon the human faculties. They take account of de facto (factual and actual) cases of free human causal action in reality. But this is also the crucial point on which they differ, since the alternative line also posited an objective potency, which speaks of possible objects that can be actualized by an agent. That is, there is a distinction drawn between the passive power of acting (potentia agendi) and actually eliciting an act.67 Heereboord introduces disputation fourteen by summarizing the argumentation of those whom he calls the patrons of free-will—the old and the new Pelagians, the Jesuits. According to Heereboord, they hold to the opinion that: An indifferent free cause is, antecedent to a free act all things requisite being posited— including the last dictate of the practical understanding—and the actual influx, by which God has infused into the free choice of a human being, the created (human) will can, nevertheless, in the composite sense, perform that act and not perform it, suspend the act, or even elicit the contrary. They say further that this is necessary for true freedom: And the dictate by which the understanding moves the will to this choice, and the movement by which God moves the will to consent, can rhyme and simultaneously actually exist and be composed in the same free cause, in the same free choice and created will, with the act of the will to the other thing, and the contrary dissent.68

66 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 237 (§9). Cf. God’s certain and infallible knowledge of contingent states of affairs, in Vos et al., Scotus: Contingency and freedom: Lectura I 39, (§62). 67 Cf. s.v. “potency” in Alluntis, Felix, and Allan B. Wolter, trans. and eds. God and creatures: the quodlibetal questions. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975; s.v. “potentia” in the glossary in Synopsis purioris theologiae, ed. Te Velde. 68 “II. Sententia Adversariorum haec est. Indifferentia causa libera est, ut positis omnibus requisitis antecedenter ad actum liberum, etiam dictamine intellectus practici ultimo, et influxu actuali, quo Deus influit in liberum hominis arbitrium, voluntas tamen creata possit etiam, in sensu composito, operari illum actum et non operari, possit, dico, positis iis omnibus, suspendere illum actum aut etiam elicere contrarium: itaque dicunt ulterius; esse necessarium ad veram libertatem et usum illius, ut dictamen quo intellectus voluntatem ad hoc, et motio, qua Deus movet voluntatem ad consensum, possint stare ac simul esse et componi in eadem causa libera, in eodem libero arbitrio ac voluntate creata, cum actu voluntatis ad aliud et dissensu contrario,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2:233 (§2). Cf. the identical definition given by the Dominican theologian Diego Alvarez (1550–1635) of what Alvarez also calls “the opinion of recent theologians.” Alvarez also states that they [the Jesuits] misunderstand and misuse the syntactical tool of the composite sense, as we will note in §6.1–2. Alvarez, Operis de auxiliis divinae gratiae, lib. 4. c. 14, 615 (§§1–3). Cf. Alvarez’s use of the composite and divided sense, and Alvarez’s Scotistic understanding of the divided sense, in Beck, Voetius, 349.

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First, we will attempt to show the crucial elements of the Jesuit line of argument for compossibility. Second, we will attempt to show the crucial elements of Heereboord’s use of an alternative approach, and his understanding of compossibility, incompossibility, and how the divine prerequisites can rhyme with free causes. Finally, we give a summary analysis and indicate the significance of the alternative approach to free causes, and its innovative use of the syntactical tool of the divided sense.

3.6.1 The Jesuit line of compossibility and incompossibility First, a careful reading of the language of the Jesuit line of argumentation, as given by Heereboord, will reveal their insistence on speaking of free causes only on the level of human agents producing acts in actuality. Their line locates true freedom not in the faculty or power of acting (potentia agendi), but in the actual act itself (actus ipse) in reality.69 They argue on the de facto level of actuality. The terms they use—de facto, actualis, in esse (in reality), actus secundus (the faculty of eliciting acts operative at the second level of actualization)—all refer to rhyming divine action with active, elicited human acts, which actually are exercised.70 Their insistence on arguing at the level of actual operating powers is evident in their opinion given above: God “infuses an influx in actuality” and God’s movement and human free causes “can rhyme and simultaneously actually exist (possint stare ac simul esse).”71 Second, their line argues for a power of simultaneity in one and the same subject, at one and the same time. They hold that it is possible for one and the same individual to both assent and dissent at the same time. They state: It is simultaneously possible that an individual assent and it is possible that the individual dissent to one and the same proposition.72 By not asserting a distinction between the power to actualize and to actualize in fact—which the alternative line does—the Jesuit line claims a compossibility in terms of the “power of simultaneity.”73 They locate this power of simultaneity at the level of 69 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 237 (§9). 70 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 233 (§2), 233–4 (§3), 235 (§4), 236 (§§7,8), 237 (§9): Cf. s.v. “in actu primo, in actu secundo” in Alluntis and Wolter, trans. and eds. God and creatures; see also s.v. “actus” in the glossary, Henk van den Belt, ed., Synopsis purioris theologiae / Synopsis of a purer theology, Latin text and English translation, Volume 2 Disputations 24–42 (Leiden: Brill, 2016). 71 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 233. 72 Ibid., 2: 233–4 (§3). 73 Cf. Heereboord says these two powers are in dispute: “De simultate potentiae et potentia simultatis,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 234 (§3).

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the actual operative powers of the agent. The technical term for this secondary level of operation is “the second act (actus secundus).74 The Jesuit line expresses the power of simultaneity in one and the same subject, at one and the same time, in terms such as “at the same instant of time” and “simultaneously in the same subject.”75 Their notion of simultaneity holds to a certain act and the absence of the same act, or contrary act, in the composite sense.76 Their opinion of simultaneity can be expressed as follows: There is a twofold truth that can simultaneously exist at the factual level: “The Holy Spirit wills to move someone to an act of love or faith, and nevertheless that individual does not love, nor does he or she believe.”77 Their line of thought is that, in order to preserve true freedom, it must be possible for a human agent, at the level of actual operative powers, to resist the operation and movement of the Holy Spirit upon human faculties. In their notion, God can move the human heart with the intention of saving grace and nevertheless, de facto, in fact—a crucial term—it is possible that grace not follow, and that the individual not convert. In other words, if there were no compossibility as presented in this case, “there would be no free cause for humankind, no free choice.”78 At this point we need to add a brief explanation of the composite sense and the divided sense of a modal proposition, since both lines of interpretation make use of these tools of syntax. The composite sense of a modal proposition is that in which the modal operator is predicated of the subject and predicate taken together in a composed sense. Heereboord gives the classic example, (1)“That white is black, is possible.” In the composite sense of a modal proposition, predication takes place in a manner such that there are compossibiles in the subject. In example (1), the compossible parts of the statement are in the same subject at the same time, by means of the modal operator, “possible.” The modal “possible” extends its impact to the whole statement. But, says Heereboord, it cannot be the case (the incompossibility of the composite sense), in example, (1) that the subject is singularly and simultaneously both black and white. This is because white is not black.79

74 “In actu secundo,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 236, (§8). 75 “Pro eodem instanti temporis … sint simul in eodem subjecto, in eadem causa libera.” Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 236 (§7). 76 Cf. the alternative sense of “potentia operandi stet simul in eodem subjecto” in the next section (§6.2). 77 “Duo esse simul vera … stare possunt: Spiritus Sanctus vult aliquem movere ad actum dilectionis aut fidei, et ille tamen non diligit nec credit,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 236–7 (§9). 78 “Alioquin homo non foret causa libera, non foret ei liberum arbitrium,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 237 (§9). 79 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select. 2: 234 (§4). Heereboord extracts the content of

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In the divided sense, a modal operator interposes itself between the subject and the predicate, which are considered as separate parts. Heereboord gives the example, (2) “It is possible that white be black.”80 If the modal operator, “possible,” is predicated of the statement in a divided sense, it makes sense and is true. In this case, the predication extends to each part of the statement in a successive manner (successive), one time after another (tempore alio). In example (2), says Heereboord, the subject, “the form of whiteness,” can support “the form of blackness” and be black, at a successive moment.81 In the introduction to this section, we saw Heereboord’s summary statement of the Jesuit line, wherein appeared the syntactical term “composite sense (sensus compositus).” How does their line of argumentation use the composite sense to explain free human causes? We recall that the example given above, (1), is to be read as one proposition, with the possibility modal operator accenting the proposition as a whole: “That white is black, is possible.”82 Their line shifts the classic use of the composite sense and interprets the proposition as giving compossibility in the same individual subject, at the same instant of time. Since their opinion attempts to guarantee autonomous human freedom of choice, we translate the principle of compossibility to free human causes, which they express in terms of the composite sense. From the summary opinion in thesis two of Heereboord’s disputation fourteen, given in the introduction to this section, we can construct two propositions. Each is to be read in the composite sense, in order to show the Jesuit line of argumentation: In one and the same free, created human agent, the will can simultaneously producethis-act-and-not-produce it. It can simultaneously suspend-this-act-or-also-elicit-the contrary act.83

80 81

82 83

(§4), about composite and divided senses, from Alvarez, De auxiliis divinae gratiae, lib. 2 c. 11. (§3). The divided sense: “Album possibile est esse nigrum,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 234 (§4). Cf. Heereboord’s extract from Alvarez, De auxiliis divinae gratiae, lib. 2 cap. 11, 237 (§3). Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 235 (§4). For a more detailed explanation of the divided and composite sense, see this present study’s chapters 1 §1.2.6 and 2 §2.6.7. Cf. Heereboord’s extracts on the divided sense in (§§4–6) from Alvarez, De auxiliis divinae gratiae, lib. 2 c. 11. (§§3,4). Heereboord agrees with Alvarez that a human can dissent in the divided sense, and emphasizes, but not in actuality (non vero actu dissentiat), 235 (§6). Cf. the same example, illustrating diachronic contingency and possibility, of the divided sense, in Vos et al., Scotus: contingency and freedom, lectura I 39, (§48). Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2:234 (§4). In formula: M(A at t1 & ~A at t1). “Voluntas tamen creata possit etiam, in sensu composito, operari illum actum et non operari, possit, positis iis omnibus, suspendere illum actum aut etiam elicere contrarium,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 233 (§2). Cf. Scotus: contingency and freedom, lectura I 39, (§51). In formula: M(sWat¹ & sW~at¹) and M(sWat¹ & s~Wat¹. (s=subject, W =act of will, a=object, M=possibility modal operator). Scotus rejected as illogical these opposite

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We note that, in the composite sense of reading, the modal possibility operator (posse) extends to both parts of the proposition as a whole, indicated by the hyphenated part of the proposition. Thus, can, or, it is possible that, simultaneously repeats its accent on the whole proposition. In this construction, the act of will is opposed to itself, since there are contrary acts, not contrary objects of the will. But since this composite reading is a logical contradiction, we turn to the alternative, classic line of interpretation about how to rhyme the divine prerequisites with free human causes.

3.6.2 An alternative line of compossibility, incompossibility, and the divine prerequisites A careful reading of the language that Heereboord uses will reveal that he distinguishes two levels or planes in conceiving of the compossibility of the divine prerequisites and human freedom. The one is the level of possibility and the other is the level of factuality. Heereboord’s language reveals a level not seen in the Jesuit line. The grammar that is indicative of the possibility level is: potentia agendi, potentia dissentiendi, potentia operandi et non operandi. They are gerundives, verbal adjectives, and are passive in meaning.84 With the help of this distinction, Heereboord points out that the faculty of the will’s power to assent is to be distinguished from actual assent, which takes place at the level of factuality. Heereboord recognizes that a human agent has a simultaneous power (simultas potentiae) to elicit an alternative choice in the same instant of time. But the principle concerns the power, not two actualized acts that would be in opposition to each other at the same time. For instance, an agent possesses the power to assent and to dissent, to walk and to sit. It is one thing to claim that individuals can exercise their faculty or power; it is another thing to claim—the point which is contested—that one and the same individual can elicit a state of affairs wherein the opposing objects of this power are actualized, on the level of factuality. He repeats the point that no agent has the power of simultaneity to elicit opposite acts at the same moment. This is the wrong and false use of the composite sense. One cannot have two acts to opposite objects simultaneously at the same time (simul eodem tempore), that is, from the same power (ab eadem potentia). The only sense in which one can talk of the power of simultaneity is in the case of

acts of the will in the composite sense, at the level of factual actuality, with the possibility modal operator accenting both parts of the proposition simultaneously. 84 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 234, (§3), 236 (§7), 237 (§9).

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“successive” moments of time, in, thus, a diachronic sense.85 Heereboord expresses these points as follows: A free created cause, as is the free choice of a human being, not only before it is determined to one act (in a logically prior sense), that is, in the divided sense, but even in the instant itself (in ipso instanti), in which it is determined by God, and in which free choice determines its will by the last dictate of the human understanding to this act, that is, in the composite sense, free choice has a simultaneous possibility by which the agent can freely produce an alternative act.86

The valid sense that Heereboord wishes to emphasize—at the level of possibility —holds that a free agent has a simultaneous power, such that, at the same instant of time (in ipso instanti) in which God determines the agent to act, it is possible that the agent freely produce an alternative act. But how does Heereboord avoid the logical incompossibility of the composite sense that we have seen? We recall that what was deemed illogical in the composite sense was the logical possibility of actual assent and dissent at the same time, but not the power to assent. The valid composite sense says that there is compossibility on the level of possibility. There is a synchronic, at the same instant, compossibility such that it is possible that an agent assent and it is possible that an agent dissent. The proposition is not saying that there is compossibility such that an agent actually assent-and-notassent at the same instant of time. In the quote above, Heereboord says the free cause has simul potentia by which he or she can (posse) produce another act. The distinct feature here that Heereboord applies in the alternative line is the ascription of a logically valid notion of synchronic alternativeness to an individual’s faculty or power of the will on the level of possibility, but not on the level of factuality.87 In Heereboord’s analysis of the Jesuit line, he said the Scholastics rejected as incompatible two actions, opposed to each other, in the same subject, in the

85 “Potentia ad unum actum non repugnat potentiae ad actum disparatum vel contrarium … sed non habet potentiam tamen ad actum oppositum simul habendum; et sic sensus compositus est malus ac falsus, qui duo actus oppositi simul eodem tempore, in vel ab eadem potentia, esse non possunt, sed tantum successive,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 234 (§3). Cf. Heereboord’s abstract of parts of this paragraph from Alvarez, De auxiliis divinae gratiae, lib. 4. c. 14. 616–7 (§3). Cf. this point about the composite sense, in Beck, Voetius, 407. 86 “Itaque causa libera creata, ut est liberum arbitrium hominis, non solum antequam determinetur ad unum actum, id est in sensu diviso, sed etiam in ipso instanti, in quo a Deo determinatur, et in quo per intellectus practici judicium ultimum voluntatem determinat suam, ad hunc actum, id est in sensu composito, simul habet potentiam, qua potest libere producere actum alium: et sic sensus compositus bonus est ac verus,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 234 (§3). Cf. Heereboord’s extract of this paragraph from Alvarez, De auxiliis divinae gratiae, lib. 4 c. 14, (§3), 616–17. 87 Cf. Vos et al., Scotus: contingency and freedom, lectura I 39, (§§49–51, 72).

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composite sense of reading a proposition. Two contradictory propositions cannot both be true, in the composite sense, at the same time, (simul eodem tempore), in the same singular subject.88 What is permitted to say is that, for instance, a statement is false at one moment, and true at a successive moment of time (sed tantum successive). Thus, Heereboord is speaking of the traditional line of an incompatibility in the composite sense.89 Simultaneous powers, however, in the sense that an agent chooses to actualize an act, and at the same moment, the agent possesses power such that it is possible that he or she chooses the opposite action, but not de facto, is not a contradiction. Actually eliciting two contrary acts, at the same time, is contradictory. They cannot both be singularly true and actual in the same subject.90 It cannot be the case that God move an individual to assent and that the individual actually dissent, in the same free cause, at the same time, in the composite sense.91 Heereboord has taken a crucial step in the alternative approach. He has transitioned from the “successive” application of the divided sense to a synchronic “in the same instant of time” (in ipso instanti) application of the divided sense. He states that in the same instant of time that individuals actually assent, they retain the power of dissenting. Moreover, the reason why a “free cause” is free and the will remains free is “because it can [will] either of two objects (utrumque potest) in the divided sense.”92 Concerning compossibility, the movement of God upon a soul to the end that he or she assent, and the individual’s power of dissenting, can simultaneously be posited in the same subject at the same instant of time, but only in the divided sense. The movement of God upon an individual to assent to something and the individual’s power to dissent can simultaneously be posited, in the divided sense. Crucially, the actual movement of God and the actual dissent of an individual cannot be simultaneously posited in the same individual free cause at the same 88 Cf. the principle of incompossibility in formula: Mp & M~p. Compossibility in formula: M(p & q), in Vos et al., Scotus: contingency and freedom, Lectura I 39, §72. Cf. Ames’s reply to Grevinchovius on first and second acts and the divided and the composite sense, in William Ames, Rescriptio Scholastica, 136–7, 146–7. 89 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 233–4 (§3). Cf. Heereboord’s extract of this paragraph from Alvarez, including the references to Aristotle and Aquinas, in Alvarez, De auxiliis divinae gratiae, 616 (§3). 90 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 234 (§§3, 4). Cf. Alvarez, De auxiliis divinae gratiae, lib. 2 c. 11 (§3). 91 “Non possunt simul poni eodem tempore in eadem causa libera, quia est sensus compositus,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 235–6 (§§4, 7). 92 Ibid., 2: 235 (§4). Cf. Den Bok concludes from Scotus’s analysis that there is a “univocal core in the concept of human and divine willing.” Both can be defined as “a potency that while having an act can synchronically have the opposite act and while having an object can synchronically have the opposite object,” in Den Bok, Nico. “Freedom in regard to opposite acts and objects in Scotus’ Lectura I 39, 45–54.” Vivarium 38, no. 2 (2000): 243–54.

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time due to the rule of the composite sense. But this actual movement of God that one assent and the power of dissenting can be simultaneously posited in the same individual due to the rule of the divided sense. This compossibility of God’s “actual movement” upon an individual and his or her “actual assent does not remove the power of dissenting from the free cause.”93 The distinction in this case lies in the fact that individuals do not have the power of simultaneity, in the composite sense, such that it is possible that they actually dissent while at the same time God is moving them to assent. The validity of this case is based on the rule of the divided sense of propositions which does not posit the two opposite terms of a proposition in the same subject at the same time, but rather only posits one of the two opposites in the subject at any one instant of time. We have seen how Heereboord distinguishes between a valid understanding of simultaneous powers in the composite sense—but not the power of simultaneity —and a valid understanding of simultaneous powers in the divided sense. At the end of thesis §7, he brings into view once more the compossibility and incompossibility of the divine prerequisites with human free choice as well as the retention by an agent of the power of indifference in the divided sense: That at the same instance of time, in the same free cause, there are incompossibilities, antecedently speaking, all requisites to a free cause performing a certain act, and that a free cause not perform this act, or perform a contrary act. Nevertheless, true freedom simultaneously rhymes (stat simul) with this incompossibility, and indeed the indifference of a free cause. This is because, although there remains a composition between the [divine] prerequisites and the [individual] power of acting itself, in the composite sense; nevertheless, this composition and this composite sense does not remove indifference from the free cause, because they do not remove the power of acting. Rather, they establish it. For they only remove a contrary act, or negative act. Indifference also remains in the divided sense, as we have explained.94 93 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 235 (§4). See Turretin’s use of the tool of the divided sense to explain that predestination doesn’t remove the freedom of will, under the Quaestio on divine concurrence, in Institutio theologiae, Q. 5. 11., 561; Twisse, Dissertatio de scientia media, (1639), 417; See The similar steps Scotus takes moving from the traditional line of divided sense to a synchronically contingent use, in Vos et al., Scotus: contingency and freedom, lectura I 39., §§48–50. Cf. Vos, Philosophy of Scotus, 240. 94 “Haec sunt incompossibilia, ut pro eodem instanti temporis in eadem causa libera omnia sint antecedenter requisita ad productionem talis actus et causa libera istum actum non producat aut producat contrarium, et nihilominus cum hac incompossibilitate stat vera simul libertas, imo et indifferentia causae liberae, quia licet maneat compositio inter praerequisita et ipsam potentiam agendi, in sensu composito, haec tamen compositio et hic sensus compositus indifferentiam a causa libera non auferunt, quia non tollunt potentiam agendi, sed vero eam ponunt, nam actum tantum contrarium aut actus negationem solum eunt sublatum; manet quoque indifferentia in sensu diviso, ut fuit explicatum, in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 236 (§7). Cf. Alvarez’s paragraph that Heereboord extracts here from Alvarez,

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In the first sentence, Heereboord gives the straight out contradictory sense of incompossibility; that is, if one reads the first sentence as one proposition, such that God wills an act to be done at a certain time in a certain way and that act is not done at that time in that way, it is self-contradictory. The reason for incompossibility is that the acts are posited at the same instant of time (pro eodem instanti temporis), without qualifying those acts in a structural order of causality (ordo causalitas), which then would permit compossibility. In the second paragraph, Heereboord states that this temporal, or time indexed, incompossibility does not remove indifference in the free cause since there is an alternate sense in which the composition of concurrence between a divine free cause and a human free cause is compossible. That sense is the structurally ordered causality, or, the notion of a previous motion of God, both of which point to a logical ordering, not a temporal index. Heereboord has referred to “previous motion” in the valid use of the composite sense, when he stated that, in the same free cause, and at the same time, there can amicably consist a structurally, previous movement of God (motus Dei praevia) upon a human agent with that individual’s own power or faculty to perform this or an alternate action.95 Heereboord brings together the notion of compossibility and the dimension of possibility (in thesis §8). Suppose both an individual human being as a free cause, and God’s decree from eternity that the individual produce an act of love or faith. Given the divine prerequisites of an efficacious decree, and God’s premoving the human will to the same act, Heereboord states: It does not rhyme simultaneously with the efficacy of the divine decree, and the working of God, that a free cause not produce that act of love or faith, or that it elicits a contrary act, either of hate or unfaithfulness.96

At first it may appear that there is no place for a free production of human love, given the divine prerequisites. But Heereboord explains that in this case just given, nevertheless, “a human cause freely produces the act of love, together with a freedom that is seated in indifference.”97 He makes use of the feature of dividing De auxiliis divinae gratiae, lib. 4. c. 14, 620 (§6). What Heereboord doesn’t transcribe (but may assume is evident in his transcript), is what Alvarez writes of a structural order (ordinem rationis) that is essential to free choice, in ibid., 618 (§5). Again, Alvarez writes of structurally ordered antecedent prerequisites of causality (secundum ordinem causalitatis), in ibid., 619 (§6). There are minor differences. Whereas Alvarez writes “hac impossibilitate stat simul libertas arbitrii,” Heereboord writes “hac incompossibilitate stat vera simul libertas.” 95 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select. 2: 236 (§7). 96 “Sed cum efficaci decreto ac motione Dei non stat simul, ut causa libera non producat illum actum vel dilectionis, vel fidei, aut ut eliciat actum contrarium, vel odii, vel infidelitas,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 236 (§8). 97 Ibid.

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a proposition into its component parts. He points to the level of possibility, “A free cause can (potest) not produce the act in the divided sense (in sensu diviso).”98 He adds that this assumes that there is no decree and efficacious movement such that the human free cause not produce the act. We recall that it was stated that God’s decree from eternity was that the individual produce an act of love. Heereboord then adds a note about what remains in tact at the secondary level of actuality and what does not. Free causes can even not produce the act in the composite sense, since they “retain the possibility of not producing the act” (retinere potentia non producendi). This is because the possibility is not removed by the decree and divine movement, but only the act to contraries [freedom of specification]—of hatred or the denial of love, infidelity or denial of faith in the second act, or denial of believing—is removed.99 The divine prerequisites do not preclude freedom of exercise, according to Heereboord, but only freedom of specification, and he specifies, in the second act. The second act refers to the level of actual operation of the human free agent, which follows the first move of God upon the human faculties, that is, in a first act. The divine prerequisites, says Heereboord, operate in and are given in actu primo; the freedom and power of actually producing acts occurs in actu secundo.100 Heereboord denies that powers of exercise are given at the conceptual level of second acts (actus secundos ejus et vires exercitas).101 For a temporal example, the power of acting was given to Jeremiah, John the Baptist, and Timothy, while they were yet in the womb, but the exercise of that power, takes place in a second act, which in their cases were later in the course of time. In a non-temporal sense, one can take these same three individuals and apply the tools of composition, seen above. If one were to analyze a snapshot, as it were, of a choice that one of them makes as an adult, one could abstract the first and second acts and compose them with the divine prerequisites. What one would draw out of the prior discussion is that a structurally prior movement of God upon human faculties can rhyme with a free human cause, due to logically ordered causes. The Jesuits claimed that the power was not even given until the second act and only in this way is genuine human freedom guarded. Heereboord’s aim has been to guard the individual’s intrinsic power to elicit opposite states of affairs. This freedom of exercise and indifference, he says, remains in the divided sense. In sum, a free cause can be free, even though God

98 Ibid. 99 Ibid. 100 Like Heereboord, Voetius holds that in the first act God awakens power in humankind and in the second act there is a concrete act of the will. See Beck, Voetius, 420. 101 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 237.

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previously moves upon the human being’s soul, provided one understoods freedom in a structurally ordered manner of causality.102

3.7

Summary

In disputation fourteen, causa libera, there is an innovative, Scotistic use of the divided sense of a proposition applied to divine and human volition that Alvarez has mediated to Heereboord. Heereboord adapts and integrates Alvarez’s discussion on the use of the composite and divided sense of propositions into his discussion in a separate place on the legitimate definition and proper interpretation of free choice. Heereboord aims to underscore how the Reformed divine prerequisites can rhyme with free human causes and logically safeguard God’s certain and infallible knowledge of future contingent events. Heereboord discusses and uses several different syntactical tools, which are at his disposal, in order to establish his claim to the compossibility of the divine prerequisites with free causes. One Scotistic innovative move he makes is to distinguish the level of possibility from the level of factuality. This move includes the use of the tool of the divided sense to achieve, as it were, a snapshot view, a synchronic conception of an instant in time, as opposed to successive instants of time. The distinction between understanding a proposition in the divided sense in either a diachronic or a synchronic sense can be illustrated by two cases of the first-century soldier at the foot of the cross who must choose whether to break the legs of Jesus, or not. (1) In a diachronically contingent sense, when the soldier wills not to break the legs of Jesus, he can at a subsequent moment will the opposite. (2) In a synchronically contingent sense, when the soldier wills not to break the legs of Jesus, he can at the same instant of time will to break the legs. In case (2), the soldier retains, in that same instant, a simultaneous power of indifference, but not the power of simultaneity such that he actually can break Jesus’ legs in factuality. We must add to the conception of case (2) that the power he retains is on the level of possibility, and thus it is not on the level of contingency. In addition, we can add to case (2) a divine prerequisite, namely, the divine decree and prophecy that the legs of Jesus will not be broken. In this way, Heereboord claims to have established the compossibility of the divine prerequisites with human free causes, as wells as the certainty and infallibility of God’s knowledge of the consequence of the decree.

102 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 236. Cf. freedom of exercise (contradiction) as essential to free choice, in Beck, Voetius, 411. On compossibility, actus primus/secundus, divided/compound senses, see Willard, Reply to George Keith, 8, 15, 47.

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The significance of abstracting a first act from a second act is that it allows one to logically prioritize the distinct, but inseparable divine and human acts. Prioritizing the two acts in this way guards the sovereignty of the divine prerequisites and allows one to make syntactical distinctions in propositions, such as, the divided and composite senses, the power of simultaneity and simultaneous powers. The inseparability of the two acts illustrates the Reformed set of requisites for freedom that places dependence of the human act upon the divine act. The Jesuits claim that genuine freedom consists with freedom of indifference and specification, in the composite sense. But Heereboord regards their use of the composite sense as illogical and contradictory. The contradiction lies in the supposed power of simultaneity to elicit acts that are opposed to one another. They hold to a version of compossibility where, for instance, the Holy Spirit actually moves upon the human faculties in a way that suggests that, in factuality, an agent can both elicit an act of faith and not, at the same time.103 The two acts stand simultaneously opposed and composed. They say, on the one hand, the force of free choice of an agent means he or she can resist the operation of the Holy Spirit, independently of God; on the other side, God can move the heart of a human being with the intention that grace follow, so that the agent is converted, and yet, de facto, grace can not follow and he or she can not be converted. If it were not so, they argue, a human would not be the cause of free choice, and would not have free choice.104 To put this in terms of the first act and second act, whereas the Reformed place the divine prerequisites in the first act, and give humans the power to believe and or resist in the first act, which they only actualize in the second act, the Jesuits claim that God gives humans power to resist in the second act, which they also actualize in the second act, simultaneous with divine operations. For Jesuits, then, there are no logical, distinct but inseparable first and second acts. The Jesuit position attempts to guarantee human autonomy by moving simultas potentiae from the plane of possibility to the plane of actuality. As a result, simultas potentiae collapses and folds into potentia simultatis. The difficulty of the discussion of compossibility is that the Jesuits shifted the use of the composite sense away from the classic use by, for instance, Scotus. Heereboord denies that the divine prerequisites can be characterized by an indifferent freedom of choice in the composite sense. Not only is it illogical that two acts occur in the same way at the same time, but their use of the composite sense cannot rhyme with certainty and infallibility (infallibilitas ac certum). For Heereboord, the state of the will is the state of the understanding. There is either freedom of indifference in both the will and the understanding, or not. However, he grounds and roots indifference of free causes in the indifference of the 103 In formula: sW(a & ~a). But this is contradictory based on, in formula: ~M(a & ~a). 104 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 237.

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practical understanding.105 The latter judges the proposed object, whether it ought to be loved or avoided (freedom of specification), insofar as it leads to the ultimate end-state. Those who locate indifference in the will alone, in the composite sense of freedom of specification, do err. The will is related to objective states of affairs and the understanding leads and governs the will (prout ab intellectu ducitur ac regulatur). But the understanding is not indifferent in regard to all things, so neither is the will. For example, with reference to the ultimate end-state. The understanding cannot not judge that the ultimate end ought to be loved, and the will too cannot not love it. The understanding does not judge the good as bad, nor the bad as good. Likewise, the will does not will the bad as good, but rather good as good. One does not will sin as sin, rather, one thinks it is actually good for him of her at least at that moment, all things considered. When a human agent elicits an act of the will, he or she does not lose the power of not acting (freedom of exercise), but retains it; when she acts she can not act (potest non agere). Whether the judgment of practical understanding is indifferent or not towards an objective state, in both cases a free cause remains indifferent in the sense that the agent retains the freedom of exercise. Heereboord allows for freedom of indifference in the understanding in the case where the mind considers an objective state that is neither good nor bad. But the understanding is not indifferent to every object proposed to the mind. When whatever is proposed to the mind is something that appears and is considered good, then the understanding proposes the good to the will, and the will follows. However, even though the will follow, it always retains its power of formal freedom, that is, freedom of exercise. For example, freedom not to will the good in view, but to will some other good, or to will not to will the good at that time. The will can will to do or think about something else at the moment. This is the freedom of exercise which is the key to explaining formal freedom.106

105 “Tota fundatur ac radicatur in indifferentia intellectus practici,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 237. 106 On definitions of formal and material freedom, see Dekker and Veldhuis, “Freedom and sin: some systematic observations,” 155–8.

4.

Adriaan Heereboord on divine ideas and exemplar causality

4.1

Introduction to divine ideas

Heereboord’s six disputations on ideas are relevant for a discussion on divine freedom of will since they concern the first and ultimate causes of states of affairs, which God either wills, or not, into existence outside himself. To describe ideas is to describe causes. “Without ideas, one cannot explain the dependence of all created order upon God. Nor can one explain divine providence,” writes Heereboord.1 But it is beyond the scope of this study to fully examine divine ideas as exemplar causes, an undertaking which Gregory Doolan has ably done.2 Our aims are more modest and limited to giving exposition to Heereboord’s classicReformed line of an ontology of necessity and possibility, of synchronic freedom and contingency. In particular, we will see that Heereboord’s scheme includes alternate possibles and contingency in the divine structural order of ideas and decrees. That is, no idea is most fitting prior to the decree, as if it already had a truth-value of “most-fitting idea,” such that it had to be done, or such that it guide what God decrees.3 The word for the term idea, he says, comes from the Greek word eidein, seeing, viewing with respect to something. In Latin, Heereboord says, the term is expressed by aspectus and species, the former of which refers to sight, vision, look, the latter of which can mean idea. In the ancient world, he says, species meant sight and was the same as video.4 Heereboord refers to archetypal ideas as ideas 1 “Sine ideis enim, nec dependentia mundi a Deo, nec divina providentia, rite explicari potest,”in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 289 (D31) 2 Gregory T. Doolan, Aquinas on the divine ideas as exemplar causes (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2008). 3 Cf. Vos et al., Scotus: contingency and freedom, lectura I 39, 107. 4 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 289. On an artificer contemplating the production of his work, Heereboord refers to Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540) and his book which dates to 1522, translated later into English by J.H., as: St. Augustine of the city of God with the learned comments of Juan Ludovicus Vives, (George Eld, 1610), 289. The reference is Civ. bk.7. c. 28.

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rationes in Latin. As he has said, an idea as species speaks of “the original state (originalis rerum), existing in the understanding.” It pertains solely to the idea (rationem) as the mind perceives it. It is the reason according to which God produces a work ad extra. Ideas alone by ratione are included in the understanding. They are “logoi rationes of states of affairs (rerum) in God that are to be produced outside God.” This is because God effects divine ideas as states of affairs outside himself. In this sense, the Latin and Greek adjectives that Heereboord uses to qualify the notion of ideas are, respectively, exemplaris and paradigmata. Both refer to following a model or pattern.5 Because God knows these ideas in the way Heereboord has described above, they are, in fact, “the same as the divine essence.” An objective image or a likeness, such as a painting of a person, can give a likeness of another person, but it can also give a likeness of the form of that person in the mind of the artist. Heereboord applies this to God and says, inasmuch as “notions (notiones), concepts (conceptus), likenesses (similitudines), images (imagines), and simulachra of states of affairs” give an idea of (informant) the divine understanding, they are called forms (forma). The ideas that God will produce in reality in the course of time are similar to what is in seeds, hidden and enclosed, as it were. They are also called “seminal ideas of states of affairs.”6 Heereboord finds it necessary to vindicate Plato’s notion of idea from Aristotelian interpretations. These interpretations are based on sections of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and chapter six of the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle, says Heereboord, invented an opinion of Plato’s ideas in order to attack it. But Heereboord thinks that Aristotle was actually engaged in shadow boxing; that is, he likely was wrestling with his own opinion. According to Heereboord, Aristotle wrongly says Plato posited pure forms of natural things that subsist apart from the divine mind (seorsum a divina mente subsistentes), and that these ideas have an apart existence (has ideas esse).7 5 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 289. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 2:289–90. Scholars have suggested that while various authors informed Aquinas’s opinion of Plato’s notion of exemplarism, it was primarily Aristotle’s Metaphysics, which proved to be both a benefit and a detriment, a benefit in that Aristotle was Plato’s own student, a detriment in that he relied solely on the Phaedo. Heereboord, though, also points to Aristotle’s Eth. Nic. particularly Bk. 1. c. 6 as a source for his notion of ideas. See Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes,32–3. Cf. Antoine Arnauld, On True and False Ideas, trans. Stephen Gaukroger, Classics of Philosophy and Science Series (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1990), 108, 122, 222. Arnauld mentions that it was Aristotle who believed Plato put ideas outside God, 122. In fn 10, Gaukroger says that in the context of Arnauld’s work, a contemporary of Heereboord, it was believed by some that “neither Augustine nor Aquinas thinks of Plato’s forms as having a completely independent existence, but rather consider them as existing in the mind of God as archetypes on which he modelled his creation,” 222. Arnauld points to q. 46 of Augustine’s Eighty-three Different Questions, where Augustine refers to

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But Heereboord says that Plato, whom he calls the divine philosopher, did not devise ideas, lost midst the clouds, or hiding in a corner of the universe, “but he placed them in the divine mind, eternal and immutable.”8 Plato posits ideas and exemplars of all things or states of affairs in God, and, says Heereboord, “his opinion is not only free of censure, but deserves praise and admiration;” for his notion of ideas pleased the Church Fathers, writes Heereboord, such as, Clement of Alexandria, Justin Martyr, and Augustine.9 Some thought that Plato’s ideas ought to have been received as “revelation (revelationi) rather than ratiocination (ratiocinationi),” says Heereboord. For “what is more pious,” he writes, “than locating the ideas of all things (rerum omnium ideas), or archetypes (archetypos), or patterns (exemplaria), in God?”10 In order to set forth this doctrine of ideas more clearly, he draws on Marsilio Ficino’s (1433–1499) Theologia Platonica, who was a leader of the Platonists, according to Heereboord.11 Anyone familiar with Plato, says Heereboord, will see his great mind on the notion of exemplarism when reading the Timaeus, the Parmenides, the Phaedo, the Republic, and Dante’s Convivio. Aristotle, however, who learned from his teacher for twenty years, concealed the notion, writes Heereboord, and ascribed to his teacher an incorrect interpretation of forms and ideas.12 Heereboord cites Javellus who says the problem with Aristotle’s interpretation of Plato’s idea boni is that Aristotle separated the two terms idea and boni from each other. At issue is God’s being. Javellus believes Plato correctly taught that true felicity consists in the contemplation of the divine being, in whom is the idea boni, and not in the good in general (in generali bono), as Aristotle held, as if the good existed apart from God’s being.13

8 9 10 11 12

13

Plato’s ideas in mente Creatoris, 108. Agnello, a contemporary of Heereboord, also says the peripatetics wrongly attributed to Plato the view that “pure forms of natural states abstracted from bodies, subsist apart from the divine mind,” in Disceptationes de ideis, Bk. I. c. 7, 33. “Sed in mente eas posuit divina, aeternas atque immutabiles,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 290. Ibid. Cf. the appeal by Voetius to Augustine and Duns Scotus, among others, on whether there be ideas in God, in the proper sense of the term, in Beck, Voetius, 323–26. Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 290. Ibid. Ibid. Heereboord likely takes these references from Ficino’s, Theologica Platonica de Immortalitate Animorum (Gilles Gourbin, 1559), Bk.11. c.4, p. 171–5, where these works of Plato are cited. Heereboord gives the testimony of three Greek commentators on Aristotle: Themistius, Simplicius, Eustratius of Nicaea, all of whom say Aristotle abandoned his teacher Plato on this point. Eustratius, in his commentary on the Eth. Nic., referenced by Heereboord, defended Plato’s ideal good against Aristotle. He also cites Chrysostom Javellus (1472–1538) who claims that Aristotle impugned Platos’s idea boni, in his Ethicam Platonis, tract 7. The issue at stake was whether the idea of the good, as an exemplar, existed outside God or in the mind of God. The reference to Dante’s Il Convivio, c. V. lines 21–34, speaks of Plato’s exemplars or ideas which Plato, Dante says, also calls forms or universals. Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 291. For the source of these comments, see

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4.1.1 Whether there be the notion of idea in God Heereboord proceeds in his inquiry on ideas by first asking in disputation thirtytwo whether there be an idea in God (an sit in Deo idea), and then in disputation thirty-three he asks what idea is (quid sit idea). He begins his an sit discussion by saying that every agent who acts from reason, acts in relation to his or her understanding. It is necessary that the agent relates to rationes and formae of states of affairs, that which he knows and which he produces. Now, “God is an agent who acts like this. But if there are rationes and formae of states of affairs to be done, and God knows which things to do, then they are nothing else than divine ideas.” Therefore, ideas are a given when speaking about God. There are “natural agents,” who are “moved by another,” and have “no need of patterns” (exemplari) by which to act. And there are “rational agents, who move themselves.” God produced the world as a rational agent, not a natural agent.14 Heereboord reasons that God knows and makes all things through His essence and possesses all things in his essence. If it were not the case he would not know what he makes. Neither is his power distinct from his essence. Therefore he knows in himself all things, and before he produces things, logically speaking, he cannot but conceive and know all things in any other way than as ideas.15 “Every cause acts by means of some form, and every effect proceeds from some form,” either according to its esse naturale, or according to an esse intelligibile. In the case of God, “he is the cause of all states of affairs,” and he does not comprehend them as esse naturale, but according to esse intelligible. And the forms of states of affairs are ideas comprised according to their intelligibile esse.16 It is said that whatever agent possesses pure potency (pura potentia) is also pure act (purus actus). But pure potency is “that in which no forms of states of Chrysostom Javellus, In Unversam Moralem Aristoteles, Platonis, et Christianam Philosophiam Epitomes (Leiden: Jacob Juncta, 1568), c.1, p. 13. In the context of Javellus’ comments, he says Aristotle speaks against Plato’s ideas because there is not one common idea of the good. One can predicate of the good not only in substance but also in other categories, such as quantity and quality and therefore one ought not confuse substance, which is prior, with the other categories, which are posterior. Heereboord also refers to Thomasso Campanella (1568–1639) and his commentary on the Metaphysics and his pro- Platonic understanding of ideas, which are “the only ‘real’ universals,” and Scipio Agnello (1592–1653) and his Disceptationes de ideis. For these authors, see Leen Spruit, Species Intelligibilis: from perception to knowledge. II. Renaissance controversies, later scholasticism, and the elimination of the intelligible species in modern philosophy, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 49 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 213, 219. 14 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 292. 15 Ibid., (§7). Cf. Voetius, who held that ideas are like exemplars (patterns), in God’s mind, which correspond to what is depicted, things outside God that can be produced, in Beck, Voetius, 324. 16 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 292 (§8).

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affairs exist before their production.” The Peripatetics commonly called this “prime matter.” In this case, pure act would be that in which all forms of states of affairs exist before their production. “But God is pure act,” there is no potency in him; “the forms of states of affairs do not exist in God before their production according to esse reale, that is, as real beings.” They are not “produced” before God “produces them.”17 It is rather the case that forms of states of affairs exist as objective and intelligible or knowable being (objectivum et intelligibile esse). Objectivum esse refers to the objective form before the mind of God, but not as if it were already willed into existence in this real world, but objective in the internal sense of God knowing what he produces. Heereboord refers to Martinus Meurisse (1584–1644) and his work “On Ideas” who says that forms existed before God produced them in the sense of “ideal states of affairs,” not real states of affairs; that is, before God produces them, he knows them as ideal states of affairs.18

4.1.2 What idea in God is Having answered the question (an sit) of whether there be ideas in God, Heereboord turns to discuss what those ideas are (quid sint ideae). He gives an account for the essence (ratio quidditatis), and the reason of the essence (ratio essentiae) of the notion idea.19 Heereboord turns to Aquinas’s Scriptum super Sententiis and his Summa and summarizes his definition. “An idea of God is a form that can substantialize (forma substantifica), presented to the mind, or the divine intellect, existing within him, on which, looking to it, he works.” In short, idea is a “similitude of a thing in God, by which a thing is known (res cognoscitur), or being known, is produced.”20 “Idea in God is called form,” signifying substance (substantifica) which points to the divine essence, insofar as it can be imitated diversely in creatures. Although idea in God is one as understood by God who knows himself—thus one idea is imitated by many—here Heereboord, following Aquinas, explains the plurality of ideas in God inasmuch as there are many creatures and therefore a characteristic of the divine idea is that God also knows himself as imitable. “The imitability” (imitabilis) of the divine essence takes place “to the degree it is imitated diversely by diverse creatures” (a creaturis diversis diversa). These various relationships point to a plurality of ideas. It is the objects of the intellect, “to the 17 Ibid., 292–3 (§9). 18 Ibid., 2:293. See Metaphysica Scotista Martinus Meurisse. Heereboord also refers to the subtle philosophy “On Ideas” in Pitanum Solonem, Exercises in Metaphysics, bk. 2 Tract 6. 19 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 294. (D33). 20 Ibid.

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exclusion of acts (actus) and habits (habitus) of the understanding, which do not have the nature of objects.”21 “Idea is the object,” however, that the divine understanding “contemplates.” Hence, idea is neither “the species or intelligible form” (species intelligibilis), nor an “art in the mind of the artificer,” because species and art do not have “the nature of an object, but only of an effective principle” (principii effectivi). Thus efficient causality is linked to species and ars, in contrast to idea. Heereboord adds that idea is properly said to be “the mental word (verbum mentis) alone,” because it has “the nature of the object,” and it is “the expressed similitude of the thing.”22 The opening description of ideas said that they exist “within the divine intellect itself” (in §1.1). This excludes an “external exemplar” to God, according to which he, “as artificer, would look while working.” Idea, however, is the “internal exemplar of the intellect itself.” But it does not follow from this that it “inheres in the mind, like an accidental form,” but it is sufficient that it be there by way of the object, which is itself “the object of the intellect.”23 When speaking of God as artificer of the universe, the concept excludes forms of natural things (formae rerum naturalium). For example, a natural agent can produce an effect like itself, such as when fire ignites fire. But these natural forms do not have the nature of ideas (ratio Ideae). A natural agent does not work by looking at a pattern or model, and therefore the effect of a natural cause (effectus causae naturalis) does not have the idea of itself in the proximate cause. The idea exists only in the remote and first cause (causa remota ac prima), God. Heereboord explains the imitability of God’s ideas, and how he works according to internal exemplars, with the philosophical axiom (philosophorum axioma), “the nature of work is a work of the understanding,” which means that “states of affairs and natural effects imitate ideas, which God has in his mind and which he contemplates in the production of things.”24

21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. On the verbum mentis as the divine Word, through which God can know the plurality of things, as developed in Summa Contra Gentiles, c. 53–4, see Doolan, Aquinas on divine ideas as exemplar causes, 98. See Morton’s use of verbum mentis in chapter 5 §5.3.1. 23 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 294. 24 Ibid. See Voetius, who also holds that ideas are grounded in God’s imitability, with a view to things to be produced. Voetius also uses the metaphor of an artist, in Beck, Voetius, 324.

The Ames and Heereboord line on divine ideas

4.2

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The Ames and Heereboord line on divine ideas

William Ames Heereboord begins disputation thirty-three by adducing statements from Ames about divine ideas. He cites Ames’s theses on ideas as possibles, antecedent to the divine decree, as authoritative.25 Before considering Heereboord’s exposition based on Ames, we first briefly touch on Ames’s theses on “ideas” drawn from the Marrow and Technometry. For Ames, just as God is pure act and “an idea in God is single,” so is “eupraxia, (both as the idea of art and as art itself), insofar as it exists in God or the exercise of God…one unique and most simple act.”26 And just as ideas become manifold in relation to created reality, eupraxia as the idea of art, likewise, becomes manifold and divided in relation to created reality. By way of abstraction, then, there is a twofold sense of eupraxia, which can be divided into genesis and analysis. The significance of this thesis is that once again there are structurally distinct conceptual planes of thought. As Ames puts it, there is a distinction between all things that are first in the mind of God (prius in ejus mente) before they are, secondly, and structurally speaking, in themselves (quam in semetipsis). This is consistent with the notion in Ames’s scheme of God knowing possibles, in his knowledge of simple understanding, that have no esse reale prior to the decree. Significantly, God knows these possibles as he knows himself, he does not know them in themselves, that is, as if his knowledge of them were grounded in their essence and their being.27 “An idea in God is single,” writes Ames in his Marrow, but in relation to human beings and created reality, it becomes manifold.28 It can be said therefore by way of abstraction that “there are many divine ideas,” which are structurally ordered in the divine mind. These ideas structurally precede the divine decree and therefore only have a “possible existence,” according to Ames. As such, ideas only come into actual existence after the divine decree. For this reason, Ames points out, one can abstract a twofold sense of divine knowledge, his knowledge of simple understanding, before the divine decree, and his knowledge of vision (or intuition), after the decree of the divine will. Significantly, for Ames, as will be the case with Heereboord, the will plays a pivotal role; Ames makes this clear in 25 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 294 (§3). Ames, Marrow, Bk. 1, c. 7 (§§15–17, 23), 95–6. 26 Ames Technometry, trans., Gibbs, 95, (§15). 27 On Ames and the Reformed notion of a twofold divine knowledge, see Fisk, “Divine knowledge at Harvard and Yale,” 151–78. 28 Ames, Marrow, Bk. 1, C.7 (§19), 96.

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his work in chapter 7 (§27) where he states that what God knows by his knowledge of vision, he knows “by the decree of his own will.”29 Heerebood also writes that there are ideas that are only known, such as of possibles (possibilia), which will never come about, or are even of impossibles, and some ideas are simultaneously known and produced, such as of possible, impossible, future states of affairs.”30 Ames had stated that ideas, considered antecedent to the decree of the divine will, represent an abstraction and only a possible existence (existentiam tantum possibilem). Considered after the determination of the divine will, they represent things which are to come in their actual existence.31 The ontological status of these ideas is such that they have no “real being (esse reale) either in existence or essence.”32 Nevertheless, it is not as if God does not know these beings; he knows them in his simple knowledge of understanding from eternity.33 For this reason Ames can say that the single idea in the mind of God—before abstracting the many—is “preexisting (praeexistens), as the exemplary cause (exemplaris causa) of all things to be done.”34 This single idea is not like a Platonic idea, existing apart from God, but rather, Ames says, “the idea of all things is the divine essence, meaning that essence understood by God himself and imitable by his creatures.”35 When Ames says that this “idea” is preexisting in the mind of God, the question arises whether or not this idea imposes itself upon God as an idea that must be done? This idea, however, in no way constrains (ex coactione) God to actualize the idea, by the divine decree, in a certain manner. The idea Ames speaks of is to be conceived of as “all things to be done (omnium rerum efficiendarum).”36 There is no truth value assigned to all these things to be done since, as Ames has said, they have no real being (esse reale).37 Therefore, although God is compared to an artist, who has a preexisting idea of what he wants to 29 30 31 32 33 34

Ames, Marrow, Bk. 1. C. 7 (§§ 19–27), 96. Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 294. Ibid., 2: 295. He cites Ames’s thesis 23 in its entirety. See Ames, Marrow, 96. Bk. I. Ch. 7, th. 23. Ames, Marrow, Bk. 1 C. 8 (§8), 101. Ames, Marrow, C. 7 (§25), 96; C. 8 (§8), 101. Ames speaks of idea as an exemplary cause in the mind of God, but unlike Aquinas, Ames does not describe God has taking counsel and working according to, as Doolan calls it, Aquinas’s “natural teleology.” Doolan does, however, say that Aquinas opposes the claim that “an agent has its end determined for it by something superior, since no cause is superior to God,” in Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes, 50, 52. 35 Ames, Marrow, (§§13, 14), 95. See Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes, chapter 3: “The multiplicity of divine ideas.” 36 Ames, Marrow, C. 7 (§13), 95. The will has the same function in Ames, and Heereboord, as in Scotus. 37 Ames, Marrow, C. 8 (§8). For the similar point on the “neutral” truth status of “things to be done,” see Vos et al., Scotus, contigency and freedom, Lectura I.39, 107 §44.

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accomplish, the fashioned end is not such that it “naturally” (naturaliter) imposes itself upon God, as if God is obliged to fashion it. God “does not work naturally” and take counsel within himself, as if under constraint, about how to effect an idea. That God “does not work “naturally” is to be understood in the sense that there is nothing outside himself that guides him or counsels him in how to proceed. In sum, Ames names three negatives on how God does not work. God does not work (1) “naturally,” (2) “not rashly,” and (3) “not by constraint.” If one were to claim that God works out the divine idea naturally, it would imply that he works and produces effects necessarily, a notion which Ames, and Heereboord after him, rejects. It is rather the case that “Idea,” in a structurally understood “order of nature,” “preexists” as “the exemplary cause of all things to be done.” In his chapter on “Creation,” Ames speaks of this “order of nature” in a logically prior sense, and Ames says that God shows his “perfection” and his “freedom in producing all things without natural necessity.”38

Heereboord We now turn to consider the details of Heereboord’s commentary on Ames’s theses on ideas as possibles. In the phrase, “Idea is similitude of a state of affairs by which the state of affairs is known or produced after being known,” Heereboord notices that there is a distinction to be made between what is known and what is produced.39 The latter is a possible state and implies that there are states of affairs impossible to produce. From this description, he says, it is clear that there are certain ideas, only of knowing (tantum cognoscendi), such as knowledge of possibles (possibilium), which never come about, or even of impossibles. Some ideas, but by implication not all ideas, are simultaneously of knowing and of producing, such as of future states of affairs. Heereboord then refers to Ames’s presentation of ideas in his Marrow. Ideas, considered antecedent to the decree of the divine will, represent an abstraction or quidditatem and only a possible existence of states of affairs. Considered after the determination of the divine will, they represent the same states of affairs which are to come in their actual existence.40 38 Ames, Marrow, Bk. 1. C. 8 (§§11, 13), 101. 39 “Ideam esse similitudinem rei, per quam res cognoscatur, aut cognita producitur,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 294 (§3). 40 Ames, Marrow, Bk. 1. C .7 (§23), 96. The italics show what was not translated from the Latin by Eusden. Cf. “ideae prout considerantur antecedentes decretum divinae voluntatis, quidditatem rerum repraesentant et existentiam tantum possibilem: prout considerantur post determinationem divinae voluntatis, repraesentant easdem res ut actu futuras, secundum actualem suam existentiam,” in William Ames, Theologiae Medullae, reprinted from 1648 edition, ed. James S. Candlish (London: James Nisbet & CO., 1874), C. 7 (§23) 31.

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Heereboord, like Ames, has a scheme that underscores the distinction between possibles, known to God, prior to the decree, and the contingency of created reality, and the actualization of ideas, with esse reale, after the divine decree. Moreover, the language of the disputations is consistent with distinctions we have seen elsewhere, between indeterminates and determinates, keeping talk of possibles and ideas prior to the divine decree separate from talk of contingents and determinate truth values of ideas after the decree, structurally speaking, that is. Following Ames’s Marrow (§§13–17, 19), Heereboord will distinguish idea in God from idea in humans, making it clear that idea is in God and known to God by pure “genesis,” whereas idea in humans is known to them by “analysis.” Idea in God as genesis means that structurally speaking, they have no esse reale and are “first in the divine mind” before they are in actu, and “in themselves.” In humans, idea is the likeness of a known thing, as something being true to its likeness, so that the entity of the thing known, or cognized, is the ground of the likeness, or similitude.41

4.3

God knows his divine essence as imitable

After explaining the principle of God knowing his divine essence as imitable, and thus, imitable in many states of affairs, Heereboord applies the principle to the doctrine of predestination. But if there are as many ideas as there are immutable and eternal forms of states of affairs, how can one maintain the simplicity of God? Heereboord replies that there are two ways to view ideas. (1) Ideas are “considered in themselves” (in se) and “according to the thing itself” (secundum rem). As such, there is only “one idea, namely, the essence of God.” Or, (2) ideas are “many, considered by that to which they refer,” namely, creatures. The problem is that many conflate the two views (1) and (2) into one and conclude that there are as many exemplars as there are creatures.42 Heereboord notes that although the word idea signifies an “absolute state of affairs” (absolutus rem), even the divine essence, it always has a connotation “with respect to creatures” (respectum ad creaturas). He proceeds to explain how the two cases are conceptually distinct but related. He sees a “twofold connotation,” and works with their proper sense and their connotated sense. He juxtaposes a state of affairs “known from eternity” and “known to exist in the course of time.” (1) In the course of time (in tempore) has to do with creatures, which are in time. But one can also conceive of a state of affairs that is (2) both from eternity (ab aeterno) and in time (in 41 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 295. Heereboord cites, Ames, Marrow, Bk. 1. C. 7 (§§15–17). 42 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 298.

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tempore). When connotation implies the disposition of the state of affairs, then the connotation is said to connote ab aeterno. Heereboord relates this principle to predestination. “Predestination signifies a divine act,” connoting an effect in the “predestined one” (praedestinato), “not in the act” (non in actu), but “in the disposition” of God before he acts (in habitu). And it connotes a “future possibility” (potentia futurum). In this way, “eternal predestination” (praedestinatio aeterna) highlights the distinct but inseparable elements of the connotation between an absolute state of affairs known from eternity and its relation to creatures in time.43 Heereboord proceeds to further distinguish between the eternal state and time. Predestination connotes the course of time (temporaliter) in which the relation is entailed in a state of actualization (in actu). In other words, it means to create (ut creare) ex nihilo. The term does not apply to God as if to signify something that was from eternity in God. It connotes something that “proceeds from God” (a Deo proficiscitur) in the course of time and “God denominates or names it.”44 “States of affairs (res) are represented by ideas” (per ideas) and “connoted by them.” He makes clear that there is a distinction between a state of affairs before it is produced, which has being and represention in the divine mind, and a state of affairs after it is produced and exists in time. (1) “Insofar as they are represented and connoted” by them, they are “from eternity” (ab aeterno). (2) “Insofar as they are (quatenus sunt), they have existence in time” (esse in tempore). These two notions do not contradict each other. In (1), connotation and representation of a state of affairs is from eternity. In (2), the state of affairs connoted and represented is in time.45 Heereboord shows how predestination highlights these principles. It is from eternity (ab aeterno), and the predestined one (praedestinatus), which predestination connotes, is in time (in tempore). Likewise, an eternal idea connotes from eternity the relation to future creatures, which, nevertheless, are not eternal, but “temporal and in time” (temporales et in tempore). In this way he distinguishes between notion (1) and (2) above—what many conflate into one. Notion (2) is unique in that it accounts for (1) and (2) while keeping (2) distinct from (1). In (2), there is idea and the relation of ideas to the conceived or “ideated state of affairs” (ad rem ideatam), or its connotation, which are from eternity. And there is the reality of the connoted state itself which is time indexed, or in time. These principles point to Heereboord as a contingency thinker when it

43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid.

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comes to relating predestination to states of affairs occuring in the course of time, but predestined from eternity.46 In sum, the representation of states of affairs by ideas in God is from eternity. But the state, which is represented from eternity, can also be in time. Heereboord wants to clarify that idea in God connotes a relation to creatures, insofar as they are future and many, and in this sense there are many relations, and multiple connotations from eternity. Ideas do then denominate God from eternity. But nevertheless the connoted creatures themselves are not from eternity, but indeed in time. In this way he believes he has answered the question: “If ideas are many on account of states of affairs they connote, the connoted states of affairs are either eternal or in time.” The significance of notions (1) and (2) for this study on divine freedom is that it shows the contingency thinking on ideas and freedom of will in the Reformed Ames-Heereboord line, grounding ideas and predestination in God’s will, and not in human free action played out in the course of time.

4.4

The meaning of states of affairs (res) and of idea

Heereboord knows there is ambiguity surrounding the word res. States of affairs (res) are taken either (1) “for existing actualized states of affairs” (pro re actu existente), or it is taken (2) for “possible states of affairs” (pro re possibili). Heereboord denies the inference from claim (1) that would infer, “Since there are many ideas, there are many actually existing states of affairs.” But he grants the inference from claim (2) that these are possible states of affairs. Under (2), there are many states of affairs (res) from eternity that are possible. This has to do with the nature of the term idea. The nature of idea does not require (ad rationem ideae non requiritur ut res actu sit) that res be actualized (ut res actu sit), but it suffices that idea be in potentia.47 There is a fallacious move, Heereboord warns, of arguing from what is said conditionally (a dicto secundum quid) to what is said absolutely (ad dictum simpliciter). The problem lies in shifting the terms of the argument from one to the other. For this reason claim (1) is not valid. Likewise, “It is not valid to argue that since there are many ideas, that is, cognized states of 46 Ibid. 47 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 299 (§9). See also, Johannes Hoornbeek, Theologia Practica (Utrecht, 1689: apud Johannen et Guilielmum van de Water, 1663), 174. “Possibility can in no way be the cause of a state (rei) much less the sufficient reason and cause on account of which a res has a future determined status.” Hoornbeek adds that there there are “thousands of other worlds” that could be imagined that will never have real existence. (Possibilitas nullius rei potest esse causa, multo minus sufficiens ratio et causa propter quam res est determinate futura. Quia milleni alii mundi, arbores, soles &c. sunt possibilia, & poterant creari aliae species rerum, at haec nunquam sunt futura, nunquam determinate futura.)

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affairs (res cognitae), there are many states of affairs.”48 It is significant that the distinction be made between possible states of affairs and actualized states of affairs. As possibles, Res fits the language of God’s simple knowledge of understanding since it speaks of possible states of affairs, as opposed to his intuitive knowledge of vision, which speaks of contingent states of affairs, actualized by the divine will.49 Heereboord explains further in disputation thirty-five the relation of idea to states of affairs. There are many ideas with respect to many states of affairs that God sees when he contemplates his essence, the many ideas of which are imitable and can be expressed outside God. But the question arises, then, “Whether there be a twin object of the divine intellect?” There is of course the “primary notion” of the divine essence “known simply.” But what of the “secondary notion” of the divine essence “known as idea, imitable from states of affairs, to be expressed in possibles?”50 Formally speaking, says Heereboord, there are not twin objects in the divine understanding, as if one were possible and the other were actualized, the one primary, the other secondary. There is no change or passing from one state to another in God’s understanding. Whatever he understands he knows in one “incommutable intuition” (incommutabili intuitu). In other words, his knowledge does not vary; it is not variable (variabilis).51 But if the divine understanding were to understand his divine essence in a twofold sense, as at least formally distinct, one primary, the other secondary, first as divine essence, and second as idea, then he would “look at” his essence (intueretur) “not uniquely and simply” (non unice ac simpliciter), “simultaneously and at once” (simul et semel). And that would seem to violate the doctrine of God’s simplicity. He says that “it doesn’t seem” (non videtur) that the same object “can be known” (posse cognosci) as “absolute” and “relative” at the same time. “But it is impious,” says Heereboord, “to ascribe divided acts of knowing to God (divisos cognoscendi actus Deo tribuere).”52 But concerning God knowing divided acts in his essence, there is a sense in which God knows them. Heereboord relates how the divine essence is more the same with his ideas than a human being is with himself. He then makes two points 48 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 299. 49 Cf. William Twisse, Dissertatio de Scientia Media, (Arnhem: apud Jacobum à Biesium, 1639), 122. Twisse refers to the Dominican Banez who, on the point of whether it is correct to mingle terms and speak as if God could know future contingents as possible ideas, doubted the claim that God knows future contingent states as per proper ideas (per ideas proprias) in God, and that ideas represent certain and infallible states by way of exemplars. 50 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 300 (D35 §1). 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid.

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on this matter. One, God has an actual and formal relation to his ideas, by which nothing greater can be thought (qua major excogitari nequit). And, second, God is pure act and one idea is in act (actus una idea), which is his essence most simply and absolutely understood. He argues therefore that just as it cannot come about that someone see herself, unless she see herself, likewise, “it cannot occur that God see his essence, unless he see his ideas.” And in this way, “God knows all things in the divine intuition of understanding” both in his essence simply, absolutely, “with respect to primary object,” and in his essence as idea, “with respect to the secondary object.” “God formally knows his essence, as idea, in divided acts, not as though they are terminated, or have an end-term, but he knows himself alone (sed se tantum), and nothing other than himself, whether primarily or secondarily.”53 When he says God knows ideas in divided acts that do not have a designated terminus, he points to a distinction between acts known by God subjectively and objectively. In order to clarify the difference between subjective and objective, he makes a conceptual distinction between (1) idea, as it is “imitable by creatures,” (imitabilis a creatura) (2) and idea insofar as it is “understood and conceived as imitable by creatures” (quatenus intelligitur ac concipitur ut imitabilis a creatura). Idea in sense (1) is prior according to reference (ratio) than idea in the second sense (2). For the essence of God is imitable by creatures, therefore God knows essence as imitable by creatures. In sense (1), there is a subjective understanding of God’s imitability by creatures. This is God’s “inherent” idea. Heereboord says this corresponds to the notion of “intelligible species, habits or dispositions,” and God’s “act of understanding.” In sense (2), there is an objective understanding insofar as idea is known and the state of affairs terminates the act of understanding.54 Heereboord illustrates the subjective sense (1) by saying that a human being is said to be objectively in the understanding, while he or she is understood, just as color is objectively in sight, while seen. But sense (1) in no way implies anything in the known state of affairs (in re cognita). We merely denominate it as being known by the understanding, which is an extrinsic denomination. But one ought not confound the distinction of reason between the subjective sense of (1) and the objective sense of (2), as if what is objective inheres in God’s understanding as in sense (1). Nevertheless, Heereboord says that “nothing prevents sometimes those 53 Ibid. Heereboord has extracted the paragraph, word-for-word, on this topic, from Scipio Agnello, Disceptationes de Ideis in Tres Libros Distributae (Venice, 1615), 72–3. On Agnello’s views on divine intellection, see Leen Spruit, Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge. II. Renaissance Controversies, Later Scholasticism, and the Elimination of the Intelligible Species in Modern Philosophy, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 49 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 213–4. 54 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 300 (§3).

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two things to be conjoined into one, although there remains a distinction of reason (distinctio rationis) between them.” The distinction rests on noting acts of understanding, a first act and a second act. The divine understanding understands itself reflexively in its “first act of understanding” (primus actus intelligendi). Such an act is subjectively in the understanding since the state of affairs inheres in it. In a second act of understanding God objectively knows the same state of affairs in the understanding “because God knows it through the other act” (quia per alterum actum cognoscitur).55 Heereboord gives three marks that describe the complete character (ratio completus) of idea. First, an idea is something absolute upon which the “similitude and imitation” of the effect depends. Second, idea has some “relation” to the thing whose idea and similitude it is. Thirdly, idea has a relation to an intelligible agent (agens intelligibilis) who works through idea. Idea existing per se does not cause, but it is the principle (ratio) by which an intelligible agent causes something else. This third mark is clear, for example, in painters use of exemplars.56 From the three marks of idea one can infer from the discussion of divine essence, Heereboord says, that there is some kind of participation outside God himself (extra se). Participation, however, does not have the complete character of idea in every respect. The notion of participation does have a relation to the operating of the divine understanding and to creatures. Intelligible species (a principle of intellection) in the divine understanding and the principle of knowing (principia cognoscendi) does not have the character or nature of idea (ratio ideae), but is the object known by God (objectum cognitum a Deo). Heereboord follows Scipio Agnello, and summarizes his chapter six, book II, taking the view that ideas in the divine understanding are simultaneously formal and objective. Idea of creatures is the essence of God insofar as it is understood and conceived as imitable and participatable by creatures outside God, and since this knowledge be reflexive, it is at the same time both objective and subjective in the divine understanding.57

55 Ibid. 56 Ibid., (§5). 57 “Est igitur essentia Dei idea creaturarum, quatenus intelligitur & concipitur ut imitabilis et participabilis a creaturis ad extra; ac cum hac cognitio sit reflexa, simul et objective et subjective est in intellectu divino,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 301 (§6). See Agnello, Disceptationes de Ideis in Tres Libros Distributae (Venice, 1615), 74; And, William Twisse, Dissertatio de Scientia Media, (Arnhem: Jacobum à Biesium, 1639), 327. The question arises whether idea is an objective or formal notion. Scipio Agnellus writes that Cajetan holds to the former view, Ferrari and Suárez, among others, to the latter.

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Heereboord reminds us that, in our way of abstracting first and second acts of knowing, God first knows his divine essence “simply according to essence itself.” Then, he knows the multiplicity and imitability of his being as it can be “communicated outside himself.” It is from such intellectual “cognition that ideas form.” And afterwards, humanly speaking, through those ideas God takes cognizance of creatures in their very selves, “those who will be produced in their time.” Hence arises “a principle of relation” (relatio rationis) between God and creatures, “in which the notion of idea is realized.”58

4.5

God has in himself ideas of all possible states of affairs

“God has in himself ideas of all possible states of affairs (omnium possibilium), which never will be, insofar as idea only signifies the principle of knowing.”59 He tests this thesis by saying that God knows all perfections (omnes perfectiones) that he can, if he wills, produce outside himself. He then gives two examples from the scriptures that attest to what God can do with the conclusion that God knows ideas as what he can do. That possible states of affairs can be transferred into real contingent states of affairs we will address below, but for the moment, the examples he gives are: “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels,” Matthew 26:53; and, “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham,” Matthew 3:9. But God did not produce these perfections nor will he, and so these are ideas of possible states of affairs.60 Likewise, God knows perpetual obedience as a possible state for Adam and Eve. And he expected it from them. But their act of obedience was not perpetual. They could have perpetuated obedience, had they willed, but they did not will, what they could (quod poterant). They had posse, such that they could will (quod vellent), but they did not will (sed non velle).61 It is not that they needed to will to possess the possibility to be able to obey, rather, they possessed the possibility to will to obey or not to obey. God knew one and another world, which he could produce (quos posset producere), if he willed (si vellet), by hypothesis (ex hypothesi), because there were 58 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 301. Cf. Heereboord’s classic-Reformed distinction between two acts of God’s intellect, only the second of which concerns God’s communication of self outside himself, with Sang Hyun Lee’s account of God’s essential and dispositional, full actuality, and essential God’s self-communication ad extra, in Edwards’s doctrine of God, in this present study’s chapter 9 §9.1.2. 59 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 302. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid.

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more possible worlds (plures mundi sint possibiles). Heereboord mentions that this opinion is disputed in his day on the argument that once the universe is created, there is no room for another. But Heereboord counters that the idea of other possible worlds is not repugnant on the part of God (ex parte Dei). It is not as if God’s power is exhausted by the creation of one world. They argue that creating another world implies a contradiction of occupied space. This is to argue from the viewpoint of the world (ex parte mundi). They argue that the universe occupies all of space. Heereboord’s rejection of their opinion suggests that he can conceive of the idea that God has an infinite number of simultaneous alternate possible states of affairs to fill the same space, none of which will ever be.62 Heereboord comments on how God knows possible states of affairs of existence and on the important role of the divine will in “translating” possibles “out of a state of possibility” into a “state of actuality.”63 A twofold conceptual plane underlies the scheme of Heereboord, which is significant for attributing the crucial role to the divine will, which structurally is located between the planes, and transfers, as it were, possibles from one state to another. This is consistent with Heereboord’s text Pneumatica where he also describes this “twofold state of affairs (duplex rerum status), namely, a state of possibles and a state of fruition.”64 If one omits the notion of transfer from one ontological state to another, then the scheme collapses into a view similar to Descartes’s “eternal essences.” Are the essences of states of affairs eternal? The question arises whether causal necessity ought to be inferred from the inherent nature of a predicate inhering in a subject in a proposition. If the proposition is true that “To be human is to be capable of laughter,” whether any human is ever created or not, then it appears that the inherent necessary truth of the subject and predicate of the proposition does not depend on existence. It also appears then that one ought not infer causal necessity in acts of creation from eternal truths.65 In other words, does the inherent necessary nature of proposi62 Ibid., 2: 302–3. 63 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 305–6. (D37) “De essentiis rerum aeternis.” 64 Ibid. Cf. chapter 5 on Morton below. Morton extracts this point from Heereboord’s Pneumatica, in Morton’s ch. 8 “Of science in God.” 65 The question arises whether or not one ought to infer causal necessity from eternal truths. In Descartes’ May 27, 1630 letter to Mersenne, he answered his question “With what kind of causality did God create these eternal truths,” and Descartes answered that God was the efficient and total cause. And to the question, “What necessitated God to create these truths,” he answered that nothing necessitated God. God was radically free such that he could “make it not true that all the radii of the circle are equal.” The truth of propositions “are no more necessarily attached to his essence than are other created things,”in John Cottingham et al., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

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tions make complex propositions to be eternal truths (aeternae veritates), such as, “humankind is an animal,” “a horse neighs,” or “a rose is a flower?” If so, does that mean they correspond to something real outside understanding them from eternity? 66 Heereboord explains that the essences of things have real being (esse reale) and defines both esse and reale. There are three definitions of esse that Heereboord mentions. (1) The esse of essence explains existence; it explains the essence of the thing defined. (2) When something is generated it is transferred from non-being to being. (3) Grammatically, “to be” or “is” connects the subject and predicate of a true proposition. “A human is an animal, is rational (mind-gifted), is able to laugh, is learned, is good, and so forth.” But the actual existence (existentia) of a subject is not required for the truth of a proposition. If a human being had to exist in order for the above proposition to be true then it implies God cannot know the truth of the proposition unless a human exists. But the consequent is false, because many things are objects of knowledge, and things are known that do not exist. For example, Heereboord says a rose in winter is still known as a rose; Homer does not exist, but that he is a poet is true and is known. He argues that many things are knowable (multa scibilia sunt), including things that do not exist, they too are known (sciuntur de rebus non existentibus).67 The definition of reale of the term esse reale, when it predicates essence or being can be taken in one of two ways. It can mean either, that which is not fictitious, or fabricated by the understanding and reason. For example, a chimera is a fictitious being that is opposed to real being (enti reali). Or reale means that which in fact is existing. The essences of things can be said to be real in the first way, insofar as they are not invented by the understanding or made up by theory. But they cannot be said to be real in the second sense, as if always existent. Since esse reale implies an eternally existing being and even coeternality with God, Heereboord rejects the second meaning.68 But ought one infer the reality of essences from so-called perpetually true propositions? 1984–91), III: 25. See also the May 6, 1630 letter which underscores that the etrernal truths are not logically prior to God such that he had to decree them to be. III: 24. 66 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 305 (D37). Heereboord says this question was much debated by, Henry of Ghent, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and more recently, Franciscus Suárez, vol. 2 Metaphysics, disputation 31; Gabriel Vasquez, Part.1. Thomas. disputation 70 and 104; Martinus Meurisse in Metaphysics Book 1. q. 15. especially Franciscus Zumel in Part 1 q. 10. a. 3, and others. It appears that Heereboord’s commentary is made up of abstracts from the commentary of the Mercedarian Francisco Zumel (1540–1607), see Francisco Zumel, Commentaria in primam partem D. Thomas Aquinas (Venice: Floravantem Pratum, 1597), 154–9. 67 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 306. 68 Ibid.

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It seems that there are essences of things from eternity, such as propositions which are said to be perpetually true, even, eternal truths. For example, “Humankind is a rational animal,” “Humankind is capable of laughter.” Each proposition is either true or not true. Can one infer the reality of eternal essences from these propositions? Heereboord rejects this inference from propositions since, as he argues, their truth does not depend on the existence of things. More precisely, “Even if God were to annihilate the essences of things, those propositions would still be true, because they only mean that there is a necessary connection of the predicate with the subject.” The truth of the proposition does not depend upon the existence of states of affairs.69

4.6

Different senses in which truths in God’s mind are eternal

For Heereboord, that a proposition has a necessary connection between its subject and predicate does not entail that the thing spoken of is an eternal truth in the sense that it has an eternal essence. Essential predication and its inherently necessary connection between subject and predicate is a different kind of necessity than the necessity of so-called eternal essences. The kind of necessity that is enclosed within the proposition, “Humankind is risible,” doesn’t entail the conclusion that God necessarily willed to create humankind, nor that humankind must be risible. In other words, the proposition can stand, though there never be such a being as a created human being existing in the world. It is, therefore, a misstep to infer causal necessity from essential predication. In the next statement and commentary, abstracted from Francisco Zumel, Heereboord builds the case for why the inherent nature of complex propositions and so-called eternally true propositions do not imply the eternal essences of states of affairs, to which we now turn. He writes, Some propositions are said to be true perpetually, and eternally, not because the connection of the subject with the predicate is from eternity outside God, but because the predicate is conceived in the notion of the subject; that is, because the subject cannot be alone, nor can it be understood, without the predicate of the proposition, nor can the predicate be alone, nor be understood without the subject of the sentence.70

69 Ibid., 2: 307. 70 “Propositiones aliqua dicuntur esse veritatis perpetua, & aeterna, non quia connexiones praedicati cum subjecto in illis habent esse ab aeterno extra Deum, sed quia predicatum concipitur in ratione subjecti, id est quia subjectum, nec potest esse, nec intelligi, sine praedicato illius propositionis, aut etiam praedicatum, non potest esse nec intelligi sine subjecto illius enunciationis,” in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Phil. Select., 2: 307 (§7).

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Heereboord makes some preliminary remarks about (1) propositions where the predicate necessarily inheres in the subject, and (2) propositions with a predicate that contingently belongs to the subject and thus the proposition is contingently true. There is, then, a difference between what are called perpetual propositions and eternal truths that are (1) true by the intrinsic truth of the proposition and (2) those that are not true by the intrinsic truth of the proposition. The former is when the predicate is true by the intrinsic nature of the subject, and the subject cannot be understood without the predicate, or vice versa, when the subject is true on account of the intrinsic nature of the predicate. Nor can the predicate be understood without the subject, such as, “Humankind is a rational animal,” and “Humankind is capable of laughter.” Now since God knows the above propositions as true in sense (1), then the argument is that it cannot ever be that he not know them as true. It is not as if God can transfer them from the realm of possibly true propositions to the realm of true propositions, by his will, as it were. Each one is true on two accounts, the eternal understanding of God and their intrinsic nature. The intrinsic nature of the propositions is such that in the first, the predicate is intrinsic on account of the subject, in the second, the subject is intrinsic on account of the predicate. Moreover, there is a mutual and necessary relation from the nature of the case and from the nature of the end-terms.71 (2) The second kind of propositions has contingent intrinsic perpetual truth. God predetermines them and knows them from eternity as propositions about future contingencies. For example, “The Antichrist will be,” is true from eternity, not by intrinsic truth, because there is no predicate intrinsic to the nature of the subject. The predicate belongs contingently to the subject. The proposition is true from eternity because God from eternity predefined (praedefinivit) that “The Antichrist will be.” So these eternal truths (vera aeterna) have always been in the mind of God (in mente Dei).72 Heereboord notes that in this second kind of proposition (2), the predefinition and assigning of the truth-value occurs logically, that is, in a structurally prior moment to the state of being intrinsically and eternally true. Moreover, he repeats the point that they have no intrinsic necessary connection between the subject and the predicate and no being from eternity outside God (esse ab aeterno extra Deum).73 Heereboord extracts four points from Francisco Zumel to clarify what he means by saying that truths in the mind of God are eternal. (1) There is a sense in which eternity refers to before the world was made (ante saecula condita). Before creation, there was no human being existing. Nevertheless, the proposition was true, “Humankind is a rational animal.” Now for a proposition to be true or false, 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid.

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either there is a state of affairs that is true, or there is not. If there was no state (res) before the world was made, then there wasn’t any proposition to be true or false, whether vocal or written, but only a mental one in the understanding of God (sed tantum mentalis in intellectu Dei). Therefore, there is no true proposition outside the mind of God.74 (2) Before creation, there was no such thing as four, three, nor seven. “For this reason, there are no perpetual or eternal truths outside God.”75 (3) Before creation, there were no extant terms to connect in propositions. When speaking of a connection between a subject and a predicate of a proposition, it makes no sense if there be no extant terms to connect, from eternity. Indeed, before creation, there are no extant terms to connect, except in the mind of God. So an argument against these propositions being eternal, which bases itself on the impossibility of their being outside the mind of God, fails. “Therefore there could not be a connection of propositional terms outside the mind of God from eternity.”76 (4) Before creation, the connection of a subject and predicate is in God’s mind alone. The connection of the predicate with the subject in the statement, “A human is a rational animal,” is either real, or in the mind. Before creation, it is not real, because there was nothing outside God. Therefore, it was in the mind of God alone. “There was no mind but God’s mind” and he not only knows from all eternity the truth of the proposition that “human beings are mind-gifted,” but he also knows “all contingent states of affairs” (omnia contingentia). Therefore, since the connection of the subject and the predicate of this proposition is in God’s mind alone, there are no eternal truths outside the mind of God.77

4.7

Summary

We have seen that, for Heereboord, the necessary connection between the subject and predicate of a proposition does not entail that the thing spoken of is an eternal truth. The connection inheres in the connection of subject and predicate, but this necessary connection is a different kind of necessity than the necessity of so-called eternal essences. Case (1) concerned the truth of the proposition that is not grounded in the state of the proposition itself (in §4.6); that is, not from the point of view of the state of affairs (non a parte rei), as if it were external to God’s mind. Case (2) concerned propositions that had contingent, eternal truth. All propositions of future contingents are of eternal truths (de futura contingenti 74 Ibid., 2: 307–8. 75 Ibid., 2: 308. Cf. the inferences Edwards makes, contrary to this principle, in WJE 1: 153, 157, 182. Cf. chapter 1 §1.2.10 H1729 Logic thesis 18. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid.

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sunt aeternae veritatis). They are eternal because they are in the understanding of God, whether God has assigned a truth value to them or not, in a structural moment of predefinition, as was seen above. Therefore, given the omniscience of the divine understanding, it cannot be the case that they are not eternal. But it can be the case that they be contingent. Heereboord in his exposition calls them contingent, eternal truths, with God’s will playing the decisive part of predetermination.78 The proposition of a future contingent does not have an intrinsic truth value, such that it be an eternal truth. Rather, the truth value is imposed from outside the proposition itself, namely, from the fact that it is in the divine understanding, as in, “The Antichrist will be.” For the predicate does not inhere in the essence of the subject. Nor can there be existence of any essence on the part of the creature. Concerning the proposition “The Antichrist will be,” God has contingently willed (voluit contingenter) from eternity the predicate, “that it will be.”79 What is at stake is our understanding of reality. Is it necessary or contingent? Divine causal exemplars that produce created beings affords Heereboord the philosophical leverage to avoid, on the one hand, concluding that states of affairs come about by chance, and on the other hand, that states of affairs occur by the necessity of nature. For Heereboord, reality is contingent, dependent on God’s predetermining will. The Ames-Heereboord line is the classic-Christian line, which holds to an ontology of necessity and possibility, of synchronic freedom, a tradition from Augustine through Anselm, from Bonaventure to Scotus, developing the crucial notion of God’s will determining things to be done. When identifying Edwards’s background, it is this classic line that is his, not the traditional view of positing the Aristotelian-Thomistic line.80 We consider (in chapter 9 §9.1.2) how the contemporary Edwards scholar Sang Hyun Lee’s account of Edwards’s dispositional ontology, where God is essentially dispositional and full actuality, conflates the distinction between two acts of God’s intellect, only the second of which concerns God’s self-communication outside himself. We will return to the discussion on the inference of causal necessity from essential predication in chapter ten, an inference which Heereboord has rejected. The significance of this present chapter for this study is that Edwards infers causal necessity from the necessary connection between subject and predicate of a proposition. We will see that this connnection is a characteristic feature of 78 Ibid., 2: 307–8. 79 Ibid., 2: 308. 80 Antonie Vos. “Scotus’ significance for Western philosophy and theology,” in Lo scotismo nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia, ed., Francesco Fiorentino, 173–209. Porto, 2010. Cf. Sang Hyun Lee’s and other accounts that identify Edwards’s background as the Aristotelian-Thomistic line, failing to make the distinction between that older ontology and the ontology of the classic line, in chapter 9 of this present study.

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Edwards’s explanation of freedom of perfection, an explanation which is void of contingency. We now turn to a transitional figure between Heereboord and Edwards, to wit, Charles Morton. He took up Heereboord’s Meletemata, transcribed selected portions, and transmitted to students what he deemed important for the collegiate courses on ethics and pneumatics. In the next chapter we will give an account of what Morton does with Heereboord’s select disputations and the choices Morton makes concerning what to pass on to Harvard and Yale students.

5.

Charles Morton on freedom of will

5.1

Introduction

The consummate educator Charles Morton (1627–1698), known for composing pedagogical memory devices for students—distichs—combined skills in extracting scholastic texts and translating them into English in order to transmit his understanding of Reformed theology, first to a dissenter academy in England, at Newington Green, then to the New England schools of Harvard and Yale by way of student textbooks on logic, ethics, and pneumatics.1 While he argued for a philosophically and semantically informed curriculum of theological education, the case will be made that Morton transmitted not an original work of his own, but rather a view of Reformed philosophy that was extracted from Heereboord, and adapted at points to his own views and purposes. That Morton exercised influence upon New England school’s curricula is evidenced by the widespread use and transmission of his textbooks at Harvard and Yale. Charles Morton was originally a Cambridge man, entering Queen’s college in 1646, but then transferring to Oxford, Wadham college in 1649, receiving his M.A. in 1652. He had a well-educated father, Nicholas Morton, who took his B.A. in 1615 and M.A. in 1619 from Emmanuel college, Cambridge. In 1653, Charles became the vicar of Takeley in Essex. And in 1655, he became the rector of Blisland.2 In 1660, the restoration of the English monarchy and the Church of 1 For a recent biography, see Mark Burden, “A Biographical Dictionary of Tutors at the Dissenters’ Private Academies, 1660–1729” (London: Dr Williams’s centre for dissenting studies, 2013), 381–394, http://www.english.qmul.ac.uk/drwilliams/pubs/dictionary.html (accessed June 22, 2015); Also, Kennedy, ed., Aristotelian and Cartesian Logic at Harvard, 61–90; If an emigré to the colonies counted, Fiering called Morton “America’s first professional philosopher.” For information on Morton and the texts pertinent to this study, see Fiering, Edwards’s British Context, 207–38; Kennedy says perhaps the best biography is Samuel Eliot Morison’s Compendium physicae with introduction by Samuel Eliot Morison, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. 33 (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1940). 2 Burden, “A Biographical Dictionary,” 382.

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England to pre-revolutionary forms led to his removal from Blisland rectory. Morton’s Newington Green academy opened sometime after 1666, where as tutor at the controversial Newington Green, Charles could count among his students Daniel Defoe and Samuel Wesley. Burden writes that according to Wesley’s account, likely due to his opposition to the Restoration government, in the early 1680s, Morton received a capias (a writ) against him, which led to his quitting the academy.3 Charles emigrated to New England in 1686 upon the promise of becoming President of Harvard College, a promise which went unfulfilled. Instead, he became vice-President and tutored students from his home. The Congregational church at Charlestown, Massachusetts, ordained him for gospel ministry on November 5, 1686.4 In this chapter we mark a crucial shift that takes place between Heereboord and Morton. Morton significantly alters Heereboord’s presentation of Reformed freedom and he dismisses crucial concepts used in explaining Reformed thought on freedom. For instance, he dismisses as “impertinent” the classic-Reformed Christian emphasis on a twofold understanding of freedom, expressed as a freedom of exercise and freedom of specification (to kind). Not only do we witness the collapse of Reformed freedom’s use of the square of opposition to explain freedom of indifference to opposites, but we see Morton lay claim to a definition of “Reformed Philosophy” (in chapter 5 §5.7.4), which upon examination turns out to be an idiosynchratic, reductionist approach to freedom of will. Whereas the Reformed tradition located freedom in rational willingness, freedom of indifference, an intrinsic freedom ad utrumlibet, Morton reduces freedom to nothing more than “rational spontaneity.” His pretence to represent the Reformed tradition arguably seriously misinformed and misled the many students who copied his textbooks. Such allegations demand a show of proof which we intend to give in this chapter. We now turn to introduce the textbooks.

5.2

Charles Morton’s “Ethics” and “Pneumaticks” texts for students

After the Clarendon code and test acts, non-conformist young men desiring to enter the ministry were denied admission to the universities. As a result academies emerged, such as at Newington Green where Morton developed curriculum and taught. This chapter analyzes a student textbook copied by Ebenezer Williams, (Harvard AB 1709, AM 1712), who wrote in his copy of the text that he 3 Ibid., 386. 4 Ibid., 387.

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finished the transcription of Morton’s “Ethicks and Pneumatics” on 07 February 1707–8. The flyleaf of the notebook suggests that it was passed on to a fellow student, Elisha Williams (Harvard AB 1711, AM 1714).5 It is well known that Williams was Edwards tutor at Wethersfield (1716–1719) and it is reasonable to suppose that Elisha used these texts in instructing Edwards. A close analysis of the Morton text, which follows, shows that it is not original to Morton, but rather that he translated extracts from Heereboord’s Latin text on Pneumatica.6 Moreover, this implies that Edwards was exposed to Heereboord, and his Reformed definitions in chapters on “science in God,” “divine will,” “divine power”—among other chapters—at the earliest time of his training, while in Wethersfield. This chapter will focus on what Edwards would have learned about divine freedom from Morton’s texts. The transcribed student text consists of two of Morton’s works, his Ethicks and his Pneumaticks. The contents of the latter are abstracted and translated from Heereboord’s Pneumatica. The following analysis of select sections reveals what at first appears to be a close similarity on many topics between Morton and Heereboord. In fact, a case will be made that Morton differs from Heereboord on key definitions of free choice. This will become evident when one sees how Morton adds his own comments, definitions, and dissent. The point of interest for this study is to show the subtle changes Morton makes to Heereboord’s understanding of divine and human freedom, which Morton then transmits to students. The selected headings also serve to highlight the structural order and conceptual plane of thought that gave Reformed authors different ways to express their requisites for divine and humankind’s freedom of action.

5.3

Morton’s Pneumaticks, chapter eight “Of Science in God.”

Morton begins his Pneumaticks text, chapter eight, with an extract from Heereboord’s Pneumatics text. Morton then gives his interpretation of the text. The extract is Heereboord’s definition of the knowledge of God.7 First, we give 5 Williams, Ebenezer, 1690–1753. A system of ethicks. Of morall phylosophy in generall & in speciall. HUC 8707.394, Harvard University Archives, (seq. 2). (Henceforth, Williams, Ethicks, HUA [seq. #]), http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.ARCH:10919374?n=2 (accessed June 22, 2015). The commencing dates for Elisha Williams are taken from the Harvard commencement broadsides, where his name appears. Harvard University. Commencement Theses, Quaestiones, and Orders of Exercises, 1642–1818. HUC 6642, Harvard University Archives. The Bachelor 1711 broadside is in the collection. However, the Master’s 1714 Quaestiones was procured through Readex, Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639–1800. 6 Heereboord, Adriaan. Pneumatica. Leiden, 1659 Page references from “Pneumatica” appended to Heereboord’s Meletemata Philosophica (Amsterdam: Joannem Ravesteinium, 1665). 7 Ebenezer Williams, “Pneumaticks.” The following footnotes will show that the text of Pneu-

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Heereboord’s definition, since his text is the source text. Then we give Morton’s translation and interpretation of what he extracted from Heereboord.

5.3.1 Definitions of God’s knowledge Heereboord defines God’s knowledge in the heading of his Pneumatica chapter ten: The knowledge of God is the knowledge by which he truly knows all things and individuals and knows them infallibly, most perfectly, and distinctly by one, eternal and most simple act, at one and the same time.8

Morton defines “science” (knowledge) of God as follows: The science of God is whereby he does understand most perfectly all singular together and at once truly and infallibly by one eternal and most simple act.9

Although Heereboord, like Aquinas, said there is no need for a principle of intellection, since God intuitively knows his essence, knowing all things in one and the same act, nevertheless, both Aquinas and Heereboord described “intelligible species” as a principle of divine intellection, a principle of knowing. Heereboord argued that intelligible species represented reality causally and efficiently by producing the mental word (quia causat verbum mentale). The produced word of the mind was the expressed similitude of the state of affairs or thing. Because of this, an idea in God was technically speaking not the species intelligible, but the word of the mind verbum mentis.10 Our authors used the

matics is not original with Morton, but rather, he has translated extracts from Heereboord’s Pneumatica (Leiden, 1659), cap. X “De Scientia Dei.’ One piece of evidence, in addition to the obvious translation of the Latin text, is the fact that the English text does not read so smoothly, which is due, not so much to a student’s transcription errors, but rather to a wooden translation from Latin into English. The English quotes in the body of our text are from Morton’s student textbook. Latin terms in the body of the text and footnotes are from Heereboord’s Pneumatica. 8 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 64. Heereboord’s definition under the title of chapter 10 is: “Scientia Dei est, qua omnia et singula vere atque infallibiliter uno, aeterno, ac simplicissimo actu, simul et semel, intelligit perfectissime ac distintissime.” 9 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 63). 10 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 64. Cf. Heereboord, Meletemata, 301–2. (D35 and D36). Heereboord cites Scipio Agnello, from whom he has taken excerpts. Agnello is clear in his work that the verbum mentis is none other than the divine Word, the second Person of the Trinity, in Scipio Agnello, Disceptationes de Ideis in Tres Libros Distributae (Venice, 1615), 74–76. See Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes, 95. Doolan has shown that Aquinas also held to the view that the verbum mentis is the Word, the second Person of the Trinity, and Heereboord attributes the same character to the verbum mentis as Aquinas does.

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following two images to help explain God’s knowledge of his imitable essence and the conceptual plane of God’s knowledge of simple understanding. Morton and Heereboord’s use of verbum mentis and speculum trinitatis There is a metaphor medieval scholastic authors used for the word of the mind (verbum mentis), namely, the speculum trinitatis. Leen Spruit’s studies show that Medieval and Renaissance authors used the term in speculo for human cognition.11 But Heereboord and Morton apply the term to God’s intellectual cognition. In God, his understanding of himself and the object or state he beholds is one and the same, as if in a glass (speculum trinitatis). Heereboord’s Pneumatica text says that in contemplating his essence, God knows all possible states of affairs outside himself (omnia possibilia extra se), either to be appointed or having been appointed (aut ponendo aut poni), as if displayed in a mirror (tanquam in speculo refulgent).12 Morton adds the term trinitatis to his translation of Heereboord’s text—at least it appears in the right margin of the student transcription.13 If we take together Heereboord’s in speculo and the transcription of Morton’s text, “as in a glass trinitatis,” we have the speculum trinitatis.14 The significance of the speculum trinitatis metaphor is that it illustrates God’s knowledge of his imitable essence, and of all possible states of affairs that can be or shall be, in one act, just as he sees the Word, the Second person of the Trinity. The context wherein Heereboord and Morton use this term is that of the conceptual plane of God’s knowledge of simple understanding. And their point is that there is no need for a third conceptual plane of divine knowledge, otherwise known as “middle knowledge.” In fact, logically, there cannot be a third conceptual plane. The exposition below of Morton, who abstracts his points from Heereboord, will explain why they reject middle knowledge. But first, we turn to God’s twofold knowledge.

11 See Leen Spruit, Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge. II. Renaissance Controversies, Later Scholasticism, and the Elimination of the Intelligible Species in Modern Philosophy, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 49 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 170, 252, 284. Spruit records three authors who used the metaphor in speculo to describe mental representation. 12 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 66. 13 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (65). Cf. Heereboord, Pneumatica, 198. 14 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 65).

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5.3.2 God’s twofold knowledge Along the conceptual plane of divine knowledge, Morton, following Heereboord, takes up the classic distinction of God’s knowledge the philosophical grammar of which he divides into (1) real beings (entia realia) and (2) notional or mental beings (entia rationes). In (1), Morton divides real beings into (1a) possible states of affairs (possibilia) and (1b) future states of affairs (futura). He orders possible states of affairs according to God’s power (potentia) and he orders future states of affairs according to God’s will (voluntatem ejus). (1a) Possible states of affairs correspond to God’s knowledge of simple understanding. (1b) Future states of affairs correspond to God’s knowledge of vision. He further distinguishes (1b) into necessary and contingent states of affairs.15 Morton translates (2) entia rationes as “notional beings” or “entities of reason.” Although humanly speaking one can abstract notional beings, which only exist in the mind, from real beings, to ascribe such diverse operations to God would imply an imperfection and go counter to the doctrine of God’s simplicity (cum Dei pugnant simplicitate). But it is not a contradiction to say God knows notional beings (entia rationes), which he does not create or make (quae non facit). For God knows not only what he does, but also what he permits to come about by secondary causes (quae ab aliis fieri permittit) as well as what he would do (quae si faceret), if he were so to will.16 Morton continues by returning to distinctions (1a) and (1b) and provides more detail about the logical or structural ordering of these two conceptual planes of divine knowledge. God’s simple knowledge of understanding This first conceptual plane of knowledge is marked by what is possible, “not as opposed to impossible, but future.”17 This is a significant additional statement since these are real possible states of affairs; possible states of affairs are not juxtaposed with impossible states of affairs and non beings (non entia), but with future states of affairs. God can assign a truth value and actualize future states of affairs such that they obtain in this world, if God so decrees. The language of possible states of affairs belongs to the first plane of knowledge, structurally speaking, which he calls by the classic name, “knowledge of simple understanding.”18 The language of future states of affairs, both necessary and 15 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 64). Cf. Heereboord, Pneumatica, 65. “God knows from among real entities, both what is possible and what is future, in one simple act of understanding.” 16 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 63–64). Cf. Heereboord, Pneumatica, 64–5. 17 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 64). Cf. Heereboord, Pneumatica, 65. 18 Cf. Van Mastricht gives a twofold nomination of the knowledge of God that concerns future events. First, God’s “Natural knowledge or knowledge of simple understanding (scientia

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contingent belongs to the second structural plane of knowledge, which he calls “knowledge of vision.” We now turn to the first definition. (1) Possible known of God by knowing his own power, it is called science of simple intelligence and conceived as going before all decrees of his will.19

This conceptual plane of knowledge also bears the names “necessary,” “natural,” and “indefinite.”20 The indefiniteness of a state corresponds to the lack of an assigned truth value. Thus, it concerns the state “without the circumstance of time.” Structurally speaking, the opposite state corresponds to whether it will be “future,” that is, the same state that has no truth value or time indexation under God’s simple knowledge of understanding can have a truth value and time indexation under God’s knowledge of vision. In a structurally subsequent instant, God’s will determines the status of possibility, under the first kind of knowledge. Morton translates Heereboord into English and writes that God’s will “transfers a thing from an act (state) of possibility to a state of futurition.”21 At this point, the concepts that Morton transcribes introduce the all-important will of God, which plays a decisive role between, structurally speaking, God’s twofold knowledge.

God’s knowledge of vision The second distinction about divine knowledge that Heereboord and Morton make concerns the future states of affairs. Here is then Morton’s translation of the second conceptual plane of divine knowledge. (2) Future known of God by knowing his own will tis called science of vision in the order of our intellect conceiving is apprehended to follow his decrees though indeed science naturalis seu simplicis intelligentiae) by which pure possibles and their possibilities are ascertained, in his omni-sufficiency and omnipotence” (quâ, circa purè possibilia, eorum possibilitatem perspiciens, in suâ omnisufficientiâ, & omnipotentiâ), in Van Mastricht, ThPrTh, Book 2. c. 13.§14, 146; On this two-fold knowledge and God passing “possible beings” from a state of possibility to futurition inWillard, Compleat body of divinity, Lecture 21, 65; Lecture 32, 102. 19 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 64). Cf. Heereboord, Pneumatics, 65. “We call knowledge in God of possibles simple understanding,” 192. “Besides, when we speak of possible real entities, it is in order to the power of God, as futures are in order to his will, God knowing his power and will, by which he knows real entities; they are as possibles of his power, and as futures, they are subject to his will,” 191. (One must keep in mind that Morton’s text is mostly his extraction and translation into English from Heereboord’s Latin. This accounts for his otherwise stilted language and construction of sentences). 20 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 64). As has been seen above, these are the terms also assigned by William Ames in, Marrow, Bk. 1, c. 7 (§§25–26), 96. Cf. Heereboord, Pneumatica, 193. 21 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 64). Cf. Heereboord, Pneumatica, 65. Cf. chapters 4 §4.5 and 6 §6.6 of this present study for Heereboord’s and Stapfer’s use of this same concept and terminology.

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and decrees are together eternal tis also called free and voluntary and definite by the circumstance of time past, present, and future.”22

Both Heereboord and Morton make a distinction between two conceptual planes of divine knowledge, that is, that there is a structural ordering of these planes, before and after, the divine will and decrees. Definition (2) seeks to clarify that this language is an accommodation to human thinking, and that in the divine life of God, “knowledge and decrees are together eternal.”23 The very next paragraph of Morton makes it clear that there is a “twofold estate” conceived, of “possibility” on the one hand, and “fruition” on the other. Hence the schoolmen conceive all things as in a twofold estate viz. possibility and fruition, between those two they place the act of Gods will to transfer thing from the act of possibility to a state of futurition, God knows both say they, the one antecedently to the will and the other consequently.24

In this classic definition by Heereboord, it is clear that God’s will is the hinge upon which possibility and fruition hang. Morton, following Heereboord, holds this “twofold estate” (duplex rerum status) in tension with the will and clarifies what is meant by attributing “foreknowledge” to God. “Prescience is properly speaking science of vision” and not “knowledge of simple understanding.” The latter “precedes” futures and the divine decree, structurally speaking. This is because the “objects” of simple understanding are “indefinite,” without an assigned truth value. They are not entia futura, but possibilia. But knowledge of vision is also called “free” and “voluntary” and “definite by the circumstance of time past, present, and future.”25 It is God’s will that moves a state of affairs out of the realm of possibility into the realm of fruition by assigning a time indexation and truth value to the state of affairs that will obtain in the course of time. The text of Pneumatica says the scholastics, implying Scotus, state that “God’s will is the cause of his science of vision (volitionem Dei esse causam scientiae visionae).” Therefore “the will indeed is the cause of the things that are known (voluntas est causa rerum scientarum futurarum). The cause is not due to the act of knowing future willed states of affairs (actus sciendi futura volita).”26

22 Ibid. Cf. Heereboord, Pneumatica, 65. Cf. Van Mastricht also gives the second kind of knowledge. God’s “free or knowledge of vision” (scientia libera seu visionis), in Van Mastricht, ThPrTh, Bk 2. c. 13.§14, 146; Willard, Compleat body of divinity, Lecture 21, 66. 23 Heereboord, 65. “It follows, however, that both [knowledge, given the context] and decree be simultaneously eternal in God himself.” 24 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 64). Cf. Heereboord, Pneumatica, 65. 25 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 64). Cf. Heereboord, Pneumatica, 65. 26 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 65. Cf. Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 64).

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Necessity and contingency of future states of affairs Heereboord and Morton intentionally discuss necessity and contingency of states of affairs under the second kind of knowledge. This is due to the time indexation and truth value assigned by God’s will, which logically and structurally precedes the second kind of divine knowledge. Only in this context can Heereboord and Morton speak of a future proposition’s implicative necessity and at the same time its contingency. The following definitions, writes Heereboord and Morton, respect only secondary causes since all future states of affairs are necessary in consequence of “God’s immutable will and infallible prescience.” Heereboord explains—which Morton omits—“that which God knows as future, necessarily is future.” God sees what he has willed; his knowledge of vision cannot fail. How much more (tanto magis) is is true that that which God foresaw (praescrivit) as future, he decreed (decrevit) as future. Therefore, necessarily, it will come about (necessario fiet). Both his will and prescience logically impose necessity upon future states of affairs (utraque necessitatem imponit rebus futuris), but it is a necessity from God’s part that does not remove contingency (non tollit contingentiam).27 In other words, that which God knows as future—“that Peter will believe”— necessarily is future—“necessarily will come about.” That is, “Necessarily (N), p implies q” expresses an implicative logical relation of necessity between God, Peter and belief. It means, necessarily, the proposition as it stands in parentheses is true. But the proposition itself is contingent, for its truth value depends upon the divine decree and can be otherwise than it is. In other words, the necessity operator (N) does not place its force upon Peter’s belief, but upon the entire proposition, which derives its necessity from God’s decree. In sum, Heereboord and Morton have said that God’s will imposes a derived necessity upon a future state, in secondary causes, and that this necessity does not remove the contingency of that future state.28 But these authors also view the necessity and contingency of secondary causes in the compound and divided sense, to which we now turn.

Necessity and contingency of secondary causes in the compound and divided sense Heereboord and Morton write that the necessity of secondary causes is seen in the “compound sense,” and the contingency of secondary causes is seen in the divided sense. The transcription from Morton reads, “In a compounded sense 27 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 65. 28 Ibid.

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with the time when in a thing is done and so everything is necessary for everything is necessary when it is.” In other words, a proposition such as “That Peter will believe, necessarily will be,” has a secondary cause, Peter, who at the time he believes does not have the possibility not to believe, in the compound sense of the statement. For, in the compound sense, when an action is done, necessarily, it is done. The time indexation that Heereboord’s text speaks of, in the compound sense, is “at the present time or moment (pro praesenti tempore).29 But in the divided sense, both authors understand that a secondary cause, in this case Peter, does have the possibility not to believe, but at another time. They do not speak of a synchronically contingent moment at this point in their presentation. They mention another time (tempore alio), that is, a diachronically contingent time.30 Thus, in the divided sense, the statement is, “That Peter will believe, contingently will be.” That is, Peter will believe and can not believe. But instead of saying “Peter will believe and it is possible that he not believe, at the same time,” as other Reformed authors would say, Heereboord and Morton’s text reads, “Peter will believe at one moment of time, and can not believe, but at another moment of time, not the same moment.” That is their presentation of a traditional understanding of diachronic contingency in the divided sense.31 In sum, in the compound sense, our two authors state that it is a contradiction to say that Peter will believe and at the same time can not believe. Or as they put it, in the compound sense, a secondary cause produces something and cannot not produce it, at a present moment (pro tempore praesenti). In the divided sense, a secondary cause produces something at the present moment and can not produce it at another moment (tempore alio). Future contingent states of affairs either absolute or conditional Heereboord’s Pneumatica text continues the discussion and adds another subpart under God’s knowledge of vision. The transcription of Morton’s text reads, “Contingents future are either absolute or conditional.” First , in the absolute sense, God “sees” absolute future contingent states of affairs “by his decree to which vision follows.”32 This language is consistent with the philosophical grammar of God’s knowledge of vision. That is, God sees what he decrees. Second, in the conditional sense, Heereboord’s text asks whether God knows future contingent conditional states of affairs, which God has not decreed as 29 Ibid., 165. Cf. Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 64). 30 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 65. 31 For Heereboord’s explanation of the syntactical features of the compound and divided sense and his presentation of the synchronic possibility of believing, in the divided sense, at the same instant of time, see chapter 3 §3.6.1 and §3.6.2 of this present study. 32 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 64).

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future, by this same kind of knowledge of vision? Does God only know these states of affairs under a condition? Or does he know them by the first kind of knowledge, that of simple understanding? Or is there a third kind of knowledge? The transcription reads, “Tis controverted whether by simple intelligence, vision, or middle science resolved thus.”33 Thus far we have considered the only two conceptual planes of God’s knowledge allowed by our two authors. As indicated above, there is a third kind of knowledge that the Jesuits have introduced, which Heereboord and Morton now consider. It is middle knowledge.34 Morton’s transcription simplifies the answer by stating that a conditional state, “tis known by simple intelligence for then the thing is only in a state of possibility.”35 Morton then concludes, “There is no need of middle science,” God’s knowledge is one pure act of all and together the division thereof is not on the part of God but us.”36 But Heereboord’s text offers the following argument against middle knowledge. If there is a future conditional state, God knows the state as a contingent future state that he has decreed. And by definition, God knows that state by his knowledge of vision (per scientiam visionis). But if God has not decreed the condition itself, but only the future under a condition, then the conditioned future contingent state of affairs (tum res contingens futura conditionate) God knows by his knowledge of simple understanding (per scientiam simplicis intelligentiae). The reason he gives, even though the proposed language of the opponents of “contingent” states of affairs belongs to knowledge of vision, is that a non-decreed state of affairs “is in a state of possibility” (in statu tantum possibilitatis) and is a mere or pure possible state (mere possibilis). And so, without the decree, it is an object of God’s simple understanding. There is therefore no need for a third kind of middle knowledge.37 Heereboord then proposes to answer the question of how his opening thesis, “God knows all things simultaneously and at once in one most simple act,” consists with these two kinds of knowledge. He reminds us that the division is an accommodation to human understanding. Possibilia are objects of God’s knowledge of simple understanding and futura are objects of God’s knowledge of vision. These God knows in one indivisible act (uno actu et indivisibili intelligit). The transcription of Morton’s text summarizes the argument and reads, “There is nothing that can be conceived but either as possible or future.”38 Thus, among entia realia, there are two conceptual planes, either possibilia or futura.39 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 64). Heereboord, Pneumatica, 66. Williams, Ethicks. HUA (seq. 65). Cf. Heereboord, Pneumatica, 200. Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 65). Heereboord, Pneumatica, 66. Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 65). Heereboord, Pneumatica, 66.

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5.3.3 No middle knowledge Finally, Heereboord and Morton conclude this chapter “On the science of God” with a number of arguments against a so-called third kind of divine knowledge: middle knowledge (scientia media). The following syllogism by Heereboord proves, he says, that there are but two conceptual planes of divine knowledge; for, the inference of the major can be denied. The syllogism is: (1) Every habit presupposes an object.40 (2) Those things which are mutually opposed to one another do not allow a third to come between them. (Possible and futures are mutually set in opposition to one another, if viewed in their formal sense (in ratione sua formali).41 But the objects of simple knowledge of understanding and knowledge of vision are set in mutual opposition to one another in God’s mind. (3) Therefore, what is possible is set in mutual opposition to what is future.42 The objects of divine knowledge are either in a state of possibility or a state of futurition. God’s knowledge is like binary conceptual planes upon which an object is juxtaposed as an opposite. That is, there is either a possible state or a future state, a binary concept admits no tertiary plane upon which so-called conditionals play out in the course of time. There are, therefore, but two conceptual planes of divine knowledge, such that, in the divine mind, states of affairs are mutually opposed to one another. This state of opposition, (p or ~p) lies as a foundational stone in the syllogism of Heereboord and is reflected in his claim that possible states of affairs and future states of affairs are mutually opposed to one another. The prophet Isaiah, writes Heereboord, alludes to “diverse conceptual moments of divine knowledge,” (quare illa scientiae divinae distinctio tantum notat diversa momenta); from this, Heereboord makes the point that there is no third conceptual plane, commonly called, “middle knowledge.”43 However, Morton’s transcription of Heereboord’s text reads, “several movements of our finite intellect,”44 whereas the Latin text speaks of “diverse moments of divine knowledge,” pointing to logical, structural moments of divine thought. For all agree that there are no succesive temporal moments in divine thought. In sum, the conceptual space, as it were, which structural moments in divine knowledge afford, make room for the two conceptual planes along which the opposites of possible states of affairs and future states of affairs are juxtaposed. 40 41 42 43

Ibid., 66. Cf. Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 65). Ibid. Cf. Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 65). Heereboord, Pneumatica, 66. Ibid., 198–9. “Therefore the distinction only marks diverse [structural] moments of the divine knowledge.” 44 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 65).

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And these mutually exclusive opposites do not allow for a third kind of divine knowledge. There are then but two opposing kinds of divine knowledge, God’s knowledge of simple understanding, which speaks of possible states of affairs, and God’s knowledge of vision, which speaks of future states of affairs, both necessary and contingent. The significance of holding to the twofold notion of God’s knowledge, and rejecting a third kind, is that otherwise the non-decreed, temporal, state of human affairs would actually determine God’s will and what God wills. If that were the case, the actual fact of the human state of affairs occuring in the course of time would imply that the state of affairs could not be otherwise than it is. Middle knowledge prior to God’s will and decree would impose a necessitarian structure upon God’s decrees and deny the ontological status of “possible states of affairs” from which God wills and decrees future events. God’s will would not be the hinge upon which possibles, on the one hand, and the fruition of future contingent propositions turn.

5.3.4 Morton’s comments and reply to middle knowledge In his chapter on “Liberty of the will,” (Chapter 3), Morton also gave a reply to socalled middle knowledge. We will extract his comments and place them here since they are relevant to the discussion on divine knowledge. First, Morton describes their notion (the papal theologians, or “papists,” as he says) of God’s middle knowledge “as if God did barely foreknow future things” when he determined them by his will. On their view, God’s decree is based on a conditioned knowledge of the future and so it calls into question the efficacy of the divine decree. For this reason Morton asks how can God determine what he barely foreknows? 45 Second, he says, if there were such a thing as middle knowledge, then events “must be certain and necessary, as if decreed.” Their certainty and necessity is linked with God’s knowledge of vision, after the decree, not their notion of middle knowledge. Thus, Morton’s trouble with their view is that it removes certainty and necessity from God’s simple knowledge of understanding thereby diminishing God’s knowledge of all possible states of affairs.46 Third, he writes in his chapter on “Liberty of the will,” in a comment against so-called “middle science in God,” the distich that, “foreknowns are true and future certain.”47 In other words, God’s knowledge of vision whereby he sees what he has decreed is true and certain, even though the Reformed attribute both necessity and contingency to future events known by knowledge of vision. The 45 Ibid., (seq. 10). 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid.

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Jesuits may argue that the Reformed cannot have it both ways, but that is to miss the distinction of future events being certain due to the necessity of the consequence of the decree. And even though God wills events contingently, nevertheless, he knows with certainty what he has decreed.48 Fourth, he says their notion of conditional knowledge wrongly attributes deliberation and ratiocination—“he sees now reasons”— to the immanent acts of God. Morton points out that these are characteristics of human reasoning, not God’s omniscience. The doctrine of omniscience encompasses both God’s knowledge of simple understanding (all possibles) and God’s knowledge of vision (all actualized states of affairs). Neither is it the case, argues Morton, that God deliberates, as humans do; for to ascribe that to God is “unagreeable to God’s omniscience and immutability.”49

5.3.5 Summary In sum, (in §5.3.2), Morton makes a distinction between God’s knowledge of simple understanding, a conceptual field which speaks of possibles, and God’s knowledge of vision, a conceptual field which speaks of future events, those which are absolute and those which are conditional, ordered by his will. We recall that future states of affairs are by definition juxtaposed with possible states of affairs. In Heereboord’s scheme, God, therefore, does not know the truth value of possible states of affairs since he has not yet, structurally speaking, ordered them by his will. But that does not violate the doctrine of God’s omniscience. For, God does know all these possibles, but as the definition says, not all that is possible, or can be done, is going to be. And that is the point. And after the divine decree God knows these same states of affairs as future with a truth value and time indexation, which he has assigned, and which do not depend on a source outside God, which as Morton points out would violate the doctrine of God’s immensity and his immanent acts. The problems that Heereboord and Morton have with scientia media are, (1) that it poses a will in God that is consequent to, and thus dependent upon, human action. For the Jesuits, it bases election upon “prevision of merits,” for the Remonstrants, “prevision of faith.”50 (2) It makes God “impotent to accomplish what he would.” (3) It implies that the human will “causes God to act to attain or fall short of his goodness in giving such means and this impeaches his wisdom.”

48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., (seq. 67).

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(4) “It destroys his omniscience to foresee future contingents, therefore to assert this were to make man be as God and God to be as man.”51

5.4

Divine will

Morton’s “Of divine will” is also largely a translated abstract of Heereboord’s Pneumatica, Chapter eleven: De voluntate Dei. Heereboord’s chapter heading begins with his definition of the will of God. We shall follow Heereboord’s structure in our commentary and analyze Morton’s translation, which more or less follows Heereboord’s structure. Heereboord: The will of God is that whereby he wills every true and good thing: Gd’s veracity and goodness belong to him.52 Morton, in his Pneumaticks, chapter 9 “Of divine will,” gives a slightly modified definition. The transcription also begins with the definition. Morton: The will of God is whereby he wills every true and good, hence are attributed to him veracity and bonity of this the sense of the word, opposites, objects.53

Heereboord proceeds by clearing up the ambiguities surrounding the terms velle and nolle. The term “willing” signifies, for example, either to love, or the opposite, to hate. Or, it signifies to decree that something come about (decernere ut aliquid fiat). This occurs either by God’s efficient (efficiente) will or permitting (permittente) will. The opposed manner is nolle, which is willing that something not come about (velle ut aliquid non fiat). However, there is no privative sense of “not willing” (non velle) admitted in God, since God is pure act (nam in deo non datur velle, quia est purus actus).54 Morton follows along and immediately adds that this willing is “only of that which is good.” Heereboord doesn’t discuss the point about good or bad objects until his second paragraph. The positive acts of willing are, as Morton puts it, “to like, love, or approve of only that which is good,” and the negatives are “to hate, dislike, or disapprove of falsehood or evil.” Thus, while Heereboord begins by speaking of the positive acts of willing, Morton also connects the act of willing with the good, and permitting with evil and false states of affairs. We saw (in §5.3.4) above, in Heereboord’s commentary, that “The acts of the divine will are to will (Velle) and to will that-not (Nolle).” These concern “existing 51 Ibid. 52 Heereboord, Pneumatica, cap. XI, “De Voluntate Dei. Voluntas Dei est, qua vult omne verum et bonum: huc pertinet Dei veracitas et bonitas,” 66. 53 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 65). 54 Heereboord, Pneumatica, cap. XI, “De Voluntate Dei.” 66.

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states of affairs.” Velle Dei is to determine that which happens, Nolle Dei is to determine that which does not happen” (Velle Dei est decernere ut quid fiat, Nolle Dei est decernere ut quid non fiat). Heereboord confirmed that the negative acts of willing, Non Velle and Non Nolle, do not properly belong to God, for God is pure act (Non Velle et non Nolle in Deo proprie non est, quia Deus est purus actus).55 Heereboord and Morton view this sub-altern, “not willing,” as a negative act, and not as an act of will, and therefore, not consistent with God as actus purus.56 Morton gives a concise abstract of this second paragraph: “The objects of God’s will are primary or secondary.” (1) The primary object of love is God, and according to the dictum Heereboord gives, he translates it as, “Primary is himself as will is love.” (2) The secondary objects of God’s will are creatures. “Secondary the creature things out of God in hope, verity, or bonity depends on God’s will as the cause thereof.”57 The primary object of love is God “God is the primary object of the divine will (objectum ponitur voluntatis divinae primarium Deus),” writes Heereboord. Secondarily, are the states of affairs outside God (res extra Deum). However, it we take velle for decree (velle sumas pro decernere), in no way, says Heereboord, is the object of the divine will God himself, neither does God decree something about himself. In other words, God doesn’t decree himself. But the dictum is that “God wills himself inasmuch as he loves himself” (Deus se ipsum velle, in quantum se ipsum amat).58 As Morton puts it, “Primary is himself as will is love.”59 In other words, it is not that the most loving thing that ought to be done imposes itself on God and what he decrees, for there is nothing true or good antecedent to the will, as Heereboord will go on to say. It is rather that the divine will is inseparably bound up with love, and therefore what the will wills has, necessarily, an ethical dimension to it. The divine will is the only cause of the love-act qua act is what Heereboord is getting at.

55 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 65). 56 See A. Vos et al., Duns Scotus on Divine Love: Texts and Commentary on Goodness and Freedom, God and Humans (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 187–8. 57 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 65). 58 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 67. 59 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 65).

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The secondary objects of love are creatures and states of affairs Heereboord elaborates on this point in this paragraph and says that God loves only the good object of the will (objectum voluntatis), and to the degree that willing signifies “to hate” he hates only the object of nilling (objectum noluntatis). As to the decree, God decrees both the good and the bad (tum bonum, tum malum), as object of the divine will. For God decrees that both be done (ut fiat), effecting the good, permitting evil. The object of the divine will that God decrees that something not be done (ut non fiat), is both good and bad. It is true that loving is the object of the will, and it is false that repudiating is the object of nilling (noluntatis). But the decision whether the object of the will be done or not, can be both true and false. It must be noted, says Heereboord, “that the will of God is the cause of all goodness and truth in states of affairs, but he is not the cause of falsity and malice.”60 In other words, God stands asymmetrically behind, structurally speaking, falsity and malice. God produces the substratum for malice, but not malicious states of affairs themselves. But with creatures it is different. God wills, that is, he both loves and decrees things concerning them. He decrees to do or perform things (decernit faciendas) and he loves both to make and what is made (amat et faciendas et factas).61 There is nothing good or true antecedent to the divine will Heereboord raises the objection whether the divine will is really good. That is, is the divine will itself bad, with only some good to be found? Moreover, what is the relation between God’s will, God himself, and the good? He argues as follows: If the only truth and goodness be what God wills, so that his will be the cause of all goodness and truth in things—for we philosophize about the truth and goodness of things outside God (extra Deum)—then it follows that nothing antecedently to the will of God is good or true. This is the case because what has been effected is not before a cause. Indeed, God himself is both good and true, antecedently to his will, as far as the will signifies that he decides. Neither is it such for this reason that he has decided it to be so.62

Heereboord illustrates the conceptual and structural point at hand by entertaining the question whether God could have created a non-rational, or non 60 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 67. 61 Ibid. 62 “Si autem nihil sit verum et nihil bonum, nisi quod Deus velit, ut ipsius voluntas sit causa omnis bonitatis et veritatis in rebus (nam de veritate et bonitate rerum extra Deum philosophamur) sequitur, nihil antecedenter ad Dei voluntatem esse bonum aut verum, nam effectum nunquam est ante causam: Deus ipse quidem et bonus et verus est, antecedenter ad voluntatem suam, in quantam haec significat decernere, neque enim ideo est talis, quia talis esse decrevit,” in Heereboord, Pneumatica, 67.

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mind-gifted human being? In other words, was the proposition, “A human is mind-gifted,” true before the divine decree? Or is the complex proposition such that God could not have willed it otherwise, once he decided to will that there be such a being as human beings? He says, “No creature is either true or good unless God decrees it so to be. Likewise, a human being is a true human because God willed the subject and predicate of the complex proposition to be, namely, “animal” and “rational.” Therefore, he says, “it is good, that is, it is agreeable with God (conveniens Deo).” That is, God agrees with this means to an end, to wit, that humans will be and shall glorify God. God has willed that it be so.”When God produced humans, he made them for his own sake (fecerit eum propter se), to wit, as a means to an end, namely, God’s glory. We saw (in chapter 2 §2.2.3) how Heereboord handles Aristotle’s dictum that every volition is either for its own sake, or for the sake of another. And here, God produces humans for his own sake, for his glory. There is no doubt that God wills to create humans for this purpose, writes Heereboord, (haud dubiem talem facere voluit).63 But it is not the case that to will is to love and that therefore God must will others in the same way he wills himself, since he loves himself. If willing were loving, then he had to will humans to glorify himself.

Verity, or truth-value, as object of the divine will Simple verity is the disposition of being (ens) dependent on the divine will. As Morton translates Heereboord, simple verity is a “convenience of a thing to its principles (convenientia rei cujuslibet cum suis principiis).” God’s will defines “genus and difference” and “constitutes matter and form,” such as, “A human is a rational animal.”64 The cause in these states of affairs (causa in rebus) is the will of God alone (est sola Dei voluntas). Divine causality concerns not only that the states of affairs be, but also that they be of such and such a species or form. As Morton translates it, “God’s wills decreeing is the cause of both of essence and existence that it is in being and that it is of that kind. So God decreeing man to be, and to be a rational animal.”65 Heereboord’s text also makes the point that this causality concerns existence and essence in created states of affairs (in rebus creatis). Moreover, the text reads that God wills that a human exists, that is, that he decrees him to exist, equating the two with each other on this point. God wills both subject and predicate, namely, that a human be an animal and that he or she be mind-gifted. Heereboord confirms the correctness of the statement that the 63 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 67. 64 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 65). Cf. Heereboord, Pneumatica, 67. 65 Williams, Ethicks, (seq. 65). Cf. Heereboord, Pneumatica, 67. “Causa non tantum existentiae, sed essentiae.”

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will of God is the cause not only of every being (entitas), but also of every verity (sed et veritatis). In other words, a human cannot not be an animal and mindgifted. The syllogism Heereboord gives is: 1. “If a human is an animal, 2. and is rational, 3. he or she is a true human when both belong to him or her, because God wills it (quia Deus vult). Therefore, the conditional is, “If God had not willed (si Deus non voluisset) a human to be such and such, he or she could not be an animal (potuit non esse animal), or rational (non esse rationalis).”66 The latter is false, therefore the former is true. Heereboord proves the minor premise by pointing out that an essentiated state (res essentiata) cannot be separated from its essence (essentia). But if a human could be human without being both animal and rational, that is, if God had nilled (noluisset) a human to be such, the essence (essentia) and the essentiated state (res essentiata) were already separated from one another (a se invicem divellerentur). Morton adds that the notion of such a separation would be “absurd.” The nub of the question of whether a human could exist, and not be both animal and rational, structurally precedes the will of God (antecedenter ad Dei voluntatem). Heereboord denies that it absolutely could have come about (simpliciter potuisse fieri) antecedent to the will of God that a human was (ut homo esset). Morton summarizes the point, “To that the solution is a man could not at all be antecedent to God’s will.”67 Heereboord argues that the case of every created entity (omnis entitas rei creatae) is consequent upon God’s will. He states that essence and the essentiated state cannot be separated from each other.68 However, the status of a possible state structurally preceding the divine will is different. “It is not yet certain (nondum certum est),” writes Heereboord, what the essence of humankind will be. This is because God only knows (Deus tantum noscit) the possible connections (possibilem nexu extremorum) of subjects and predicates by his knowledge of simple understanding (per scientiam simplicis intelligentiae). Prior to the divine will, God knows the possible state as a noncontradictory case, that is, of combining animal and rational in humankind. He concludes that God’s will is the sole cause (sola Dei voluntas) that actually connects the extremes (ideoque actualis connexionis extremorum causa), the subject and predicate, of a simple verity of an entity. In this way a simple verity agrees or conforms to God’s will, that is, to God’s decreeing what shall be.69 “Extremes” are terms of relation, such that, aRb, where a has, for example, an asymmetric relation to b, such as a parent has to her child; it is a one-way relationship.70 Morton’s point is that the relation of God’s scientia simplicis 66 67 68 69 70

Heereboord, Pneumatica, 67. Williams, Ethicks, (seq. 65). Heereboord, Pneumatica, 67. “Essentiam et rem essentiatam non posse a se invicem divelli.” Heereboord, Pneumatica, 68. Cf. Williams, Ethicks, (seq. 66). See Vos, Philosophy of Scotus, 190.

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intelligentiae to his decree is one way, asymmetrical, as is his scientia visionis. Thus, God knows the “extremes” as possibles, as to whether he will join rational and animal in the notion of humankind and decree to create a mind-gifted (rational) animal, antecedent to the decree, not after the decree. Complex verity of propositions (enunciationis) God’s will is also the cause of complex truths, which are grounded in and derived from simple verities. Heereboord asks the question, “Whether the will of God also be the cause of first principles (principiis primis) and axioms known per se (axiomatibus per se notis)?” In other words, can it be the case that first principles are true prior to the divine will? For example, “Two times two equals four.” Or, “The whole is greater than its parts.” He responds that these first principles depend upon the will of God for their truth. As to the examples given, God has willed them so and instituted them by his will (instituit per voluntatem). It is not the case that their truths somehow imposed themselves upon God’s will. If God had not willed them so (si Deus non voluisset esse), they would not be true (non fuissent haec vera), writes Heereboord. Thus, the divine will has determined both simple and complex verities.71

5.5

Liberty is a property of the divine will

That freedom is a property of the divine will (Voluntatis divinae proprietas est libertas) is not a new topic for Heereboord, but he wants to make three points at the end of this chapter on God’s will about how God’s freedom pertains to diverse objects. We first turn to Heereboord’s three points in his text, then Morton’s interpretation, with his dissent on the notion of “indifference.”72 Morton skips over these next three points which concern freedom of exercise and freedom of specification, or kind. Since Morton does refer to these two distinctions in his Ethics textbook, in reference to human willing, we will give a brief historical sketch of these distinctions, as used by Reformed authors, and introduce the logic behind their use (in §5.7) below.

71 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 68. Cf. Williams, Ethicks, (seq. 66). 72 Cf. Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 68).

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God’s act of self-love If we take velle as if it implies loving, and if loving refers to God loving himself, as object of his will, then it is necessarily the case that God loves himself. God is the primary object of his love. In this case, Heereboord says, “God in no way freely wills that he love himself (Deus nullo modo libere se ipsum vult, i. e. amat).”73 This is necessarily (necessario) the case, both with respect to freedom of specification (quoad specificationem) and freedom of exercise (quoad exercitium). In regards to specification, God cannot nill loving himself. “He cannot hate himself (non potest se odisse).” In regards to exercise, God “cannot not exercise the act of loving himself (non potest non actum se amandi exercere).”74 If God could hate himself, it would imply he understands himself as evil. But that cannot be so, since God is the summum bonum. There is no account of evil in him, from him, about him. In fact, God cannot cease from the act of loving himself (non potest ab actu se amandi cessare). If he were to, it would violate the doctrine of God’s simplicity, to wit, it would imply God was in potentia. We saw above (in chapter 3 §3.4.2) that there is no privative indifference in God. Heereboord has stated that God is void of all potentiality. God’s act of love towards his creation Again, if we take velle for loving, and this time in the sense of God loving creatures, he has created, as object of his will, then, secondarily, God’s love for self must be viewed as a kind of self-love (amor sui secundarius). Now God’s relation to creatures is either as to possible states of affairs (ut possibiles), before his decree to create, or existing states of affairs (existentes), after his decree. As far as creatures as possibles are concerned, God wills to create and necessarily wills that he love them (amat necessario). This is because Heereboord began by defining willing as loving. And this is nothing other than God willing and loving his omnipotence (quam velle et amare suam omnipotentiam). The connection between God necessarily loving his creatures and his omnipotence has to do with these creatures as possibles. But God necessarily wills and loves his omnipotence.75 As far as the notion of existing creatures is concerned, God necessarily wills that he love (amat necessario) quoad specificationem. This is because God cannot hate his creation. But quoad exercitium, God freely wills that he love his creation (amat libere). The sense of willing freely means that God could (it was possible 73 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 73. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid. On the medieval pairing of willing and loving, see Vos et al, Duns Scotus on divine love, 216.

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that he not) not have willed and loved (ut potuerit non amare) inasmuch as he could have decreed (potuit decernere) that these possible creatures not exist. Heereboord argues that “had God decreed that they not exist, neither could he have loved them as existing.”76 God’s act of willing as decreeing is free Now, if we take willing as decreeing, God freely has willed, or, decreed (Deus libere voluit id est decrevit).77 First, Heereboord makes a distinction between the act of willing or determining and the object willed or decreed. The latter entails taking into account the relation itself of the act of willing or decreeing towards the object or state willed and decreed. But first, when speaking of God freely willing and decreeing, that freedom doesn’t concern the act itself of God willing himself to exist. For God cannot not will himself to exist. God is pure act, not in potentiality as regards willing and decreeing. But with respect to decreed states of affairs, or rather the relation to the endterm of states of affairs (terminationis in res) that have been willed or determined, God is said freely to have willed and determined them. In fact, God necessarily (necessario) holds himself indifferently (indifferenter) from eternity in his act of the will (actu suae voluntatis). In willing or decreeing, God would will to incline (vellet tendere) and determine to fix the end-goal of his will upon certain future states of affairs (res futuras). In creation, God had many worlds to which he freely could have inclined to create (in creationem plurium mundorum), says Heereboord.78 If it can be said that God freely wills in this sense, the scholastics, Heereboord says, also asked, “Whether it could be said that he wills contingency?” (an etiam dici possit velle contingentia?), to which Heereboord gives a qualified affirmative answer. “If contingent be the same as that indifference” (si contingens idem sit quod indifferens), he agrees. The reason is that contingency is indifference in the sense that the will of God aims for and determines its end-goal (contingens est et indifferens, quod Dei voluntas tetenderit ac terminata) by willing and determining only in one world (sit volendo ac decernendo in unum tantum mundum). Contingency does not mean a choice from among a plurality of creations. Creation is the world he knew, of seven planets with four elements.79 The significance of this statement is that for Heereboord, contingency does not mean

76 77 78 79

Heereboord, Pneumatica, 73. Ibid. Heereboord, Pneumatica, 74. Ibid.

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that God wills from among possible worlds. On the contrary, divine contingent willing concerns possibles in this world, the world which is accessible to his mind. Morton’s interpretation of liberty as property of the divine will Morton avoids Heereboord’s discussion largely due to his disagreement with Heereboord’s inclusion of “indifference” in his definition of freedom. Morton writes, The property of divine will is liberty by which he acts most necessarily and yet most freely. This is easy to understand if you place liberty in rational spontaneity (wherefore indeed it is), but in indifference to opposites then there need a great many impertinent distinctions which are not to recite because we hold there is no such liberty in God.80

We can summarize his dismissal of Heereboord’s commentary in two points. (1) He rejects as “impertinent distinctions,” to wit, the freedom of specification and freedom of exercise. (2) He likely rejects the notion that God freely wills and decrees states of affairs and holds himself indifferently towards them.81 This dismissal of God’s freedom to opposites has significant implications for his ability to accurately represent the Reformed tradition on freedom of will. For, in his own definition of freedom according to “Reformed philosophy,” which we analyze (in §5.7.4), he also denies that there is freedom of indifference to opposites in humans. Morton’s label of the twofold freedom of exercise and of specification, or kind, as an impertinent distinction denies him the very tools his own Reformed tradition used to explain the logical possibility of freedom of indifference to opposites. We explain these tools and the twofold freedom in detail below in the introduction to (§5.7). We draw out the implications (in §5.7.4) point (6), and summarize the broader implications (in §5.7.5).

5.6

Divine decrees

Morton’s “Of decrees,” abstracts from and translates Heereboord’s Pneumatica, Chapter 13 De decretis Dei. Heereboord’s chapter heading begins with his definition of the decrees. We shall follow Heereboord’s structure in our commentary, and observe subtle changes Morton makes, for example, his dissent with Heereboord on “structural instants” in the act of decreeing.

80 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 68). 81 Cf. Turretin, however, holds to both spontaneity and indifference in the divine will, in Institutio, Topic Three, Q. XIV, III and V (Giger, 1:219).

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5.6.1 Heereboord’s definition of the divine decrees Heereboord: The decree of God means the internal act of God, both of knowing and of willing, directed on what is outside God, and preferably could be called: a decison.82 Morton, in his Pneumaticks, chapter 11,“Of decrees,” adapts the definition to reflect his previous chapter on God’s power. The transcription begins with the definition: Morton: Though power follows acts internal and external the internal are his decrees, or rather decreeing, which is the internal act of intellect and will terminated out of himself.83

The source of equivocation concerning the word decretum lies in whether one means (1) the “act of decreeing” (actum decernendi) or (2) the “object decreed,” (re decreta) that is, its subjective or objective sense. First, Heereboord considers the attributes of the subjective act, then the object decreed. The decrees mark relational operations of God, ad intra and ad extra, and we shall see that they are, in one sense, necessary and essential perfections, and in another, accidental and contingent. The act of decreeing, is an “immanent” act of God and as such it is necessary.84 The decrees of God, which signify the understanding and volition of God, are no less necessary (non minus sunt necessaria) than God himself is. God is necessary in this sense since it is impossible that God ever was not, or that he ever could not be. Moreover, it is impossible that God ever was or could have been without understanding or volition. That is, he never was nor could be without decree or the act of decreeing (sine decreto aut actu decernendi).85 The decrees themselves signify the states of affairs understood (res intellectas) and willed (volitas). In other words, these states of affairs have an end-point, or terminus, and as such are contingent (contingentia). Morton understands Heereboord to say that inasmuch as the word decree can refer to the object, “the object decreed is contingent.” Contingency means that these states of affairs are, as Morton translates, “not fortuitous, but consultive” (non fortuita, sed consulta). Heereboord continues, and Morton transcribes this point, that what God understood and willed—that is, decreed—is contingent (contingens est). In fact, what is most contingent (contingentissimum) in God is decreeing these or other states of affairs to this or that end or terminus. “Whether these or other things,”

82 “Decretum Dei notat actionem Dei internam, tum intelligendi, tum volendi, terminatam extra Deum; ac melius diceretur decretio,” in Heereboord, Pneumatica, c. 13, “De decretis Dei,” 77. 83 See Muller, DLGTT, “opera Dei ad extra,” “opera Dei ad intra,” and “opera Dei essentialia.” 84 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 77. Cf. Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 70). 85 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 77. See 5.1.2, footnote below on decrees of God quoad exercitium and quoad speciem.

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transcribes Morton, “whether more or less, this may be said, because the extension or termination to such [and] such object might have been or not been.”86 Significantly—for what the student misses—Morton skips over the following paragraph about divine contingency and freedom of specification and exercise. The scholastic (scholasticis) authors correctly say, writes Heereboord, that “the decrees of God are necessary with respect to the act of exercise (necessaria quoad exercitium), that is, with respect to the act of decreeing, and free with respect to the act of specification (libera quoad speciem), that is, with respect to various kinds of decreed states of affairs (varias rerum).”87 In other words, the act of decreeing and willing necessarily belongs to who God is. Heereboord goes on to clarify the sense of this dictum, and its implications for divine operations ad intra and ad extra. The decrees of God are “partly essential and partly accidental.”88 Accidental does not mean “predicamental” (non pro accidente praedicamentali), “but predicable” (sed praedicabili).89 That the decrees are essential means that God has willed them according to perfection, not wishful thinking. They are essential according to God’s understanding and volition inasmuch as there never was a moment, as it were, when God was without knowledge and volition, as said above. However, the decrees are not essential in the sense of predicating operations towards certain objects or states of affairs. In other words, says Heereboord, extension (extensio) is not a perfection in God.90 Decrees are accidentals to the extent they are without extension and without termination upon their objects.

86 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 70–1). Cf. Heereboord, Pneumatica, 77. 87 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 77. Cf. Twisse, Dissertatio de scientia media, c. 8, 477. (Twisse’s commentary on Suárez chapter 8 with the same title). “Quomodo cognoscat Deus futura haec in decretis liberis suae voluntatis” (How God knows these future states in the free decree of his will). “Concerning God’s free decrees, Twisse cites Suárez and says he agrees with him that these decrees add no real form or mode to God. (Assentior tamen Suario profitenti decreta ista nullum realem modum Deo addere). And Twisse says that Scotus ascribes freedom to God, not with respect to opposite acts, as if God were indifferent to undertaking any opposite acts, but only with respect to objects,” (Hinc est quod Scotus libertatem Deo tribuat, non quoad actus oppositos, quasi natura divina indifferens esset ad quemlibet ex oppositis actibus suscipiendum; sed duntaxat quoad obiecta); Cf. Turretin, Institutio Theologiae Elencticae,Q. 7. 11. 212 XI; Q.14, 242. 88 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 78. 89 Cf. Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 70). Morton’s transcription has it the other way around. “accidental (not predicable but predicamental).” 90 Heereboord appropriates Descartes’ terms, such as “extensio,” when speaking of God’s attributes, but with Descartes, he denies ascribing extension to God. “But I deny that true extension as commonly conceived,” writes Descartes, “is to be found in God or in angels or in our mind or in any substance which is not a body,” in John Cottingham et al., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984–91), III: 361. “Letter to More, 5 February 1649.”

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The decrees also are essential inasmuch as they terminate upon God’s divine essence (terminantur ad ipsam essentiam divinam), that is, inasmuch as they are intra Deum. The acts of God of understanding and willing are necessary and essential in God, but since they are necessary, they terminate upon God, by virtue of being in God. He explains that the acts of God’s understanding and volition extend to every state of affairs that can be made to come to pass (ad omnia factibilia).91 There is a sense in which they belong to the essence of God, but are changeable (mutabilis) and can be expressed outside God (extra Deum). In this sense they are contingents (contingentia) and accidentals (accidentalia). Heereboord says God was most free (liberrimum fuit) in terminating a decree in whatever state of affairs (res) he chose.92 Another way to distinguish the decrees of God is between (1) the principle of decreeing (principium decernens) and (2) the terminus ad quem.93 The former view understands them as necessary and essential. The latter as free or contingent and accidental (liber vel contingentia atque accidentalia). Others view the decrees either (1) a priori, inasmuch as they are essentially known (cognita) and willed (volita) by God, or (2) a posteriori, insofar as divine cognition (cognitionis) and volition (volitionis divinae) are concerned.94 In sense (1), the decrees are essentialia and necessaria, in sense (2), they are contingentia or libera and accidentalia, which parallels the previous views, followed by Walaeus and Rutherford. Morton began his chapter eleven, “Of decrees,” by agreeing with Heereboord that the decrees are contingent when considered in relation to their objects.

5.6.2 Three “instants” in the act of decreeing Having made an attempt to clear up some of the ambiguities surrounding the meaning of “decreeing,” Heereboord proceeds, as he says, “skillfully,” and orders the remainder of this chapter around three structurally conceived “moments of nature” (momenta naturae), or “structural instants” (seu instantia rationis) in 91 Cf. John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio I, vol. 2 of Opera omnia (Civitas Vaticana, 1950) D2, q2. “Cognoscens omnia factibilia,” http://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Authors/Duns_Scotus/ Ordinatio/Ordinatio_I/D2/Q2D (accessed June 22, 2015). 92 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 78. 93 Cf. Antonius Walaeus, Loci Communes s. (Leiden: Adriani Wyngaerden, 1647), 527. Walaeus uses this division and says that the decrees themselves are essential and necessary, if one considers them from the perspective of the principle of decreeing (principium decernens). Likewise, if one considers the act of the principle (actum principii), it is free, since it is in relation to creation. 94 Samuel Rutherford, Exercitationes Apologeticae Pro Divina Gratia, (Amsterdam: Henricum Laurentii Bibliopolam, 1636), 48.

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God’s decreeing. He says they are not temporal (non temporis), because the decrees of God are eternal.95 Morton interprets and translates the term instantia rationis as if it speaks of “three instants (of reason with time) to be conceived.”96 Perhaps, Morton’s omission of the paragraph distinguishing between the necessary feature of the principle of decreeing and the accidental feature of the terminus ad quem has led Morton to the mistranslation. But Heereboord is abstracting these three atemporal, structural moments of decreeing in God in order to help the student distinguish between God’s free determination of decrees and the actual futurition of the decrees, without compromising the doctrine of God’s simplicity. Recent scholarship has pointed to the Scotist line of thought in the technical use of Instantia as a logical device. Vos, for instance, points to how the different structural instants relate God’s knowledge to God’s will. God sees his essence and knows all things and all individual things, but how does Heereboord use the Scotian device of “instants” to explain factual reality? Heereboord gives a sketch of three structural moments related to God’s act of decreeing states of affairs in reality. Morton translated Heereboord’s comment on this relation between God’s knowledge and will as follows: “The thing decreed is said to be an act of the intellect and will.”97 We now turn to explain these three structural moments, the exposition of which closely resembles, in some terminology, a 1637 disputation on God’s simplicity by Gisbertus Voetius, noted in this paragraph.98 In the first structural moment (primum momentum), Heereboord recalls that God is pure act and a living Spirit (spiritus se ipso vivens), and as such, one must conceive of the act of decreeing (actus decernendi) as a vital act (actus vitalis) of

95 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 78. Cf. “the unqualified use of the term ‘instant’ in seventeenthcentury texts usually refers to structural rather than temporal instants,” in Simon J.G. Burton, The Hallowing of Logic: The Trinitarian Method of Richard Baxter’s Methodus Theologiae, Brill’s Series in Church History, 57 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 189; Beck, Voetius, 268–74, 347. He summarizes Voetius’s view of three synchronic instants as, (1) God’s essence, (2) God’s essence in unchangeable relation to creatures, (3) and—proceeding from the first two— God’s understanding that rests on the free determination of the decree and the actual futurition of the decrees. The Latin text of Voetius’s disputation is very similar to Heereboord’s. Voetius’s Select Disputations I “On the one and most simple essence of God,” reads, “Decretum potest a nobis concipi secundum tria momenta seu instantia rationis, aut naturae, non vero temporis seu durationis, quia decretum est Deo coaeternum,” 240. Whereas Heereboord says the decrees are eternal, Voetius says they are “coeternal” (coaeternum). (The respondent was Johannes Almeloveen, the date of the disputation was June 10, 1637). A comparison suggests affinity, but not dependence. Heereboord’s Pneumatica dates later to 1659; On instantia as “structural moments” and a conceptual “device,” see Vos, Philosophy of Scotus, 237–9; 245–9. 96 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 71). 97 Ibid. 98 Cf. Voetius, Selectae Disputationes 1: 240.

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God, who is living substance (substantia vivens).99 In the first moment, one conceives of his act of decreeing as ordered to God himself.100 In the second structural moment (secundum momentum), one conceives of the act of decreeing as “terminated upon the decreed state of affairs” (res decretae), “to which it is related.” This relation or termination expresses a transcendent relation (relatio transcendentalis) between the subject and the object, between God decreeing and the state of affairs decreed.101 As Morton translates the next phrase, this relation “is not the same but something else in God besides God.” This second moment of decreeing means that there are cases where the common axiom, as Heereboord gives it, “There is nothing in God that be not God himself” (Nihil est in Deo, quod non sit ipse Deus), does not apply.102 For example, Heereboord says that if nihil denies taking being (ens) in a broad sense, then formal relations and modes of being (modi essendi), or of existing (existendi), or of operating (operandi) are in God, but not God himself. But if nihil denies “real entities” (ens reale), then the axiom is true. Then the sense of the axiom is that there is no real entity (ens reale) that is in God. As Heereboord resolves the question, “substance, accident, creature,” are detached from God and are not God himself.103 Thus, the decrees are not accidentalia in God. For example, whereas risibility is predicated of humankind, and forms a constitutive part of what it means to be human, such is not the case with the attributes of God. In the third structural moment (tertio momentum), from God’s perspective, one conceives of a structural relation (relatio rationis). Morton translates this term as a “relation of reason.” The moment is “grounded in the free decree of God,” which terminates upon a decreed state of affairs or object outside God.104 From a human perspective, the act of decreeing concerns actualized future states of affairs. According to Heereboord’s definition of the decree of God, God knows his act of decreeing insofar as it is “an act of knowing and of willing,” according to previous cognition (praecognitio) and foreknowledge (praescientia) of vision 99 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 78. Cf. Voetius, SD I, 240. Voetius also conceives of the first instant by way of an actus vitalis. Cf. Aza Goudriaan, Philosophische Gotteserkenntnis bei Suárez und Descartes Im Zusammenhang mit der Niederländischen Reformierten Theologie und Philosophie Des 17. Jahrunderts, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 98 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 54 fn. 107. Suárez speaks of God as the living Spirit (Spiritus vivens); he also writes that substantia, spiritus, vivens, are of the quiddity or essence of God, 55 fn110. 100 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 78. Cf. Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 71). 101 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 78. 102 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 78. Cf. Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 71). 103 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 78. Cf. Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 71). 104 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 78. Cf. Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 71). Cf. Voetius, SD I, 241. Voetius also says the act of decreeing is grounded in God, seen from his perspective (ex parte Dei fundatur in ipso decreto jam libere terminato). Heereboord says, “ex parte Dei fundata in libera decreti divini.”

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(visionis).105 God foresees what he has decreed. This is true whether one speaks of God effecting good states of affairs, or permitting bad states of affairs. This language of God seeing future actualized states of affairs does not belong to God’s knowledge of simple understanding (non simplicis intelligentiae), says Heereboord, a statement which we have seen before. He explains that God’s simple knowledge of understanding of all decrees structurally precedes (in signo rationis antecedit) the will as pure possibles (mere possibilia).106 As Morton translates, “Will is here predestination of end and preordination of means which in God is one act.”107 As an accommodation to our understanding, although there is one act, we can abstract a structural ordering of a moment in God’s decreeing of the means and the ends, although it be in one and the same decree (eodem decreto simul). There is, as it were, one distinct structural, twin moment (gemino momento rationis distinctum). Although theoretically, the act of knowing is first, Morton’s translation indicates Heereboord’s structural priority placed on God’s will: “Yet in decrees the act of the will is first conceived by us because the science here is of vision which (being of future) we conceive consequent on the will’s acts.”108 Morton clearly states the classic line of thinking on this point, that God sees, or intuits, future contingent propositions that are structurally consequent upon God’s will. Heereboord refers to his chapter 2, “On the attributes of God in general,” and theorem 22, which states, “We see foreordination and foreknowledge in the decrees of God, and this pertains to divine ideas.”109 Divine ideas, seen as practical future states of affairs (futurorum practicae), belong to God’s knowledge of vision (scientia visionis). On the contrary, divine ideas, known as theoretical possible states of affairs (possibilium theoreticae) belong to God’s knowledge of simple understanding (scientia simplicis intelligentiae). Again, he says, this knowledge precedes every decree of God. And this ordo is an accommodation to human understanding. Indeed, incomprehensible to us, in God, he says, “everything comes about simultaneously and at once, in one unique and most simple act and stroke (actu et ictu) from eternity.”110 We cannot conceive of God’s knowledge of possible decrees, of ends and means, and his knowledge of future states of affairs, except that it be in him a most simple act from eternity. Heereboord explains how humankind chooses, and he abstracts from that process how God chooses. Humans, he says, do not conceive of states of affairs as possibles that they then transfer from a state of possibility (ex statu possibilitas) 105 106 107 108 109 110

Heereboord, Pneumatica, 78. On the structural order of the term, “signum rationis,” see chapter 6 §6.5.1. Heereboord, Pneumatica, 78. Cf. Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 71). Heereboord, Pneumatica, 78. Cf. Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 71). Heereboord, Pneumatica, 49. Ibid., 79.

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to a state of futurition (in statum futuritionis) in their mind alone; they only understand the process as due to humankind’s willing. Humankind decrees or chooses to do something from known possibilities, and in the same way (ad eundem modum) they conceive of God first knowing possibilities by his knowledge of simple understanding, then willing from those possible states of affairs to decree some future event. And, again, God knows that future state by his knowledge of vision. But Heereboord makes clear that we are to conceive of nothing temporal in God, as in humans (tempora et conceptus diversis temporibus factos). Likewise, there are divine ideas, as seen above, which are theoretical and possible and precede the divine decree, and there are some that follow the decree, which are practical and future. “As for divine ideas in God,” writes Heereboord, “whether one understands them as formal concepts (conceptus formales), as Scotus does, or whether one understands them as objective concepts (conceptus objectivi),” he says that he already addressed this issue in his Select Disputations Vol. II, 31–36, which we commented on (in chapter 4 §4.4).111 There we saw that Heereboord followed Scipio Agnello, who held that ideas in the divine intellect are simultaneously both formal and objective. Morton summarizes Heereboord’s point in a brief comment: About ideas in God speculative (of possibles) and practical (of futures), what they are the schoolmen do dispute. Scotus will have them to be formal conceptions of understanding; Thomas objective (conceptions) or rather the divine essence conceived by God as imitable.112

5.6.3 Summary Morton’s translation of Heereboord’s instantia rationis, as “instants of reason with time,” which Heereboord says are not temporal, not only misses the point about structurally or logically ordered moments, moves, or instants, but also denies what Morton knows to be true about God’s simplicity and the atemporal life of God. That is, there are no successive moments of time in God’s thinking and willing. Morton knows that God is pure act, but his dismissal of the distinctions of freedom of exercise and freedom of specification removes a conceptual tool that is intended to help the student abstract different conceptual planes upon which the acts of God play out. To account for why he translates 111 Heereboord, Pneumatica, 79. 112 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 71). Cf. “quid porro ideae divinae sint in Deo, an conceptus formales intelligendi, quod voluit Schotus, an conceptus objectivi, seu potius essentia divina a Deo concepta ut imitabilis, quod voluit Thomas,” in Heereboord, Pneumatica, 79.

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instantia rationis as instants bound up in time, it is likely that he must believe that the language is intended to be used as an accommodation to human understanding. But it is difficult to see how his translation of “reason with time” would make sense to the student, since the subject is God’s act of immanent decreeing, juxtaposed with God’s willing states of affairs ad extra. Heereboord’s three “moments” reflects a Scotistic use of the logical tool of Instantia, pointing to a distinction between necessary and contingent relations in internal decreeing in God. Subjectively speaking, the immanent relation of God’s ad intra decreeing is such that the decreeing is necessary. However, objectively speaking, God has an internal, “transcendental” relation to his decrees and as such they are contingent. They are contingent because they are, as Morton translates it, “a transcendental relation between God decreeing and things decreed, this is not the same but something else in God besides God.” The external end-termination of the decree to such and such object is also contingent.113 What is significant is Morton’s dismissal of Heereboord’s discussion of divine freedom of specification and freedom of exercise, which we saw in §6.4 above, where Morton deemed them “impertinent distinctions.” By skipping over Heereboord’s comments on this twofold distinction of freedom, Morton has denied himself the use of tools that help explain the logical possibility of freedom of indifference to opposites. In the next section, (§8), we will see that Morton also denies this twofold freedom in humans. In the introduction to this important section, we will explain what this twofold freedom is in more detail, and we will draw out the implications for this study (in §8.4).

5.7

Morton’s Ethics, chapter three “Of the Liberty of the Will”

In his “Ethics” chapter three, Morton gives a précis on the liberty of the will, but unlike his more or less complete translation of Heereboord’s Pneumatica chapter on “God’s knowledge,” he appears to abstract his text from various chapters of Heereboord, and perhaps other sources. At times, Morton covers material and expresses himself much as Francis Turretin in his Institutio, a few cases of which we will mention below.114 But this likely points to sources they both 113 Similarly, on this precise point in a contemporary of Morton, Gisbertus Voetius, see Beck, “Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676): basic features of his doctrine of God,” in Reformation and scholasticism: 221–2. 114 Kennedy dates Morton’s preparation of the Ethicks and Pneumaticks texts to between 1675– 1685, for students at Newington academy, which is about the same time Turretin prepared his Institutio (1679–1685). Given the evidence we have seen for Morton’s abstracted texts from Heereboord, we only note affinity of ideas, not dependence. See Kennedy, ed., Aristotelian and Cartesian Logic at Harvard, 68.

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held in common. Morton’s précis begins with a definition of free choice, then he treats the prerequisites to humankind’s freedom of action, freedom of exercise, freedom of specification. But he holds that rational spontaneity is the key to understanding freedom. Before turning to Morton, we will give a brief historical sketch of the development of two important tools of logic that Morton uses. In particular, we want to establish the logical relation between freedom of contradiction (freedom of exercise) and freedom of contrariety (freedom of specification or kind). This distinction plays a significant role in the development of this study’s story, since Morton ends up rejecting the use of this distinction. In recent research, Eef Dekker discovered Arminius’s use of this distinction, and that Arminius had derived it from the Jesuit Luis Molina’s (1535–1600) De Concordia.115 Dekker explained that for Arminius, a twofold freedom was at stake: (1) The freedom to effect something (libertas exercitii) and (2) the freedom to do something else (libertas specificationem). The freedom to effect something is the freedom by which someone can will and act and can postpone his or her act of will, and act. The freedom to the species (kind) of act is the freedom by which someone prefers this act over and above that act.116

We also know this distinction from a disputation presided over by Franciscus Gomarus (1563–1641). Gomarus, thus, distinguished between “freedom with respect to the exercise” (libertas exercititi) and “freedom with respect to the kind (species) of an act” (libertas specificationis).117 Franciscus Junius (1545–1602) called these two kinds of freedom, respectively, libertas contradictionis and libertas contrarietatis in Disputation 22, thesis 23, of his Leiden disputations: The proper act of free choice is election, but it can happen in two ways: Either by selecting one thing from two or more opposites (this is usually called the freedom of contrariety [libertas contrarietatis]); or, only one thing being pro-

115 Eef Dekker, Rijker dan Midas: vrijheid, genade en predestinatie in de theologie van Jacobus Arminius 1559–1609 (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1993), 139–9. 116 “II. De vrijheid tot bewerkstelligen is die, waarmee [iemand] kan willen en handelen, en de wilsact en handeling kan opschorten. De vrijheid tot de species van de act is die, waarmee [iemand] eerder deze dan die act wil en doet.” Footnote 11: “Examen Perkinsiani, Opera 733 (III 418): Libertas enim quoad exercitium est, qua potest velle et agere, et volitionem actionemque suspendere. Libertas quoad speciem actionis est, qua potius hunc quam illum actum vult et agit)” in Dekker, Rijker dan Midas, 13–16. Cf. Antonie Vos, Kennis en Noodzakelijkheid: een kritische analyse van het absolute evidentialisme in wijsbegeerte en theologie. Dissertationes Neerlandicae series theologica (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1981), chapters 2 and 3. 117 See “Undisputed freedom: a disputation of Franciscus Gomarus (1563–1641)” in Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 129. (28 June 1602, respondent: Gilbertus Jacchaeus).

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posed, by accepting or rejecting this one (this is called the freedom of contradiction [libertas contradictionis]).118 The starting point of explaining this distinction is clearly a contradiction, but in which way? Classic philosophy does not accept contradictory willing (aWp & a~Wp). Given the logical contradiction, how then does one define genuine freedom? A contradiction is a conjunctive proposition of the form: p & ~p (p and not-p). Let us frame a concrete example: (1) I am walking and I am not walking. So, I will that p & ~p and (2) I will that I am walking and that I am not walking But this composition of (1) and (2) is unacceptable. How then can the distinction about contradiction be functional? The point is that my actual willing has to be compatible with the possibility of willing the opposite, just as the truth of p and the possibility of ~p are consistent and logically acceptable: (3) p & it is possible that ~p and (4) I am walking & it is possible that I am not walking Now we can apply results (3) and (4) to willing, respectively: It is consistent to say: I will that I am walking & it is possible that I do not will that I am walking Just as it is consistent to say: I will that p & it is possible that I do not will that p However, in (4), if I do not walk, there are other different alternatives, like sitting, biking, driving and flying. However, what these alternatives have in common is that that they imply that I do not walk, but exercise some other activity. For, walking and not-walking are contradictories: I am walking and I am not walking 118 “An image of its Maker: Theses on freedom of Franciscus Junius (1545–1602)” in Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 101. The Latin text is: “Actus liberi arbitrij proprius, est electio: sed ea duobus modis fieri potest, vel seligendo unum ex duobus, vel pluribus oppositis, quae dici solet libertas contrarietatis: vel uno tantum proposito, illud acceptando, aut rejiciendo, et haec est libertas contradictionis. Utrumque modum in thesi 17 expressimus,” in Franciscus Junius, Opuscula theologica selecta Bibliotheca Reformata, 175 (Amsterdam: Muller & Kruyt, 1882), 175. “Theses theologicae: D22 De Libero Arbitrio (§23).”

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cannot be true together and they cannot be false together. But, I am walking and I am biking cannot be true together, but they can be false together. It is possible that both are false, for they are contraries.119 Reformed authors, like Junius, resolved what otherwise would have been a logical contradiction by introducing the possibility modal operator, seen in (3) and (4), into the distinction libertas contradictionis: I will that p & it is possible that I do not will that p. And libertas contrarietatis gives us: I will that p & it is possible that I will that ~p. Now that we have seen the logic undergirding these distinctions in the Reformed tradition, we can proceed to consider Morton’s idiosyncratic understanding and use of these tools.

5.7.1 Morton’s definition of humankind’s freedom of will Morton says human freedom of the will is “a faculty whereby of its own accord it chooses good and refuses evil.”120 We recall that in chapter 2 §2.6.1, Heereboord said that a human agent’s agency is devoid of natural necessity and has his or her own power to act or not to act. On this point, the definition given by Morton squares with that of Heereboord’s, since faculty means power. However, Heereboord pointed out that merely to grant humans choice of one’s “own accord” is not sufficient to distinguish human freedom from animal freedom. For animals also have powers to act spontaneously of their own accord. But the given definition does include a distinction between morally discernable good and evil states of affairs, which sets humans apart from animals. But this definition is brief and only begins to distinguish human from animal freedom. We will give Morton’s own expanded definition below.

119 Cf. the “doctrine of opposition scheme” in John Wesley, Aldrich, and Sanderson, A compendium of logick, (Bristol: Felix Farley, 1750; 2d ed. London, 1756), 9, 10. Cf. the “square of opposition” in Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 34, 45. On John Wesley’s use of “liberty of contradiction” and “liberty of contrariety,” and Vos’s conclusion that, at least from a systematic point of view, Wesley’s use of this distinction places him in the Reformed tradition, see Antonie Vos, “John Wesley on salvation, necessity, and freedom,” in Evangelical theology in transition, eds., Cees Van der Kooi, E. Van Staalduine-Sulman, and A.W. Zwiep, 203–22. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2012 (§6). 120 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 8).

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5.7.2 Prerequisites to humankind’s free acts of will Freedom from compulsion Morton sets out the customary requisites for free human action. He says, “Liberty is usually distinguished into a freedom from compulsion and necessity.” But this freedom from coaction or compulsion points to a free “inward inclination” that even animals enjoy. This inward inclination is the kind of freedom Heereboord spoke of (in chapter 2 §2.6.1), which he called natural inclination (naturalis inclinatio) and intrinsic principle (principium intrinsecum).121 A requirement for both human and animal freedom is freedom from outward or external restraint.122 Freedom from necessity Morton’s definition speaks of freedom from necessity. And this freedom “belongs not to brutes,” but to humans. But which kind of necessity is it? There are three immediate candidates, necessity in the sense of (1) natural necessity, (2) external necessity, or (3) intrinsic necessity. In chapter 2 §2.6.1, we saw that he applies (1) “natural necessity” to the natural elements; for example, “Fire burns.” But Heereboord said this natural necessity differed from an animal’s spontaneity. Animals act spontaneously, of their own accord, not by constraint, but that is not to act freely as humankind does. Morton applies acting according to “necessity” to brutes, “which always act from a necessity of nature,” like a “hungry horse seeing oats within his reach can’t forbear to eat though he should not.”123 Humankind, however, can check their appetite, says Morton. “This liberty from necessity,” writes Morton, “is again distinguished (by the schoolmen) into a liberty of contrareity and contradiction.”124 Below we will consider Morton’s definition of Reformed freedom (§5.7.4). We note here a definition which Morton gives, but with which he does not fully agree. We have explained (in §5.7) how Reformed authors adapted and used this distinction.The task at hand is to establish whether Morton accepts or rejects this distinction.

121 Cf. chapter 2 §2.6.1 and 3 §3.2.2, §3.2.4. 122 Cf. Turretin, Institutio, Topic 10, Q. 2, IV. “Necessity of coaction,” and “physical and brute necessity,” and “The necessity in a horse to eat the straw or grass put before him.” 123 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 8). Cf. Turretin, Institutio, Topic 10, Q. 2, V. “Physical and brute necessity … For the things done from a physical necessity by natural agents determined to one thing by nature and without reason, cannot be done freely.” 124 Williams, Ethicks, HUA (seq. 8).

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Freedom of exercise The transcription reads, Of contradiction or as to the exercise of the act (willing or not willing good, nilling, or not nilling evil) is a liberty whereby a power is so indetermined, so that it can act or suspend its act, so say they, (I doubt falsely), the will is free, and herein they place the liberty of the will, namely in indifference to opposites privitive, acting or not acting, but not opposites contrary acting in two contrary species of action; for according to them though the will can’t nill an apprehended good yet it may not will or suspend its act of willing, provided it be a subordinate good and not the last end (as felicity) that the will cannot will.125

Morton does not agree with this commonly held definition. His opponents, the Jesuits, attribute to this distinction freedom with an “indeterminate” power, in which they say “the will is free.” Morton rejects this distinction, writing, “so they say the will is free,” but he “doubts” it. And when Morton writes, “for according to them,” he is attributing the view to the Jesuits, whom he has identified elsewhere in his text.126 When we read, “yet it [the will] may not will or suspend its act of willing,” we note that Morton does not use the modal operator “can” as in other places, but the modal operator “may,” indicating a permissive willing. Nevertheless, having described freedom of exercise, as he understands the Jesuit’s sense of it, Morton rejects it. Freedom of specification The transcription reads, Contrariety or the specification of act (willing and nilling). This is a liberty whereby a power is so indetermined as that it can will or nill (which are contrary species of action) any object proposed whether it be good or evil, and they say rightly the will is not free.127

Morton also rejects this distinction, freedom of specification. His comment is, “they say rightly the will is not free.” By this he means, the will is not free in this sense. He notes that these acts of the will are contrary to one another, as in willing (velle) and nilling (nolle). But this common definition states that the power or faculty is “indeterminate” with respect to good and evil. Here lies the difficulty for Morton. The act of willing or nilling is not inclined to the good proposed to the mind. Although technically speaking Heereboord has indicated that if free125 Ibid. By “privitive” Morton makes clear in chapter 9 “Of divine will” that he means “not willing,” which is a “negative,” and according to Morton, “privitive or not willing this belongs not to God because he is all pure act.” Morton does hold to divine “positive” volitions, “willing” (velle) and “willing that-not (nolle).” 126 Ibid. 127 Ibid.

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dom were only ethical or moral, then a moral agent would not be free, since he or she would be inclined to the good, the point of disagreement here with the given definition has to do with whether a moral agent can will evil and nill the good. Morton would likely know the commentary of Heereboord, namely, that in the state of creation and regeneration, humans enjoy both freedom of specification and freedom of exercise concerning good or bad states of affairs. There Heereboord had said these freedoms relate to these states of affairs indeterminately (indeterminate). But Morton and Heereboord would agree that an agent is not free to will the bad and nill the good. Morton says that the “apparent good moves the will.” And, “a real good appearing evil may be nilled.” Both authors would agree that the doctrine of the apparent good or evil is such that one can nill a good state unwittingly, because one thinks it is evil. But Morton has departed from the Reformed tradition by rejecting this distinction between freedom of exercise and freedom of specification, or to the kind. We analyze below (in §5.7.4) the implications of this rejection. We now turn to briefly summarize his understanding of the distinction that he has rejected.

5.7.3 Opponents’ view of freedom of exercise First, the opponents’ view, which Morton has rejected, says that in freedom of exercise, an act of the will can will or not will the good, nill or not nill evil. This represents both positions of contradiction given in the classic square of opposition. He has named these positions in parentheses in the above definition: “Willing or not willing good, nilling, or not nilling evil.” In other words, an act of the will can will the good or will something else other than the good presented to the mind. And an act of the will can nill evil or not nill, which doesn’t mean that it wills something bad, only that it wills to permit it and not nill it.128 Second, the definition states that an act of freedom of exercise is an “indetermined” power, which means that it can “act or suspend its act…so they say,” adds Morton. They hold that an human agent cannot nill what the judgment of the understanding judges to be good. Morton gives the example of “suffering for a good cause;” though I do not deliberately will to suffer, it is possible that I not nill suffering, if there be a good reason. But Morton rejects this definition and attributes the example of suffering for a good cause to “the ancient doctrine of the schools in the dark time of popery.”129 Third, they place the liberty of the will “in indifference to opposites privitive.” Morton has said in his Pneumatics, chapter 9, “On divine willing,” that “privitive” 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid., (seq. 9).

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means not willing. But it does not belong to God who is pure act, according to Morton. In humankind, which is the case here, the term privative indifference (indifferens privative) presupposes an imperfection and indetermination and likewise implies an aptness to be perfected and determined. We have seen this commentary from Heereboord above (in chapter 3 §3.4.2). When Morton says that there cannot be “opposites contrary acting in two contrary species of action”—since the law of non-contradiction applies such that an agent cannot both will and not will at the same time in the same way—he is not pointing out anything that Reformed authors would not also reject. Nor can one nill and not nill at the same time in the same way. For example, one cannot will to love neighbor n and not will to love neighbor n at the same moment of time. These are contrary species of action. Morton’s memory device for the students is: Of Contrariety is willing nilling or {Of specifying acts is willing nilling Of Contradiction is willing not willing or {Of exercise is willing not willing.130

5.7.4 Morton’s claim that Reformed philosophy locates freedom in rational spontaneity Morton’s definition of Reformed freedom of the will is: But indeed Reformed Philosophy places the liberty of the will not in indifference to opposites (willing or not willing, nilling, or not nilling) but in a rational spontaneity that is the will uninforced following the practical understanding, or the a thing spontaneously (that is of one’s own accord) for a reason (the word for a Reason) differing the spontaneity from that of brutes, which act not deliberately at all but according to present appetite excited by present sensative objects; they therefore deny the will of man liberty of contradiction as of contrareity for say they it is impossible they should not incline to a good proposed by the understanding as not only good in itself but at present good for us because the will must always follow the last dicate of the practical understanding.131

The key components of his definition are: (1) rational spontaneity, (2) the practical understanding, (3) one’s own accord and reason, (4) no indifference to opposites, (5) the impossibility of not inclining to the proposed good, and (6) denial of freedom of specification and freedom of exercise. We shall examine these point by point and then give a summary analysis. (1) Rational spontaneity is a combination of two terms and the adjective rational sets human spontaneity apart from that of animals, since it points to humans as mind-gifted individuals. We recall Morton’s opening definition (in 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid.

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§5.7.1) that pointed to humans choosing the good and refusing evil, which sets them apart from animals. And (in §5.7.2) we saw that humans enjoy a formal freedom, given to them in creation. Moreover, they can check their appetite, unlike animals. (2) The second point follows upon the first in that the will follows the practical understanding “uninforced.” That is, the understanding does not coerce the will, nevertheless, he goes on to say “the will must always follow last dictate of the practical undertsanding.” In other words, the syllogistic reasoning of the mind presents to the will what appears to be the immediate good, and a moral agent seeks the apparent good.132 (3) Morton’s opening definition (in §5.7.1) also included the element of choosing “of its own accord.” That is, given all the requirements to act, genuine human freedom is free from compulsion, coercion, and necessity. Morton’s definition here (in §5.7.4) adds that humans act “deliberately” and “for a reason.” In the word deliberately is reference to the deliberation of the practical understanding, which has its “reasons” why it proposes a state as good to the will.133 (4) Morton denies indifference to opposites in willing and not willing, nilling or not nilling. This is a key distinction he places in his definition since it gets at a major point of controversy between the Reformed and their opponents, such as the Jesuits and Arminians. The point of controversy lies in the term “indifference.” How then does he understand indifference and what is at stake for his understanding of Reformed freedom of will? 134 The indifference Morton denies entails indifference to good and bad states of affairs. For he says the Reformed deny freedom of contradiction and contrareity, not as such, but in the sense that the opponents give it, to wit, that one can “not incline to a good proposed by the understanding.” Morton explains that this is because the Reformed hold that moral agents incline to the good as good “in itself” and as presently “good for us.”135 It is impossible not to incline to the proposed good. (5) Given the difficulties that Morton has stated above about “indetermined” powers of the will, and “opposites privitive” or “privitive indifference,” which leads to the notion of the will willing evil as evil and nilling the good, and the suspension of acts, it appears that the indifference he rejects he associates with these difficulties. On this last point, Morton says, “if in such case it suspends its act and does not will a good so proposed, it does it with or without a reason.”136 In other words, if an agent can suspend an act to will a proposed good, it appears to bring the agent in conflict with his or her reason, as if one can disregard or even 132 133 134 135 136

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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disengage the function of the understanding. If the understanding proposes a greater good, then there is a reason to nill the lesser good in favor of the greater good. Morton adds that there are comparative goods, lesser and greater, which then may be nilled and willed, except in the case of willing the absolute good. But if the opponents claim that an agent can will and nill without reason, then an agent’s will “ceases to be rational power as not to be directed by the understanding.”137 What he opposes is an interpretation of freedom of indifference that permits an agent to be indifferent to good and bad states of affairs in the act of willing or nilling, and that permits an agent to suspend its act of willing, or ignore its judgment, and thereby be indifferent to the good proposed to the will by the understanding.138 (6) Although Morton gives students a distich to help recall the distinction between freedom of exercise and of specification, or kind, one ought not conclude that he is in favor of the classic distinction that other Reformed authors make. In his exposition he identifies this distinction with “the schoolmen” and he himself casts doubt—“I doubt falsely”—on the features attributed to this distinction. The difficulties outlined under point (5) lead Morton to deny including the features of this distinction in his definition of freedom. Morton has clearly rejected the notion that the will is free in the sense of the distinction between freedom of exercise and freedom of specification, or kind. His idiosyncratic definition of “Reformed Philosophy” and its definition of freedom marks a clear departure from the use of the distinction of freedom of exercise and of kind by the Reformed authors mentioned above in the introduction to (§5.7). Whereas the Reformed tradition made use of this twofold distinction of freedom, and located freedom in rational willingness, freedom of indifference, and an intrinsic freedom ad utrumlibet, Morton has shifted the locus of the debate, and denied the logical tools that the Reformed tradition deemed necessary to show how their understanding of Christian freedom worked. Morton has reduced freedom to nothing more than “rational spontaneity.” When he wrote that “they therefore deny the will of man liberty of contradiction as of contrariety,” “they” refers back to the “Reformed,” which is a misleading statement, given the position of the authors mentioned in the introduction to this section.

137 Ibid. 138 Ibid.

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5.7.5 Summary analysis There is therefore a significant shift that has occured in Morton’s pretense to represent the view of “Reformed philosophy” on freedom of will. Junius and Gomarus, mentioned in the introduction to (§5.7), Heereboord, and many other Reformed authors, like Ames, Voetius, and Turretin, represent the main-line Christian tradition, in both its Reformed and Medieval interpretations when it comes to freedom of exercise and of specification or kind. But the idiosynchratic interpretation of Morton creates a dilemma for students, such as Edwards, who studied his Ethics texts and transmission of what he called “Reformed philosophy.” His pretence to represent the Reformed tradition was mistaken. The problem lies with Morton’s denying the use of the tools of logical analysis, deeming them as giving students “impertinent distinctions.” Morton denied freedom of indifference and freedom to opposites in God, and likewise he denies them in humankind. The introduction (in §5.7) attempted to show that without the modal operator “can,” or, “it is possible,” one encounters a classic logical contradiction in “freedom of contradiction,” as seen in aWp and a~Wp. But Reformed authors use the modal operator “can” and insert it in the conjunction before a~Wp, giving us: aWp and MaW~p. I will that p and it is possible that I will that ~p. Morton, however, removes this distinction from the Reformed toolchest, and passes on to his students a much reduced formula of freedom, namely, rational spontaneity, for both God and humankind. The result is that the socalled square of opposition collapses, which in turn denies an author the ability to explain that in every act of will there is a contingent, simultaneous, logically acceptable, alternative choice. In the end, what is at stake is a long-standing and very robust explanation of Christian freedom. In sum, Morton has excluded freedom of indifference from his definition and locates freedom of the will in “rational spontaneity” alone. Heereboord’s definition of freedom of the will has two core elements, (1) rational willingness (lubentia rationis) and (2) freedom of indifference, in the divided sense of understanding one’s acts.139 Heereboord gives logical priority to rational willingness, which constitutes a greater freedom than indifference alone. Moreover, it pleases rational willingness to follow the last dictate of the understanding. Second, Heereboord includes indifference in his definition and even describes it as indeterminate. But Heereboord grounds the latter in rational willingness. On this point Morton differs from Heereboord. Whereas Reformed freedom ad utrumlibet includes the concept of structural alternativeness (synchronic contingency), such as given in Heereboord’s definition in chapter 2 §2.6.8, Morton’s description of freedom does not. 139 Cf. Heereboord, Meletemata, 237. II:D14 “Causa libera,” theses 7–10.

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The shifting line on freedom is: Heereboord has represented the classic-Reformed line of freedom as consisting in: rational willingness, freedom of indifference, and a real, natural, not ethical or moral, freedom. Morton reduces this to rational spontaneity, in both God and humans. Edwards, as we shall see in chapter nine, argues that freedom is doing as one wills or pleases; it is moral necessity which translates into a freedom of perfection.

Part Two. The Position of Jonathan Edwards on freedom of will

6.

Jonathan Edwards’s “Controversies” Notebook on predestination

In Part One, we attempted to establish the teaching of the Harvard and Yale curricula, and two of their instructors, Heereboord and Morton, on the doctrine of freedom of will, both human and divine. The intent was to use the curricula’s commencement theses and quaestiones, Heereboord’s disputations, and Morton’s student textbooks, to set down a benchmark, in the New England context, for the study and evaluation of Edwards’s Freedom of Will, 1754. The synthesis of the curricula’s theses and quaestiones with Heereboord and Morton represented and displayed the conceptual tools, framework, and language that the schools’ educators had passed on to Edwards. In Part Two, we turn from the curricula towards Edwards’s argument for freedom of will, and the argumentation of his interlocutors. We ask what the position of Edwards himself is on the topics of freedom, necessity, and contingency. What place, if any, do they have in his argumentation? We now are in a position to examine Edwards’s preparations leading up to the writing of Freedom of Will. What conceptual tools and language was he gathering together, weighing and considering, in the years in which he contemplated writing his argument on the question of freedom of will? What was Edwards’s interest in transcribing select passages from Johann Friedrich Stapfer’s (1708–1775) Institutiones (1743– 7)? Edwards begins transcribing Stapfer’s Latin text some time in the late-1740s. The significance of Edwards’s engagement with Stapfer is that he is, relatively speaking, a late representative of the Reformed tradition. In contrast to Edwards, he uses an array of classic-Reformed scholastic distinctions and terms. His interpretation includes a robust understanding of God’s knowledge of and willing of contingent states of affairs, and a distinction between possible states of affairs and contingent states of affairs. Whereas Stapfer brings an array of scholastic distinctions to bear on the Remonstrants’ position, Edwards, in his writing against the Arminians, as we shall see in chapters eight through ten, defines terms of art in a non-classic manner. He fills terms with meanings that are quite different from Stapfer, and the distinctions we saw in Part One. Chapter seven

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presents the argument of one of Edwards’s chief Arminian interlocutors, Daniel Whitby. The chapter demonstrates the rich use of scholastic terms that plays in the background debate on freedom between Hobbes – Bramhall, the scholastic terms which Whitby tones down considerably. Chapter eight introduces fundamental concepts and the meaning of familiar scholastic terminology, yet with this important caveat; Edwards gives those terms of art his own meaning, according to what he considers to be the common or vulgar idiom of his day. Chapters nine and ten present and analyze Edwards’s own argument for moral necessity, which Edwards transforms into a freedom of perfection and moral necessity, and God’s “universal determining providence,” as Edwards expresses it. By the end of Part Two, it becomes clear that there exists a stark contrast between Part One and Part Two, that is, between Edwards’s formulation of his theory of freedom of will, and the formulations, conceptions, language and meaning of terms that we encountered in Part One. What is evident, as we attempt to pay attention to Edwards’s own definitions of terms, and especially his Latin-based English idiom, is the shift in meaning of what were precise scholastic terms. In Part Two, we devote an equal number of chapters to Edwards and the development of his self-consciously termed “modern inquiry” into the freedom of will, essential to an individual’s virtue and vice. We now turn to Edwards’s transcription of Johann Friedrich Stapfer’s Institutiones theologiae polemicae universae.

6.1

Introduction

Edwards transcribes large sections of the Latin text from the Swiss pastor and Zurich divine Johann Friedrich Stapfer’s (1708–1775) Institutiones (1743–7) into a notebook.1 This chapter attempts to reconstruct the core concepts of Stapfer’s argument for the reconciliation of divine and human freedom of will. We look at select passages that Edwards extracted, which are found in his “Controversies” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination.”2 This is done with a view to capturing those conceptual features of scholastic discourse that contribute to our understanding of the set of requisites that both the Remonstrants and the Reformed maintained 1 Johann Friedrich Stapfer, Institutiones Theologicae Polemicae Universae, Ordine Scientifico dispositae, 5 vols. (Tiguri (Zurich): Heideggerum et socios, 1756). (The translation is mine). For a brief biography, see Douglas A. Sweeney, ed., The “Miscellanies,” 1153–1360, vol. 23 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, gen. ed. Harry S. Stout (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 17–18. 2 BRBML GEN MSS 151, Box 15, Folder 1203. Edwards’s “Controversies” Notebook now available at: brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3794778 (Accessed March 07, 2016).

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were essential to virtue and vice. The Yale editors note that Edwards “assembled this collection of disparate notes” into one Notebook, “dating from the 1730s to the end of his life.”3 The extracts from Stapfer in Edwards’s Notebook on “Predestination” began some time after the publication of Stapfer’s Institutiones (1743–1747), quite possibly around 1750. Based on Edwards’s letter to John Erskine in August of 1748, as noted in the introduction chapter (§3), one can surmise that it was just such a work as Stapfer’s that Erskine recommended, and which Edwards sought, in order to understand the latest views on the topic of freedom from the perspective of a continental Reformed author.4 The significance of these extracts from Stapfer for this study becomes evident when one considers the continued use of technical scholastic distinctions, by a continental Reformed scholar, even into the 1740s, in order to address issues raised by the Arminians. In contrast to Stapfer, Edwards’s approach in Freedom of Will—in a preparatory stage at the time of the transcript—made less use of scholastic distinctions, and where he did, he gave them a particular, personal meaning. At this stage in his preparations, Edwards made known his preference for a more “modern inquiry” and reply to the Arminians, as Edwards’s title informs the reader, an approach which, as we shall see, shows interaction with more contemporary scholars. Stapfer, even though he makes use of traditional scholastic terms, is one of these contemporary authors whom Edwards has consulted. The analysis that follows shows that Edwards transcribes passages and gathers commentary on topics of current debate, sometimes citing an author who represents the opposing opinion, and then citing another author who responds with counter arguments. This is the case, for example, in the first section where Edwards cites Bishop Gilbert Burnet, who represents the Anglican, and as Edwards perceives it, the ‘Arminian’ view on conditioned decrees. In the case of Stapfer, Edwards omits paragraphs that express views with which Edwards disagrees, and appropriates paragraphs that express views helpful to his cause. 3 WJEO 27: 100. (Henceforth WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,”). See transcript: http://edwards.yale.edu/archive?path=aHR0cDovL2Vkd2FyZHMueWFsZS5lZHU vY2dpLWJpbi9uZXdwaGlsby9zZWxlY3QucGw/d2plby4yNg== (accessed June 22, 2015). 4 In WJE 23, Editor Sweeney notes that the “Miscellanies” entry No. 1156 begins Book 8 of Edwards’s “Miscellanies” and contains a citation of Alphonsus Turretinus, cited by Stapfer in his Institutiones theologicae polemicae. According to Sweeney’s selected dates for the composition of “Miscellanies,” Nos. 1153–1360, this would mean that Edwards had access to Stapfer’s Institutiones sometime around 1750, prior to the final draft of Freedom of Will in 1753. In addition, Minkema’s “Chronology” places “Miscellanies” No. 1180 in March, 1751, which places the Stapfer citation—“Miscellanies” No. 1156— prior to that time. However, although this present chapter suggests an interest by Edwards in transcribing Stapfer’s text on “series of events,” a notion taken up by Edwards in Freedom of Will, the suggestion is not meant to imply dependence upon or direct influence by Stapfer upon Edwards’s thought.

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Beyond the controversies that Stapfer records between the Reformed and the brethren of the Augsburg Confession—the Lutherans—there is a particular reason that appears to motivate Edwards’s assembling of these quotations, and that is their contribution to stating the idea of God’s “wise order and connection of things.”5 The background to the select passages that Edwards transcribes from Stapfer are Stapfer’s chapters on “The Arminians,” and the “Ten Propositions,” which Stapfer draws up based on the general continental knowledge of the Remonstrants in the Netherlands. The selected passages below from Stapfer introduce his response to Remonstrant Propositions Four and Six. Proposition Four concerns a simultaneous concurrence of divine and humankind’s freedom of action, and Proposition Six concerns conditioned decrees. Edwards shows interest in transcribing passages on the representation of possible states of affairs in the mind of God, on how God passes things on from of a status of possibility to a status of futurition, and God’s ordered sequence of events in the universe. Our analysis compares Stapfer’s replies and set of requisites for freedom to Edwards’s comments on the passages he has copied. We begin the next section on the divine decrees by first setting up the background to the passages extracted by Edwards. Thereafter we analyze the first passage that Edwards extracts from Stapfer. Thus, first we analyze Stapfer’s interpretation of what he calls “Remonstrant proposition Six” on conditioned decrees, which, as we recall, is the question that concerned Edwards in the beginning of his transcription. Then we analyze Edwards’s first Latin extract in his Notebook.

6.2

Divine decrees

The following extracts on the topic of the divine decrees appear near the beginning of Part V “Predestination.” While considering God’s “wise order and connection of things,” Edwards turns to Stapfer for his commentary on whether God’s decrees are conditioned. In his Notebook, in the paragraph immediately before the Latin extract from Stapfer, Edwards asks how God regards “conditions to his decree,” since God orchestrates his plan with a “wise order and connection of things.”6 This question appears to structure Edwards’s selection of extracts from Stapfer.

5 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” Paragraph at footnote 9. 6 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (Last English paragraph before Latin extract).

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6.2.1 Remonstrant Proposition Six As mentioned in the introduction, Edwards transcribes Latin passages from Stapfer that concern certain issues on the Arminian controversy. It is clear from the sections of Stapfer’s Institutiones which Edwards transcribes, that Stapfer is addressing Ten Propositions of the Remonstrants.7 Stapfer formulates “Proposition Six” on the decrees as follows: The divine decree concerning eternal salvation of man can by no means depend upon the foreseen faith of man or on something which does not depend on the divine decree, when the bestowal has been decided, but eternal election to salvation regards faith or a condition, which God has decided to bestow upon man at the same time.8

Remonstrants do not see how to reconcile foreseen faith and an independent decree Edwards begins his transcription from Stapfer with the following extract and argument by Stapfer, from Volume IV (§93), where the Remonstrants, writes Stapfer, argue that “the existence of future states of affairs, or futurition, as the metaphysicians say, does not depend upon divine predetermination and foreknowledge, but only the free choice of the human will.”9 As Proposition Six above says, the Remonstrants do not see how one can reconcile foreseen faith and an independent decree. The difficulty, in their opinion, lies with the interpretation of a decree that is independent of human freedom. Proposal six highlights this difficulty by the Remonstrant refusal to acknowledge a Reformed previous concurrence, which logically orders God’s move upon the human will in a first 7 Stapfer, Institutiones 4: 544–549. (Ch. 17, §§36–57), “De Arminianis.” For recent case-studies and research on the judgment of Dordt, see Aza Goudriaan and Fred van Lieburg, eds., Revisiting the Synod of Dordt 1618–1619), Brill Series in Church History, 49 (Leiden: Brill, 2011); For a recent appraisal, see William den Boer, God’s Twofold Love: The Theology of Jacob Arminius (1559–1609), Reformed Historical Theology, 14 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010); To understand the Dordt positions and Remonstrant opinions upon which British writers, like Hubbard at Berry-Street Church, were writing, see Anthony Milton, ed., The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (1618–1619), Church of England Record Society, 13 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: The Boydell Press, 2005), 226ff. Beginning on page 226, the orthodox position and the erroneous opinion of the Remonstrants are given. 8 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4: 546. (ch. 17, §46). (Translation mine, unless otherwise indicated). “Propositio VI, §46 Decretum divinum circa aeternam hominis salutem a praevisa hominis fide, ceu a re a Decreto divino independente, pendere minime potest, dum ipsa fidei largitio decreta sit; sed aeterna ad salutem electio, fidem ceu conditionem respicit, quam Deus simul homini largiri decrevit.” 9 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4: 577. (§93, Objection 4). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (Edwards’s first Latin extract from Stapfer).

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act, and a human agent’s response in a second act.10 This structural ordering of acts will not do for them. For this reason their definition implies simultaneous acts. Moreover, Stapfer, in the first passage extracted by Edwards (§93), says that the Remonstrants hold that the “certainty of divine foreknowledge is not antecedent and causal, but subsequent and potential (eventualis).” The Remonstrant notion of future states of affairs “infers neither necessity nor causality.” They appeal to the words of Scripture, which they believe support the idea of conditioned foreknowledge and conditioned decrees.11 Supposed-scripture language of conditioned foreknowledge In this same first passage that Edwards extracts, Stapfer turns to Bishop Gilbert Burnet, who in his Tractatus on predestination and grace, refers to the classic Scripture loci that seem to point to a conditioned knowledge in God.12 The two Scripture passages are 1 Samuel 23:11,12 and Matthew 11: 21, 22. The first case concerns whether the men of Keilah will surrender David and his men into the hand of king Saul. The Lord tells David that they will surrender David. David and his men flee, Saul gives up the expedition, and therefore the men of Keilah do not surrender them. Is this a case of conditioned foreknowledge? The second case concerns the past conditional language addressed to the unrepentant cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida. “If the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented.” The rest of (§93) is a quote from Burnet, who makes the point that it is not as if God’s foreknowledge could have failed in these two cases. Neither is it plausible to conclude that these two events somehow thwarted God’s providence. Therefore, Burnet concludes that God’s knowledge is conditioned and that this theory both vindicates God’s attributes and asserts the freedom of the human will, thereby resolving all difficulties.13

10 The British delegation uses the technical term, potentia in actu primo positu, in their exposition, point two, to uphold “The second position,” to wit, that God’s action upon the human soul does not hinder the freedom of the will, in A. Milton, ed., The British Delegation, 260. 11 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4:577–8 (§93 Objectio 4). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (First Latin paragraph extract). 12 Gilbert Burnet, De praedestinatione et gratia tractatus, (Berlin, 1724), 66 (§49). 13 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4:578 (§93). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (The first Latin extracted paragraph, which begins with “Ut [porro] contra nos,” and ends with “videatur.”

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6.2.2 Response to conditioned knowledge Stapfer presents two lengthy replies (in §94), responsio α and β. Edwards’s transcription skips the first responsio and proceeds to the second. First we give responsio α, then β. Response α Stapfer stresses above all that neither divine foreknowledge of states of affairs, nor predetermination of states of affairs infer absolute necessity (nec absolutam inferre necessitatem).14 In responsio 87, Stapfer had made three points about the Remonstrants: (1) They wrongly infer that an absolute decree deprives humans of freedom, (2) They wrongly infer that an absolute decree infers the necessity of absolute and inevitable action, (3) They wrongly hold that the decrees as such exclude the necessary use of means. Stapfer had explained in volume one that when God contingently decrees a state, transferring it from a state of possibility to a state of futurition, it remains contingent, as part of a total nexus of contingent states of affairs.15 As Stapfer explains, it is rather the case that God foreknows free states of affairs and determines free states of affairs, contingent states of affairs as contingent (contingentes ut contingentes), necessary states of affairs as necessary (necessarias ut necessarias), such that God’s foreknowledge and predetermination of these states of affairs changes nothing in the states of affairs themselves (in rebus ipsis nihil mutat).16 In other words, it is not as if the decree changes a state of affairs’ status from contingent to necessary. What God wills contingently remains contingent. When change occurs God passes the state of affairs out of the sphere of possibility to that of futurition. This transfer means that the event will take place in the course of time, without in any way rendering it necessary (minime vero necessitatem).17 In this way, Stapfer highlights the distinction between certainty and necessity. He explains that, structurally speaking, prior to the divine decree, there were actions represented as pure possibles (repraesentatae merae possibiles), and these actions remain (maneant) either contingent, free, or necessary (vel ut contingentes, vel ut liberae, vel ut necessariae), even after (etiam post) the predetermination of the divine will to produce an act of a chain of events (rerum serie), and even after the foreknowledge of their certain futurition.18 14 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4:578 (§94). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination.” (First paragraph of Latin text). 15 Stapfer, Institutiones, 1:108–9. (§§439–442). 16 Ibid., 4: 578 (§94 Responsio α). 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 4:578–9. (§ 94 Responsio α). “Ita ut eae actiones, quae antecedenter ad divinum De-

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Stapfer’s definition makes it clear that he believes contingency can consist with the divine decrees. The point he sets out to make is that the divine decree does not infer absolute necessity; even God’s production of a “chain of events,” which will unfold in the course of time, can remain contingent, that is, if one understands, as Stapfer does, that God’s production is a contingent production, but certain nonetheless.19

Response β Edwards skips over response α and transcribes response β, (§94), because in it he finds arguments useful to his cause and acceptable to his notion of the necessary connection of states of affairs following the divine decree. The second response reflects a Harvard 1704 commencement quaestio. For example, in the passage Edwards extracts, Stapfer identifies two roots of states of affairs, (1) God’s knowledge is the root of the pure possibility of the states of affairs (intellectum divinum in se spectatum sine respectu ad voluntatem, radicem esse merae possibilitas rerum), and (2) God’s will is the root of the futurition of states of affairs (Voluntas autem Dei, radix futuritionis est).20

Purely possible states of affairs Under point (1), in the passage Edwards extracts, when God regards himself, his perfections, as it were, he knows himself, and his knowing himself involves no contradiction. And this is true whether what he knows be “absolutely necessary,” “contingent,” or “free” (sive sit veritas absolute necessaria, sive contingens, sive libera). And crucially, on this conceptual plane of knowledge, the states of affairs that God knows are not future, but only purely possible (sed hactenus res nondum futurae sunt, sed nonnisi mere possibiles).21 cretum, si ita loqui liceat, intellectui divino repraesentatae fuere ceu merae possibiles vel ut contingentes, vel ut liberae, vel ut necessariae, etiam post praedeterminationem divinae Voluntatis de ea rerum serie ad actum producenda, et post praescientiam futuritionis earum certitudinis tales maneant.” 19 On the defective account by Arthur Lovejoy on the notion of The great chain of being, and the problem of the notion of the Principle of Plenitude, as well as Knuutila’s account of Scotus’s modal thesis on contingency, see “Time and modality in scholasticism,” in Knuuttila, ed., Reforging the great chain of being, 3, 163ff; On God’s will as the cause of the contingency in things, see Vos et al., Scotus: contingency and freedom, lectura I 39., (§§ 38–40, 42–61). 20 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4:579. (§94 Responsio β). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination.” (Paragraph beginning with Responsio). Cf. chapter 1 §1.2.3 H1704 Q. 14. 21 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4:579. (§94 Responsio β). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination.” (The paragraph beginning with “Responsio. Tenendum hic intellectum”).

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Futurition Under point (2), God’s will predetermines, with ensuing certainty, the futurition of a sequence of states of affairs and a system of possible states of affairs. These states of affairs are represented in the divine understanding, structurally preceding the decree. What is freely represented in the divine mind remains free, and what is contingently represented, remains contingent. The divine will does not change this status of the states of affairs.22

Divine mental representation In this same passage that Edwards extracts from (§94), one sees, according to Stapfer, that structurally speaking, at the moment when the divine will decrees to produce a future nexus of states of affairs (nexum rerum), the divine understanding represents to itself this sequence, but no longer as pure possible states of affairs, but future states of affairs. Stapfer says that the opponents ought to concede, or at least they cannot deny, that the simple representation of pure possibles in the divine understanding, which precedes the decree, in no way infers necessity. At that conceptual moment, structurally preceding the decree, “there is no relation (habito) with respect to the divine will,” writes Stapfer.23 In fact, the relation is not yet “defined or definite” (ne quidem definitum sit) as to whether the act will be produced or not. In other words, as we have seen, Stapfer is here speaking of God’s simple or “indefinite” knowledge of understanding. When God decrees to produce states of affairs that have been represented in the divine understanding, nothing with respect to the state of affairs itself changes. The only difference is that now the state of affairs is going to be future (nisi quod futura est). There is no change in the intrinsic nature of states of affairs by a decree. “The intrinsic nature of all states of affairs remains” (intrinsecam omnium rerum manere naturam).24 Along the conceptual plane of indefinite divine knowledge, Stapfer says that the representation to the divine understanding alone, not just of states of affairs or things, but even of the essence of states of affairs (rerum essentiis), has no 22 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4:579. (§94 Responsio β). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination.” (Paragraph beginning with “Responsio. Tenendum hic intellectum”). Cf. Muller, PRRD: 3:142. Muller notes Stapfer’s systems of possible things. 23 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4:579 (§94). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination.” (The same paragraph as above, which begins with “Responsio. Tenendum hic intellectum”). On use of habito as “relation to,” see Twisse, Vindiciae gratiae, 224. Twisse says that the origin of God’s divine good pleasure to creatures has “no relation with respect to either good or evil in creatures.” 24 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4:579–80 (§94). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination.” (Paragraph beginning with “Responsio” and ending with “Praevisio”).

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relation with respect to the divine will—it infers no necessity (nullam inferat necessitatem). That there is no inference that can be drawn to necessity is a point he repeatedly makes in this paragraph. Again, an act of the divine will does not change the intrinsic nature of states of affairs. Neither does it follow that God’s absolute will of free and contingent states of affairs infers necessity. But after the divine will decreed to produce some sequence of states of affairs, previously represented in the divine mind as pure possibles, the divine understanding represents to itself this sequence as no more pure possibles, but as future states of affairs, which God foreknows and foresees. Nevertheless, divine foreknowledge or foresight does not somehow render the state more necessary. Stapfer is convinced that this foresight and decree changes nothing and that his opponents ought to agree that even though God knows and views a state differently after the decree, the state does not on that account become necessary (non fieri). The exception he adds is if the essence of the state already was necessary. As he has said, what was necessary remains necessary, what was contingent remains contingent. In sum, divine representation of possible states of affairs, structurally prior to the decree, involves no absolute necessity of free and contingent states of affairs, once decreed. Neither foreknowledge, nor foresight of these states of affairs, relative to the decree, infers necessity.25

If the latter occurs, then the former also happens (ut si hoc fit etiam illud fiat) Edwards transcribes (§95) wherein Stapfer states another step the Remonstrants take in building their argument, namely, that “conditioned foreknowledge in the Scripture is ascribed to God and depends upon the free actions of creatures.”26 In 25 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4:580 (§94). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination.” (Paragraph beginning with “Responsio” and ending with “Praevisio”). We saw in chapter 4 that Heereboord uses the language of representation, not participation, when describing God’s relation to humans, which entails similitude in the sense of creature’s representation to God’s mind. And this similitude he called the ratio cognoscendi. 26 “Si dicant adversarii: Deo in Litteris S. praescientiam adscribi conditionatam, a creaturarum actionibus liberis pendentem,” in Stapfer, Institutiones, 581 (§95). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination.” (Paragraph beginning with “Si dicunt adversarii” and ending with “Praescientiam negare”). Edwards also extracts (§95), but selectively, skipping two sentences in the middle of this short section. The sentences highlight two marks of Jesuit “middle knowledge,” (1) a “conditional decree” (decretum conditionatum) and (2) “conditional divine foreknowledge” (praescientiam divinam conditionatam). The skipped sentences read as follows: “As we have asserted above, the divine decree with respect to humans, that is, objectively considered, is not absolute, but conditional (conditionatum). We call divine foreknowledge conditional (conditionatam), with respect to creatures, objectively considered.” Stapfer makes the first (1) point about conditional foreknowledge twice. Edwards does transcribe point (1) the first time Stapfer makes it (in §95). On Voetius’s argument against conditional or middle knowledge, see Beck, Voetius, 277–322 (§8.3).

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their scheme, writes Stapfer, pinpointing the point of contention, they view the entire system and nexus of events that unfold with respect to the events themselves. The phrase, “with respect to the events themselves,” characterizes and marks their scheme of the nexus of events as ex natura rei, that is, as if it were grounded in the state, event, or person itself. Thus, Stapfer’s opponents characterize their scheme on the divine decrees with respect to humans, and objectively consider the nexus of events as conditioned, and not as absolute. Stapfer explains that, in their scheme of how the chain of events plays out in the course of time, if the latter occurs, then the former also happens (ut si hoc fit etiam illud fiat). The former is grounded in the latter. Every state of affair of the total nexus is hypothetical (rerum nexu omnia sunt hypothetica), and each link in the chain of states of affairs, as it were, is subordinated to itself (sibi subordinata) —not from the decree—such that this happens on account of this (ut hoc eveniat propter hoc). Therefore, in their scheme God’s foreknowledge of all future states of affairs is conditioned (conditionata est) and grounded in the affairs themselves.27 Foreknowledge of one state of affairs always presupposes knowledge of another state of affairs. Nevertheless all future states of affairs are certain, since God foreknows them, even though they remain, in their scheme, conditioned. Stapfer concludes that the opponents do not have cause to accuse his position when he denies conditioned foreknowledge.28 In the classic-Reformed tradition, God wills ex decreto, not ex natura rei. And when God decrees, it changes nothing in re. Edwards transcribes Ridgley’s comments, who adds that God’s decree posits nothing in being, Decretum Dei, nihil ponit in esse.29 In fact, God’s decreeing is not the same as God producing the event in the course of time. And the entry from Hubbard on the property of the eternality of the decree shows his concern to avoid giving the impression that there are any new temporal councils, taken by God, as he puts it, “in time.” There are therefore “no contingencies,” “no conditions” that can affect God’s will.30 27 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4:581 (§95). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (Penultimate paragraph ending with footnote 10. “Si dicant andversarii. .”). This explanation is transcribed by Edwards. 28 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4:581 (§95). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (Penultimate paragraph ending with footnote 10). 29 Thomas Ridgley, A body of divinity wherein the doctrines of the Christian religion are explained and defended, being the substance of several lectures on the Assembly’s Larger Catechism (London, 1731; First American edition, Philadelphia, 1814), I:485–6. This appears as a footnote, just a few pages before the passage Edwards selects to transcribe. Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (Paragraph heading: Conditional decrees, Ridgley’s Body of divinity). 30 WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (After heading: Faith and practice, Hubbard, “No contingencies. .”); Cf. J. Hubbard, “God’s Decrees,” in Faith and Practice Represented in Fifty-Four Sermons on the Principal Heads of the Christian Religion; Preached at Berry Street, 1733, 2nd Ed. (London: John Oswald, 1739), 101, 103.

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However, he does say contingency belongs to things in their own nature, and admits of some contingent sense in which there is a “conditional will” in God, provided one understands that God wills decisively and “peremptorily.”31 Hubbard appears to hint at this contingency when he says that it is God’s will alone that can “falsify” a connection of events by willing or ordering them “to be otherwise than according to that connection.” God knows all other possible sequences of events, not just those that happen Edwards transcribes (§96) wherein Stapfer establishes various sequences of states of affairs representing themselves to God which as such remain in the state of pure possibility. The language is of possibles, not of futures or of what is going to happen. Not only does God know what is going to happen, according to scientia visionis, but also what other series of states of affairs were possible, according to scientia simplicis intelligentiae. To deny this is to limit the height of the divine understanding. Stapfer gives the example of a minister of the State, or army commander, who takes precautions against various sequence of events, in order to be able to provide for situations should this or that happen unexpectedly to himself, even if afterwards nothing ever turned out. Likewise, he abstracts from this that just as an army commander, or the minister of State, represent to themselves the various sequence of events which, however, never come about, but remain in a state of pure possibility, so also does God. God, who knows the thoughts of human beings, and of the series of various types of things that will never happen (varias rerum series nunquam quidem eventuras), but yet are possibles, as long as they involve no contradiction, they are represented in God’s mind. Moreover, God can represent to himself infinitely more possibles than the will decrees, more than which he produces by an act of omnipotence.32

31 WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (The section headed “Faith and Practice, sermon 6 by John Hubbard, third paragraph down). See Hubbard, Faith and practice sermons, 103. Edwards’s quote is from Hubbard’s footnote, “Whatever conditional will …” The entry on “peremptory” in SOED 2: 2157 reads, as an adverb, “So as to settle a matter, conclusively, definitely.” Note that the term “peremptory” is used in the Remonstrant controversy and appears in their “Fifth erroneous opinion,” that the object of peremptory and complete election is man considered no otherwise than in the end of his life,” in A. Milton, ed. The British delegation, 233. 32 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4:581–2 (§96). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (Edwards skips this paragraph in the paragraph that begins with “Statuimus porro. .” The first sentence ends with possibile esset. At this point he skips several lines and picks up again with “Si itaque Deus Davidi. .).

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Stapfer’s caveat on conditionals Edwards transcribes (§96), in part, where Stapfer presents the classic twin cases in Scripture about so-called conditionals. The one is whether the men of Keilah would hand David over to king Saul—where God said they would, but they didn’t. The other is the case when Christ told Tyre and Sidon that Sodom and Gomorrah would have repented had they seen the miracles the people in Galilee see. These cases, according to Stapfer, indicate nothing other than that God knows, by representation of these possible events to his mind, the various possible chains of events, even though some scenarios will never happen. Moreover, God knows what other nexus of events could have occured if this or that condition had been, as Stapfer puts it, “substituted” in their place. Stapfer grants divine foreknowledge to be conditioned on account of the object, if and only if those same conditions—whether future or not—depend upon the divine understanding and will. His point is that God could have elected and ordered, if he had willed, another chain of events, and other conditions, and he says that this points to the contingency and freedom that God exercises with respect to states of affairs.33

6.3

God’s ordering of events does not destroy human freedom of will

We recall that Edwards’s transcription of Stapfer begins with Remonstrant Proposition Six, which proposes that an independent divine decree and foreseen faith are irreconcilable. Stapfer responds that divine predetermination does not infer necessity. Moreover, series of events that are freely and contingently represented in the divine mind, previous to the decree, remain free and contingent after the decree, and thus in no way remove human freedom. It is the Remonstrants’ notion in Proposition Six that divine foreknowledge is conditioned and depends upon human free choice. In fact, freedom is grounded in human freedom ex natura rei. The Remonstrants go so far to protect human freedom that, as Edwards writes, “They may say, God can’t always prevent men’s sins, unless he acts contrary to the free nature of the subject, or without destroying men’s liberty.”34 Before considering Edwards’s comments on how to reconcile 33 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4:582–3 (§96). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination.” (After having skipped a large part of §96, Edwards picks up again with the sentence about David, Saul, and the Keilahites, which begins with “Si itaque Deus Davidi. .” and extracts the rest of (§96). The next extract in Edwards’s Notebook is from volume 5 of Stapfer’s Institutiones, 185 (§77), which includes a long citation by Stapfer from Leibniz’ Theodicy, 1:§84 “Essay on the justice of God and the freedom of man in the origin of evil.” 34 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, “Predestination,” Part V, (The paragraph after footnote

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God’s acts and human free choice, without destroying human freedom, we first look at what Remonstrant Proposition Four says about it, and how Stapfer responds. Then we see the different tack Edwards takes.

6.3.1 Remonstrant Proposition Four: The most certain event of the divine decree is by no means incompatible with the freedom of man by the effectivity of divine grace and to such an extent that neither does it deny the morality of acts.35

The Remonstrants intend to guard human free choice and moral responsibility by a “simultaneous” concurrence of the divine and human acts, rather than by a “previous concurrence,” wherein the divine decree can be further distinguished into a first cause, structurally prior to a second cause, with God moving upon the human will in a first act, structurally prior to a second act. These are distinctions that belong to the Reformed set of divine prerequisites for divine and human freedom. We recall Remonstrant Proposition Six, (§2.1) above, which states that “eternal election to salvation regards faith as a condition that God decreed simultaneously to be bestowed upon humans.” When taken together, Proposition Four and Six propose a simultaneous divine decree and human act of choice, with the decree dependent upon foreseen faith. Stapfer responds to Proposition Four by saying that “the most certain event of the divine decree neither removes the freedom of rational action, nor the contingency of things.”36 He explains that nothing changes in re when God brings a state of affairs, ex decreto, out of a status of possibility to a status of futurition. From the viewpoint of the divine decree, the state of affairs that God views as contingent remains contingent in the status of futurition, and what he views as free, remains free. Stapfer bases his statement, that the certainty and immutability of the divine decrees do not remove human freedom, on hypothetical necessity. By way of hypothetical necessity, says Stapfer, every thing or state in the 36, which is several paragraphs in English—Edwards’s own comments—after the end of his transcript from Stapfer). For the sake of convenience, the references to Edwards’s English text in the Notebook will include a reference to the same text, as enumerated in sections in the twovolume Banner of Truth edition, in Edward Hickman, ed. and comp., The works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1834; reprint, 1992). Henceforth, BT volume 2, followed by page and section. BT 2: 532 (§19). 35 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4:545 (§92). “Propositio IV §42 “Decreti divini eventus certissimus, divinaeque Gratiae efficacia Libertati hominis minime repugnat, adeoque nec actionum moralitatem tollit.” 36 Stapfer, Institutiones, 4:545 (§42). “Certissimum decreti divini eventum nec rerum contingentiam, nec actionum rationalium libertatem tollere.” He mentions he demonstrated this in vol. 1, ch. 3, (§440).

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entire universe occurs contingently.37 Given that God is the first cause and wills the end as well as all the means necessary to achieve the end, he wills in a way such that the entire nexus of states of affairs remains contingent, even though the nexus depends upon God, the first cause.38 On the contrary, Remonstrant Proposition Four does not speak of contingency at all. This is because the Remonstrants do not couche the condition of foreseen faith in God’s contingent willing, but in God’s foreknowledge and the efficacity of human freedom. Theirs is a knowledge-based theory, not a will-based theory.

6.3.2 Edwards’s response: the stronger the inclination, the freer one is Edwards takes a different tack from Stapfer. He does not refer to the contingency of decreed events and of the entire nexus of events. Instead, he replies that just as God orders that in the beatific vision saints and angels will never sin, and doesn’t thereby destroy their liberty, so could God have set before all humankind “such strong motives to obedience,” that they would have continued in their obedience to the end, “as the elect angels have done.”39 He argues from the strength of motivation and inclination of the human will, such that, the stronger the motivation and inclination, the freer one is. Thus, the saints and angels are most free when in a state of glory, in which state they cannot but obey God. From the state of glory, he abstracts this kind of freedom of perfection and applies it to the pilgrim’s state of regeneration. We consider Edwards’s line of argument in chapters 7 and 9 and analyze his interpretation, in which he claims that his argument for freedom applies to both the state of regeneration and of glory. Therein he differs from his interlocutor, Daniel Whitby, who claims that the question of freedom, essential to virtue and vice, has only to do with the state of regeneration.

6.4

Sequences of events

Stapfer structures his commentary around consent and dissent between the Reformed and the Lutheran theologians. Stapfer then interprets the issues surrounding the debate in sections which he calls “observations.” Edwards transcribes these “observations” by Stapfer. The first set of five observations concerns 37 Stapfer, Institutiones, 1:108–9 (§§440, 442). 38 Ibid., 1: 109 (§442). 39 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, “Predestination,” Part V, (English paragraph with footnote 37, “But will they deny that an omnipresent. .”). BT 2: 532 (§19).

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two questions on the decree of election or predestination.40 The second set of seven observations concerns the decree of reprobation.41 At this point, Edwards’s transcription moves from Stapfer’s volume four to volume five, where the first set of questions and observations is in view.42 For our purposes, we limit the discussion to Edwards’s apparent interest in transcribing passages about God’s sequence of events.

6.4.1 Synchronic representation of sequences of events in the divine mind Edwards’s transcription begins at Stapfer’s (§77), which is in the middle of Observation Four, which runs from (§§75–78). In (§77), Stapfer gives a lengthy quote from Leibniz’s Theodicy—Edwards transcribes the entire quote—wherein Leibniz states that there is no order to the decrees. The decrees are simultaneously represented in God in one unique act of decree.43 Stapfer cites Leibniz, who says that “all the decrees of God that are here concerned are simultaneous (simul), not only in respect of time (non solum tempore), as everyone agrees, but also in signo rationis, or in the order of nature (ordine naturae).”44 Huggard 40 Stapfer, Institutiones, 5:164 (§48). 41 Stapfer, Institutiones, 5:189–90 (§80). 42 Stapfer, Institutiones, 5:200–5 (§91). Edwards’s transcript picks up in the middle of “observation 4,”(p. 203). The structure of the observations is: (1) The Reformed doctrine of reprobation, a. act of preterition, b. act of predamnation, (2) Act of divine judgment, (3) Act ordained of predamnation, (4) Notion of absolute reprobation a posteriori falsely ascribed to the Reformed. These are the four observations leading up to the passages selected by Edwards. Edwards skips observation five and seven and picks up again with observation six. There are seven observations in total. The content of the observations, however, lies beyond the scope of this chapter. 43 Stapfer, Institutiones, 5:185 (§77). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (Paragraph beginning after footnote 10, “Haec veritas,” followed by the Leibniz quote, which begins as follows: “Hinc patet”). The English translation is taken from Leibniz, Theodicy, 167–8 (§84). In the editor’s introduction, Austin Farrer defines “representation” as a notion that explains the nature of “idea,” which one assumes can “represent plurality in a unified view,” 25. However, Farrer says if one reflects further on representation, idea represents but one “environment,” as he calls it. If there are no other environments to be represented in these other possible sequences, then idea is nothing more than an “empty, mere capacity for representation,” 26. Farrer says that Leibniz’ system of ideas as monads cannot avoid a “pre-established harmony,” 27. He rests his necessitarian opinion on an interptretation of what he calls the “physical theology” of Leibniz’ age, which is when one “treats divine action as one factor among the factors which together constitute the working of the natural system,” 28. Farrer could not conceive of how to unhinge actualized reality from logical possible sequences, known by God in his scientia simplicis intelligentiae, structurally prior to the decree and, following thereupon, God’s scientia visionis. Farrer’s own solution to the problem of what he saw as predetermined human choices, was the suggestion of the analogy of free choice in artistic creativity,” 32. 44 Leibniz, Theodicy, 167 (§84). (The Latin is inserted according to Stapfer’s text). Leibniz says

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translates simultaneitas decretorum as the “synchronism of decrees,” a term Leibniz uses to make the point that, speaking in signo rationis—structurally speaking—before God decrees any sequence of states of affairs, he considered that sequence along with other possible sequences, and then afterwards approves it.45 These sequences of states of affairs, represented in God’s understanding, are as ideas of all possible sequences, preceding the decree, and of all future sequences, following the decree. Thus, representation logically and structurally is said to precede and follow the divine will. In the case following the decree, Leibniz speaks of all future decreed states of affairs, (In cujus Idea omnia futura repraesentabantur), such as the first parents’ sin, how Jesus Christ will redeem the human race, etc. He says that God sanctions a sequence only after having “entered into all its detail, and thus pronounces nothing final as to those who shall be saved or damned without having pondered upon everything and compared it with other possible sequences.”46 It appears that God considers each total sequence of states of affairs before choosing which sequence to actualize. For Leibniz says, “God’s pronouncement concerns the whole sequence at the same time (simul).”47 Thus said, although there is synchronicity of sequences present to the divine mind, once God decrees a sequence, the question arises whether the connection of events in the sequence is hypothetically necessary, and yet contingently linked? He writes, “In order to save other men, or in a different way, he must needs choose an altogether different sequence, seeing that all is connected in each sequence.” He characterizes the connected actions in this conception of the matter as “connected together to the highest possible degree.” However, he also says, each individual act of will is not “inevitable” but depends upon the outcome of the total sequence.48 Although God wills the entire set of a sequence, and the future set is contingent as a whole, what is not clear is whether each individual link in the sequence remains contingent. Stapfer, with his quote from Leibniz, appears to have wanted to make the point that the Reformed churches do not separate the decreed means from the decreed ends. That is, God first—structurally speaking—considers all possible sequences and each in detail, and all means to ends, before decreeing some people to come

45 46 47 48

he is referring to differences of the order of the decrees between the supralapsarians and infralapsarians, and between them and the Evangelicals. Cf. Stapfer, Institutiones, 5:185 (§77). Leibniz, Theodicy, 168 (§84); Cf. Stapfer, Institutiones, 5:185 (§77). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (Paragraph beginning after footnote 10, beginning with “Non possumus non hic allegare illustris Leibnitii. .”). Leibniz, Theodicy, 168 (§84). Ibid. WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, PartV, “Predestination” (Passage ending citation of Leibniz); Cf. Stapfer, Institutiones, 5:186. Cf. Leibniz, Theodicy, 168.

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to faith in Christ. Hence, “the Reformed,” writes Stapfer (in §78), “reject the opinion of those who state that God elected some people before all consideration of means, and that others were reprobated, regardless of whether or not they would make use of means to salvation, or persevere in sin to the end.”49

6.4.2 The sequence of states of affairs is best because God willed it Edwards’s interest in the harmony of the sequence of all states of affairs likely drew his attention to (§94), which concludes his Latin transcript of Stapfer. When asked why God judges or arbitrates this sequence of states of affairs to be best (hanc rerum seriem optimam), Stapfer’s response is that it is because God willed it; or he elected it (quia Deus eam elegit, sive voluit). These are the last words that Edwards transcribes from Stapfer.50 In (§94), “Observation Six,” Stapfer cites the Lutheran Samuel Pufendorf ’s Jus Feciale divinum on consent and dissent among Protestants. Pufendorf (1632–94) writes that, when Reformed authors attempt to describe the difficult topic of predestination, they often retreat to the benevolence of God and Paul’s statement, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments,” Romans 11:33,34. Stapfer’s comment on Pufendorf ’s remark is that God wills nothing except with respect to his relation to 49 Stapfer, Institutiones, 5:187 (§78). “Cum decreta divina ex Reformatæ Ecclesiæ Mente sint ordinata, ut Media a fine nunquam sint sejungenda; hinc illorum sententiam rejicimus, qui statuunt: Deum ante omnem Mediorum Considerationem nonnullos elegisse, alios vero reprobasse, nullo vel usus mediorum salutis, vel Peccati et finalis Resistentiæ respectu habito. Neque toti Ecclesiæ attribuendum id, quod privatus aliquis doctor professus esse videtur.” Edwards transcribed (§78) from Stapfer. See WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, PartV, “Predestination” (The paragraph beginning with “Cum decreta divina ex Reformatae Ecclesiae”). 50 Stapfer, Institutiones, 5:210 (§94). Stapfer cites Samuel Pufendorf, Jus feciale divinum, sive De consensu et dissensu Protestantium, (Lubecae, 1695), § 66. But the passage of interest here is Stapfer’s comments which follow his brief quote from Pufendorf. Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination” (Passage ending with Latin quote from Stapfer, footnote 20, “Respondemus quia Deus eam eligit, sive voluit”). After Edwards transcribed the Leibniz quote, and Stapfer’s immediate response in (§78), Edwards skipped sections §79- §85, which included “Observation Five,” “Consent” (§§81–3) and “Dissent” (§§84–5). Stapfer began a new heading, “Observationes ad tertiam hanc controversiam,” which included seven observations, running from §86 – §96. Edwards’s transcript picks up in the middle of §91, “Observation Four,” under the new heading. Where Edwards picks up his transcription, Stapfer cites Johan Buddeus followed by Holzfusius (whose name Edwards omits). Then Stapfer makes three points, α, β, γ. Edwards leaves out the third point in §91. Edwards then skips “Observation Five” (§93) and picks up again at §94 “Observation Six.” He ends his Latin transcript from Stapfer at end of §94, “Quaerenti cur hanc rerum seriem optimam esse arbitremur, respondemus quia Deus eam eligit, sive voluit,” thereby omitting “Observation Seven.”

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all his attributes (nihil velit nisi respectu habito omnium suorum attributorum).51 And since God always acts by virtue of his wisdom—the highest criterion of all his attributes and actions—it follows that God always has a reason why he wills this rather than that (semper esse rationes cur potius hoc quam aliud velit). Moreover, God always regards the harmony of all things (ut semper respiciat rerum convenientias), nor does God do anything that is not in the greatest harmony with the end-goal of the universe in general (neque quidquam faciat quod fini universi generali non est convenientissimum). Stapfer reasons that from the fact that God has willed something (ex eo vero quod Deus aliquid voluit), one can always conclude that it is also the best (optimum esse). The reasoning on account of which God judges something to be the best is that God chooses the best by his will (a Dei voluntate).52

6.4.3 God’s willing of bad states of affairs that belong to a series of events By way of comparison, in Heereboord’s Meletemata, disputation 24, after distinguishing between the will of God’s good pleasure and the will of the sign, Heereboord distinguishes between a bad state of affairs considered (1) in itself, in se, and (2) as such, secundum se.53 The first bad state of affairs is that which can become good, the second is that which cannot become good. So too Edwards, in his Notebook, making comments after the extracts from Stapfer, makes the same distinction, stating that “there is certainly a difference between the thing itself being, and its being an evil thing.”54 And this is the same context of God decreeing to permit sin to come to pass for a greater good, such as the crucifixion of Christ. Edwards applies the principle and says the crucifixion in se, when it occurs, becomes a good thing. “As God ordered it, it was good.” Heereboord had said that a good state joined to a bad state can bring about a greater good. Likewise, Edwards writes that there is then “more good in the whole, than if that evil had not come to pass.”55 Edwards then relates the will of God’s good pleasure, such as

51 Samuel Pufendorf, Jus Feciale divinum sive de consensu ex dissensu Protestantium, (Lubeca, 1695), 241 (§66). 52 Stapfer, Institutiones, 5: 210. 53 Heereboord, Meletemata, I:91 (D24, th. 6). Cf. WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (Paragraph in English beginning with “Sin is an evil”), on God’s will of divine good pleasure and will of sign or precept). BT 2: 529–32 (§§17–19). 54 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (6th paragraph of English text, after end of Latin text). BT 2: 529 (§17). 55 Ibid. BT 2: 529 (§17). Cf. Augustine of Hippo, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, intro. John O’Meara, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 1972), 455–6. Just as a picture set against black can be beautiful, “in the same way the whole universe is beautiful, if

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in willing to permit the crucifixion, to one of the major terms we saw in Stapfer, the rerum series, such that the crucifixion, when it occurs, belongs to a “series of events.”56

6.4.4 Summary Edwards only transcribes observations four and six from Stapfer’s second set. What does he find of interest there? The first observation four shows Stapfer’s interest in Leibniz’ commentary on possible, synchronic sequences of events that God can decree. Stapfer discusses the technical term, signum rationis, or structured “order of nature,” a term Edwards’s himself uses later in his Freedom of Will.57 In the second set, observation four answers that the decrees are not conditioned and that all of reality depends upon God and his good pleasure. Observation six concludes that God’s ways are incomprehensible. Edwards’s transcription of these observations confirms his interest in the harmony of the sequence of all states of affairs as well as the wise order and connection of all things, an interest which we will analyze in chapter 10. It appears then that Edwards’s interest is not so much in the consent and dissent between “the Reformed Churches” and “the Lutherans,” which is of concern to Stapfer, but rather in assembling material that contributes to his envisioned scheme of a universal determining providence.

6.5

Analysis of two technical terms

We have already stated that based on the passages Edwards includes and avoids, his interest lies elsewhere than in the consent and dissent between the Reformed Churches and the Lutheran authors. Quite often Edwards skips over the author’s citation information, which Stapfer for his purposes carefully records. Edwards assembles passages that contribute to his growing understanding of the synchronism of decrees, and the representation of all possible states of affairs in the mind of God. What follows is a brief analysis of two frequently occurring terms in the above sections, to wit, (1) signum rationis and (2) repraesentare in the divine mind. one could see it as a whole, even with its sinners, though their ugliness is disgusting when they are viewed in themselves.” 56 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (Paragraph ending with “series of events, and as related to the rest of the series.” BT 2: 529 (§17). 57 Leibniz, Theodicy, 167 (§84). Cf. WJE 1: 177, 376.

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6.5.1 Signum rationis We encountered the term signum rationis (in §6.4.4) above, which Edwards transcribes from Stapfers’ quote of Leibniz’ Theodicy, which Leibniz uses to describe a synchronic representation of sequences of events in the divine mind. By this he signifies that there is no order to the divine decrees, but rather that all possible sequences of states of affairs are simultaneously and synchronically represented in the divine mind. There is a “synchronism of the decrees” or “order of nature.” This idea of the order of nature is what likely attracts Edwards to this passage in Stapfer and Leibniz. Our thesis is that Edwards is assembling passages that have to do with the harmony of the sequence of all states of affairs as well as the wise order and connection of all things. We saw (in chapter 3 §3.4.1) that Heereboord ascribes “negative indifference” to God. He pairs this negative indifference with the notion of signum rationis. For example, before God decrees to create the world, there is in God a prior structural moment, which means that God is indifferent not only whether to create or not, but also whether to create this sequence of events, or another. Furthermore this indifference implies neither some imperfection in God, nor any increase in perfection if God were to create the world.

6.5.2 Repraesentare The term repraesentare appears repeatedly in the many passages that Edwards transcribes from Stapfer. We concluded in our analysis (in §6.2.2 and §6.3), that one ought not infer necessity from divine mental representation of pure possibles. Structurally speaking, at the instant when the divine will decrees to produce a future nexus of states of affairs, the divine understanding represents to itself this sequence, but no longer as pure possible states of affairs, but future states of affairs. At that conceptual instant, structurally preceding the decree, there is no relation with respect to the divine will. Stapfer said that prior to the divine decree, sequences of states of affairs are represented as pure possibles in the divine mind, and these remain either contingent, free, or necessary, even after the decree to produce a sequence of states of affairs. God knows possible sequences of states of affairs by their representation. These sequences are represented in the divine mind at the instant of God’s one pure act of decree. In fact, Stapfer said that the entire corrupt human race is represented in God’s mind in one of these sequences of states of affairs.58 The significance of Edwards’s transcription of Stapfer’s extensive use of the term 58 Stapfer, Institutiones, 5:194. In the actus praeteritionis. (Observation one).

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“divine mental representation” is the absence of this particular term in Edwards’s subsequent comments in his Notebook on predestination. Edwards does write in the Notebook about Stapfer’s use of the term, “transferring states of affairs from the sphere of possibility to the sphere of futurition,” but Edwards does not take up these two terms in his Freedom of Will. Heereboord relates the notion of the representation of states of affairs to the issue of predestination. The passages that Stapfer cites appropriate the notion of representation of states of affairs and apply the term to counter the notion of conditioned decrees. Heereboord also speaks of states of affairs represented by ideas in God’s mind, states of affairs both from eternity and in time. Idea signifies an absolute state of affairs (absolutem rem) and it connotes its relation to creatures. Heereboord juxtaposes a state of affairs known from eternity and known to exist in the course of time. Predestination signifies a divine act connoting an effect in the predestined, and it connotes the possibility of futurition. Eternal predestination, as such, underscores the distinct but inseparable elements of the connotation between an absolute state known from eternity and its relation to creatures in time. The significance of this twofold notion lies in how the Reformed appropriate it to ground ideas and predestination in God’s knowledge of all possible sequences of states of affairs and in his decree, and knowledge of his decree, rather than in conditioned divine knowledge or in human free action played out in the course of time.

6.6

States of affairs passing on from one status to another

In his Notebook, after having extracted sections from Stapfer, Edwards adapts Stapfer’s scheme that locates in God’s decree the passing of a thing out of a state of possibility into a state of futurition, but with a caveat.59 Unlike Stapfer, Edwards avoids using the term “contingency” in his scheme. He does, however, juxtapose a state of possibility with a state of futurition, with God’s will as the hinge of transference, and thereby Edwards attempts to hold on to some essential elements from Stapfer’s scheme. Edwards encounters this scheme when he transcribes Stapfer’s Latin text. In his Notebook, Edwards adapts elements from Stapfer to help shape his own response to Arminian conditional decrees and foreknowledge. Edwards’s reluctance to use the term “contingent” may be due to the association of the term in his context with “chance” and “mere accident,” 59 WJEO 27, “Controversies,” Notebook, “Predestination, Part V, (paragraph following footnote 39, beginning with “The thing in its own nature is not necessary,” and ending with “brought out of that state of mere possibility into a state of futurition, to be certainly future.”) BT 2: 532 (§21).

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terms which, as he writes in his Notebook, are “contrary to the supposition” at hand.60 For Edwards, like Stapfer and Ames, God—not chance, not humans— decisively moves a thing out of a state of possibility into a state of futurition and thereby assigns the truth value of such a thing. From Edwards’s Notebook, we will attempt to reconstruct his explanation of how God’s foreknowledge can consist with what “is not in its own nature necessary,” and how God’s will is the crucial hinge to the argument.61 We begin with his response to and adaptation of Stapfer’s scheme, which is then set in a broader context of discussion about the Arminian notion of freedom.

6.6.1 Stapfer’s scheme In the section on the divine decrees in general, Stapfer states Proposition 436: From what is afore-mentioned, it is certainly clear that states of affairs are only possible, as far as they are related to the knowledge of God, but as far as they are related to the will, they become future; that is, they pass on from the status of pure possibility to the status of the future by the decree.62

In this scheme, we see that the certainty and truth of a future proposition is not knowledge-based, but will-based. Stapfer concludes that the decreed state is future, certain and immutable due to the divine decree of the will, not divine foreknowledge.

60 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, “Predestination, Part V, (Paragraph beginning with “And if it be already decided,” and ending with “What holds up the chain?”). BT 2:532 (§21). Note that editor Hickman, in the Banner edition, omits the rest of the paragraph, omitting from ”What determines the futurition of that thing that decides” through “What holds up the whole chain?” Hickman also omits the paragraph that follows, “To suppose that God’s decrees are conditional” through “To show how many things there must be now in God.” On “contingent,” see point (§11) below. 61 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, “Predestination, Part V, (Paragraph with footnote 39, beginning with “The foreknowledge of God will necessarily infer a decree”). BT 2: 532 (§21). 62 Stapfer, Institutiones, I:107–8. (§436). “Ex superioribus nempe patet, res quatenus ad intellectum Dei referuntur esse tantum possibiles, quatenus autem ad voluntatem referuntur fiunt futurae, sive ex statu merae possibilitatis per Decretum transeunt in statum futuritionis.”

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6.6.2 Edwards’s scheme against the Arminian scheme In his Notebook, in response to Stapfer, Edwards puts forth the following proposition, “If God from all eternity knew that such and such things were future, then they were future.”63 Then he explains, “That such a thing, at such a time, should be,” is not necessary “in its own nature.” It is “not necessary, but only possible.” Edwards makes two points. First, things are not future based on some inherent necessity of the thing that makes it true and future at such and such a time. “The being of a thing is not in its own nature necessary.”64 The truth of a proposition is not prior to the divine decree; it is not the case that a proposition was true before and therefore, by necessity, must be future. Second, “If there must be some reason of the futurition of the thing…this can be no other than God’s decree.” That is, writes Edwards, “The truth of the proposition: “Such a thing will be,” has been determined by God.”65 In the paragraph that follows, Edwards then refers to Stapfer’s scheme, stating that a thing is “not of itself in a state of futurition—if I may so speak—but only in a state of possibility.” There is no doubt that he is using Stapfer’s terms. There must be an agent who brings the thing in question “out of a state of mere possibility, into a state of futurition.” And “this must be God only.” The futurition of all states of affairs must have a first cause, or, “First Being”—not just other future events—and that is God. Only God exists necessarily and of himself. Then, Edwards’s unmistakably repeats Stapfer’s terms, namely, that mere possibles are “brought out of that state of mere possibility into a state of futurition, to be certainly future.”66 Returning to the proposition that Edwards puts forth, “That such a thing, at such a time, should be,” he argues that the supposition is not so by itself, nor by necessity of its own nature, but it is an effect that has a cause. Whatever comes to pass in time is future, not of itself, but thanks to God. There are only two 63 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, “Predestination, Part V, (Paragraph with footnote 39). BT 2: 532 (§21). “From all eternity” simply refers to the atemporal nature of God’s knowledge and decrees. There is a structural “order of nature,” to God’s knowledge and decrees, which Edwards recognizes in his Notebook. Thus, it is not to be understood as if to say that God always knew that event x would be and that event x could not not be. And it is not the case that such and such things necessarily are future, therefore God knows them. The second part of Edwards’s supposition, below, implies there is a reason why the proposition is true, to wit, God makes it true by his divine decree. 64 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, “Predestination, Part V, (Paragraph with footnote 39). BT 2: 532 (§21). 65 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, “Predestination, Part V, (Paragraph with footnote 39, which begins as “The foreknowledge of God will necessarily infer a decree”). BT 2: 532 (§21). 66 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, “Predestination, Part V, (Paragraph beginning with “The thing in its own nature is not necessary”). BT 2: 532 (§21). Cf. Stapfer, Institutiones, I:107–8 (§436).

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possibilities to account for the future event. Either the futurition of the event is (1) inherent in the event itself, or (2) it is grounded in God. Edwards argues that if the “Arminian notion of liberty” chooses option (1), “then things are future prior to any decree, or their futurition is antecedent in nature to any decree of God.”67 This, he says, would nullify the need for any divine decree. “The Arminian notion of liberty,” as Edwards calls it in his Notebook, removes God’s freedom, since God cannot decree that the event not come about in the future, since it is already known to be future. An event cannot both be and not be future. The ‘Arminan notion’ of freedom makes a future event independent of God’s decree. Edwards takes up Stapfer’s argument against the Remonstrants, and attempts to show its “absurdity.” Edwards asks, on their principles, “To what purpose is any decree at all?” “It is allowed that things are future before they come to pass, because God foreknows either things are future antecedent to God’s decree, and independent of it, or they are not.” Edwards argues that, on the contrary, it is “God’s decree” that is decisive about what things will come about. “There is no medium,” writes Edwards, alluding to the corresponding notion of Jesuit and Remonstrant ‘middle knowledge’ (scientia media). Therefore, The “Arminians” and their notion of liberty, “destroy the freedom of God himself, according to their own principles.”68 If it already be decided that an event shall come to pass in time, who, then, decided, asks Edwards? It must be grounded either in God or in the creature. Edwards does not accept an infinite regress of causes. Edwards gives the example of another author who says that it is as if a chain were hung down from heaven to earth, and one should ask, “What held up that chain?” An infinite number of links in the chain does not resolve the problem.69 The Arminian scheme assumes that something that first occurs in the course of time in this world is the cause of God’s foresight, foresight that nevertheless is from eternity. But how can that be without compromising God’s foreknowledge? Moreover, no thing can be a cause of its being before it is, argues Edwards. The effect is not prior to its cause. The Arminians counter that the existence in time is not the cause of the event, but rather God’s foresight of the event, which is simultaneous with the decree of the event. Or, they argue that God’s foresight or foreknowledge of the actual event is in God’s mind even before the decree, 67 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, “Predestination, Part V, (Paragraph beginning with “But if you say that the ground or reason of their futurition,” and ending with “according to their own principles”). BT 2: 532 (§21). 68 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, “Predestination, Part V, (Paragraph beginning with “But if you say that the ground or reason of their futurition,” and ending with “He has no choice in the case”). BT 2: 532 (§21). 69 Ibid., (As noted above, Hickman omits the end of the paragraph, which in the Notebook reads, “What holds up the whole chain?”). Cf. BT 2: 532 (§21).

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structurally speaking, that is, “in the order of nature.”70 This argument by the Arminians juxtaposes actual existence in time with existence in the divine mind. But Edwards says this does not resolve the problem. For, in their scheme, God’s foreknowledge still depends upon “future actual existence.” This would imply that the actual existence of the event, even if it is just in God’s mind, would be the cause of God’s knowledge. Edwards asks how the effect could flow from the cause before the existence of the cause? He argues that the divine decree is the ground of both the futurition of the event and the foreknowledge of it.71 Thus, there can be no scientia media that serves the role of passing an event from a state of possibility into a state of futurition, nor does God’s knowledge of an event entail that a future event is necessary in itself. In chapter 8 of this study we will examine whether Edwards maps necessity onto a theory of the will and decree, or onto a theory of knowledge. We will analyze his use of the terms: contingency, the necessity of the consequence, and implicative necessity. However, this Notebook has shown us that Edwards eschews the term contingency.72 Nevertheless, Edwards does appear to avoid collapsing the notions of being and willing into each other when he states, “The being of a thing is not in its own nature necessary” and a proposition is “not in its own nature a necessary truth.” For Edwards, “the divine decree is the ground of the futurition of the events, and also the ground of the foreknowledge of it.”73

6.7

Summary analysis

In this chapter, we attempted to reconstruct, from his Notebook, Edwards’s interest in the topic of predestination and its associated themes. We saw that one focus he has is the idea of a series of events or a nexus of states of affairs. It appears that the view in Stapfer’s mind is of God willing a sequence of events in its 70 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, “Predestination, Part V, (Paragraph beginning with “To suppose that God’s decrees” and ending with “otherwise the effect is before the cause”). (Note, this paragraph in the Notebook does not appear in the Hickman edition, at least not in §21). Edwards’s use of “order of nature” to describe an instant before the decree shows that he understood the structural sense of this technical term. On Edwards’s use of “order of nature,” see below, chapter 7 §7.5. 71 Ibid., (Paragraph ending with “otherwise the effect is before the cause”). (Note, Hickman omits this paragraph). 72 WJEO 27 “Controversies Notebook,” Predestination, Part V, (paragraph beginning with “God’s promising supposes,” ending with footnote 72). BT 2: 535 (§33). Cf. Polhill, Speculum theologiae in Christo, (London, 1678), 169. Polhill writes, “to the lottery of man’s will,” which Edwards transcribes as, “If it be left to chance, or man’s contingent will.” Edwards’s modification of Polhill’s text shows that Edwards equates lottery with contingency. 73 WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Predestination Part V, (Paragraph ending with “but otherwise the effect is before the cause). Note that this is the paragraph that Hickman omits.

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entirety, without excluding the metaphysical contingency of individual events in a sequence. Moreover, this occurs after God, structurally speaking, or in the order of nature, previously considers all possible sequences. Edwards’s transcription of Stapfer includes the latter’s appropriation of Leibniz’s use of the term signum rationis to explain the structural order of nature and “synchronism” of decrees, as Leibniz put it. Furthermore, the concept underlying the term helps explain how these sequences of states of affairs are represented in God’s mind, apart from or previous to the decree. While Edwards recognizes a non-temporal structural order of nature, which one can understand as a conceptual plane upon which God decrees a sequence of events out of all possible series, nevertheless, in his scheme, there are no contingent, simultaneous individual alternative links in the sequence. For Edwards, the sequence necessarily stands or falls together. This appears to be due to Edwards’s insistence on a causal necessity. These are terms that we take up in the next chapter from his Freedom of Will. Given the contested understanding and use of these terms by Edwards, the next chapter’s exposition on his understanding and use of terms, such as, the necessity of the consequence, contingency, or lack thereof, proves crucial to our understanding of Edwards’s scheme of freedom in the next chapter.74 In what is a significant development, Edwards’s scheme appears to follow Stapfer in saying that there is no truth-value assigned to a thing prior to the decree. And that futurition is based ex decreto. This also appears from Edwards’s statement , “That such a thing, at such a time, should be,” is an effect that has a cause, such as the divine decree. Edwards posited a twofold hypothesis, based no doubt on his transcription from Stapfer: (1) A being is not in its own nature necessary, but possible; (2) “A proposition is not in its own nature a necessary truth.”75 Edwards argued in his Notebook that the “Arminian” attempt to shift the crux of the argument from the decree to God’s knowledge equally fails, since knowledge comes into the same so-called difficulty surrounding the notion of necessity as does the decree. Thus, Edwards writes, “The foreknowledge of God contradicts their notion of liberty as much, and in every respect, just in the same manner as a decree.” For, structurally speaking, just as God’s decree renders “an indissoluble connection beforehand between the subject and predicate of the proposition,” such that an event will come to pass, and it be impossible but that it be, so is it with God’s foreknowledge. In both, the end result is an “infallible certainty.” Edwards concludes that “a decree infers no other necessity than that.” Thus, on their own principles, his opponents should not reject the divine decree 74 Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and the Absence of Free Choice,” 12, 14. Muller argues that Edwards’s “necessary sequence of causes” leaves “no room for contingency.” And he says Edwards “appears to confuse necessitas consequentiae with necessitas consequentis.” 75 WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (Paragraph beginning with “The foreknowledge of God,” in paragraph with footnote 39.) BT 2: 532 (§21).

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on account of the infallible and certain connection of the subject and predicate of a proposition concerning future events. This is a significant recognition of the crucialty of the decree, not God’s knowledge, and display of argumentation by Edwards which assumes a structural moment prior to the decree. In the previous chapter 5, we saw Heereboord and Morton speak of a future proposition’s implicative necessity, a notion which Edwards seems to assume in this argumentation in his Notebook. But Heereboord, Morton, and Stapfer all state that the contingency of the proposition remains. Edwards, however, does not give any room to the notion of contingency. But, at least in his Notebook, he does appear to avoid inferring causal necessity from the necessity of the subject and predicate of a proposition. Thus, from the decree one ought infer no other necessity than the necessity of the consequence, and this necessity does not infringe upon human freedom. Edwards thus formulates a twofold hypothesis from his transcription from Stapfer: (1) A being is not in its own nature necessary, but possible; (2) A proposition is not in its own nature a necessary truth. Edwards draws the consequence that the reason for (1) and (2) must be God. In the next three chapters we shall examine whether Edwards develops this twofold hypothesis from his Notebook and applies it to his notion of freedom in his published work, Freedom of Will. Finally, of significance for this study is the contribution by Stapfer of terms and concepts that Edwards’s transcribes in his Notebook, some of which Edwards uses and develops in writing Freedom of Will, some not. For example, Edwards develops the notion of a “series of antecedents and consequents.”76 In the Notebook, he develops the notion of “the indissoluble connection between the subject and predicate of a proposition,” the connection of which, he says, signifies “philosophical necessity.” This notion appears in the beginning of Freedom of Will, under his definition of terms.77 In the Notebook, Edwards also uses Stapfer’s language about “the state of possibility,” and “bringing out of a state of mere possibility into a state of futurition.”78 Immediately after this section in his Notebook on God bringing things out of a state of possibility into a state of futurition, Edwards argues the absurdity of his opponents’ attempt to ground the futurition of things in themselves, independent of God’s will and decree. Likewise, Edwards develops this argument in Freedom of Will by arguing that “fatal necessity” follows “Arminian principles,” not his own, since Arminians subject God’s will to a “fixed futurity of the state of things in the moral world.”79 In the Notebook, Edwards enumerates three ways in which his opponents might argue 76 Cf. WJE 1: 367, 369, 405. 77 Cf. WJE 1: 152–3. 78 WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (The paragraph after footnote 39, beginning with “The thing in its own nature is not necessary”). 79 WJE 1: 395.

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that the will determines itself, with respect to the “order of nature.” In Freedom of Will, Edwards also enumerates and develops three ways his opponents understand an act of self-determination, according to the notion of the “order of nature.”80 Edwards also argues in his Notebook that it is impossible that an event should actually be without a reason why it is so, and not otherwise. It is unreasonable to suppose that a proposition should be true, without a reason why it is true. Likewise, in Freedom of Will, Edwards uses and develops the principle of sufficient reason, which he understands to mean that there is a reason why something is so, and why it is impossible that it be otherwise.81 In his Notebook, Edwards refers to his opponents notion of liberty in which there is a “sovereignty in the will, and that the will determines itself.” That is, that the will’s determination “to choose and refuse, this or that,” lies “primarily within itself.”82 In the next chapter we encounter Daniel Whitby’s use and development of the concept autexousia, which corresponds to the notion of self-determination, a notion which, although broadly used and developed by other authors, whether of “Arminian” or “Reformed” traditions, Edwards contests throughout Freedom of Will.83

80 WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Part V, “Predestination,” (Paragraph beginning with “If the will determines itself, one of these three must be meant.” See also the previous paragraphs). Cf. WJE 1: 177–8. In another context, Edwards also applies the notion of the “order of nature,” 354, 376. 81 WJEO 27 “Controversies” Notebook, “Predestination, Part V, (Paragraph beginning with footnote 39, which begins with “The foreknowledge of God will necessarily infer a decree”). Cf. WJE 1: 181, 183. 82 WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Predestination Part V, (The paragraphs beginning with “Their notion of liberty, is that there is a sovereignty in the will”). 83 WJE 1: 164, 171–4, 176–9, 188, 191, 206, 223–4, 238, 298, 321, 323–4, 367, 414, 421, 429, 436. Cf. Te Velde, ed., Synopsis of a purer theology, 407–11. Also, Turretin’s use of the term in “Beyond indifference. An elenctic locus on free choice by Francesco Turrettini (1623–1687)” in Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 174–5.

7.

Daniel Whitby on freedom ad utrumlibet and Edwards’s reply

7.1

Introduction

The Church of England scholar Daniel Whitby (1638–1726) is one of Edwards’s chief interlocutors in Freedom of Will. He wrote a Discourse on the freedom of the will of man (1710), which prompted Edwards to finish writing his Freedom of Will, as he indicates in a letter to the Rev. John Erskine in 1752.1 When taken together, both authors give an extensive, anthropologically oriented exposition on human freedom of will. Whitby writes his Discourses against what he perceives to be the “Calvinist” position. We see that Whitby’s footnote references make it clear that the Hobbes-Bramhall debate on liberty and necessity plays in the background of Whitby’s Discourses. The Marquis of Newcastle had arranged a meeting between Thomas Hobbes and Bishop Bramhall, while the Marquis was in exile at his house in Paris in 1645. Subsequent to their meeting in Paris, a controversy on freedom and necessity ensued with an exchange of discourses between the years 1645–1658.2 Whitby likely draws his assertion of an affinity between the doctrine of fate of his adversaries, “the Calvinists,” and “Mr. Hobbes” and the philosophers of fate, from Bramhall’s discourses, since Whitby made references to the Anglican Bishop Bramhall’s A defence (vindication) of true liberty from antecedent and extrinsical necessity (1655) and Castigations of

1 Daniel Whitby, A Discourse Concerning Five Points, Election, Redemption, Grace, Liberty of the Will, Perseverance (2d ed.; London: Aaron Ward and Richard Hett, 1735). (Henceforth, Five discourses). Edwards engages the anthropologically oriented Discourse IV, on “The liberty of the human will in a state of trial and probation,” from “Discourse on the five points,” first published in 1710. Volume editor Ramsey indicates Edwards likely cited the second edition, London, 1735, which is the edition we will use. See editor Ramsey’s helpful comments on the Whitby-Edwards exchange, in WJE 1: 81–89. And, Peter Thuesen’s entry in Catalogues of books, WJEO 27: 177. On the letter to Erskine, see “Introduction” chapter §3. 2 Vere Chappell, ed., Hobbes and Bramhall on liberty and necessity, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), ix.

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Mr. Hobbes (1658), which contains citations from Hobbes’s, Of liberty and necessity (1654) and The questions concerning liberty, necessity, and chance (1656).3 This chapter proceeds, first (in §7.1), by reporting Whitby’s turn from the “Calvinist” position that he had learned at Oxford to what he later claimed to be the position of the Church of England. We introduce the structure of Whitby’s argument and the argument itself, as found in Discourse Four. We identify six elements that are essential to Whitby’s argument, followed by a brief analysis of the argument. Then, (in §7.2), we interpret the claims and allegations that Whitby makes concerning his opponents, namely, that the ‘Calvinists’ show affinities to the Hobbes and the Stoics. Not only are Whitby’s allegations and Edwards’s replies significant for this study, but also the context in which these allegations are made. We make the case in this chapter that the context within which to understand the allegations is, in part, the seventeenth-century Hobbes-Bramhall controversy. Next, (in §7.3), we interpret and analyze Whitby’s conditions requisite for free choice. Then, (in §7.4), we interpret and analyze Edwards’s reply to Whitby’s allegations, drawing on Edwards’s Freedom of Will, which reveals Edwards’s acceptance of affinity with the Stoics. Then, (in §7.5), we analyze an important technical term, a “structural order of nature,” which we saw in the previous chapter (in §6.4.1), a notion which Edwards contests when it is used in a non-temporal manner. Finally, (in §7.6), we give a summary.

3 Whitby, Five discourses, 350–3, 356, (Chapter 4 “Shewing the affinity of the opinions of our adversaries concerning liberty, with that of Mr. Hobbes; and with the fate of the philosophers, condemned by the Christian fathers”). John Bramhall, A defence of true liberty from antecedent and extrinsical necessity and The castigations of Mr. Hobbes, his last animadversions in the case concerning liberty and universal necessity, (1658) vol. 3 in The works of the most reverend father in God, John Bramhall D.D., late lord bishop of Ardmagh, primate and metropolitan of all Ireland, some of which never before printed, collected into one volume, (Dublin: Benjamin Tooke, 1675). (Henceforth, Bramhall works followed by the title of the discourse). The pagination of this edition of Bramhall’s discourses agrees with Whitby’s page references in his footnotes in the 1735 edition of his Five discourses, which we cite, and which Edwards cited. Cf. the section on “Hobbes” and Bramhall, in Norman Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’s moral thought and its British context (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981; Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006), 272–77. Jonathan Edwards would have had access to the works of Bishop Bramhall since they are listed in the Yale 1743 catalogue, under “Works on various subjects,” as “Bp Bramhall’s Folio,” in Mooney, ed., Eighteenth-century catalogues of the Yale college library, Page A36 X.

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7.1.1 Whitby’s account of the turn from his ‘Calvinist’ education to the view of the early church on the doctrine of freedom of the will Daniel Whitby was a graduate of Trinity College, Oxford (B.A. 1657, M.A. 1660).4 In his preface, he makes known his dissatisfaction with having studied for “seven years under men of the Calvinistical persuasion.” Since he had heard of “no other doctrine,” he says that “he once firmly entertained all their doctrines.”5 He gives a four-point account of his turn from the Calvinist doctrines to what he perceives to be the view corroborated by a study of the early church. First, he begins to question the sources alleged to support the doctrine of “the imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity.”6 His search into the matter confirms his suspicions, but one doubt still remains, “whether antiquity did not give suffrage for this doctrine.” He takes courage in the words of Gerhard Vossius, “The Catholic Church always so judged,” examining Vossius’s collected testimonies, from Ignatius to Augustine.7 But Whitby finds them insufficient to prove the point. He finds Peter Du Moulin more convincing on the doctrine, namely, that from the Apostle’s to Augustine’s time, ecclesiastical writers are cautious on the matter, inclined to what he calls “Pelagianism.”8 Whitby also gives account of how he begins to doubt “absolute election and reprobation,” as interpreted from St. Paul’s book to the Romans, chapter nine. He says that he read Henry Dodwell’s interpretation of Paul, whom Dodwell said was educated by the Pharisees, whose teaching borrowed the doctrine of fate from the Stoics.9 Thus, he was taught that Paul was to be read against the background of the Stoics. But doubt set in and Whitby records how he set out to get the sense of Paul’s teaching, which he subsequently published in his Paraphrase and Commentary on the New Testament, (1703).10 He summarizes his first point as a coming to the realization that the Calvinism that he had learned at Oxford was running against the “stream of antiquity.”11

4 The dictionary of national biography, founded in 1882 by George Smith. The concise dictionary (London: Oxford University Press, 1953–61). B.D and D.D. 1672, Precentor of Salisbury. 5 Whitby, Five discourses, i. 6 Ibid., ii. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., iii. Whitby’s footnote cites the Prolegomena by Dodwell to John Stearn’s De Obstinatione, §41. p. 147. 10 Daniel Whitby, A Paraphrase and Commentary on the New Testament: All the Epistles, including a discourse on the millennium, vol. 2 of A Paraphrase and Commentary on the New Testament (London: Ansham and John Churchill, 1703), 53 (Rom 9:11). 11 Whitby, Five discourses, iii. He writes that the exceptions to all other authors in antiquity were Augustine, and his followers, Prosper of Aquitaine and Fulgentius of Ruspe.

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Second, Whitby claims that “the hereticks of old, used many of the same texts of Scripture, to the same purposes, as the patrons of these doctrines do at present.”12 He identifies such “heretics” as the “Valentinians, Marcionites, Basilidians, Manichees, and Priscillianists,” calling them all “decretalists,” to which list he adds the “Stoicks,” all of whose opinion, Whitby writes, the early church fathers condemned, from the same Scriptures.13 He summarizes the principle arguments of the early “champions of the Church” against these so-called heretics as follows. (1) The root of humankind’s wickedness is not their “nature,” but their “will,” for otherwise one makes God the author of sin;14 (2) Humankind does not become sinful by birth, lest the children suffer for the sin of their fathers;15 (3) The punishment for the first sin was “only mortality” for Adam and his posterity, thanks to God’s “wisdom and clemency,” that “sin might not be eternal in them.”16 Third, the “patrons of these doctrines” ground them, not in “Holy Scripture,” nor in the “doctrine of Christ,” but in those “impure streams of the scholastical divines, who had but little knowledge of the Text, and less of the sense of Scripture, or in the doctrine of St. Augustine who writ much and fast, and oft against his former, and his better self.”17 Some examples of these patrons, which he gives, are Twisse, Rutherford, and especially, Bishop John Davenant (1572– 1641).18 Whitby accuses the latter of borrowing his arguments from “the schools,” not Scripture.19 If one were to assert that his own doctrine is akin to “semiPelagianism,” Whitby says that his Third Discourse disproves it, nevertheless, he notes that “the Church of God” has not condemned it, and Augustine, in his day, owned them as “good Catholicks and Christian brethren.”20 Fourth, after the Restoration of 1660, almost all the bishops and clergy of the Church of England, writes Whitby, shared his opinion on the “Five Points” 12 13 14 15 16 17

Ibid. Whitby, Five discourses, iv, viii. Ibid., iv. Ibid. Ibid., vi. Ibid., viii. Whitby grants that the other “patrons” of these doctrines, “Augustine, Prosper, and Fulgentius,” were good Latin scholars, but they were deficient in Hebrew and Greek, x. 18 Ibid. The authors whom Davenant cites concerning the nature of predestination in the treatise to which Whitby refers in his footnote, are, among others, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Scotus, and the Jesuits, Diego Ruiz, Gabriel Vasquez, and Francisco Suárez, in John Davenant, Animadversions written by the right reverend father in God, John, Lord bishop of Sarisbury, upon a treatise intituled, God’s love to mankind (London, 1641), 8, 21, 30. The work, God’s love to mankind, upon which Davenant comments, was written by Samuel Hoard (1599–1658), entitled, De absoluto reprobationis decreto (Amsterdam, 1640). 19 Whitby, Five discourses, viii. 20 Ibid., xi. Whitby cites Vossius, Historiae de controversiis, quas Pelagius eiusque reliquiae moverunt libri septem (Leiden, 1618). Book 6. thesis 18, p. 621.

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explained under the Five Discourses named in the title of the present work.21 He urges his reader to remember that the Church of England wrote the Thirty-Nine Articles with a latitude to accommodate broad subscription. Last, the Church of England enjoins all preachers to teach nothing but what is agreeable to “the doctrine of the Old and New Testaments,” and that which the “Catholick Fathers, and the Ancient Bishops gathered from that very doctrine.”22

7.1.2 The structure of Whitby’s argument Whitby structures his “Fourth discourse” on “The liberty of the human will in a state of trial and probation,” into five chapters. Chapter one is, “The state of the question.”23 The chapter sections are: §1. Humankind, in this world, is in a state of trial.24 §2. The liberty in question, to choose life or death, concerns only a lapsed human.25 §3. The freedom of the will cannot consist with a determination to one, that is, in a determination to good only by the efficacy of divine grace, infallibly inducing to that operation, so that he cannot fail of acting, since it would put him out of a state of trial, and make him equal to the state of angels.26 §4. The autexousia, or free will of man, is neither an act, for that is the exercise of the will; nor a habit, for that only facilitates and inclines to action. It is a faculty or power.27 §5. To say that humankind is disabled from choosing the good and avoiding the bad, and yet may deserve punishment for the evil they do, though they cannot do otherwise, is like punishing the devils for choosing to do evil; and rewarding the blessed angels for choosing to do good.28 §6. To say that humankind under this unfrustrable operation is still free, because what moves a human to do they will to do, and do it with complacency, is only to say humankind herein has the freedom of an elect angel, which is not rewardable; but not that humankind has the freedom of one in a state of trial.29 §7. To say that lapsed humankind has been, as it were, disabled, such that without special grace, he or she can do nothing good, and is in bondage to sin, has no foundation in the Holy Scriptures.30 §8. This is a new notion of liberty and is contrary to common sense, and to the rules laid down 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Whitby, Five discourses, xi. Ibid., xii. Whitby, Five discourses, 297. Ibid. Ibid., 299. Ibid., 301. Ibid., 305. Ibid., 309. Ibid., 312. Ibid., 315.

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by those who were guided only by “the light of nature,” such as Aristotle, Epictetus, Diogenes Laertius, Cicero, and Seneca.31 Chapter two is, “Proposing arguments to prove the freedom of the will as well from necessity, as from coaction.”32 He introduces the chapter by stating that freedom of the will is (1) grounded in Scripture, (2) “asserted both by heathens and Christians in their discourses against fate,” and (3) given as a fundamental article of the Church by all her ancient writers.33 The sections are: §1. Not only can liberty of the will not consist with coercion, but also not with necessity.34 §2. It is in vain that the patrons of these doctrines, such as Davenant, tender the gospel to “reprobates,” since Scripture passages tender conditions, such as, “If you be willing, if you believe,” which, on their account, are impossible to perform. Their offers are not made in good earnest.35 §3. The decrees of election and reprobation cannot consist with humankind in a state of trial, of choosing life or death.36 §4. The early church fathers attest to Scripture which says that humankind’s liberty of will is such that they can choose the good and refuse the bad.37 Chapter three is, “Propounding arguments from reason to evince this freedom of the will from necessity.”38 The sections are: §1. God accommodates himself to the human faculties, by illuminating the understanding and persuading the will.39 §2. The common meaning of “free for us to do” is free to do (1) “that which is in our power,” (2) “that which may be done otherwise than it is done,” (3) that about which there is “ground for deliberation.”40 §3. The actions of humans proceed freely and can consist with being subject to laws and commands, as is the case of a lapsed human in a state of trial.41 §4. The sins of omission and commission only hold if sinners be not necessitated to omit or commit them.42

31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41

Ibid., 325–7. Ibid., 328. Ibid., 328–9. Ibid., 329. Ibid., 332–3. Ibid., 334–5. Ibid., 336–43. Justin Martyr, Deut 30:15, 19; Isa 1:19–20, in Second Apology; Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies; Tertullian, Exhortation to Chastity; Cyprian, To Quirinius: Testimonies against the Jews; Epiphanius, Refutation of All Heresies, “against Pharisaical fate;” Theodoret, John 7:37 in Against Gr. in Sermon 5; Chrysostom, Sir 15:15–17 in To. 6. Homily 2 De Fato et Providentia; Cyril of Alexandria, L.1. in Es.; Augustine, Against Adimantus, Sir 15:14 in Grace and Free Will; to these authors Whitby adds: Jerome, Basil’s Homily on Ps 61; Irenaeus, Matt 5:16; 8:13; 9:29; 24:48, 51; Mark 9:23; Luke 6:46; 12:35, 36, 47; 21:34; Origen, Homiliae in Numeros; Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel. Whitby, Five discourses, 344. Ibid. Ibid., 345. Whitby cites Le Blanc, De Libero Arbitrio, Part 2, Thesis 20, p. 405, in Theses theologicae, variis temporibus in academia Sedanensi, 4th ed. (London, 1708). Whitby, Five discourses, 347. Whitby cites the same place in Le Blanc, and cites Augustine, “It

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Chapter four is, “Shewing the affinity of the opinions of our adversaries concerning liberty, with that of Mr. Hobbes; and with the fate of the philosophers, condemned by the Christian fathers.”43 Hobbes’s notion of freedom, according to Whitby’s introduction to the chapter, is that human liberty can consist with necessity; that is, liberty is “only a power to do what we will, though we lie under a necessity to have that will.”44 Whitby, however, holds that liberty from necessity is essential to virtue and vice. He holds that there is general agreement between the patrons of the doctrine of necessity and the doctrine of Hobbes and Stoic fate. Their doctrine runs contrary to the opinion of “all Christians for the first four centuries.” It was Augustine, writes Whitby, who introduced “the contrary doctrine,” thereby contradicting his own former opinion.45 The sections are: §1. There is a “manifest agreement” between the patrons of necessity, such as Ursinus, Le Blanc, and Hobbes.46 §2. There is affinity between these patrons of necessity and Stoic fate. The former make much of “The things we have in our power” and “power over ourselves,” but it amounts to nothing more, writes Whitby, than to “The liberty of doing what must be done out of necessity.”47 §3. The heathen philosophers—Simplicius, Cicero, Oenomaus, Alcinous—condemned the doctrine of fatal necessity because it destroyed human freedom.48 The early Christians, writes Whitby, said the doctrine of fate was introduced into the church by the Colobarsians, the Bardesanes, Priscillianists, and Marcionites.49 The early church fathers, however, were proponents of free choice, such as Justin Martyr, Origen, and Eusebius.50 Chapter five is, “Shewing that these late notions, concerning the liberty or rather servitude of the will of lapsed man, were generally condemned by the primitive Christians.”51 The sections are: §1. The apostles and ecclesiastical tradition handed down to the church the freedom of the will from necessity, in opposition to Stoic fate. Whitby cites the following church fathers: Justin Martyr,

42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51

is the height of madness and injustice to hold any person guilty because he did not that which he could not do,” in Two Souls, c. 12. Whitby, Five discourses, 348. Ibid., 350. Ibid. Ibid., 350–1. Ibid., 351. Although he drew on Le Blanc for support of his opinion in chapter 3 (§2), here Whitby interprets Le Blanc’s opinion about “necessity” consisting with “natural liberty” (necessitas agendi naturalem ejus libertatem non tollit) in a way that he associates him with the patrons of necessity. Whitby cites Bishop Bramhall’s citations, in italics, of Hobbes. Thus, Whitby is making use of Bramhall’s in-text quotes of Hobbes. Ibid., 354. Ibid., 357. Ibid., 359–60. Whitby cites Augustine, Heresies, 15. Whitby, Five discourses, 360–3. Ibid., 363.

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Origen, Didymus, Theodoret, Augustine.52 §2. The early Augustine made many arguments against the Manichees with which the early church fathers would have concurred.53 For example, “No souls offend in not being such as they cannot be.”54 The “ancient fathers”—Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Pseudo Clemens, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Pseudo Justin, Tertullian, Theodoret, Hilary, Basil, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, Macarius, Athenagoras, Tatian, Jerome, Alexander of Aphrodisias—gave this rule, that “the necessity of sinning frees men from all fault.” Whitby distinguishes between Origen’s notion of the “necessity of sinning,” in which human flesh imprisons the human soul, and that of the “decretalists,” whose doctrine is far worse, since they impute Adam’s sin to all human posterity.55 §3. Even though the later Augustine renounced what he had formerly said against the doctrine of necessity of the Manichees, the consensus of the early church fathers, and those after him, writes Whitby, was such that Augustine’s earlier opinion was in agreement with the general consensus, which therefore ought not be rejected.56 Whitby ends Discourse Four by summarizing a statement from Augustine’s Free will, “Since no man is compelled to sin by his own nature, or by the nature of another, ‘It remains that every one sins by his own proper will.’”57 Whitby ends with the point whereby he began, namely, that the freedom of the will from necessity concerns humankind’s will, not nature.

7.1.3 Whitby’s argument In Whitby’s argument for freedom of the will, there are six identifiable qualifications that he deems essential for a freedom that is worthy of praise or blame: (1) Free will (autexousia) is neither an act, nor a habit. For an act concerns “the exercise of the will,” and a habit “facilitates” and “inclines” to action. It is “a faculty or power.”58 (2) This freedom concerns lapsed humankind in a state of trial; it does not concern a state of “the perfection of human nature.”59 (3) As a corollary, this freedom is not essential to human beings as such.60 (4) There must be freedom from necessity.61 (5) There must be freedom from a divine “physical 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

Ibid., 363–5. Ibid., 365. Ibid., 366. Ibid., 376–7. Ibid., 381. Whitby’s text inadvertently skips §3, and goes to §4. Ibid., 384. His reference in the footnote is to Augustine, De libero arbitrio, Book 3. c. 16. Whitby, Five discourses, 305. Ibid., 297–299. Ibid., 300. Ibid., 329.

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influx,” which Whitby understands as determining a human act to one choice.62 (6) There must be freedom ad utrumlibet, which is placed in discontinuity with a perfected human freedom in the eternal state.63 We will briefly look at each qualification, followed by a consideration of his claims for support for his doctrine of freedom, and then give a brief analysis of the argument. Free choice (autexousia) Whitby locates the essence of freedom in power and the effective exercise of that power towards an object. The object of the will’s power is either a good that one can pursue, or an evil that one can avoid. This power is a moral power, which concerns moral action, since the question of the discourse concerns humankind in a state of trial. For this reason, lapsed humankind is morally able, not “disabled,” to choose what is “spiritually good,” and to refuse what is “spiritually evil.”64 It will not do to claim that a moral agent has the power to choose otherwise than he or she does, writes Whitby of his opponents, if one’s “exercise” of that power is “obstructed” or “impeded.”65 He directs this comment to his fellowAnglican, Bishop Bramhall, and gives the example of a bird. To claim that humankind retains this power to choose otherwise, but in a way such that the person’s choice is determined to one, is like claiming that “a bird is free to fly when I hold its wings.”66 Whitby opposes centering the argument upon humankind’s nature, since he locates the discussion on the human will. “Nature” recalls the principle that Whitby says Augustine condemned in the Manichees, to wit, that some people were “wicked not by choice, but by nature.”67 Thus, he does not understand nature in the classic and Thomist sense of “natural inclinations for the good,” for self-preservation, for the education of our children, the inclinations of which can be redeemed and perfected.68 Whitby uncouples freedom from nature. He returns to the church fathers and pagan philosophers for support of his view. He makes a disjunction between, on the one hand, natural or moral inclinations that long for the good and beatitude, and, law and command on the other hand. He therefore pitches the debate within a moral law obligation framework.

62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Ibid., 301–2, 313. Ibid., 300, 370. Ibid., 305. Ibid. Ibid., 306. Ibid., 365. In classical Latin idiom, Cicero says that “omnis natura strives to preserve itself,” in Lewis, Studies in Words, 4–5.

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A state of trial The question on freedom of the will concerns “only a lapsed man in a state of trial, probation and temptation.” Whitby wishes to restrict the discussion to a lapsed state wherein humans can answer or reject gospel calls and invitations, and choose life or death. He includes regenerated Christians since they too are subject to temptation.69 He intends by this limitation to eliminate arguments of the opponents derived from the eternal state. The context he sketches for lapsed humans to exercise the power of free will, in a state of trial, fits the context of a moral obligation theory, which demands human freedom of indifference in a context where, for example, there is a tendering of a covenant, wherein one is obliged to choose life or death, and is subject to law and commands.70 Not essential to humankind as such, only to a state of trial This freedom ad utrumlibet is not “essential” to humans as humans, but “only necessary to humans” in a state of trial.71 For Whitby, this freedom is an inferior freedom to that which is perfect. By essential, it appears he means that what remains after the removal of the temporary kind of freedom requisite for trial and probation. Thus, essential freedom is the perfected and consummated freedom that belongs to the saints and angels in heaven, who need no tendered treaty, no promises, no encouragements, since they are “unfrustrably determined to one,” and are moved to do what they do, with complacency.72 And this consummated freedom will no longer be rewardable, according to Whitby. Freedom void of necessity Freedom of the will, for Whitby, cannot consist with a divine determination of the human will to one choice, to the exclusion of an alternate choice, which infallibly induces the human operation of the will, such that he or she cannot fail of acting.73 Whitby frequently refers to this “determination” with the terms used by Bramhall, to wit, “unfrustrable,” “infallible,” or “inevitable.”74 He closely associates divine determination with the notion of the divine influx. Whitby requires freedom from every kind of necessity, without further distinction or refinement. He cites Le Blanc who says that we are free to do something, “if it is in 69 70 71 72 73 74

Whitby, Five discourses, 298–9. Ibid., 301. Ibid., 299. Ibid., 312. Ibid., 344. Ibid., 331, 346, 353.

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our power” and it “may be done otherwise than it is done.” In that place, the necessity that Whitby rejects is that which is “necessary to be done one way which cannot be done otherwise.”75 In his mind, a determination to one good choice, to the exclusion of another good choice, or to one evil, to the exclusion of another respectively, would remove the discussion out of a state of trial—which is the state of the discussion, as he sees it—and into a state of perfection. Freedom from a “divine physical influx” Whitby requires freedom from a “divine physical influx.”76 Whitby can conceives of this influx operating only in an eternal state. He views it as an operation that cannot be frustrated. Only in a state of elect angels can freedom consist with necessitating operations. Whitby conceives of necessitation as either necessitating the human will to act or enabling and persuading it to act. As such, he can only conceive of enablement or persuasion as belonging to a state of trial. Whitby places his finger on the nub of the problem when he says that a physical influx “cannot be resisted.”77 Whitby’s concern is that God’s influx will frustrate the endeavor to resist, and resistance will be overcome. Whereas Heereboord defined freedom ad utrumlibet as physical, that is, natural, Whitby’s notion of freedom is adverse to what is “natural.” It is not as if Whitby misunderstands the term physical, as if it meant “corporeal.”78 He correctly explains it as God moving upon a human soul effecting a change. The problem Whitby has with the notion is that he says it is unwarranted; it has “no foundation in the holy scriptures.”79 Freedom ad utrumlibet is an inferior freedom Whitby considers human freedom ad utrumvis a lesser or inferior freedom that will be “done away” in the eternal state, where they will enjoy a “perfection of human nature.” This is further evident when he defines this freedom as “only” that of a lapsed man in a state of trial. He contends that the early church fathers and classic philosophers had advocated this freedom ad utrumlibet in the first four centuries.80 He quotes church fathers as speaking of potestas ad utrumlibet, 75 76 77 78

Ibid., 345. “Necessarium est quod non potest aliter se habere.” Ibid., 302, 313, 314. Ibid., 313. That “physical” cannot mean corporeal is clear in Baxter who says, “Common love to God and special saving love to God be both acts upon an object physically the same.” Lewis notes, “physically means “in its own nature,” in Lewis, Studies in words, 70–1. 79 Whitby, Five discourses, 314. 80 Ibid., 314, 325–7, 328–9, 350–1, 370.

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“a power to do both.”81 Whitby applies the term “liberty, ad utrumvis,” to angels prior to their being confirmed in a state of goodness, and thus as a requisite condition for a state of trial.82 That this ‘inferior freedom’ does not concern perfected human nature reiterates Whitby’s notion that the state of the question only concerns a state of trial, and it underscores a disjunction, in his mind, between what others would consider natural inclinations, which are at work whether one speaks of a state of trial or not, and freedom of will. In his scheme, one must be free despite natural inclinations, whereas the classic- Thomist model says, one is free because of them. Perfection, for Whitby, refers to consummated freedom in the eternal state.

7.2

Whitby’s claims

This section examines Whitby’s claims of support for his view of freedom, as opposed to ‘Stoic’ freedom, beginning with his claim of support from all the early church fathers in the first three centuries. It is certainly beyond the scope of this study to give a thorough taxonomy of the early church fathers views on human freedom of will, God’s decree and foreknowledge, interpretation of scripture passages for support of one’s views, and so forth—whether before the later Augustine all were libertarians or not.83 But the complexities of determining whether there were early church fathers who held to a classic freedom of perfection scheme, perhaps with affinities with the Stoics, or whether there were those who held to a compatibilist approach, would take us beyond the borders of this study.84 Besides, the classic Reformed freedom scheme saw the need and benefit of drawing on later medieval and post-Reformation developments in order to put together a very robust set of divine prerequisites for discussing freedom, as seen in Heereboord. Whitby claims for support for his notion of 81 Ibid., 370. 82 Ibid., 300. 83 In a recent study of John Edwards’s critique of Whitby’s claim, Jeongmo Yoo’s study shows that John Edwards claimed that there were early church fathers who held that humans “act according to their nature,” and not with a freedom of indifference, namely, Prosper of Aquitaine, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, in Jeongmo Yoo, John Edwards (1637–1716) on Human Free Choice and Divine Necessity: The Debate on the Relation Between Divine Necessity and Human Freedom in Late Seventeenth-Century and Early Eighteenth-Century England, Reformed Historical Theology, 022 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 64, 82, 122; See also, Marcia L. Colish, The Fathers and Beyond: Church Fathers Between Ancient and Medieval Thought, Collected Studies (Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2008). 84 Suzanne Bobzien, Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Marcia L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, Stoicism in Christian Latin Thought Through the Sixth Century, 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1990).

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freedom from all early church fathers in the first four centuries, up to and including the early Augustine, and some classic philosophers. Our interest, therefore, in the following sections, is to explain Whitby’s claims for support from the early church fathers.

7.2.1 Whitby’s claim from the early church fathers Let us summarize and then assess the primary arguments of the early church fathers that Whitby adduces as evidence that “primitive Christians” condemned the recent notion of “liberty or rather servitude of the will of lapsed man.”85 According to Whitby, the following early church fathers place freedom of the will from necessity among the doctrines of the apostles and ecclesiastical tradition. The first four are the references to which Edwards refers in Freedom of Will.86 (1) Justin Martyr says that Christians do not hold to Stoic fate. Rather, one “fares well or ill according to the freedom of his will or choice.”87 (2) Origen says that according to ecclesiastical tradition, “all souls are rational and have free will and choice (liberi arbitrii et voluntas).”88 Thus, there is no coercion “to do good or evil.” (3) This reference to Eusebius is in chapter 4 where Whitby attempts to show the affinity of his opponents to Hobbes, and Stoic fate. “If fate be established, philosophy and piety are overthrown…then no praise, no blame…rather than proceeding from our own free choice.”89 (4) Macarius says, “ … Man is not 85 Whitby, Five discourses, 363. It is beyond the scope of this study to cite and analyze all the authors Whitby does. For example, Whitby says he could add to his list the “large discourse of Origen,” Philocalia. See Origène, Philocalie 21–27 sur le libre arbitre, Sources Chrétiennes (Paris: CERF, 2006). The editor’s résumé says mind-gifted humans have in all cases “the faculty to choose between the good and the bad. Origen adduces many scripture passages to prove the reality of free choice, the condition of moral activity,” 19. Although John Edwards would like to claim, against Whitby, that the early church father Origen did not hold to election based upon foreseen faith, but “predestination is wholly founded on the good will and pleasure of God,” 6; the case is more subtle than that. Origen wrote of attributes of divine foreknowledge: universality, infallibility, atemporality, and possibles. Foreknowledge, however, was not a cause of a future event. In his commentary on Genesis, he made a distinction, “If someone interprets ‘In any case, this will happen,’ in the sense of ‘It is necessary that what is known in advance happens,’ we don’t grant it him. For we don’t say, ‘Since Judas was known in advance before being a traitor, there was an absolute necessity from this that Judas would become a traitor.” He merited the blame, but no one could assign blame if there were a necessity, such that he could not have become like the other apostles, 82, 157–9. (Translation mine). 86 WJE 1: 192. 87 Justin, First Apology, 45. Whitby gives the references to the church fathers in his footnotes, in Five discourses, 363ff. Cf. WJE 1: 192. 88 Origen, First Principles, in proem, in Whitby, Five discourses, 364. WJE 1: 192. 89 Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, c. 6, 363; Cf. WJE 1: 192.

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bound to do evil by any necessity, but has a liberty, to become a vessel of election and life, and they who are acted by the Holy Spirit, are not held under any necessity, but have a liberty to turn themselves, and do what they will in this life.”90 (5) Though there is in the “rational soul power to do evil, it is not evil on that account,” says Didymus Alexandrinus, “but because the will freely uses that power.”91 (6) Augustine teaches this definition of sin, “Sin is the will to obtain or refrain that which justice forbids, and from which it is free for us to obtain.”92 There is no praise and blame “for not doing that which he has no power to do.”93 Whitby concludes the first section by citing Le Blanc and laying down four rules from Augustine. 1. Le Blanc says that “the Reformed teach that men are so depraved by the fall, they cannot but do evil,” which is Augustine’s first rule. 2. That if lapsed people are so depraved, “they offend not in not being good.”94 3. Lapsed people “cannot be blameworthy or worthy of punishment, for not doing that good they cannot do.” 4. “No one is guilty for not having that which he has not received.”95 Whitby then claims the “ancient fathers exactly accord” with Augustine, namely, that “a necessity of sinning frees humans from all fault.96 Pseudo Justin answers the question, “How can God require us to fulfill the law, and not sin, which is beyond our strength?,” since it is manifest that “no man is criminal for not doing that which is beyond his power, and therefore is to him impossible.” Justin answers that “God condemns us not for not doing what is impossible, but for not willing to do what is possible.” Added to this, Whitby adduces Irenaeus, who says the Lord would not ask of us what was not in our power to do; and Tertullian, who holds that God would not have given a law, if it were not in our power to obey it; and Origen, who asks the same question; and Theodoret, who says God cannot justly punish a nature that has it not in his or her power to do good.97 Then Whitby cites Augustine again on sin, from Against Fortunatus, “It is the will to do that from which we have the liberty to abstain.”98 He then adduces Hilary who says, “God has permitted to every man the liberty of life and judgment, laying them under no necessity of doing good or evil (non necessitatem in alterutrum affigens), that he might be rewarded for the goodness of his will.”99 Basil says, “God loves them who do what is right, not from necessity

90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

Whitby, Five discourses, 369. Cf. WJE 1: 192. The footnote reads “Ed. Combes. p. 28,”in Whitby, Five discourses, 364. Augustine, Two Souls, 11, 12. See Whitby, Five discourses, 364. “Qui id non faciat quod facere non potest,” in Two Souls. See Whitby, Five discourses, 364. Augustine, Two Souls, c.12, See Whitby, Five discourses, 365. Augustine, Free Will, Bk 3, c. 15.16. See Whitby, Five discourses, 366. See Whitby, Five discourses, 366. Ibid., 367. Ibid., 368. Hilary, Psalm 21, 662. See Whitby, Five discourses, 368.

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but virtue.”100 He writes, “Virtue arises from choice, not from necessity.”101 Cyril of Alexandria writes, a human being has a “free inclination to what he will choose to do and a freedom from necessity.”102 Whitby claims that Augustine proves Against Felix the Manichee, from scripture, that humans have freedom of will. Therefore a person sins “if he wills, and sins not if he will not,” and “all the fathers accord with him in this;”103 and “There is no true liberty where there is not, a power to do both (potestas ad utrumlibet); nor where we are not masters of our own actions (actionum nostrarum Domini).”104

7.2.2 Whitby’s claim that ‘Calvinists’ show affinities to the ‘Stoics’ Whitby adduces the following evidence to warrant his claim against his adversaries.105 In chapter 4, Whitby claims that his “adversaries,” those of a “Calvinistical persuasion,” have affinities with the Stoic fate of Seneca, the “eternal” and “immutable series of causes,” and the first-century Stoic Epictetus. Whitby cites a verse from Cleanthes, the author of “The Hymn to Zeus.”106 To support his claim, and his view of freedom, Whitby adduces the following authors: Cicero, the academic skeptic, Oenomaus of Gadara, the second-century cynic, and Simplicius, the sixth-century Neo-Platonist.107 An example, likely spoken of in the Roman stoa, shows the irony of free assent. Suppose a dog is tied to the back of a cart. When the cart moves, the dog can “voluntarily” follow, otherwise, the cart will drag him against his will. Laertius, according to Whitby, explains that, likewise, in the case of humans, “If they will not follow fate, they shall by all means be necessitated to come under the laws of fate.”108 Now concerning the wise man and the fool, Seneca says, “the wise man does nothing unwillingly, he avoids necessity by doing willingly what otherwise

100 101 102 103 104 105

Basil, Tome. 1, 362. See Whitby, Five discourses, 369. Basil, Tome. 1, 362. Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julian, Bk 8, 285. See Whitby, Five discourses, 368. Augustine, Against Felix. See Whitby, Five discourses, 370. Whitby, Five discourses, 370. Zacharias Ursinus, Corpus Doctrinae Orthodoxae, Sive Catecheticarum Explicationum., Davidis D. Parei (Heidelberg: Ionae Rhodii, 1616), Sect. De Libero Arbitrio, 56. 106 See Appendix I “Cleanthes’praise of Zeus in his hymn,” in P.A. Meijer, Stoic Theology: Proofs for the Existence of the Cosmic God and of the Traditional Gods, Including a Commentary on Cleanthes’ Hymn on Zeus (Delft, NL: Eburon, 2007), 209ff. 107 Oenomaus’s Kata Chresterion, which was taken up by Eusebius in his Preparation for the Gospel, which Whitby cites, advocated free choice. 108 Whitby, Five discourses, 355. He cites Diogenes Laertius, Liber ined. apud Menaq in illud Stoicorum apud Laertius. Bk 1.7, p. 455.

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she, [fate], would compel him to do.”109 Whitby says his opponents explain that this necessity “proceeds from external and antecedent causes,” which are either (1) the eternal decree of God, or as Seneca says, “a certain law established from eternity,” or (2) an “eternal series of cause,” as Seneca says, and “an immutable series of causes.”110 Whitby says that although the Stoics “took away liberty and contingency,” since those notions do not consist with their theory, the Calvinists “allow them.” But this is no consolation to those who will never receive grace, yet be held accountable.111 Whitby cites Cleanthes’s prayer taken from Epictetus’s Enchiridion. The prayer expresses the sense of the dog and cart example above. Whitby collapses the citation of Cleanthes, dropping from the first line of text Ho Zeus. Whitby records the prayer as: “Lead me, o fate, to that to which thou hast ordained, that I may follow willingly, for if I do not follow so, I shall be compelled to do it.”112 In this way, Whitby makes the claim that the ‘Calvinists’ show an affinity with the Stoic philosophers.

7.2.3 Whitby’s claim for support from philosophers That a “series of causes” is a point of contention between the two schemes is evident in Whitby’s reference to Cicero, who says that such series “rob the soul of its liberty, and leave us nothing in our own power.”113 Presumably, the series and each individual link is void of the kind of contingency we saw in Stapfer. There we 109 Seneca, Epistulae morales, 54. “Necessitatem effugit quia vult quod ipsa coactura est,” in Whitby, Five discourses, 355. 110 Whitby, 355–6. (1) Seneca, De Providentia., c.5 and (2) Seneca, Ad Helviam, c. 8; Seneca, Naturales Quaestiones, c. 36, 37. 111 Whitby, Five discourses, 356–7. 112 Whitby, Five discourses, 355. Whitby reports that the prayer is from Epictetus’ Enchiridion. Cf. the wording of Cleanthes’ verse in Jason L. Saunders, ed., Greek and Roman philosophy after Aristotle, Readings in the History of Philosophy (New York: The Free Press, 1966), 148: “53. Lead me, O Zeus, and lead me, Destiny, Whither ordained is by your decree. I’ll follow, doubting not, or if with will, Recreant I falter, I shall follow still,” verses by Cleanthes, 148; Cf. the translation in Hastings Crossly, trans., “The Golden Sayings of Epictetus,” in Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, The Harvard Classics (New York: P.F. Collier & Son Corporation, 1909, 1937), 179. “52. Lead me, O God, and Thou, O Destiny, Be what it may the goal appointed me, Bravely I’ll follow; nay, and if I would not, I’d prove a coward, yet must follow still!”, verses by Cleanthes. Editor Crossly states that “Epictetus left nothing to writing,” (ibid., 116). Editor Saunders states that the Greek philosopher and historian Arrian “probably compiled” discourses and “The Manual of Epictetus,” as he calls it, (ibid., 133n1). Cf. translator Oldfather’s first line, which reads: “Lead thou me on, O Zeus, and Destiny,” from “The Encheiridion 53,” in W.A. Oldfather, trans., Epictetus: the discourses as reported by Arrian, the manual, and fragments, The Loeb classical library, 218 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 537. 113 Whitby, Five discourses, 357.

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saw that series of events that are freely and contingently represented in the divine mind, previous to the decree, remain free and contingent after the decree, and thus in no way remove human freedom. As with Whitby, Remonstrant Proposition Six says that divine foreknowledge is conditioned and depends upon human free choice, ex natura rei.114 In De Fato, Oenomaus says one cannot reconcile “power in man” with “connection of causes,” which, according to Whitby, introduce “an antecedent and external cause on which they depend.”115 A cause which necessitates action, renders an effect necessary. Again, Whitby ignores distinctions made between the necessary consequent and the necessity of the consequence. There is a push for human action independent from God, and rejection of distinctions of an order of nature, divine influx in a first act, and previous concurrence, which were meant to help explain human dependence upon God, and to guard human freedom. Simplicius’s commentary on Epictetus’s “Handbook” says that no one can be said to act freely who by external causes is necessitated to act, or not to act.” He adds, “those who take away liberty, take away the natural difference between vice and virtue” and leave no place for praise of blame.116

7.3

Observations and analysis

Given that Whitby wrote his Fourth Discourse “On the freedom of the will of man,” at least in part, against the background of the Bramhall-Hobbes debate on liberty and necessity, and that both Whitby and Bishop Bramhall were Anglicans, it makes sense to begin this analysis by making a few observations about their methodological assumptions. In the opening paragraph of his preface to the reader, Bramhall summarizes the problem addressed by highlighting Hobbes’s misunderstandings of the “terms of art,” which belong to the debate. “A necessity upon supposition (which admits a possibility of the contrary),” writes Bramhall, “is mistaken for an absolute and true necessity.”117 Whereas Bramhall makes use 114 Marcia L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, Stoicism in Christian Latin Thought Through the Sixth Century, 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 124–5. Colish writes that Cicero approves of Stoic fate, albeit only with a careful reading of Chrysippus, and the language of proximate and principal causes. For, in human free choice, if fate is understood as an auxiliary or proximate cause, then free will enjoys the role of principle and perfect cause. But these distinctions are absent from Whitby’s method. 115 Whitby, Five discourses, 357. 116 Simplicius, In Epictetus and De Phil Plat. 26; Whitby, Five discourses, 357–8. 117 In the preface, Bramhall responds to Hobbes’s calling him a “learned school divine,” and writes, “The weightier Ecclesiastical controversies will never be understood and stated distinctly, without the help of their necessary distinctions,” in Bramhall works: Castigations,

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of these kinds of medieval scholastic distinctions and terms of art to defend human freedom, Whitby avoids the technical aspects of these scholastic distinctions, and in fact, he notably skips the medieval thinkers, except upon rare occasions, and favors the early church fathers. For his part, Bramhall writes that he prefers “the proper terms of the schools” to Hobbes’ choice to use the vulgar language of the street.118 As in the Hobbes-Bramhall debate, Whitby and Edwards differ on the meaning of the terms—which Edwards calls “terrible epithets,” “unfrustrable,” “inevitable,” and “irresistible.”119

7.3.1 On Whitby’s free choice Whitby’s argument for free choice concerns not just a power, but a moral power, such that freedom with power to choose otherwise is not enough unless it can morally achieve what it purposes to do.120 Both Whitby and Bramhall agree to the classic sense of “free choice” as a faculty or power, which a human agent 734. Bramhall calls these distinctions, “Terms of art,” such as, “subjects and predicates, modes and figures, synthetic and analytic method … liberty of exercise, liberty of specification,” in Bramhall works: A vindication of true liberty, 698; Chappell, ed., Hobbes and Bramhall, 55. Bramhall writes that Hobbes confuses the term “necessity” and that the discussion about God’s determination of events really concerns nothing more than “a necessity of supposition,” and that Hobbes needs to know that causes can operate “freely or contingently;” they can “suspend” concurrence, and thus effects are not “antecedently necessary,” but “free or contingent,” in Chappell, ed., Hobbes and Bramhall, 44–5; Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 652. 118 Bramhall works: Castigations, 733. Cf. WJE: 150, 155, 346, 348, 354, 357, 361, 363, 429, 463. We recall that Edwards also often stated, and sometimes preferred, the “vulgar” or common use of words over against “terms of art.” 119 WJE 1: 430. 120 Whitby, Five discourses, 305. There is, already in Augustine, an indication of a distinction between what can be called a ‘formal’ freedom and a ‘material’ freedom, the former being a neutral power, with which humankind is endowed by their Creator, and the latter a power to achieve the good, which has been severely weakened post lapsus, but which daily is being renovated in believers. Cf. “but the power of achievement comes from God,” in Augustine of Hippo, Concerning the city of God against the pagans, intro. John O’Meara, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 1972), 195; “The freedom of choice which the Creator has conferred in the way of nature upon the rational soul is a neutral power, which can either be exerted to faith or sink into unbelief.” (Liberum arbitrium media vis. Quod liberum arbitrium naturaliter attributum a Creatore animae rationali, illa media vis est, quae vel intendi ad fidem vel inclinari ad infidelitatem potest), in Augustinus, De Spiritu et littera, PL 44: Bk. 1. cap. 32.§58; “The Spirit and the letter,” in John Burnaby, ed. and trans., Augustine: Later works, vol. 8 of The library of Christian classics (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1955), 242. On the distinction between formal and material freedom, see Dekker and Veldhuis, “Freedom and sin: some systematic observations,” 153–61.

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possesses.”121 Whitby has set the boundaries of the question of “free choice” to a state of trial, and thus he has restricted the question to terms of moral action and achievement, opposing ‘the patrons of necessity’ who argued for a non-moral power, as distinguished from act, as a way to maintain their claim that though the will be morally “disabled,” it retains what Whitby calls in this place, “a power of doing otherwise,” or, “a faculty of willing otherwise.”122 Whereas Whitby disallows a moral “disability,” as unacceptable in a state of trial, Bramhall is more nuanced and makes a distinction between the power to act and the moral power to achieve what it purposes to achieve, when he writes that “the liberty of man comes short in the intention of the power.”123 Whitby also criticizes what he believes to be a limitation that a ‘freedom of exercise’ would impose upon humans in a state of trial. Unlike Whitby, Bramhall attributes to humankind the use of both classic distinctions of freedom. A “liberty of exercise” is “the liberty to do or forbear to do the same action, to choose or not to choose the same object, without varying of the kind,” which means, this or that good, this or that evil, respectively.124 Humankind also enjoys a liberty of specification. Unlike the former, this is “a liberty to do and not to do, good and evil, this or that.” With the liberty of specification, humankind can “choose both good and evil.”125 Unlike Whitby, who cited Bramhall’s example of a man holding a bird, which therefore was not free to fly, Bramhall, nevertheless, granted the distinction between power and act, even once the act is determined, if and only if one stated that an agent is “free in sensu diviso, but not in sensu composito.”126 Bramhall brings into the equation the distinction between a non-temporal structural order of nature and a priority of time. This is important for understanding the assertion that God freely created the world, but the distinction also applies to human acts of will. “In the same instant wherein the will elects it is free, according to a priority of nature, though not of time, to elect otherwise. And so in a divided sense, the will is free, even whilst it acts, though in a compounded sense it be not free.”127 Bramhall 121 Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 655; Cf. the similar definition of the term autexousia, “a power which is of itself,” in Te Velde, ed., Synopsis purioris theologiae/ Synopsis of a purer theology, 407–9. 122 Whitby, Five discourses, 305. 123 Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 655. 124 Ibid., 654–5. 125 Ibid. 126 Chappell explains the syntactical feature of the divided sense, as used by Bramhall, which considers the ambiguity of the second clause of a conjunction, such as, “The cause is necessitated and the effect is free.” The second clause, considered as a separate component part—in the divided sense—is contingent in that the effect can not occur, in Chappell, ed., Hobbes and Bramhall, 8fn23. 127 Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 715; Cf. “in mind-gifted agents, however much they be determined to act by God, they nevertheless can suspend the divine influx, the act can be borne to the contrary, in the divided sense,” (Etenim manifestum est agentia ratio-

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uses terms of art to display classic syntactical features of propositions to build the case for non-temporal synchronic moments wherein choices can be made. Bramhall answers the invectives of Hobbes against scholastic distinctions by demonstrating the clarity such distinctions can bring and warning readers of abuse at the hands of those who merely contend about words. Bramhall explains the distinction between a necessary cause and a sufficient cause in relation to an agent’s will. Generally speaking, it is necessary that all acts which proceed from the will be voluntary. In this sense, “The will is a necessary cause of voluntary acts,” that is, their “voluntariness.” “But the will is not a necessary cause of the particular acts themselves.”128 For example, he says, given the supposition that someone wills to write, “It is necessary that his writing be voluntary, because he willeth it.” In the case where there is no given supposition, “It is not necessary that he should write, or that he should will to write.” The reason is that “it was in his own power, whether he would write or not.” Thus, Bramhall concludes that the acts of will are not necessary “before the free agent had determined himself;” and then only given the supposition that the agent wills to do something.129 Whitby, however, misinterprets Bramhall, by citing him as saying that human choice lies under an unacceptable necessity, whereas, in fact, Bramhall is speaking of a “necessity of supposition,”—a hypothetical necessity—which he says “may and doth consist with true liberty, not a real antecedent necessity.”130 He then follows up this section and poses a disjunctive proposition, “Whether every sufficient cause do necessarily effect whatsoever it is sufficient for,” or, “Whether a free agent, when all things are present which are needful to produce an effect, can, nevertheless, not produce it.” One can understand the question in one of two ways, he writes, “either inclusively or exclusively.”131 In the inclusive both/and sense, the question includes and comprehends the components parts of the notion of sufficiency and the agent’s power of will. The parts are not set in opposition to one another. In this both/and sense of sufficiency, the sufficient cause has “both ability and will to produce the effect.” There is a concurrence of both “requisite power and will.” If these conditions are met, he affirms that the “effect will infallibly follow.”132 In the exclusive, either/or sense, the question does not combine the component parts of willing and the notion of sufficiency; the will is not reckoned as a necessary requisite to produce the effect. The truth of the proposition depends

128 129 130 131 132

nalia, quantumvis à Deo ad agendum determinata, posse tamen & influxum suum suspendere & in contrarium ferri in sensu diviso), in Twisse, Vindiciae Gratiae, §17., 193. Bramhall works, Castigations, 841. Ibid. Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 654; Whitby, Five discourses, 352. Bramhall works, Castigations, 841. Ibid. Bramhall gives the Latin idiom, “Posit causi ponitura effectus.”

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upon the necessary opposition of the two parts. The agent has power, but there is no willing. Thus, in this either/or disjunction, the will, as one of the two component parts, is considered separately from the notion of sufficiency. In this case,writes Bramhall, it is “infallibly true that the effect cannot be produced.” That is, the effect can not be produced.133 In fact, Bramhall began his first discourse on liberty and necessity with a disjunctive proposition, which he took in the exclusive either/or sense. “Either I am free to write this discourse for liberty against necessity, or I am not free.”134 On this same argument, in another place, Bramhall made the further distinction that “the concurrence of the will is needed to the production of every free effect, and yet the cause may be sufficient, in sensu diviso, although the will do not occur.”135 Given that the “concurrence of the will is not predetermined, there is no antecedent necessity, before it do concur, and when it hath concurred, the necessity is but hypothetical, which may consist with liberty.”136 In effect, Bramhall has used terms of art to display syntactical features of propositions in order to support the classic contention that there is a synchronic and contingent alternate possibility in the concurrence of the will.

7.3.2 On Whitby’s state of trial Bramhall understood “a liberty from necessity,” that is, from “necessitation,” as a “universal immunity from all inevitability and determination to one.”137 We saw above that, whereas Bramhall granted both “a liberty of specification” and “a liberty of exercise,”138 Whitby restricted freedom of exercise from being a requisite condition for human freedom in a state of trial. In his view, freedom of 133 134 135 136 137

Ibid. Chappell, ed., Hobbes and Bramhall, 1; Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 649. Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 718. Ibid. Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 654; Chappell, ed., Hobbes and Bramhall, 1; Cf. “determinare” under “Glossary of concepts and terms,” in Te Velde, ed., Synopsis of a purer theology, 605; Cf. Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 31–33, 114, 177, 179, 185. In the introduction, the editors discuss divine determination and how it can consist with human freedom, 31–33. In chapter 6, on Francis Turretin, we see Turretin speak of freedom in a way similar to, yet different, from Bramhall. Both make the same scholastic distinctions on the principle of human election of acts, understood in the divided sense, in the first act. Yet there are differences. Whereas Turretin states that human freedom enjoys an “immunity from coercion and physical necessity,” and that humans are dependent upon God, and thus not free from “extrinsic necessity” (p. 185), Bramhall insists on independence from God in the sense of freedom from extrinsic necessity and from a “predetermination of the concurrence of the will,”—without distinction—which also is evident in the title of Bramhall’s discourse, A vindication of true liberty from antecedent and extrinsical necessity. Cf. Bramhall works, a vindication of true liberty, 718–9. 138 Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 654–5.

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exercise belonged to a freedom of perfection, a state of heaven, and thus to a context outside the question at hand. The problem Whitby had with a liberty of exercise is that he associated it with a freedom of perfection, as God and the good angels exercised, which implied a limited range of choices, unacceptable for the discussion of human freedom in a state of trial. As he saw it, the divine determination of human choices “to one” choice, the elect to conversion, the reprobate to evil, to the exclusion of an another choice (in contradistinction to conceiving of a possible alternate choice, respectively), was an unacceptable consequence.139 Unlike Whitby, Bramhall viewed the attribution of both kinds of liberty to humans as giving them a broader range of options than God and good angels have, “whose object is only good.”140 “The liberty of man is more large in the extension of the object, which is both good and evil,” writes Bramhall. But, unlike Whitby, Bramhall recognizes a limitation in human power, “The liberty of man comes short in the intention of the power;” that is, humans cannot morally achieve the good they pursue, due to the distraction of their “sensitive appetites.” Unlike God and good angels, “Man is not so free in respect of good only.”141

7.3.3 On Whitby’s freedom void of necessity Hobbes states that the following “definition of a free agent” implies “a contradiction and is nonsense.” It is, he writes, as if one were to say that “the cause may be sufficient, that is, necessary, and yet the effect not follow.” I hold that ordinary definition of a free agent [to imply a contradiction], namely that a free agent is that which, when all things are present which are needful to produce the effect, can nevertheless not produce it.142

That which Hobbes holds to be nonsense is, according to Bramhall, the classic definition of “philosophers and schoolmen,” which, Bramhall says, he himself acknowledges “with little variation.” What Hobbes denies, Bramhall affirms, namely, that the will has power “to forbear willing what it doth will, to will what it doth not will.” To deny these powers to the will implies that, as Hobbes holds, “the will is necessitated extrinsically to every act of willing.”143 139 Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 655; Whitby appears to confuse the explanations of freedom of exercise and freedom of specification with each other. He uses only the one technical term, “liberty of specification,” but he juxtaposes it with “liberty of contrariety,” which is one and the same, in Whitby, Five discourses, 331. 140 Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 655. 141 Ibid. 142 Chappell, ed., Hobbes and Bramhall, “Hobbes’ treatise Of liberty and necessity,” §32; Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 718. 143 Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 719.

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Bramhall affirms that The will has a dominion over its own acts, to will or nill without extrinsical necessitation, if the power to will be present in actu primo [as a first actuality], determinable by ourselves, then there is no necessary power wanting in this respect to the producing of the effect.144

There is confusion on Hobbes’s part over what “all things present which are needful to produce the effect” means, that is, what the requisite conditions are to produce the effect.145 Bramhall points out that Hobbes thinks that one of these needful things must be “the actual determination of the will.”146 Bramhall disagrees. He gives examples of what needs to be present, such as “all necessary power either operative or elective.” He adds, “all necessary instruments,” both “extrinsical and intrinsical.”147 In the case with which he opened his discourse, “Either I am free to write this discourse,…or I am not free,” among the requisite items are pen, ink, paper, desk, and the free use of his hand. Bramhall then makes the decisive distinction between the power to produce the effect and the act itself, that is, the distinction between “the actual production” and “the producibility of the effect.”148 Since the power is present in actu primo, there is no lacking of power “in this respect to produce the effect.”149 Thus, whereas Bramhall distinguishes power from act, Hobbes conflates producibility and production into one, and therefore claims the definition to be nonsense. Bramhall goes on to say that the words “to produce or not to produce, have reference to the effect.” It is the distinction between “a thing to be done” and “already done.”150 “Once the will has actually concurred with all other causes and conditions, and circumstances, then the effect is no more possible, or producible, but it is in being, and actually produced.”151 Bramhall puts his finger on the problem when he says that Hobbes 144 On the term, actus primus, editor Chappell explains that Bramhall is invoking the “Aristotelian distinction between different levels or degrees of actuality. A first actuality is a particular disposition to perform a specific kind of action, as opposed to (a) the exercise of such a disposition or the performance of an action of that kind (this is a second actuality) and (b) a general capacity to form such dispositions or to perform actions of some broader kind (this is a mere potentiality). See Aristotle, De Anima, II.I:412a22–8,” in Chappell, ed., Hobbes and Bramhall, A defence of true liberty, 85; Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 719. Cf. the term ”actus,” in the “Glossary of concepts and terms,” whence the crucial comment which applies to Hobbes’s position, namely, “Christian thought abandons the notion of necessary realization of potencies,” in Te Velde, ed., Synopsis of a purer theology, 603. 145 Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 719. 146 Ibid. 147 Ibid. 148 Ibid. 149 Ibid. 150 Ibid. 151 Ibid.

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“takes away the subject of the question,” that is, the agent who has a will and dominion over his or her own acts.152 Both Bramhall and Whitby propose a freedom of will without extrinsic and antecedent necessity. But the similarities end there on this point. Whereas there is no room for necessity in Whitby’s definition of freedom, there is a place for a certain kind of necessity, which Bramhall carefully distinguishes in his definition, since he says that when the will concurs, “the necessity is but hypothetical.” In Whitby’s case, there is an omission of medieval and post-Reformation scholastic distinctions, and a preference to rely rather on the testimony of the early church fathers. Bramhall takes up the dictate of common sense, to wit, that “nothing can begin to be without a cause,” which Hobbes has put forth as an appeal to the commonsense understanding of words. In other words, for Hobbes, someone would be negligent or lack an ability to think if he or she were to conceive of the matter otherwise. But Bramhall replies that this is an “imaginative reason” on his part, since a thing “may begin to act of itself without any other cause,” placing the accent on “to act” in contradistinction with “to be.” Although it is true that nothing can begin without a cause, many things can and do begin “without necessary causes.” For there are “free causes,” that is, free from extrinsic determination.153 When Whitby claims that there is affinity between his adversaries and Hobbes and Stoic fate, he cites Bramhall’s quote of Hobbes’s opinion that necessity is “a consequent of the divine decree.” Bramhall had responded to Hobbes that not only was necessity a consequent of God’s decree, but so was liberty; “liberty is consistent with God’s decrees.” Unlike Whitby, who claims that the early Augustine was responsible for introducing the doctrine of necessity into Christian teaching, and that the early church fathers of the first four centuries condemned Stoic necessity, Bramhall had a more nuanced understanding of Augustine. Hobbes had referred to Augustine and explained the difference between God’s will and prescience in two of Augustine’s statements, “‘What God willeth shall necessarily be’, (that is according to an absolute antecedent necessity)” and “‘What God foreknows shall truly be’, (that is only by a necessity of infallibility).”154 The latter necessity was, according to Bramhall, also known as the necessity of consequence. In his controversy with Hobbes, Bramhall referred the reader to Augustine’s statement in De civitate Dei:

152 Ibid. 153 Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 721; Cf. WJE 1: 181–183. 154 Whitby, Five discourses, 351; Bramhall works, Castigations, 829. Bramhall refers to Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber (On the literal interpretation of Genesis: an unfinished book), Bk. 6. c. 15.

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Neither is that necessity to be feared, which the Stoics fearing, were careful to distinguish the causes of things, so that some they subtracted from necessity, some they subjected to necessity. And in those which they would not have to be under necessity, they placed our wills, lest they should not be free if they were subjected to necessity.155

Augustine goes on to clarify that if “necessity” in the case of humans involves what is not in their control, achieving its purpose whether they will or not, then their wills, by which they lead a good life or a bad, “are not under such a necessity.”156 Contrary to Whitby’s claims, Bramhall had pointed out that Hobbes’s universal necessity was not shared by the “Stoics, the great patrons of necessity.” Nor did the Stoics “countenance necessity to the prejudice of the liberty of the will.”157 To support his claim that there is affinity between the patrons of necessity and Hobbes and the Stoics, Whitby cites as evidence the Reformed thinker, Zacharias Ursinus (1534–83), whose opinion he rejects.158 Whitby’s own in-text paraphrase of Ursinus’s opinion on the theme of freedom of the will is, “The liberty of the will consists not in a freedom from necessity, but only in a freedom from co-action or compulsion.”159 However, although Whitby gives the modal operator “potest” in his footnote, he doesn’t translate it. “Potest,” or, “can,” modifies the verb consistere, and Ursinus thereby points to the logic of how it is possible (potest) that freedom rhyme with necessity. Thus, Whitby differs from Ursinus on the crucial point of using the modal operator potest. Ursinus’s original statement is: Freedom is called voluntary or spontaneous, which is opposed to involuntary and coercion. But freedom is not opposed to what is necessary. For what is voluntary can consist with what is necessary, but not with that which is involuntary.160

155 156 157 158 159

Bramhall works, Castigations, 829; Augustine, De civitate Dei, Bk. 5. c.10. Ibid. Bramhall works, Castigations, 829. Whitby, Five discourses, 351. “ἑκούσιον quod est liberum potest consistere cum ἀναγκαίῳ, sed non cum ἀκουσίῳ,” in Whitby, Five discourses, 351n(k). 160 The key terms in Ursinus’s text, which Whitby cited, are: ἑκούσιον (voluntarily or spontaneous), ἀκουσίῳ (involuntarily), ἀναγκαίῳ (Necessarily). The source Whitby is citing is Ursinus’s Corpus Doctrinae Orthodoxae: “Liberum enim vocatur ἑκούσιον, hoc est, spontaneum: quod opponitur ἀκουσίῳ, hoc est, involuntario & coacto, non autem ἀναγκαίῳ seu necessario. Potest enim ἑκούσιον consistere cum ἀναγκαίῳ sed non cum ἀκουσίῳ: ut Deus & sancti angeli, ἀναγκαίως, hoc est, necessario sunt boni: non men άκουσίως, hoc est, coacte, sed liberrime: quia principium bonitatis habent in seipsis, liberam voluntatem,” in Zacharias Ursinus, Corpus doctrinae orthodoxae, sive catecheticarum explicationum., Davidis D. Parei (Heidelberg: Ionae Rhodii, 1616), 56. Ursinus, Corpus doctrinae orthodoxae, 56.

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7.3.4 On Whitby’s freedom from the divine influx In the beginning of his discourse, Whitby cites a statement by Bramhall in order to underscore his own point that the freedom of the will, in a state of trial, is not free if God “determines” one’s choice only to “the good” by “the divine influx,” “infallibly inducing” someone to act in one way, so that he or she “cannot fail of acting.”161 First, Whitby claims that this action takes the human being out of a state of trial and places him in a state of perfection, like the angels, since he or she must do what the “divine impulse doth incite him to do.” Second, he claims that the “schools” confirm this idea, namely, that the pursuit of happiness is not free, since one cannot choose otherwise. Third, those who combine this notion of divine influx and determination of an agent to choose one and no other, with the notion that there is an “incapacity” in humans to do good, “through the fall,” but “evil only,” reduce humans to the status of devils, who are determined to evil in general. Whitby says some suppose that this “incapacity” is the condition of those with a “hardness of heart.” But this proves the contrary, he writes, namely, that this is an acquired state of “fallen” humans, not their “natural” state.162 It is the “consequent of a course of sin,” not a determination by God, which would abuse the grace of God which was sufficient to prevent the fall. Whitby then cites Bramhall for support of his argument. The context of Bramhall’s statement was a question posed by Hobbes, whether “hardness of heart” had not been as easily derived from God’s permission (withholding his grace), as from his “positive decree,” to which Bramhall answered, “No.” Unlike Whitby, Bramhall had proceeded to distinguish between “the necessity of consequence,” which he associated with the notion of “infallibility,” and “the necessity of consequent,” which he associated with the notion of “causal necessity.”163 We recall that Whitby links the “infallible” inducement of a divine influx with a necessity that belongs to a state of perfection, not a state of trial. Bramhall, however, had distinguished “infallibility” as a feature of the “necessity of consequence,” which could consist both with God’s withholding his grace or a positive decree, as per Hobbes’s query.164 Thus, whereas Bramhall had equated the notion of “infallibility” with the terms, “necessity of consequence,” and “hypothetical necessity,” which could consist with the notions: a “determination to one,” “divine influx,” and freedom of will, Whitby confuses “infallibility” with an absolute determination of an act to one, and with a “necessity of consequent.” 161 162 163 164

Whitby, Five discourses, 301–2. Ibid., 302. Bramhall works, Castigations, 745. Cf. “necessity of infallibility: a necessity on supposition of divine foreknowledge,” in Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 39.

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He restricts the applicability of the terms, infallibility and divine influx, to the future state of perfection and glory. Bramhall, however, had stated that Aristotle’s dictum, “Whatsoever is, when it is, necessarily is as it is” was only a “necessity of consequence,” not a “necessity of consequent.” Thus, though an agent had elicited an act, and determined an action, which infallibly occurred, “yet if the agent did determine freely, the action likewise is free.”165 As a result, unlike Bramhall, Whitby removes the possibility of reconciling a “divine influx” with free will. This is due, in part, to Whitby’s equating the terms “infallible,” “unfrustable,” “inevitable,” with the notion of absolute necessity, rather than incorporating syntactical features such as the component part of a disjunctive proposition, in the divided sense, when considering the concurrence of causes, as Bramhall had done.166 Whitby alleges a likeness between the patrons of necessity—the ‘Calvinists’— and Hobbes. In support of his allegation, Whitby turns to Bramhall’s extended quotation of Hobbes’s view of the decree of God—“the concourse of causes, whereof every one is determined to be such as it is by a like concourse of former causes.”167 Whitby’s point is that, either the patrons of necessity propose the absurdity that while the effect is determined, the cause remains undetermined; or hold to “a connexion of causes as the Stoics did.”168 Bramhall had resolved the problem which he believed Hobbes’s “concatenation or concourse of causes” posed differently than Whitby. Bramhall had distinguished between God’s “decree itself” and the “execution of the decree.”169 Bramhall had answered Hobbes by adducing the scholastic distinction between, on the one hand, God’s “knowledge of vision,” which is God “seeing” what he has decreed—in which sense it is God’s “speculative knowledge”—and, on the other hand, God’s “knowledge of approbation, or practical knowledge,” which is “knowledge joined by an act of the will.” The latter is “the cause of things, as the knowledge of the artist is the cause of his work.”170 In a further response to Hobbes’s “concourse of causes,” Bramhall held to “a contingent concurrence of natural causes.” There are many effects produced, “which otherwise had never been produced.” They are contingent, not necessary; that is, “they do not proceed from a continued connexion and succession of

165 166 167 168 169 170

Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 707; Chappell ed., Hobbes and Bramhall, 13. Whitby, Five discourses, 353. Whitby, Five discourses, 356; Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 665. Whitby, Five discourses, 356. Bramhall works, 666. Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 666; On scientia approbationis, which concerns God’s knowledge of the elect, the concept of which originated in early Franciscan tradition, see Beck, Voetius, 271fn33.

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necessary causes, which is directly contrary to Hobbes’s opinion.”171 The patrons of necessity, according to Whitby, claim that whereas the Stoics remove liberty and contingency, they hold on to them. Whitby views this as an empty claim, since he thinks they deprive humans of liberty in spiritual and moral matters. Bramhall, however, had given a more refined argument, having explained how human liberty, in moral choices, could consist with necessity, that is, a necessity of supposition, or, hypothetical necessity. “The will is determined morally,” wrote Bramhall, “when some object is proposed to it with persuasive reasons and arguments to induce it to will.” The will is moved “intrinsically” and is “only a necessity of supposition.”172 The will is moved “freely and indeterminately.”173 In sum, we can draw the following conclusions from the Hobbes-Bramhall debate and how Whitby appropriated the terms of their debate. Whitby prefers to use the vulgar, quotidian notions of liberty and necessity in contradistinction to Bramhall, who made much more use of scholastic terms of art. Both Hobbes, and later Whitby, evince a disdain for the schools so-called “barbarous” speech, as Whitby calls it.174 Whitby also prefers to make his claims based on his reading of the early church fathers. This choice results in Whitby placing human freedom of will in opposition to necessity, without further distinction or refinement of the meaning of the term necessity. Bramhall had distinguished absolute necessity from necessity of supposition and consequence, otherwise called hypothetical necessity, which can logically consist with humankind’s free choice. He had elaborated on how this was possible, thanks to syntactical features of propositions, such as reading a proposition in a way that distinguishes its component parts, and reads each part in the divided sense, in contradistinction with the compounded sense. We now turn to examine first Edwards’s reply to Whitby’s claims for support from the early church fathers; second, Edwards’s answer to the charge of Stoic fate; third, Edwards’s reply to the ‘Arminian’ set of conditions requisite for freedom; and fourth, Edwards’s reply to what he calls three ‘Arminian’ evasions.

171 172 173 174

Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 722–3. Bramhall works, A vindication of true liberty, 666–7. Ibid., 667. Whitby, Five discourses, 331.

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Edwards’s replies to Whitby’s claims

7.4.1 Edwards’s reply to Whitby’s claim for support from early church fathers In Freedom of Will, Edwards cites four of the numerous early church fathers which Whitby cites, namely, Origen, Justin Martyr, Eusebius, and Macarius.175 Unlike the other three, the quote from Eusebius is from Whitby’s chapter 4, which intends to show the affinities of the opponents with the ‘Stoics’. Edwards reply to Origen, Justin Martyr, Eusebius, and Macarius can briefly be sketched as follows. Their claim that the soul acts by its own choice and is free to incline whichever way, freedom ad utrumlibet, he rejects as guilty of an argument “in infinitum.”176 There is, in Edwards’s view, a free choice before the first free act, which is a contradiction. It is, in principle, in contradistinction to Edwards’s notion of the stronger the bias, the freer one is. Their freedom ad utrumlibet either means (1) that an agent has power to will, as he or she does will—which is the same as to say, whatever is, is. Or it means (2) an agent has power to will as he or she pleases, he or she has “power by one act of choice, to choose another; by an antecedent act of will to choose a consequent act.” It appears that Edwards shuffles the question. Where, then, asks Edwards, is the freedom in the prior act located? In the act prior to that, in infinitum? If so, in Edwards’s view, it would be located nowhere. On this topic, in 1755, students at Princeton had to defend these metaphysic’s theses: Metaphysics thesis 2. ”There is no infinite regression in successive causes.”177 We reported from the Notebook, (in chapter 6 §6.2), that Edwards would ask, “If a chain hung down from heaven to earth, ‘What held up that chain?’” Not an infinite number of links. Edwards argues that no event can be a cause of its own being. The effect is not prior to its cause. The P1755 Metaphysics theses 5 and 6 argued, as follows, “There is no determination of the will without a moving cause. Therefore, the power of determining itself does not belong to the will.”178 Edwards’s identifies the problem of freedom ad utrumlibet as consisting in the infinite regression in successive causes. We examine his own theory of freedom, which is a will-based theory of causality (in chapter 8). Augustine is referred to in another section of Freedom of Will in a reference to Augustine by Whitby, whom Edwards quotes. The quote includes the Latin text of Augustine, a quo liberum est abstinere, which Whitby transcribed and translated. “St. Austin [Augustine] lays down this as the true definition of sin, in Against 175 WJE 1:192. 176 Ibid., 194. 177 PUL P1755 theses broadside. Metaphysicae 2. “In causis successivis non sit progressio infinita.” See chapter 1 §1.2.10 178 Ibid. PUL P1755 Metaphysics thesis 5. “Voluntatis determinatio, sine causa movente, non datur.” 6. “Ergo, voluntati, sese determinandi, potestas non competit.” See chapter 1 §1.2.4

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Fortunatus, that it is the will to do that from which we have the liberty to abstain.”179 Edwards’s quote from Whitby also includes Origen. Thus, we have two places in Edwards’s Freedom of Will where he comments on the early church fathers. Edwards replies to Whitby, who claims that a free act must be free from coaction and from necessity, adducing support from Augustine’s and Origen’s concerns for culpability.180 In the example of Augustine on sin, one is free to abstain, thus there is culpability, not coercion. But Edwards introduces a kind of necessity that can consist with freedom, such as in the culpability of Judas.181 He freely sinned, yet Christ had foretold his betrayal. This is a necessity Edwards makes much of in his Freedom of Will, the necessity of the consequence, of a decree or prophecy. But Whitby interprets this as the necessity of sinning, which he bans from his scheme. If all necessity, according to Whitby’s requisite, must be removed for praise and blame, then Judas was blameless, unless one wants to accuse Christ of not knowing what he was saying about Judas’s future actions. In sum, Edwards’s understanding of necessity fits his scheme of moral necessity, to wit, the stronger the moral bias, and in the case of sin, the more guilty one is. This notion runs directly and proportionately counter-intuitively to Whitby’s Arminian principles.182 Edwards’s understanding of Arminian freedom locates “sovereignty” in the human will, which “determines itself.”183 Edwards sees a logical inconsistency in this notion of self-determination. This is his argument. Self-determination supposes a first act of the will whereby it chooses or refuses. But how can there be a first act of the will if the will is determined by itself ? For determining implies an act of will, which then would be antecedent to the first act. But if that is the case, then there is no first act, but a series of prior determinate acts of will. In other words, Edwards understands self-determination in a causal sense.184 The principle of sufficient reason, such that every effect has a cause, is the same principle he used to reply to the Arminian notion that there could be known-future events without a cause to make them future. Unlike his understanding of a structural order of nature, seen in Heereboord and Stapfer, applied to divine causality and knowledge by logically ordering divine knowledge of possible states of affairs “prior” to the divine decree, and ordering divine knowledge of what he has decreed “after” the decrees, Edwards declines to 179 WJE 1: 295. Cf. Whitby, Five discourses, c. 5, sect. 2, 368. Whitby also cites Augustine’s definition of sin in the beginning of chapter 5, (§1), 363, only in that place, albeit another work, from Two Souls, 11, 12. 180 WJE 1: 295. 181 Ibid., 296. 182 Ibid., 297. 183 Ibid., 164. 184 WJEO 27 “Controversies,” Notebook, Predestination Part V, (The paragraphs beginning with “Their notion of liberty”). Cf. WJE 1: 141 “Concerning the determination of the will.”

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apply a structural order of nature to human volition. Instead he invokes the theory of causality and principle of sufficient reason to dismiss what he calls three Arminian evasions.185 We will consider these evasions after the next section.

7.4.2 Edwards’s reply to some aspects of ‘Stoic’ doctrine Edwards’s direct reply to Whitby as well as the limits of his appropriation of ‘Stoic’ doctrine are found in Freedom of Will, Part 4, sections 6 and 12. Edwards expresses a guarded admiration for the “ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, and especially the Stoics,” for maintaining many important truths.186 The Stoics, he says, were the “greatest, wisest, and most virtuous of all the heathen philosophers.”187 Edwards believes that “the light of nature and reason,” in the wisest of the heathen, “harmonized with and confirms the gospel of Jesus Christ.”188 In his guarded response to what he understands as ‘Stoic’ doctrine, he insists that he rejects any fate that is opposed to his scheme of liberty, which consists in “doing as we please.”189 In defense of his scheme, Edwards insists on the use of “advantage,” “benefit,” the use of “means and endeavors,” which he believes are lost in the ‘Arminian’ contingence of volition.190 Ironically, while Whitby fears human endeavor would be overcome by God’s ‘physical influx’— thus he rejects it—Edwards believes endeavor to seek the good would be completed and perfected. Thus, Edwards rejects “universal fatality,” instead he espouses a freedom that enjoys “perfection, dignity, privilege, and benefit.”191 We attempted to make the case in chapter 6 that Edwards’s transcriptions of Stapfer show great interest in “series of causes.” It should come as no surprise then that Edwards embraces a ‘Stoic’ series of events. In the context of discussing Stoic doctrine, he refers to what is now quite familiar,

185 WJE 1:183. 186 Ibid., 372. On pagan moral thought in the Harvard curriculum and the acceptance, including Edwards’, of the prisca theologia, see Fiering, Moral philosophy, 11–22. 187 WJE 1:372. 188 Ibid. Cf. Pinckaers, Sources,138–9; ET, 125. He points to St. Paul’s qualified appropriation of Cicero, Seneca, and Plotinus. Cf. Colish, The Stoic tradition, 337. She refers to Taurus the Stoic who speaks of nature implanting instincts, which grow, incline a person, and then he or she reaches an age of reason. Cf. the appropriation of the notion of “seeds of virtue” by Heereboord, Turretin, and Van Mastricht in chapter 9 §§ 9.3.2–.3.4. 189 WJE 1: 373. 190 Ibid. 191 Ibid., 374.

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The doctrine of necessity, which supposes a necessary connection of all events, on some antecedent ground and reason of their existence, is the only medium we have to prove the being of God.”192

Edwards’s strategic interest is in the idea of a series of events or a nexus of states of affairs. Stapfer envisions God willing a sequence of events that includes metaphysical contingency of individual events. Edwards’s transcript includes Leibniz’s term, in signo rationis, on the structural order of nature and “synchronism” of decrees. In language reminiscent of Whitby’s charge in chapter four of his Discourses—showing the affinities of his adversaries concerning liberty with that of Hobbes and the fate of the philosophers—Edwards believes that, “the Stoic philosophers, whom the Calvinists are charged with agreeing with, were no atheists, but the greatest theists, and nearest akin to Christians” concerning “the unity and perfections of the Godhead, of all the heathen philosophers.”193 It is their “doctrine of necessity, which supposes a necessary connection of all events,” which interests Edwards, as well as the related principle of sufficient reason for all these events, “the only medium we have to prove the being of God.”194 Edwards makes his case for the Stoics by arguing from the principle of sufficient reason, that nothing happens without a reason why it should be so, rather than otherwise, and its corollary, Nihil est sine ratione.195 Nothing comes to pass without a cause and there cannot be more in the effect than in the cause. In chapter nine, we will examine the The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, written in the years 1715–6, and attempt to establish the case that The Correspondence, and the technical terms which they discussed, played an important role in Edwards’s writing of Freedom of Will. Leibniz had pointed out the denial by Epicurus of the “great principle” of sufficient reason, without which “one cannot prove the existence of God,” which is a point that Edwards also makes.196 In chapter ten we examine these principles in greater detail. Suffice it to say here, Edwards sides 192 WJE 1: 420. Cf. P.A. Meijer, Stoic Theology: Proofs for the Existence of the Cosmic God and of the Traditional Gods, Including a Commentary on Cleanthes’ Hymn on Zeus (Delft, NL: Eburon, 2007), 124. Cf. “there must be something most perfect since an infinite sequence of perfect beings is impossible,” in Adam Drozdek, Greek Philosophers as Theologians: The Divine Arche (Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 239. 193 WJE 1: 420. The Stoics were known as the “Theists,” and the Epicureans as the “Atheists.” On the massive publishing of classical authors, see Rivers, Reason, grace, and sentiment, 2: 92. The affinity in language between Collins and Edwards is noteworthy. Cf. WJE 1:420 and Anthony Collins, A Philosophical inquiry concerning human liberty (London: R. Robinson, Golden Lion, St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1717), 59–61, 185ff. 194 WJE 1: 420. 195 Ibid., 181, 183, 420. Edwards himself refers back to these sections. 196 LCC: (Leibniz’s fourth paper §18), (Clarke’s fourth reply, §18), (Leibniz’s fifth paper, §70 and §§125–126, §128, §130 on chance, blind necessity, and the denial of the great principle of sufficient reason by Epicurus. Cf. WJE 1: 420.

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with the ‘Stoic’ doctrine of there being no chance and accident in the universe, and against “Epicurus,” at least as he understood him, “that chief father of atheism…the greatest maintainer of contingence.”197

7.4.3 Edwards’s reply to the ‘Arminian’ set of conditions requisite for freedom A strong point of Edwards’s freedom of perfection scheme is the inherent continuity the scheme brings as he applies it to all three states: a lapsed state, a state of regeneration, and an eternal state. Edwards’s scheme attempts to expose the problem that he sees with Whitby’s view of freedom of indifference. For instance, the law is seen as placing someone under obligation. His or her obedience no longer naturally flows from the habits of a heart, which has grown to love God over many years, but rather now law obligates, commands, and fixes the requisites of trial, which is what Edwards finds so averse in Whitby. But this is precisely the context of Edwards’s exposition in Freedom of Will on Jesus’ holiness, which is necessary, yet to be praised. Edwards’s reply to Whitby is that if ever there was anyone who was in a state of trial, under promises and commands, and who acted necessarily and yet in a manner worthy of praise, it was Christ. In other words, necessity can consist with law. Thus Edwards dismisses Whitby’s notion that an agent proves genuine freedom only when in a state of trial, given his particular ‘Arminian’ requisites. Edwards’s scheme, as we have seen, is very much in line with Pinckaers description of habits of the heart, natural inclination, and the seeds of virtues which grow and perfect freedom over time. Edwards’s scheme of freedom of moral perfection has not reduced law and command to a state of trial, void of necessity. His scheme of habits of growth and strength of inclination applies to both a pilgrim in a state of trial and in a state of glory. Whereas Heereboord had juxtaposed natural and moral freedom, applying “natural” to pilgrims on earth in a state of trial, who enjoyed freedom ad utrumlibet, applying “moral” to the saints in a state of glory, Edwards applies both “natural” and “moral” necessity to pilgrims in a state of trial. This application by Edwards was in contradistinction to Whitby’s scheme.

197 WJE 1: 420. On the Stoic doctrine of a “causal nexus,” which forms part of Edwards’s theory of freedom, see Colish, The Stoic Tradition, 31.

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7.4.4 Edwards’s reply to three ‘Arminian’ evasions Edwards’s notion of willing is that the will determines itself in the very act of willing; “It directs and limits the act of the will.”198 When he considers the Arminian notion of self-determining power, Edwards conceives of three “evasions” from his idea of freedom, all of which juggle the relation of time to causality. The different aspects of time and causal order can be differentiated by synchronicity within a structural order of nature, and by simultaneity, or concurrence, without a structural order of nature. The evasions of his opponents arrange these elements in one of three ways, either (1) the determining act structurally precedes an act of volition such that the two acts occur in a synchronized manner. In Edwards’s terms, the one act is prior in “the order of nature” to the other act, but not in “the order of time.”199 Or, (2) the determining act does not structurally precede the act of volition, the two acts occur simultaneously. As Edwards says, there is, in effect, no distinction between the two acts, they are elicited and occur concurrently. And, (3) a contingent act occurs without a cause, not even contingently caused. The act of volition comes to pass without a cause.200 The determining act structurally precedes an act of volition In his analysis, Edwards gives some illustrations that, in his mind, show that evasion (1) runs into difficulty by its inability to escape a distinct prior cause, or series of causes. If a determining act structurally precedes the act “it will not help the case.” Interestingly, he adds, “though it should be allowed,” thereby showing his familiarity with a non-temporal structural order. Nevertheless, he does not make use of the non-temporal understanding of a “structural order of nature.” For Edwards, if one speaks of something prior, then what is prior in the structural order is a “cause or ground of its existence.” But he does not accept a prior cause if it means that cause is external to the agent in question. For him, the essence of a cause is internal, not external. He illustrates this internal/external distinction by way of an architect who is distinct from the house he builds, or a father who is distinct from his son. The problem, as he sees it, is the infinite regress of prior, even structurally ordered causes which regress to a first cause in a series of causes, which by his reckoning is a first, determining cause that lies outside of an essential, internal cause.

198 WJE 1:176. 199 Ibid., 177. 200 Ibid.

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But this is a different interpretation of the non-temporal structural order than we have seen in Part One. Edwards interjects the notion of an internal/external relational distinction into the series of causes. But this distinction ought not imply independence from the first cause, which is God and his decree. The possibility inherent in the structural order of nature is that one can conceive of logically ordered causes, dependent upon a first cause, which in the logical order comes first. There is, in the Reformed terminology Edwards had seen in Heereboord and Stapfer, a “previous,” that is, logically prioritized order of concurrent causes. Of the three evasions, the first is the one Edwards could have construed in the Reformed sense of ‘previous concurrence’. The determining act does not structurally precede the act of volition, the two acts occur simultaneously. The second evasion (2) is eliminated due to a concurrence of the determining act and the “exertion” of the act. The one act is folded into the other act; contrary to evasion (1), there is no distinct separate cause. Edwards distinguishes between (a) a person determining which among “external objects” of choice will be chosen and (b) the determining of the “act of choice itself.”201 In one step the mind’s eyes are presented with “various possible acts of choice” and in a next step the act is elicited. In Edwards’s chessboard illustration, there is no indifference as the mind goes through these steps. These two determining acts correlate with the chessboard illustration as follows. Step (a) correlates to the chessboard step (1), which is the decision to touch one of the sixty-four squares. And step (b) correlates to chessboard step (3), which is the act of touching the square, the one which has prevailed in the mind’s eye through all the steps. Edwards’s point is that to will to choose among possible objects differs from the act of volition. In his rejection of evasion (2) he asks what the cause, ground, or reason is behind the “order of nature,” that is, behind the structural order, which determines the mind when moving between step (a) and step (b), of this section? In answering the question, Edwards recognizes that the Arminian idea of freedom holds to evasion (2), a concurrence theory of two simultaneous acts, which is a contradiction in the compound sense. There must be an antecedent influence, writes Edwards, “either in order of time or nature.”202 However, from another angle, the problem with simultaneous concurrence in evasion (2) arises when one conflates both causes, in (a) and in (b), such that to determine (b) is simultaneously to determine step (a), collapsing any structural order behind cause and effect. For Edwards, when the will exerts an act, “the exertion must be prior in the 201 Ibid., 178. 202 Ibid.

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order of nature to itself, and distinct from itself.”203 In other words, Edwards’s theory of causality in volition keeps the cause distinct, but inseparable from the effect. And this distinction is missing in evasion (2). The act of volition comes to pass without a cause The third evasion (3) fails due to Edwards’s interpretation of the principle of sufficient reason.204 The evasion posits an effect of the will without a cause. There is no structural order and without any apparent ground, nevertheless, a choice is made, for example, to touch one chessboard square over another. A self-determining power is emptied of its power and the source of this kind of freedom is absent in evasion (3). Something arises from nothing. Edwards then links this argument with what he perceives to be the Arminian problem of contingent events and notes that “contingence is essential to freedom in their notion of it.”205 His argument is: a) No effect comes to pass without a cause, b) An effect has come to pass, c) therefore, the effect has a cause. The next crucial step Edwards makes is to identify contingency as the minor premise of the syllogism. That is, a) No event comes to pass without a cause, b) A contingent event has no cause, c) a contingent event cannot come to pass. In Edwards’s words, when an event comes to pass, it “doesn’t happen contingently.”206

7.5

Analysis of “order of nature”

Edwards’s rejection of the structural order of nature in evasion (1) moves him away from both Heereboord’s and Stapfer’s use of the structural order in reply to the Arminian notion of freedom. Stapfer noted that the Arminians hold to a simultaneous concurrence of divine and human willing—evasion (2)—rejecting the structurally ordered Reformed notion of previous concurrence, one of the Reformed divine prerequisites to acts of the human will.207 But neither is Ar203 204 205 206 207

Ibid. Ibid., 178–181, 183. Ibid., 179. Ibid., 179, 213. For Van Mastricht’s use of the term “order of nature”, applied non-temporally (1) to the divine decrees, and in two senses when applied to (2) the divine prerequisites and human regeneration, see Petrus van Mastricht, ThPrTh, 278, 663. (1) Sunt sibi invicem priora & posteriora, ordine naturae, non autem ordine temporis, 278; “Non ordine tantum naturae; sed nonnunquam, insuper ordine temporis,” (Not only in order of nature, but sometimes also in order of time). See the English translation of (2) in, Petrus van Mastricht, A Treatise on Regeneration, ed. Brandon Withrow (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria: 2002; New Haven: 1769; orig. 1699), 27. See also the Puritan John Flavel’s use of the term, “order of nature,”

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minian certainty of divine foreknowledge causal; it is subsequent and potential, conditioned by the sovereignty of the human will. And on this point, we recall that Edwards skipped Stapfer’s response α, which says that even a decreed chain of events remains a contingent production. With this in mind, we see that Edwards rejects a “contingent” production, since he deems contingency a violation of the principle of sufficient reason.208 Edwards’s reductionist approach to the “order of nature,” with respect to humans, incurs a loss of abstracted structural distinctions, which Reformed authors, like Heereboord and Stapfer, ably used to defend both divine and human freedom against necessitarianism on the one hand and libertarianism on the other. Contingency, however, is not opposed to the necessity Edwards claims in his scheme of freedom, since it can be shown that if there is something contingent, then there is something necessary. Edwards himself brings forth and rejects the argument of tracing an effect or design back to its cause in infinitum without ever determining a necessary first cause external to the chain. Creation itself is then a contingent effect that was caused by a first cause, a creator who necessarily exists. If not, then the argument in infinitum goes back forever seeking a first cause that is never found, an argument which Edwards rejects. In other words, in the case of two disjunctive attributes of beings, such as infinite and finite, if there is a finite being, then there is an infinite being at the beginning of, but external to, the causal series. But not vice–versa.209

7.6

Summary

In this chapter, we proposed that Whitby writes his Discourse on freedom on what he perceives to be the “Calvinist” position, at least in part, against the background of the Hobbes-Bramhall debate on liberty and necessity. Whitby likely draws his assertion that there is an affinity between the ‘Calvinists’ and Mr. Hobbes and the philosophers of fate from the Hobbes-Bramhall debate, given Whitby’s references to Bramhall’s works, which mediate to the reader extensive quotes from applied to structural moments in regeneration, in the appendix, idem, 91. In 1769, just fifteen years after the publication of Edwards’s Freedom of will, the anonymous translator of Van Mastricht’s section on regeneration appended excerpts from the following Reformed authors, most of whom made use of distinctions of first and second acts in the abstracted, structurally conceived “order of nature,” as opposed to an order of time: Thomas Ridgley (1667–1734), Stephen Charnock (1628–1680), Samuel Willard (1640–1707), John Flavel (1630–1691), Herman Witsius (1636–1708), Le Blanc (1616–1650), William Ames (1575– 1633), Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661), Dr. Frans Burman (1628–1679), Dr. Johannes Braun (d. 1708), and John Brine (1703–1765). 208 Cf. chapters 9 § 9.1.2 and 10 §10.3.1 on Edwards’s use of the principle of sufficient reason. 209 Vos et al., Scotus: Contingency and freedom, Lectura I 39., 97.

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Hobbes. The significance of this observation is the understanding of certain terms of art which find their way into Edwards’s Freedom of Will, such as the “necessity of the consequence.” Whereas Bramhall equated the notion of “infallibility” with “necessity of consequence,” and “hypothetical necessity,” consistent with a “determination to one” and a “divine influx,” Whitby interprets “infallibility” in an absolute sense of determination of an act to one good object, and as a “necessity of consequent.” He therefore restricts the applicability of the term to a state of perfection (the glorified state of angels and saints in heaven). Bramhall had interpreted Aristotle’s dictum, “Whatsoever is, when it is, necessarily is as it is” as nothing more than a “necessity of consequence,” not a “necessity of consequent.” Thus, though a determination to act infallibly occurs, if the agent determines freely, the action likewise is free. This interpretation was available to both Whitby and Edwards, but each, in his turn, used the term differently in the structure of his argument. In some respects, the structure of Whitby’s argument informs the structure of Edwards’s Freedom of Will, and brings into sharp relief Edwards’s set of requisite conditions for freedom. Whitby claims the discussion about freedom must be about humankind in a state of trial. For Whitby, humankind’s free will in a state of trial must not be compared to angels or saints in a glorified state, since in that state, there is no praise or blame; an angel or saint cannot but worship God. Free will in a state of trial is located in neither act (the exercise of the will) nor habit, but in power ad utrumlibet, that is, a power that can act otherwise than it does. This technical term is taken up and strongly opposed by Edwards, even though it is a term used by Heereboord in his description of free choice. Whitby’s idea of power, unlike Heereboord’s, is a moral power directed towards a good to pursue or an evil to avoid; it is not a neutral, formal power to act otherwise than one does. An agent must be morally able to choose, not disabled, a notion Whitby associates, rightly or wrongly, with his opponents. In disagreement with his fellow Anglican, Bishop Bramhall, Whitby says this power cannot be determined to one good in any sense, otherwise, to attribute the power to choose otherwise to a human agent is like claiming a bird is free to fly, while one holds its wings. Whitby’s set of requisites also preclude—from a state of trial but not a glorified state—a key requisite in the Reformed set of conditions, namely, a divine “physical influx” or natural, real divine motion in reality upon the human soul. Whitby does not see how such an influx can be resisted, which is an essential requisite for freedom in a state of trial. Whitby states that the ‘Calvinists’ claim to hold to liberty and contingency, which they claim were absent from the Stoics, is an empty claim, since they deprive humans of the liberty that counts, moral liberty. In Edwards’s reply, he does not defend Heereboord’s use of Reformed freedom ad utrumlibet, neither does he use the Reformed concept of the structural

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order of nature.210 Instead, he rejects Whitby’s interpretation of Origen, Justin Martyr, Eusebius, and Macarius, and restates the opinion that the soul acts by its own choice and is free to incline whichever way—freedom ad utrumlibet—by stating such a notion is guilty of an argument in infinitum. That is, it implies that there is free choice before the first free act, which Edwards claims is a contradiction. In that case, Edwards demands to know where one would locate the essence of freedom. In an act prior to an antecedent cause, in infinitum?” If so, the cause has no location. When Whitby attempts to adduce support from Augustine, that an act must be free from coercion and the necessity of sinning in order to praise and blame, such that one is free to abstain from sin, Edwards replies that according to Whitby’s use of “necessity,” no one would escape blame, since they are “given up to God to sin.” Edwards gave a twofold reply. First, if God so orders or disposes, by “doing or forbearing to do,” the consequence is that humans would continue in their sin.211 Edwards views it as a matter of the necessity of the consequence relative to God’s disposing act. Second, Edwards holds to the notion that, based on a “natural impossibility” to avoid sin, or necessity of sinning in a natural sense, a human being ought to be excused and is not culpable.212 He set “natural” in contradistinction to “moral” impossibility. He grants that the nearer the natural impediment or difficulty to avoid sin approaches impossibility, the nearer a person is to being blameless, in proportion to the strength of natural difficulty.213 However, Edwards’s counter-intuitive notion of “moral necessity” is such that the stronger the “bias or bent to evil” in the will, the more culpable a person is.214 Edwards illustrates Whitby’s principles by way of degrees and a scale balance. Suppose there are ten degrees of moral difficulty which make avoidance of sin impossible, and so excuse the person. If, then, there were nine degrees of moral difficulty, the person would be only in one degree guilty, having but one degree of genuine liberty, and be nine degrees not guilty. And if there were but one degree of moral difficulty, he or she would be in nine degrees guilty. On “Arminian principles,” as Edwards puts Whitby’s case, the nearer one approaches equilibrium, the freer one is, the greater the “liberty of indifference,” and therefore the more praiseworthy or blameworthy one is. Edwards continues with a scale balance. If a weight of ten pounds, representing moral impossibility to avoid sin, is 210 Yoo’s assessment of Jonathan Edwards’s attempt to refute Whitby concurs with ours, in that, unlike John Edwards, Jonathan Edwards deviates from the “classic Reformed thought on human freedom and its relation with divine necessity,” in Yoo, John Edwards (1637–1716) on human free choice and divine necessity, 64. 211 WJE 1: 295–6. 212 See chapter 9 on Edwards’s freedom of perfection. 213 WJE 1: 297. 214 Ibid., 297–8.

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placed on one side of a scale and renders the “self-moving” power of the scale useless, then five pounds allows for half of the self-moving power, and zero weight gives full use to the self-moving power. This is how Edwards illustrates what he sees as the “inconsistence” of Whitby’s demand for freedom from necessity in the case where someone is “given up to hardness of heart.” But Edwards argues that the stronger the moral “antecedent bent and bias on the will,” the freer one is.215 This is Edwards’s argument in Freedom of Will, which we will examine below in chapters 8 and 9.216

215 Ibid., 297–9. 216 LCC: (Clarke’s second reply, 21); (Clarke’s fourth reply, 45); (Leibniz’s fifth paper, 55, 58); (Clarke’s fifth reply, 97–8); (Clarke’s appendix, 131: Leibniz’s Theodicy, 515). The similitude of the scale balance as well as the great principle of sufficient reason appear quite frequently in LCC.

8.

Fundamental concepts in Jonathan Edwards’s Freedom of Will

8.1

Introduction

In this chapter we examine Edwards’s explanation of terms in Freedom of Will. We propose that he holds to a freedom of perfection, which is void of contingency, in contradistinction to Heereboord’s freedom ad utrumlibet. Furthermore, Edwards’s view of necessity is paradoxically will-based. His theory of freedom of perfection is comprised of the notions of the greatest apparent good determining the human will and the impossibility of free choice being otherwise than it is. He takes steps to build the case that human acts of the will actualize what is most fit, and hereby we see his theory transform itself into a theory of causality. He infers freedom for perfection determining the human will from his conceptual theory of propositional containment. That is, he infers his theory from his own notion of the incompatibility of p and q. The moves he makes in developing the theory of incompatibility are tied to his understanding and use of Latin idiom, such as the crucial term “necessity.” Therefore, an understanding of how he sees reality proves crucial to our understanding of Edwards’s freedom of perfection. Edwards makes a self-conscious “modern” inquiry into freedom of will, and for this reason only engages recent and contemporary authors, with the one exception to this rule being his use of the standard thesis of Boethius (480–524) on the unchanging ever-presentness of God. The early-modern authors he adduces, and who become his interlocutors, are the English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), the Church of England scholar Daniel Whitby, the English nonconformist Isaac Watts (1674–1748), the English philosophical theologian Samuel Clarke (1675–1729), and the Scottish moral philospher Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782). Nevertheless, although Edwards calls his inquiry modern, the method he follows is the classic-scholastic method of explaining terms and concepts, using propositional analysis, stating opponents positions, giving extensive commentary, and setting forth quaestiones. At the end of Freedom of Will, Edwards states, without apology, that his method, and his Reformed tra-

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dition, can be interpreted as appealing to “scholastic distinctions.” But he asks his readers to judge his approach, and especially his conclusions, based on “the strictest and justest reason.”1 The chapter proceeds (in §8.2), by reporting Edwards’s and two of his interlocutors’, John Locke and Isaac Watts, definitions of terms which are crucial to distinguishing Edwards’s theory of freedom of the will from that of others. Then (in §8.3), we set Edwards’s understanding of ‘necessity’ against the background of Calvin and the classic-Reformed tradition. Next (in §8.4), we compare and

1 WJE 1:423–4. For literature concerning Edwards’s Freedom of Will, see the following: On the philosophical argument, Editor Ramsey’s “Introduction” in Paul Ramsey, ed., Freedom of the will, vol. 1 of The works of Jonathan Edwards, gen. ed. Perry Miller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), 11–47 (§3); On the view that today’s understanding of the Reformed doctrine of divine determinism owes much to Edwards, but whose view is not per se identical to that of other Reformed authors in that tradition, see Crisp, Deviant calvinism, 4–5.; On Edwards’s orientation from the “old logic” and argument based on psychology and analysis of language, see the chapter by Allen Guelzo, “After Edwards: original sin and freedom of the will,” in Crisp and Sweeney, eds., After Jonathan Edwards, 51–62; That Edwards deviated from the scholasticism of his forebears, writing instead for a modern audience, see Helm, “A different kind of Calvinism?,” in Crisp and Sweeney, eds., After Jonathan Edwards, 91–103; On Edwards’s notion of the greatest apparent good, the distinction between natural and moral necessity, the essence of virtue and vice, and liberty of indifference, see the chapter by Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott, “Free will and original sin,” in The theology of Jonathan Edwards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 339–56; On causality, freedom, and the determination of the will, see Natalia Marandiuc, “Human will, divine grace, and virtue: Jonathan Edwards tangos with Immanuel Kant,” in Jonathan Edwards and Scotland, eds., Kenneth P. Minkema, Adriaan C. Neele, and Kelly Van Andel (Edinburgh: Dunedin, 2011), 129–46; On Edwards’s strategic selection of his opponents in Freedom of Will, his polemical purposes, and that his method of writing was not as a “philosophical investigation,” consult Guelzo, Edwards on the will, (original 1989 edition), 72. See especially, Guelzo’s “Introduction,” chapter 1 “The New England Dilemma: willing and revival, ” and chapter 2 “Jonathan Edwards: critics and criticism”; On the law of causality, self-determination, and a comparison of Edwards’s views with what he called the common opinion of Reformed authors, see Jan Ridderbos, “De theologie van Jonathan Edwards” (Ph.D. diss., ‘S-Gravenhage: Vrije Universiteit te Amsterdam, 1907). For journal articles addressing concepts in Edwards’s Freedom of Will, see Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and Francis Turretin, 266–85; Helm, “Turretin and Edwards once more,” 286–96; Idem, “Jonathan Edwards and the parting of ways,” 42–60; Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and the absence of free choice,” 3–22; Helm, “‘Structural indifference’ and compatibilism in Reformed orthodoxy,” 184–205; Idem, “Reformed Thought on Freedom: Some further thoughts,” 185– 207; Idem, “Synchronic contingency in Reformed scholasticism: a note of caution,” 207–22; Oliver D. Crisp, “Jonathan Edwards on the divine nature,” Journal of Reformed theology 3 (2009): 175–201; Fisk, “Divine knowledge at Harvard and Yale,” 151–78; Idem, “Jonathan Edwards’s Freedom of the Will and his defence of the impeccability of Jesus Christ,” Scottish Journal of Theology 60, no. 3 (2007): 309–25; Van Vlastuin, “A retrieval of Jonathan Edwards’s concept of free will: the relevance for neuroscience,” 198–214; Stephen A. Wilson, “The possibility of a habituation model of moral development in Jonathan Edwards’s conception of the will’s freedom,” The Journal of Religion 81, no. 1 ( January 2001): 49–77.

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contrast Edwards’s definition of freedom with that of Heereboord, followed by a summary (in §8.5).

8.2

Edwards’s and his interlocutors’s definitions of terms

8.2.1 The acts of the will Edwards opens his scholastic discourse on the “will” with some psychological observations about an agent’s power of mind, will, and soul. He defines “the will,” as “that by which the mind chooses anything,” thereby affirming, as Heereboord also held, that when an agent elicits an act, de facto, the faculty of the mind chooses as well as the faculty of the will. In other words, when an agent chooses, both the mind and the will are engaged. “A more perfect definition of the will,” he says, is that it is “that by which the soul either chooses or refuses.”2 Edwards’s use of the instrumental case points to the classic distinction between the principium quod and the principium quo. The former is the agent who acts and the latter the faculty by which the agent acts. The Latin, which underlies his distinctions, evinces the precision he seeks.3 Edwards writes, “That which has the power of volition or choice is the man or the soul, and not the power of volition itself.”4 Edwards observed these same points in the definitions of two of his interlocutors, John Locke and Isaac Watts. For Locke, the will is a “power to prefer or choose” and Watts also says it is “that by which the soul either chooses or refuses.” Edwards, however, omits Watts’s caveat, namely, “without any inward or outward restraint, force or constraining bias or influence.” We will return to this omission below when we discuss the determination, motivation, and preponderating bias of the will. Nevertheless, here we recognize a familiar building block of faculty psychology, to which Edwards returns many times, namely, that 2 WJE 1: 137. 3 According to the Scotus scholar Allan Wolter, “the distinction between the person, nature, and operative faculty was expressed by saying the person is the one who acts (principium quod), the nature, or operative faculty, by contrast represents that by which (principium quo) the person acts,” in : Alluntis and Wolter, trans. and eds., God and creatures, 512. Aristotle explained this principle by saying that it is better to avoid saying “the soul chooses,” and instead say, it is the person who does this with his soul, in De an.408b12–15. See Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941), 548. Although it appears, at first, that Edwards is doing what Aristotle warns not to do, when Edwards says the soul chooses, he intends to encompass both the faculties of the mind and the will, and hence, he is referring to the agent as a whole person when he says soul. This becomes clearer in section five when he gives the illustration of the bird, once let out of a cage, has the power to fly, not that the bird’s faculty of flying has a power and liberty of flying, WJE 1:163. 4 WJE 1:163.

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the will itself is not an agent that wills, but is a faculty by which an agent chooses.5 In his introduction, editor Paul Ramsey pointed out Hobbes’s remark to Bishop Bramhall, namely, that anyone who “cannot understand the difference between free to do if he will, and free to will, is not fit …to hear this controversy disputed, much less to be a writer in it.”6 For Edwards, an agent, principium quod, possesses a faculty by which, principium quo, he freely chooses to do what he wills, but the will itself is not free to will whatever it wills. His comparison of a bird, as agent, to a man, as agent, is instructive since it illustrates and warns of the danger of confusing the power of flight possessed by a bird with any so-called power of willing possessed by a human faculty, as if a person had a power of willing to will or the bird the power of flight, which wills to fly. It is the person who possesses the faculty of choice, not the faculty itself.7

5 WJE 1:137. This definition of the will by Locke is found in John Locke, An essay concerning human understanding (2d ed. London: Printed for Albutham and John Churchil, 1694), Book II.21.sect. 17. Edwards, Locke and Watts all three agree on agents and moral agency, to wit, that it is not the will that is free, but the agent. Locke writes, “Liberty, which is but a power, belongs only to agents, and cannot be an attribute or modification of the will, which is also but a power,” Book 2. 21. §14. For Watts, Locke could have been clearer, since he goes on to speak of the will as one power and freedom as another power, in section sixteen. Watts defines liberty of choice as “a power to chuse or refuse, to chuse one thing or another among several things which are proposed, without any inward or outward restraint, force or constraining bias or influence.” In his footnote he adds, “I do not describe liberty of choice or indifference, as many have done, by a power to act, or not to act, but a power to chuse or refuse … Perhaps that great man, Mr. Locke, had writ more perspicuously on this subject, if he had always maintained this distinction, for he describes liberty a power to act or not to act,” in Isaac Watts, On the freedom of will in God and in creatures, vol. 4 of The works of the Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D. in nine volumes, prepared by Edward Baines (London 1732; Leeds: Paternoster -Row, repr. 1813), 458. (Henceforth, Watts, On the freedom of will in God and creatures). Out of deference to Locke, he does go on in section nineteen to clarify by saying that “Powers are Relations, not Agents: but it is the Mind, or the Man, that operates, and exerts these Powers; that does the Action … that which has the power to operate, is that alone, which is, or is not free; and not the Power itself.” Aristotle made this same point on agency, only he did not use “soul” for an agent, as Edwards does, but considered the soul, apart from the willing agent, and said what these three writers have said, namely, that “It is doubtless better to avoid saying that the soul pities or learns or thinks, and rather to say that it is the man who does this with his soul,” in “On the soul” Richard McKeon, ed., The basic works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941), 548 (Bk I. 4.408b). 6 WJE 1:13. 7 Ibid., 163.

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8.2.2 Volition and preference and the acts of the will Of all his interlocutors, Edwards first cites Locke concerning his theory of will. For Locke, “The will signifies nothing but a power or ability to prefer or choose.” On this point, Edwards would agree with Locke only if he had equated preferring with choosing. But since Locke, two sections prior in his essay, said the equation is imprecise, Edwards picks up on this and uses Locke’s illustration of a distinction between a preference for flying to walking and a volition for one or the other as a foil through which to make the point that each act of the will is with respect to an object of will or desire in the mind’s view.8 What Locke is prepared to concede, Edwards is not, namely, that there be a distinction between preferring and choosing, such that, two objects may come into the mind’s view at the same instant of choosing, with the result that with one act of the will what one chooses can occur, but what one prefers not. Edwards finds Locke’s illustration unconvincing and he proceeds to distinguish between “immediate” and “remote” objects of preference. He presents two cases to make his point, first choosing to walk and second choosing to fly. First, when a person chooses to walk, the immediate object of the act of the will is to move her legs, not that she arrives at another destination. Edwards pinpoints the problem with Locke’s proposal to be in the moment of choice and points rather to successive moments of choosing, whereby a person walks. Second, the case of flying is different. Although someone may remotely choose or prefer to fly, one doesn’t “choose or prefer, incline to or desire,” any “immediate” exertion of his body to fly in any circumstance since “he has no expectation that he should obtain the desired end by any such exertion.”9 It appears from these cases, says Edwards, that the objects of the acts of the will are such that there is no difference between volition and preference. Thus, he concludes that an act of the will is expressed by what pleases a person to do. Doing as he or she wills is the same as doing as he or she pleases.10 To sum up this point, the significance of Edwards’s reply shows his refusal to admit to any kind of power of simultaneous acts of the will—a recurring point that he raises against what he perceives to belong to the Arminian notion of freedom—such that a person prefers to act but chooses not to act. Edwards sees through what amounts to a contradiction, cloaked in the semantics of distinguishing preference from volition, as if someone could elicit two opposing acts at the same time. The next example he gives will bear this out further.

8 Ibid., 138. And John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (2d ed. London: Printed for Albutham and John Churchil, 1694), 128 (Book 2. 21. §15). 9 WJE 1: 138. 10 Ibid., 139.

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Edwards seizes upon another of Locke’s examples, the case of a person who is obliged to speak persuasively and who then apparently with one act of the will both wills to speak persuasively and to not prevail upon the listener. In this example, for Edwards, there are two acts of the will with respect to two objects before the mind: (1) to will to speak persuasively, and (2) to will not to effect persuasion in the hearer. The difference lies not in a nuance between volition and preference, but in acts of the will and their respective objects in view of the mind. Edwards says that for Locke to prove his position, “that will and desire may run counter, it should be shown that they may be contrary one to the other on the same thing, or with respect to the very same object of will or desire.”11 Edwards goes to great lengths to explain this fundamental misstep by Locke by focusing our attention on the state of the mind during an act of willing. At the instant of choice, a person has one particular object in view that he prefers and he cannot logically “desire the contrary in an particular” at the same instant. “A man never, in any instance,” writes Edwards, “wills anything contrary to his desires, or desires anything contrary to his will.”12 When, however, there are two objects in view, at two different times, a person may then rightly consider two acts of the will with respect to two objects, and on these two particulars, “the will may not agree with the will, nor desire agree with desire, in different things.”13 Edwards ends the first section with what becomes in his Freedom of Will his trademark accent, that is, his understanding of preference as “a prevailing inclination of the soul, whereby the soul, at that instant, is out of a state of perfect indifference, with respect to the direct object of the volition.”14 The mind of a person, or the soul as he likes to put it, is either in an act of volition or not, such that one’s dispositional state is either one of a “perfect continuing equilibrium” or a “prevailing inclination.” These dispositional states appear to conform well to his theory of, on the one hand, “continuing equilibrium” prior to choice, and on the other, “successive moments” of preferring or choosing.15 Indeed, embedded in this foundational theory of states of disposition lies his understanding of the notion that praise and blame is proportional to the strength of one’s inclination, such that, the stronger the inclination, the more accountable one is for his or her actions. We will develop these themes in due course, but our purpose now is to highlight his core ideas and how important this initial launch into his subject matter is. When Edwards writes that an agent doesn’t will or prefer contrary to desire, he shows, albeit indirectly, and with another use in mind than the classic scholastic 11 12 13 14 15

Ibid., 139–40. Ibid., 139. Ibid., 140. Ibid. Ibid., 138, 140.

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use, his appreciation for the scholastic distinction between simultaneous powers and the power of simultaneity—which we will discuss further below—the latter of which poses a contradiction. He heads off what he believes to be a contradiction of terms in the way Locke distinguishes preference from volition, as if someone can both prefer but not will one object of preference, which is in view of the mind at any one instant.

8.2.3 Objects of the will In his opening discourse, Edwards defines freedom of choice in relation to the objects in the mind’s view, using the language of freedom of specification.16 “In every act of will whatsoever,” writes Edwards, “the mind chooses one thing rather than another…something rather than the contrary, or…the nonexistence of that thing.”17 Hereby he refers to the contraries of freedom of specification, that is, to willing and nilling. He describes nilling as “an act of refusal…the mind chooses the absence of the thing refused.”18 Thus, he expresses nilling as, a wills ~p. And willing is as, a wills p. He sees these contrary acts as “the positive” and “the negative,” which are “set before the mind for its choice.” He calls the will’s determining between these two acts “a voluntary determining.” The elective pairs of names, though no sub-altern, permissive ones, which Edwards gives to this freedom of specification, are “choosing, refusing, approving, disapproving, liking, disliking, embracing, rejecting, determining, directing, commanding, forbidding, inclining or being averse, a being pleased or displeased with,” all of 16 We encountered the terms “Freedom of specification” and “Freedom of exercise” in chapters 2 §2.3, 3 §3.5.2, 5 §5.7. With respect to the will, authors of logic textbooks mapped opposite kinds of acts of the will onto a teaching tool, commonly called a “square of opposition.” Likewise, with respect to necessity and possibility, textbooks mapped opposing relations onto the square of opposition. Edwards’s “catalogue” of reading lists logic texts which included the square of opposition, such as Isaac Watts Logick (London, 1725). See Isaac Watts, Logick, 12th ed. (London: Buckland & Longman, 1763), 158–9. Another logic textbook that explained the square of opposition, was Arnauld’s and Nicole’s Art of thinking. In a letter to his father, dated July 24, 1719, sent from New Haven, Edwards requested that his father send him the Art of thinking: BRBML Kh 662 Ad. Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, Logic, or, The art of thinking, trans. Jacques Ozell (London, 1717). The book is signed by Jonathan Edwards; Cf. Edwards’s letter: “3. To the Reverend Timothy Edwards, New Haven, July 24, 1719,” in WJEO 16:33. This is Jonathan’s letter to his father wherein he requests The art of thinking. For a recent English translation, see Buroker, ed. Arnauld and Nicole Logic. Cf., on the “Square,” William Kneale and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962; reprint 2008), 55–6, 86, 125–6, 210; Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 34, 45–6. 17 WJE 1:137. 18 Ibid.

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which, he says, he can reduce to choosing. And, “for the soul to act voluntarily, is evermore to act electively.”19 For Edwards, the adverb “electively” makes a decisive point in his account of freedom of will in relation to objects. His notion of freedom of choice entails eliciting an act of will with an object in view. There is no structurally ordered instant “before” the choice that would not also be a choice. For if there were such an instant, it too would be a choice. One either elicits an act or not. Thus, freedom of exercise in the sense of, a wills p and a can not will p, at the same instant, is not in view for Edwards. Either there are two, or more, different successive choices, or one; but there are not two possibles in view, with one actual choice, where the agent elicits the one, and at the same instant, dismisses the alternative. In other words, there is no synchronic, possible alternative. In his opening paragraphs, Edwards says that, to act voluntarily is to act electively. This is the argument that underlies the two examples given above against Locke. This reasoning, by Edwards, helps explain why freedom of exercise is missing from his scheme, to wit, velle paired with non velle. For, each is a choice considered in itself. Thus, Edwards does not, here in the specific context of his replies to Locke, apply the non-temporal structural order of nature to human volition, which he saw in Stapfer—concerning divine knowledge and will—as seen in the previous chapter. For Edwards, freedom of will necessarily entails the election of the good, and as we will see below, the greatest apparent good. But Edwards’s point is that the act of electing is tied to a willed object. At that instant of choice, the will is no longer in a state of perfect indifference or equilibrium, as he puts it. In his argument against Locke’s supposed difference between preferring and choosing, one principle of volition Edwards named was that there ought to be but one object in view, taken by itself. Otherwise, with two or more objects in view, “the will may not agree with the will, nor desire with desire, in different things.”20 In the next section, we shall examine more fully Edwards’s notion of the act of the will directed to one proposed object of choice.

8.2.4 The greatest apparent good Locke, asked, “What determines the will?” to which he answered, the mind. Knowing that this will not satisfy—For what moves the mind?—Locke reasoned that the “great motive” that moved the mind to action was “uneasiness.” Having changed his view on this—“upon second thoughts”—he wrote, “It is not as 19 Ibid. 20 WJE 1:140.

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generally supposed, the greater good in view.”21 “When I first published my thoughts on this subject,” wrote Locke, “I took it for granted” that the “maxim,” held by “the general consent of all mankind,” was true.22 But Edwards does not see how Locke’s change matters, for “the word ‘good,’” writes Edwards, “includes in its signification, the removal or avoiding of evil…or what is disagreeable.” He understands Locke as saying that, the aim to remove uneasiness is “the same thing as choosing …what is more easy and agreeable.”23 With this understanding of Locke, Edwards uses Locke as a foil through which to extend his own view that the mind chooses what appears to suit it best. It is what appears good that allows Edwards to distinguish himself from Locke by describing the role and ability of the last dictate of the understanding in a different way from Locke. We recall that for Locke, there is a difference between desire and the will. “Upon stricter inquiry, I am forced to conclude,” wrote Locke, “that the greater good…does not determine the will, until our desire, raised proportionately to it, makes us uneasy in the want of it.”24 For him, the source of all liberty was the mind’s ability to induce and raise the level of desire, and its capacity to “suspend” it. “During this suspension,” wrote Locke, a person has the opportunity “to examine, view, and judge, of the good or evil of what we are going to do.” The significance of this power of suspension was the ability to weigh and consider an action and then if one pursued the election of an act of the will, it would be according to “the last result of a fair examination.” This was for Locke a perfection of our freedom. “A perfect indifferency in the mind, or power of preferring, not determinable by its last judgment of the good or evil…would be so far from being an advantage… that it would be as great an imperfection.”25 It is perhaps troubling that Edwards glides over this notion of “suspension” in Locke at this point, but it may be explained by the fact that the mind’s power to suspend the election of an act runs counter to his idea that where there is no preferring, there is no volition. Where there is no volition, there is a perfect continuing equilibrium. Locke saw this as an imperfection. Edwards chooses to respond to this notion in Freedom of Will 21 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (2d ed. London: Printed for Albutham and John Churchil, 1694), Book II, ch. 21.sect. 29, 31, 35. Cf. Michael Ayers, Locke: Epistemology and Ontology, The Arguments of the Philosophers (1991; repr., London: Routledge, 1991), II:192. Ayers says that, indeed, Locke’s first edition followed the doctrine that the “greater good” determines the will, but then Locke saw that it is feeling or passion that moves the will, not reason, the intellect or speculation about what will make one happy, or what the good is. On Edwards and Locke, see Guelzo, Edwards on the Will, 27–9, 83–4; Lee, Philosophical theology of Edwards, 123–5; Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’s moral thought and its British context, 33–40; Editor Ramsey, “Introduction,” to Freedom of Will, 47–65. 22 Locke, Essay, Book 2: 21. §35. 23 WJE 1:143. 24 Locke, Essay, Book II.21. §35. 25 Locke, Essay, Book II.21. §§47–8.

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when he takes up the subject of whether indiffernce is essential to free choice. Edwards counters by saying that this so-called suspension “is itself an act of volition.”26 In Freedom of Will, Edwards makes use of the common illustration of comparing the motives and the will to the weights of a scale balance. The appropriateness of comparing a human agent’s will to weights in a balance was debated in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, written in the years 1715–6, published in 1717.27 Edwards applies the similitude of a scale in an illustration concerning the last dictate of the understanding. Suppose a drunkard who returns to a tavern. The last dictate of the understanding is like a weight placed on a scale, alongside other compounding factors, such that the mind may “add” or subduct” its influence “in estimating the degree of that appearance of good which the will always follows.” When all the factors concur, then the mind adds the weight of the last dictate of reason to the same scale. “But when it is against them, it is as a weight in the opposite scale, where it resists the influence of other things,” the influence of which is overcome by the “greater weight.”28 In this case, what the mind judges as a short-term win—wetting the palate—overrules and overcomes the resistance mounted by what reason had declared best in the long-term pursuit of the good. This illustration of the scale of weights illustrates the meaning of a word he uses at the end of section one, to wit, a “preponderation” of the mind, that is, as in the Latin praepondare, to outweigh or regard as superior.29 For Edwards, therefore, there is a twofold view of the last dictate of the understanding. It is not true for him that the will always follows the last dictate of the understanding, when the long-term view of personal happiness is taken into consideration. Locke, however, had no need for a two-tiered role of reason, which only presented to the will what appeared to be most suitable. The role Locke attributes to the suspension of the will grants a well-considered, fair examination of the object before the mind. For Locke, the stronger the last judgment, the freer a person was and the further he was from a perfect indifferency in the mind. For Edwards, the last dictate of reason may be outweighed by an opposite and sometimes deceptively stronger motive. His illustration of the scales shows how he conceives of the last dictate of reason putting up resistance, but finally being overcome by a greater apparent good.30 He views this balancing act occuring where there is no preferring, no volition, but a perfect, continuing equilibrium 26 WJE 1:210. 27 We encountered the LCC in chapter 7 §7.4.2 and will encounter it in greater detail in the next chapter. On whether Edwards was at least familiar with The Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, see the introduction chapter §2.3 and chapter 9 §9.1Fn3. 28 WJE 1:148. 29 Ibid., 140. 30 Ibid., 148.

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before the instant of choice. It appears at this point that Locke’s notion of the mind examining, viewing, judging, and suspending desire, all in pursuit of one’s happiness, could have served Edwards, even if he were to call these suspensions acts of the will. Of signifiance for Edwards’s development of his theory of freedom—the stronger the prior inclination is, the freer the agent is—is the observation that both authors agree that a person is most free when his or her motive is as far removed as possible from indifference. Another one of Edwards’s interlocutors was the pastor, dissenter, and wellknown hymn writer, Isaac Watts (1674–1748), whose Essay on the freedom of will in God and in creatures (1732), Edwards had at hand, but whom Edwards was reluctant to name in his entire Freedom of Will. Watts was ordained into the pastorate of London’s Mark Lane congregational church in 1702. At the age of sixteen, Watts attended the same dissenter academy at Newington Green, under Thomas Rowe, where formerly Charles Morton had run an academy, before emigrating to New England to settle near Harvard College.31 In 1737, Yale rector Elisha Williams had solicited a donation of books from Isaac Watts. Williams had made it clear to Watts that Yale needed books that would help stem the influence of authors from “the Arminian camp,” and help the cause of “Reformed truth.”32 Watts helpfully summarized in three principles what philosophers had written as the cause of the determination of the will. They are: “The greatest apparent good as it is discovered to the mind, or the last dictate of the understanding, or the removal of some uneasiness.”33 The first is the position Edwards takes up, the 31 Michael R. Watts, The dissenters: from the Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford: OUP, 1978; reprinted 1999), 311–2, 370. 32 Warch, School of the prophets Yale College, 179. Warch notes that Watts’s Logic text did not become a required text until the 1740s. Ibid, 207–8. That students read Watts while at Yale, see a student’s commonplace book in , BRBML. The Eleazer May papers, 1749–1777 GEN MS 360. A Commonplace book, 1749, 1750. May notes having read Watts’s Logick and Philosophical Essays; The “Yale 1742 catalogue” listed the following works by Watts: Logic and Supplement, Philosophical Essays, On Soul and Will, Metaphysicks & Ontology, “Miscellaneous essays,” in Mooney, ed., Eighteenth-Century Catalogues of the Yale College Library, A5, A9–10, A43, and the category “Pneumatology.” For works by Watts, either cited or quoted by Edwards, see Thuesen ed., Catalogues of books, in WJE 26: 468–9. 33 Watts, On the freedom of will in God and in creatures, 462. For a contrast and comparison of Edwards and Watts on the issue of freedom of will, and their common background in reading authors, such as Heereboord, Burgersdijk, Rohault, Downame, and Henry More, and that both taught from Newton, see Guelzo, Edwards on the Will, 64–72. For Watts’s life and work, see Arthur P. Davis, Isaac Watts: His life and works (New York: Dryden Press, 1943; reprint, Literary Licensing, LLC, 2012). The Yale editor Ramsey gives an excellent analysis of Watts’s differences with Edwards, such as “the radical contingency of the moral no less than of the natural world.” That view of Watts in contradistinction to Edwards’s view will be taken up in chapter 10. In this present chapter, of relevance is Watt’s contrary view, which Ramsey states: “There are things perfectly indifferent in the mind’s view concerning which the will determines without, in these cases, reference to prevailing motive or greater good,” in the “Introduction” to Freedom of Will (WJE 1), (§§5.13–21), 89–118.

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second he holds to, but in a modified sense, and the third is recognizably that of Locke, whom Watts names and with whom he interacts in his Essay. Watts considered the greatest apparent good to be the same as the “last assent or dictate of the understanding;” he appeared to conflate the first and second principles. But then he gave what he called evidence that “the greatest apparent good does not always determine the will” and the consequences thereof. If this hypothesis were true, then “the will is never free with a liberty of choice or indifference,” since whatever was viewed “in such a certain light, will necessarily appear to that individual understanding” as “fit or unfit” and consequently would “necessarily determine the will to choose this greatest apparent good.” He called this, “the very scheme of the fatalists.”34 The second line of argument that Watts presented was very much what Edwards writes when he makes a distinction between someone’s present and future happiness in determining whether to follow the last dictate of the understanding or not. Watts, like Edwards after him, gave the example of someone who may have his future happiness in view and nevertheless “choose present sensualities” and “pursue them in opposition to this greatest apparent good.”35 It is for this very point that Edwards insists on distinguishing the last dictate of reason from the greatest apparent good. The weight of reason though placed in the scale may be overcome and resisted in favor of a preponderating apparent good such that the act of the will opposes the last dictate. For Watts, “the violence of appetite or passion inclines the will strongly, yet not necessarily,” and with the last dictate of the understanding and the greatest apparent good in the mind, “present influences” overpower them. It is, Watts added, according to Ovid, “video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor.”36 For both men, there is an “overpowering by present influences” such that the mind resists opposition. But what happens by one kind of necessity for Edwards happens by another kind of necessity for Watts. For Watts, the will determines itself and can go against its own conscience. Watts held to a sovereign, self-determining power. These characteristics were required in Watts’s scheme of liberty in order to preserve praise and blame. Otherwise, how could authorities hold a criminal responsible for an act of the will if he had no choice between virtue or vice at the moment of decision? If choice happened necessarily, according to Watts’s understanding of the notion, “then there is no such thing as sin against the convictions of the mind…which is a very absurd proposition…and it frees the criminal from all blame.”37 Edwards arrives at the opposite conclusion. He reasons that the stronger the preponderation of the will, 34 35 36 37

Watts, On the freedom of will in God and in creatures, 462–3. Ibid., 463. Ibid., 463. Ovid, metam. 7.20–21. Watts, On the freedom of will in God and in creatures, 463–4.

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and the nearer it approaches necessity in that respect, the freer the agent is— based on a freedom of perfection—and therefore the greater the accountability. Interestingly, both authors tie the importance of their scheme to the social consequences of crime.38 Watts’s position not only raises the need for more precision concerning the use and meaning of the term necessity, but he also raises the question of how someone who holds to Edwards’s scheme, would answer the charge that it represents fatalism. We take up the terms, ‘necessity’ and ‘contingency’ below (in §8.3). Edwards’s opinion of the greatest apparent good forms part of an entire scheme that unfolds in his Freedom of Will. That scheme consists of the following three points: (1) He prefers to state his case as such, “The will always is as the greatest apparent good is,” rather than stating that “the will is determined by the greatest apparent good.”39 (2) “The stronger the inclination…the further from indifference, the more virtuous the heart.”40 (3) Accountability for human action increases in proportion to the strength of the inclination of the human will.41 Human freedom is a freedom of perfection, not of indifference; that is, the stronger the inclination of will, the freer one is.42 The magnitude of these three points is such that they will feature in the structure of the next chapter’s examination of the sources of freedom of perfection. In what follows we examine each of the above three points. (1) In 1750, rector Thomas Clap presided over a commencement thesis at Yale on this point: Metaphysics thesis 1 states: “The will is not always determined by the greatest apparent good.”43 Edwards prefers not to use the term “determined,” 38 WJE 1:360. Edwards freedom of perfection, due to habitual good choices, follows Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and choice of the greatest apparent good. 39 WJE 1:144. 40 Ibid., 320, 321, 360. 41 Ibid., 322, 359. 42 In order for the Arminians to have the kind of freedom they claim, the will must be in a perfect state of equilibrium, without the slightest ounce of preponderation or previous inclination, which is not possible, according to Edwards. For Edwards, in every act of choice, there is a “prevailing inclination of the soul,” WJE 1:140. As he sees it, the slightest degree of antecedent bias would scuttle the Arminian notion of freedom, Ibid., 205. 43 EB. Y1750 metaphysics thesis 1. “Voluntas per maximum bonum apparens non semper determinatur.” In Henry More, Enchiridion Ethicum (4th ed. London, 1711), 202, More has Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as a reference point and takes this point from him: “Voluntas igitur semper propendet ad majus bonum apparens, ac proinde necessario ad unum determinatur.” (The will therefore always inclines to the greatest apparent good, and accordingly, it is necessarily determined to one object). Heereboord also develops Aristotle’s view that the willing of the will is carried not only to the true good, but also to what appears good. He then poses the question, “Whether it is correct to say that the object of the will is likewise the apparent good, with respect to the act, which is to

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but rather, “The will always is as the greatest apparent good is.” By changing the terms of the Yale thesis, he shows that he wants to take a different tack and emphasize a different point. On the face of it, it appears that Edwards deviates from Rector Thomas Clap’s opinion at Yale, for, Clap says the greatest apparent good “does not always” determine the will. Now if Clap had in mind the last dictate of the understanding, then Edwards would agree, for he too has said that the will does not always follow the last dictate. But this thesis is about the relation of the greatest apparent good to the determining of the will. And the different nuances of the two authors’ theses point to a conceptual space that gives the clue to their differing opinions. There is a conceptual and structural ordering that Clap assumes and which Edwards collapses. That is, whereas Clap creates conceptual space between the good proposed to the mind and then proposed by the mind to the will, which, for example, chooses to will it and can choose to nill it; or chooses to will it and can choose not to will it, but will something else, Edwards, on the contrary, collapses these two freedoms—freedom of specification and freedom of exercise—when he states that the will is as the greatest apparent good is. The mind’s choice appears to be synchronized with the will’s choice. There is no conceptual space allowed for a structural ordering of what the will chooses, nor any simultaneous alternative, at the same instant of time. This is where Edwards refuses to grant room for the idea of freedom ad utrumque. His chessboard illustration makes it clear that at the instant of choice, there is a preponderating bias towards touching one square over another, and that no simultaneous alternative is possible. Even though Edwards conceives of and enumerates a threefold ordering of steps in the mind, it is clear from the first step, that there never was a possible alternative; so strong is the inclination and bias. We will return to the chessboard illustration in the exposition below on necessity, (in §8.3). Now suppose one interprets Clap’s thesis as saying something else, namely, that it is not always the greatest good that determines the will, but sometimes a lesser good, or even an unforeseen evil? This, however, could not be the point since both authors are aware of this and that is why both theses speak of the “apparent” good. This change of tack by Edwards on the thesis of the greatest apparent good indicates a different direction that he takes, at least in comparison with Yale, and as will be argued below, with his Reformed forebears. (2) Edwards’s theory of the will against what he perceives to be the ‘Arminian’ notion of freedom of indifference is as follows: “For so long as prior inclination possesses the will, and is not removed, it binds the will, so that it is utterly will? Response: Yes, it is altogether so. (An objectum voluntatis, respectu actus, qui est velle, recte dicitur, bonum etiam apparens? Resp. omnino), in Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., Disputation 9, De voluntate, 42.

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impossible that the will should act otherwise than agreeably to it…That which the will chooses and prefers, that, all things considered, it preponderates and inclines to.”44 Further, the will cannot overcome the preponderating inclination of the soul. This is because “the strength of the will, let it be never so great, does not at all enable it to act one way, and act the contrary way, both at the same time.”45 Edwards gives the case of the acts of the will of the human soul of Christ. His acts were virtuous, yet his will was not free ad utrumque, to either holiness or sin, but was unalterably determined to one.” Christ was “under such a strong inclination or bias to the things that were excellent, as made it impossible that he should choose the contrary.”46 (3) A moral agent is responsible for who he is and it is the growing habit of the inclination of the soul that shapes and even compels the will. The stronger the inclination, the more responsible the moral agent is. Edwards’s notion of the will is that behind the will lies the strength of affections and as a result the will gets folded into the affections. The affections incline the will to act. According to his law of causality of nature, the cause is moral in nature and he refers to it as “either some previous habitual disposition, or some motive exhibited to the understanding.”47 And the effect is also moral in nature, “consisting in some inclination or volition of the soul, or voluntary action.”48 However much he makes of this distinction, it is difficult to see how this law of causality escapes what he intends to avoid, to wit, a necessitarian scheme that makes the law of cause and effect the law of the universe. This law imposes itself on both the natural and moral world. He appears to make all nature necessity. In this scheme, the affections constrain the will, that is, moral necessity inclines the will and the will is a capacity more natural than free. What drives Edwards to this scheme is his insistence on removing any supposable opposition in order to secure the certainty of the moral law of causality and thereby guarantee moral accountability for a world that otherwise would be marked by arbitrariness. In other words, any threat to the infallible connection of cause and effect would undermine moral responsibility, which is unacceptable for Edwards. In sum, Edwards calls his work “that grand inquiry” into “the determination of the will,”—a scholastic term with a long pedigree, which, historically speaking, cannot be the same as the modern-day doctrine of determinism—which he defines as “causing that the act of the will or choice should be thus, and not otherwise.”49 Edwards fills the term with his own meaning. The choice is “di44 45 46 47 48 49

WJE 1:205. Ibid. Ibid., 290–1. Ibid., 158. Ibid. Ibid., 141. The current-day term “determinism” has two meanings, the first came into use in

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rected to” a particular object. Edwards brings causality more sharply into view by stating that the determination of the will “supposes an effect, which must have a cause. If the will be determined, there is a determiner.”50 The causal connection follows logically from his discussion of the act of willing, the act of which he viewed as the immediate consequence and fruit of the mind’s, (not the will’s) volition. Edwards’s immediate concern about this “grand inquiry” appears to be twofold: to establish that the strongest motive is a combination of factors that induce the mind to choose, forming “one complex motive,” and to make a conceptual link between the role of motives and the role of causes. The significance of what we find at the very outset of this section is the role of the strength of motive that he equates with a cause and effect relationship. His next move is from the mind to the will, concluding that the “will is always as the greatest apparent good is.” The choice of the mind with respect to objects before its view cannot but accord with the strength of one’s inclination or propensity to do what pleases him or her most. His view of degrees of strength will lead us later to see that the stronger the inclination of will is, the freer one is. That is, the degree of one’s freedom is in direct proportion to the strength of one’s inclination.51 Edwards, without going into detail on the self-determination of the will, builds on what he has said, namely, that the will is not an agent, but a faculty, by which principium quo one freely chooses to do what he wills, but the will itself is not able to determine itself. The form of the argument against the Arminian’s notion of the will as a self-determining power is that they make the will both determiner and determined. This confirms Edwards’s point that every effect has a cause, but the function of the argument rests on saying that only agents elicit acts of the will, not the will itself. “Actions are to be ascribed to agents, and not properly to the powers of agents.52 What determines the will for Edwards “is that motive, which, as it stands in the view of the mind, is the strongest.” His definition of “motive” and its degrees of influence “is the whole of that which moves, excites or invites the mind to volition, whether that be one thing singly, or many things conjunctly.”53 Edwards takes an important step when he states that what an intelligent and voluntary agent perceives is viewed as “good,” and “The will always is as the greatest

50 51 52 53

the late eighteenth century, and the second in the late nineteenth century. See SOED: 1:664. (1) “The doctrine that human action is necessarily determined by motives regarded as external forces acting on the will.” (2) “The doctrine that everything that happens is determined by a necessary chain of causation.” WJE 1: 141. Ibid., 144. Ibid., 171. Ibid., 141.

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apparent good.”54 He defines “good” as “agreeable” or “pleasing to the mind.”55 And now, this defining step of his against any indifference or power to elicit an act to the contrary means that an object most suitable to the mind’s eye cannot “engage the election of the soul in any further degree than it appears such,” that is, objects cannot “engage the mind to elect them, some other way than by their appearing eligible to it.”56 For example, there is the election of the act and the resultant act itself. If walking is the greatest apparent good before the mind’s eye, the mind elicits the act of walking and the voluntary act of walking is the fruit of the choice. One must remember, it is not as if preferring is separate from choosing. Where there is no preference, there is no volition. At the instant of volition, there is no array of choices competing for election, only the most suitable, only the greatest apparent good—for the mind is not attracted to what it abhors, though the true nature of what appears good may be misleading—the mind of the agent elicits that act. The objects perceived cannot present themselves simultaneously to the mind as both agreeable and disagreeable. In the end, he reminds the reader of his beginning definition of the faculty of the will— doing as one wills is doing as one pleases—and now adds, “when men act voluntarily, and do what they please, then they do what suits the best.”57

8.3

Necessity

The semantic range of the Latin term necessitas includes the notions of inevitability, compulsion, privation, relation, connection, even friendship. In his opening discourse on definitions, Edwards handles necessity in terms of relation in the sense of opposition to or from us; and he recognizes the notion of connection when he speaks of necessity in terms of the subject and predicate of a proposition. Against the foregoing background, Edwards takes up the subject and predicate of propositions as well as the modal concepts of necessary, impossible, and contingent. He not only defines these modal terms but also discusses how they are mutually definable by means of negation. In terms of modal logic, “it is necessary that” is equal to the proposition “that it is impossible it should not be,” writes Edwards, wherein the word impossible is a relative term and supposes a “power exerted” whose effect is thwarted, due to its insufficiency.58 The argument can be expressed by using letters as propositional variables in the modern manner, instead of special symbols to indicate logical 54 55 56 57 58

Ibid., 142, 144. Ibid., 144. Ibid., 142. Ibid., 147. Ibid., 149.

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connectives. For example, it is necessary that p obtain, in spite of the opposition of an act of the will, the proffered resistance and opposition of which is insufficient to thwart p. The modal relation can be explained, according to Edwards, as follows: It is necessary that p = it is not possible that not p. Although consequentia could refer to conditional statements, Edwards emphasizes the relation, namely,“the full, fixed, and certain connection” that affirms the existence of an effect.59 His modal notion of incompatibility says that the connection between p and q, for example, is such that the conditional relation holds if its consequent is incompatible with its antecedent. And the conditional relation is true if and only if it corresponds to a valid argument. “Thus many things are necessary in their own nature,” writes Edwards. “When the subject and predicate of the proposition, which affirms the existence of anything, either substance, quality, act or circumstance, have a full and certain connection, then the existence or being of that thing is said to be necessary in a metaphysical sense.”60 He puts forth his own metaphysical and mathematical examples, such as, “The eternal existence of being generally considered, is necessary in itself,” as well as the infinity of God and other attributes. And, “It is necessary in its own nature, that two and two should be four; and it is necessary, that all right lines drawn from the center of a circle to the circumference should be equal.”61 The starting point of Edwards’s analysis is to be located in “something that frustrates endeavor or desire.” Such an approach presupposes the original meaning of the Latin (necessitas, ne-cedo), that is, something or somebody is unable to avoid something. Thus, the crucial dimension is that of opposition and resistance. For this reason, “necessity” and “impossibility” are relative terms. “Necessary relates to some supposed opposition made to the existence of the thing spoken of, which is overcome, or proves in vain to hinder or to alter it,” writes Edwards.62 So, “necessary” in fact means: made necessary, because something is, “notwithstanding all supposable opposition.” An incomplete and improper explanation of the word “necessary,” writes Edwards, would be to say that it is what “must be, and cannot be otherwise.” He explains that the proper understanding of the term necessary includes the notion in which it relates to a supposed opposition that is overcome, that “which is, or will be, notwithstanding all supposable opposition.”63 In the case of necessity, the point is not that there is no possible alternative. Edwards’s notion of necessity presupposes a process in which the counter-forces and the opposite powers are overcome. The linguistic starting point is the original 59 60 61 62 63

Ibid., 152. Ibid. Ibid., 152–3. Ibid., 149. Ibid.

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meaning of necessitas, to wit, coercion or compulsion. There are forces working on something which make it impossible that something should not be. In the same way, “impossible” is a relative term. Here, the supposed power is insufficient. Counter-forces and opposite powers fail. That non-existence is approached in terms of impossibility is due to Edwards’s view of insufficiency. For him, the term, “Able” runs parallel to “resistible” and “unable” runs parallel to “irresistible.” Necessary things are also relative in the sense that they are necessary for us.64 The crucial point of view is overcoming opposition and resistance. What matters is making something necessary by conquering the adversary and beating the enemy. For Edwards, reality is not only what is, but also what must be. Events occur necessarily in relation to us. When they occur, or will occur, is necessary even when we desire or endeavor to the contrary, or try to prevent them from happening. “Such opposition of ours always either consists in, or implies opposition of our wills.”65 Paradoxically, Edwards’s view of necessity and impossibility is will-based. But here the theory is wrapped in the theory of action. However, because actualizing what we desire is the focal point, the theory of will also transforms itself into a theory of causality. Another consequence of this approach is that the use of these terms is nonsensical when there is no opposition. Edwards stresses that this usage is the common use. Even on the level of language he is very critical of the academic usage.66 The difficulty the reader may have when attempting to rhyme Edwards’s theory of the nature of the will with genuine opposition is that he does not allow for the possibility of giving the opposing motive a genuine opportunity to be chosen. For the mind always chooses the greatest apparent and most suitable object. The opposing object is never truly eligible because it is never equally in view before the electing mind as a genuinely electible candidate. For, as he has expressed the theory, the will is as the greatest apparent good is. Therefore, unless he is willing to say that the mind can choose the last dictate of reason when in fact it does not—a possibility he would not admit—then whether he chooses the last dictate or not matters not upon the scale, as it were, since the preponderation of the will is such that the mind is inclined to the superior weight even before it is placed in the scale. The mind’s eye only sees and therefore wills or nills the superior object before the mind. The scale is in fact not indifferent or neutral, but tipped. As Edwards expresses it in his famous chessboard illustration, when a person is determined to touch one of the squares, there is a “preponderating 64 Ibid., 149–50. 65 Ibid., 150. 66 Ibid., 151.

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inducement” upon the mind, such that “the mind does not proceed in absolute indifference.” Indeed, though he breaks down the steps to three, which the mind takes in determining to touch a square, the mind proceeds “as it were in a moment.”67 In other words, there is no succession of choices, structurally speaking. There is one square in the mind’s view that overcomes all resistance put up to that one square by the other squares. Each chessboard square vyes for election by the mind’s eyes, each with its outgoing influence and power. But the mind resists the influence of every square and “does not proceed in absolute indifference” but is, as it were, overcome by the superior attraction of one square, won over by “a preponderating inducement.” We might be tempted to conclude that the mind is passive in this process, were it not for the fact that Edwards’s entire Freedom of Will opposes such a perfect, indifferent passivity that supposedly exists both before and at the moment of election. The will does not allow itself to cause itself to will. When Edwards summarizes his opponents position on liberty consisting in indifference, he challenges them to seek if it is even possible to remove all “prior inclination” that possesses the will.68 When the mind’s eye scans over the sixty-four chessboard squares, at the moment of choice, there is but one prevailing square that the mind has decided to touch with the finger. Before the challenge to choose one square, the mind may rove the many squares, but without a view to choosing one, that is, the squares are not viewed as candidate squares for election, since this has not yet been suggested to the mind to do. Once the general determination has been made by the mind to choose a square, a second general determination is made to “give itself up to accident,” that is, to an unforeseen cause-effect connection. The third step is a “particular” determination” to touch one square, but at no moment in the process is there any perfect indifference, but rather a prior inclination that possesses the will, a “preponderating inducement” that tips the scale and overcomes all resistance put up by each square. The significance of introducing his chessboard illustration at this juncture has been to develop Edwards’s notion of opposition to one’s endeavour. No opposing forces, whether internal or external, can oppose the will, given his view of the preponderation of the will and necessity. For Edwards, necessity is in relation to opposition “from us or others, or from whatever quarter.”69 A person may endeavor, for example, not to return to the tavern, having considered the negative consequences with regard to wife and children, and so he may offer up resistance to the idea of going, but all his desire and endeavor is in vain, when the pull of the 67 Ibid., 199. 68 Ibid., 205. 69 Ibid., 149.

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tavern and the remembrance of the taste of alcohol overcomes his opposition and resistance to the contrary, and the preponderation of the will subdues the opposition put up by the will. In this sense is necessity “relative to us” and to any “supposable opposition of our wills.”70 The point to make here is that for Edwards there is no real opposing preference, nor resistance when a person chooses what he prefers, given that to choose is to prefer. For Edwards, the opposition put up against the will always is overcome by a preponderating weighty inducement.

8.3.1 Absolute necessity, the necessity of the consequence, and of the consequent: Calvin’s line, Edwards’s line, and the classic-Reformed line In Part One, we viewed Heereboord’s disputations as representative of the medieval and post-Reformation development of what we have called the classic line of Reformed theology, from Augustine through Scotus. But the question arises whether Edwards’s representation of “Calvinist” thought on necessity be not closer to Calvin himself, rather than the classic line. And if that were the case, would it not be fairer to say that Edwards was a good “Calvinist,” rather than to judge how “Reformed” he was according to the classic line? The historiographical challenge of juxtaposing Calvin and Edwards is that one runs up against different historical contexts, genres of writing, and the development of arguments on freedom of will in response to movements that arose after Calvin.71 Edwards, writing to defend the “Calvinist” tradition against movements and opponents that appeared in the post-Reformation period, such as, according to Edwards, “Jesuits, Socinians, Arminians,” places himself in the classic-Reformed line of Turretin, Van Mastrict, and Stapfer. His education at Yale included authors in this line, like Heereboord, and it included theses and quaestiones in this classic line, as evidenced in our survey of the Harvard and Yale broadsides. It seems then more than justified to hold Edwards accountable for the classic-Reformed line of freedom.72 If we accept for the moment this study’s thesis that the classic line was presented to Yale students, like Edwards, and that that line’s innovations represent a more robust freedom than the more deterministic, traditional, Calvinist line, then there is indeed a compelling reason not just to hold Edwards accountable for 70 Ibid., 150. 71 Muller, After Calvin, 8. See also, Chapter 1 and Part One. 72 WJE 1: 131, 164, 203. On the label of “Calvinist,” see the “Introduction” chapter §7. On Edwards’s letter to Bellamy mentioning his esteem for Turretin and Van Mastricht, see the “Introduction” chapter §3.

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the classic line, but to establish whether Edwards parted ways from the classic line, and if so, how close he came to Calvin’s understanding of necessity? Muller has given a highly nuanced view of Calvin’s positive relationship to the thought world of medieval scholastics and scholastic method.73 On distinctions that can be drawn concerning different conceptual levels of necessity, both Calvin and Edwards make use of scholastic distinctions the sources of which are medieval scholastic authors. For Edwards, these distinctions were mediated to him through the Yale curriculum and his own reading. Both authors share some common opponents on the issue of free choice, which Edwards names in Freedom of Will, “the Pelagians” and “semi-Pelagians.” We recognize that Calvin’s writings, such as his Defensio (Defence of the orthodox doctrine of human choice against Pighius, 1543), and his second work against Albert Pighius (1490–1542): De aeterna Dei praedestinatione (Eternal predestination of God, 1552) did not form part of the regular diet of the Harvard and Yale curricula. Given these historiographical concerns about approaching Edwards’s and Calvin’s line of thought on necessity, we set out to compare Calvin’s and Edwards’s distinct kinds of necessity. We proceed in this section first with a brief overview of two classic distinctions on necessity from the medieval and early modern scholastics: necessitas consequentiae and necessitas consequentis. Then we present Calvin’s use of different kinds of necessity, followed by Edwards’s. We will consider the extent to which Edwards’s “Calvinist” thought on necessity runs parallel to Calvin, and the extent to which both Calvin and Edwards follow or do not follow the classic-Reformed line. Then we will draw some conclusions.

The classic-medieval and early-modern line on implication The distinction between the necessity of the consequence (necessitas consequentiae) and the necessity of the consequent (necessitas consequentis) plays a crucial role in medieval logic, philosophy, and theology. The first technical term that we need to introduce here is the necessity of the consequence. This indicates an implicative necessity. In Latin idiom, the word for implication, or consequence, is consequentia (con-sequi). The basic form of an implication is: (1) p→q. That is, (1) symbolizes that p conditions q. If p, then q is the whole of the implication that p implies or conditions q. In (1), we call p the antecedent of the implication p→q, and q the consequent. Another technical term we need to introduce is the necessity operator, symbolized by N. It can refer either to the antecedent and/or the consequent of the implication, or to the implication itself. 73 Muller, The unaccommodated Calvin, chapter 3 “Scholasticism in Calvin.”

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The structure of an implication in which the necessity of the consequent obtains is symbolized as: (2) p → Nq. In (2), the necessity operator N determines the consequent q so that q is necessary and then p also has to be necessary. The structure of an implication in which the necessity of the consequence obtains is symbolized as: (3) N(p→q). In (3), the necessity operator N determines the whole of the implication p → q. The implicative relation itself is necessary, whereas neither p nor q have to be necessary, for p and q can be contingent. This implicative connective N (→) expresses the necessary entailment of modal propositional logic. What matters is the necessity of the implicative relation and not the real or ontological necessity of the antecedent and the consequent themselves.74 If one ignores the distinction between necessitas consequentis and necessitas consequentiae, then the truth values of the variables p and q have the same truth value as: (N) If p, then q. In that case, p and q themselves have to be necessarily true: (N) If N p, then Nq. This formula offers the pattern of the necessitas consequentis. And this represents the necessitarian position. In his well-known Loci Communes (1535) §50, Melanchthon takes up the medieval practice of distinguishing between these two kinds of necessity, in order to defend against the idea that God is the author of sin. He associated the necessity of the consequent with absolute necessity. One example he gave was, “It is necessary that God exists, that he is good, and just.”75 In syllogistic form, If God necessarily exists, then he is necessarily good and just. God necessarily exists. Therefore, he is necessarily good and just.

The major premise contains the conclusion, and in this case, necessarily so. For, it is not possible that God both exists and that he is not good and just. Thus, in this 74 See Vos et al., Scotus: Contingency and Freedom, Lectura I 39, 37–8. Cf. the difference between the consequence/consequent distinction and the concomitance/concomitant distinction, 132– 7. See Dekker, Rijker dan Midas, 13–16; Cf. Vos, Kennis en noodzakelijkheid, chapter 2, 3. 75 Antonie Vos, “Melanchthon over wil en vrijheid,” in Philippus Melanchthon bruggenbouwer, ed. Frank Van der Pol (Kampen: Kok, 2011), 173–77; Cf. Luther knows of the scholastic distinction, but expresses disdain for what he calls the sophists “absurd formula,” that “all things take place by necessity of consequence, but not by necessity of the thing consequent,” in Martin Luther, The bondage of the will, trans. J.I Packer and O.R. Johnston (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1957), 82. Although relunctantly, Calvin uses the distinction between necessitas consequentis et consequentiae, translated by Reid as “absolute and consequential necessity.” Calvin also acknowledges the concept of the “contingency” of events that occur in the world. He gives the classic example of the frangibility of the bones of Christ, which he correlates with the necessity of the consequence, in John Calvin, Concerning the eternal predestination of God, trans. J.K.S. Reid (London: James Clarke & Co. Limited, 1961), 170; Guilielmus Baum et al., Corpus Reformatorum, vols. 29–87 Ioannis Calvini opera omnia quae supersunt omnia (Brunsvigae: C. A. Schwetschke et Filium, 1863–1900) 8:354.

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case, neither proposition can be contingent, considered apart. It is not possible for God not to be good and just. Therefore, the consequent “then-proposition” is necessarily true. From the propositional variables in the following pattern, ~(p & ~q), one can infer: “If p, then q.” In that case, the necessity operator N is placed as follows: N~(p & ~q). Although this suffices to express the necessity of the consequence in an “If-then” conditional relation between p and q, it will not do for the case just given, “If God necessarily exists, then he is necessarily good and just.” For, in this case, we need to express an inference about the component propositions “p” and “q” separately. We can isolate the “q” proposition, which follows behind “then,” by placing the necessity operator N before “q.” One can express the necessity of the component proposition “q,” namely, “He is necessarily good and just,” as follows: “Nq,” and by inference, Np, since then p also is necessary.76 Melanchthon gave the following example of the necessity of the consequence: “If God wills that Jerusalem be destroyed, then it will be destroyed.”77 In syllogistic form, If God wills that Jerusalem be destroyed, then it will be destroyed. He wills that Jerusalem be destroyed. Therefore, it will be destroyed.

If one considers each component proposition apart, there is no necessity binding God to will that Jerusalem be destroyed. That is, there is nothing essential to the nature of Jerusalem such that it must be destroyed. According to the “If p, then q” pattern, the major premise contains the conclusion, and therefore there is a necessary conditional relationship between the major premise and the conclusion, but each component proposition can stand on its own, and as such, God’s willing is contingent, as is the destruction of Jerusalem. Calvin’s levels of necessity Although Calvin is reluctant to do so, he makes use of medieval scholastic distinctions in De aeterna Dei praedestinatione. In accommodation to the terms of the schoolmen, lest the subtle arguments of his opponents sway the common folk, he writes, “And though I shrink from the received forms of speech, and the 76 Andreas J Beck, “Zur rezeption Melanchthons bei Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676), namentlich in seiner Gotteslehr,” in Melanchthon und der Calvinismus, vol. 9, eds. Frank Günter, Herman J. Selderhuis, and Sebastian Lalla, Melanchthon-Schriften der Stadt Bretten, 9 (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 2005), 319–44; Vos, “Melanchthon over wil en vrijheid,” 173–86; Vos et al., Scotus: Contingency and freedom, Lectura I 39., 37–8, 132–7; Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 35–9; Dekker, Rijker dan Midas, 13–16. See also chapter 8 §8.3.1 of this present study for a presentation of the necessity of the consequence/consequent distinction. 77 Vos, “Melanchthon over wil en vrijheid,” in Philippus Melanchthon, 175.

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distinction between absolute and consequential necessity, I use them.” The English translation by Reid does not make the four distinctions as clear as they are in Latin, nor does it do justice to the correct contradistinctions between hypothetical necessity and absolute necessity, on the one hand, and between the necessity of the consequent and the consequence, on the other. In this text, Calvin distinguishes the following kinds of necessity: (1) necessitas natura “necessary by nature.” He gives the classic example of bones, which by nature, are frangible; (2) necessitas absoluta “absolute necessity”; (3) necessitas secundum quid “relative necessity” in contradistinction to (2); (4) necessitas consequentis, “the necessity of the consequent” in contradistinction to (5) necessitas consequentiae “the necessity of the consequence.”78 Calvin’s example highlights the following points. He asks if any of Christ’s bones could have been broken in which case the answer is “Yes,” according to the order of nature, but “No,” once they become unbreakable as a consequence of the “fixed decree of God.” “I omit to mention the distinctions employed in the schools,” writes Calvin. “What I hold is, in my judgment, simple, and needs no force to accommodate it usefully to life.” Calvin admits that the “force” of his argument lies not in the logical force of scholastic distinctions, but in the language of theological accommodation to common human understanding.79 Likewise, he acknowledges “contingency,” but as a way of accommodating language to the human understanding, not as a force of logical argument. “Let the Stoics have their fate; for us, the free will of God disposes all things. Yet it seems absurd to remove contingency from the world.”80 He ends the section on the 78 John Calvin, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, trans. J.K.S. Reid (London: James Clarke & Co. Limited, 1961), 170. The Latin text is De aeterna praedestinatione Dei: “Nec vero quod a receptis loquendi formis de necessitate secundum quid et absoluta, item consequentis et consequentia, abhorream, ita loquor,” in Guilielmus Baum et al, Corpus Reformatorum, vols. 29–87 of Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia (Brunsvigae: C.A. Schwetschke et Filium, 1863–1900), 8:354. (Henceforth: CO). Calvin also makes these distinctions in the Institutes: “Whence again we see that distinctions concerning relative necessity and absolute necessity, likewise of consequent and consequence, were not recklessly invented in schools, when God subjected to fragility the bones of his Son, which he had exempted from being broken, and thus restricted to the necessity of his own plan what could have happened naturally,” in John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion. vol. 20, 21 of The Library of Christian Classics, ed., John T. McNeill, trans., Ford Lewis Battles, 1.16.9. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960). The Latin text of the Institutio (1559) is: (Unde iterum videmus, non temere in scholis inventas fuisse distinctiones de necessitate secundum quid, et absoluta: item consequentis et consequentiae: quando ossa Filii sui Deus, quae à fractura exemerat, fragilitati subiecit, atque ita restrinxit ad consilii sui necessitatem, quod naturaliter contingere potuit), in Calvin, Institutio, (Amsterdam, 1671), 1.16.9. 79 Calvin, Eternal predestination of God, 170; Cf. CO 8:354. 80 (Valeant igitur cum suo fato Stoici: nobis libera Dei voluntas omnium sit moderatrix. Sed contingentiam tolli ex mundo, videtur absurdum), in CO 8:354. Reid’s footnote on this quote

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bones of Christ by identifying contingency with what happens in the order of nature. “Though it is proper for us to regard the order of nature as divinely determined, I do not at all reject contingency in regard to human understanding.”81 Calvin views contingency from the human point of view of how things unfold in this world, not in terms of how God wills and decrees. He makes a distinction between what necessarily takes place in the course of this life relative to God’s decree (3), and what is necessary in and of itself, for instance, that bones are by nature breakable (1). “What necessarily happens is what God decrees, and is therefore not exactly or of itself necessary by nature.”82 That the bones of Christ Jesus would not be broken, that God would “exempt” (eximere) and “restrict” (restringere) what happened to Christ’s bones, was relative to “the necessity of God’s council.”83 The level of necessity here was, according to Muller, a relative necessitas secundum quid (3), not the necessity of the consequence (5).84 In Calvin’s Defence of free choice against Pighius, he begins with Aristotle to arrive at a common definition of necessity: It is “a fixed steady state in which a thing cannot be otherwise than it is. In Aristotle at any rate the existence of alternative possibilities is always the opposite of necessity.” He adds that common sense would agree that, what is necessary is “whatever has to be as it is and cannot be otherwise.” From this he infers that necessity includes immutability, thus, it follows that “God is good of necessity.” From this he deduces that God nonetheless “wills the good as necessarily as he does it.” But this is not coercion. God is “a necessity to himself.” Noone coerces him, nor does he coerce himself. “Of his own accord and voluntarily he tends to that which he does of necessity.”85 In the next section, we analyze Calvin’s different levels of necessity.

Analysis of Calvin’s levels of necessity Given the position statements on necessity by Calvin, the fundamental difference between Calvin and Pighius that emerges is that whereas Calvin’s doctrine of God is will-based, Pighius’s doctrine is nature-based. For Calvin, God is good in virtue

81 82 83 84 85

reads, “French has: As for what is called contingency, it means that things can happen either in one way or another.” “Iam vero quia divinitus positum naturae ordinem intueri nos decet, contingentiam, quoad sensum nostrum, minime rejicio,” in CO 8:354 The distinction is between regarding “divinitus positum naturae ordinem ” and “contingentiam, quoad sensum nostrum.” Calvin, Eternal predestination of God, 170. Calvin, Eternal predestination of God, 170; idem, Institutio, 1.16.9. Muller, The unaccommodated Calvin, 53. John Calvin, The bondage and liberation of the will: a defence of the orthodox doctrine of human choice against Pighius, ed. Anthony N.S. Lane, trans. G.I. Davies, Texts and studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1996), 149; CO 6: 335.

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of his will. For Pighius, God is good by nature. Pighius states that “will is inferior [structurally posterior] to nature” (Voluntas inquit natura posterior est). Since God is good by nature, Pighius reasons that “it is inappropriate to say that God wills to be righteous, when he is so by nature.”86 Calvin states his will-based position very clearly, as follows: (C1) “Since, then, God wills to be whatever he is, and that of necessity, there is no doubt that just as he is good of necessity, he also wills to be so, a state which is so far from coercion that in it he is to the greatest degree willing.”87 But Pighius says, “he does not know what it means for God to will to be righteous of necessity.”88 Paradoxically, although Pighius’s doctrine is nature-based, his position includes the contingency of divine willing and acting in states of affairs outside himself: (P1) “God does not do or will of necessity anything at all which is outside himself, but in a purely free way, even though they be just.”89 Calvin clarifies that he too would add that God wills in a “free” way, “if it were agreed that free means “self-determined.”90 In sum, for Pighius, although God is by nature good, and therefore it is impossible that he not will what is good and do what is just, he nevertheless wills freely and contingently. One way to make sense of Pighius’s notion of freedom is to deduce that at the moment God wills a state of affairs outside himself, it is possible that he not will it or will something else. Ironically, on this point, Pighius, the opponent of Calvin, makes use of a conceptual device that authors in the classic line also make use of, namely, “synchronic contingency.”91 Calvin, however, disallows what he sees in Pighius’s position (P1) to be a distinction between God’s “righteousness” (that he is good) and his “works” (that he wills what is good).92 In response, by not allowing this distinction, Calvin appears to knowingly make the mistaken “circular” deduction that: (C2) “If God’s goodness is necessary, then “he wills the good as necessarily as he does it.”93 Calvin himself says that God’s “goodness, wisdom, power, righteousness 86 87 88 89

90 91 92 93

Calvin, A defence of free choice against Pighius, 147; CO 6: 334. Calvin, A defence of free choice against Pighius, 148; CO 6: 334. Calvin, A defence of free choice against Pighius, 147; CO 6: 334. Calvin, A defence of free choice against Pighius, 147; Calvin paraphrased Pighius’s statement: “Addit praeterea, Deum nihil aliorum omnium a se necessario agere aut velle,” in CO 6: 334. Pighius wrote: “Nihil tamen omnium aliorum a se, etsi iusta sint, necessario agit aut vult, sed mere libere,” in Pighius, 385a (xlib). (Pighius’s additional words are added in italics). For the missing part of Pighius’s Latin text, see Ioannis Calvini defensio sanae et orthodoxae doctrinae de servitute et liberatione humani arbitrii, eds. Anthony N.S. Lane and Graham I. Davies (Genève: Droz, 2008), 385a (xlib). Calvin, A defence of free choice against Pighius, 148; CO 6:334. On “synchronic contingency,” see Vos et al., Scotus: contingency and freedom, lectura I 39, §§48–50; See the discussion of the Yale 1718 thesis in chapter 1 §1.2.8, and chapter 3 §3.6.2 of this present study. Calvin, A defence of free choice against Pighius, 147; CO 6: 334. Calvin, A defence of free choice against Pighius, 149; CO: 335.

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and will are united together by a kind of, so to speak, circular connection.”94 In other words, if God’s goodness is necessary, then it is not possible that he contingently will the good and do it. Admitting this circular reasoning, given (C2), Calvin then concludes this about God, that (C3) “Since he continues unchanging in this respect, he is in a certain sense a necessity to himself, he is not coerced by another, nor however does he even coerce himself, but of his own accord (sponte) and voluntarily (voluntarius) he tends (inclinare) to that which he does of necessity.”95 In sum, Calvin’s point is that while coercion is opposed to freedom, necessity is not. Freedom and necessity can be made to rhyme with one another. “What is voluntary is not so different from what is necessary that they cannot sometimes coincide,” writes Calvin.96 Although Pighius offers a classic distinction in an attempt to explain just how one can rhyme freedom with necessity, Calvin disallows the contingency line of thinking. He restricts the language of contingency to an accommodation to human understanding, as we saw in the case of the bones of Christ. In Kennis en Noodzakelijkheid, Antonie Vos has given an excellent philosophical analysis of Calvin’s use of key scholastic distinctions on necessity.97 The starting point of Calvin’s use of necessitas presupposes the meaning for him of the Latin idiom (ne-cesse). In Calvin’s thought, conceptually, the implicative line of linking up necessity with God’s will and power looks like this: “Since God’s foresight implies God’s will, and God’s will implies the necessity of what he wills, nevertheless, God’s foresight as much as his foreknowledge implies the necessity of what he foresees, and what he foreknows.” Thus, “God’s providence appears to imply necessity, because God’s providence implies God’s will.”98 Although Calvin allows for logical distinctions between God’s providence, foreknowledge, and foresight, it appears that both predestination and providence proceed from God’s eternal will, outside time, thus Calvin’s title: De aeterna Dei praedestinatione (The eternal predestination of God). Vos points out that the worth of the distinction between the necessity of the consequence and the necessity of the consequent rests in the logical possibility of denying either the necessity of the antecedent or the necessity of the consequent of a proposition, while at the same time “granting the necessity of the implication.” The distinction collapses, however, “if there is no more talk of ne94 95 96 97 98

Calvin, A defence of free choice against Pighius, 148; CO: 334. Calvin, A defence of free choice against Pighius, 149; CO 6: 335. Calvin, A defence of free choice against Pighius, 149; CO 6: 335. Vos. Kennis en Noodzakelijkheid, 115–24, 234–38. Vos, Kennis en noodzakelijkheid, 119. See Wendel, whose work Vos cites, François Wendel, Calvin: origins and development of his religious thought, Philip Mairet trans., 263–84. (Presses Universitaires de France, 1950; New York: Harper and Row, 1963; Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997).

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cessity” both in the case of the implication, and in the case of the antecedent or consequent.99 In other words, given the necessity of the consequence in a proposition, represented, by p and q, there is an implicative relation between p and q, such that, N(p → q). That is, necessarily, p conditions, or, implies q. Calvin’s manner of using these terms appears to make the worth of the logical distinctions collapse. For instance, “What necessarily happens is what God decrees, and is therefore not exactly or of itself necessary by nature. I find a familiar example in the bones of Christ,” writes Calvin.100 Here is an instance of the necessity of the consequence of God’s decree. Necessarily, since God decrees that Christ’s bones will not be broken, then they will not be broken. Calvin notes that in the example of God’s decree concerning the bones of Christ, the necessity of that which can or cannot happen to Christ’s bones in the course of time is not a necessity of nature, but is relative to God’s decree. But he does not speak of the decree—what is now impossible that it not be—in terms of the implicative necessity of the consequence in the propositional relation of p and q. As we saw in the presentation of the classic line of thought on the necessity of the consequence and the necessity of the consequent, if one ignores the distinction, then the truth values of p and q have the same truth value of: (N) If p, then q. Both propositional variables p and q are necessarily true. (N) If Np, then Nq. Thus, Nq. Calvin’s position ends up being necessitarian. Given (C1) and (C2), it appears that Vos’s analysis of Calvin’s position is valid. We arrive, as Vos does, at Calvin’s necessitarian position, which we have sketched above, as follows: (1) If God knows that p, then it is necessary that God knows that p. (2) The former, (1), is also necessarily true. In consequence thereof, the following has to be true: (3) Then and only then, if God wills that p, is it necessary that God wills that p.101 Given that the truth of a state of affairs p obtaining—That the bones of Christ will not be broken—is equivalent to God’s knowledge, and God’s knowledge of p, and will that-p obtain, are inseparably linked in Calvin’s thought, then, Vos argues: Then and only then if God wills that p is it necessary that p, and Then and only then if it is possible that God wills that p, is p true.102

99 100 101 102

Vos, Kennis en noodzakelijkheid, 120. Calvin, Eternal predestination of God, 170; Cf. CO 8:354. Vos, Kennis en noodzakelijkehid, 235. Ibid.

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There is no other possibility than that p be true and obtain. This is because, for Calvin, given (C2) and (C3), it is necessary that God not will that not-p. Likewise, it is necessary that p is possible. In other words, for Calvin, if it is possible—That the bones of Christ will not be broken—it is in fact necessary. We now present and compare Edwards’s levels of necessity.

Edwards’s levels of necessity The theory of causality that Edwards holds demands that even though the cause of an effect is not discerned, there is, nonetheless, a cause. We will see in our presentation of his understanding of levels of necessity that he links causes with the technical distinction: the necessity of the consequence. To support his case for the certainty of states of affairs that infallibly obtain, Edwards takes up the term consequentia, from the Latin con-sequi, which means “following from.” The term consequentia may refer to an argument or inference, or it may refer to an implied proposition. An example of inference is, “For every man it is necessarily true that if he has married a woman, he is her husband.” Whereas an implied proposition is, “For every man it is true that if he is a husband, then it is a necessary truth that he is married.” This distinction has important ramifications for Edwards’s worldview, and this will be considered in due course. At this point it ought to be said that when one can make these modal distinctions he or she marks the boundaries between two extremes, a nominalist, arbitrary contingent worldview and a determinist, necessitarian worldview. Edwards enumerates three kinds of necessity using roughly English equivalents of the well-known scholastic terms in at least two of his definitions: necessitas absoluta and necessitas consequentiae. However, he does not name the twin pair of necessitas consequentiae, namely, necessitas consequentis. Edwards introduces his definitions of propositions with the following general definition of “philosophical necessity,” which he also calls a “general” or “metaphysical” necessity: (EO) Philosophical necessity is really nothing else than the full and fixed connection between the things signified by the subject and predicate of a proposition, which affirms something to be true.103

For Edwards, his understanding of “connection” is crucial to how he approaches the controversy surrounding necessity and the acts of the will. He explains how he relates “connection” to “necessity” in this definition. For Edwards, even if there is opposition or contrary effort raised against any given event, past, present, or future, when there is such a “connection, then the thing affirmed in the 103 WJE 1: 152.

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proposition is necessary.”104 Edwards repeats the definition at the head of three definitions which follow: (EO¹) The subject and predicate of a proposition, which affirms the existence of something, may have a full, fixed, and certain connection several ways.105

Edwards prepares the reader for three distinct ways of interpreting a proposition and what it says about how an event comes to be. The first way that Edwards enumerates points to features associated with absolute necessity. Edwards begins his first paragraph in his text with the numeral (1) on absolute necessity: (E1) They may have a full and perfect connection in and of themselves.106

The examples Edwards gives are: (1) the eternal existence of being generally considered, God’s infinity, and other attributes,107 (2) That two and two should be four, (3) That all right lines drawn from the center of a circle to the circumference should be equal, and (4) That men should do to others, as they would that they should do to them, otherwise known as the Golden rule. And so there are “innumerable metaphysical and mathematical truths that are necessary in themselves.”108 In these examples, it appears that Edwards gives a classic understanding of things that are necessary “in themselves.” That is, God doesn’t arbitrarily decree whether two and two make four, in the Cartesian sense. And God doesn’t arbitrarily decide whether he should decree the two great commands, to love God, and love our neighbor. But then Edwards makes a move that needs to be analysed. He seems to infer from the absolute necessity of God’s infallible knowledge an infallibly certain and fixed connection of events. In other words, he takes a step of inference from ontological truths, things necessary in themselves, like God’s knowledge, towards propositional language, and then a step from the logical inner necessity and nexus of propositions to make inferences from causality necessary. This is seen in his move to transfer what he calls the necessity of the consequence from one event in a chain of events to another. We will see this below under Edwards’s proposition (E3). When we discuss the necessity of the consequence below, we will seek to understand why it is that he gives no room for contingent causality. We saw in Stapfer chapter 6 §6.2.2 that he stressed that neither divine foreknowledge of states of affairs, nor predetermination of states of affairs infers 104 105 106 107

Ibid., 152. Ibid., 152. Ibid. Ibid., 152. Cf. “necessitas absoluta,” in Muller, DLGTT, 199: “Necessitas absoluta indicates something that is necessary in such a way that its opposite is contradictory. God’s existence is, thus, an absolute necessity, since the nonexistence of the self-existent, necessary being is a contradiction.” 108 WJE 1:153.

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absolute necessity. He was responding to the Remonstrants, who inferred that an absolute decree would deprive humans of freedom. He said they wrongly inferred that an absolute decree inferred the necessity of absolute and inevitable action. Stapfer had explained that when God contingently decrees a state, transferring it from a state of possibility to a state of futurition, it remains contingent, as part of a total nexus of contingent states of affairs.109 But Edwards’s inferences from absolute necessity, and his entire section of examples of divine prophecy, depart from Stapfer’s conclusions. We saw how Stapfer had said that God foreknows contingent states of affairs as contingent, necessary states of affairs as necessary. Moreover, God’s decree did not change a state of affairs’status from contingent to necessary. What God willed contingently remained contingent. Stapfer’s explanation made it clear that he believed contingency could consist with the divine decrees. The point he set out to make was that the divine decree does not infer absolute necessity; even God’s production of a “chain of events,” which will unfold in the course of time, can remain contingent, that is, if one understands, as Stapfer does, that God’s production is a contingent production, but certain nonetheless. Part Two, Section Eleven of Edwards’s Freedom of Will, from which we took examples of God’s foreknowledge and foretelling, begins with a statement by Edwards which appears to concede that contingency can consist with the necessity of God’s foreknowledge, which if it were the case, then we would have to retract our conclusions that his scheme is void of contingency. He writes, “That the acts of the wills of moral agents are not contingent events, in that sense, as to be without all necessity, appears by God’s certain foreknowledge of such events.”110 We could interpret this double negation—“not contingent” and “without necessity”— to mean that acts of the will are contingent events that consist with necessity. However, what he appears to give in Section Eleven, on one reading, he removes in Section Twelve.111 Ironically, Edwards’s exposition in Section Eleven does not differ much from the position of Bishop Burnet, which Edwards transcribed from Stapfer, and whom Stapfer held up as representative of the Remonstrant position. When Edwards argues that, since God foreknows the future volitions of moral agents, he can foretell all events, he is stating nothing different than Bishop Burnet, who advocated God’s conditioned, but infallible knowledge, and who adduced the classic Scripture passage about God’s knowledge that the men of Keilah would surrender king David into Saul’s hands, if he didn’t flee. In fact, all the Scriptural examples that Edwards used in Freedom of Will, Part Two, Section Eleven, could have been used by his opponents to justify 109 Stapfer, Institutiones, 1:108–9. (§§439–442). 110 WJE 1: 239. 111 Ibid., 257.

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God’s conditioned, yet infallible knowledge, which is a notion Edwards clearly opposed.112 Edwards on the necessity of the consequence Edwards explains the term, “the necessity of the consequence,” in Part One of Freedom of Will, and applies it throughout his inquiry.113 The significance of the term for his argument is evident in the way he has structured the book. In Part Two of Freedom of Will, he begins each and every section eight through twelve with the concept of the necessity of the consequence, using the term to explain the connection, and to show the consistency, between the notion of liberty of will and necessity (§8), acts of the will and the last dictate of the understanding (§9), motives and volition (§10), God’s certain foreknowledge of the volitions of moral agents (§11), and to infer the necessity of the volitions of moral agents, given the indissoluble connection between the events and God’s foreknowledge (§12).114 In Part Three of Freedom of Will (§4), he asserts, against “Arminian writers,” that the necessity of the consequence of acts of the will is consistent with the will as “the proper subject of precept and command,” such as when a person is subject to a “covenant treaty.”115 In Part Four of Freedom of Will (§5), he counters what he understands as the implications of the “Arminian” notion, which is that the necessity of the consequence, if applied to the sure connection of causes and effects, antecedents and consequents, would render useless any means and endeavors to pursue virtue, and avoid vice.116 In Part Four, (§5), Edwards gives the following example of the sure connection between cause and effect, in order to show the consistency between the notion of the necessity of the consequence and the human endeavor to pursue virtue. In the following presentation and analysis of Edwards’s use of this distinction, what is confusing is that he partly describes the necessity of the consequence correctly, and he partly confuses it with the necessity of the consequent. His description is not the same as the classic sense of the term.117 Some of the features 112 Ibid., 239–256 (§11). Interestingly, Edwards does not refer to the Scripture passage about David and the men of Keilah (1 Samuel 23:11–12). 113 Ibid., 153. 114 Ibid., 213, 217, 225, 239, 257. 115 Ibid., 302, 304, fn1, 203. 116 Ibid., 365, 367. 117 Muller comes to the same conclusion that Edwards confounds “the necessity of the consequence” with “the necessity of the consequent,” in Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and Francis Turretin,” 266–85. Note the subtle shift concerning contingency in definitions from the time of Altenstaig to Chambers (in Edwards’s day). Cf. Joannes Altenstaig, Lexicon theologicum (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag; repr. Köln 1619, 1974), 584. Altenstaig defines necessity of the consequence as: “The necessity of the consequence concerns a consequence in which a

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of necessity that Edwards attributes to the necessity of the consequence actually belong to the necessity of the consequent. After showing what is correct and what is not correct about his definition, we will show that the first mistake he makes leads to a second mistake, namely, an ontological misstep. That is, he discusses the necessity of the consequent in causal terms. In his second paragraph (2), Edwards continues to explain the ways in which the subject and predicate of a proposition affirm the existence of something. He begins with the following definition: (E2) The connection of the subject and predicate of a proposition, which affirms the existence of something, may be fixed and made certain, because the existence of that thing is already come to pass; and either now is, or has been; and so has as it were [been] made sure of existence.118

In (E2), Edwards correctly points to that feature of the necessity of the consequence which states that the implicative relation itself between p and q in a proposition is “necessary,” or, as he says, “fixed” and “certain.” In reference to (E2), Edwards explains in the same paragraph: proposition which is either necessary or contingent, delivers in a good consequence another proposition which is either contingent or necessary.” (Necessitas consequentiae in qua una propositio sive necessaria sive contingens in bona consequentia infert aliam sive contingentem sive necessariam). Cf. Muller, DLGTT, necessitas consequentiae: “a necessity brought about or conditioned by a previous contingent act or event so that the necessity itself arises out of a contingent circumstance; thus, conditional necessity … The necessitas consequentiae occurs in the finite order and, unlike necessitas absoluta, is applicable to God in terms of his potentia ordinata, or ordained power.” Altenstaig defines the necessity of the consequent as: “The necessity of the consequent is the necessity … by which something is such that it is impossible that it is not so, or by which it is so that it is impossible that the opposite happens. It is called absolute necessity.” (Necessitas consequentis est illa, ut scribit Brul., qua aliquid ita est quod non potest non ita esse, vel qua ita ut non possit oppositum eius fieri et dicitur absoluta). Cf. Muller, DLGTT, necessitas consequentis: “The necessity of something that cannot be other than what it is, which is to say, a simple or absolute necessity. A necessity of the consequent arises out of the connection of necessary causes with the effects that must follow from them.” Cf. Van Asselt et al., Scholastic discourse, 358–9. The Reformed scholastic writer, Johannes Maccovius (1588–1644), uses the term “immutable connection” (immutabili nexu) in reference to an axiomatic necessity, that is, a material necessity. Maccovius writes: “Necessity is either a necessity of matter as is seen in an axiom, or it is a necessity of the form as can be seen in a syllogism. The former can be seen in the immutable connection of subject and predicate, such as: God is omnipotent. The latter is seen in drawing a conclusion from premises. It can occur in contingent and even in false matter such as: ‘a donkey has wings. Ergo: it flies.’ This is necessary by a necessity of inference, or by a necessity of form.” Consequence: “In a more restrained signification, consequence is used for the relation or connection between two propositions, whereof one follows, or is inferred from the other. Thus, It is an animal, and therefore feels,”in Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopaedia: or an universal dictionary of arts and sciences, vol. 1 (London: D. Midwinter, 1741–43), 118 WJE 1: 153.

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(E2¹) It has become impossible it should be otherwise than true, that such a thing has been.119

In (E2¹), Edwards, again, correctly points to that feature of the necessity of the consequence which speaks of an implicative necessity, such as, “Necessarily, if I am married to Cynthia, she is my wife;” that is, “Necessarily, p implies q.” But there are other features of the necessity of the consequence. When we introduced the classic sense of this distinction we saw that although the implicative relation itself is necessary, neither p nor q have to be necessary, for p and q can be contingent. For instance, that I married Cynthia was a contingent event. If Edwards is saying that, given the fact that my marriage to Cynthia already has come to pass, it is impossible that it not be true, then he is pointing to the issue of whether a past event is necessary or contingent. This issue arose in the Yale 1718 logic thesis, “A proposition about the past can be contingent,” which we discussed (in chapter 1 §1.2.8). In the case of the above example— “Necessarily, if I am married to Cynthia, she is my wife”—although the marriage-event was true on a certain day in the past, that same event could, seen today, not be true on that same day in the past. The event was contingent. Thus, if we apply Edwards’s statement in (E2¹) to the event of a past wedding, it is not correct to say that it cannot be “otherwise than true.” Thus far in his exposition, Edwards has not mentioned the term “the necessity of the consequence.” In the next definition, he does use the term. We turn to his paragraph (3): (E3) The subject and predicate of a proposition which affirms something to be, may have a real and certain connection consequentially; and so the existence of the thing may be consequentially necessary; as it may be surely and firmly connected with something else, that is necessary in one of the former respects.120

In reference to (E3), Edwards names the “former” kinds of necessary connection: “That which is absolutely necessary in its own nature,” a reference to (E1), and “That which has already received existence,” a reference to (E2). Edwards explains that “This necessity lies in or may be explained by the connection of two or more propositions one with another.”121 He then makes clear that he is talking about “the necessity of the consequence” at the end of his paragraph (3): (E3¹) Things which are perfectly connected with other things that are necessary, are necessary themselves, by a necessity of consequence.122

Edwards correctly points to that feature of the necessity of the consequence which states that the implicative relation itself between p and q in a proposition is 119 120 121 122

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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necessary. If the antecedent p is necessary, then necessity is transferred to the consequent q by virtue of the necessity of the consequence. We saw this under the presentation of the classic line on implication. However, in (E2), we pointed out that there is a sense in which a past event can be contingent. But Edwards claims that it is impossible that a past event be otherwise than true. Edwards adds to his definition of (E3) that propositions with respect to the future, which are necessary, are necessary only in this last way (E3). The existence of a future state of affairs is “not necessary in itself,” as it would be according to Edwards definition (E1). Nor, writes Edwards, is a future state of affairs necessary in the sense he gave in (E2). He concludes that the only way something future “is or can be necessary, is by a connection,” with something that is necessary in the sense of (E1), “necessary in its own nature,” or (E2), a past event.123 In (E3) we encounter Edwards’s understanding of “connection” and its importance in his explanation of how past, present, and future events “come to pass necessarily.” He explains his sense of “connection” as follows: Given an effect or an event, “the other certainly follows.” In other words, Edwards states that whether past, present, or future, every event or effect comes about “necessarily” because of a “connection” of events, “the one being supposed, the other certainly follows.” Significantly, he adds that “this is the necessity which especially belongs to controversies about the acts of the will.”124 Edwards devoted an entire section in Freedom of Will to giving examples of what he calls the necessity of the consequence.125 His point was to say that his understanding of necessity is compatible with attributing virtue and vice to moral agent’s choices. Edwards says that since God foreknows the future volitions of moral agents, he can foretell all events, even if the series of successive events were an “infinite number of series” or “chain of events.”126 For example, he says that God foretold Pharaoh’s moral conduct; he foretold to Abraham that Israel’s children would go to Egypt; God foretold the moral conduct of nations and peoples; and he foretold, because he foreknew with certainty, the future establishment of “the kingdom of the Messiah.”127 In the rest of Edwards’s Freedom of Will, every time he speaks of a necessity of connection and consequence, we must keep in mind that he is not applying the classic sense of the term. He has filled the term with a sense of connection and philosophical necessity that has removed any possibility of contingent events, or contingent “grounds or reason for why something is the way it is, and not

123 124 125 126 127

Ibid. Ibid., 154. Ibid., 239–56. Ibid., 239–40. Ibid., 240–46.

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otherwise.128 His strong sense of connection and philosophical necessity makes him suspicious of any kind of fortuitous contingency. Edwards rejects contingency because he says it is used in the sense of a contingent event that comes to pass “whose connection with its causes or antecedents…is not discerned.” “Contingent” is also used for “something which has absolutely no previous ground or reason, with which its existence has any fixed and certain connection,” writes Edwards.129 But just because a “cause” is not “discerned” does not mean that there is no cause. And just because Edwards holds to the principle that every effect has a cause does not mean that the cause cannot be contingent. Edwards’s view of the necessity of the consequence a priori rules out contingency. Given that he presupposes a process in which counter-forces and opposite powers are necessarily overcome, his notion of philosophical necessity, which he applies to the controversy on necessity and acts of the will, steers him towards a necessitarian worldview.130 Opposition, for Edwards, is never really a genuine opposite, that is, an electible opposite. We now arrive at a crucial point in our analysis. From Edwards’s definitions, we conclude that Edwards sees the “connection” of what a and p signify in a proposition as an “infallible connection,” but in the sense of “philosophical necessity.” Furthermore, even though he calls (E3) a “necessity of the consequence,” he infers from the classic implicative relation of p and q in a proposition a kind of necessity that does not belong to the necessity of the consequence. He infers a philosophical necessity. But the connection of a philosophical necessity, in Edwards’s understanding, is such that it is impossible that an event be otherwise than it is. Thus, he fills the meaning of “connection” with what he calls a general, philosophical, and metaphysical necessity.131 In this way he denies any role to contingency. The classic view is ignored, which allows for a connection where p and q can be contingent. We conclude from the evidence that what Edwards calls a necessity of the consequence is the classic “necessity of the consequent.” Ironically, Edwards does not use the term, necessity of the consequent. But that is what he describes. The confusing misstep that Edwards takes is to describe the necessity of the consequence in terms of a series of events whose connection is marked by 128 Ibid., 156, 213, 217, 225, 239, 257,265. Cf. Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and the absence of free choice,” 14. Cf. Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 35–38. 129 WJE 1:155. 130 What the necessity of the consequent would have proposed is a conditional that is simple or absolute, such that, the if–clause p can never be true when the main clause q is false. However, the consequent q can be true regardless of whether the consequence is true or false. The state of affairs q “arises out of the connection of necessary causes with the effects that must follow from them,” writes Muller in DLGTT, 200. 131 WJE 1: 152, 154.

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philosophical necessity. But the implication that one proposition implies another does not entail the individual necessity of one or the other, neither does it remove the contingency of one or the other. Edwards, therefore, confounds the necessity of the consequence with a sequence of events that are, as he says, “necessarily” connected in the sense of philosophical necessity. When Edwards says that this is the necessity which belongs to the controversy about the acts of the will, what he means is that there is another kind of necessity, which he claims does not apply to acts of the will—although at the end of the paragraph he suggests that “particular necessity” may not differ from “general necessity” after all. He defines “particular necessity” as: (E4) Particular necessity regards a particular person, thing or time, when nothing that can be taken into consideration, in or about that person, thing, or time, alters the case at all, as to the certainty of that event…or can be of any account at all, in determining the infallibility of the connection of the subject and predicate in the proposition which affirms the existence of the thing; so that it is all one, as to that person, or thing, at least, at that time, as if the existence were necessary with a necessity that is most universal and absolute.132

In (E4), Edwards infers a universal necessity from the infallible connection of a subject and predicate of a proposition, which signifies the existence of an event in an individual’s course of life. His application of this universal necessity denies the contingency of events in individual’s lives, and corresponds to his interpretation of the principle of sufficient reason, where, in his view, nothing can alter the case of why something is the way it is. In other words, for Edwards, there is a reason why an event is, the way it is, and not otherwise, but unlike with the classic line of interpretation, it is impossible that there be a contingent reason.133

The causal function of the antecedent in an “If-then” conditional There is a function of the ‘antecedent’ in the relation between the antecedent and the consequent in an “If-then” conditional proposition that needs introduction. The Yale 1737 commencement thesis 9 states, “The antecedent is not always the cause of the consequent, but of the consequence.”134 The thesis implies that the “if” in an “If-then” conditional is causal, such that the antecedent proposition has a twofold causal function. The antecedent can be the cause of the consequent, and it can be the cause of the consequence, just as the premises are the cause of the 132 Ibid., 154. 133 This observation anticipates what we will see in chapter 9 of this present study. 134 EB. Yale 1737 commencement thesis 9, “Antecedens non semper est causa consequentis, sed consequentiae.”

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conclusion.135 Edwards often states the correspondence between ‘cause and effect’ and ‘antececedent and consequent’ and ‘subject and predicate’ of a proposition. The causal function plays a fundamental role in his argument.136 For example, he begins Part Four, section five, by stating that the Arminians consider the pursuit of virtue, such as prayer as a means, to be in vain if one holds to “necessity consisting in a sure connection of causes and effects, antecedents and consequents.”137 Edwards holds to a correspondence between causes and effects and “foregoing things” and “consequent ones,” the connection or nexus of which also corresponds to the certain connection between the subject and predicate of a proposition. He had established this maxim in Part Two, section twelve, to wit, “All certainty of knowledge consists in the view of the firmness of that connection,” that is, “the firm connection between the subject and predicate of the proposition that contains that truth.”138 The Harvard 1738 broadside- logic thesis 16, confirms the maxim: “The truth of a hypothetical proposition depends on the certain connection of the antecedent with the consequent.”139 The Yale 1751 broadside-logic thesis 10, confirms the separate function of the connection, as opposed to the parts: “The truth of a hypothetical proposition depends not upon the truth of their parts, but of their connection.”140 For Edwards, when he thinks of causal necessity, he understands that the firmness of connection between the antecedent and the consequent of the proposition serves as the “foundation of the certain truth of that proposition,” which affirms the truth of, for example, prayer as a means to pursue virtue.141 In other words, the ‘causal necessity’ of the antecedent as cause of the necessity of the consequence of a proposition can logically consist with the free human endeavor to pray as a means to obtaining virtue. Summary We began §8.3.1 with the question whether Edwards’s representation of “Calvinist” thought on necessity be not closer to Calvin himself, rather than the classic Reformed line. There are two missteps that Edwards takes that lead us to conclude that indeed Edwards’s line of interpretation was closer to Calvin’s line 135 Pope John XXI, Syncategoreumata, ed. L.M. De Rijk, trans. Joke Spruyt, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 30 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 199. 136 WJE 1: 265, 352, 354, 365, 367. 137 Ibid., 365. 138 Ibid., 265. 139 HUA. The Harvard 1738 commencement broadside, logic thesis 16. “Propositionis hypotheticae veritas a connectione certa antecedentis cum consequente pendet.” 140 EB: Y1751 commencement thesis, logic 10. “Propositionis hypotheticae veritas, non e partium veritate, sed earum connexione pendet.” 141 WJE 1: 352.

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rather than to the classic Reformed line. The first misstep Edwards took was a logical one, where he gave a mixed interpretation of the necessity of the consequence. He attributed features of the necessity of the consequent to the necessity of the consequence. He inferred an absolute necessity of connection from the connection between a subject and predicate of a proposition. And he denied the possibility of the contingency of the antecedent and consequent parts of a proposition, each considered apart from the implication as a whole. Other Reformed authors, such as, Melanchthon, Junius, Gomarus, Ames, Voetius, and Turretin, explained and applied the necessity of the consequence along classic lines of interpretation. In addition to the feature of the necessity of implication, there is also each component part of a proposition. When each is considered separately, such as an antecedent prayer and a consequent virtue obtained, each part remains contingent, free, and unnecessary in itself.142 Edwards denies this last point. He makes the point that there is a logical consistency between ‘necessity,’ in the sense of the necessity of the consequence, and human endeavor. His approach is to appeal to the certainty of the causal nexus of subject and predicate of a proposition, against what he calls “the Arminian doctrine of contingence and self-determination.”143 Ames, for example, also confirmed the certainty of the causal nexus, but he retained the contingency of the separate component propositions. The consistency, coherency, and effectiveness of Edwards’s approach will be examined on its own merits in chapters eight, nine, and ten. The second misstep he took was an ontological one, where he inferred causal necessity of a connection of events from the logical features of implication. Edwards’s distinction between a philosophical, or general necessity, which he says applies to the current controversy over freedom of will, and a particular necessity, or absolute, universal necessity, which he claims does not apply to the present controversy, is particularly troubling. He doesn’t offer an argument for why we should view reality in a two-fold manner. In fact, he concedes at this point in his inquiry that there may not be a difference between the notion of philosophical necessity and universal, particular necessity. Although Edwards placed himself in the classic-Reformed line of Turretin, Van Mastrict, and Stapfer, and although his education taught the classic line, his interpretation and application of levels of necessity does not correspond to the classic line. In fact, even Calvin conceded the usefulness of the term contingency as a way of accommodating human language and understanding. But Edwards commits himself to applying philosophical necessity (E0) to his interpretation of 142 Cf. Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 113–4; 160–5; For Melanchthon and Calvin, see above section §4.6.3; Cf. Ames, Rescriptio scholastica, 195–6, section §4.6.2 above. 143 WJE 1: 367.

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propositions, and that event to which they point as existing in reality. Edwards interpretation of propositions leads him to transform the implicative necessity of connection into a theory of universal causal necessity. A necessity that is void of contingency. We will see in chapter 10 how he works this out as a theory of universal determining providence.

8.3.2 Natural and moral necessity Edwards makes a crucial distinction in his scheme on freedom and causality of nature between “natural” and “moral” necessity.144 First, we define and explain Edwards’s notion of natural necessity, then we turn to his notion of moral necessity. By natural necessity, Edwards means “the force of natural causes” as distinguished from “moral causes, such as habits and dispositions of the heart, and moral motives and inducements.”145 Examples of natural necessity are when people feel pain when wounded, when they “assent to the truth of certain propositions, as soon as the terms are understood,” mathematical axioms, and the classic example of gravity such that “bodies move downwards, when there is nothing to support them.”146 First, he notes that “moral necessity may be as absolute, as natural necessity.” This is due to the strength of a previous bias and inclination of the affections such that their propensity to move the will a certain way would not be surmounted, either by internal or external opposition. An individual would elicit an act in accordance with what is morally fit to do.147 The law of causality becomes universally determinative in his scheme, whether it concerns natural or moral matters. Second, the distinction entails important consequences for the cause and the effect of a proposition where “intelligent beings” are the subjects of it. “The difference does not lie so much in the nature of the connection, as in the two terms connected,” namely, the cause and the effect are both of a moral nature. The cause arises from a person’s affections and the effect is then a result of the “volition of the soul.” In other words, the distinction between cause and effect in 144 Ibid., 156. Edwards’s distinction between natural and moral necessity can be found, for example, in one of his chief interlocutors in this Freedom of Will, that is, Isaac Watts. In fact, Edwards’s definitions in Part one, section four, bear a striking resemblance to Watts’s description of the “moral and natural liberty” of “intelligent beings” as well as to his reference to “natural and moral necessity.” Cf. Watts, On the Freedom of Will in God and in creatures, 4: 456–7. 145 WJE 1: 156–7. 146 Ibid., 157. 147 Ibid.

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“mere nature,” as opposed to a moral agent, lies in choice. Choice is as it were “a new principle of motion and action, different from that established law and order of things.”148 Third, Edwards observes that the “necessity” of moral necessity “is not used according to the original design and meaning,” which refers to opposition that is overcome.149 But in the case of moral agents, there is no such opposition from one’s own will. The will does not oppose the will. By “moral necessity” Edwards means that necessity of connection and consequence, which arises from such moral cases, as the strength of inclination, or motives, and the connection which there is in many cases between these, and such certain volitions and actions.150

He extends his argument for natural and moral necessity to natural and moral inability. A natural inability is contrary to liberty. It is due to “nature” impeding the will; this impediment arises from a source external to the affections and the will, and may be placed in “the faculty of understanding, constitution of body, or external objects.”151 He imposes moral inability only in the sense of “opposition or want of inclination” to willing the good, not in the sense of not being physically able to do good. He gives as an example that “a woman of great honor and chastity may have a moral inability to prostitute herself to her slave.” The key element lies in the strength of one’s affections that incline the will either to virtue or evil. “A strong habit of virtue and great degree of holiness may cause a moral inability to love wickedness in general” and “a great degree of habitual wickedness may lay a man under an inability to love and choose holiness.”152 Given his description, a habit is then a causal and purposive power. Indeed, Edwards shedds a bit more light on the causality of habit when he goes on to delineate a “general and habitual moral inability” to mean an “inability in the heart to all exercises or acts of the will of that nature or kind, through a fixed and habitual inclination.”153 In the context of these remarks, he often refers to a “fixed and habitual” inclination or “fixedness of habit,” or “the moral inability that attends fixed habits.” By fixed, he appears to mean that given certain general conditions, a God-given law of causality operates, wherein the inclination of a defective will cannot be overcome, whose power, as defective will, is “insufficient to bring to pass the thing desired and endeavored.” Any opposition is therefore no more than a “shadow” with respect to “the acts which arise from a fixed and strong 148 149 150 151 152 153

Ibid., 158. Ibid., 159. Ibid., 156. Cf. Chapter 9, “The argument for freedom of perfection.” Ibid., 159. Ibid., 160. Ibid., 160.

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habit,” given the law of causality.154 Or, as Edwards put it in his opening definition, given the necessity which arises from “moral causes.”155 Edwards has stated that these terms of necessity are relative; that is, inability relates to opposition and has respect to will and endeavor. The success of will and endeavor against any opposition is relative to a present occasion and Edwards makes this distinction of a “particular and occasional” moral inability.156 “But yet there may be will and endeavor against future acts of the will…it is no contradiction, to suppose that the acts of the will at one time, may be against the acts of the will at another time; and there may be desires and endeavors to prevent or excite future acts of the will,” writes Edwards.157 To understand that moral ability or inability may differ in the present moment from the future moment, is to perceive the dynamic nature of this relational and “transient” or occasional causality. It is moreover, to perceive in Edwards’s scheme on eliciting acts, a distinctly free relation between a present inclination of the will to a present object with respect to a future inclination of the will to an object at that time. The present-future distinction indicates a diachronic understanding of the two occasions and the relation between the strongest motive presented to the heart and mind at the two different times. Edwards’s scheme holds that individual moral accountability is consistent with freedom of will since it is a matter of “being willing,” not “being able.” The moral agent is free to do all he will, not free to will what he will, which is impossible. It is a “downright contradiction” to say, “he can’t will, if he does will.” A malicious person can hold his hand back from striking someone. The person who has it in his power to refrain from striking, also has it in his choice. One ought not say a person is unable to do a thing, when he or she can do it if he will.”158 An agent is free since he elicits acts in accordance with, and not opposed to, the inclination of his will and affections. Nevertheless, this diachronic view of resisting opposition and eliciting acts at two successive moments of time is nothing radical, as it would be if the agent could elect otherwise than he does each time he elicits an act. But the emphasis on synchronically contingent alternatives runs against the emphasis that Edwards wants to place upon the strength of previous bias and development of habitual bias in the affections. The notion of a previous bias belongs to his scheme of freedom of perfection, which we will turn to in the next chapter.

154 155 156 157 158

Ibid., 160–1. Ibid., 156. Ibid., 160. Ibid., 161. Ibid., 162.

Heereboord and Edwards: an analysis of acts of the will

8.4

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Heereboord and Edwards: an analysis of acts of the will

A comparison of Edwards’s position on acts of the will with Heereboord’s will help us see whether Edwards has interpreted terms in a different way. We begin by analyzing Heereboord’s and Edwards’s position on free choice.

8.4.1 Heereboord and Edwards on free choice Heereboord: We define this term as follows: The faculty of doing what one pleases (facultas faciendi quod lubet). By “faculty,” we understand a real or natural, (facultas physica seu naturalis), not an ethical or moral faculty. In other words: The faculty of the intellect and the will, related to two alternatives (ad utrumlibet).159

There are some points in common between Edwards and Heereboord. Both say that an act of the will is doing what one pleases. Both hold that the mind chooses as well as the will. However, thereafter, Edwards departs from Heereboord’s subsequent points. Whereas Heereboord uncoupled the act of choice from objects when he says that it is “real (physical) or natural,” Edwards links the act with the object, the will is as the greatest apparent good is. For Heereboord, when one linked choice with objects, those objects were considered either good or bad; there was then an ethical dimension. If freedom were only considered in ethical terms, then presumably angels and the saints in heaven would be bereft of free choice, since their acts would necessarily be linked to the good. Heereboord, thus, related free choice to two alternatives (ad utrumlibet), and denied that the ethical sense is essential to free choice. There was possibility to act to the contrary. Ad utrumlibet referred, not to a moral attribute, but to the real (physical) or natural attribute of the will, that is, the efficacity of the faculty of the will itself. We shall see below that Edwards refuses to use the term ad utrumlibet. For him, the term is too closely associated with his opponents, the Arminians.

8.4.2 Heereboord and Edwards on the relation of objects to the will Heereboord, in his disputation on the motives of the will, seen (in chapter 2 §2.4), said that the will is moved (movetur) and impelled (impellitur) to act by the object (ab objecto). Like Heereboord, Edwards also describes the object in view of the mind as a motive, which “moves, excites or invites the mind to volition.” Both 159 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., 53. chapter 2 §2.6.8.

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authors describe the mind and will working together in a sort of alliance. Heereboord discussed different views on the mind’s cognition of objects and how it concurs with acts of the will. On the relation of the object to the will, we recall that he asked, “How does an object concur with volition, and the act of volition?” He replied that the object can concur either formally (formaliter) or finally (finaliter) to an act of the will. Whereas Heereboord likened formal concurrence to the opening of the eyes of the otherwise blind will, Edwards similarly speaks of a state of equilibrium and perfect indifference prior to the inclination of the soul to choose an object. In Heereboord’s commentary on formal concurrence, the object is outside the act. But in the case where the object concurs finally (finaliter) with the act of will, the object proposes itself as the good to be desired. And not only as the immediate good, but as the end-goal of the will. He said,“Every good whether true or apparent is an end, whether subordinate or ultimate, in general or absolutely.” Like Heereboord, who said that one ought not think that the object always acts upon the will teleologically, so also Edwards says that a person does not always have the end-view in mind; he or she can desire the means to the end more than the end, such as in drinking as the proper object of the act of the will. Heereboord (in chapter 2 §2.4.4), posed the question, “How does cognition relate to volition?” There were those who held that cognition of the object effectively concurred with the act of the will, both with respect to freedom of exercise and freedom of specification. But Heereboord rejected this opinion because it implied that cognition and volition were the same, effectively locating the act of the will in the understanding. Although Edwards only mentions freedom of specification, not freedom of exercise, and thus, on this point alone, it might appear that he would reject equating cognition effectively with volition, he does indicate a strong concurrence between the mind and the will choosing. This appears, at first, in his opening definition, where he says that the will is “that by which the mind chooses,” and “the faculty of the will is that faculty or power or principle of mind by which it is capable of choosing.”160 Edwards’s trademark explanation of this concurrence of cognition and volition is that “the will is as the greatest apparent good…an appearing most agreeable or pleasing to the mind, and the mind’s preferring or choosing, seem hardly to be properly and perfectly distinct.”161 In response, it can be said that not only does Edwards not hold to both freedom of specification and freedom of exercise, but he also conceptually distinguishes a structural order of the two

160 WJE 1:137. 161 Ibid., 144.

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faculties; strictly speaking, he says, the act of the will is “the immediate consequence and fruit of the mind’s volition or choice.”162 The next opinion that Heereboord entertained (in chapter 2 §2.4.4) was whether cognition effectively concurred with the act of will, with respect to freedom of specification alone (willing or nilling the different objects), but not with respect to freedom of exercise (willing or not willing different opposite acts). The issue with freedom of exercise was that it had more than one object in view that played a role in whether the will would will. For example, willing to love one person, or perhaps not willing to love that person, but another. Those are two different choices. On this point Edwards agrees. But on this view, Heereboord had said that in both freedom of specification and freedom of exercise, volition was not from the cognition of the object (a cognitione objecti), but rather from the object itself (sed ab ipso potius objecto), in causing an act of the will (causante actum voluntatis).163 The object itself worked either formally, giving sight to the blind will, as an external principle, or teleologically, which was the object as endgoal, moving and causing an act of will.

8.5

Summary

For Edwards, the will always overcomes opposition and resistance. Necessity and impossibility, therefore, are relative terms. Reality is not only that a state of affairs is, but also that it must be, for things are necessary to us, when they are, or when they will be, even though we endeavor the contrary. Ironically, Edwards’s view of necessity and impossibility is will-based, wrapped in the theory of action. However, because actualizing the greatest apparent good is the focal point, the theory of will also transforms itself into a theory of causality. As a consequence, if one removes opposition, necessity and impossibility lose their meaning. Edwards insists that his use represents the street vernacular, giving indirectly a critical glance towards academic terms of art and usage. Edwards imports a philosophical necessity of connection into his notion of intrinsic causal necessity in human agency, which for him is a necessary connection between disposition (or motive) and choice. This notion of per se certainty runs parallel with his necessary connection between subject and predicate. Edwards applies the geometric rules to human agency. “That every act of the will has some cause, and consequently…has a necessary connection with its cause, and so is necessary by a necessity of connection and consequence, is evident by 162 Ibid. 163 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic., D10 “De motivo voluntatis,” 43.

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this, that every act of the will whatsoever, is exited by some motive.”164 For Edwards, internal motives bias the choice of the will, so much so, that the effect of the choice of the will is more properly said to be the effect or fruit of motives, than of choice. The necessity of connection between motive and volition is therefore opposed to the notion of a “self-determining power in the will,” writes Edwards. It is impossible that the “biasing of the will,” says Edwards, logically rhyme with the contested notion of “the will’s acting in a state of indifference and equilibrium, to determine itself to a preference.” For the will cannot act first and choose to comply or not with the motive that is presented. For in Edwards’s theory, the will already falls under the influence of a motive, which is the ground and reason of choice.165 Edwards’s view of human freedom points to a freedom of perfection, a moral necessity of habitual bias, such that the stronger the inclination, the freer one is. From the analysis (in §8.3.1), we see that Edwards attributes features of the necessity of the consequent to the necessity of the consequence. He infers an absolute necessity of connection from the connection between a subject and predicate of a proposition. But he denies the possibility of the contingency of the antecedent and consequent parts of a proposition. He also takes the ontological step of inferring causal necessity of a connection of events from the logical features of implication. In other words, he transforms the implicative necessity of connection into a theory of universal causal necessity. Furthermore, after an initial attempt to make a distinction, Edwards concedes that there may not be any difference after all between what he calls “philosophical necessity” and “absolute” or “universal necessity,” in the controversy over freedom of the will. Ironically, although Edwards places himself in the classic-Reformed tradition of Turretin, Van Mastrict, and Stapfer, our analysis shows that his interpretation of “necessity,” and commitment to philosophical necessity, does not correspond to the classic-Reformed line. Whereas Calvin concedes the usefulness of the term “contingency” as accommodation to human language, Edwards does not. Finally, the analysis (in §8.3.2) shows that, for Edwards, moral necessity is as absolute as natural necessity. There is no opposition possible against the choice of the will. He speaks of the moral nature of cause and effect. The law of causality becomes universally determinative in his scheme. From the necessity of connection and consequence, and strength of prior bias in the will, Edwards infers moral necessity. In the next chapter, we develop Edwards’s notion of moral necessity as freedom of perfection.

164 WJE 1: 225. 165 Ibid., 226–7.

9.

Jonathan Edwards’s argument for freedom of perfection

9.1

Introduction

The backdrop to Edwards’s argument for moral necessity as a freedom of perfection included, not only Whitby himself, an interlocutor in Edwards’s Freedom of Will, but also the famous debate—between the two seventeenth-century contemporaries Thomas Hobbes and Bishop Bramhall—on liberty and necessity, which we considered in chapter 7. But Edwards lived and wrote from within a different day and context. Edwards’s education at Yale reflected Newtonian physics—the new physics—the evidence of which we saw in the Yale 1720 commencement “physics theses.” What is new in Edwards’s context are the physical principles of action and motion. Thus, in addition to Whitby and the Hobbes-Bramhall debate, there is also terminology in Edwards’s Freedom of Will which clearly comes from The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, written in the years 1715–16, published in 1717.1 The Correspondence engaged the controversy surrounding Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727) and his Principia (1686), the context of which is an entirely new world of discourse and represents a shift in language, a shift which Edwards himself makes as he imports new principles and insights from laws of motion and action, matter and space, into his argumentation. These principles fund Edwards’s thought on habits of the heart as causally active, lawlike powers.2 The Correspondence discusses controversial terms that are taken up 1 LCC; Ryan D. Tweney, “Jonathan Edwards and determinism,” Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences 33, no. 4 (Fall 1997): 377–8fn22. Contra Fiering, Tweney states that it is arguable that Edwards was familiar with the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence; Cf. Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’s moral thought and its British context, 295–6; Guelzo suspects that Edwards had “at least some familiarity with the celebrated” Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, in Guelzo, Edwards on the will, 70. 2 Sang Hyun Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Rev. and exp. edition, 2000); Idem, ed., Writings on the Trinity, grace, and faith, vol. 21 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, gen. ed. Harry S. Stout (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 5–7; That the “Newtonian synthesis” displaced Cartesian physics and “the world of Descartes,” see Koyré, Newtonian studies, 12,13; and Tweney, “Edwards and

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in Edwards’s Freedom of Will, such as, moral necessity, absolute necessity, a necessity of fitness and wisdom, the principle of sufficient reason, the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, the apparent good, the similitude of a balance endowed with agency, and the soul of the world.3 Edwards’s synthesis weaves together the ideas of moral necessity as a freedom of perfection with a redefined notion of habits of the heart and seeds of virtue, transforming natural principles into moral principles of motion and action. In this chapter, we first develop Edwards’s doctrine of freedom of perfection, which we infer from his notion of “moral necessity.” We consider (in §9.1.1) how he structures the argument of Freedom of Will around the notion of inversely proportional degrees of freedom and indifference, which he deems essential to virtue and vice. That is, the further a moral agent is removed from indifference, the freer one is. The inverse is, the greater the degree of bias in human choice, the freer one is. Unlike, Whitby’s argument for restricting freedom of perfection to the state of heaven, and God and angels, Edwards makes his argument for a freedom of perfection and moral necessity that is applicable to both a state of trial on earth as well as a state of heaven. He claims, against Whitby, that the greatest example is that of Jesus Christ, who in a state of trial and temptation, and under the inducement of promises, laws, and commands, with a view to praise or dispraise, nevertheless exercised a liberty consistent with a “universal determining providence,” but without liberty ad utrumlibet. Then (in §9.1.2), we give an analysis of his argument for freedom of perfection, considering Edwards’s use of physical laws and principles of motion and action. We draw on Sang Hyun Lee’s account of Edwards’s dispositional ontology. Lee’s account cuts across both divine and human volition, and in his account we find support for our interpretation of Edwards’s synthesis of physical principles of motion and action. Next (in §9.2), we consider how Edwards transforms the classic view of habit and natural principles into moral causes. For Edwards, moral habits of the heart are not implanted by nature itself, but rather are acquired. Then (in §9.3), we consider additional sources for the doctrine of freedom of perfection, weighing determinism,” 367. For evidence of Edwards’s appropriation of Newton’s new principles of action and motion, see WJE 1: 158–9, 392. 3 Cf. WJE 1: The principle of sufficient reason, 181–3; The similitude of a balance endowed with agency, 232, 298; The soul of the world, 374; Quotes in support of his argument from Samuel Clarke’s A discourse concerning the Being and attributes of God, 377–8; The principle of the identity of indiscernibles, 384–5. Cf. LCC: The similitude of a balance, (Clarkes’ fourth reply, 45 §§1–2); (Leibniz’s fifth paper, 55, 58–9 §§3, 14); (Clarke’s fifth reply, 97–8 §§1–20); (Clarke’s Appendix, comments on Leibniz’s Theodicy, §3: Leibniz refers to Mr. Bayle who affirms a comparison of a “man’s soul with a balance,” 131); Moral necessity, (Leibniz’s fifth paper, 56–7 §§7,9), (81 §76); The principle of sufficient reason, (Leibniz’s fifth paper, 95–6 §§125, 126, 130); The soul of the world, (Leibniz’s fifth paper, 92 §111); Principia, “General scholium” (Added in the 2nd ed. 1713), 166.

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affinities with classic strains of thought on “seeds of virtue” in Heereboord, Turretin,Van Mastricht, beginning with the degrees of the propensity of the human will in Descartes. Finally, we conclude with a summary.

9.1.1 Edwards’s argument for moral necessity as a freedom of perfection In the previous chapter, we reported that Edwards defines freedom of will in terms of moral necessity. A close reading of Edwards’s Freedom of Will reveals within the overal structure that Edwards links moral necessity to freedom of perfection. The principle underlying freedom of perfection is, at first, not so evident in Freedom of Will since Edwards takes up more space explaining what he considers the absurdity of his opponents’ view than positively setting out his own view. We propose that Edwards attempts to thread his notion of freedom of perfection through the entire treatise. He begins by defining “moral necessity” in contradistinction to “natural necessity” and ends by stating that the principle of virtue and vice is found in freedom of perfection: “greater virtue and vice in stronger and more established inclination.”4 That is, the stronger the inclination, the greater the virtue or vice, and the freer one is, and the further one is from indifference, with respect to human action. As would be expected of a notion of such high importance, Edwards defines the notion of “moral necessity” in his opening explanation of terms in Part One of Freedom of Will (§4). Moral necessity is proportionate to “the strength of inclination,” which arises from “habits and dispositions of the heart.”5 The “stronger” the previous “bias and inclination,” the greater the moral necessity, thus, the greater the freedom.6 The idea of freedom of perfection and moral necessity is seen in how Edwards speaks of “degrees of strength” of a previous bias and inclination of the heart. The stronger the previous bias or motive, the stronger the connection between previous bias and subsequent act of the will. The stronger the habitual bias or motive, to good, or to bad, respectively, the greater the difficulty to overcome the bias or motive. Thus, no matter how much one increases resistance, for example, to do the good, or to forbear sin, “that power is not infinite,” and one arrives at a limit beyond which he or she cannot go.7 Thus, “a strong habit of virtue and great degree of holiness may cause a moral inability to love wickedness in general.” Likewise, “a great degree of habitual wickedness may lay a man under an inability to love and choose holiness.”8 4 5 6 7 8

WJE 1: 429. Ibid., 156–7. Ibid., 157. Ibid. Ibid., 160.

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These are instances of what Edwards means by the term: moral necessity. In contradistinction to how Edwards arrives at the notion of moral necessity is the ‘Arminian’ principle of the greater the indifference, the greater the liberty. According to their principle, the greater the difficulty to avoid sin, due to an antecedent bias of the will, the less liberty there is, and therefore the less accountability for human action.9 How does Edwards develop the notion of moral necessity into a freedom of perfection? The first full-blown case Edwards makes for human freedom of perfection is found in Part Three (§2). In contradistinction to Whitby’s claim for a unique state of trial wherein freedom is played out, free from necessity or a determination to one that is without alternate choices, Edwards argues that if ever a human being was in a state of trial, and under commands and promises, Jesus Christ was. Yet it was impossible that “the acts of the will of the human soul of Christ should, in any instance, degree or circumstance, be otherwise than holy.”10 If Christ were “liable to fail in his work,” if his “peremptory promises depended upon a mere contingence,viz. the determination of his free will, consisting in a freedom ad utrumque, to either sin or holiness,” than he would have been “guilty of presumption.”11 In answer to Whitby, “the man Christ Jesus had his will infallibly, unalterably and unfrustrably determined to good, and that alone;” but yet he had promises of rewards made to him, which were based on “condition of his persevering in the work God had given him.”12 The strength of bias and inclination of the human soul of Christ, even such that it made it “impossible that he should choose the contrary,” in no way diminishes the virtue of what Christ accomplished.13 As the moral “difficulty” to avoid vice increases, so does the liberty of indifference diminish, which jeopardizes the Arminian principle of “self-determination.”14 In Part Three (§6), Edwards exposes the absurdity of his opponents’ principle, to wit, that the “more indifferent and cold the heart is” with relation to the act performed, the greater the liberty. On the contrary, it is agreeable to “the light of nature,” and common sense, that virtue lies in the tendency and inclination of the heart, that “the stronger the inclination, and so the further from indifference, the more virtuous the heart…and the act that proceeds from it.”15 The “universal 9 10 11 12

Cf. WJE 1: 297–8. Ibid., 281. Ibid., 288–9. Ibid., 289–90. We recall from Bramhall that the terms, “infallibly, unalterably and unfrustrably” in combination with “determined to good,” are consistent with a necessity of consequence or of supposition, and as such do not entail an absolute necessity. However, whereas Bramhall gives a robust role to contingency in his scheme, Edwards does not. 13 Ibid., 291. 14 Ibid., 298. 15 Ibid., 320.

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sense of mankind” is that sincere virtuous action proceed from a heart “well disposed and inclined; and the stronger, and the more fixed and determined the good disposition of the heart, the greater the sincerity of virtue.” Virtuous action is, therefore, not performed in a state of indifference, nor in a time of indifference.16 Common sense tells us that “indifference” itself, in principle, is actually “vicious” to a high degree; it is counter-intuitive to hold it as essential to virtue and vice. For who would be cold and indifferent and not already inclined to want to help a friend or family member “in extreme distress?”17 To suppose liberty of indifference to be essential to virtue and vice violates our sense of crime, accountability, and punishment that fits the crime. It “destroys the great difference of degrees of the guilt of different crimes.”18 On Arminian principles, there is neither sense of, nor degrees of vice, in “having a mind in a state of perfect indifference with respect to crimes,” such as “adultery, bestiality, murder, perjury, blasphemy.”19 To be indifferent to these crimes is “to be infinitely near to choosing, and so committing the fact.” Even the “least degree of preponderation (all things considered) is choice.” There is no logical escape, “for the will to be in a state of perfect equilibrium with respect to such crimes, is for the mind to be in such a state, as to be full as likely to choose them as to refuse them, to do them as to omit them.”20 And therefore if one’s state of mind necessarily is such that he or she is just as likely to commit such crimes as not commit them, where is the crime? How can one be held accountable for a crime which he or she is just as likely not to commit? These principles defy reason. Suppose one is habitually in such a state of so-called equilibrium before a criminal act, “wherein the probability of doing and forbearing are exactly equal,” then according to the “nature and laws of contingence,” the “inevitable consequence of such a disposition of things,” is that one should “choose them as often as reject them.” Given the law of contingence, necessarily, “the equality in the effect is the natural consequence of the equal tendency of the cause.”21 The conflicting result follows for Edwards that, on Arminian principles of liberty of indifference, “habitual bias,” and the strong preponderation of the heart to virtue or vice, cannot be virtuous or vicious.22 Unlike Whitby, Edwards does not restrict the kind of liberty that God, angels, and glorified saints can exercise from the discussion of human liberty on earth in a state of trial. He therefore does not restrict the application of the features of a 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Ibid. Ibid., 322. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 322–3. Ibid., 323.

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liberty of exercise—which Whitby limits to a state of heaven—from the discussion. We recall from Bramhall that a liberty of exercise is the liberty to do or forbear to do the same action, to choose or not to choose the same object, this or that good, this or that evil, respectively, that is, without varying the kind. Edwards recognizes the technical distinction of the liberty of good angels with respect to the good only, and bad angels with respect to the bad only, when he refers to Whitby restricting this liberty to God and the glorified state.23 Though Edwards does not use the technical term “liberty of exercise,” this is the language Edwards employs in this chapter—“doing and forbearing”—and he is drawing on this kind of liberty, which as he writes, God and angels exercise with a bias and inclination that can be so strong as “invincible,” without “the will’s determining contrary to it.”24 For Edwards, this shows the inconsistency of his opponent’s position, for on their principles, a strong degree of a “fixed inclination” would exclude “all virtue, vice, praise or blame.” Edwards then forcefully states his thesis in the negative, “If very strong habits destroy liberty, the lesser ones proportionably hinder it, according to their strength.”25 On the principles of liberty of indifference, “habitual depravity of inclination, whether covetousness, pride, malice, cruelty,” would excuse people from their crime and vice.26 And however strong and excellent disposition one has, so much the less is his or her virtue. Whereas Whitby centers the discussion about freedom on the faculty of the will, not nature, Edwards centers his argument on “habits,” which are “acquired and established by repeated free acts.”27 For Edwards, there is virtue in “habits or qualities” as “humility, meekness, patience, mercy;” there is “praiseworthiness in loving Christ above father and mother;” or “delight in holiness,” “love to enemies,” all of which would be empty of virtue on Arminian principles of liberty of indifference.28 On his opponents reasoning, the stronger those habits or dispositions are, the further they are from being virtuous. On their principles, the absurd conclusion would be that “the man Jesus Christ was very far from being praiseworthy for those acts of holiness and kindness which he performed, these propensities being so strong in his heart.”29 He makes a case for an increasing probability that the next act of the will, in a progressively growing Christian character, in one who has built up virtuous habits of the heart and mind over time, will be virtuous, and not just as likely vicious. The stronger the inclination 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Ibid. Ibid. On the language of God “acting and forbearing to act,” see WJE 1:432. Ibid. Ibid., 324. Ibid., 324. Cf. Whitby, Five discourses, 363–84. Ibid., 325. Ibid., 326.

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to virtue, the more one loves it, the more virtuous he or she is. On Arminian principles, virtue and vice are “wholly excluded out of the world.” No “propensity, disposition, or habit can be virtuous or vicious.” They “destroy the freedom of the will, the foundation of all moral agency.” Any degree of bias or disposition, whether it be habitual or not, “If it exists but a moment before the act of will, which is the effect of it, it alters not the case, as to the necessity of the effect.”30 On the contrary, “If there be no previous disposition at all, either habitual or occasional, that determines the act, then it is not choice that determines it.” And if there is no human choice, arising from within, “it is therefore a contingence, that happens to the man.”31 In fact, writes Edwards, contingency is necessary. For Edwards, the origin or cause of virtuous acts of the will lies in one’s nature; it arises from within.32 There are two lines of argument for freedom of perfection that Edwards makes in Part Four of Freedom of Will: (1) In Part Four (§4), Edwards explains freedom of perfection in terms of “moral necessity” which is entirely consistent with praise and blame, reward and punishment.33 We recall that in Part One (§4), Edwards defined “moral necessity” as “necessity of connection and consequence, which arises from such moral causes, as the strength of inclination.”34 Given the exposition up to this point, it has become evident that moral necessity is bound up with Edwards’s notion of freedom of perfection. In one of the few places where he states positively his notion of freedom of perfection, he clearly marks a change in the course of his exposition. He marks this by writing: “Whereas the reverse is true. He that in acting, proceeds with the fullest inclination, does what he does with the greatest freedom.” It is the common sense of everyone in all the world, that “the further he is from being indifferent in his acting good or evil, and the more he does either with full and strong inclination, the more is he esteemed or abhorred, commended or condemned.”35 This is the sense of “moral necessity” in Edwards’s scheme of freedom. Thus, the reverse of what the opposing view holds is true, to wit, the nearer individual freedom approaches “moral necessity,” or “impossibility” of doing otherwise—either through a strong antecedent moral propensity, or opposition—the nearer does it approach praise and blame.36 For Edwards, “natural necessity” to do the bad and “impossibility” to do the good removes blame and praise, for in the case of what is natural, freedom is removed. (What is natural is necessary. Nature, writes Edwards, is prior to all acts of the will 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Ibid. Ibid., 326–7. Ibid., 337. Ibid., 357. Ibid., 156. Ibid., 359. Ibid.

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whatsoever).37 But “moral necessity” is the outcome of a freedom of perfection and as such it brings with it praise. Again, Edwards writes, “the reverse is true.” The nearer the approach to “moral necessity in a man’s exertion of good acts of will,” and the stronger the propensity to good, “so much the better the man he is.” The stronger the inclination, and the nearer it approaches “necessity in that respect,” the more virtuous he or she is.38 It is the common notion of mankind, according to Edwards, that virtuous or vicious action “is determined by an antecedent bias or motive,” not a supposed “sovereign power of the will itself.”39 (2) In Part Four (§7), inasmuch as human character reflects God’s character, Edwards applies the notion of moral necessity to God’s acts of will. For God’s will is “in everything necessarily determined to that which is most wise.”40 He argues the principle of perfection by claiming that the nearer moral necessity attends, and determines, the divine will, the greater the dignity and advantage; likewise the further contingency is removed from attending the divine will, the better. God’s supremely wise volition is necessary. The fact that God necessarily acts with supreme wisdom and holiness means that his praise is the greater.41 In Part Four (§13), the last section of Freedom of Will, Edwards summarizes his lines of reasoning. In argument (1), he starts with moral necessity and adds the principle of proportionate degrees of virtue and vice in relation to the strength of previous bias in the will. He sets this principle in opposition to the notion of a sovereign power of the will over itself.42 He states that common or “natural sense does not place the moral evil of volitions and dispositions in the cause of them, but the nature of them.” By nature, he explains that he means “the choice of the heart.”43 Thus, the essence of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness lies in the habits of the heart, inasmuch as he or she is the author of acts of the will. Edwards ends his last chapter by repeating that greater virtue and vice is stronger in proportion to “stronger and more established inclination.”44 He recalls how he began Part Four (§1), by stating that the essence of the virtue and vice of habitual dispositions of the heart lies not in their cause, but their nature.45 In argument (2), Edwards states that if “self-determination” is essential to the freedom of will in moral agents, such as God, then it would imply that

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Ibid., 361. Ibid., 360. Ibid. Ibid., 380. Ibid., 382–3. Ibid., 424. WJE 1: 427. Ibid., 429. Ibid., 337, 427.

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God’s will is not necessarily determined, an implication which Edwards finds unacceptable.46 In “The Conclusion,” on the “Calvinist-Arminian” article concerning freedom of the will requisite to moral agency, Edwards states that the doctrine of a “universal determining providence” follows from and has no other necessity than a “moral necessity.”47 He then points out that this moral necessity is consistent with moral agency, which means that a moral agent’s freedom of perfection is consistent with a moral agent being subject to the commands and calls of the gospel, to rewards and punishments. Likewise, he infers from the doctrine of moral necessity and perfection that the stronger the previous inclination and bias are to doing evil, the more difficult overcoming sin becomes for the moral agent. He calls this difficulty “moral inability,” which in his view is entirely consistent with blameworthiness.48 On the article concerning “Efficacious grace,” Edwards repeats that “nothing in the state of acts of the will of man is contingent,” but on the contrary, “every event of this kind is necessary, by a moral necessity.” In sum, he writes that God’s assistance and influence is determining and decisive, attended with a “moral necessity of the event,” such that “God gives virtue, holiness and conversion to sinners,” determining the effect, such that “the effect infallibly follow by a moral necessity.”49 In the Hobbes-Bramhall debate, this “infallibility” is nothing more than a necessity of the consequence, relative to God’s determining action, according to the classic-Reformed interpretation. But Edwards takes the opposite stance. He sums up by saying that this is what Calvinists mean by efficacious and irresistible grace, namely, his explanation of freedom of perfection and moral necessity.50 Under the article on Perseverance of saints,” Edwards again brings in the notion of moral necessity and the “infallible certainty of events,” which are consistent with the doctrine of perseverance. He repeats that freedom of will does not lie in “the power of the will to determine itself,” the notion of which is unnecessary, “in order to virtue, reward, commands, counsels, etc.”51 Thus, we encounter Edwards’s clearly and strongly stated necessitarian view.

46 47 48 49 50 51

Ibid., 417. Ibid., 431. Ibid., 433. Ibid., 434. Ibid. Ibid., 436.

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9.1.2 Analysis of Edwards’s notion of freedom of perfection Sang Hyun Lee has introduced the idea of “habit and Edwards’ dynamic vision of reality.”52 There is a “dynamic network of dispositional forces and habits” at work in Edwards’s view of humankind’s freedom of will, a “dispositional ontology” which characterizes and informs Edwards’s understanding of habits of the heart and its disposition.53 Lee characterizes Edwards’s notion of habit as a disposition or active tendency. For Edwards, “habit is an active and ontologically abiding power that possesses a mode of realness even when it is not in exercise.” And habit is “a relational principle—that is, a general law that governs the manner or character of actual actions and events.”54 Lee states that although Edwards retrieved the notion of habit as “an active, causal power, from the AristotelianScholastic tradition,” he redefined habit as a “relational law,” contrary to Burgersdijk and Chambers, who still associated habit with substance and form.55 Edwards’s dynamic view of reality, according to Lee, is unlike the ancient Greek conception of reality, which viewed the cosmos as a “self-moving organism,” whose laws of nature were “immanent in and intrinsic to nature itself.” For Edwards, “the laws of nature are not intrinsic to nature,” but God by his sovereign will “imposes them on nature.”56 Neither is Edwards’s view, according to Lee, like the Renaissance vision of reality, which viewed the cosmos as a self-moving “machine, the motions of which are radically contingent upon the causal activity of God himself.”57 Contrary to the classic-Reformed ontology of true contingency, which we examined in Part One in the broadsides and in Heereboord, and in the “Stapfer chapter,” by way of Edwards’s “Controversies” Notebook, Lee develops his account of Edwards’s dispositional ontology against the background of “the Aristotelian-Thomistic” line on the idea of habit, naming Burgersdijk, Chambers, Ames and other Puritans, claiming that the logicians retained “the whole Aristotelian metaphysics,” while the theologians adapted “habit” to their use.58 Significantly, Lee juxtaposes Edwards’s so-called “dynamic” synthesis against the older necessitarian ontology, which, we have argued, arguably does not represent Edwards’s Reformed background, which is an innovative and robust classic line of possibility and freedom. Both Heereboord and Stapfer showed signs of Sco52 Lee, The philosophical theology of Edwards, 4, 7. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., 7. Cf. H1717 Logic thesis 4. “Can (possibility) is inferred by the term, disposition, but not necessarily the act,” in chapter 1 §1.2.4. 55 Ibid., 38. 56 Ibid., 101–2. 57 Ibid., 102. 58 Ibid., 22–5.

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tistic innovations, speaking of “transferring” states of affairs out of a state of possibility into a state of futurition, with the divine will as the crucial hinge, and of “structural moments” in God’s act of decreeing. For Edwards, we have seen that the essence of one’s habits of the heart lies in one’s nature, as active dispositional powers, which arise from within, not an external cause. There is a sense, for Edwards, writes Lee, in which “power and the laws of nature are immanent since they constitute the very essence of entities.”59 Lee summarizes the contribution that Edwards has made to our understanding of a dynamic view of reality, and in particular our understanding of how he conceives habits of the heart as causal powers, in a nexus of three areas: the teleological, relational, and aesthetic.”60 There is a dynamic nexus of relations in both God’s and humankind’s dispositional essence and activity. For example, in Edwards’s section on “moral necessity of God’s acts of will,” his purpose for and the “peculiar fitness” and beauty of the cosmos is such that there is not one atom which the Creator has made and placed “in vain,” as if without “any end or motive.”61 Even one change in the “most minute effects,” or “the smallest assignable differences,” would have “very great and important consequences,” since one atom is part of “a whole series of events.”62 For Edwards, there is “no one thing determined without an end” and “fitness for that end, superior to anything else.”63 These statements on a superior fitness by Edwards exemplify his understanding of the principle of sufficient reason, that is, why nothing happens without a reason why it ought to be so, rather than otherwise.64 59 60 61 62 63 64

Ibid., 102. Ibid., 105. WJE 1: 388, 392. Ibid., 392. Ibid., 388. Cf. LCC: (Leibniz’s second paper, 16); (Clarke’s third reply, 30); (Leibniz’s fifth paper, 95). The term “perfection,” as we have described it above in (§1.1) in Edwards’s notion of freedom of perfection—which rules out alternative possible objects of choice—is not to be confused with the distinction of “a perfect material freedom,” which falls under the term, “material freedom.” Dekker and Veldhuis have described “material freedom” as “freedom with regard to objects of choice,” where the term material refers to “the material field of possible objects of choice which can be effectuated by free choice.” These possible objects are “alternatives to one another within one possible world. Thus, if one questions whether there are alternative fields of options, let alone the “objects of choice,” the question of “whether the field of options at some moment could have been different is independent of this subject,” write the authors. Material freedom can be further distinguished by “a perfect material freedom,” which entails “a free actualization of only good possibilities which are given by God (by way of creation and grace). They point out that this is an eschatological category. (We recall that Edwards applied arguments from an eschatalogical state to believers in a state of trial). The authors state that in the position of perfect material freedom we can choose something bad, but led by love we do not want (‘will’) that.” The authors further distinguish between divine and human perfect freedom, such that “for God goodness is an essential property; so he cannot sin.” The field of

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In his explanation of the term “moral necessity,” we saw that Edwards described habitual causes, in Newtonian language, as a “new principle of motion and action.”65 Edwards saw habit as an active power, “a lawlike relation between events or actions and not an accidental quality that inheres a substance,” writes Lee.66 In principle, he was “honoring the fundamental methodological concerns of Newtonian science.”67 As Lee points out, there were phenomena which Newton did not explain as “causation-by-impact principle;” rather, Newton had an umbrella term for such forces as gravity and magnetism, to wit, “active principles,” which he associated with God’s ruling providence, which was an “immaterial” and “teleological” power.68 Edwards refers to Newton’s unobservable sense of active principles, such as gravity, in the chapter and section to which we referred in the previous paragraph, to wit, “Moral necessity and God’s acts of will.” Edwards interprets and makes use of what he understands to be Newton’s laws, and concludes: If the laws of motion and gravitation, laid down by Sir Isaac Newton, hold universally, there is not one atom, nor the least assignable part of an atom, but what has influence, every moment, throughout the whole material universe, to cause every part to be otherwise than it would be, if it were not for that particular corporeal existence. And however the effect is insensible for the present, yet it may in length of time become great and important.69

Edwards attempts to make use of Newton’s laws of motion and in so doing adapts them to his own notion of moral necessity. Unlike Newton himself, or his interpreter Clarke, Edwards infers the notion that the order of the universe is such that no body in the universe can be otherwise than it is.70 “There is not one atom”

65 66 67 68 69

70

“bad options” are “not open to his will.” For humankind, goodness is not an “essential property,” but “accidental.” Humankind enjoys a “received goodness” and “access to the field of bad options, but he does not enter it (anymore),” in Dekker and Veldhuis, “Freedom and sin: some systematic observations,” 156, Fn17,160. WJE 1: 158–9; 392. Cf. The “laws of contingence,” 322. Cf. Newton’s “Active principles” in LCC: (Extracts from Newton’s Query 31), 178, 179. Lee, Philosophical theology of Edwards, 39. Ibid., 39–40 Unlike Newton, Lee notes that Edwards viewed habit as a causal power, distinct from the principle of uniformity for all laws of nature. Ibid., 31–2. Cf. Koyré notes the expulsion of meaning and aim, formal and final causes, from the new ontology, in Koyré, Newtonian studies, 7. WJE 1: 392–3; Newton himself contributed copies of his Principia and Opticks to the Dummer collection for Yale. See Louise May Bryant, Mary Patterson, “The list of books sent by Jeremiah Dummer,” in Papers in honor of Andrew Keogh, 464. (Principia, ed. Cambridge, 1713; Opticks, ed. 1706). Edwards owned his own copies, see Catalogues of books, ed. Peter J. Thuesen, WJE 26: 132, 154, entries 63 and 194. (Principia, ed. 1687; Opticks, ed. 1704). LCC: (Clarke’s third reply 32, 35 §§5, 16); (Clarke’s fourth reply 49 §18). Newton wrote, “Since space is divisible in infinitum, and matter is not necessarily in all places, it may be also allowed that God is able to create particles of matter of several sizes and figures, and in several proportions to space, and perhaps of different densities and forces, and thereby

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that can “cause every part to be otherwise than it would be.” In other words, moral necessity, as we have seen, excludes the notion of freedom ad utrumlibet. The second part of this quote refers to Newton’s notion of the insensibility of effects. A little further on in his exposition, Edwards expresses the idea, writing, “The influence of the least particle may, for ought we know, have such an effect on something in the constitution of some human body, as to cause another thought to arise in the mind at a certain time, than other wise would have been.”71 His argument is that if one adopts the notion that things can be otherwise than they are, and one makes even one change, who knows but that in time, a “vast alteration” of the entire world would take place, with unimaginably “great consequences.”72 When Edwards opposes any such doctrine of a “universal fatality,” he uses language strikingly similar to Newton. The world is at the “disposal of an intelligent wise agent,” writes Edwards, “that presides, not as the soul of the world, but as the sovereign Lord of the universe, governing all things by proper will, choice, and design.” Newton, in a “general scholium” of his Principia, writes, “This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God pantokrator, or Universal Ruler.”73

to vary the laws of nature, and make worlds of several sorts in several parts of the universe,” in ibid (Query 31, 181). 71 WJE 1: 393. 72 Ibid. Cf. Lee states that Newton made the point that the unobservable laws and effects served as a pattern of the observable instances of gravitational pull, and thus not occult qualities or forces. He finds here a parallel explanation of the medieval view of substantial forms that configure prime matter; that is, “the substantial form that is ontologically and temporally prior to the actual observable effects of it,” in Lee, Philosophical theology of Jonathan Edwards, 32–3; Cf. “God is omnipresent not virtually only [as for Descartes] but also substantially, for virtue cannot subsist without substance,” in Koyré, Newtonian studies, 112–3; LCC: (From Newton’s Principia, Preface and General scholium, 143, 168). 73 WJE 1: 374; LCC: (Newton’s General scholium, 166); Cf. on “God’s action and the syntax of God’s book of nature,”in Alexandre Koyré, Newtonian studies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 13; Cf. Edward B. Davis, “Newton’s rejection of the ‘Newtonian worldview’: The role of divine will in Newton’s natural philosophy,” Science and Christian belief 3, no. 1 (1991): 103–17. That Edwards was very familiar with Newton’s works is wellrehearsed in the literature, see Lee, Philosophical theology of Edwards, 10fn13; Tweney, “Jonathan Edwards and determinism,” 365–380; Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’s moral thought and its British context,14; Wallace Anderson, ed., WJE 6:23; See the multiple references in chapter 1 to Morris, The young Jonathan Edwards. Although Edwards takes up Newton’s “new principle of motion and action,” 158, and finds in Newton support for a relational kind of causality, and cites his principle of “particular corporeal existence,” affirming Newton’s “ubiquitous God, constituting duration and space and sustaining by his presence the laws of motion and gravitation,” Edwards does not go so far as others did in the eighteenth century, who synthesized Newton and the Stoic and Platonist “world-soul,” in a Shaftesburian sense,

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Edwards sets in opposition to one another the “laws of contingence” and “the laws of moral causes.” There is a relative necessity of consequence and connection between the cause, by which Edwards means habitual causal power (previous habitual bias and inclination), and the effect, by which he means the act of will. The will—as effect for Edwards, not cause—can neither overcome, nor resist, the ever-increasing strength of habitual causal powers. Choice, for Edwards, arises from within, from preponderating habits of the heart, from habitual causal powers, from strength of inclination, not from a so-called self-determining power.74 We noted above (in §9.1.2), Edwards’s own statement that the essence of the virtue and vice of dispositions of the heart, and acts of the will, lies not in their cause, but their nature.75 As Lee observes, “If the essence of being is habit or disposition, then an entity is an abiding reality as a habit or disposition and attains full actuality through the exercise of that habit or disposition.”76 In other words, Edwards’s theory of the habits of the human heart is such that a person attains full actuality, and increases in the strength of propensity of will, to the degree that his or her causal powers are actualized. Lee’s observations confirm the point made in our sketch of Edwards’s theory of freedom of perfection (in §9.1.1), namely, that the disposition of a person’s will grows stronger and stronger in its relation to the greatest apparent good, as he or she elicits acts of the will. The example that Edwards gave was of Jesus, who in the midst of trials, increased in holiness and bias to choose the things that are excellent, making it more and more impossible that he should choose the contrary. The laws of habits and moral causes, and their actively biasing the will, leads one to conclude, as Lee observes, that the active tendency is a “being” and as such the habitual laws “have a mode of being apart from the actual events.”77 In his explanation of terms, Edwards writes that “moral necessity” can signify “a high degree of probability” of the choice a human agent will make, all other things being equal, given the agreeableness of an object proposed to the mind.78 We stated above (in §9.1.1) that Edwards speaks of the increasing probability of what a choice will be, given virtuous habits of the heart. This mode of being, which is a “real” and “active tendency,” writes Lee, “operates with a kind of necessity.” It is not that habitual tendencies can or may be realized, but that “one predicts that a

74 75 76 77 78

writes Abrams in M.H. Abrams, The mirror and the lamp: Romantic theory and the critical tradition (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), 64, 185. WJE 1: 156–162; 322–6; 434. Ibid., 337. Lee, The philosophical theology of Edwards, 7. Ibid., 44. WJE 1: 146, 156.

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certain event would occur if certain conditions are met.”79 In other words, given that certain conditions are met, the habitual bias and tendency will be realized. For Edwards, habit is much more than pure potentiality; habit is “an active, teleological, causal power,” it is a “virtual principle that stands at a midpoint between mere potentiality and full actuality.”80 As Lee indicated by “mode of being,” Edwards’s notion of habit belongs not only to the sphere of epistemology, but to ontology, since it envelops laws of habitual powers, “moral causes,” a “necessity of connection and consequence” between cause and effect. Habit is embedded in a dynamic ontology based on, as Edwards writes, “the principle of motion entirely distinct from nature.”81 The causal nexus of habit and will, in physical terms of action and motion, implies that for Edwards, human action is determined, since “Will” is as the greatest apparent good is. As such, the nexus of active forces helps us to understand that which is essential to Edwards’s synthesis. Challenges to Lee’s account of Edwards’s dispositional ontology Lee’s account has not gone unchallenged. In Jonathan Edwards as Contemporary: Essays in Honor of Sang Hyun Lee, interpreters of Edwards debate the issue of whether he held more or less to an “essentialist,” relational-dispositional, or a mixed model, with respect to metaphysics, and the traditional understanding of divine simplicity and God’s relation to created reality.82 The challenge to Lee concerns his claim that Edwards applied a dispositional ontology to both created human dispositions and God—the latter’s disposition, according to Lee, is radically different—that Edwards attempted a synthesis of God’s simplicity and God’s essentially dispositional character by “replacing Plato’s abiding and selfsufficient Idea with the abiding and self-sufficient Divine Dispositional Actuality.” In Lee’s account, there is both an ad intra and ad extra dimension to God’s essentially dispositional nature.83 The matter of defining terms and distinctions is crucial to answering the question of whether Lee’s account is in agreement with the classic line, which this study has set out in Part One. To the extent that Lee’s account understands Edwards to say that God is pure act, that God’s attributes and properties are unacquired, pointing to God’s self love, so far then is the account in agreement with the classic line.84

79 80 81 82

Lee, Philosophical theology of Edwards, 44–5. Ibid., 45. WJE 1: 156, 159. Stephen Daniel, “Edwards’ occasionalism,” in Jonathan Edwards as contemporary: Essays in honor of Sang Hyun Lee, ed. Don Schweitzer (Oxford: Peter Lang Publishing Inc, 2010), 11, 68–9. 83 Lee, Philosophical theology of Edwards, 174–5, 183, 203–4. 84 Ibid., 175–83. See chapters 4 and 5 of this study on God’s act of self-love.

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Briefly, the classic line explains how God is related to his own properties, reconciling God’s simplicity and aseity with his perfecting properties and relational terms, by pointing out that relative terms do not predicate contingents about God. They neither add nor subtract from God’s essential character. Let us suppose that I go stand to the left of my brother. Has anything substantially changed about him, in himself ? Are we to ascribe to him the attribute of “being to the right?” No. For instance, when speaking of inter-trinitarian relations, predicating divine relations ascribes neither substantial nor accidental properties to God. In his dissertation on divine simplicity and the classic line on God’s aseity and transcendance, Immink points out the problematic features of the “identity thesis” model (identifying God with his perfections). He concludes that “God is essentially good, just, and wise;” but concerning works ad extra, “we cannot say that he is essentially the Creator of the heavens and the earth, nor that he is essentially the Redeemer…our concept of God contains essential and contingent properties.”85 Contrary to Immink’s account of classic theology, Lee’s account posits not only a dynamic dispositional conception of God’s relations ad intra, but it also entails God’s essential disposition ad extra, to create the world, to self-enlargement, self-realization, and self-repetition. Although Lee’s account speaks of a radical difference between God and created beings, even so, Lee says that “there is not an ontological disjunction.”86 Immink states a principle about God, as substance, and his nature, which he adapted from Anselm, namely, that in God there cannot be a property whose contradictory is in some respect better. Concerning God’s attributes, but not works and relations ad extra, Immink concludes that theologians can preserve God’s aseity and “perfecting properties” by saying that he possesses these properties intrinsically, maximally, and in this sense, essentially.87 On the contrary, Lee, in his account, must hold that for Edwards, it is impossible that the property or disposition of God’s self-enlargement and selfcommunication ad extra be otherwise than it is. Thus, on Lee’s account, and that of this present study, Edwards holds to an essentialist ontology. The classicReformed line, however, holds to an ontology of true contingency. Recent criticisms of Lee’s account also fail to take into account the classic distinction Immink points to between God’s essential and contingent attributes, which is important when comparing Edwards’s ontology with the classic-Reformed ontology. In his “Critique of Sang Hyun Lee’s dispositional account of Edwards’s ontology,” Oliver Crisp claims that Edwards sought “to synthesize a 85 F.G. Immink, “Divine simplicity” (Ph.D. diss., Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht: Kok-Kampen, 1987), 44, 118, 178–9. 86 Lee, Philosophical theology of Edwards, 183, 201–10. 87 Immink, Divine simplicity, 119–21.

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commitment to essentialism, idealism, and occasionalism along with his orthodox theological commitments.”88 Crisp characterizes Edwards’s ontology as both basically essentialist, and actually synthetic, due to his idiosyncratic eclectic approach. “Essentialism,” writes Crisp, “divides what exists into substances and their properties.”89 Crisp moderates Lee’s account and says that Edwards did not entirely replace divine substance with disposition. Crisp’s conclusion does not conflict with our claim that Edwards, in his own idiosyncratic way, appropriated laws of motion and action and transformed them into a dynamic dispositional ontology. Although our analysis would agree with Crisp on the need for secondary causes (we would add, contingent secondary causes), it is arguably the case that we ought to weigh our judgment of Lee’s account and Edwards’s adaptation of a dispositional ontology against the background of what we saw in the curricula in Part One, namely, a classicReformed ontology of true contingency. The use of the contested terms of “essentialism,” “relational model,” and the “substance-attribute model” of the “Aristotelian-Thomistic” line, without distinguishing the older ontology of the latter line from the robust classic-Reformed ontology of true contingency, sets up the wrong baseline from which to offer critique of Lee’s account. We saw in chapter four, on Heereboord’s interpretation of divine ideas and exemplar causality, that the classic-Reformed line in Edwards’s curriculum held that God is pure act, that an idea is the internal exemplar of God’s intellect (but not inherent as an accidental form); that an idea in God is single, but becomes manifold in relation to created reality. In chapter 5, we saw Morton write about God’s act of self-love, that freedom is a property of God’s will, that God freely wills that he love his creatures, with respect to freedom of exercise, and that God necessarily wills that he love, with respect to freedom of kind or specification.90 To the extent that Lee’s account fails to show the continuity of Edwards’s synthesis with these distinctions, so far then is Lee’s account in disagreement with the classic-Reformed line.91 Lee’s own conclusion is that Edwards’s position

88 Oliver D. Crisp, “Jonathan Edwards’s ontology: a critique of Sang Hyun Lee’s dispositional account of Edwardsian metaphysics.” Religious Studies 46, no. 1 (March 2010): 1–20. 89 Ibid., 2. (See also, fn. 5). 90 See this present study’s chapters 4 and 5. 91 Cf. the problem of actuality and possibility, identity and simplicity, God as pure act and real relations, in Vos, Philosophy of Scotus, 250–3, 279–80, 292–98; Cf. Muller, PRRD 3: 287–988; See this study’s chapter 6 §§6.2 and 6.5.2 on Edwards’s transcript from Stapfer on the representation of pure possibles in God’s mind; chapter 4 §4.1 on the imitability of God’s essence; chapter 5 §5.6.2 on Heereboord’s use of the notions of formal relations, modes of being and operating, to explain the different senses of understanding the axiom: “There is nothing in God that be not God himself.” He explained that substance and accident are not God himself.

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remains consistent with the “doctrine of God’s absolute prior actuality and aseity.”92 Lee’s account, however, cuts across two interrelated levels, the divine and human. The thrust of this chapter concerns Lee’s anthropological application. In his essay, Stephen Daniel finds a thread he believes worth taking up which, he claims, links Lee’s dynamic vision of reality with Edwards’s version of Malebranche’s occasionalism. Lee’s insight, according to Daniel, is that Edwards adopts an ontology in which the identities of things are inherently relational. In this way, writes Daniel, Lee shows how Edwards offers an alternative to the traditional substance-attribute model.93 But Lee, writes Daniel, provides only a description of how Edwards frames his dispositional ontology, not an answer as to why it must be so structured.94 Daniel refers to Edwards’s “Miscellanies,” 629 as evidence used by Fiering, who claims that Edwards endorses occasionalism.95 There is in the“Miscellany” evidence for Edwards’s notion of an “abiding, vital principle of action.” However, Edwards’s “Miscellany” has to do with a distinction between “natural principles” and causes (the laws of nature) and a “principle of grace,” between natural principles of motion and an “abiding, natural, vital principle of action,” which as we have suggested Edwards adapts to his theory of human habits and volition.96 In “Miscellanies,” 629, Edwards writes that the Holy Spirit works in human hearts, not according to “natural principles,” but the Spirit infuses “an abiding, natural, vital principle of action, a seed remaining in us.” In Freedom of Will, Edwards features this new “principle of motion entirely distinct from nature.”97 Thus, our proposal that Edwards’s synthesis adapts physical principles of motion to a vital principle of action, and seeds of virtue, actually finds support from “Miscellanies,” 629, and stands apart from an occasionalist interpretation of Edwards’s synthesis. In the following sections (§9.3.3) on Turretin and (§9.3.4) Van Mastricht, we discuss Edwards’s adaptation of the concept of seeds of grace, as a vital principle of action, to his theory of the will.

92 93 94 95 96

Lee, Philosophical theology of Edwards, 204. Daniel, “Edwards’ occasionalism,”Jonathan Edwards as contemporary, 11. Ibid. Ibid., 4. In WJE 18: 157, “Miscellanies,” 629, Edwards is referring to the classic distinction between natural causes, “the laws of nature,” and free causes (what he calls “moral causes” in WJE 1: 156–9). For instance, fire is a natural cause of burning, thus he writes, “in natural things, means of effects, in metaphysical strictness, are not proper causes of the effects, but only occasions.” On natural and free causes, see Introduction (§1.4.1) in Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom. On free causes, see this present study’s chapter 3 “Necessity and contingency” on Heereboord’s disputations on “Free Causes.” 97 WJE 1: 159.

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In sum, although this study finds support for the anthropological part of Edwards’s synthesis in Lee’s thesis, the evidence of what we presented in Part One, and in the “Stapfer” chapter, undermines Lee’s thesis, which does not acknowledge the classic-Reformed ontology of true contingency.98 In fact, neither this study’s account of Edwards’s theory, nor Lee’s interpretation of Edwards, represents the classic-Reformed line on true ontological contingency. Both lack a satisfactory ontology that can rhyme necessity with freedom. The Essays in honor of Sang Hyun Lee point to the need for an ontology that explains why things are, as they are, and not otherwise. But a satisfactory ontology claims that the reason why things are, the way they are, and not otherwise, can itself have a contingent reason.

9.2

The transformation of natural principles into moral causes

In this section we consider the classical view of naturally implanted dispositions, a view which lies in the background of Edwards’s Freedom of Will, and which, as we have seen, he transformed into the dynamic vision of active principles and habits of the heart. The following review will help highlight differences between it and Edwards’s view, and what was transformed.

9.2.1 Natural inclinations We perhaps are accustomed to juxtaposing “natural” inclinations and freedom. But if we say, “What comes naturally constitutes freedom,” then we begin to understand the classical freedom based on a naturally implanted disposition. For example, we naturally long for the good and for happiness. The natural inclinations for which Cicero and later Aquinas argued were, for example, the inclination to the good, the inclination to self-preservation, inclination to search the truth, and the inclination to educate one’s children. And in distinction from animals, Cicero pointed out, in his De officiis (§1.4), that humans possess foresight and make rationally informed decisions that reason had conferred all these on humans.99 Pinckaers’s seminal work, Les sources de la morale chrétienne, 98 See for instance, Edwards’s on different levels of necessity in chapter 8 §8.3.1. 99 The student Osborn recorded in his “commonplace book” the synopsis of reading recommended by Dr. Merryweather, directions to a young student in the University. Ciceronis Orationis, De Officiis, De Finibus are listed to be read in the fourth year of studies, in July, August, September. See BRBML. Commonplace Book, 1700, James Marshall and MarieLouise Osborn Collection; Cicero’s works are listed in Stoddard’s library, see Norman Fiering, “Solomon Stoddard’s Library at Harvard in 1664,” Harvard Library Bulletin 20 (1972): 268.

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makes the case that the doctrine of freedom of perfection and excellence has its roots in Aristotle’s Ethics, Cicero’s Tusculan disputations, the Greek church fathers, and reaches its apogee in Aquinas’ Ia IIae.100 The doctrine of growth in excellence is consistent with Aquinas’s account of human freedom. While there are some similarities between Edwards’s account of moral habits and the classical language that expresses human’s natural or moral habits as a propensity to seek the good, which gets stronger through practice and with time, there are, as we have noted, significant differences. Pinckaers writes that the early church fathers built the scheme of freedom for excellence, upon two principles, namely, (1) sequi naturam, and (2) beata vita.101 The classical idea of habit as disposition can be illustrated as follows. Suppose a beginning piano student is gifted, but does not desire to practice straight away. Although a beginning student may view assigned exercises as coercive, nevertheless, in time her gifts develop and she assigns herself exercises, and increases her practice times. Over time, she acquires and exercises her power of freedom, developing her natural instincts and strengthening her disposition to play.102 Learning another language also suffices to demonstrate the same freedom of perfection. The learner begins learning a grammar that becomes his own and when he is fluent he speaks from a natural disposition to the language. The more fluent he is, the freer he is.103 This is a diachronic look at growth in freedom, apart from a synchronic view, which would consider a simultaneous alternative choice, to play the piano or do something else, to speak this word, or another, with respect to the above examples. The “germ of moral freedom,” according to Pinckaers, is a requisite disposition for every human for exercising genuine freedom, as we saw in the example of acquiring the art of playing piano or learning to speak a second language.104 This germ of freedom is developed in each of us thanks to the “seeds of virtue” (semina virtutum) which will make these natural dispositions towards the good grow. “Far from impeding our freedom,” writes Pinckaers, “such dispositions therefore ground it.” Indeed, the germ of this notion of a freedom of progressive perfection consists with necessity. “We are free, not despite them, but because of them,” writes Pinckaers. In fact, “the better we develop them the freer 100 There are two principles upon which all the early Greek church fathers built their scheme of freedom, according to Pinckaers, to wit, (1) sequi naturam, “conformity to nature,” which translates into mind-gifted humans pursuing the good, truth, friendship. And (2) beata vita, longing for beatitude, or happiness, for which they found support in the beatitudes in Matthew’s sermon on the mount, in Pinckaers, Sources, 341–2, 411–413; ET 333–5, 405–6. 101 Pinckaers, Sources, 235, 262, 341–3, 406–7, 410, 419; ET 225, 252, 333–6, 400–1, 403–5, 413. 102 Ibid., 354; ET 361–2. 103 Ibid., 362; ET 355–56. 104 Ibid., 364; ET 357.

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we become.”105 Pinckaers traced this sense of freedom back to “the famous principle of ancient philosophy, sequi naturam, ‘follow nature,’ so frankly adopted and christianised by the Fathers of the Church.”106 Cicero, says Pinckaers, spoke of semina virtutum in his Tusculan disputations, which can serve as a metaphor for the kind of freedom of perfection that Aquinas would develop along the lines of natural inclinations in his Prima Secundae, question 94, article 2.107 This increasingly intense disposition towards God, by natural necessity, as it were, does not imprison freedom, but consists with freedom; “It is essentially liberating.”108 For this reason, Aquinas can tie rational spontaneity, or instinctus rationis—a “natural moral sense” with a “marked predilection”—to the expression “instinct of the Holy Spirit” (instinctus Spiritus Sancti), who is at work in the heart of a believer.109 The significance for freedom of perfection by this move by Aquinas is to demonstrate that such an instinct is not blind, indifferent or opposed to freedom, but is rather open to the source of light and the good; it is, according to Pinckaers, this “spontaneity that grounds freedom.”110

9.2.2 Edwards rejects a notion of natural necessity in favor of progressive growth of habits Although Edwards, at times, focuses on atomistic choices, such as steps taken moving a chess piece, or to use another metaphor, learning to play piano, he presents his scheme for freedom of perfection against the background of a diachronic developmental framework, the freedom of which, as we have seen, is markedly void of contingency, and opposed to integrating the features of synchronic freedom ad utrumlibet with those of diachronic freedom. With Christ in a state of trial as his example, Edwards claims that to advance in degrees of holiness is to advance in degrees of freedom. For Edwards, a view that centers on the atomised choices in a freedom of indifference precludes viewing progression of growth in freedom, progression in holiness, and diminishes the role of habits of the heart, which progressively incline a person to seek the good. In other words, a view that always seeks equilibrium before moral choices misses the 105 Ibid., 364–5, 407; ET 357–58. 106 Ibid., 365; ET 358. Pinckaers points out that sequi naturam means conformity with nature and concerns rational human beings, 341; ET 334. Cf. “follow nature,” in Vos, Philosophy of Scotus, 433. 107 Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, III. 1 “The seeds of virtues are natural to our constitutions, and, were they suffered to come to maturity, would naturally conduct us to a happy life.” On natural inclinations, see Pinckaers, Sources, 411; ET 405. 108 Pinckaers, Sources, 365; ET358 . 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid.

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diachronic perspective of what progressive growth gains. In his view, freedom of indifference inhibits growth by always reverting to the default mode of the nul of indifference, that is, to the power of saying “Yes” or “No” to law and command. We have seen that Edwards devotes a lot of space to argue the absurdity of the principle, “The closer one arrives to a perfect state of equilibrium, the freer one is.” If that were true, “The man Jesus Christ was very far from being praiseworthy for those acts of holiness and kindness which he performed, these propensities being so strong in his heart.”111 We saw that Edwards applies this principle of growth in perfection to a state of trial when he believes that the human will of Jesus Christ is both finite and progressive in its inclination to holiness: We may learn how Christ was sanctified in his last sufferings…But this could not be done without a proportionable increase of his aversion and hatred to sin, and consequently of his inclination to the contrary, which is the same thing as an increase of the holiness of his nature … Those last sufferings of Christ were in some respects like a fire, to refine the gold … it added to the finite holiness of the human nature of Christ.112

Edwards transformed these natural inclinations into moral causes, moral habits, and moral necessity as a freedom of perfection. In Edwards’s view, freedom of indifference would impede progressive freedom of perfection by blocking any binding rapport between the moral law, for example the Decalogue, and freedom.113 Instead of a progression in inclination towards taking pleasure in obeying the Decalogue, freedom of indifference, in his view, atomizes freedom of choice, by insisting on the power to say yes or no. By way of contrast, we have seen that Edwards begins Freedom of Will by distinguishing between natural necessity and moral necessity. He rejects basing moral accountability, and virtuous and vicious behavior, on natural principles. This is because, as he writes, “nature is prior to all acts of the will whatsoever,” that is, prior in terms of having been “implanted” in human hearts by nature.114 This is not a reason on account of which someone is counted more or less virtuous. Edwards holds someone accountable for action according to the principles of “moral necessity,” since moral necessity is “acquired and established by repeated free acts.” In his new vision of reality, there are “no habits which are natural, or that any are born or created with.”115 111 WJE 1:326. 112 Amy Plantinga Pauw, ed., The “Miscellanies,” 833–1152, vol. 20 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Harry S. Stout (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 333; Cf. Fisk, “Jonathan Edwards’s Freedom of the Will,” 323. 113 Throughout Freedom of Will, Edwards argues for consistency between “God’s moral methods,” moral inducements, commands, either physical or moral, which promote human virtue and freedom of perfection. See WJE 1: Part 3, sect. 1–2, 7; Part 4, sect. 1, 4. 114 WJE 1: 361. 115 Ibid., 324; 361–3.

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Given the exposition above of Edwards’s dynamic vision of reality, dispositional forces and habits, and “new principle of motion and action,” it is arguably the case that Edwards moved on from the classical view of sequi naturam and semina virtutum, and natural principles, since he lived, thought, and wrote in the wake of the Newtonian synthesis, the Lockean revolution in knowledge, and Shaftesbury’s “aesthetic perspective.”116 As Lee notes, Edwards retrieved habit as an active, causal power from the classical tradition, but moved on and formed his own “synthesis” of relations, by conceiving of habits of the heart as causal powers in a nexus of three areas: the teleological, relational, and aesthetic.117 We have seen Edwards’s synthesis at work in his exposition on moral necessity as a freedom of perfection throughout Freedom of Will, and in particular in Part One (§4), defining humankind’s moral necessity, Part Three (§6), rejecting the classical notion of natural habits with which one might be born, and Part Four, (§§7,8), describing how each distinct act of divine power determines the “peculiar fitness” of every body in the universe; that God made no atom in vain, nor without purpose or motive, why it is in one place and not another. We also shall see his synthesis at work in the next chapter, on moral necessity as a divine freedom of perfection, and in particular, what he calls God’s “universal determining providence.”118

9.3

Other sources on the notion of moral necessity as freedom of perfection

There are good reasons to consider Descartes, Heereboord, Turretin, and Van Mastricht as sources for the notion of human freedom of perfection. We are not claiming that there is direct dependency on these sources by Edwards. Our purpose, rather, is to set Edwards’s own development of the notion against the background of those who also developed this notion, and who either played a part in his educational background, and were readily available to Edwards, such as Heereboord and Descartes, or whom Edwards specifically named as favored authors, such as Turretin and Van Mastricht. It is entirely possible, for instance, that Edwards read Descartes, since his Opera philosophica, 4 tomes, and Meditationes de prima philosophia were part of both the Dummer collection and Solomon Stoddard’s library in 1664. The student notebook, moreover, which came into the possession of Edwards’s tutor, Elisha Williams, also makes ref-

116 Lee, Philosophical theology of Jonathan Edwards, 31, 99, 105. 117 Ibid., 105. 118 WJE 1: 431–3.

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erence to Descartes’s Fourth Meditation. We now look at Descartes’s development of the notion of freedom of perfection.119

9.3.1 Descartes on freedom of perfection A brief sketch of Descartes’s notion of freedom of the divine will In Descartes’s Fourth Meditation, he expresses the notion of a freedom of perfection, in human freedom, that Edwards would later express, namely, “In order to be free (ut sim liber), there is no need for me to be inclined both ways (utramque partem ferri posse); on the contrary, the more I incline in one direction (quo magis in unam propendeo). . . the freer is my choice (tanto liberius illam eligo). ”120 A brief sketch of his “Replies to objections VI,” would show that Descartes privileges the divine will so much so that he collapses (1) God’s knowledge of simple understanding and (2) his visionary knowledge into one logical position, structurally located after the will. It appears that what drives Descartes to this position is his view of the role of indifference in the divine will. “As for the freedom of the will, the way in which it exists in God is quite different from the way in which it exists in us,” writes Descartes. It would be self-contradictory were the divine will not, “indifferent from eternity with respect to everything which has happened or will ever happen.”121 Descartes reasons that we cannot conceive of any good thing that exists or of any truth to be believed, or of any good work that ought to be done, or of any evil work to be omitted, the idea of which existed in the divine understanding “prior to the decision of the divine will to make it so.”122 Thus, even the ethical necessity of loving God and neighbor in no way impells the divine will. God is completely indifferent to all possible notions until he wills what he wills. Descartes anticipates someone who may say that, “Of course, what you say is understandable if one considers that there is no diachronic succession of moves in the atemporal life of God, but surely you 119 On Descartes, take note of his appearance in our commentary on the broadside theses in chapter 1 as one of the authors of the “New Learning” at Yale. On Turretin and Van Mastricht, as authors whom Edwards admired, see the introduction chapter (§3). On Elisha William’s Notebook, see also the introduction chapter (§3) and chapter 5 §5.2 of this present study. 120 John Cottingham et al., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984–91), 2:40. The Latin is from Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, eds., Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, in vol. VII of Oeuvres de Descartes (Paris: J. Vrin, 1983), 57–8. The significance of Descartes’s view of liberty of perfection, not indifference, in human agency, is that it is the opposite of his view on the divine will. 121 John Cottingham et al., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984–91), 2: 134. 122 Ibid.

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would agree that there is a logical, structural priority to possible ideas that can be actualized.” Descartes answers, “I am not speaking here of temporal priority: I mean that there is not even any priority of order, (prius fuit ordine), or nature (vel naturâ), or of ‘rationally determined reason’(ratione ratiocinata), as they call it.”123 What is significant for this study is the affinity one finds between Descartes and Edwards on human freedom of perfection, in the sense of the stronger one’s inclination, the freer one is. In his “Reply to objections VI,” Descartes writes, “Indifference does not belong to the essence of human freedom.”124 A sketch of Descartes’s view of human freedom of perfection In his Fourth Meditation, Descartes speaks of human freedom in these terms, “The more I incline in one direction…the freer is my choice” (quo magis in unam propendeo…tanto liberius illam eligo). Human freedom increases as indifference decreases. “The spontaneity and freedom of my belief was all the greater in proportion to my lack of indifference.”125 Descartes expresses his notion of human freedom of perfection in terms of quo magis, tanto liberius, that is, in terms of strength and proportion. As one scholar recently summarized Des-

123 Ibid. Cf. J. Martin Bac, Perfect will theology: divine agency in Reformed scholasticism as against Suárez, Episcopius, Descartes, and Spinoza, Brill’s Series in Church History (Leiden: Brill, 2010), chapter 5. Bac focuses attention on the divine will and agency, hence the chapter title, “Magnifying Divine Will,” where he shows how divine essence is folded into an indifferent divine will, removing all trace of the essential attributes of the divine being, and any trace of non-contingent willing in the realm of ethics, such as willing love to God and neighbor necessarily. See Descartes’s conversation with Burman, 16 April 1648, where when asked if God could have commanded a creature to hate him, Descartes replied, “Why not?,” in Cottingham et al., The Philosophical writings of Descartes, 3: 343. 124 Cottingham et al., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 2: 292. 125 Adam and Tannery, eds., Oeuvres de Descartes, 7:57–8. The English translation is from Cottingham et al., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 2:40–1. Mortimer Adler concludes his discussion on Descartes’s divine and human freedom of will with a short summary of Descartes’ view on human freedom. And he helpfully focuses on (1) willing to opposite acts and (2) willing to opposite objects: (1) “So far as willing or not willing is concerned, the will can have no greater freedom than to choose not to will when it is confronted with the most evident good as an object to be willed. (2) “while, so far as willing a particular object is concerned, there is no greater freedom than to have no choice but to will the evident good,” in Mortimer J. Adler, The Idea of Freedom: A Dialectical Examination of the Conceptions of Freedom, The Institute for Philosophical Research (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1958), 525. Cf. Fouillée, to understand one implication of Descartes’ and Edwards’s view of freedom, “In proportion as my free power increases in intensity, the number of objects I can actually will is lessened. When freedom reaches its maximum, there will be no more than a single possible object of will, and hence there will be no free decision in the proper sense of the word,” cited by Adler, from Alfred Fouillée, La Liberté et le Déterminisme (4th ed.; Paris: Felix Alcan, 1895), 318.

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cartes’ view, “The will is freest when it is powerfully and ineluctably inclined ‘in one direction’. . .The more I incline…the freer is my choice.”126 In a letter to Mesland, 09 February 1645, concerning freedom of the will in his Fourth Meditation, Descartes clarifies that there is an “absolute” sense and a “moral” sense of the terms. In the moral sense of freedom, “we can hardly move in the contrary direction,” writes Descartes.127 In the absolute sense of freedom, there is freedom of specification, a “positive faculty of determining oneself to one or other of two contraries …to pursue or avoid, to affirm or deny.”128 “It is always open to us to hold back from pursuing a clearly known good, or from admitting a clearly perceived truth…provided we consider it a good thing to demonstrate the freedom of our will by so doing.” Likewise, “We determine ourselves more easily” when we follow the course appearing most in our favor.129 Descartes says that a person possesses freedom in an absolute sense before he elicits an act of will, that is, with respect to time. And this absolute sense entails indifference.130 “Freedom considered in the acts of the will at the moment when they are elicited does not entail any indifference taken in either the first sense [moral] or the second sense [absolute].”131 In other words, when an act is elicited, there is no indifference in the moral sense, nor is there an absolute freedom of indifference to opposites since a person cannot elicit opposite acts at the same instant of time. That is, “What is done cannot remain undone as long as it is being done (quia quod sit, non potest manere infectum, quandoquidem fit).”132 Descartes applies the principle of quo magis in unam propendeo…tanto liberius illam eligo when he says that, within our own field of judgment, we cannot be freer when presented with equally good choices, or choices with as many pros as cons. “We can always act more freely” in cases of greater good present to us, than in cases of adiaphora.133 126 Husain Sarkar, Descartes’s Cogito: Saved from the Great Shipwreck (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 255. 127 Cottingham et al., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3:245. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid., 3:246. 132 Ibid. The Latin is from Adam and Tannery, Oeuvres de Descartes, 4: 174. 133 Cottingham et al, Philosophical writings of Descartes, 3:245. Descartes writes that when it concerns God, indifference is a perfection of divine freedom, but not in humans, in a letter to Mersenne, 21 April 1641, wherein he claims he finds backing for his position in Father Gibieuf ’s book, De libertate Dei et creaturae (1630), 179. Liberty is seated in amplitude, 13, 18. He refers to John 8 and 2 Cor 3, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.” Augustine’s letter/epistle 89 says the freer we are, the healthier we are. According to Augustine, if posse peccare is our state now, how much greater our state when in heaven we are non posse peccare. This is Gibieuf building his case for a freedom of amplitude or perfection, 21.

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In sum, Descartes explains how his view of divine freedom affects human freedom by his belief that, although God is radically indifferent, once he wills the true and the good, divine-human concurrence is such that humans cannot but embrace the true and the good. In fact, human freedom is in proportion to the strength of this inclination to what is true and good. The more clearly a human perceives what is true and good for him at any moment, the stronger the inclination becomes to elicit such an act, and the further one is removed from indifference. A human “embraces what is good and true all the more willingly, and hence the more freely, in proportion as he sees it more clearly.”134 We find great affinity between Descartes and Edwards in the principle of quo magis in unam propendeo…tanto liberius illam eligo. However, on the notion of an absolute and moral sense of freedom, one finds less affinity, more dissimilarity. Whereas Descartes distinguishes between a “moral” sense of freedom and an “absolute” sense of freedom, Edwards, we have seen, distinguishes between natural and moral necessity. On the notion of moral necessity, there appears to be some affinity between Descartes and Edwards. Both authors speak of moral necessity in the sense of an agent pursuing the apparent good. As Edwards illustrates it, when an alcoholic has his liquor before him, the choice to drink appears most agreeable.135 But unlike Descartes, we have seen that Edwards develops ‘moral necessity’ as a technical term, which we do not find in Descartes’s February 9, 1645 letter to Mesland. Edwards’s expression of moral necessity in Newtonian language, as involving a new principle of motion and action, shows that much had changed by his time of writing. On the notion of an absolute sense of freedom, such that an agent can hold back from pursuing a known good, this is not quite the same as Edwards’s understanding of a sense of indifference as equilibrium prior to a choice. For Edwards, “Where there is absolutely no preferring or choosing, but a perfect continuing equilibrium, there is no volition.”136 In his absolute sense, Descartes seems to imply that an agent can “hold back from pursuing a clearly known good,” which, as Edwards would view it, if one holds back from pursuing a known good, he or she is choosing to hold back, and thus one can no longer speak of the case in the sense of absolute freedom. The case has become one of moral freedom. And for Edwards, a case of moral necessity. Although Edwards develops the same principle of human freedom—quo magis in unam propendeo. . . tanto liberius illam eligo— Edwards’s world of syntax and development of his argument is not that of Descartes’s—extension

134 Cottingham et al, Philosophical writings of Descartes, 2: 135. 135 WJE 1:143. 136 Ibid., 140.

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and motion—but of Newton’s—matter, motion, and space.137 “The nature of learned discourse was clearly shifting in the age of Enlightenment,” writes Lee. Edwards, living and breathing under the influence of Newton’s world, conceived of causal forces and active principles of motion at work in the habits of the human heart, the language of which gives evidence of having displaced Cartesian physics.138

9.3.2 Heereboord on the classical notion of ‘habit’ and freedom of perfection We have seen that Heereboord structured his Meletemata around the Nichomachean Ethics and Prima Secundae. Although it was beyond the scope of this study to give exposition to Heereboord’s roots in classic virtue ethics, notably, he devoted six disputations to virtue ethics in his “Collegiate ethics” and eight disputations exclusively to virtue ethics in his “Exercises in ethics.” In fact, the disputations on freedom that we selected were all embedded in the series of disputations that Heereboord placed under “Ethics.” We recall from chapter 4 (§4.1) that Heereboord used the concept of semina in reference to the divine ideas that God will produce and see grow in the reality of this world. In his Collegiate Ethics, in disputation 17, he wrote on the fundamentals of virtue, wherein he explained that “primordial seeds of virtue” (semina ac primordia virtutum) were naturally implanted in humans.139 This explains why people have a natural propensity to worship God and to honor their parents. This natural propensity is, as it were, in the root (in radice), in the seed (in semina), in the stem or source (in stirpe); it adumbrates and engenders virtue in every human heart. Heereboord says that it is as the Scholastics say, “Virtue is inchoate by nature, but not perfected by nature.”140 Although judgment, understanding, and intuitive reason are “natural endowments,” the development of their powers requires education and time, as is evident in the wisdom of older people. The distinct point about the role of nature is that “while no one is thought to be a philosopher by nature, people are thought to have by nature judgment, understanding, and intuitive reason.” Thus, Heereboord, with Aristotle, says humans have the virtutum semina ac primordia by nature because these first practical principles (ista principia prima practica insint a natura) are there by nature.141 137 Koyré, Newtonian studies, 12, 13. 138 See Writings on the Trinity, grace, and faith, ed., Lee, in WJE 21: 5–7; Tweney, “Jonathan Edwards and determinism,” 367. 139 Heereboord, Meletemata, Disp. Colleg. Ethic, (D17) “De virtutis moralis causis,” 72 § 3. 140 Ibid., 73. “Virtus est a natura inchoative, non a natura perfective.” 141 Ibid. See Aristotle, Eth. nic. 1143b 5–10.

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We see then that Heereboord integrated the classic view of freedom of perfection with a Reformed freedom ad utrumlibet in his disputations. In chapter 2 (§2.6.2), we saw that Heereboord explained that “habit” does not signify that the faculty of the will is already disposed or inclined one way or the other. For him, habits incline power to a certain kind of action, good habit to the good, evil to evil, respectively; free choice does not incline of itself (ex se) to a certain kind of action, rather it holds itself indifferently (indifferenter se habet) to diverse actions. Unlike Heereboord, Edwards holds habit to include a relation of moral causes, a relative necessity of consequence and connection between choice —located in habitual power—and effect in the act of will.142 It is arguably the case that Edwards does not consider liberty of indifference as in any sense “natural” to freedom, as his Reformed forebears did. He, thus, identifies freedom with moral necessity. Herein lies the significance of Heereboord’s definition of freedom, chapter 2 (§2.6.8), which said the essence of freedom ad utrumlibet is physical (real) or natural (physicam seu naturalem), not ethical or moral. For Edwards, there is no consideration of other conative features of willing, which can be uncoupled from moral necessity, such as, the logical and conceptual distinctions so often discussed by Reformed authors, and debated and learned in the Harvard and Yale curricula. We now turn to two of Edwards’s well-known favorite theologians, Turretin and Van Mastricht, to briefly assess their possible contribution to Edwards’s understanding of the notion of seeds of grace. The intent here is to show that Edwards shares the language of “habits” of the heart with these authors. Nevertheless, each author, including Edwards, has other sources from which he draws, the terminology and idiom of which he or she fills with his or her own meaning, for his or her own designs. Edwards is no exception.

9.3.3 Turretin on the classical notion of “seeds of virtue” and “moral necessity” The notion of seeds of grace and virtue enters into Turretin’s discussion of the perseverance of believers in a state of regeneration. In answer to the question of how these seeds of virtue can subsist with sin or falling away from a state of grace, Turretin turns to what God has bestowed upon his children by way of efficacious calling and adoption. Indeed there is the matter of “the practice of faith and the exercise of repentance,” nevertheless, a believer “does not fall away from a state of grace” because “the seeds of grace and of virtue are never taken away from him (semina gratiae et virtutum nunquam ab eo auferuntur).”143 In the previous 142 WJE 1: 156–7. 143 On the sixteenth question “The perseverance of faith,” Turretin makes use of the notion of

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section, he stressed that “a habit is perfected by an act and a virtue…from the act exerting itself.” Thus, even when a believer sins by not loving his spouse, and the “habit of love is weak,” nevertheless, “although those seeds and habits of Christian virtues which remain in him are weakened, they are true in their own kind” (quòd licet semina ista & habitus virtutum Christianarum debilitati, qui in ipsis manent, veri sint in suo genere).144 Turretin described six kinds of necessity under the subject of liberty and necessity, the fifth of which was “moral necessity,” or, “necessity of servitude,” (Necessitas moralis, seu servitutis). He divided moral necessity into two kinds of “moral habits,” or a twofold servitude: 1) That of the regenerate in a state of grace, who have a habit characterized by righteousness, and 2) That of the unregenerate, who remain in a state of sin, and have a habit of sin. Neither one of the moral habits “destroyed free choice.”145 Moral habits are acquired and the believer’s will becomes “imbued” with them, such that he or she cannot but exercise them. The habits become so strong that one cannot but act either well or badly, respectively. This principle of habits is in accordance with Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics, writes Turretin.146 Like Turretin, Edwards refers to “acquired habits” and “moral necessity.” But Edwards fills the terms with new meaning, as we saw above, weaving a synthesis of causal relations, conceiving of habits of the heart as causal powers in a teleoseeds of virtue: “But in the former sense, it is rightly said that the believer does not from from a state of grace becasue the right of sons once given to him is never taken away on God’s part (although its use and sense can be interrupted for a time) and the seeds of grace and of virtue are never taken away from him,” in Francis Turretin, Eleventh through Seventeenth Topics, vol. 2 of Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1994), Locus 15. Q. 16. §45, 615. (Turretin, Institutio, “Sed priori rectè dicitur fidelem a statu gratiae non excidere, quia Ius filiorum semel ipsi indultum, nunquam tollitur a parte Dei, licet usus eius et sensus subinde ad tempus possit intercipi, et semina gratiae et virtutum nunquam ab eo auferuntur,” Locus 15. Q. 16§45, 673.) 144 Turretin, trans., Giger, Institutes, Topic 15. Q. 16. §44, 614–5. (Turretin, Institutio, Locus 15. Q.16. §44, 672). 145 Turretin, trans. Giger, Institutes, Topic 10. Q.2. §4, §8, 661–3. (Turretin, Institutio theologiae elencticae, Locus 10. Q. 2, §4, §8, 729–31); Cf. “beyond indifference: An elenctic locus on free choice by Francesco Turrettini (1623–1687),” in Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 178–80. 146 Turretin, trans. Giger, Institutes, Topic 10. Q.2. §4, 662. The sixth kind of necessity is the “necessity of the event, in virtue of which, when a thing is, it cannot but be.” Whereas both Bramhall and Turretin regard this kind of necessity as a necessity of consequence, consistent with freedom and contingency, Edwards has no place for contingency in his scheme of moral necessity. Cf. Bramhall on this dictum of Aristotle, in this present study, chapter 7 §7.3.4. Turretin, in his Institutes, Topic 10. Q.2. (§10), elaborates on “the necessity of the event,” writing that it is consistent with free and contingent causes, which is not the case in Edwards’s description of “necessity of the consequence,” nor his notion of moral necessity and freedom. Cf. chapter 8 §8.3.1, §8.3.2 and §8.4.

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logical, relational, and aesthetic nexus. Edwards, as we saw, takes up into his idea of habits and moral necessity the new principle of motion and action, appropriating the new elements of matter, motion, and space into his scheme, from the world under the influence of Newton.147

9.3.4 Van Mastricht on a classic notion of freedom of perfection Van Mastricht, Edwards’s other favorite theologian, uses semina virtutum in a way that is related to the first act of spiritual life. He lets us see that the appropriation of the concept was not mutually exclusive with Reformed freedom ad utrumlibet, or as Van Mastricht puts it, freedom alterutrum.148 His use of semina virtutum is representative of other Reformed authors and consistent with what we saw above in Heereboord.149 The use of the idea of seeds of virtue (semina virtutum) by Van Mastricht in the context of regeneration finds application in both a non-temporal “order of nature” and a temporal “order of time.” The a-temporal use in a logical order of nature sees a first act by God awakening the human will that is completed or fulfilled in a second act, which the human agent enacts.We recall from chaper 3 that authors, like Heereboord, make much of the simultaneous occurrence of these two abstracted acts, but in a structurally prioritized order, as part of a set of Reformed prerequisites to the discussion of divine-human action. But in the Reformed case, the prerequisite is that of a previous concurrence of divine influx, with “previous” referring to the first act, which is God’s. The intent of the set of prerequisites is to give due justice to the idea of God’s sovereign election of individuals and to counter a general concurrence espoused by Arminian freedom, which is the case with Bramhall. The versatility of the concept is such that Van Mastricht also applies the notion of ‘seeds of virtue’ to a scheme of regeneration, which is held in tension with the notion of a structural priority, 147 WJE 1: 392–3; On the three elements, new in the world of Newton, see Koyré, Newtonian studies, 12, 13. Cf. the shift in language and discourse in the wake of Newtonian science, see Lee, ed., WJE 21:5–7. 148 Van Mastricht, ThPrTh, 160 (§14). “The will by nature is indifferent to alternatives, determined to one or the other.” (Voluntas, per naturam indifferens ad utrumque, determinatur ad alterutrum). “Free choice, which is most free, is that in which it is structurally and antecedently indifferent, determined to this or that.” (Et haec liberrima est προαίρεσις, quâ, natura antecedenter indifferens; determinatur ad hoc aut illud). On the influence of Van Mastricht upon Edwards, see Adriaan C. Neele, Petrus van Mastricht (1630–1706) Reformed orthodoxy: method and piety. Brill’s series in church history and religious culture, 35. Leiden: Brill, 2009, 12ff, Appendix VIII “Mastricht and Edwards,” 316. 149 Burgersdijk, Idea philosophiae, 137; Ursinus, and Walaeus, for example, all appropriate the classic notion of semina virtutum.

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wherein we see God’s initiative in cases such as those of Jeremiah, John the Baptist, and Timothy. In these cases there are years to take into account between God’s first act of regeneration and the flowering in the second act.150 In these cases, God regenerates these three men in a first act (actus primus), the actual faith of which occurs years later at “the age of discretion” in a second act (actus secundos) of conversion. In these three cases, the first and second act occur according to an order of time (ordine temporis).151 Van Mastricht says John 3: 3, 5, 7 teaches that God “awakens the heart spiritually and infuses it with spiritual life in the first act (actu primo), bestowing the soul with all the seeds of virtues (semina omnium virtutum) needed for salvation.”152 Van Mastricht remarks that although some say that it suffices to redeem the understanding if the will always were to follow the understanding, in the case of king David’s adultery, the propensity of his will went against better judgment, showing the need for the will to be renovated—the renovation of material exercise of freedom—thus the will is the location of all the seeds of virtue (semina omnium virtutum), which are necessary for salvation.153 This brief sampling from Van Mastricht shows that Edwards would have known of the idea of semina virtutum from his reading of Van Mastricht. His presentation leads one to conclude that the relation of the first and second acts to the order of nature and the order of time is such that presumably a structural order of nature is normative and viewing acts separated according to the order of time the exception. Although his focus at first appears to fit the more atomistic view of structural acts in the order of nature, as opposed to Edwards’s development of a freedom of perfection and habits of the heart in the order of time, Van Mastricht does develop the “imperfect” sense of the spiritual life bestowed in regeneration in the first act. And he ends his doctrinal part by elaborating on this imperfection or incompleteness of spiritual life, saying “that it exhibits the first act alone and only the seeds of spiritual virtues” (semina tantum virtutum spiritualium praestet), which still need to gradually grow up (paulatim succrescant)

150 Peter van Mastricht, A Treatise on Regeneration, ed. Brandon Withrow (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria: 2002; New Haven: 1769; orig. 1699), 26–7. See Van Mastricht, ThPrTh, thesis 22, 663. 151 Withrow, Treatise on regeneration, 27; Van Mastricht, ThPrTh, Thesis 17, 663. 152 Van Mastricht, ThPrTh, thesis 41, 514. “Cor spiritualiter vivificatur, & infuso ei vitae spiritualis actu primo, semina omnium virtutum salvificarum, animae conferuntur Ioh. III. 3. 5. 7.” 153 Withrow, Treatise on regeneration, 24; Cf. Van Mastricht, ThPrTh, thesis 15, 662. “In hac igitur spirituali voluntatis inclinatione, semina continentur, omnium virtutum, quae ad salutem praecisè sunt necessariae.” Withrow translates semina virtutum as “seeds of graces.”

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and develop.154 The seeds of virtue grow and through sanctification fruit is produced. And that fruit becomes visible and distinguished in second acts (in actibus secundis agnosci et dignosci).155 Thus, Van Mastricht’s appropriation of semina virtutum could have fed Edwards’s scheme of freedom of perfection. But this does not explain why Edwards chose not to appropriate other aspects of Van Mastricht’s teaching on Reformed freedom ad utrumlibet. It only confirms that authors, and Edwards is no exception, are selective in their appropriation and use of other authors, even their favorite ones.

9.4

Summary

In this chapter, we gave evidence that suggests that Edwards likely wrote his argument for moral necessity as a freedom of perfection against, in part, the background of the Hobbes-Bramhall debate on liberty and necessity, and the background of The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence. There are two significant points to make about this observation. First, unlike Whitby’s use of freedom of exercise in the context of the Hobbes-Bramhall debate, Edwards understands the freedom of doing or forbearing to be exercised with a strong bias and invincible inclination. He applies this notion of freedom to both God and humankind, without qualification. Second, The Correspondence concerned Newton’s physical laws of motion and action, Clarke’s and Leibniz’s interpretations of those laws, and their application to the topics of freedom of the will, contingency and necessity. This is the context in which Edwards developed his synthesis of moral necessity and principles of motion and action, which resulted in his structuring the argument of Freedom of Will around the notion of inversly proportional degrees of freedom and indifference, which he deemed essential to virtue and vice. Sang Hyun Lee sets Edwards’s dynamic dispositional ontology against the background of the Aristotelian-Thomistic line, which he presumed was the ontology that Edwards had inherited. Recent scholarship has challenged Lee’s account of Edwards’s dispositional ontology, which Lee has applied to both created human dispositions and to God. We attempted to show that Lee’s attempt to reconcile God’s simplicity with his essentially dispositional character of selfenlargement and self-communiction ad extra fails to stand up to the classicReformed line of an ontology of true contingency. The classic line holds that while God is essentially good and just, possessing these attributes intrinsically 154 Van Mastricht, ThPrTh, Thesis 22, 664 (Translation mine); Cf. Withrow, Treatise on regeneration, 30. 155 Withrow, Treatise on regeneration, 31.

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and maximally, he is not essentially Creator and Redeemer, since the latter concerns his contingent works and relations ad extra. Thus, the classic-Reformed line conceives of God as possessing both essential and contingent properties. This line shapes the background to Edwards’s education and against this line we can weigh and consider the continuity of his synthesis with the classic-Reformed tradition of freedom of the will, not the Aristotelian-Thomistic line. Without distinguishing the older essentialist ontology of the latter line from the robust classic-Reformed ontology of true contingency, one sets up the wrong baseline from which to offer critique of Lee’s account. We concluded that Lee’s account of Edwards’s dispositional ontology holds that it is impossible that the disposition of God’s self-enlargement and self-communication ad extra be otherwise than that disposition is. Thus, on Lee’s account, and that of this present study, Edwards holds to an essentialist ontology. The classic-Reformed line, however, holds to an ontology of true contingency. In Edwards’s exposition, the scholastic terms he had learned at Yale undergo a semantic shift, which is evident in the way he reverses Heereboord’s teaching about the sense of the terms “physical/natural” and “moral.” We recall that for Heereboord, the classic-Reformed essence of freedom ad utrumlibet is physical (real) or natural, not ethical or moral; the term speaks of synchronic freedom and contingency. For Edwards, the essence of freedom is moral and there are no other conative features of willing—logical and conceptual distinctions—that can be unhinged from moral necessity. His dynamic account of habit as an active force and inclination, as is evident in his dictum that ‘will always is as the greatest apparent good is’, points to a necessary nexus of forces, caught up in God’s universal determining providence, such that the human will cannot do otherwise than what the will chooses. (Whatever the reason is for why one does what he does, there is no possibility of a contingent reason in Edwards’s scheme). There is, then, a dynamic network of dispositional forces and habits, which are characterized by an active tendency, informed by physical principles and laws. The habits of the heart act as causal forces in a nexus of three areas: the teleological, relational, and aesthetic. Edwards’s synthesis for moral necessity as a freedom of perfection weaves together strands taken up from a classic notion of seeds of virtue and from physical principles of motion and action. His synthesis transforms natural principles into a dynamic view of reality wherein habits of the heart are like moral forces, essential to acts of the will and virtue and vice. Although he applies physical laws of nature as new principles of motion and action to his notion of freedom of perfection, he does not apply classic natural principles, such as sequi naturam, and semina virtutum. He transforms these natural principles into moral principles, that is, habits of the heart, which are acquired and established by repeated free acts.

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We suggested that Heereboord, Turretin, and Van Mastricht as likely sources who mediated the classical sense of semina virtutum to Edwards, who in turn transformed the classical notion into moral principles and forces. Edwards’s exposition displays a shift in language concerning natural principles and moral necessity. Edwards, under the influence of a Newtonian worldview, conceived of causal forces and active principles of motion at work in the habits of the human heart. Edwards’s synthesis gives evidence of the displacement of Cartesian physics by Newtonian physics.156 Physical laws of motion must be taken into account in order to understand Edwards’s moral necessity as a freedom of perfection. When Edwards illustrates a principle in physics about action and attraction from a distance, he gives evidence in his exposition of his appropriation of Newtonian terms, such as when Edwards writes about an effect that is “insensibile,” like the insensibility of void space, gravity, and universal attraction acting at a distance.157 He gives a physical illustration of two bodies moving in the same direction in straight lines, parallel to one another, which can be diverted from this parallel trajectory by the attraction of an atom at a distance.158 Thus a change in the placement, time, and circumstance of one single atom can, by degrees, alter the orbits of planets, at first imperceptibly, but in time, dramatically. If such a change were to happen, the result would be a “vast alteration with regard to millions of important events.” Edwards’s ontology finds the alternativity of events unacceptable, that is, that events can be “otherwise than would have been,” since alternativity would violate the principle of sufficient reason, as he understands it.159 In other words, that God governs an atom in one place, time, and circumstance, the situation of which possibly can be otherwise than it is, is unacceptable to Edwards’s argument for divine moral necessity. In Edwards’s ontology, there is no simultaneous alternative possibility for the placement of an atom in space. For him, God cannot contingently will an atom’s placement in space. We shall consider the notion of God’s moral necessity and Edwards’s notion of a divine determining providence in the next chapter.

156 See Lee, Writings on the Trinity, grace, and faith, in WJE 21: 5–7; Tweney, “Jonathan Edwards and determinism,” 367. 157 WJE 1: 392–3; Cf. LCC: (Newton’s laws, 160–1); (Newton’s Laws I and II, extracted from his Principia; and Opticks (Query 28, 174), and (Query 31, 181). 158 Isaac Newton The Principia: Mathematical principles of natural philosophy, trans. Bernard I. Cohen and Anne Whitman (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 416, 564. Law I and II and Bk. I, Proposition 61, Theorems 23, 24. 159 WJE 1: 393.

10. Jonathan Edwards’s “universal determining providence”

10.1 Introduction This chapter focuses on a new term that Edwards introduces at the end of Freedom of Will. We examine the meaning and implications of the term “universal determining providence.” He develops the meaning of this term in the last Part of Freedom of Will (Part Four), the last sections (§§ 6–13), and in his “Conclusion.” We consider the extent to which Edwards’s use of this term affirms or denies an ontology of contingency. We ask whether his interpretation of Newton’s laws of motion and action is a kind of physical determinism. If indeed Edwards’s ontology departs from an ontology of contingency, we consider the way in which Edwards’s synthesis is marked by teleological characteristics belonging to an ontology of “perfection, harmony, meaning, and aim.”1 In this chapter, we first present the argument (in §10.2.1) for that part of Edwards’s synthesis which concerns, a “universal determining providence.” Second, we give analysis (in §10.2.2) of the argument by considering the principle of superior fitness, Edwards and Newton on infinite space and duration, and Edwards’s reply to Isaac Watts on the notion of God’s superior fitness. Third, we consider (in §10.3) how Edwards’s notion of a universal determining providence transforms a theory of will into a theory of causality. We do this by looking at Edwards’s interpretation of the principle of sufficient reason (in §10.3.1), the principle of the predicate in the subject (in §10.3.2), and the principle of the noble cause (in §10.3.3). All three principles appear in The Correspondence. Finally, we give a summary of conclusions.

1 Koyré, Newtonian studies, 7.

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10.2 Edwards’s argument for God’s universal determining providence 10.2.1 The argument The term, “universal determining providence,” first appears in Edwards’s “Conclusion” chapter, arguably since this is what he had set out to demonstrate, not assume, as he himself writes.2 “Freedom of the will requisite to moral agency” is consistent, argues Edwards, with “a determining disposal of all events… throughout the universe, in his providence.” This is so due to God’s “positive efficiency” or his “permission.” From this “universal determining providence” one “infers some kind of necessity of all events.”3 He explains that, in the case of “moral events” or “volitions,” necessity implies an “infallible previous fixedness of the futurity of the event,” which he writes is none other than “moral necessity.” Moral necessity can consist with humankind’s moral agency. By “infallible,” given the evidence we saw in chapter 7 of this present study for how Bramhall used the term to mean necessity of the consequence, Edwards also means no other necessity than the necessity of the consequence related to God’s decree, which “fixes” the futurity of the event. And by “previous” Edwards appropriates a key Reformed technical term which, as we have seen in Heereboord, grounds the future event in God’s will and decree, the latter of which is structurally “previous” to God’s visionary knowledge of the future event. Thus, God’s decree is not grounded in foreseen human choice, nor in a general concurrence of God’s will and human’s will. By “positive efficiency” or “permission,” Edwards means God’s “acting,” or “forbearing to act,” in bringing forth creation and the “whole series of events” and “interpositions” that would ensue, and which, given both positive and negative circumstances, God had to order.4 In language reminiscent of his explanation of the term, “the necessity of the consequence,” which Edwards had explained (in Part One §3), he writes that “all events whatsoever are necessarily connected with something foregoing, either positive or negative, which is the ground of its existence.”5 He explains that “the whole series of events” is connected with a first, original event, an event which has nothing prior to it but “God’s own immediate conduct,” to wit, God’s “acting or forbearing to act.” His argument is that, since God “designedly orders his own conduct, and its

2 3 4 5

WJE 1: 431, 433–4. Ibid., 431. WJE 1: 432. Ibid.

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connected consequences, it must necessarily be, that he designedly orders all things.”6 Thus, if God orders p, then p must necessarily be. Edwards argues that “nothing in the state or acts of the will of man is contingent;” on the contrary, “every event of this kind is necessary, by a moral necessity.” The “doctrine of a universal determining providence” follows from that doctrine of moral necessity. “God does decisively, in his providence, order all the volitions of moral agents, either by positive influence or permisssion.”7 Edwards is speaking of God’s acting and forbearing to act. He clarifies that virtuous human volitions are due to God’s positive acting, not mere permission, the latter of which concerns “sinful volition.” He summarizes by saying that “God gives virtue, holiness and conversion to sinners, by an influence which determines the effect.” The “effect will infallibly follow by a moral necessity; which is what Calvinists mean by efficacious and irresistible grace.” Again, the language Edwards uses, an infallible consequence, implies a mere necessity of the consequence of God’s influence relative to God’s ordering of events. For Edwards, there is a nexus of active forces, caught up in God’s universal determining providence, such that the “state,”—not just “act”—of the human will cannot do otherwise than it does. We leave Edwards’s “Conclusion” chapter and pick up (Part Four §6) of Freedom of Will, where Edwards effectively sharpens his focus on his doctrine of divine moral necessity. We saw (in chapter 7 §7.4.2) of this present study that Whitby alleges that those who hold that there is a kind of necessity that can consist with freedom are in agreement with “the ancient Stoics in their doctrine of fate, and with Mr. Hobbes.”8 In Edwards’s reply, we noted in chapter 7 his guarded admiration for the “ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, and especially the Stoics,” but that he rejected a “universal fatality.”9 When Edwards dismisses objections to his doctrine of necessity, just because there are some affinities with the ancient Stoic doctrine of fate, he states qualifications of what he would not find acceptable in Stoic doctrine. Thus, in reference to the ancient Stoics, Edwards counters with a statement, that “the world’s being” is subject to “the disposal of an intelligent wise agent, that presides, not as the soul of the world, but as the sovereign lord of the universe.”10

6 For Edwards, given his interpretation of the principle of sufficient reason, that what is so cannot be otherwise, he argues that, If God knows that p, then p is necessary itself. It cannot be otherwise, which is not consistent with his frequent use of the necessity of the consequence. Cf. Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 37. 7 WJE 1: 433. 8 Ibid., 372. 9 Ibid., 372, 374. 10 Ibid., 374.

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Edwards brings descriptive terms into the discussion on God’s moral necessity from four authors, Isaac Watts, Samuel Clarke, John Locke, and Andrew Baxter, all of whom are interlocutors in Freedom of Will. Watts speaks negatively of what he sees as a “necessary determination of God’s will” by what “God sees to be fittest and best.”11 Locke and Baxter apply to God a principle that Edwards shares with them, to wit, “The certainer such determination is, the greater the perfection,” and “the more strong and necessary this determination, the more perfect the Deity.”12 The Baxter quote, by Edwards, goes on to say, “It is the beauty of this necessity, that it is strong as fate itself.”13 In the end, Edwards sees no disadvantage nor dishonor in admitting these terms into his description of God’s moral necessity and determining providence. Edwards lists four attributes of God’s sovereignty: (1) His supreme, universal, and infinite power; (2) His authority; (3) His supreme will; and (4) His wisdom.14 To the first, he explains that God “is able to do what he pleases,…without restraint.” His power is in no way “derived,” rather, all other power is derived from him. To the second attribute, neither is his authority derived. Third, his will is also “underived, and independent on anything without himself.” Fourth, his wisdom, which determines his will, is “supreme, perfect, underived, and independent.” Thus, God’s will is necessarily determined to that which is most wise. To be otherwise would be a great indignity, and would subject God’s will, writes Edwards, to some degree of “undesigning contingence.”15 By the term “contingence,” Edwards understands a degree of randomness. He explains this contingency as being “liable to be carried hither and thither at random, by the uncertain wind of blind contingence.” He writes that this randomness would admit a degree of liability to evil. Thus, if Edwards’s doctrine of moral necessity is a disadvantage, as Watts claims, then, as Edwards sees Watts’s position, the greater the randomness, the greater the liberty. The freer one is from moral necessity, the greater the randomness, and the greater the dignity. “Senseless unmeaning contingence” and absolute randomness would be the “supreme glory.”16 Edwards grants (in Part Four §8 of Freedom of Will) the implication that maintaining the notion of “superior fitness” and “preferableness” in his doctrine of moral necessity implies some affinity with “the fate of the Stoics,” and the “necessity of Mr. Hobbes.”17 For Edwards, there is no such thing as a “perfect 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Ibid., 377. Ibid., 378–9. Ibid., 379. Ibid., 378–80. Ibid., 380. Ibid., 380–1. Ibid., 384.

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indifference” and “equality as to fitness” among the possible things presented to God’s view to be considered for choice.18 Edwards considers two arguments that Watts puts forward. (1) The parts of absolute “infinite time and space”—as opposed to relative space—are “perfectly alike.” Therefore, “when God determined to create the world in such a part of infinite duration and space, rather than others, he determined and preferred among various objects, between which there was no preferableness, and absolutely no difference.”19 (2) “God actually places in different parts of the world, particles or atoms of matter that are perfectly equal and alike.”20 Edwards’s reply to Watts’s first argument (who represents as it were Newton’s position) denies the notion of absolute and infinite space as well as absolute and infinite duration, the former of which implies, according to Edwards, an “infinite series” of measurable parts.21 He objects to the supposition that God created the world in a part of infinite space that already had existed. Edwards thus connects the world with time and matter. He rejects the supposition that, even if there were no world, there would still be space, time, and duration, that is, if duration implied anything other than the eternity of God’s existence. For support of his understanding of the notion of “eternal duration,” Edwards appeals to the Boethian formula on the unchanging ever-presentness of God.22 He concludes his reply by denying that the created world “might have been differently placed from what it is, in the broad expanse of infinity.” The reason why comes in his reply to the second argument. In his reply to Watts’s second argument, Edwards makes two arguments, the first from “the doctrine of the infinite divisibility of matter (close to Descartes who argued for the “indefinite” divisibility of matter), the second from the superior fitness of circumstances (place, time, rest , motion) for a certain end of why, for example, God’s will determines the place of one atom to differ from another.”23 In the first reply, he says the odds are an infinite number to one that there are two atoms “exactly equal and alike” in dimensions and quantity of matter. Likewise, it is infinitely unlikely that any two particles of light would have the same quantity of matter. In the second reply, he argues that there is a reason, some end, a “peculiar fitness” for why God determines by an act of will, “above all other acts,” to distinguish the “place, time, rest, or motion” of one atom over 18 Ibid. 19 WJE 1: 385. Cf. Koyré, Newtonian studies, 104–5. On absolute and relative space. For Newton, space is not infinitely divisible, 91. For Newton, “God is not duration, or space, but He endures and is present … He constitutes duration and space,” 112. 20 WJE 1: 387. 21 Ibid., 386. 22 Ibid., 385. 23 Ibid., 387–8. Cf. LCC: xxi.

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another.24 In Edwards’s words, “the end,” “reason,” and “superior fitness” of the circumstances of a body, particle, or atom determine the act of God’s will. Edwards supposes two globes, “perfectly alike in every respect,” one placed to the left, the other to the right. Even if there were no difference between them with respect to time, motion, rest, or any circumstance, “but only their place,” that alone is reason enough for why God placed them so. And if someone were to suppose that two globes had no other difference than a “numerical” difference, even so, writes Edwards “It will not follow, that there is an infinite number of numerically different possible bodies, perfectly alike, among which God chooses, by a self-determining power, when he goes about to create bodies.”25 In other words, a mere “numerical” difference is not sufficient to determine God’s will. The determination of which numerically different body to choose rests not with God’s will, but the superior fitness of the one body over another; that is what determines God’s will. In summary (§9.4) of the preceding chapter, we mentioned the support Edwards’s draws from Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and universal attraction. In the present section being considered, Edwards turns to Newton and his “laws of motion and gravitation” to continue his argument against Watts. God, writes Edwards, does not make even “one atom in vain.”26 Even a change in the smallest assignable differences of an atom would have enormous, incalculable consequences for the universe. However “insensible” the effect at present, yet it may in time “become great and important.” Edwards is referring to Newton’s notions of void space, gravity, and universal attraction acting at a distance, all of which are “insensible.” Edwards supposes two bodies moving in the same direction in straight lines, parallel to one another, which can be diverted from this parallel trajectory by the attraction of an atom at a distance.27 An imperceptible change of place, time, and circumstance of one single atom can alter the orbits of planets, and cause a “vast alteration with regard to millions of important events.” For Edwards, a “superior fitness” necessarily determines the divine will, such that events cannot be “otherwise than would have been.”28 In other words, even “the least assignable alteration” would violate the doctrine of moral fitness and necessity. Edwards argues that it is not his doctrine that derogates from God’s goodness, but rather Watt’s doctrine which implies God determines things by chance and bestows favors altogether “at random.” Edwards thus rejects a doc-

24 25 26 27 28

WJE 1: 388. Ibid., 391. Ibid., 392. Ibid., 393. Ibid.

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trine of “perfect contingence,” since it excludes “prevailing motive,” “previous inducement,” and “the influence of a wise end.”29 Edwards concludes (Part Four §8 of Freedom of Will) by arguing that it is “Arminian principles”—not Calvinist principles (as he interprets them)—that are guilty of a “servile subjection of the divine being to fatal necessity,” since all events that occur in the course of the moral world are dependent on “the volitions of moral agents.” Events would have a fixed certain futurity, “independent” of God, so that instead of a “moral necessity of God’s will,” God would have to accommodate himself to a fixed unalterable state of the moral world, a result which would be unworthy of God.30 Finally (in Part Four §12), Edwards picks up the allegation from §6 that those who share Edwards’s doctrine of moral necessity have affinities with the Stoics, which by implication, tends to promote “atheism and licentiousness.”31 Edwards argues from the principle of sufficient reason that the doctrine of necessity “supposes a necessary connection of all events, on some antecedent ground and reason of their existence.”32 Edwards’s point is that the Stoics held to such a principle, and “were no atheists, but nearest akin to Christians in holding to the unity and perfections of the Godhead.” On the contrary, it is Epicurus who is the “chief father of atheism” and whose doctrine of “contingence” tends to licentiousness.33 Therefore, on this count, Edwards prefers association with the Stoic doctrine of necessity to association with the Epicurians. He applies the principle of sufficient reason, against the charge that the doctrine of moral necessity tends to atheism and licentious, to make the point that the human will is not a “sovereign self-determining power of the will.” For Edwards, that notion would “tend to encourage men to put off the work of religion and virtue.”34

10.2.2 Analysis The principle of superior fitness and Edwards’s universal determining providence Samuel Clarke defends Newton against the charges leveled by Leibniz. One of the controverted principles is the principle of sufficient reason.35 As in The Correspondence, Edwards calls it “the grand principle of common sense.”36 The value of 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Ibid., 394. Ibid., 395–6. Ibid., 420. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 421. LCC: (Leibniz’s second paper, 15–16 §1); (Clarke’s second reply, 20 §1); (Leibniz’s third paper,

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The Correspondence is that we see the various applications of the principle of sufficient reason that Clarke makes. The Correspondence also gives us the vantage point from which we can observe that Edwards is very selective in his use of Clarke, since Edwards tends to fall on the side of Leibniz, rather than Clarke. In his “Third reply” to Leibniz, Clarke recalls that the principle of sufficient reason states that “nothing is, without a sufficient reason why it is, rather than not; and why it is thus, rather than otherwise.” Edwards agrees with Clarke in principle. But Clarke also argues that in things indifferent, such as “placing any particle of matter in one place rather than another, when all places are originally alike, “mere will, without any thing external to influence it, is alone that sufficient reason.” In his Fifth Reply, Clarke reiterates that, concerning the “grand principle of a sufficient reason,” one could equivocate, and infer either “necessity” or “will and choice.” Clarke says that the question is not so much if there is a sufficient reason why every thing is, which is, but whether in some cases, “different possible ways of acting may not possibly be equally reasonable; whether the bare will of God be not itself a sufficient reason for acting,” a notion which, as we have seen above, Edwards rejects.37 For Edwards, God’s will, as he writes, is not a “selfdetermining power,” and thus it is impossible that God contingently will any thing, let alone an atom’s placement in space. Some end or superior fitness determines God’s will, in Edwards’s view. The authors of Reformed thought on freedom have demonstrated that Turretin had established a legitimate place for “free choice” (autexousia), a “self-determining power,” in the Reformed position on human and divine will.38The term autexousia means, without a master or authority, dependent on no-one. Humankind has this authority which is derived from God, but God has it in an underived sense. Ironically, we saw above (in §10.2.1) that Edwards defines God’s infinite power, authority, will, and wisdom in this sense, as “underived,” nevertheless he does not ascribe a self-determining power to God’s will.39 His adversity to the term autexousia is likely due to it being a key requisite for the freedom for which Whitby argued, which we saw (in chapter 7 §7.1.2). Edwards’s

36 37 38

39

27 §7); (Clarkes’s third reply, 30, 32 §§2, 5); (Leibniz’s fifth paper, 95–6 §§125–130); (Clarkes’s fifth reply, 119 §§124–30). WJE 1: 181. LCC: (Clarke’s third reply, 30 §2); (Clarke’s fifth reply, 119 §124–30). Cf. “though agreeing that everything must have a reason, Clarke maintained that God’s will was a more than sufficient one,” in Koyré, Newtonian studies, 167. “Beyond indifference: An elenctic locus on free choice by Franceso Turrettini (1623–1687)” in Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 174, 187. Cf. Te Velde, ed., Synopsis of a purer theology, 407–9. The editors state that word autexousia means “without a master,” dependent on no-one. Creatures have this authority derived from God, but God has it in an underived sense. WJE 1: 379–80.

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understanding of ‘determining’ in God’s universal determining providence is absent the notion of “assigning a truth-value” to a possible state of affairs. Instead, Edwards chooses to fill the meaning of the term with the principle that things cannot be otherwise than they are.40 The way he uses the term “determining,” has a strong necessitation component, and as such, is more akin to a “non-Christian Aristotelian paradigm.”41 Edwards’s application of the principle of sufficient reason to God’s universal determining providence is more akin to Leibniz’s use, as seen in the latter’s “Fourth Paper” in response to Clarke’s “Third Reply.” “A mere will without any motive, is a fiction…contrary to God’s perfection.”42 Edwards also finds kinship in Leibniz’s response in his “Fifth Paper” to Clarke on “moral necessity.” “As for moral necessity,” writes Leibniz, “this also does not derogate from liberty…when a wise being, and especially God, who has supreme wisdom, chooses what is best, he is not the less free upon that account: on the contrary, it is the most perfect liberty…without this, the choice would be a blind chance.”43 Like Leibniz, Edwards argues along the lines of the principle of the identity of indiscernible properties.44 For Edwards, God has a reason for a spatio-temporal difference—numerical differences aside—caeteris paribus, such as, the circumstances of place, time, rest, motion. He argues that “we know not what we mean,” when we argue that “the world might have been differently placed from what it is.”45 Likewise, Leibniz had argued in his “Fourth Paper,” that the “principles of sufficient reason” and “the identity of indiscernibles, change the state of metaphysics,” by which he meant they make science “real and demonstrative.” Against Clarke, the principle that two things are indiscernible, that “the universe could have had at first another position of time and place, than which it actually had,” writes Leibniz, is an “impossible fiction.”46 Clarke had argued that “the uniformity of space, does indeed prove, that there could be no (external)

40 41 42 43

Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 189–90. Ibid., 190. LCC: (Leibniz’s fourth paper, 36 §2). Ibid., (Leibniz’s fifth paper, 56–7 §7). Cf. Koyré, who writes that “Newtonians thought that God should not, and could not, be bound by the principles of plenitude and sufficient reason, and that Leibniz, by imposing them upon God, limited or even destroyed his freedom and subjectd him to necessity,” in Koyré, Newtonian studies, 167. Cf. Isaac Newton The Principia: Mathematical principles of natural philosophy, trans. Bernard I. Cohen and Anne Whitman (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), “Editor Cotes’s preface to the second dition,” 397. Matter is not infinite and eternal. This world arose from the perfectly free will of God. 44 On the principle of the identity of indiscernible properties, cf. LCC: Editor’s introduction, xxii–xxiii. 45 WJE 1: 387. 46 LCC: (Leibniz’s fourth paper, 37–9 §§5, 6, 13, 15, 18).

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reason why God should create things in one place rather than in another.”47 His point was that nothing hinders the claim that God’s will itself is a sufficient reason of acting in any place, when all places are indifferent or alike.”48 For his part, Leibniz often raised the specter of Epicurean chance, if one were to hold to Clarke’s view of God’s self-determining will, a point which Edwards does not fail to make.49 But Clarke responded that so-called Epicurean chance is, on the contrary, “not a choice of will, but a blind necessity of fate.”50 In the final analysis, and ironically, Clarke—the Newtonian, whom Edwards lists as among the “chief Arminian writers”—and his replies to Leibniz, shows more affinity with the Reformed position on God’s free determination of the will than does Edwards.51 We have seen that the Reformed position on divine determination is marked by free and contingent acts of God’s will.52 Contrary to Edwards, God freely and contingently determines his act of will, ad extra, to place an atom, or a globe, in one particular place of space, at a particular time-index, without any binding guidance from a structurally prior superior fitness, or foreseen end in mind, to use Edwards’s examples. Thus, it is possible that God determines his act of will otherwise than he does. Although there is a sense in which it is necessary that God determines and decrees whether to actualize a possible state of affairs, or not, he nevertheless is free in the examples which Edwards discusses, which concern objects ad extra, whether atoms or planets.53 The state of the cause of the effect, which God determines, does not logically have to be void of contingency, but Edwards removes contingency, as a property of the will, from both God and humankind.54 Thus, if as we see in Edwards’s “Conclusion” chapter, “God designedly orders his own conduct,” ad extra, then there is but one design to approve, as it were, since as Edwards understands contingency, there is no alternate possible design.

47 48 49 50 51 52

Ibid., (Clarke’s third reply, 32 §5). Ibid. Ibid., (Leibniz’s fourth paper, 39 §18); (Leibniz’s fifth paper, 79 §70). Ibid., (Clarke’s fourth reply, 50 §18). WJE 1: 217. Cf. chapter 2 §2.6.8, chapter 8 §8.4 on Reformed freedom ad utrumlibet and simultaneous, alternative possible choices. See “Determinare” under “Glossary of concepts and terms,” in Te Velde, ed., Synopsis of a purer theology, 605. The term may be used to indicate “the eternal and contingent act of will whereby God selects the possibilities to be actualized.”; Cf. Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 31–33, 114, 177, 179, 185. On the technical term “determination,” 31–33. Cf. Vos et al., Scotus: contingency and freedom, lectura I 39, §§ 38–40, 42– 61. God’s will, without anything guiding his will, is the cause of the contingency in things; Cf. Beck, Voetius, chapter 9, 329–58. 53 Cf. Muller, PRRD 3: 453–4, 456, 469. Muller notes the Reformed ad intra and ad extra distinctions in the doctrine of God, between voluntas necessaria and libera. 54 Van Asselt et al., Reformed thought on freedom, 31.

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Edwards and Newton on infinite space and duration In his exchange with Watts, who brings in issues raised in the Newtonian controversy, Edwards denies the notion of absolute and infinite space, as well as absolute and infinite duration, the former of which implies, according to Edwards, an “infinite series” of measurable parts.55 Unlike Newton, Edwards thus connects the world with time and matter.56 But like Aristotle and Descartes, he rejects the Newtonian supposition that, even if there were no world, there would still be space, time, and duration, that is, if duration implied anything other than the eternity of God’s existence.57 For support of his understanding of the notion of “eternal duration,” Edwards appeals to the Boethian formula on the unchanging ever-presentness of God, a notion which Newton rejected, who, instead, favored a view of God’s duration understood as “sempiternal,” that is, that God is “extended in time and space.”58 In his reply to Watts’s second argument, Edwards makes an argument from “the doctrine of the infinite divisibility of matter.”59 We saw in chapter one that the Yale 1718 Physics Thesis 2, presents the Newtonian definition of matter, to wit, “Matter is divisible, impenetrable, and passive substance.”60 But Newton does not say ‘infinitely’ divisible, as Edwards does. Edwards’s statement comes closer to, but short of, Descartes’s notion. Descartes holds to the “indefinite,” not “infinite” divisibility of matter.61 Edwards uses the argument from infinity in order to establish that it is infinitely unlikely that any two atoms are equally alike. Inversely, the less divisible matter is, the more likely it is that there will be two identical atoms and their circumstances of place, time, rest, and motion, caeteris paribus. Likewise, the more divisible matter is, in infinitum, the less likely there will be two identical particles. Thus, Edwards argues for the infinite unlikelihood of any two particles of light, for example, being equal. From the Opticks,Query 31, Newton holds that “space is divisible in infinitum,” but he does not say matter.62 Edwards’s denial of absolute and infinite space, and absolute and infinite duration, leaves him open to the charge of rejecting space, time, and duration, in the 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

62

WJE 1: 385–6. Koyré, Newtonian studies, 104. Ibid., 104Fn1. Ibid., 112Fn3. On Edwards’s use of Boethius’s formula, see Fisk, “Divine knowledge at Harvard and Yale,”168–71. WJE 1: 387. EB Yale 1718 Physics thesis 2, “Materia est divisibilis, impenetrabilis, ac substantia passiva.” Koyré writes that Descartes’s position on the infinite is often misunderstood. Descartes, he claims, held to the concept of the infinite—God alone is infinite, he wrote—and the idea of infinite number, but that “matter not only was indefinitely divisible (which implies the impossibility of atoms) but is even actually divided into an infinite number of parts,” in Koyré, Newtonian studies, 193. LCC: (Query 31, 181).

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case of there being no world created. And that charge implies an Aristotelian paradigm of hypothetical necessity, such that, whatever is, is, when it is.63 In sum, on the one hand, Edwards affirms the Reformed doctrine of God’s “supreme, universal, and infinite power,” underived authority, underived will, and underived wisdom. And he affirms God’s power in “designedly acting or, forbearing to act.”64 On the other hand, he compromises what he holds about God’s underived authority and will by denying the notion of God’s “self-determining power,” and by adding the notion of a superior fitness and designed end, structurally prior to the divine will and decree. This is reflected in his statement in his “Conclusion” that God “designedly orders his own conduct.”65

Edwards’s reply to Isaac Watts on the notion of God’s superior fitness Edwards prefaces his remarks about Isaac Watts on divine fitness with a comment about the structural “order of nature” in God. Although Edwards does not apply the structural order of nature to human freedom, he does admit that we are “obliged” to conceive of some divine attributes in their “order of nature,” for example, the knowledge and holiness of God is structurally prior in order to his “happiness” and “holy determinations,” and the “perfection of his understanding” is prior in order to his “wise purposes and decrees.”66 But when it comes to divine causality, given the doctrine of divine simplicity, Edwards says it is less appropriate to speak of such representations. Nevertheless, Edwards understands and uses the order of nature in a way that will prove significant for his interaction with his interlocutors, since he allows for no ontological room, as it were, for possible alternatives, nor for contingent actions. We now turn to his first interlocutor, Isaac Watts. Edwards defends God’s moral necessity against the characterization by Watts of God as an “almighty minister of fate.” Edwards’s initial reply uses the structural priority of God’s knowledge and holiness to his happiness to say that it is no dishonor for God “necessarily to act in the most excellent and happy manner, from the necessary perfection of his own nature.”67 But Watts, in the paragraph running up to Edwards’s citation, says that this doctrine of necessity of superior fitness and determination of God’s will has broad consequences, beyond making 63 Koyré, Newtonian studies, 104Fn1. Cf. LCC: (Clarke’s fifth reply, 99–101 §§21–25, 26–32). 64 WJE 1: 378–80, 432. Cf. Muller, PRRD 3: 325. The freedom of the divine will is affirmed, and the power to act or forbear to act. 65 WJE 1: 432. (Italics mine). 66 Ibid., 376–7. Cf. Thomas Clap presided over the Yale 1765 Metaphysics thesis 14 “The divine decrees precede foreknowledge in a structural order (ordine naturae).” “Decreta divina, in Ordine Naturae, Praescientiae antecedunt.” 67 WJE 1: 377.

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this world and its creatures necessary. For, “if God cannot do anything without a view of superior fitness,” then it has negative implications for “providence, redemption and grace;” God could not have withheld his Son, his Spirit, nor omitted one miracle, “for the will of God was determined to do all this by its superior fitness.”68 Edwards’s citation of Watts skips over Watts’s quote from the Stoic Seneca, who mentions the “connected train” (nexus causis) that not even Jove himself can break, an illustration of the necessity to which Watts objects in this doctrine of superior fitness determining God’s will.69 Given Whitby’s charge that Calvinists, now like Edwards himself, have affinities with the Stoics, Edwards wishes to avoid association with Seneca, but not necessarily the idea of a causal nexus, thus, he omits Seneca’s name. To support this claim, we need only see a later citation by Edwards from Watts, which includes Watts’s conclusion about the view to which Edwards holds, namely, the chain of necessary causes, which flows from the doctrine of the necessity of superior fitness and determination of God’s will. This chain of causes is the causal nexus that we saw Edwards positively transcribe from Stapfer and Leibniz (in chapter 6 §6.4).70 Edwards transcribes Stapfer’s second, but not first, response to the Remonstrants. What Edwards skips over is Stapfer’s comment that even after the predetermination of the divine will to produce a “sequence” or “chain of events” (rerum series), the events remain, respectively, necessary, contingent, or free. Watts links the Stoic causal nexus to the notion of God as a “minister of fate,” and Edwards’s tack does not raise objections to the necessity of the causal nexus, but rather to Watts’s supposed inconsistency on whether he advocates, or not, superior fitness determining God’s will necessarily. Below we shall look more closely at Edwards’s causal nexus, but the point to make here is that Edwards quotes Watts as granting an “antecedent superior fitness,” but in that paragraph Watts gives a proviso, and says, “yet we may suppose” that “God as Benefactor” can consider “in his infinite survey of things” that there may be “a thousand equally fit objects for his goodness, and a thousand equal ways of manifesting it.”71 Contrary to Edwards’s conclusion, Watts argues that it is possible for God to act otherwise, that is, in a synchronically contingent sense, which means there are simultaneous alternatives to choose. In the next chapter of Freedom of Will, Edwards returns to Watts on this very point of whether God can have two or more equally fit objects for the same ends. Edwards denies it is possible, arguing from 68 Watts, On the Freedom of will in God and in creatures, Section. 7, diff. 1, 492. 69 WJE 1: 375. Cf. Watts, Freedom of will, Sect. 7, diff. 1, 494. “Quae nexa suis currunt causis, non licet ipsum vertisse Jovem.—Seneca. Thus causes run, a long connected train; Not Jove himself can break the eternal chain.” 70 WJE 1: 381–2; Cf. on chain of causes, 177, 367. 71 Watts, On the Freedom of will in God and in creatures, Section. 7, diff 6, 502.

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the infinite divisibility of matter, which would consist with superior fitness. Watts affirms it is possible.72 In fact, Watts in arguing for the free will of God in his created works, supposes that God is better pleased now with his actual works of creation, than with those left in a state of possibility, although he thinks that “antecedent to this determination they might be both equally fit or good.”73 Whereas for Edwards, in the divine order of nature, superior fitness determines God’s will necessarily, Watts writes that God’s will determines itself. There are, as it were, neutral propositions before the mind of God. There is no “real superior fitness.”And on “perfectly indifferent” things in the divine ideas, “the will of God, as a sovereign agent, has no determination from his own ideas, and therefore in and of itself determines itself to choose one thing and not another; and as it were, makes that thing good, that is, makes it pleasing to himself.”74 In sum, Watts holds that God chooses from among equally fit schemes, and once he chooses a scheme, it becomes “more fit and good.” On this point Watts entertains the objection by some who supposed that there might be more schemes that have “superior fitness” than not. If there is but one one thing “to which God is influenced by superior fitness, this is fatality.” He responds by saying that “The largest part of God’s actions ad extra are free…There is not so much as the real existence of one creature necessary, and so fatality is utterly excluded, since all created beings are contingent till the will of God determine them into existence.”75

10.3 Edwards’s universal determining providence: a theory of will transforms itself into a theory of causality The theory of superior fitness determining the divine will, taken together with the impossibility of its being otherwise, encompasses Edwards’s theory of superior fitness. That is, since God wills to actualize what is most fit, his theory of will transforms itself into a theory of causality. For Edwards, contrary to Stapfer, there is no talk of possible alternative motives. For God always chooses superior fitness and the most suitable object; reality is not only what it is, but also what must be. As we saw (in chapter 8 §8.3), Edwards transforms a theory of the incompatibility of p and q into a will-based freedom of perfection and superior fitness. Likewise, he attempts to support the moves he makes by adapting the 72 73 74 75

WJE 1: 387. Watts, On the Freedom of will in God and in creatures, Section. 4, diff 14, 474. Ibid. On neutral propositions, see Beck, Voetius, 271–2. Watts, Freedom of will, 494–5.

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causal principle of sufficient reason (PSR), taken together with the principle of propositional containment, that is, the predicate in the subject (PPS), and the noble cause (PNC). Edwards infers his theory of a universal determining providence from his conceptual theory of propositional containment. It is arguable that he roots his causal theory of freedom of perfection in two corollary principles, the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), “This grand principle of common sense” and the principle of the predicate in the subject (PPS).76 He then infers the principle of the noble cause (PNC) from (PSR). Gabriel Nuchelmans’s study of Arnold Geulincx (1624–1669), and his containment theory of logic, describes “certainty” as an axiomatic characteristic of a proposition, not depending on observation and the senses, but on the theory of containment, which includes the notion of the principle of the predicate in the subject.77 Nuchelmans’s study of Geulincx shows that he distinguishes two kinds of propositions; (1) the one he describes as extratemporal and necessary and the other (2) as temporal and contingent.78 Theory (1) describes essential predication, such as “Humankind is capable of laughter;” these are “eternal necessary truths,” in which the predicate is either included in the subject or considered as a non-accidental property.79 Theory (2) describes temporal statements, in which the predicate is in the subject, but only as a contingent feature. They are not selfevidently true. It is rather God’s will, not his thought, “that determines the various kinds of contingent phenomena.”80 Nuchelmans points out that a propositio can refer to both a mental as well as a written or spoken declarative sentences. It stands for both the state of affairs in reality and the mental proposition itself.81 In his studies at Yale, Edwards would have learned that there are two rules to help decide whether a proposition is a common per se principle, exhibiting propositional containment, or whether it needs demonstration, which requires a new middle term, which the axiom lacks. The key aspects of rule one are as follows, according to Arnauld and Nicole (A&N): 76 WJE 1: 181. Cf. LCC: (Leibniz’s second paper, 16 §1); (Leibniz’s fifth paper, 95–6 §§125–30). 77 Gabriel Nuchelmans, Studies on the History of Logic and Semantics, 12th – 17th Centuries, Variorum Collected Studies Series, Ed. E.P. Bos (Aldershot, Hampshire, GB: Variorum, 1996), chapter XIII, “Geulincx’ containment theory of logic,” 281–86 on consequence as containment, 295–303 on subject and predicate: preliminaries, and 303–308 on truth and falsity of subject-predicate statements in general, and 308–313 on the logic of genuine propositions. 78 Nuchelmans, Studies, 13:269. 79 Ibid, 269, 273. 80 Ibid., 269. 81 Gabriel Nuchelmans, Late-scholastic and humanist theories of the proposition, Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeling Letterkunde (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company, 1980), 200–1.

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(A&N rule1) The (attribute) predicate is truly included in the idea of the subject.82 This rule or common principle of recognizing containment, or per se axiomatic propositions, however, “is not sufficient for deciding what ought to be accepted as an axiom.” Sometimes a demonstration is needed to be brought in due to a misconstrual of a mere explanation for a clear idea of the terms of a proposition which invite immediate assent to its truth. What a demonstration does is bring in a third idea in order to show the connection between subject and predicate. Arnauld and Nicole explain the need for and give an example of a third idea in rule two. (A&N rule2) When a mere consideration of the subject and predicate does not clearly show that the latter belongs to the former, then demonstration is needed.83 The significance of these two rules is the foundationalist standard they give us for the classification of propositions, and in particular, the absolute, intrinsic connection between a subject and a predicate.84

82 Buroker, ed., Arnauld and Nicole Logic, 248. “In order to show clearly that an attribute applies to a subject—for example, to see that being larger than its part applies to the whole— whenever we need only to consider the two ideas of the subject and the attribute with moderate attention, so that we cannot do it without recognizing that the idea of the attribute is truly included in the idea of the subject, then we have the right to take this proposition for an axiom, not needing to be demonstrated. This is because it has in itself all the evidence that could be given in a demonstration, for a demonstration could do nothing more than show that this attribute applies to the subject by using a third idea to show this connection, which is already seen without the aid of a third idea.” 83 Buroker, ed., Arnauld and Nicole Logic, 249. “When the mere consideration of the ideas of the subject and attribute is not enough to show clearly that the attribute applies to the subject, the proposition that affirms it should not be taken for an axiom. But it must be demonstrated, by using some other ideas to show the connection, as, for example, the idea of parallel lines is used to show that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles.” 84 Norman Kretzman, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism 1100–1600 (1982; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 510. One hesitates to name the “foundationalist standard” to which Edwards holds, but it appears from the evidence that his relunctance to employ contingent propositions in his argumentation justifies placing him in a foundationalist camp, which is marked by intuitive, necessary propositions, as opposed to any kind of demonstrative propositions. Eileen Serene’s essay on “Demonstrative science” notes that Scotus reinterprets demonstrative science and gives it a new object, “to discover not what is necessary in nature but what is possible or compossible.” If one accepts the claim that Edwards’s Reformed forebears, such as Ames, Voetius, Van Mastricht, Turretin, and Stapfer worked against the background of this “new object,” then Edwards appears to deviate from these authors, and only use necessary self-evident propositions when writing about divine knowledge and how it consists with free will.

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10.3.1 The principle of sufficient reason (PSR): “There cannot be anything coming to pass without a cause.”85 For Edwards, the principle of sufficient reason is the ground of our knowledge and without it we cannot, as he goes on to say in the immediate context, “have proof of the being of God.”86 Leibniz also states the “great principle” of sufficient reason and reasons that without it we “cannot prove the existence of God.”87 Edwards, then, in the same context, gives an example of the (PSR). “We infer the past existence of ourselves, or anything else, by memory.”88 This illustration of the use of memory as a sufficient condition to establish a past event may be put in the following proposition: “If I remember my childhood, I lived in the past.” Having lived in the past is a necessary condition for the antecedent memory claim about childhood. The relation between antecedent and consequent is such that q (the past) is a necessary condition for p, and, p (memory) is a sufficient condition for q. This logical relation bears a material implication such that p implies q is false if and only if p is true and q is false. What the loss of causality (PSR) entails Edwards makes clear by linking (PSR) with the principle of the predicate in the subject (PPS), such that, “If things may be without causes, all this necessary connection and dependence is dissolved, and so all means of our knowledge is gone.”89 He sets the significance of these principles in the context of his causal theory of willing wherein he states that according to the hypothesis of his opponents, if acts of the will come to pass without a cause, then “millions of events are continually coming into existence contingently”—which in his understanding of (PSR) is absurd—“without any cause or reason.”90 Edwards builds on the principle of sufficient reason by invoking the principle of the predicate in the subject (propositional containment), and the principle of 85 WJE 1: 183. 86 Ibid. 87 LCC: (Leibniz’s Fifth Paper, 95–6 §§ 125, 126, 129, 130). Leibniz, like Edwards, speaks of the “method of experimental philosophy, which proceeds a posteriori, though the principle were not perhaps otherwise justified by bare reason, a priori.” Likewise, Edwards says, “First we ascend, and prove a posteriori, or from effects, that there must be an eternal cause; and then secondly, prove by argumentation, not intuition, that this being must be necessarily existent; and then thirdly, from the proved necessity of his existence, we may descend, and prove many of his perfections a priori.” 88 WJE 1: 183. In the “Miscellanies,” entry 1340, Edwards distinguishes between “self-evident propositions,” whose truth is judged by intuition, and “general proposition,” which are proven by the principle of sufficient reason, in WJE 23: 361. The “Miscellanies,” entry no. 1340. Cf. Aristotle, An. Post. 73a21ff “Necessary premisses.” As in his Freedom of will, in this miscellany Edwards draws on the example of the “testimony of memory,” by which one can infer the past, as an example of the principle of sufficient reason. 89 WJE 1: 183. 90 Ibid., 183–4.

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the noble cause. He infers from these principles his theory of causal necessity, moral necessity and superior fitness. Let us illustrate the steps. Suppose the statement, “I can stand.” Necessarily, as a human it is true. It states a necessary condition if I ever were to stand. But whether I do stand, is contingent. “Can” logically precedes the fact of actually standing. But, although it is a valid inference, the necessary condition for standing is not a logically adequate ground upon which to build a theory. One needs both necessary and sufficient reasons to infer that “I am in fact standing.” We saw Edwards argue from the principle of sufficient reason when he said we infer the past by memory.91 The nub of the problem is that in our analysis, we see Edwards’s principle of superior fitness collapse “can” into “must.” Edwards’s ontology does not allow for a contingent reason why something is, when it is, and not otherwise. This conclusion, however, previews what we will see below in his interpretation of the noble cause (§10.3.3).

10.3.2 The principle of the predicate in the subject (PPS), or, propositional containment A second step Edwards takes in transforming the theory of freedom of perfection into a causal theory of superior fitness is in his view of propositional containment. He extrapolates causal necessity from the logical inference and necessity of the subject and predicate of a proposition. We see him seamlessly move from the one notion to the other in Freedom of Will, Part One, section three, without keeping them distinct. He also moves, in Part Two, from the logical inference and inner necessity of propositional truth to an extrapolated causal necessity of consequence between divine foreknowledge and a state of affairs.92 However, a logical nexus of inner inference differs from a casual nexus.93 The former is a matter of language and propositional truth, the latter is a matter of the ontological truth status of states of affairs, which belongs to the realm of being. Propositional truth language expresses how humans grasp the reality of ontological truths. Edwards states that the “ground of certainty of knowledge” lies in “the firm and infallible connection between the subject and predicate of the proposition that contains that truth.”94 He applies the principle of a necessary connection 91 Ibid., 183. 92 Ibid., 265. See also, 182, 258. 93 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Routledge Classics, trans. D.F Pears and McGuinness (London: 1961 Routledge & Kegan Paul; revised 1974), 5.1362. 94 WJE 1: 264–5. Cf. Aristotle’s definition of consequential connections in An. post. 73b16–24, in Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941), 116–7. This principle could also have been found by Edwards in Maccovius. “8. Necessity is either a necessity of matter as is seen in an axiom, or it is a necessity of the form as can be seen in a

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between the subject and predicate of a self-evident proposition to divine foreknowledge and present events, such that, “there is a certain infallible and indissoluble connection between those events and that foreknowledge,” whereby those events are necessary. Not to affirm this is the same as to affirm, “that there is no necessary connection between a proposition’s being infallibly known to be true, and its being true indeed,” writes Edwards.95 Similar to Arnauld and Nicole (A&N1), Edwards also works with common principles, when describing propositions, the certainty of which is necessary in itself, such as the example that “it is necessary that all right lines drawn from the center of a circle to the circumference should be equal…So innumerable metaphysical and mathematical truths are necessary in themselves; the subject and predicate of the proposition which affirms them, are perfectly connected of themselves.”96 But unlike Arnauld and Nicole, who distinguish between foundationalist per se axioms on the one hand (A&N1), and propositions on the other, which need demonstration to determine their certainty (A&N2), Edwards does not tell us when a geometric proposition may need demonstration. He only presents the kind of proposition that is necessary in itself and which therefore supports his view of necessity, wherein he links together the principle of the noble cause (there being nothing greater in the effect than in the cause), and its corollary principle of a necessary proposition where the predicate is in the subject. Edwards’s theory of propositions exhibits marks of epistemological foundationalism, such as an internalist view of how propositions possess certainty.97 As Edwards says, the subject and predicate of a proposition may have a “full and perfect connection in and of themselves.”98 Arnauld’s and Nicole’s Logic mediate

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syllogism. The former can be seen in the immutable connection of subject and predicate, such as: God is omnipotent,” in Van Asselt et al., Scholastic Discourse, 359. WJE 1: 258. WJE 1: 153. And, “the subject and predicate of the propositions which affirms them, are perfectly connected of themselves,” and are truths “in themselves.” Eleonore Stump sorts out different kinds of foundationalism, for example, a classical Aristotelian approach, also falsely attributed to Aquinas, according to Stump, and an early modern foundationalism associated with Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz. Stump shows that though Aquinas might at first appear to be a foundationalist, since he, for example, states a foundationalist common principle that “In fact, every proposition in which the predicate is in the definition of the subject is known per se,” he nevertheless distinguishes between common principles and proper principles in his Sententia super posteriora analytica, according to Stump. Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), 223. WJE 1:152. See also Edwards’s “Controversies” Notebook, compiled in the years leading up to the was writing of Freedom of Will, wherein he writes on “Predestination,” to wit, “the decree makes an indissoluble connection beforehand between the subject and predicate of the proposition.” In the paragraph, Edwards is referring to the decree as being structurally “beforehand” with reference to “the foreknowledge of God. Exposition on his “Controversies” Notebook and “Predestination” follows below. See William Wainwright, Reason and the Heart: A Prolegomenon to a Critique of Passional Reason (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

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their understanding of both Aristotle and Descartes to Edwards, but whereas Edwards follows a qualified, essentialist approach to propositions, finding certainty of connection internally in propositions, Arnauld cautions against accepting so-called axioms as indubitably true and sets forth rules by which to judge propositions, and his second rule states that there are situations where demonstration is needed, which brings in another idea in order to show the connection.99 Edwards, however, does not make the distinction between what can be called internalist and externalist approaches to propositions. Edwards next move infers from the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) the principle of the noble cause, from which he will infer causal necessity and superior fitness.

10.3.3 The principle of the noble cause (PNC): “There cannot be more in the effect than in the cause.”100 There are logic theses by Ames and Burgersdijk that mediated this principle (PNC) to students at Harvard and Yale. For example, Ames writes: “Every cause is structurally prior to its effect, and even prior by dignity, to the extent that naturally the effect depends upon it.”101 Burgersdijk writes: “The principle cause is either equal to or nobler than the effect.”102 Arnauld and Nicole present two principles, “Axiom 3: Nothingness cannot be the cause of anything.” And its corollary, “Axiom 5: All the reality or perfection in something exists formally or eminently in its first and total cause.”103 The principle can also be traced to Aquinas, Peter Lombard, and Bonaventure.104

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1995), 51. Wainwright says that “Edwards is a foundationalist … A proper, and therefore rational belief must be self-evident.” Cf. Bobzien, “Chrysippus’ modal logic,” 80–1. On Chrysippus’ and Diodorus’ modality schemes of propositions, where the latters’ view precludes contingency, and is akin to Edwards’s scheme. WJE 1: 183. “Omnis causa naturâ prior est suo effecto, et etiam prior dignitate, quatenus nempe effectum ab ipsa dependet,” in Ames, Theses logicae,” thesis 27. Burgersdijk, Institutionum logicarum, 69. “XXI. Causa principalis vel aequalis est effecto, vel nobilior.” Buroker, Arnauld and Nicole Logic, 250 “That it be objected that a cause is more noble than an effect” (Quod obiicitur quod causa nobilior est effectu), he writes that the principle holds in the case of efficient and final causes, but not when speaking of formal and material causes, in which case “they do not have truth absolutely but only in a qualified sense [secundum quid],” in S. Bonaventurae Bagnoregis, Commentaria in quatuor libros sententiarum, Magstri, Petri Lombardi, Bk II.Dist. III. Pt 1. art.1 (38a). See also, Thomas de Aquino, Scriptum super Sententiis, Quaestiones Disputatae De Malo, q. 4, art.1, arg. 15. “Moreover, just as the first cause is nobler than the second, so is the second nobler than the effect” (Praeterea, sicut causa prima est nobilior quam secunda,

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Edwards’s principle of the noble cause states that the cause is “proportionable and agreeable to the effect.”105 Crucially, this means that, for Edwards, necessity and impossibility are relative terms in the final analysis. There is, in fact, no opposition to overcome. Thus, due to the “necessary connection” and noble cause, agreeable to its effect, the principles lead him to infer the theory of moral necessity, causality, and superior fitness. He transforms the noble cause into an efficient and final cause, but void of contingency.106 We recall from the opening paragraphs that the context of Edwards’s giving priority to superior fitness is the divine structural order of nature. In Edwards’s scheme, it appears that in the divine order of nature, “superior fitness” determines the divine will and therefore collapses it into divine knowledge, thereby making void, possibles on the one hand, and contingency on the other.

10.4 Summary Edwards’s notion of a “universal determining providence” is, in his own words, void of “a self-determining power,” by which God chooses. There is no contingent freedom. The notion of superior fitness and a design and end points to teleological determinism. Edwards appears to infer causal necessity from the principle of the internal necessity of true propositions. That is, the notion of essential containment in propositions is inseparably linked with the truth of propositions. His universal determining providence is more akin to Stoic fate than to Reformed thought on freedom. This is seen in the fact that, although Edwards transcribes material relevant to these issues from Stapfer, who arguably represents a Reformed position, Stapfer is not among the authors Edwards adduces in support of his theory of freedom. Instead, the three authors he references, which we saw above, are Samuel Clarke, and his Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, 1725, John Locke, and his Essay, 1690, and Andrew Baxter, and his Enquiry, 1733.107 The reference Edwards makes to Clarke appears solely intended to adduce support for the idea of a superior fitness, which consists with greatest freedom and perfect choice.108 Yet, unlike Edwards, Clarke holds that God acts

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ita causa secunda est nobilior quam effectus). Also, Aquinas, ST, I.q.70, art. 3, arg. 3. (Praeterea, causa nobilior est effectu). WJE 1:183. Cf. Ames, Marrow, Bk. 1, c. 6 (§8), 92. WJE 1: 377. Cf. “it is absolutely impossible for God not to do what his moral attributes require him to do,” in Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God, the Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation (Richard Griffin and Co., London, 1705; new edition Glasgow, 1823), Proposition 12,108.

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freely, not necessarily. Unlike Edwards, on the principle of sufficient reason Clarke says that God’s “mere will” can be sufficient reason, ascribing a selfdetermining power to God, a power which Edwards is unwilling to grant. From all three of these authors, Clarke, Locke, and Baxter, Edwards draws support for the notion that metaphysical fitness and moral necessity structurally precede and determine the divine will. When Edwards defends God’s will being necessarily determined to that which is in every case “wisest and best” and when he concludes that without such necessity, the divine will must be subject to some degree of undesigning contingency, he is discarding contingency as “senseless,” with the result of removing metaphysical distance between God and evil, in a structurally ordered way, that is.109 The necessity of superior fitness removes alternative possibilities. For what is “best” attaches a preceding truth value, as it were, to the choice and it would, as such, impose itself upon God to be done. But then he would not be free since God could not choose an alternative “best,” that is, in the sense that it would then be best, because God chose it. Neither does Edwards distinguish, as Heereboord does, between necessity in God’s essence and contingency in God’s acts. Again, Edwards moves away from what Morton taught (in chapter 5 §5.7.3), that the act of decreeing was an immanent act of God, and as such necessary. But decreed states of affairs are contingent, since the decree itself is contingent. Heereboord, Morton, and Stapfer all represent a broadly defined Reformed freedom ad utrumlibet, which is marked by synchronic contingency and the will’s self-determining power. Nevertheless, we see that Edwards moves away from these authors, and the Reformed appropriation of free choice (autexousia) as a “self-determining power,” which is relevant to describing both human and divine willing. Edwards, instead, favors developing a universal determining providence as a divine freedom of perfection. The quote Edwards provides from Locke in his footnote affirms Edwards’s freedom of perfection theory, “The certainer such determination is, the greater the perfection.”110 Edwards opts for a freedom of perfection, void of contingency, a scheme for which there is no support from Heereboord, Stapfer, or Morton. In another footnote that Edwards provides, Andrew Baxter speaks of “infinite knowledge” as the origin of moral necessity. But Baxter’s theory of freedom of perfection excludes the possibility of neutral ideas presented to the mind of God “to be done;” on the contrary, for Baxter, ideas guide God concerning what must be done.111 Like Locke, Baxter 109 WJE, 1: 380–1. 110 Ibid., 378. 111 Neither Edwards nor his three authors distinguish between theoretical and practical knowledge of God, which would have removed the resultant necessitarianism. On this distinction, see Vos et al., Scotus: Contingency and freedom, Lectura I 39. 104–6; On the theoretical/practical distinction, see Willard, Compleat body of divinity, 65–6. Lecture 21.

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speaks in terms of perfection, “The more strong and necessary this determination is, the more perfect the Deity.”112 It appears clear that Edwards adduces what he believes to be support from these authors, in a very selective manner, based solely on the notion of freedom of perfection. Finally, if Stapfer’s distinction between God’s scientia simplicis intelligentiae and God’s scientia visionis were present in Edwards’s notion of a universal determining providence, it would look different. This is because when the two kind’s of divine knowledge are taken together with the notion of God bringing a sequence of events out of a sphere of possibility into a sphere of futurition, it entails an ontological freedom and structured conceptual instants in the divine order of nature. But Edwards does not avail himself of the readily available semantic and syntactical distinctions. We saw (in chapter 5), that Morton also moves away from some distinctions, such as the structural order of divine instants. We see this move when he translates Heereboord’s instantia rationis and momenta naturae as “instants of reason with time,” even though Heereboord says that he is speaking about atemporal instants in the divine decrees. Nevertheless, Morton follows Heereboord on the notion of God’s simple knowledge of understanding structurally preceding the will (in signo rationis antecedit). Thus, between Heereboord and Morton, there is some movement away from the use of certain classic-Reformed distinctions. But Edwards, with his synthesis, due in part to his adaptation of physical laws of motion and action, and rejection of contingent freedom, moves away from the classic-Reformed freedom that includes freedom ad utrumlibet, a self-determining power of will, and an ontology of true contingency.

112 WJE 1:379.

Conclusion

This study asks whether Jonathan Edwards departs from the classic-Reformed tradition of freedom of the will. In Part One, we establish a framework by which to examine the classic-Reformed tradition. We examine and interpret the Harvard, Yale, and Princeton commencement broadside theses and quaestiones that concern freedom of the will, necessity, and contingency. We also present and analyze the teaching content of two influential instructors of the Harvard and Yale curricula: Adriaan Heereboord (1614–61) and his Meletemata disputations (Leiden, 1664; Amsterdam, 1665), and Charles Morton (1627–98) and his “Ethicks” and “Pneumaticks” student textbooks. In Part Two we engage Edwards and his interlocutors on his position of freedom of will. In this way the study attempts to establish that from which Edwards departs as well as whether he departs. The conclusion is that Edwards departs from and significantly transforms the classic-Reformed tradition of freedom of the will, from within the tradition. Edwards transforms a classic-Augustinian, Christian freedom into a necessitarian freedom of perfection, which is void of contingency. We limit our focus to Heereboord’s and Morton’s set of requisites for a classic Reformed freedom, only making a brief reference to their adaptation and inclusion of a seeds of virtues ethic. Edwards’s necessitarian scheme acknowledges three Reformed divine prerequisites, (1) an efficacious decree, (2) incorrigible foreknowledge of future acts, (3) and a divine influx. But the anthropological focus of Freedom of Will denies any role to contingency and Reformed freedom related to two alternatives (ad utrumlibet). The question of whether it is fair to compare Edwards, writing in the mideighteenth century, with authors who wrote one hundred years prior, is addressed in chapter six where we examine the Institutiones (1743–7) of the Reformed continental theologian whom Edwards himself selected, namely, Johann Friedrich Stapfer (1708–75), as an author to consult in preparing to write Freedom of Will. We date Edwards’s transcription of select passages from Stapfer into his private “Controversies” Notebook to around the year 1750. The “Stapfer” chapter, thus, sets down a non-arbitrary, benchmark, since Stapfer is a con-

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temporary of Edwards. Stapfer’s teaching extends the classic-Reformed tradition of freedom of the will, holding to an ontology of true contingency. Any claim that the Reformed tradition had abandoned the use of scholastic distinctions by the time of Edwards’s composing of Freedom of Will fails. In chapter 1 §1.2.14, we see a Y1765 broadside ethics thesis, which clearly reflects Edwards’s view of an essential freedom of perfection. Perhaps it was rector Clap’s intent to debate Edwards’s view, since the Y1765 thesis reads, “The virtue of all actions consists in its nature, not in its cause.” Edwards holds: “The essence of the virtue and vice of dispositions of the heart, and acts of the will, lies not in their cause, but their nature.”1 In any case, this is one instance of the interplay between Edwards and the Yale rectors and their commencement theses. The connection Edwards makes between moral necessity and freedom of perfection is not entirely original with him. Edwards is present when rector Elisha Williams presides over the Y1738 Metaphysics thesis 5, which says that moral necessity does not destroy natural liberty. Clap presides over theses that speak of moral necessity, as we see in §1.2.2. The Y1749 ethics thesis 14 says that moral necessity, according to the mode of acting, is proportional to the degree of perfection of each being. The Y1749 Metaphysics 6, 7 says that divine moral necessity is the foundation of natural liberty; hence, God is by nature an infinitely free agent. Edwards also argues from God’s perfection to human freedom.2 But whereas Williams’ and Clap’s commencement theses speak of moral necessity as the foundation of natural liberty, Edwards does not speak of “natural liberty” in his Freedom of Will. He speaks of natural necessity, but that has to do with natural causes, such as feeling pain when wounded. It has nothing to do with freedom. Unlike Williams and Clap, he unhinges his theory of freedom from “natural liberty,” and prefers to speak of an essential moral necessity tied to freedom of perfection. In the theses grouped under “causes,” section §1.2.10, there is a clear semantic distinction between “natural causes and effects,” with no necessary connection, (Y1728 physics thesis 24) and a “necessary nexus” between a “proper cause and effect” (Y1752 metaphysics thesis 6), which is a semantic distinction that is less evident in Edwards’s reasoning.3 Edwards no doubt would think that the Y1745 metaphysics thesis 7 supports his position, which was about a causal nexus proceeding from eternal truths. But the exposition by Stapfer on the causal nexus, chapter 6, includes a place for contingency in the classic-Reformed tradition, the inclusion of which Edwards consistently resisted.

1 YUL Y1765 Ethics 6, presided over by Thomas Clap; WJE 1:337. 2 WJE 1: 277ff. 3 WJE 1: 157.

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Under “structural order of nature,” §1.2.1, we see the Y1753 Metaphysics thesis 3 affirms a non-temporal structural order of cause and effect, one which Edwards acknowledges, but dismisses as an Arminian evasion from the problem.4 In section §1.2.2 we see that even though by 1754 the interpretation of the idiom Physical (real) has a restricted use in Edwards’s Freedom of Will, the methodological idiom is at work in the Y1761 quaestio 13, which describes regeneration as God’s pure natural, physical, (real) act—obviously not physical forces. The semantic range of the term hasn’t changed as much as in Edwards’s Freedom of Will. In Edwards’s Freedom of Will, he describes the restricted semantic range of “natural” as “natural causes,” like feeling pain, and like gravity, much as we would understand “physical” forces today. In section §1.2.6, we see that just as Timothy Edwards, in 1694, denies that freedom of indifference is essential to freedom of choice, and thus, to virtue and vice, so too his son, Jonathan, dismisses freedom of indifference from his scheme. Morton also dismisses indifference. But what we don’t know is in what sense they dismiss this quaestio. We do know from Yale student notebooks, such as we see with Daniel Newell (Yale BA, 1718), that tutors taught the distinction between the divided and composite sense in Edwards’s day, and they understood contingency to be bound up with the syntactical feature of the divided sense of a proposition. At any rate, Edwards does not specify whether he is rejecting freedom of indifference in the qualified divided, or composite sense. Moreover, unlike Edwards’s ontology of necessity and necessitarian scheme, the commencement quaestiones assume that it is possible to reconcile contingency and freedom with the necessity of the consequence of God’s decree. Chapter 2 introduces the fundamental principles and qualifications of Reformed freedom ad utrumlibet, which is essential to virtue and vice (§2.6.8), and which distinguishes it from Arminian, libertarian freedom ad utrumlibet. The classic-Reformed requisites for freedom are: (1) God’s efficacious decree, (2) his incorrigible knowledge of the future act, which is structurally apart from the decree, and (3) his influx and previous concurrence. All three requisites are at work in an atemporal, structural order of first and second acts, which must be in place in order to account for how God premoves (praemovere) in a human soul in a first act, such that he or she responds in a second act. We also see how Heereboord assesses the philosopher’s definition of free choice, and then gives his own explanation, (in §2.6.8). We see that the Greek-Latin idiom physical (real) and natural excludes the terms ethical or moral. Edwards’s explanation of free choice reinterprets the terms physical, natural, and moral. Heereboord’s interpretation of three requisite conditions affirms that a human agent retains the possibility of eliciting alternative acts in the divided sense. Furthermore, Heer4 Cf. WJE 1:177.

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eboord affirms that humans have simultaneous powers, but not the power of simultaneity. Humans have a freedom related to two alternatives (ad utrumlibet). Chapter 3 marks distinctions about degrees of necessity, which serve as a Reformed benchmark for reconciling the necessity and freedom of humankind’s action. The root and first cause of contingency in second causes, and contingency in all creation, is the will of God. This is also the point of the 1704 Harvard quaestio. Unlike Edwards’s scheme, “contingency” is a robust term and plays an indispensible role in understanding Reformed freedom essential to virtue and vice. This chapter also distinguishes Reformed ‘previous concurrence’, as a requisite for freedom, as opposed to a Jesuit, or Arminian simultaneous concurrence. We see ‘negative indifference’, distinguished from other kinds of indifference, and significantly, the use of the term signum rationis—(in chapter 6 §6.5.1)— points to an indifferent, atemporal, divine structural order, which serves as part of an essential apparatus for explaining Reformed freedom. Contrary to Edwards’s scheme of telelogical determinism—(in chapter 9)—there is a non-temporal structural instant prior to the decree to create, such that God is indifferent to create or not create. We note the distinct, but inseparable nature of two structurally prioritized acts that belong to the Reformed set of requisites for freedom essential to virtue and vice, keeping humankind’s act dependent upon the divine act, unlike the scenario of modern libertarians who would reject these prerequisites, and demand an independent human act. In chapter 4, we see how a structural order served the Reformed set of requisites for freedom essential to virtue and vice, taking into account alternate possibles and contingency in the divine structural order of ideas and decrees, which is something Edwards denies in his scheme of divine freedom of superior fitness. There are two distinct, but inseparable principles about ideas in God, that insofar as ideas represent states of affairs, they are from eternity (atemporal), but insofar as they exist in actuality, they are time-indexed. The notion of a structural order is a tool the classic-Reformed authors have to ground election from eternity, and humankind’s free action in tempore, in God. Heereboord distinguishes two principles of eternal propositions, (1) the truth of an eternal proposition is not grounded in the state of the proposition itself (non a parte rei), as if it is external to God’s mind; and, (2) propositions have contingent, eternal truth. Given these principles, Edwards’s view of reality is at stake—is it contingent or necessary?—when it appears that he collapses (2) into (1) by inferring causal necessity from ontological truths, and inferring from the logical inner nexus and necessity of propositions a scheme of causal necessity. A scheme void of contingency. In chapter 5, we attempt to make the case that Morton largely abstracts and translates complete passages from Heereboord’s Pneumatics. We summarize Heereboord’s distinction, transcribed by Morton, between, subjective and ob-

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jective relations with respect to God’s decreeing. Subjectively speaking, the immanent relation of God’s ad intra decreeing is such that the decreeing is necessary. Objectively speaking, God’s internal, transcendental relation between decreeing and the things decreed, is contingent. This relation is not the same, but something else in God, besides God. According to Morton, the Jesuits reject this distinction, proposing God’s prevision of merits. The Remonstrants also propose a prevision of faith, which they hold is essential to virtue and vice. But the nub of the problem is grounding, for example, Peter’s contingent assent to faith, outside of God himself. Morton compromises the Reformed structural framework and distinction of God’s ad intra decreeing, sketched above, by changing the meaning of three structurally ordered “instants” (instantia rationis) in the divine act of decreeing. In his translation, he ascribes the instants to successive willing in human agents.The Latin idiom and application of terms once essential to Reformed freedom undergo change as Morton steps away from Heereboord’s definition of freedom which includes both “rational willingness” and “freedom of indifference.” Morton describes freedom of the will only in terms of “rational spontaneity,” to the exclusion of a structural alternativeness of freedom of indifference. Chapter 6 introduces Edwards’s “Controversies” Notebook, wherein we see his interest in the synchronic representation of sequences of events in the divine mind. He transcribes Johann Stapfer’s replies to two Remonstrant proposals which describe conditions for freedom essential to virtue and vice, as well as Stapfer’s replies to the Remonstrants’ notion of conditioned decrees. Stapfer makes use of a divine structural order in his opinion against the Remonstrants, to wit, that the “Reformed Churches” do not separate the decreed means from the decreed ends, as if God does not first—structurally speaking—consider all possible sequences and each in detail, and all means to ends, before decreeing some to come to faith in Christ and salvation. Edwards transcribes the term signum rationis from Stapfer, who is citing Leibniz. Leibniz was using the term in the context of a synchronic representation of sequences of events in the divine mind. There is a “synchronism of the decrees” or “order of nature.” This idea of the structural order of nature is likely what attracted Edwards to this passage in Stapfer and Leibniz, since it appears he was assemblying passages about the wise order and causal nexus of all states of affairs. Significantly, this chapter shows that Edwards had encountered these terms that pointed to a non-temporal, divine structural order of nature and synchronism of decrees, before finishing his Freedom of Will. However, in Edwards’s scheme, there is no ontology of true contingency. A sequence of events necessarily stands or falls together, due to Edwards’s view of the causal nexus. Edwards’s comments appear to follow Stapfer in acknowledging that the futurition of states of affairs is based ex decreto.

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God’s decree renders an indissoluble connection between the subject and predicate of a proposition. Thus, based on his private Notebook, Edwards speaks of a future proposition’s implicative necessity and contingency, and presumably this would have led him to conclude that the causal nexus had contingent features. However, Edwards does not go so far as to fill the word “contingency” with this kind of semantic meaning. He remains consistently antagonistic to the term ‘contingency’ in what he publishes in Freedom of Will. Thus, a non-temporal structural order of nature, signum rationis, was part of the Reformed apparatus, but not appropriated by Edwards, as it was by Stapfer. Chapter 7 analyzes Whitby’s argument for freedom ad utrumlibet in his Discourse on the freedom of the will of man (1710), an extensive, anthropologically oriented exposition on human freedom of will. Whitby writes his Discourse on what he perceived to be the “Calvinist” position, at least in part, against the background of the Hobbes-Bramhall debate on liberty and necessity, arranged by the Marquis of Newcastle while in exile at his house in Paris in 1645. An exchange of discourses followed (1645–1658) their meeting each other in Paris. A generation later, Whitby does not always agree with his fellow Anglican Bishop Bramhall, and makes much less use of scholastic distinctions in his polemic against the ‘Calvinists’, than did Bramhall against Hobbes. For example, Bramhall associated the term “infallibility” with the term “necessity of the consequence,” which he said was nothing more than “hypothetical necessity.” This, in turn, was consistent with a “determination to one good object” and a “divine influx,” terms which Edwards disputed. Bramhall had interpreted Aristotle’s dictum, “Whatsoever is, when it is, necessarily is as it is” as nothing more than a “necessity of consequence,” which follows the classic-Reformed interpretation. Whitby cites Bramhall’s Defence of true liberty from antecedent and extrinsical necessity (1655) and Castigations of Mr. Hobbes (1658), which contained citations from Hobbes’s, Of liberty and necessity (1654) and The questions concerning liberty, necessity, and chance (1656). He likely draws his assertion of an affinity between the doctrine of fate of his adversaries, “the Calvinists,” and “Mr. Hobbes” and the philosophers of fate, from Bramhall’s discourses. Edwards, in turn, takes up and addresses the allegation by Whitby. Whitby demands that the discussion about freedom be about humankind in a state of trial, and hereby he sets down some of the terms of the debate. Whitby locates freedom in neither act, nor habit, but in power ad utrumlibet; that is, a power that can act otherwise than it does. Edwards strongly and consistently opposes this notion, even though the term had been used by Heereboord in his description of free choice. Whitby’s set of requisites for freedom also preclude— from a state of trial but not a glorified state—a key requisite in the Reformed set of conditions, namely, a divine “physical influx,” or real divine motion upon the

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human soul and will. Whereas Whitby appropriates the term “free choice” (autexousia), a self-determining power, as do Reformed authors, like Turretin (albeit in a derived sense), Edwards rejects using the term. In Edwards’s reply to Whitby, he does not appropriate Heereboord’s use of freedom ad utrumlibet, nor the concept of a structural order of nature, which could have been used to analyze acts in a synchronic and contingent sense. Instead, he rejects Whitby’s interpretation and attempts to draw support from early church fathers by stating that their claim that the soul acts by a selfdetermining power is guilty of an argument in infinitum. It implies that there is free choice before the first free act, in infinitum. Edwards sets “natural” in contradistinction to “moral” impossibility. The nearer the natural difficulty to avoid sin approaches impossibility, the nearer a person is to being excused. On the contrary, for Edwards, “moral necessity” is such that the stronger the “bias to evil” in the will, the more culpable a person is. Thus, the stronger the moral “antecedent bent and bias on the will,” the freer one is, and likewise, the more culpable. In chapter 8, we observe that the crucial dimension in Edwards’s scheme of reality is overcoming opposition and resistance. He reduces necessity and impossibility to relative terms, since reality is not only that a state of affairs is, but also that a state of affairs must be. This is because things are necessary to us, when they are, or when they will be, even though we endeavor to the contrary. Ironically, even though Edwards folds his will-based view of necessity and impossibility into a theory of action, because actualizing the greatest apparent good is the focal point, he transforms his theory of will into a theory of causality. Therefore, the test of whether necessity and impossibility are relative terms is to ask what happens if one removes opposition. In Edwards’s scheme, there is no real opposition to human endeavor. Thus, the terms necessity and impossibility loose their meaning. Edwards insists that his semantics represents the street vernacular, which means that he is reluctant to acknowledge and use the prior historical semantic idiom. He does not appropriate a Reformed understanding of freedom ad utrumlibet. Perhaps it is a cost that he is willing to pay, given the New England context, and his desire to disassociate himself from Arminian freedom ad utrumlibet. Edwards attributes features of the necessity of the consequent to the necessity of the consequence, inferring an absolute necessity of connection from the connection between a subject and predicate of a proposition. He denies, however, the possibility of the contingency of the antecedent and consequent parts of a proposition. He transforms the implicative necessity of connection into a theory of universal causal necessity. Furthermore, Edwards concedes that there may not be any difference after all between what he calls “philosophical necessity” and “absolute” or “universal necessity.” Ironically, Edwards’s position is not in line

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with the classic-Reformed tradition which he esteems, that of Turretin, Van Mastrict, and Stapfer. He interprets necessity in a way that commits himself to philosophical necessity. We demonstrated that whereas Calvin concedes the usefulness of the term “contingency” as accommodation to human language, Edwards finds no place for contingency in his interpretation of levels of necessity. For Edwards, moral necessity is as absolute as natural necessity. The law of causality becomes universally determinative for his scheme. From the necessity of connection and consequence, and strength of previous bias in the will, Edwards infers moral necessity. In chapter 9, we claim that Edwards likely writes his argument for moral necessity as a freedom of perfection against, in part, the background of the Hobbes-Bramhall debate on liberty and necessity, and the background of The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, written in the years 1715–16, published in 1717. Edwards takes up the major terms discussed in The Correspondence, terms such as moral necessity, a necessity of fitness and wisdom, the principle of sufficient reason, the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, the apparent good, the similitude of a balance endowed with agency, the soul of the world, and Clarke’s claim that mere will is a sufficient reason itself for explaining action. Chapter 9 analyzes Edwards’s argument for freedom of perfection. Edwards structures the argument of Freedom of Will around the notion of inversly proportional degrees of freedom and indifference, which he deems essential to virtue and vice. That is, the further a moral agent is removed from indifference, the freer he or she is. The inverse is, the greater the degree of bias in human choice, the freer one is. Descartes, in his Fourth Meditation, says, “The more I incline in one direction…the freer is my choice.” Although Edwards develops the same principle of human freedom—quo magis in unam propendeo…tanto liberius illam eligo—Newton’s physics of matter, motion, and space had displaced Cartesian physics of extension and motion in the schools’ curricula. The shift is reflected in Edwards’s language and development of his argument for freedom of perfection. Edwards’s education at Yale takes up Newtonian physics and we conclude that Edwards incorporates physical laws of motion and action in his theory of how habits of the heart are causally active, lawlike powers. Edwards’s synthesis, thus, weaves together the ideas of moral necessity as a freedom of perfection, in contradistinction to natural necessity. He weaves together a redefined notion of habits of the heart and the classical notion of seeds of virtue (semina virtutum). Heereboord, Turretin, and Van Mastricht are the likely sources for his understanding of the classical sense of semina virtutum. Like Turretin, Edwards, refers to “acquired habits” and “moral necessity.” But Edwards fills the terms with new meaning. Edwards’s dynamic account of habit as an active force and inclination, evident in his dictum that “will always is as the greatest apparent good is,” indicates a necessary nexus of active, law-like forces, under God’s universal

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determining providence. God’s determining providence is such that it is impossible that the human will do otherwise than the will chooses. From Edwards’s Freedom of Will, we demonstrate, taking our cue from Sang Hyun Lee’s Philosophical theology of Jonathan Edwards, that physical principles and laws inform Edwards’s development of a dynamic network of dispositional forces and habits, forming a causal nexus of three areas: the teleological, relational, and aesthetic. However, we observe that whereas Lee sets Edwards’s dispositional ontology against the background of the Aristotelian-Thomistic line, the evidence from Part One of this study, and the “Stapfer” chapter, demonstrate otherwise. Edwards’s background is rooted in the classic-Reformed tradition, which holds to an ontology of true contingency. Moreover, contrary to Lee’s account of a dispositional necessity in God and humans, such that God’s self-communication ad extra is necessary, the classic-Reformed tradition holds that although God is essentially good, just, and wise, God is not essentially the Creator and the Redeemer—concerning his works ad extra—rather, our conception of who God is must include both his essential and contingent properties. Chapter 10 concludes that Edwards’s notion of a universal determining providence rejects the notion of a self-determining power, and favors instead, the idea of a superior fitness, which is structurally prior to the will and decrees. Edwards’s synthesis and vision of reality is such that it removes any kind of logically and synchronically structured, ontology of contingency.5 His ontological idealism entails a freedom of perfection that is void of contingency. His causally determined structure of fittingness and preferability is such that neither God nor humans can will contingently; that is, they are guided by the most fitting and most excellent object that presents itself to the divine and human mind and understanding. In Edwards’s understanding of acts of the will, he is unable to rhyme contingency with causality. This is of course the nub of the matter, namely, whether it is possible that agents contingently elicit acts of the will. Edwards sums up his own understanding and denial of contingent willing when he says that contingency is “efficient Nothing…effectual No-Cause, blind.”6 Edwards adduces support from three authors on the notion of superior fitness, Clarke, Locke, and Andrew Baxter. Edwards concludes that metaphysical fitness and moral necessity structurally precede and determine the divine will, in the “order of nature.”7 When Edwards defends God’s will being necessarily determined to that which is in every case “wisest and best,” and when he concludes that without such necessity, the divine will must be subject to some degree of undesigning contingency, he thereby shifts the understanding of the term con5 WJE 6: 112. 6 WJE 1:183–4. 7 WJE 1: 376–79, 380–1.

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tingency, viewing it as “senseless.” In Edwards’s synthesis, the necessity of superior fitness removes alternative possibilities in a divine order of nature. Metaphysical superior fitness entails a divine freedom for excellence, void of contingency, in Edwards’s view. In a passage on whether God is an almighty minister of fate, Edwards copies an entire paragraph from Watts, except for a quote from Seneca on the causal nexus, which he skips over, but which Edwards subsequently defends—the chain of necessary causes, which flows from the doctrine of superior fitness. Edwards’s adaptation of physical laws of motion, action and universal attraction, which are not directly sensed, is evident when he states that the established laws of causality that lie behind the “dependence and connection between acts of volition or choice” may be less obvious to human observation than in the material world, but they are, nevertheless, present and acting, only, perhaps, by a new name.8 Edwards points out that although people are in the habit of attributing “contingence” to an event in nature whose cause is indiscernible, and “choice” to an event in the immaterial world whose cause is even less discernible, there are nonetheless an established rule and law of connection at work. Observers of natural events and volitional events are apt to make a distinction between “nature” and “choice,” as if they are “universally distinct,” when in fact they are not, since there is a “connection, according to an established law, truly taking place.”9 Newton’s new principle of motion and action asserts an analogy between nature and choice, between a natural, physical law of causality and a rational, moral law of causality. Edwards’s view of the law of causality levels the playing field of distinct kinds of necessity and empties his expositional labors on moral and natural necessity of any plausible power. He restricts the sense of the Reformed set of semantic distinctions and scholastic terms in Freedom of Will and chooses to adapt physical laws of motion and action to his vision of reality and freedom of will. His synthesis thereby departs from the classic-Reformed tradition of freedom ad utrumlibet, and the Reformed appropriation of a selfdetermining power in the will. Finally, our conclusion calls for placing Edwards’s argument for freedom of perfection in a broader perspective. The contrast between the use and definition of terms in Part One with that of Edwards’s interpretation, adaptation, and use in Part Two has shown discontinuities between Edwards and his Reformed tradition. What do these discontinuities mean for his place in the tradition? Does Edwards’s doctrine of freedom seriously deviate from it? Our conclusion is that Edwards totally transformed the Reformed tradition from within the tradition, and as such, deviates from it. We can sketch this out in the following points. 8 WJE 1: 158. 9 WJE 1:158.

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First, the classic-Reformed understanding of freedom ad utrumlibet differs from the Molinist and Arminian understanding of it. The classic-Reformed authors base their understanding on the notion of synchronic contingency. Recent scholarship has christened the Reformed understanding of freedom ad utrumlibet as synchronic freedom. We do not encounter this notion in Whitby’s thought, neither in Morton nor Edwards. On the contrary, Heereboord’s line of freedom and will represents the classic-Reformed Christian tradition from Augustine to Anselm, through the eighteenth century. From this present study, we can conclude that Ames, Heereboord, and Watts, and Edwards’s New England education, represent the classic-Reformed tradition. The result is that the course of the “New Divinity” departs from Edwards’s heritage and takes on a necessitarian character. There is a main strand of thought in the above paragraph that needs to be teased out a bit more. In Edwards’s view of freedom and the will, there appears to be no place for the classic, Reformed concept of synchronic contingency and freedom. Edwards’s approach attempts to synthesize moral necessity, an adaptation and interpretation of physical principles of motion and action, and the concept of freedom of perfection. But the absence of contingency is evident in Edwards’s language about how an agent’s will is as the greatest apparent good is. Such language entails a necessary will, which is not a will at all. At least not in the classic, Reformed understanding of the will. Edwards’s language points in another direction, to the classical, Greek understanding of velle in the sense of to wish or to desire. But to wish is not the same as to will. On the contrary, the classicReformed understanding of will develops the notion of velle in the Christian tradition of Augustine, Anselm, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus. This is the line that recent research in medieval and post-Reformation studies has developed.10 It is Edwards’s own Reformed heritage. We also can set developments, such as that of the New Divinity, against the broader range of early modern philosophies. In the early modern centuries, main-stream Western thought is not only based on Scotian innovations, but alternative movements, it must be stressed, can only be understood in the light of the broad Scotist legacy. That is, they derive their identities by agreeing or disagreeing with the Scotist model. The most important early modern movements opposed to the Scotist model are Socinianism, Molinism, Arminianism, Carte10 Cf. Heereboord’s robust use of contingency, more in line with Augustine, Anselm, and Scotist, than Aquinas, in chapters 2 §2.6.8, 3 §3.3, 4 §§4.2–3. Cf. the robust understanding and use of contingency by Voetius, in Beck, Voetius, 431–39; On Scotus’s robust understanding of contingency, see Antonie Vos, “Scotus’ significance for Western philosophy and theology,” 173–209; Idem, “Reformed orthodoxy in the Netherlands,” in A companion to Reformed orthodoxy, 166–76. Idem, The Philosophy of John Duns Scotus, 558–69; Dekker, Rijker dan Midas.

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sianism and Spinozism. Whereas Socinianism, Arminianism and Cartesianism strengthen the contingency side, Molinism strengthens the necessity side. And Spinoza wholeheartedly embraces necessity thinking. Second, Heereboord and the ethical and philosophical disputations gathered together in his Meletemata need to be set in a broader perspective. Although Heereboord structures his disputations around Aristotle’s works and Aquinas’s Summa, his teaching content on freedom of will, contingency, and necessity, places him in the classic understanding of Augustine and Anselm, Bonaventure and Scotus, on these topics. Heereboord’s place, therefore, in the classic-Reformed tradition deserves a reappraisal, not only because he offers his own views —to be weighed on their own merits—but his views represent a whole tradition.11 Third, Morton’s adaptation of the Reformed tradition, seen for example in his nuancering of what he calls “Reformed philosophy,” adumbrates the more total transformation that occurs under Edwards. We recall that Morton transcribes Heereboord, but our conclusion shows that he moves away from him in ways significant for the Reformed tradition after him. Morton shifts the meaning of the Latin idiom of Heereboord, reducing the latter’s definition of freedom, in the well-nuanced terms of rational willingness and freedom of indifference, to mere rational spontaneity. Morton also excludes any sense of a structural alternativeness in freedom of indifference in the divided sense. In general, Edwards does give a much more coherent argument than Morton does. This is true at least as far as Morton’s view has come down to us by way of William’s student textbook. Fourth, Stapfer also represents the European main Christian tradition, writing as a contemporary of Edwards in the middle of the eighteenth century. This 11 Cf. Aza Goudriaan, “Theology and philosophy,” in A companion to Reformed orthodoxy, ed. Herman J. Selderhuis (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 27–63. Goudriaan writes that although Heereboord, along with others, sought to weaken or reinterpret Cartesian doubt, nevertheless, he was a major Reformed thinker who sympathized with Descartes, 46–7. Cf. Andreas J. Beck, who writes on the crisis at both the Utrecht and Leiden Universities surrounding Descartes’s sympathizers. In the context of the Leiden crisis, Beck notes that, according to Verbeek, Heereboord had “converted to Descartes.” But both Verbeek and Beck relativize this opinion. Beck acknowledges that Heereboord was an eclectic thinker, who applied his thought to a “philosophia novantiqua,” but who, nevertheless, stood in continuity with Burgersdijk, in Beck, Voetius, 73. Verbeek, for instance, doubted that Heereboord had “known very much about Descartes,” who, at the time of the Leiden University crisis on the matter, “had not even published his Meditations,” in Verbeek, Descartes and the Dutch, 35. On the topics of freedom, contingency, and necessity, covered in this present-study, in chapters 2–4, we do not find Heereboord to be sympathetic with Descartes’s radical nominalist view on these same topics. The question for reappraisal, which arises from this present study, is the degree to which, and the context in which, Heereboord is more in line with the developments in his day of Scotistic thinking on contingency. Cf. Heereboord’s robust use of contingency, which is more in line with Augustine and Anselm, and Bonaventure and Scotus.

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present study’s chapter on Stapfer gives us a look at an extended transcription of parts of Stapfer’s Institutiones, in particular, his reply to the so-called conditioned knowledge of God put forth by the Remonstrants. A closer look at Stapfer’s response (in chapter 6 §§6.2.2, 3, 7) reveals that his thought on the issue runs parallel to Heereboord, and likewise, to Scotus. Fifth, for what concerns systematic interests in the topics of individual virtue and vice, freedom of will, necessity, and contingency, Edwards’s necessitarian line, ironically removes the basis he seeks for establishing individual accountability, virtue and vice.

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Index of Names

Adler, Mortimer J. 375n125 Agnello, Scipio 108, 169n7, 170n13, 180n53, 181, 181n57, 193n10, 219 Albert the Great 184n66 Alcinous 270 Alexander of Aphrodisias 271 Altenstaig 50n131, 336–7n117 Ames, William 24n1, 27, 32, 42, 42n87, 49n122, 49n124, 52–54, 52n135, 53n138, 54nn141–4, 70–72,72nn6–10, 90n65, 101n99, 102n103, 103n108, 104n109, 108, 146, 146nn42–3, 147n44, 151n59, 160n88, 173nn25–8, 174nn29, 31–7, 175nn38, 40, 176n41, 173–176, 178, 188, 196n20, 230, 257, 300n207, 343, 343n142, 360, 401n84, 405, 405n101, 406n106, 419 Andrew, Samuel 72, 72n8, 95, 105 Anselm 31n24, 41, 108, 188, 267n18, 366, 419, 419n10, 420, 420n11 Appleton, Nathanael 98, 98n87 Aquinas 50n131, 90–92, 90n64, 108–110, 113, 114n24, 115, 116n35, 117n39, 133, 145n41, 147n44, 149n55, 160n89, 167n2, 168n7, 171, 172n22, 174n34, 184n66, 193, 193n10, 267n18, 369–371, 404–406, 404n97, 406n104, 419n10, 420 Aristotle 52–54, 52n135, 53nn136–7, 90– 92, 90n64, 91, 92n73, 108, 111, 112, 114, 114n27, 119, 120, 133, 140, 160, 160n89, 168–170, 168n7, 169n12, 170n13, 207, 269, 286n144, 290, 301, 306n3, 307n5, 316nn38, 43, 329, 370, 378, 380, 380n146, 396, 402n88, 403n94, 405, 414, 420

Arminius, Jacob 38n71, 221 Arnauld, Antoine 90, 90n62, 168n7, 310n16, 400–01, 401nn82–3, 404–05 Athenagoras 271 Augustine 31, 42, 49n124, 104n109, 108, 142, 167n4, 168n7, 169, 169n9, 188, 253n55, 266, 266n11, 267, 267nn17, 18 269nn37, 41, 270, 270n49, 271, 271n57, 272, 275–278, 281n120, 287, 287n154,288, 292–93, 293n179, 302, 324, 376n133, 419, 419n10, 420, 420n11 Ayers, Michael 91, 312n21 Bac, Martin 125n64, 375n123 Basil 271, 277 Bavinck, Herman 33, 34n44 Baxter, Andrew 66, 389, 406–07, 417 Baxter, Richard 274n278 Bebbington, David W. 34, 35n48 Beck, Andreas J. 39n73, 159n85, 163n100, 164n1102, 169n9, 170n15, 172n24, 216n95, 220n113, 244n26, 290n170, 327n76, 395n52, 399n74, 419n10, 420n11 Bellamy, Joseph 50, 50n129, 324n72 Bellarmine, Robert 34, 34n44 Bernard de Clairvaux 49n124, 145, 145n41 Betts, Thaddeus 102, 102n102 Bishop Gilbert Burnet 44n100, 237, 240, 335 Bishop John Bramhall 37, 64, 138n20, 236, 264, 265, 265n3, 272–3, 280, 280n117, 281, 281n117, 282, 282nn126, 127, 283, 283n132, 284, 284n137, 285–6, 286n144, 287, 287n154, 288–91, 300, 301, 307, 351,

Index of Names

354n12, 356, 359, 380n146, 381, 383, 387, 414, 416 Bishop John Davenant 267, 267n18, 269 Bobzien, Suzanne 405n99 Boethius 304, 396 Bok, Nico den 160n92 Bonaventure 188, 405, 419–20, 420n11 Brainerd, David 51 Brattle, William 49, 86–87 Braun, Johannes 300n207 Brine, John 300n207 Brooks, Cleanth 59n155 Brooks, Edward 80 Brown, William 28 Bruyère, Nelly 52n135 Burgersdijk, Franco 36, 41, 49n125, 53n138, 55n146, 107n1, 133, 136, 137, 137n15, 314n33, 360, 405, 405n102, 420n11 Burman, Frans 300n207, 375n123 Burton, Simon 216n95 Callender, Elisha 80 Calvin, John 7, 28, 30, 305, 324–25, 326n75, 327–8, 328n78, 329–30, 330n89, 331–33, 342–43, 350, 416 Campanella, Thomas 170n13 Charnock, Stephen 300n207 Cherry, Conrad 35–6 Chrysippus 280n114, 405n99 Chrysostom 269n37, 271, 275n83 Cicero 49n124, 104n109, 269–70, 272n68, 278–79, 280n114, 294n188, 369, 369n99, 370–1, 371n107 Claghorn, George 47 Clap, Thomas 50, 71n5, 78–9, 83, 86, 99, 316–17, 397n66, 410, 410n1 Clarke, Samuel 37–39, 50, 61, 65–6, 295, 295n196, 303n216, 304, 313, 313n27, 351, 351n1, 3522n3, 361n64, 362, 362n70, 383, 389, 392–95, 392n35, 393n37, 395nn47, 48, 50, 397n63, 406–7, 406n108, 416–17 Cleanthes 278, 278n106, 279, 279n112, 295n192 Clement of Alexandria 196, 269n37 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 30, 30n19

437 Colish, Marcia 275nn83–4, 280n114, 294n188, 296n197 Collins, Anthony 32, 295n193 Colton, Eli 102, 102n102 Cotton, John 42 Cotton, Josias 80 Crisp, Oliver 23–25, 39–41, 305n1, 366–7, 366n88 Crocco, Stephen D. 51, 51n133, 52n134 Cunningham, William 32 Currier, Joseph 81, 81n35 Cutler, Timothy 46–48, 53, 71, 71n5, 72n6, 90, 105 Cyprian 269n37 Cyril of Alexandria 269n37, 271, 278, 278n102 Cyril of Jerusalem 271 Daniel, Stephen 365n82, 368, 368n93 Dante 61, 169, 169n12 De Moor, Bernhard 33 De Rijk, L.M. 58, 58n154 Defoe, Daniel 191 Dekker, Eef 24n1, 30n21, 58n154, 151n58, 152n61, 166n106, 221, 221nn115–16, 281n120, 326n74, 327n76, 361–2n64, 419n10 Descartes 43, 43n92, 49n124, 65, 87, 90, 99, 99n91, 104, 104n112, 105, 108n4, 183, 183n65, 214n90, 351n2, 353, 363n72, 373–377, 374nn119–21, 375nn123–25, 376n133, 377, 390, 396, 396n61, 404n97, 405, 416, 420n11 Didymus 271, 277 Diodorus 405n99 Dodwell, Henry 266, 266n9 Doolan, Gregory T. 167, 168n7, 172n22, 174nn34–5, 193n10 Downame, George 48n122, 314n33 Drozdek, Adam 295n192 Dummer, Jeremiah 49, 49n124, 108n4, 362n69, 373 Dumont, Stephen 39n74 Duns Scotus, John 39n74, 42, 90n64, 91n67, 92, 108, 110–11, 130n79, 143n32, 153n63, 154n66, 157nn81, 83, 160n92,

438 161n93, 165, 169n9, 174n36–7, 184n66, 188, 188n80, 197, 205, 210n75, 214n87, 215n91, 219, 242n19, 267n18, 324, 401n84, 419, 419n10, 420, 420n11, 421 Dunster, Henry 70 Dyer, Ebenezer 102, 102n102 Edwards, Timothy 49, 86–7, 310n16, 411 Edwards, Timothy (son) 57n153 Emerson, John 77, 77n24 Epictetus 269, 278–280, 279n112 Epiphanius 269n37, 271 Eusebius 269–271, 276n37, 276, 278n107, 292, 302 Farrer, Austin 250n43 Fergusson, David 28–9 Ficino, Marsilius 169, 169n12 Fiering, Norman 36–7, 37n59, 42, 42n91, 50, 70n3, 87, 107n1, 190n1, 265n3, 294n186, 351n1, 363, 368 Flavel, John 299–300n207 Fonseca, Pedro da 99n92, 132 Fouillée, Alfred 375n125 Foxcroft, Thomas 48 Gassendi, Pierre 91 Geulincx, Arnold 34, 400, 400n77 Gibbs, Lee W. 52, 54 Gilbert, Samuel 87, 87n53 Gillit, John 87, 87n53 Gomarus, Franciscus 221, 221n117, 230, 343 Goodhue, Francis 85, 85n46 Goudriaan, Aza 239n7, 420n11 Gregory of Nyssa 275n83 Guelzo, Allen 24n1, 37–39, 305n1, 351n1 Hall, Albericus 76, 76n20 Hall, David 47n112 Hamilton, William 32 Hathaway, Asahel 87 Heereboord, Adriaan 26–7, 36, 46, 49n125, 55, 55–6nn145–6, 59–60, 62n170, 63, 65, 69–70, 71n3, 81, 84, 86, 91n67, 92, 96, 99, 99nn91–2, 100, 103, 107–131, 132–166,

Index of Names

167–189, 190–231, 235, 244n25, 253, 253n53, 255–6, 262, 274–5, 293–4, 294n188, 296, 298, 300–1, 306, 314n33, 316–17n43, 324, 347–349, 353, 360, 367, 367n91, 373, 378, 378nn139–40, 379, 381, 384–5, 387, 407–409, 411–416, 419–420, 420n11, 421 Helm, Paul 23–24n1, 25n4, 39, 39nn73–74, 40, 305n1 Henry of Ghent 184n66 Hilary of Poitiers 271, 277 Hill, George 28 Hobbes, Thomas 34, 37–38, 40, 64, 236, 264–65, 265n3, 270, 270n46, 276, 280– 291, 295, 300–01, 307, 351, 359, 383, 388– 89, 414, 416 Holifield, E. Brooks 23n1, 30 Home, Henry (Lord Kames) 304 Hubbard, Daniel 75, 76n20 Hubbard, John (Yale, MA 1750) 102,102n102 Hubbard, John (Berry–Street Church, London) 239n7, 245, 245n30, 246, 246n31 Hubbard, Thomas 48, 48n118, 87 Immink, Frederik. G. 366 Irenaeus 269n37, 271, 277 Javellus, Chrysostom 169, 169–70n12 Jerome 269n37, 271 Judd, Timothy 102, 102n102 Junius, Franciscus 221, 222n118, 223, 230, 343 Justin Martyr 169, 269n37, 270–71, 276, 292, 302 Keckermann, Bartholomaus 71, 72n6, 104n109 Keith, George 85, 86n49, 164n102 Kelley, Brooks Mather 44n100, 45n104, 47nn112–113, 71n5 Kennedy, Rick 49n126, 87, 190n1, 220n114 Knuuttila, Simo 31n25, 242n19

439

Index of Names

Koyré, Alexandre 29n17, 42n92, 43, 43n92, 351n2, 362n68, 363nn72–73, 381n147, 386, 390n19, 393n37, 394n43, 396n61 Le Blanc 269nn40–41, 270, 270n46, 273, 277, 300n207 Lee, Sang Hyun 23–24n1, 26, 41n82, 63, 65, 182n58, 188, 188n80, 312, 352, 360–369, 363n72, 373, 378, 381, 381n147, 383–384, 417 Leibniz, G.W. 28, 37–39, 59n158, 61,61n168, 63–65, 76, 250–252, 250nn43–44, 252n50, 254–55, 261, 295, 295n196, 303n216, 313, 313n27, 351, 351n1, 352n3, 361n64, 383, 392–395, 392–3n35, 394nn42–43, 46, 395, 395n49, 398, 400n76, 402,402n87, 404n97, 413, 416 Lesser, Max 24 Lessius, Leonard 34n44, 99n92, 132 Leverett, John 53, 77n24, 86–7, 90 Levesque, George 46 Lewis, C. S. 31n25, 60nn162–63, 272n68, 274n78 Locke, John 35, 35n53, 40, 49, 49n124, 53, 53n140, 66, 84, 90–92, 92n73, 304–315, 307n5, 312n21, 389, 404n97, 406–7, 417 Lombard, Peter 405 Luther, Martin 30, 326n75 Macarius 271, 276, 292, 302 Maccovius 49n124, 59n155, 337n117, 403n94 Malebranche, Nicolas 34, 368 Marandiuc, Natalia 305n1 Marenbon, John 39n74 Marsden, George 36n54, 45 Marston, Benjamin 80 Mastricht, Petrus van 32, 40–42, 50, 50n129, 65, 76n22, 81n34, 100n96, 104, 146n43, 148n50, 195–96n18, 197n22, 294n188, 299–300n207, 324n72, 353, 368, 373, 374n119, 379, 381–383, 381n148, 382nn152–53, 385, 401n84, 416 Mather, Increase 45, 86, 104 Mather, Nathaniel 87

Mather, Warham 49 May, Eleazer 72, 72n10, 76, 76n23, 99, 314n32 McClymond, Michael J. 23n1, 41, 305n1 McDermott, Gerald R. 23n1, 41, 305n1 Melanchthon, Philip 326, 326n75,327, 343 Meurisse, Martinus 171, 184n66 Miller, Perry 35–36, 35n53, 36n54, 42n91 Milton, Anthony 239n7, 240n10, 246n31 Minkema, Kenneth P. 45–47, 46n108, 47n115, 237n4 Molina, Luis 99n92, 132, 221 More, Henry 43n92, 48n122, 214n90, 314n33, 316n43 Morison, Samuel Eliot 71n3, 75n19, 190n1 Morris, William S. 25n4, 36, 71n3, 108n4, 363n73 Morton, Charles 27, 46, 46n106, 62–63, 65, 69, 84, 91n67, 100, 107, 142, 172n22, 183n64, 189–205, 207–209, 212–221, 223–231, 235, 262, 314, 367, 407–409, 411–413, 419–20 Muller, Richard A. 23–24n1, 28, 32, 40, 44, 60, 62n170, 134n4, 144n38, 213n83, 243n22, 261n74, 305n1, 325, 329, 334n107, 336–37n117, 340n130, 395n53, 397n64 Newell, Daniel 88, 88nn58–59, 411 Newton, Isaac Sir 25, 25n4, 26, 34–36, 42, 42nn89, 91, 43, 43n92, 50, 61, 63, 90, 105, 314n33, 351, 351–52n2, 362, 362nn65, 67, 69, 70, 363, 363nn72, 73, 378, 381, 381n147, 383, 385, 385n157,386, 390– 392, 390n19, 396, 416, 418 Nicole, Pierre 90, 90n62, 310n16, 400–01, 401nn82–83, 404–05 Noble, John 70n3, 107n2 Nuchelmans, Gabriel 400, 400n77 Oenomaus of Gadara 270, 278, 278n107, 280 Origen 269–271, 269n37, 276, 276n85, 277, 292–293, 302 Paice, Joseph

48, 48n118, 83, 83n38

440 Parmele, Ebenezer 82, 82n36 Phelps, John 77, 77n25 Pighius, Albert 325, 329–331 Pinckaers, Servais 294n188, 296, 369–371, 370n100, 371, 371n106 Plato 49n124, 168–170, 168–69n7, 169n12, 170n13, 174, 365 Priestly, Joseph 28 Pseudo Clemens 271 Pseudo Justin 271, 277 Pufendorf, Samuel 252, 252n50 Ramsey, Paul 37–38, 42n89, 51n132, 264n1, 305n1, 307, 312n21, 314n33 Ramus, Peter 49, 52, 52n135, 53n138, 54, 71, 72n6, 90 Ridderbos, Jan 24n1, 32–34, 33nn36, 38, 34nn44, 48, 305n1 Ridgley, Thomas 245, 245n29, 300n207 Ruiz, Diego 267n18 Rutherford, Samuel 48n122, 100n96, 215, 267, 300n207 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 30 Seneca 269, 278–79, 279nn109, 110, 294n188, 398, 398n69, 418 Shedd, William G.T. 31, 31nn24, 26, 33 Sill, Elijah 87, 87n53 Silliman, Robert 101, 101n97 Simplicius 169n12, 270, 278, 280 Spinoza 420 Spruit, Leen 109n7, 170n13, 194, 194n11 Stapfer, Johann Friedrich 27–28, 28n12, 50, 62–64, 62n170, 76, 99–100, 196n21, 235–262, 279, 293–295, 298–300, 311, 324, 334–35, 343, 350, 360, 367n91, 369, 398–99, 401n84, 406–410, 413–14, 416– 17, 420–21 Stewart, Dugald 32 Stoddard, Solomon 45, 50, 87, 107, 108n4, 369n99, 373 Stump, Eleonore 90n64, 404n97 Suárez, Franciscus 34n44, 50n131, 99n92, 108, 132, 153n63, 181n57, 184n66, 214n87, 217n99, 267n18 Sweeney, Douglas A. 236n1, 237n4

Index of Names

Swinburne, Richard

56n148

Tatian 271 Tertullian 269n37, 271, 277 Thachery, Peter 85 Thane, Daniel 73 Theodoret 269n37, 271, 277 Thuesen, Peter 49n125, 50n129, 264n1, 314n32, 362n69 Torrance, Thomas 25, 25n3 Turretin, Alphonsus 237n4 Turretin, Francis 31, 31n26, 40–42, 50n129, 65, 100n96, 101n99, 104, 104n109, 161n93, 212n81, 214n87, 220,220n114, 224nn122–123, 230, 263n83, 284n137, 294n188, 305n1, 324, 324n72, 336n117, 343, 350, 353, 368, 373, 374n119, 379, 379–80n143, 380, 380nn144–146, 385, 393, 401n84, 415–16 Tweney, Ryan D. 26, 37, 42–44, 43n92, 351nn1–2, 363n73 Twisse, William 49n124,179n49, 181n57, 214n87, 243n23, 267, 283n127 Ursinus, Zacharias 49n124, 84, 270, 288, 288n160, 381n149 Vasquez, Gabriel 184n66, 267n18 Vives, Juan Luis 167n4 Vlastuin, Willem van 24n1, 305n1 Voetius, Gisbertus 32, 33n36, 40–42, 42n87, 50n131, 163n100, 169n9, 170n15, 172n24, 216, 216n95, 217nn99, 104, 220n113, 230, 244n26, 343, 399n74, 401n84, 419n10 Vos, Antonie 30, 39n73, 90–92, 90n64, 91n67, 92n73, 130n79, 188n80, 216, 216n95, 221n116, 223n119, 326n75, 330n91, 331–32, 367n91, 371n106, 419n10 Vossius, Gerhard 266, 267n20 Walaeus 104n109, 215, 215n93, 381n149 Walsh, James 57n153, 71n5 Warch, Richard 49, 71, 314n32 Waterman, Simon 80

441

Index of Names

Watts, Isaac 65–66, 304–307, 307n5, 310n16, 314–16, 314nn32–33, 344n144, 386, 389–391, 396–399, 418–419 Watts, Michael R. 314n31 Wesley, John 223n119 Wesley, Samuel 191 Whitby, Daniel 27, 37–8, 49–51, 49n124, 50n129, 55–56, 56nn147–148, 60–61, 64, 66, 84, 103, 127, 131, 236, 249, 263–285, 287–296, 300–304, 351–352, 354–356, 383, 388, 393, 398, 414–15, 419 Willard, Samuel 85, 86n49, 164n102, 196n18, 300n207, 407n111

Williams, Ebenezer 46, 191 Williams, Elisha 45–46, 78, 99, 192, 192n5, 314, 373, 410 Wiswall, Samuel 80, 83 Withrow, Brandon 299n207, 382n153 Witsius, Herman 300n207 Wollebius, Johannes 103, 103n104 Wyttenbach, Daniel 28 Yoo, Jeongmo

275n83, 302n210

Zakai, Avihu 41, 41n83, 43, 43n92 Zumel, Francisco 108, 184–186, 184n66