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Wyatt Graham

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Six Ways That John Calvin Speaks about Free Will

August 26, 2020 by wagraham 3 Comments

John Calvin speaks about free will in the following six ways:
 
1. Adam had free will and freely chose to sin.
 
2. Adam lost free will because free will requires the mind to deliberate and to discern good from evil before choosing one of these ends. In this sense, free will no longer exists in humans because our natures have become corrupted.

3. Yet all people by nature have an impulse toward the good. This impulse, however, is an animal impulse which does not follow from reason deliberating between good and evil and choosing one or the other (a requirement for free will; Inst. 2.2.26).
 
4. The regenerate have free will restored to them in part now, and then in full in heaven.
 
5. As a consequence, fallen people lack the ability to do good (since that requires free will). Fallen people then only do moral evil (since the impulse towards good seems, for Calvin, to be vice since not rational).
 
6. When fallen people sin then, they do so by necessity but not by compulsion (Inst. 2.3.5). In this way, Calvin seeks to affirm that humans sin willingly without compulsion, even if they necessarily sin.
 
As a side note, he follows the logic of Bernard of Clairvaux and Augustine as he distinguishes how people willingly sin apart from compulsion yet do so by a necessity of nature (remember: free will requires reason to distinguish good from evil before the will chooses it; Adam lost us this creaturely capacity, and so our nature is totally corrupt in all its faculties. Now, we do good by animal impulse not reasonable choice).

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Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: Reformed Theology

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Comments

  1. Doug Sayers says

    August 28, 2020 at 11:37 am

    Thanks Wyatt.

    Can’t let this one go unchallenged.

    If Adam could choose to sin without a sinful nature then why couldn’t God give the rest of us the ability to repent with a sinful nature?

    If fallen people lack the ability to do good, why would Jesus indiscriminately say:

    “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him.”

    Why would Jesus speak of the faith of children if they were born dead in sin, by typical Calvinistic definition?

    Why would Paul teach that fallen sinners can see the invisible attributes of God in creation and insist that Gentiles, who do not have the law, *by nature* do the things in the law…” ?

    Why would the Jews need to be blinded and given a spirit of stupor to ensure they reject Jesus? Does this not necessarily infer they had the (common grace) ability to receive Him?

    Were Plato, Cicero, Darius, Nebuchadnezzar, Nicodemas, G Washington, Abe Lincoln, W Churchill, and A Kuyper (before his first pastorate) utterly disabled and made opposite to all good?
    Were they wholly inclined to all evil? WCF

    I think Augustine’s view was an over correction of his buddy Pelagius, and the Reformers have carried on the mistake.

    Without the power of contrary moral choice the final judgment is rendered perfunctory; and hell gets robbed of its glory as a just punishment for suppressing the Truth in righteousness. Repentance is robbed of its meaning, as a self imposed turning, if it’s utterly irresistible.

    What glory is there for God in punishing a natural born sinner for being a natural born sinner?

    What is it they like to say? Semper Reformanda? Reformandum? (only had one year of Latin… a long time ago!) It’s time to re-think the power and scope of God’s common grace and the definition of dead in sin.

    Reply
  2. Ethan says

    March 24, 2022 at 2:26 pm

    Hey, found this very helpful. Thanks Wyatt.

    Reply
    • wagraham says

      March 25, 2022 at 11:59 am

      glad to hear it

      Reply

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Wyatt is the Executive Director of The Gospel Coalition Canada. He enjoys his family and writing. You'll generally find him hiding away somewhere with his nose in a book.

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