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Idea of Real Freedom.

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communities, those constitutions are the best which have grown up organically and unconsciously out of the history and life of the people, or which owe their legislative power to the inspiration of a great man who was conscious of being the organ of the Divine Will, as well as the bearer and representative of the national spirit; separate, by a wide cleft, from these are those constitutions which a calculating reflection has prepared to be imposed upon a people, and which by excessive minuteness of regulation check the national life.

If a necessity of the kind now illustrated be one which excludes all indifference, all wavering of choice between opposites, yet at the same time it must at first view be regarded as freedom; for it is the acting out of one's own nature. That moral action is free which expresses unconstrainedly the moral condition of the agent, whatever it may be. But the question arises, Does the moral condition of man, as it actually is, stand in such a relation to his true nature, his nature as it ought to be, that an action which the former puts forth, can with confidence be regarded as corresponding to the latter? We know that it does not. Sin cannot belong to the true nature of man; for if it did, it could not produce inward strife and conflict. Man, accordingly, is not truly free when his will is estranged from God, but then only does he realize his true nature, then only is truly free, when with full decision he wills what is good, and in his actions expresses that inner necessity which excludes all thought of the possibility of the contrary. This idea of freedom is confirmed by the Holy Scriptures. In those passages in which the designations ἐλεύθερος, ἐλευθερία refer to the inner sphere of life; they do not express anything belonging to man in his natural condition, but a possession imparted to him by virtue of Redemption. 1 Cor. 10: 29. 2 Cor. 3: 17. Gal. 2: 4. 5: 1, 13. 1 Pet. 2:16.

The Christian is free, so far as he is delivered from the power of sin. This is the idea of freedom in John 8: 32, 36, where the douλος τῆς ἁμαρτίας is put in contrast with the ἐλεύθερος, cf. Rom. 8: 2. This freedom, says Christ, has he alone to whom He gives it. In like manner, James denotes the law fulfilled by Christ as rouos iλevDepías, 1: 25. 2:12. The Christian cannot be free from the external yoke of the law, if he be not free from the ruling power of sin. But he could not be free from the power of sin, if the law stood over him as merely external authority. In germ, in principle, the redeemed possess this freedom already in the midst of the contests of this life. It will not be manifested in its perfection until their entrance into the kingdom of glory, Rom. 8: 21, 23. But since freedom from sin is at the same time submission to God, obedience to his will from inner impulse, the New Testament denotes this condition as δουλεία τοῦ Θεοῦ,

̓Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ, τῆς δικαιοσύνης, and both designations (ἀπελεύθερος κυρίου and δοῦλος Χριστοῦ) are placed side by side, 1 Cor. 7: 22. 1 Pet. 2:16. In this freedom a power of choice is not thought of, but a condition of the firmest decision. The identity of the same with necessity, is testified in Scripture by the doctrine that the principle of sanctification received into the inner life cannot but produce a corresponding action, Matt. 7: 17-20. 12: 33. 1 John 3: 9. Such an action is accordingly free, and at the same time necessary. In designating the state of obedience to the law of righteousness as freedom, there is not merely the relative meaning of freedom from sin, but of a real self-determination, the purest, most unrestrained spontaneity of the soul. Man realizes his idea when his will is entirely obedient to the Divine Will.

But however significant and important this idea of freedom may be, it is evident, that, in itself considered, it does nothing for our purpose, which is to find in man a power of sufficient independency to originate sin, and thus separate the origin of sin from the Divine causality. But by the preceding view the possibility of sin is excluded from freedom. Now there is another view of the moral freedom of man, which is even as deeply fixed in common consciousness as it is prevalent in science, and which seems perfectly to satisfy the want which the former view left unsatisfied. Here freedom is regarded as a power of choice between good and evil-an action which is free could either have been omitted, or exchanged with another of an opposite character, and the decision between these possibilities rested entirely in the will of the agent.

From the Holy Scriptures this view of freedom does not seem so capable of proof as the other. It matters little that by freedom it never means a power of choice between good and evil. It might, without having the name, yet give instruction respecting the thing itself. But we seek in vain for any such instruction. Nevertheless, this may be accounted for by the practical character of the gospel, which everywhere finds men in the bondage of sin, and does not offer him a first choice between good and evil, but a redemption from the consequences of the perverse decision which he has already made. It constantly appeals to the consciousness of guilt in man as an undeniable part of his inner life, and leaves it quietly to the development of Christian thought to make clear to itself the necessary condition of this consciousness of guilt. Is now this condition no other than that freedom of will by means of which alone man can be the responsible author of his sin, then all those elements of Christian doctrine which confirm the truth of the consciousness of guilt, form at the same time

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Idea of formal Freedom.

251 a foundation for this idea of freedom. And thus the gospel is the strongest testimony of that original freedom in which man was created by God. If one desires a direct confirmation of this idea of freedom from the Holy Scriptures, there is a decisive acknowledgment of its truth in the history of the fall. Not merely the preceding prohibition and the subsequent punishment, but also the process itself, the opposition to the temptation in the lively consciousness which was had of the prohibition, and the commission of the sin notwithstanding this consciousness, all this sets man before us as one who has the power to decide between good and evil. Moreover, in the present condition of the human race, this freedom of choice is acknowledged in various ways by the Holy Scriptures. In the books of the law, not only are there threatenings for the disobedient, and promises for the obedient, but we have the express testimony that the decision between obedience and disobedience, between life and death, is placed in the choice of men, Deut. 30: 15, 16. In the gospel a willing and seeking on the part of man, though it be ever only a yielding to the drawing of the Father to the Son, John 6: 44. Rom. 9: 16, is often denoted as the condition of the efficacy of Divine grace, Matt. 7: 7. 11: 12. Luke 11:1-13. Heb. 3: 8, and the want of success to the offers of mercy is ascribed to the unwillingness of man, Matt. 23: 37. John 5: 40. Acts 7: 51.

These two ideas of freedom seem mutually to destroy each other, so that, so far as the first, which, as the unity of the will with its true purport, we may call real freedom, belongs to man, the other, or formal freedom must be denied to him, and vice versa. And yet we feel obliged to hold both of them fast, the one, because in it we find an expression for the true independence of our spirit from every foreign power, the other, because the consciousness of guilt and faith in the holiness of God require it. Without the first, we cannot regard the perfection of the human life in Christ attainable; without the second, we cannot explain man's present moral condition.

How are these two definitions of the idea of freedom to be reconciled? Man is originally endowed with formal freedom, in order that by his own self-determination, he may attain unto real freedom. The will were not what by virtue of its formal freedom it should be, the power to determine itself by itself, if it could not set itself as determined, i. e. if it could not give to itself its own direction. Real freedom, or that entire decision for the good, which excludes every possibility of evil, were not possible as freedom, if it did not proceed out of the formal freedom. The one is the essential precondition of the other. To begin with real freedom would not be self-determination,

but a being determined from without, would, therefore, be nature, and not spontaneity. But formal freedom has no other destination than to pass over into real freedom. The former is only means to the latter as end. Formal freedom is the starting point, real freedom is the goal.

Formal freedom contains in itself the possibility of sin, but only the possibility. How very far this is from a disposition to sin, appears from the fact that there is also in formal freedom a possibility of choosing the good. The Pelagian idea of freedom is liable to the charge of inconsistency, in representing the same faculty as a root both of good and of evil. Doth a fountain at the same place pour forth sweet water and bitter? And it may seem that formal freedom, as implying the possibility of good and evil, is equally indifferent to both. So it would be, if freedom were already fully determined as formal, but in connection with formal freedom, there is the idea of duty to God, by realizing which, the will is to come into possession of real freedom. Moral evil, therefore, arises from formal freedom by no means in the same manner as moral good, for it arises not in the course for which the freedom was originally designed, and which is pointed out by the accompanying consciousness of duty, but by a fall from this destination.

It is not a mere abstraction, but it expresses a real distinction, when we regard freedom not as something which is necessarily involved in the idea of will, but as something which the will can be destitute of without ceasing on that account to be will. Scripture, church, ex

1

By will is meant conscious self-determination. In considering the subject of moral agency, it is necessary to beware of sundering the will from its living union with the other activities of the spirit's life, and of regarding it in an external relation to them. Rather as the soul makes use of the body as her instrument, and subjects all its members, muscles and nerves to her unity, and is present through them all with determining power; so the feelings, inclinations, interests, convictions, principles, which make up the sum of our spiritual life, together make up, as it were, a body for the will; the will is their forming and moving principle, their proper soul. With a correct view of this relation, the old phraseology, that the will is determined by motives, that these bring forth the decision and the act through the will as their instrument, will give no more embarrassment. Truly a strange psychology, which regarded the conceptions as the properly operative agencies in the soul, and on the contrary, gave to the will a merely receptive, or, to speak more correctly, passive place. No less false is it, to represent motives and will as two powers in the inner life which mutually exclude each other, so that, when the motives do not suffice to bring forth a definite decision, the will turns the scale. If the freedom of a volition is in inverse ratio to the degree in which it is determined by motives, the necessitarian always has the advantage; for it will be easy for him to show, that such determining motives are present even when in the moment of volition they escape the notice of consciousness. But even supposing that, on such an hypothesis, it were possible to maintain the freedom of the will, yet the result would be, that man is only then free, when opposing motives have thrown

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Can we bring to mind our first Sin?

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perience teach of an enslaved will, servum arbitrium. The will, which cannot withdraw itself from the ruling power of sin, or resist temptation, is destitute not only of real freedom, but also of formal freedom. Is there in such a man still a desire which resists that ruling power of sin, but only a velleitas, a desire which cannot carry itself into execution, as in the state described, Rom. 7: 14-24, then he will feel the want of freedom as a heavy burden, as the sick man feels his pain so long as his constitution reäcts against the power of sickness. But has that resisting desire vanished, and is the will wholly given up to selfishness, then the bondage of sin is no more felt by such a one, but is yet, notwithstanding the assent of his will to it, so much the more completely present. The voluntarium remains, the liberum is lost. Has man in this life formal freedom?

If there were, at the commencement of our conscious existence, such an individual act as the stepping forth of the will out of a state of indecision into a sinful purpose, it would remain as a dark background in the memory. But who is able to say definitely when and how he for the first time acted in contradiction to his moral consciousness? Certainly our recollection, if our attention is directed sufficiently early to this point, goes back further than is generally supposed, and many a one will be able to say, when, for example, the first feelings of hatred and of revenge were enkindled within him, and what a tumult they produced in the soul of the child. But if we descend deeper into the shaft of self-recollection, we discover behind these earliest moments of sin, still others by which they were prepared, and which accordingly must have been of the same sinful character, and, if we seek to fix these, yet other similar emotions loom up in our memory, and these again, if we seek to hold them fast, lose themselves in an uncertain twilight. To a pure beginning, to an original determining act it is impossible in this way to attain. The earliest sinful act, which presents itself to our consciousness, does not appear as the incoming of an altogether new element into the youthful life, but rather as the development and manifestation of a hidden agency, the awakening of a power slumbering in the deep. Sin does not then for the first time exist in us, but only steps forth into light. However imhim in some doubt before his decision is made, and, that he manifests his freedom the most essentially, when he decides without motives, or even against them. But every one regards it as something unworthy, to decide in any important matter without or against motives; and no one feels it as a want of freedom, but rather he has then the strongest feeling of freedom, when in any instance he is moved to a definite decision quickly and without at all wavering by the force of powerful, and clearly perceived reasons. A volition, then, is not a simple, but a complex exercise of the spirit.