Foreknowledge by Joel Hayes - Library of Theology

There is nothing that my consciousness more fully attests than that in my transgressions I do not lie passive
in the hands of God, who merely uses me as his instrument in their production.
Mr. Watson says, "A free action is a voluntary one; and an action which results from the choice of
the agent is distinguished from a necessary one in this, that it might not have been, or have been otherwise,
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according to the self-determining power of the agent." We are not using the term free action in this sense.
It is not a voluntary action or an action which results from the choice of the agent--at least, we are not so
using the term in this treatise--it is the choice itself. This, as I conceive it, is the real free action. The result
of a volition or choice, is bound to the volition. It is not distinguished from a necessary action at all, for it
necessarily follows the volition. It may be free from every thing else, but it is indissolubly bound to its cause.
It is true, however, that a free action is distinguished from a necessary one in this, that it might not have
been, or have been otherwise, according to the self-determining power of the agent; for this is true only of
the volition, or choice, having been made, the voluntary action which is its result cannot be otherwise, nor
fail to occur.
The truth of the statement that holiness or sin is dependent on the choice of the being in which it
exists is universally admitted. Thus President Edwards says, "The brute creatures are not moral Agents. The
actions of some of them are very profitable and pleasant; others are very hurtful; yet, seeing they have no
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moral faculty, or sense of desert, and do not act from choice guided by understanding, or with a capacity
of reasoning and reflecting, but only from instinct, and are not capable of being influenced by moral
inducements, their actions are not properly sinful or virtuous. 25
Necessitarians, however, do not admit that free volitions, or acts of choice as herein defined, are
necessary to the existence of holiness or sin. The earlier necessitarians denied that there were any such
things as free actions. The later ones admit the existence of such actions, but give such a definition to
freedom as to make it consistent with their doctrine of necessity. Free actions, according to them, are, like
all others, indissolubly bound to their respective causes. President Edwards says that "that is the notion of
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a free act of the soul, even an act wherein the soul uses or exercises Liberty," and that "the plain and
obvious meaning of the words Freedom and Liberty, in common speech, is power, opportunity or advantage,
that any one has, to do as he pleases. Or in other words, his being free from hinderance or impediment in
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the way of doing, or conducting in any respect, as he wills." President Edwards's idea of a free act, then,
is that of an act of an agent when he does as he pleases.
We may remark in passing that in the definition of a free volition, as given in this treatise, freedom
has been considered as the property of an action, not of an agent. Of course, however, we do not deny that
it is just as much the property of an agent; for there are free agents as well as free actions, the freedom of
the one consisting in his not being indissolubly bound to his action, just as the freedom of the other consists
in its not being indissolubly bound to the agent. Perhaps, indeed, freedom, in its primary signification, is
rather the property of an agent than of an action. So it is considered by President Edwards. He first defines
freedom as altogether the property of an agent, and only incidentally tells us what is his "notion of a free act
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Watson's Institutes, Part II., Chapter IV., p. 215. The edition used is that of 1873, edited by T. O.
Summers, and published at Nashville, Tenn.
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Emphasis mine.
25
Edwards on the Will, Part I., Section V., p. 19. The edition used is that of 1881, published by Robert
Carter and Brothers, New York.
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Ibid., Part II., Section VII., p. 42.
Ibid., Part I., Section V., p. 17.
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