Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
We trace willing in God back, not to motives and antecedents, but
to his infinite personality. If man is made in God’s image, why we
may not trace man’s willing also back, not to motives and
antecedents, but to his finite personality? We speak of God’s
fiat, but we may speak of man’s fiat also. Napoleon: “There shall
be no Alps!” Dutch William III: “I may fall, but shall fight every
ditch, and die in the last one!” When God energizes the will, it
becomes indomitable. _Phil. 4:13_—“_I can do all things in him
that strengtheneth me._” Dr. E. G. Robinson was theoretically a
determinist, and wrongly held that the highest conceivable freedom
is to act out one’s own nature. He regarded the will as only the
nature in movement. Will is self-determining, not in the sense
that will determines the self, but in the sense that self
determines the will. The will cannot be compelled, for unless
self-determined it is no longer will. Observation, history and
logic, he thought, lead to necessitarianism. But consciousness, he
conceded, testifies to freedom. Consciousness must be trusted,
though we cannot reconcile the two. The will is as great a mystery
as is the doctrine of the Trinity. Single volitions, he says, are
often directly in the face of the current of a man’s life. Yet he
held that we have no consciousness of the power of a contrary
choice. Consciousness can testify only to what springs out of the
moral nature, not to the moral nature itself.
Lotze, Religionsphilosophie, section 61—“An indeterminate choice
is of course incomprehensible and inexplicable, for if it were
comprehensible and explicable by the human intellect, if, that is,
it could be seen to follow necessarily from the preëxisting
conditions, it from the nature of the case could not be a morally
free choice at all.... But we cannot comprehend any more how the
mind can move the muscles, nor how a moving stone can set another
stone in motion, nor how the Absolute calls into existence our
individual selves.” Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 308-327, gives an
able exposé of the deterministic fallacies. He cites Martineau and
Balfour in England, Renouvier and Fonsegrive in France, Edward
Zeller, Kuno Fischer and Saarschmidt in Germany, and William James
in America, as recent advocates of free will.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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