Theism; being the Baird Lecture of 1876Flint, Robert
Religion
Theism; being the Baird Lecture of 1876
Flint, Robert
Theism
Between this Will and sin there are ever interposed created wills,
which are conscious of their power to choose good or evil, obedience
or disobedience to God's law. God bestows on His creatures only good
gifts, but one of the best of all these gifts includes in its very
nature ability to abuse and pervert itself and all things else.
Freewill needs no vindication, for it is the primary and indispensable
condition of moral agency. Without it there might be a certain animal
goodness, but there could be no true virtue. A virtuous being is one
which chooses of its own accord to do what is right. The notion of a
moral creature being governed and guided without the concurrence and
approval of its own will is a contradiction. If God desired to have
moral creatures in His universe He could only have them by endowing
them with freewill, which is the power to accept or reject His own
will. The determination to create moral beings was a determination
to create beings who should be the causes of their own actions, and
who might set aside His own law. It was a determination to limit His
own will to that extent and in that manner. Hence, when He created
moral beings, and these beings, in the free exercise of their power,
violated His law, sin entered into the world, but not through His
will. It resulted from the exercise of an original good gift which He
had bestowed on certain of His creatures, who could abuse that gift,
but were not necessitated to abuse it. Their abuse of it was their
own action, and the action consisted not in conforming to, but in
contravening, God's will. Thus, God's character is not stained by the
sins which His creatures have committed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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