Moral Inability

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Toasty

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Jonathan Edwards and A.W. Pink make the distinction between natural ability and moral ability. It is my understanding that moral inability has to do with the lack of desire to do something. Some people have the desire to not commit a certain sin, but they commit it anyway. Would moral inability be more than a lack of desire to do something?
 
Robert Haldane has a good discourse on the subject in his Romans commentary, ch. 8, v. 7. Both Charles Hodge and WGT Shedd oppose it, but when you read them carefully, I'm not persuaded they are completely opposing each other.

I tend to agree with Haldane, though Hodge makes some fair cautionary statements.
 
Bavinck has an interesting thing to say about it. I have yet to understand how he makes the connection that Edwards "aided the cause of Pelagianism." But, then again, Bavinck in near infinitely more intelligent than I am. If some of you more astute members here could clue me in, I would be in great debt.

When we are taught that as a result of sin that humans are incapable of any good and this inability is called “natural,” this does not refer to a physical necessity or fatalistic coercion. Humans have not, as a result of sin, lost their will and their increated freedom: the will, in virtue of its nature, rules out all coercion and can only will freely. What humans have lost is the free inclination of the will toward the good. They now no longer want to do good; they now voluntarily, by a natural inclination, do evil. The inclination, the direction, of the will has changed. “This will in us is always free but it is not always good.” In this sense the incapacity for good is not physical but ethical in nature; it is a kind of impotence of the will. Some theologians therefore preferred to speak of a moral rather than a natural impotence–Amyraut, Testard, Venema, and especially Jonathan Edwards among them.

Edwards in his day, one must remember, had to defend the moral impotence of humans against Whitby and Taylor, who denied original sin and deemed humans able to keep God’s law. They argued, against Edwards, that if humans could not keep God’s law, they did not have to, and if they did not keep it, they were not guilty. To defend himself, Edwards made a distinction between natural and moral impotence, saying that fallen humans did have the natural but not the moral power to do good. And he added that only natural impotence was real impotence, but moral impotence could only be figuratively so called. For sin is not a physical defect in nature or in the powers of the will; but it is an ethical defect, a lack of inclination towards or love for the good. Now Edwards did say that human beings could not give themselves this inclination toward the good nor change their will. In this respect he was completely on the side of Augustine and Calvin. But by his refusal to call this disinclination toward the good “natural impotence.” he fostered a lot of misunderstanding and actually aided the cause of Pelagianism.

—Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. III, Sin and Salvation, pp. 121-122

Robert Haldane has a good discourse on the subject in his Romans commentary, ch. 8, v. 7.

Thank you so much for this resource. I had never heard of this man, but his section on Rom. 8:7 is absolutely astounding. The brevity yet clarity and power of thought are truly refreshing.
 
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Edwards in his day, one must remember, had to defend the moral impotence of humans against Whitby and Taylor, who denied original sin and deemed humans able to keep God’s law. They argued, against Edwards, that if humans could not keep God’s law, they did not have to, and if they did not keep it, they were not guilty. To defend himself, Edwards made a distinction between natural and moral impotence, saying that fallen humans did have the natural but not the moral power to do good.

Edwards did not have to make that distinction in order to defend himself. Man lost the ability to please God as a result of the Fall and it was man's fault that he lost that ability. We all sinned in Adam; we all fell in Adam, just as if we had ourselves ate the forbidden fruit. Whitby and Taylor claim that we cannot be held morally responsible for our sin if we cannot please God. My response to this is that man had the ability to please God before the Fall, but lost that ability as a result of the Fall and it is man's fault that he lost that ability.
 
Someone could have the desire to give up a specific sinful practice. He can try and fail. His problem is not a lack of desire.
 
Someone could have the desire to give up a specific sinful practice. He can try and fail. His problem is not a lack of desire.

I feel that begs the question, in a way. Is having "the desire to give up a specific sinful practice" the equivalent of the desire to be holy before a holy God that only comes through regeneration? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, as I have just encountered and began to grasp this distinction between moral and natural ability. Surely there is a difference between the unregenerate's desire to self-improvement and the regenerate's desire to holiness. There are societal constructs of right and wrong, and we also have a conscience. However, I don't think it's correct to equate an unregenerate person's desire to obey the conscience or rid themselves of some bad habit as recognizing their depravity before a holy God and acting accordingly (both of which would come through regeneration and the gift of faith, anyway).
 
Someone could have the desire to give up a specific sinful practice. He can try and fail. His problem is not a lack of desire.

I feel that begs the question, in a way. Is having "the desire to give up a specific sinful practice" the equivalent of the desire to be holy before a holy God that only comes through regeneration? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, as I have just encountered and began to grasp this distinction between moral and natural ability. Surely there is a difference between the unregenerate's desire to self-improvement and the regenerate's desire to holiness. There are societal constructs of right and wrong, and we also have a conscience. However, I don't think it's correct to equate an unregenerate person's desire to obey the conscience or rid themselves of some bad habit as recognizing their depravity before a holy God and acting accordingly (both of which would come through regeneration and the gift of faith, anyway).

I was thinking of the unregenerate's desire to stop practicing a particular sin. For example, he might have the desire to stop being a drunkard. He might try really hard to stop being a drunkard. He is still in bondage to sin and cannot set himself free. His own desire and self-effort is not going to set himself free.

I agree that the unregenerate's desire for self-improvement is different from the regenerate's desire for holiness.

The following quote is from this website:
https://www.monergism.com/jonathan-edwards-we-are-inclined-sin


"One of the most important distinctions made by Edwards is the one between natural ability and moral ability. He also distinguishes between natural necessity and moral necessity. Natural necessity refers to those things that occur via natural force. Moral necessity refers to those effects that result from moral causes such as the strength of inclination or motive. He applies these distinctions to the issue of moral inability.

We are said to be naturally unable to do a thing, when we can’t do it if we will, because what is most commonly called nature [doesn’t] allow … it, or because of some impeding defect or obstacle that is extrinsic to the will; either in the faculty of understanding, constitution of body, or external objects. Moral inability consists not in any of these things; but either in the want of inclination; or the strength of a contrary inclination; or the want of sufficient motives in view, to induce and excite the act of the will, or the strength of apparent motives to the contrary. Or both these may be resolved into one; and it may be said in one word, that moral inability consists in the opposition or want of inclination (Edwards, Freedom of the Will, p. 159)."
 
Someone could have the desire to give up a specific sinful practice. He can try and fail. His problem is not a lack of desire.

I feel that begs the question, in a way. Is having "the desire to give up a specific sinful practice" the equivalent of the desire to be holy before a holy God that only comes through regeneration? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, as I have just encountered and began to grasp this distinction between moral and natural ability. Surely there is a difference between the unregenerate's desire to self-improvement and the regenerate's desire to holiness. There are societal constructs of right and wrong, and we also have a conscience. However, I don't think it's correct to equate an unregenerate person's desire to obey the conscience or rid themselves of some bad habit as recognizing their depravity before a holy God and acting accordingly (both of which would come through regeneration and the gift of faith, anyway).

I was thinking of the unregenerate's desire to stop practicing a particular sin. For example, he might have the desire to stop being a drunkard. He might try really hard to stop being a drunkard. He is still in bondage to sin and cannot set himself free. His own desire and self-effort is not going to set himself free.

I understand that. What I am saying is that you may be equating a drunkard's desire to stop drinking and a regenerate man's desire to stop sinning. An unregenerate drunkard does not desire to stop drinking because it is sin, but because of an infinite number of other reasons, most likely because of health, relationships, or a near-death experience due to drunkenness. It is impossible that they desire to stop because it is sin, because that takes an awakened spirit to accomplish. A regenerate man stops being a drunk because he recognizes that being a drunk, while it most certainly is damaging to relationships and health, is first and foremost sin. That is what I think theologians mean by "moral ability." That's why it's called moral inability, not mental inability; it not only addresses willpower (because every drunk has the willpower to stop drinking), but most importantly the motive (because no unregenerate drunk, while they may have the willpower to stop drinking, has the moral ability to stop sinning in some way).


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Pink talked about "moral inability" in The Sovereignty Of God in chapters 7 and 8. In a later work, The Doctrine of Man’s Impotence, he wrote,

Chapter 3 said:
Many Calvinists have supposed that in order to avoid the awful error of Antinomian fatalism it was necessary to ascribe some kind of ability to fallen man, and therefore they have resorted to the distinction between natural and moral inability. They have affirmed that though man is now morally unable to do what God requires, yet he has a natural ability to do it, and therefore is responsible for not doing it. In the past we ourselves have made use of this distinction, and we still believe it to be a real and important one, though we are now satisfied that it is expressed faultily. There is a radical difference between a person being in possession of natural or moral faculties, and his possessing or not possessing the power to use those faculties right. And in the accurate stating of these considerations lies the difference between the preservation of the doctrine of man’s depravity and moral impotence, and the repudiation or at least the whittling down of it.

At this very point many have burdened their writings with a metaphysical discussion of the human will, a discussion so abstruse that comparatively few of their readers possessed the necessary education or mentality to intelligently follow it. We do not propose to discuss such questions as Is the will of fallen man free? If so, in what sense? To introduce such an inquiry here would divert attention too much from the more important query, Can man by any efforts of his own recover himself from the effects of the fall? Suffice it, then, to insist that the sinner’s unwillingness to come to Christ is far more than a mere negation or a not putting forth of such a volition. It is a positive thing, an active aversion to Him, a terrible and inveterate enmity against Him.
And later in the same chapter said,

Such is the ruined condition of the fallen creature. No human power is able to effect any alteration in the moral perceptions of sinful men. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil" (Jer. 13:23). Nothing short of the sinner, mentally and morally blind to divine light. Here, then, lies the moral inability of the natural man: it consists in the lack of adequate powers of moral perception. His moral sense is prostrated, his mind unable to properly discern between good and evil, truth and falsehood, God and Mammon, Christ and Belial. Not that he can perceive no difference, but that he cannot appreciate in any tolerable degree the excellence of truth or the glory of its Author. He cannot discern the real baseness of falsehood or the degradation of vice.
 
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