Necessity and Compulsion

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Taylor

Puritan Board Post-Graduate
Am I the only one who finds this argument and distinction very appealing? I find it to be, frankly, a complete destruction of the common objection that the inability not to sin (Augustine: non posse non peccare) removes culpability. Has anyone seen this argument dealt with or rebutted in anti-Reformed literature?

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"Because of the bondage of sin by which the will is held bound, it cannot move toward good, much less apply itself thereto; for a movement of this sort is the beginning of conversion to God, which in Scripture is ascribed entirely to God’s grace. So Jeremiah prayed to the Lord to be 'converted' if it were his will to 'convert him' [Jer. 31:18, cf. Vg.]. Hence the prophet in the same chapter, describing the spiritual redemption of the believing folk, speaks of them as 'redeemed from the hand of one stronger than they' [v. 11 p.]. By this he surely means the tight fetters with which the sinner is bound so long as, forsaken by the Lord, he lives under the devil’s yoke. Nonetheless the will remains, with the most eager inclination disposed and hastening to sin. For man, when he gave himself over to this necessity, was not deprived of will, but of soundness of will. Not inappropriately Bernard teaches that to will is in us all: but to will good is gain; to will evil, loss. Therefore simply to will is of man; to will ill, of a corrupt nature; to will well, of grace.

"Now, when I say that the will bereft of freedom is of necessity either drawn or led into evil, it is a wonder if this seems a hard saying to anyone, since it has nothing incongruous or alien to the usage of holy men. But it offends those who know not how to distinguish between necessity and compulsion. Suppose someone asks them: Is not God of necessity good? Is not the devil of necessity evil? What will they reply? God’s goodness is so connected with his divinity that it is no more necessary for him to be God than for him to be good. But the devil by his fall was so cut off from participation in good that he can do nothing but evil. But suppose some blasphemer sneers that God deserves little praise for His own goodness, constrained as He is to preserve it. Will this not be a ready answer to him: not from violent impulsion, but from His boundless goodness comes God’s inability to do evil? Therefore, if the fact that he must do good does not hinder God’s free will in doing good; if the devil, who can do only evil, yet sins with his will—who shall say that man therefore sins less willingly because he is subject to the necessity of sinning? Augustine everywhere speaks of this necessity; and even though Caelestius caviled against him invidiously, he did not hesitate to affirm it in these words: “Through freedom man came to be in sin, but the corruption which followed as punishment turned freedom into necessity.” And whenever he makes mention of the matter, he does not hesitate to speak in this manner of the necessary bondage of sin.

"The chief point of this distinction, then, must be that man, as he was corrupted by the Fall, sinned willingly, not unwillingly or by compulsion; by the most eager inclination of his heart, not by forced compulsion; by the prompting of his own lust, not by compulsion from without. Yet so depraved is his nature that he can be moved or impelled only to evil. But if this is true, then it is clearly expressed that man is surely subject to the necessity of sinning.

"Bernard, agreeing with Augustine, so writes: 'Among all living beings man alone is free; and yet because sin has intervened he also undergoes a kind of violence, but of will, not of nature, so that not even thus is he deprived of his innate freedom. For what is voluntary is also free.' And a little later: 'In some base and strange way the will itself, changed for the worse by sin, makes a necessity for itself. Hence, neither does necessity, although it is of the will, avail to excuse the will, nor does the will, although it is led astray, avail to exclude necessity. For this necessity is as it were voluntary.' Afterward he says that we are oppressed by no other yoke than that of a kind of voluntary servitude. Therefore we are miserable as to servitude and inexcusable as to will because the will, when it was free, made itself the slave of sin. Yet he concludes: 'Thus the soul, in some strange and evil way, under a certain voluntary and wrongly free necessity is at the same time enslaved and free: enslaved because of necessity; free because of will. And what is at once stranger and more deplorable, it is guilty because it is free, and enslaved because it is guilty, and as a consequence enslaved because it is free.' Surely my readers will recognize that I am bringing forth nothing new, for it is something that Augustine taught of old with the agreement of all the godly, and it was still retained almost a thousand years later in monastic cloisters. But Lombard, since he did not know how to distinguish necessity from compulsion, gave occasion for a pernicious error."

—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols., Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), II.iii.5.
 
Nope, you're not the only one who finds the argument appealing.
I haven't read anything significant to rebut it, although I'm sure many have written to do so.

You might find some of the best attempts in the Works of Arminius.
I'll have to do some investigating on that...

Blessings!
 
Is it even lawful to attempt to answer the objection, "Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?" since Paul already declared...

"Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:
23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory..."

Or am I being a spoilsport?


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Is it even lawful to attempt to answer the objection, "Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?"

One would think so. I cannot tell you how many times I have mentioned to someone the fact that, in their complaint, they are raising the exact objection which Paul's hypothetical objector is raising in Romans 9. Needless to say, this never seems to deter them. It ought to shut every mouth, but the rebel in all of us just isn't satisfied with the fact that Paul doesn't answer the objector with a theodicy, but with putting man in his place.
 
One would think so. I cannot tell you how many times I have mentioned to someone the fact that, in their complaint, they are raising the exact objection which Paul's hypothetical objector is raising in Romans 9. Needless to say, this never seems to deter them. It ought to shut every mouth, but the rebel in all of us just isn't satisfied with the fact that Paul doesn't answer the objector with a theodicy, but with putting man in his place.

Let me ask a somewhat speculative question. Paul, as you intimated, declined to explain why a vessel created for dishonor is responsible for its dishonorable condition. In fact Paul seems to avoid the issue of responsibility altogether (at least in the potter passage) and talks instead about God’s creative design.

Calvin, on the other hand, approaches the problem from the philosophical position of compatibilism, which argues for the compatibility of necessity and responsibility.

So here’s the question, and again it’s speculative: Would Paul, if he’d been presented with Calvin’s compatibilist argument, have agreed with it, or would he have responded to it by rejecting “responsibility” altogether, arguing instead that corrupt man, by virtue of both his congenital condition and divine prerogative, is simply “properly punishable”? Is "responsibility" something Paul would have even cared about?
 
Let me ask a somewhat speculative question. Paul, as you intimated, declined to explain why a vessel created for dishonor is responsible for its dishonorable condition. In fact Paul seems to avoid the issue of responsibility altogether (at least in the potter passage) and talks instead about God’s creative design.

Calvin, on the other hand, approaches the problem from the philosophical position of compatibilism, which argues for the compatibility of necessity and responsibility.

So here’s the question, and again it’s speculative: Would Paul, if he’d been presented with Calvin’s compatibilist argument, have agreed with it, or would he have responded to it by rejecting “responsibility” altogether, arguing instead that corrupt man, by virtue of both his congenital condition and divine prerogative, is simply “properly punishable”? Is "responsibility" something Paul would have even cared about?

That is a very good (set of) question(s). I will have to ponder them tomorrow, and maybe get back to you Monday, if I happen to come up with any thoughts...Lord willing.
 
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