# Theories about Adam's fall



## ThomasT

As Sproul has pointed out, Adam's fall is problematic for Calvinists (and also for Arminians, but for different reasons). The key problem is that Calvinism teaches that any person not acting from external force can only will to do what is in his nature to do. Which (apparently) means that Adam's nature must have contained some kind of sinful impulse.

There are at least three theories that attempt to solve this problem. (I suspect that there are a lot more than three, but these are the ones I'm acquainted with.)

1) The Deceit/Trespass theory. This says that Adam honestly believed he was doing God's will when he ate the fruit. His feeble but innocent mind wasn't capable of resisting the serpent's arguments, and he thought (again, innocently) that God was testing him by telling him not to eat the fruit, that God actually did want him to eat the fruit, and that God was using the test to see if Adam deserved to be elevated to God's company of glorified beings. Adam's act of disobedience was thus a mere trespass and not an actual sin (which comes from a sinful impulse, an impulse Adam didn't have), but God treated the trespass as a sin and punished Adam with the loss of innocence. (An example of a trespass that's not a sin: God tells a man not to eat broccoli on Tuesday. The man honestly thinks today is Wednesday when it's actually Tuesday, and he eats the broccoli with a perfectly clear conscience.)

2) The Shelf-Life theory: This says that God created Adam with a nature in which all the impulses were of proper size and in perfect proportion. Adam's self-love was very narrowly constrained. But like a candle that slowly burns down to the wick (Dabney's metaphor), Adam's nature eventually ran out of the store of grace it was created with. When the store of grace had been depleted, Adam's self-love grew monstrously out of balance and gave Adam the sinful impulse that led him to eat the fruit.

3) The Tragedy of the Creature theory: This says that by logical necessity, all creatures, not being the source of their own existence, must be flawed. Therefore Adam had to have been created with a sinful impulse of some kind. 

The problem with the first theory is that a mere trespass isn't a real sin. The problem with the second is that God ends up being the reason Adam sinned, God having created Adam with a sinful impulse, even if it was one that wouldn't appear until some time had passed. The problem with the third theory is that while God has nothing to answer for here, God not being capable of creating a being truly free of a sinful nature, Adam has nothing to answer for, either, having been created with the impulse to sin.

I prefer Sproul's approach to the problem, which is to understand that not all problems allow for human solutions. But I'm wondering if anyone else has some thoughts to add?


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## earl40

I wonder if the answer to this problem could be that Adam before the fall was peccable and Jesus in His humanity was impeccable?

I write this with the belief Jesus in His humanity was impeccable which I know RC and other reformed teachers deny.


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## ThomasT

earl40 said:


> I wonder if the answer to this problem could be that Adam before the fall was peccable and Jesus in His humanity was impeccable?
> 
> I write this with the belief Jesus in His humanity was impeccable which I know RC and other reformed teachers deny.




I agree with you that Adam must have been peccable pre-Fall. The problem comes in when we try to explain how the Fall was Adam's fault. If we say, as I think we have to, this point being critical to Calvinism, that Adam's will wasn't in a state of libertarian freedom any more than ours is, that his will was a prisoner of his nature, then Adam's nature must have been created with a built-in impulse to sin. Otherwise sin wouldn't have been something Adam could have chosen. 

And if Adam was created with a sinful impulse, his eventual choice to disobey God wasn't something he could have resisted. As Edwards is well known for pointing out, our nature is the master of our will, and to the extent that our nature contains conflicting impulses, the impulse we obey is the one that happens (through no choice of ours) to be strongest at any given moment.

So while we can explain the Fall by pointing to Adam's peccability, we can't use Adam's peccability to explain a) why Adam was peccable in the first place, or b) how any creature, not just Adam, could be peccable and yet free of all sinful impulse at the same time...


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## Stope

Can we speculate that the "reason" (whatever it might be) is/could be the same "reason" for Satan's fall? 


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## py3ak

> I agree with you that Adam must have been peccable pre-Fall. The problem comes in when we try to explain how the Fall was Adam's fault. If we say, as I think we have to, this point being critical to Calvinism, that Adam's will wasn't in a state of libertarian freedom any more than ours is, that his will was a prisoner of his nature, then Adam's nature must have been created with a built-in impulse to sin. Otherwise sin wouldn't have been something Adam could have chosen.
> 
> And if Adam was created with a sinful impulse, his eventual choice to disobey God wasn't something he could have resisted. As Edwards is well known for pointing out, our nature is the master of our will, and to the extent that our nature contains conflicting impulses, the impulse we obey is the one that happens (through no choice of ours) to be strongest at any given moment.
> 
> So while we can explain the Fall by pointing to Adam's peccability, we can't use Adam's peccability to explain a) why Adam was peccable in the first place, or b) how any creature, not just Adam, could be peccable and yet free of all sinful impulse at the same time...



Perhaps some quotes from Dennison's very useful _Reformed Confessions_ volumes will come in handy for the discussion.

Large Emden Catechism:

Q. 82. How should I understand this? 
R. This image of God was in Adam in the beginning, by virtue of which he was immortal, holy, wise, and lord of the entire world, and thus was endowed with the freedom and ability to either completely execute or disregard the commandment of God. However, the image of God in himself and in all of us he so destroyed by his sin, that henceforth, all offerings intended for goodness were utterly destroyed both in himself and in all of us. (Eph. 4; Gen. 2; Ps. 8; Ecclesiasticus 15; Gen. 3; 1 Cor. 15)

Hungarian Confession of Faith (Debrecen Synod, 1567)

The Causes of Sin 
Christ says that Satan and his lies are the cause of all sin. Satan is a murderer too, i.e., he is the cause of death. Sin came in through man’s disobedience and death on account of sin (Rom. 5– 7). We therefore say that the cause of sin lies not in not seeing God alive, nor in being created for freedom, nor in the fact that God allowed the angels and Adam also to fall and did not draw them back, but let them fall into sin. We also say that neither the angels nor Adam fell because of God’s counsel or will, nor His decree and compulsion, but by their free will (Gen. 2– 3). The fact that God was prescient, that He knew that Adam would fall because of Satan, is not the cause of sin. “I knew, I saw beforehand, that you would be disobedient, would not obey Me, and I called you subject to the law for your future offenses, and your sins have destroyed you” (Isa. 48). “Adam, whose sin is it that you are naked?” (Gen. 3: 11). “Certainly not Mine, but yours, because you have eaten from the forbidden tree.” Neither Adam nor Eve lay their sins on God, but on Satan; Adam does on Eve and Eve on the tempter (Gen. 3: 12– 13).

Sandomierz Consensus
IX. On Free Will, and on the Power or Strength of Each Person 
Because this matter has always caused much disagreement and discussion among the doctors in the church universal, we maintain that it is a necessary teaching that everyone diligently consider the threefold state, or situation and condition, of human nature. First, one must consider what the human being was like before the fall, that is, perfect, righteous, and possessing a free will, able to remain in goodness if he had wanted to, but also able to turn to evil, as he did, and in this way, by his free will, he became familiar with sin and death, not only for himself but also for all his descendants. Subsequently, it is necessary to see what the human being was and is like after the fall. Indeed, God did not take away his intellect, did not remove the freedom to desire, nor did He change him into stone or wood, but all these original gifts with which a human being was created in the image of God were so changed and corrupted by original sin that a human being no longer has perfect control and ability in himself, as our father Adam had before the fall, because the natural mind is darkened, and human will has changed from being free to being a slave because it serves and is subjected to sin, freely and without any compulsion. The will always has the inherent freedom in it that from among two things, it wills and chooses the one it desires. Therefore, a human being is freely perfect and desirous toward evil and fleshly desires, without feeling any compulsion in himself, neither from God nor from the devil. However, it often happens that God is pleased to halt things that a human being had already planned and begun, and yet He leaves in a human being the ability to choose freely and commence such evil deeds, even though God, by His omnipotence, does not allow them to reach their result or end. We have a clear example of this in the matter of Joseph’s brothers, who had freely intended to wipe him away from the face of the earth, yet this did not come to fruition, because God through other means thwarted their endeavor.


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## earl40

ThomasT said:


> earl40 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I wonder if the answer to this problem could be that Adam before the fall was peccable and Jesus in His humanity was impeccable?
> 
> I write this with the belief Jesus in His humanity was impeccable which I know RC and other reformed teachers deny.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I agree with you that Adam must have been peccable pre-Fall. The problem comes in when we try to explain how the Fall was Adam's fault. If we say, as I think we have to, this point being critical to Calvinism, that Adam's will wasn't in a state of libertarian freedom any more than ours is, that his will was a prisoner of his nature, then Adam's nature must have been created with a built-in impulse to sin. Otherwise sin wouldn't have been something Adam could have chosen.
> 
> And if Adam was created with a sinful impulse, his eventual choice to disobey God wasn't something he could have resisted. As Edwards is well known for pointing out, our nature is the master of our will, and to the extent that our nature contains conflicting impulses, the impulse we obey is the one that happens (through no choice of ours) to be strongest at any given moment.
> 
> So while we can explain the Fall by pointing to Adam's peccability, we can't use Adam's peccability to explain a) why Adam was peccable in the first place, or b) how any creature, not just Adam, could be peccable and yet free of all sinful impulse at the same time...
Click to expand...


Was the impulse or will to eat the fruit sinful in of itself because scripture does say it "was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise"? Or was it only sinful after God told Adam not to eat? 

I ask these questions because I do see a difference between Jesus and pre fall Adam in that Our Lord was "wiser" because Adam ate. Now I realize there is no inherent part of the fruit to do such (impart wisdom), but the experience of eating it does "make one wise" to what good and evil is through the experience of eating what God commanded man not to do.


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## earl40

py3ak said:


> Hungarian Confession of Faith (Debrecen Synod, 1567)
> 
> The Causes of Sin
> Christ says that Satan and his lies are the cause of all sin. Satan is a murderer too, i.e., he is the cause of death. Sin came in through man’s disobedience and death on account of sin (Rom. 5– 7). We therefore say that the cause of sin lies not in not seeing God alive, nor in being created for freedom, nor in the fact that God allowed the angels and Adam also to fall and did not draw them back, but let them fall into sin. We also say that neither the angels nor Adam fell because of God’s counsel or will, *nor His decree* and compulsion, but by their free will (Gen. 2– 3). The fact that God was prescient, that He knew that Adam would fall because of Satan, is not the cause of sin. “I knew, I saw beforehand, that you would be disobedient, would not obey Me, and I called you subject to the law for your future offenses, and your sins have destroyed you” (Isa. 48). “Adam, whose sin is it that you are naked?” (Gen. 3: 11). “Certainly not Mine, but yours, because you have eaten from the forbidden tree.” Neither Adam nor Eve lay their sins on God, but on Satan; Adam does on Eve and Eve on the tempter (Gen. 3: 12– 13).



Not sure about this. For Our Lord was The Lord of providence before during and after Adam's sin. I of course agree God did not "compel" but He did decree whatever sin came to pass.


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## ThomasT

py3ak said:


> Perhaps some quotes from Dennison's very useful _Reformed Confessions_ volumes will come in handy for the discussion.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I agree that the Sandomierz Consensus seems to offer us a good starting point: ”[Adam was] perfect, righteous, and possessing a free will, able to remain in goodness if he had wanted to, but also able to turn to evil, as he did, and in this way, by his free will, he became familiar with sin and death…”
> 
> The question Sproul is asking is this: If we accept the Reformation doctrine on free will (and Sproul of course does), which is that free will in the libertarian sense is a pagan philosophical construct we categorically reject (meaning that the Sandomierz Consensus is using the term “free will” only to indicate that Adam’s will wasn’t in bondage to sin but that it was still in bondage to his nature), Adam could have sinned only if God had created in Adam a propensity for sin. _No being, creature or creator, when not acting as an agent of an external force, can will to do anything that isn’t an expression of the being’s true nature_.
> 
> But Sproul isn’t willing to accept (and I think he’s right) the conclusion that God made Adam with a sinful defect. So then how was it possible for Adam to have sinned?
> 
> Sproul said he’s spent years puzzling over this question and he’s no closer to an answer now than he was when the question first occurred to him. (Dabney said he was deeply troubled by the question as well.)
> 
> Is Sproul wrong about Adam not being created with a propensity to sin? And if he’s not wrong, and the Reformed understanding of the human will is correct (no one’s will, not even Adam's is ever free in the libertarian sense), how do we handle the resulting problem?
> 
> Is it possible – and here I’m merely speculating – that Adam lacked free agency at the moment he disobeyed God, but that God, acting within his divine prerogative as creator of Adam, treated Adam’s innocent trespass as a sin?
Click to expand...


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## py3ak

Perhaps the place to start would be with Dr. Muller's notorious article on Jonathan Edwards' reception in the British Isles.

http://jestudies.yale.edu/index.php/journal/article/view/63

It is accessible at the above link if you login - creating a login is free and worthwhile.


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## C. Matthew McMahon

Adam was _mutable _(able to choose what he thought was best). That means he had the ability to sin or not sin. God does not have the capacity to sin, though Christ's temptations were real. So, as William Perkins (I think rightly) points out, the Holy Spirit took his hand off him from upholding him in that mutable state, as with a broomstick. The Holy Spirit upheld Adam in his righteousness for a time to only choose to do good. Then Let him go. As Perkins' says, let the broom handle go, and gravity takes over, it falls to the ground.

I don't think that having _the ability _to sin is sinful. God made Adam with the ability to chose one way or the other. It may be the theologian's use of the words that seem to make the issue more puzzling.

"treated Adam’s innocent trespass as a sin"

I don't see the fall in any respect an "innocent trespass;" that which sends multitudes to eternal hell under God's wrath.

I think it is safer to say that Adam had free will - the ability to choose what his heart desired at the moment. And that choice also rested on the mutability factor, and the abandonment of the Holy Spirit factor.


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## TheOldCourse

It seems like this is a bigger problem on an Edwardsian conception of free will which argues directly and deterministically from nature to choice than a more traditional Reformed view. Ruben's link above introduces some of the differences. Thomas Boston also points out that an immutably righteous nature is proper only to God Himself--man's original nature was righteous but mutably so. As Matthew suggested above, that mutable nature requires the gift of God for permanent maintenance. And if it is a gift, there is no sin in witholding it.


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## Contra_Mundum

I think we're better off and safer leaving the mystery of the fall where it actually is: beyond our scrying curiosity.

I think even Dabney (who was loath to push an investigation past the limits of revelation, as in the lapsarian question) probably goes too far with his candle analogy, just as I am inclined to think Perkins' broomstick is too much. When we Protestants start talking about God removing a particular gift, it starts to sound similar to the Roman doctrine of the _donum superadditum,_ or that special measure of grace that kept Adam righteous and holy. We want nothing to do with that.

(see quote from Richard Muller, _Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms,_ at https://amfortress.wordpress.com/2015/03/07/donum-superadditum-donum-concreatum/ )

Adam's nature was mutable, so sin fell within the capacity of it, but not due to any necessity of the nature. The Confession summarizes the whole of our doctrine, and leaves the mystery alone.

WCF ch.4, Of Creation4:2 After God had made all other creatures, He created man, male and female (Gen.1:27), with reasonable and immortal souls (Gen.2:7; Ecc.12:7; Mt.10:28; Lk.23:43), endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after His own image (Gen.1:26; Eph.4:24; Col.3:10); having the law of God written in their hearts (Rom.2:14-15), and power to fulfil it (Ecc.7:29); and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject unto change (Gen.3:6; Ecc.7:29). Beside this law written in their hearts, they received a command, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which while they kept, they were happy in their communion with God (Gen.2:17; Gen.3:8-11,23), and had dominion over the creatures (Gen.1:26,28).​
WCF ch.5, Of Providence5:4 The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God so far manifest themselves in His providence, that it extendeth itself even to the first fall, and all other sins of angels and men (2Sam.16:10; 24:1; 1Ki.22:22-23; 1Chr.10:4,13,14; 21:1; Act.2:23; 4:27-28; Rom.11:32-34); and that not by a bare permission (Act.14:16), but such as hath joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding (2Ki.19:29; Ps.76:10), and otherwise ordering and governing of them, in a manifold dispensation, to His own holy ends (Gen.1:20; Is.10:6-7; 10:12); yet so, as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature, and not from God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither, is nor can be, the author or approver of sin (Ps.50:21; Jas.1:13,14,17; 1Jn.2:16).​
WCF ch.6, Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof6:1 Our first parents, being seduced by the subtilty and temptation of Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit (Gen.3:13; 2Cor.11:3). This their sin God was pleased, according to His wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to His own glory (Rom.11:32)​
Man was in a covenant of works prior to the fall. He had the power to fulfill it. The fall was inevitable, being ordained by God (not just "bound to happen" by the law of averages). And yet God is not in the least blameworthy for permitting the fall, for he is bringing about the greatest possible good it and so magnifying his mercy and his justice. The fall was necessary, not intrinsically, but for the completion of this incomparable design of the unfathomable wisdom of God.

How God brought it about is to us purely speculative. But he is not answerable to us, or to any higher standard of right-conduct than his own righteous and holy will.

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## ThomasT

C. Matthew McMahon said:


> Adam was _mutable _(able to choose what he thought was best). That means he had the ability to sin or not sin. God does not have the capacity to sin, though Christ's temptations were real. So, as William Perkins (I think rightly) points out, the Holy Spirit took his hand off him from upholding him in that mutable state, as with a broomstick. The Holy Spirit upheld Adam in his righteousness for a time to only choose to do good. Then Let him go. As Perkins' says, let the broom handle go, and gravity takes over, it falls to the ground.
> 
> I don't think that having _the ability _to sin is sinful. God made Adam with the ability to chose one way or the other. It may be the theologian's use of the words that seem to make the issue more puzzling.
> 
> "treated Adam’s innocent trespass as a sin"
> 
> I don't see the fall in any respect an "innocent trespass;" that which sends multitudes to eternal hell under God's wrath.
> 
> I think it is safer to say that Adam had free will - the ability to choose what his heart desired at the moment. And that choice also rested on the mutability factor, and the abandonment of the Holy Spirit factor.



We agree that the ability to sin isn’t a sin. What Sproul is saying is that the ability to sin is possible only for a being with sinful inclinations. The reason God can’t sin is that that there are no sinful inclinations in his nature. Only beings with sinful inclinations can sin.

Now if Adam had an inclination to sin, that inclination must have been created by God. Adam was no more the source of his natural inclinations than we are of ours.

Adam didn’t choose to disobey God for no reason – his disobedience was an expression of the disobedient nature God gave him. Without an inclination for rebellion and disobedience, rebellion and disobedience would have been impossible for Adam.

Sproul goes on to say that man cannot say “no” to his natural inclinations. If Adam had some sinful inclinations along with all the good ones, then Adam would have helplessly followed whatever inclination -- good or bad -- happened to be strongest in him at any given moment. Resisting our strongest natural inclination (whatever that may be at any given moment, and this will change from one moment to the next) is possible only with libertarian free will, the existence of which I assume we all reject.

You seem to be saying something very similar. You wrote: “I think it is safer to say that Adam had free will - the ability to choose what his heart desired at the moment.” But isn’t that exactly what we all have the power to do? Isn’t the word “heart” simply a metaphor for “natural inclination”? Having the ability to choose what our nature wants is mere free agency -- it isn't free will...


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## py3ak

The Confession of the Heidelberg Theologians is particularly full:

5. Concerning the fall of angels and men; and concerning hereditary sin. We also believe that even though God did initially create angels and men holy and good, and that He especially created man in His image and for blessed immortality, they— the angels for the largest part and both original human beings— fell away from God their Creator not long after having been created. By virtue of this fall, they not only have brought upon themselves the wrath of God, but have also contracted a corruption of their nature, which is such that they no longer either desire or are capable of any good. The fallen angels, as a body, have all at once become subject to this corruption, whereas human beings inherit such corruption from the one to the other, along with the guilt of temporal and eternal death. This corruption of man is therefore called hereditary sin. 

6. Concerning the cause of the fall. We believe furthermore that though the dreadful fall of both angels and men could not have transpired outside of God’s decree, and that He does not decree anything without purpose, the guilt of this fall can in no wise be attributed to Him. It must be observed that both angels and men were created in such a fashion that they were capable of exercising their free will toward good as well as evil. 

7. We believe furthermore that as poor creatures we have no right to dispute with God why He created angels and men capable of falling, nor why He did not prevent such a fall— which He indeed could have done. He is the Lord, and His will is always right and good, even though we do not always understand this. The apostle Paul states that God has concluded all things under unbelief (Rom. 11: 32) or under sin (Gal. 3: 22) in order that He might be merciful to all (that is, that no one would be saved apart from the mercy of God). See also Romans 9: 22– 23: “What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had before prepared unto glory.” We should reasonably leave it at that. 

8. Concerning the condition of angels and men after the fall. We believe furthermore that fallen angels and men by their grievous fall did not thwart the omnipotent government of God. Instead, the one as well as the other are in the hand of God, and their wickedness cannot manifest itself in any other way than which God has decreed concerning them. NB: This article of faith is our greatest comfort on earth. For if wicked angels and men could do as they please, what refuge could we find from them? 

9. Concerning the cause of sin after the fall. We believe furthermore that though God has decreed all the sins of angels and men, He also often uses their sinful works to accomplish His holy works (such as Absalom’s dreadful deeds for the chastisement of David, as well as the betrayal of Judas for the redemption of the human race, etc.). Moreover, though He often punishes sin with sin, and generally fully blinds and hardens those who with seeing eyes wish to be blind (which He did earlier to Pharaoh), nevertheless He Himself takes no pleasure in sin, and even less stimulates or compels anyone to that end. Rather, the actual cause of all committed sin is to be attributed solely to the free and uninhibited will of evil angels and men. 10. Concerning the punishment of the fall. We believe furthermore that God has condemned the fallen angels to eternal fire without there being any recourse to grace and mercy, thereby warning us that we should not take the wrath of God against sin lightly.​


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## timfost

Thanks, Bruce.

I would add that another problem with the "Tragedy of the Creature theory" seems to share some Gnostic tendencies.

Following C. Matthew McMahon's train of thought, there is nothing in this creation analogous to Adam prior to the fall. We have no idea what it means to be wholly upright, righteous _and_ mutable. If we are going to understand how this works, we only have special revelation to go by. Since such revelation only describes the events without the mechanics, we are better off simply describing the events without inquiring into it any further.

On the bright side, by faith we are found in Christ, and therefore ingrafted into Him who is immutable. As believers, then, we are in a far superior place than Adam (pre-fall), even in this body of sin.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> I prefer Sproul's approach to the problem, which is to understand that not all problems allow for human solutions. But I'm wondering if anyone else has some thoughts to add?



My thought is that we should steer away from calling it a problem for Calvinists.

What does Calvinism teach? Simply what holy Scripture teaches -- that God in His sovereign good pleasure has chosen a people for Himself and permitted the fall for manifesting the glory of His grace and justice. If anyone has any objections to this revelation of divine glory he contends with the potter who made him. The Calvinist should leave it there. What point is there in seeking to justify God?

Now it may be that some Calvinists have complicated the issue by their particular theories of causation, volition, etc., but that is not "Calvinism." That is just some theologian who calls himself a Calvinist trying to justify God according to his own rational processes.

What are the facts of revelation so far as the fall is concerned? We have (1) man being made upright but natural, so as he is not yet confirmed in a state of righteousness or consummated with heavenly life, (2) man undergoing a state of probation and being left to the freedom of his own will, and (3) man being exposed to a subtle agent who was able to deal rationally with man and present him with a genuine temptation. These facts suffice to explain the essential elements involved in the fall. It does not need to be pressed any farther.


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## Kurt Steele

Did Adam "really" have a choice or was this the sovereign plan of God from eternity past to bring Him the most glory? God created Adam in innocence and as Matthew wrote Adam was mutable. Jesus was and is Immutable. This is a very tough issue for a human mind to comprehend/


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## MW

Kurt Steele said:


> Did Adam "really" have a choice or was this the sovereign plan of God from eternity past to bring Him the most glory?



That is known as a false dilemma. Adam's genuine choice and God's sovereign plan are both true.


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## Kurt Steele

Was there any chance for Adam to succeed in innocence?


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## MW

Kurt Steele said:


> Was there any chance for Adam to succeed in innocence?



Given all the conditions necessary for making free choice, Yes. Divine sovereignty does not take away the contingency of second causes.


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## Justified

MW said:


> Kurt Steele said:
> 
> 
> 
> Did Adam "really" have a choice or was this the sovereign plan of God from eternity past to bring Him the most glory?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That is known as a false dilemma. Adam's genuine choice and God's sovereign plan are both true.
Click to expand...


Rev. Winzer, do you think human beings have freedom of contradicting/contrariety?


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## MW

Justified said:


> Rev. Winzer, do you think human beings have freedom of contradicting/contrariety?



If contrariety is explained in accord with other dynamics of human existence which constrain choice, then I would answer yes. If bare contrariety is meant, the answer would be no, because then the person could choose not to choose, which is absurd.


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## Justified

MW said:


> Justified said:
> 
> 
> 
> Rev. Winzer, do you think human beings have freedom of contradicting/contrariety?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If contrariety is explained in accord with other dynamics of human existence which constrain choice, then I would answer yes. If bare contrariety is meant, the answer would be no, because then the person could choose not to choose, which is absurd.
Click to expand...

Do recommend any good classic Reformed authors on the issue? I find most Reformed theologians today are determinists of sorts of the Edwardsian type.


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## MW

Justified said:


> Do recommend any good classic Reformed authors on the issue? I find most Reformed theologians today are determinists of sorts of the Edwardsian type.



Perhaps the best single volume I could recommend is Reformed Thought on Freedom, ed. van Asselt. Besides providing a case for synchronic contingency, it helps to show the different taxonomies which affect discussion.

In the Scots' Presbyterian tradition, Adam Gib on Liberty and Necessity in his Sacred Contemplations is well worth studying.

Although it is shown that Edwards steered an unique course so far as necessarian ideas are concerned, he is still useful on the freedom of the will in general. He followed the older psychology of seeing the will as an inclination to apparent good. Apart from this basic definition it is impossible to lay rational constraints on the will and see human choice as meaningful. The treatise is still valuable in this regard.


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## ThomasT

py3ak said:


> It must be observed that both angels and men were created in such a fashion that they were capable of exercising their free will toward good as well as evil.



Which means (at least according to the limits of our human logic) that pre-fallen angels and men had a nature that contained by both good and evil impulses. 

Following is a link, for those who are interested, in a fascinating lecture ("What Is Evil & Where Did It Come From?") Sproul delivered on the problem we're discussing. It covers a lot of territory but treats at length the question of how a being like Adam could have sinned. Sproul admits that he has no way of answering the question without rejecting tenets of Reformed doctrine...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ir6pKEV0RQ


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> My thought is that we should steer away from calling it a problem for Calvinists.



How sin entered the world through Adam poses problems that certainly aren't unique to Calvinists. All Christians have incomplete theodicies, but in different ways. Calling the fall a problem for Calvinism is something I've done here (following the lead of people like Sproul and Dabney) simply because I don't think we're concerned -- for the moment -- about the problems Adam raises for Arminians and other Christians who don't accept Reformed doctrine.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> Which means (at least according to the limits of our human logic) that pre-fallen angels and men had a nature that contained by both good and evil impulses.



An evil impulse is evil since the law of God is spiritual and applies to the heart. If one affirms that man was created with evil impulses he must deny that man was created innocent and upright.

Reactions: Like 1


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> How sin entered the world through Adam poses problems that certainly aren't unique to Calvinists. All Christians have incomplete theodicies, but in different ways. Calling the fall a problem for Calvinism is something I've done here (following the lead of people like Sproul and Dabney) simply because I don't think we're concerned -- for the moment -- about the problems Adam raises for Arminians and other Christians who don't accept Reformed doctrine.



Adam's fall doesn't raise a problem for Calvinism. Without Calvinism we could not explain the dynamics of divine sovereignty and human responsibility without having recourse to a dualist philosophy. Calvinism answers the problems raised by reason.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> Which means (at least according to the limits of our human logic) that pre-fallen angels and men had a nature that contained by both good and evil impulses.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> An evil impulse is evil since the law of God is spiritual and applies to the heart. If one affirms that man was created with evil impulses he must deny that man was created innocent and upright.
Click to expand...


And yet without an evil impulse Adam couldn't have willed to sin, Adam's will not being free in the libertarian sense.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> And yet without an evil impulse Adam couldn't have willed to sin, Adam's will not being free in the libertarian sense.



That is your reason creating conditions in order to meet your criteria for rational explanation. Adam was made upright. He had no evil impulses.


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## py3ak

ThomasT said:


> py3ak said:
> 
> 
> 
> It must be observed that both angels and men were created in such a fashion that they were capable of exercising their free will toward good as well as evil.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Which means (at least according to the limits of our human logic) that pre-fallen angels and men had a nature that contained by both good and evil impulses.
> 
> Following is a link, for those who are interested, in a fascinating lecture ("What Is Evil & Where Did It Come From?") Sproul delivered on the problem we're discussing. It covers a lot of territory but treats at length the question of how a being like Adam could have sinned. Sproul admits that he has no way of answering the question without rejecting tenets of Reformed doctrine...
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ir6pKEV0RQ
Click to expand...


Or a more accurate assessment of what Reformed doctrine is.... The idea that nature exhaustively determines will as you have enunciated it above is not correct. With regard to God, it eliminates the contingency of creation and the freeness (which is to say the sovereignly gracious) character of grace. With regard to man in innocence, it creates an unnecessary bind. If an idea is creating difficulties for Calvinism, it is at least worthwhile to raise the question whether it is Calvinism or the idea that ought to be rejected.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> And yet without an evil impulse Adam couldn't have willed to sin, Adam's will not being free in the libertarian sense.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That is your reason creating conditions in order to meet your criteria for rational explanation. Adam was made upright. He had no evil impulses.
Click to expand...



We agree that Adam had no sinful impulses. But are we now forced to conclude that Adam had libertarian free will?


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## timfost

ThomasT said:


> And yet without an evil impulse Adam couldn't have willed to sin, Adam's will not being free in the libertarian sense.



Thomas,

It is correct to say that this poses a problem for human _logic_. It is another thing to say that it poses a problem for reformed theology. One of the tenets of reformed theology is that God's sovereignty and human freedom are both absolutely true. In fact, it is God's decree that establishes contingency (WCF Ch. 3). The problem does not arise from the truth of the matter, only our finite ability to comprehend _how_ it works.


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## ThomasT

py3ak said:


> The idea that nature exhaustively determines will as you have enunciated it above is not correct.



I'm aware of Reformed doctrine offering only two possible determinates of will: one external and one internal. When an external force is at work, a man isn't a free agent, so we'll leave external determinates aside since I think we agree that Adam had free agency when he sinned.

Which leaves us with the internal determinates. If a person's nature isn't the only internal determinate of his will, as you've stated, then what are the others? What internal force, other than our nature, makes us choose one thing over another?


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> We agree that Adam had no sinful impulses. But are we now forced to conclude that Adam had libertarian free will?



It depends on what is meant by "libertarian." Indifference or rational spontaneity? The former is not possible because the will was bound to the law of God, and indifference to what God commands or forbids is sinful in itself. But rational spontaneity allows for free choice based on a previous judgment of reason. God left man to this liberty, and the serpent presented another rational agent by which man's reason could be "seduced" into regarding the fruit of the tree as a perceived good.

Reactions: Like 1


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## ThomasT

timfost said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> And yet without an evil impulse Adam couldn't have willed to sin, Adam's will not being free in the libertarian sense.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thomas,
> 
> It is correct to say that this poses a problem for human _logic_. It is another thing to say that it poses a problem for reformed theology. One of the tenets of reformed theology is that God's sovereignty and human freedom are both absolutely true. In fact, it is God's decree that establishes contingency (WCF Ch. 3). The problem does not arise from the truth of the matter, only our finite ability to comprehend _how_ it works.
Click to expand...


I think we may be too focused on the word "problem" here. I agree with your comments, but theologians often use the word problem not to suggest that a doctrine must in error but rather to acquaint us fully with a particular question (a _problem_ with the incarnation, a _problem_ with the atonement, etc). We can't decide if a question can or can't be answered within the limits of revelation and reason unless we know what the question is really asking. "Problem" just lets us know that there's a question to be asked in the first place.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> We agree that Adam had no sinful impulses. But are we now forced to conclude that Adam had libertarian free will?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It depends on what is meant by "libertarian." Indifference or rational spontaneity? The former is not possible because the will was bound to the law of God, and indifference to what God commands or forbids is sinful in itself. But rational spontaneity allows for free choice based on a previous judgment of reason. God left man to this liberty, and the serpent presented another rational agent by which man's reason could be "seduced" into regarding the fruit of the tree as a perceived good.
Click to expand...


If Adam’s will was bound to the law of God, as you stated, then Adam’s will couldn’t have been the cause of Adam’s sin. And thus Adam’s sin becomes unintelligible.

You said that Adam had rational spontaneity, and that it was this faculty of Adam’s that brought about the fall. But rational spontaneity is simply free agency combined with the power of pre-choice deliberation. 

What dilemma was Adam deliberating over as he listened to the serpent’s arguments? Was he deliberating over whether to obey God or to obey the serpent? No – you seemed to have ruled that out when you said that Adam’s will was bound to God’s law. It wasn’t possible for Adam to have formed the sinful intent of disobeying God. Adam had no interest in rebellion against God or in disobeying God’s commands. 

According to the rational spontaneity theory, Adam never formed a sinful intent – it’s just that his reasoning ability wasn’t a match for the serpent’s deceit. The serpent was smarter than the man, and Adam ate the fruit with no intent of rebelling against his creator. As he ate the pomegranate Adam truly believed he was doing what God wanted him to do. 

So if Adam disobeyed God only because he wasn’t as smart as the serpent, and not because his will was in rebellion against God, how are we to regard Adam’s disobedience as a sin?


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> If Adam’s will was bound to the law of God, as you stated, then Adam’s will couldn’t have been the cause of Adam’s sin. And thus Adam’s sin becomes unintelligible.



Sin is the transgression of the law. If his will was not bound to the law of God there could be no transgression, no sin.



ThomasT said:


> You said that Adam had rational spontaneity, and that it was this faculty of Adam’s that brought about the fall. But rational spontaneity is simply free agency combined with the power of pre-choice deliberation.



"Agency" is not "will." An Agent is one who "acts." Will is that which "chooses" to act. Rational spontaneity includes "voluntariness" so that the choice of the will is a genuine act of self-determination.



ThomasT said:


> It wasn’t possible for Adam to have formed the sinful intent of disobeying God.



Of course it was possible. God made Adam mutable. That means Adam was able to change.



ThomasT said:


> According to the rational spontaneity theory, Adam never formed a sinful intent – it’s just that his reasoning ability wasn’t a match for the serpent’s deceit.



You are mistaken. It is only by "spontaneity" that the choice could genuinely be regarded as Adam's. Take away that spontaneity and you make Adam a passive instrument of some necessarian force, which in turn removes accountability and guilt from the action.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> You are mistaken. It is only by "spontaneity" that the choice could genuinely be regarded as Adam's. Take away that spontaneity and you make Adam a passive instrument of some necessarian force, which in turn removes accountability and guilt from the action.



No one’s trying to take away Adam’s spontaneity. We’re simply trying to understand how free deliberative voluntary choice could cause Adam to act against his impulses, none of which was sinful. _A choice doesn’t explain a choice_.

All rational choices serve an end, a desire. My neighbor, say, buys a gun. His purpose in buying the gun is to defend his family from intruders. I buy a gun, but my purpose is to rob a bank. My neighbor’s reason for buying the gun is good, mine is bad. Yet we both have a reason for our choice. No deliberative person buys a gun for no reason at all. 

So then if Adam had no sinful impulses, and Adam was a rational creature, what was his reason for choosing to eat the fruit?


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> We’re simply trying to understand how free deliberative voluntary choice could cause Adam to act against his impulses, none of which was sinful.



The point of mutability is that, being left to the freedom of his own will, he was able to form a desire after a forbidden object. Your objections seem to come back to the idea that Adam was an unmovable, immutable agent.

Consider what Turretin says (Inst. 1:607): "Thus he could indeed stand if he wished, but could also if he wished become evil. This the event itself sufficiently proves (if nothing else could teach it)." He goes on to explain that mutability "denotes a power which could be inclined to evil, but was not yet inclined." This leads to the following important observation: "Nor ought it to seem strange that man (created capable of falling and mutable) changed and fell, no more than that a beginning of motion takes place to one perfectly at rest. For where there is a power to change, the transition from power to act is easy."

I also wonder if the repetition of the word "impulses" is not barring the way to a proper appreciation for "spontaneity." If rationality can be convinced that an object is good, the will inclines towards it, and this suffices to explain new desires. "Impulse," on the other hand, suggests a degree of rational passivity.


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## C. Matthew McMahon

ThomasT said:


> So then if Adam had no sinful impulses, and Adam was a rational creature, what was his reason for choosing to eat the fruit?



I don't know what a "sinful impulse" means. Is that a sin? Or is it a real temptation to sin? Did Adam have that before he fell, or not? 
You'd have to be really specific about that. It runs along the same lines of Christ not being able to sin, does that then make the temptations not a "real problem" for him? _etc_.

Adam's "reasoning" for choosing the shortcut to "being like God" was the proposition itself, "you will be like God."

God's way, the long way, was to be holy according to His command - do this and live.
The shortcut, was eat the fruit and be like God.
In a somewhat rational/emotional/excited frame (sinful as it was), I understand the excitement of the temptation. Imagine if we could just take a bite and be like God? 
Adam had a good Theology Proper, but he took the shortcut to get fulfill Matthew 5:48, keeping in mind the Spirit's release for him to do so.

However, in order to sin, there had to be an illogical set of propositions for Adam to believe, which in turn gave fuel to the temptation, which in turn caused him to give into the temptation. Is considering temptation a sin? Is thinking through temptation a sin? How far can one contemplate the temptation before they cross the line, and what does it mean to "cross the line?" I think with an upright and perfect being where he sinned, as Satan did, where "sin was found in him", even though he was upright at first, is where we lose the ability to answer the question as much as we would like.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> We’re simply trying to understand how free deliberative voluntary choice could cause Adam to act against his impulses, none of which was sinful.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The point of mutability is that, being left to the freedom of his own will, he was able to form a desire after a forbidden object. Your objections seem to come back to the idea that Adam was an unmovable, immutable agent.
> 
> Consider what Turretin says (Inst. 1:607): "Thus he could indeed stand if he wished, but could also if he wished become evil. This the event itself sufficiently proves (if nothing else could teach it)." He goes on to explain that mutability "denotes a power which could be inclined to evil, but was not yet inclined." This leads to the following important observation: "Nor ought it to seem strange that man (created capable of falling and mutable) changed and fell, no more than that a beginning of motion takes place to one perfectly at rest. For where there is a power to change, the transition from power to act is easy."
> 
> I also wonder if the repetition of the word "impulses" is not barring the way to a proper appreciation for "spontaneity." If rationality can be convinced that an object is good, the will inclines towards it, and this suffices to explain new desires. "Impulse," on the other hand, suggests a degree of rational passivity.
Click to expand...


I follow your points, and I don’t object to the Reformed principle of Adam’s mutability _per se_, but I think we’re glossing over something here. Adam’s choice, as you’ve described it, simply came down to a defect, a limitation, in his power of reason and perception. 

And yet a defect in the power of reason and perception isn’t morally blameworthy. Our imperfect reason and perception lead us to make mistakes every day and no one assigns us any moral blame for them. Suppose (to use a less-than-everyday example) an emaciated beggar tells us he lost his job, he’s homeless, and he’s starving to death (we’ll say we’re living in a poor country where people actually do starve to death). He implores us to buy him a sandwich. We notice that malnourishment has left his body covered in sores. We take pity on him and buy him not just the sandwich he asked for but also a whole bag of groceries. Later we learn that the man is a convicted mass murderer, a fugitive from justice who was starving only because he was on the run from the law. We also learn that the groceries we bought the man gave him the energy to slaughter an innocent family of five. 

Are we morally blameworthy for our susceptibility to the man's lies and our failure to perceive that the “homeless” man was a criminally depraved monster?


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> Adam’s choice, as you’ve described it, simply came down to a defect, a limitation, in his power of reason and perception.



There was no defect in Adam's knowledge. He had full consciousness of what he was doing, what he was forsaking, and what he was seeking to attain. In this sense his transgression went beyond being "deceived," 1 Tim. 2:14. It was conscionable "disobedience," Rom. 5:19. He chose wittingly and wilfully.


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## timfost

> 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “*We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.*’”
> 
> 4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
> 
> 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.



Eve may have been deceived in the _consequences_ or _outcome_ of her actions, but she knew that she was disobeying the law of God. Satan's deception was contradicting the curse "you shall surely die." He never said "you are mistaken, God didn't say you can't eat from this tree." We need to be careful in spelling out exactly what her deception was. Concerning God's law, there was not confusion, only willful disobedience.

Thomas, I think entertaining your premise that Adam had a defect contradicts that he was created "very good." His mutability was not a defect, but perfectly suited to God's eternal plan.

I think we need to reverence scripture and not look further than what is revealed. We need to believe God _because He said it_, not because the details all make sense to our logical confines. God, after all, is not bound by human logic.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> Adam’s choice, as you’ve described it, simply came down to a defect, a limitation, in his power of reason and perception.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There was no defect in Adam's knowledge. He had full consciousness of what he was doing, what he was forsaking, and what he was seeking to attain. In this sense his transgression went beyond being "deceived," 1 Tim. 2:14. It was conscionable "disobedience," Rom. 5:19. He chose wittingly and wilfully.
Click to expand...


I think this makes a great deal of sense, a defect of reason hardly being the kind of thing we would blame someone for. Yet of course this raises another question. If Adam wasn’t outsmarted into sinning, then he must have acted, as you said, “wittingly and willingly.” But acted on what? Wasn’t it a _desire_ he acted on? And wasn’t this desire itself sinful?

Yet we don’t choose our desires. You said in an earlier post that “Rational spontaneity includes ‘voluntariness’ so that the choice of the will is a genuine act of self-determination.” Again, I agree. Reason allows us to understand what we really desire, as opposed to what we may mistakenly believe we desire. But what we want isn’t itself something we can conjure up out of thin air.

So while rational spontaneity assures us that Adam made a choice that was a genuine reflection of his nature, it doesn’t tell us how his nature came to contain sinful desires in the first place.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> But acted on what? Wasn’t it a _desire_ he acted on? And wasn’t this desire itself sinful?



We are back to mutability. As noted by Turretin, he had the power to incline towards sin; he did not have the actual inclination. It is the inclination to sin which is sinful, which he did not have as created; the power to incline to sin was not itself sinful, and this is what he had as created. His mutability consisted in his power to incline to sin.


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## ThomasT

timfost said:


> I think entertaining your premise that Adam had a defect contradicts that he was created "very good." His mutability was not a defect, but perfectly suited to God's eternal plan.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Just to be clear, I wasn't actually advancing the defect theory -- I was merely asking the person I was corresponding with if he himself was advancing that theory. I'll take the blame for any miscommunication.
Click to expand...


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> But acted on what? Wasn’t it a _desire_ he acted on? And wasn’t this desire itself sinful?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We are back to mutability. As noted by Turretin, he had the power to incline towards sin; he did not have the actual inclination. It is the inclination to sin which is sinful, which he did not have as created; the power to incline to sin was not itself sinful, and this is what he had as created. His mutability consisted in his power to incline to sin.
Click to expand...



An inclination is a natural tendency, an innate trope. We talk about plants that are especially desirous of sunlight as being “heliotropic”; they twist themselves into whatever shape is necessary to receive maximum sunlight.

Suppose that one such heliotropic plant has a rational will. Suppose further that one day our plant makes a free voluntary choice to incline itself not to the light but to the shade. We’ll say also that the plant knows that by inclining itself to the shade it will certainly die. 

We’d be stuck with one or more of the following conclusions:

1) The plant has the power of contrary choice.

2) The plant suffers from a critical defect in its reasoning power.

3) The plant was corrupted by an alien inclination (in the form, say, of the DNA of a shade-loving plant like a fungus).

4) The plant had been harboring an inclination for shade-seeking its whole life, but right up to the moment before the plant’s decision to reject the light, the shade-seeking inclination had been in a state of total dormancy. 

The plant is obviously our stand-in for Adam here, and yet in the case of Adam we’ve ruled out all four conclusions. Which, as far as I can tell, leaves us not just with a mystery but with a paradox. Is there a Number 5 I’m missing?


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> the power of contrary choice.



That is where rationality spontaneity comes in. As an upright man Adam inclined to good, but was not confirmed in that state; he was natural -- of the earth earthy. The probation set forth in the forbidden tree tested him to see whether he would choose God or himself as his chief good and supreme judge of good and evil. He had the power to incline towards earthy things, and that is what he chose.

Having now come full circle again back to rational spontaneity, I hope all the elements are now adequately explained so as to show that there is no "problem" here.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> the power of contrary choice.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That is where rationality spontaneity comes in. As an upright man Adam inclined to good, but was not confirmed in that state; he was natural -- of the earth earthy. The probation set forth in the forbidden tree tested him to see whether he would choose God or himself as his chief good and supreme judge of good and evil. He had the power to incline towards earthy things, and that is what he chose.
> 
> Having now come full circle again back to rational spontaneity, I hope all the elements are now adequately explained so as to show that there is no "problem" here.
Click to expand...



I wasn't aware that you were a proponent of contrary choice. I don't share your belief in contrary choice, but I do understand your reasoning now. Contrary choice, as a hypothetical construct, does indeed close the gap I was pointing to...


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> Contrary choice, as a hypothetical construct, does indeed close the gap I was pointing to...



Granting that you said you don't agree with it, I still have to take issue with saying it is an "hypothetical construct." It happened! Adam chose contrary to the uprightness with which he was created. That is one of the basic facts of the fall, as Turretin has observed.

Problems arise, I think, when the bondage of the will in a state of depravity is used to define the nature of the will in all conditions. The Westminster Confession wisely defines the freedom of the will as it exists in all states before descending into the particulars of how it operates in each and every state.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> Contrary choice, as a hypothetical construct, does indeed close the gap I was pointing to...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Granting that you said you don't agree with it, I still have to take issue with saying it is an "hypothetical construct." It happened! Adam chose contrary to the uprightness with which he was created. That is one of the basic facts of the fall, as Turretin has observed.
> 
> Problems arise, I think, when the bondage of the will in a state of depravity is used to define the nature of the will in all conditions. The Westminster Confession wisely defines the freedom of the will as it exists in all states before descending into the particulars of how it operates in each and every state.
Click to expand...



One arrives at contrary choice through a line of exegetical reasoning, and it's not a line of reasoning all Reformed theologians accept.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> One arrives at contrary choice through a line of exegetical reasoning, and it's not a line of reasoning all Reformed theologians accept.



Granted, there have been psychological theories which create problems in regard to the prima facie account of the fall; and granted, there have been theologians in the reformed tradition who have adopted those theories and tried to solve the problems of their own making.


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## Justified

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> One arrives at contrary choice through a line of exegetical reasoning, and it's not a line of reasoning all Reformed theologians accept.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Granted, there have been psychological theories which create problems in regard to the prima facie account of the fall; and granted, there have been theologians in the reformed tradition who have adopted those theories and tried to solve the problems of their own making.
Click to expand...


If you will allow me, Rev. Winzer, I'd like to ask a question of how you understand the compatibility with contrary choice and God's decreeing everything that comes to pass. Firstly, obviously the problem is not some sort of absolute necessity; God's foreordaining all that comes to pass is not incompatible with his foreordaining being contingent, insofar as God could have been decreed otherwise. However, there still seems to be some sort of necessity-- a necessity of consequence-- between God's willing and its coming to pass. God's willing person P to perform action X at time T makes it such that he will indeed do such. Again, it is still contingent in the sense that God could have willed otherwise. But what about the person or agent; if God wills that I do X, do I really have the option of doing not X? Does primary and secondary causes come into play somehow?

Any help you could offer would be helpful. I am just trying to figure out how to understand this; I have great interest in this particular subject.


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## MW

Justified said:


> Any help you could offer would be helpful. I am just trying to figure out how to understand this; I have great interest in this particular subject.



Everything God decrees comes to pass. He decreed whatsoever shall come to pass, and being decreed they must come to pass. This much is "necessary."

But then the way they come to pass might be "necessary" or "contingent" depending on the nature of their second cause. To borrow from Twisse, necessary things come to pass necessarily and contingent things come to pass contingently. So with Adam's fall, the contingency of choice was decreed as equally as the outcome of the choice. His ability to choose otherwise was as necessary as the choice he made because both were decreed. The decree is so exhaustive that it takes in the whole complexity of choice with all its options and motivations.

To look at it internally, God's decree to permit Adam to fall was no part of the consideration which entered into Adam's rational process. The "necessity" of the decree exercised no influence on his motivations. His rational motivation operated freely without any necessitating control. He acted as himself in every way.


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## earl40

Knowing Adam was created mutable would he have been judged a sinner if he contemplated eating the fruit without eating it? I find it interesting Our Lord tested Adam through satan with something naturally good, and satan also tempted Jesus him with the same natural good.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> Granting that you said you don't agree with it, I still have to take issue with saying it is an "hypothetical construct." It happened! Adam chose contrary to the uprightness with which he was created. That is one of the basic facts of the fall, as Turretin has observed.



It’s one thing to say that contrary choice is taught by Scripture. This is a debatable assertion, but we’ll say for the sake of discussion that contrary choice is a Biblical fact.

It’s something else entirely, though, to say that contrary choice isn’t a problem. It’s very much a problem.

Contrary choice simply doesn’t make sense. I’ll try to spell this out in the clearest and quickest way I can, although I’ll note that others have done it far better than I can do.

Let’s start with some assumptions. I’ll number them so you can tell me exactly where I’ve gone wrong. By the way when I use the word “choice” I have in mind only those choices that are voluntary and sufficiently knowledgeable and rational.

1) Every choice must be driven by a motive. Without a motive, we’re stuck with permanent indecision. 

2) All motives come from inclinations. 

3) We don’t choose our inclinations, and hence we don’t choose our motives. 

4) Temptation itself isn’t a motive. If someone tempts me to eat a bowl of broken glass, explaining to me how shiny and transparent and generally wondrous glass is, I’ll merely laugh at him, because I have no inclination, and hence no motive, for eating glass.

5) Some temptations are compound ones, and in order for these temptations to be potentially successful, they need to target multiple inclinations. For example: If someone takes me to the fence of my neighbor’s orchard and shows me a beautiful apple, and if this person tells me to climb over the fence and grab the apple and eat it, I’ll need multiple motives to do what he wishes. First I’ll need the motive to eat the apple. I’ve got that one – I have an inclination, and hence a potential motive, to eat delicious fruit. But I’ll also need an inclination to disobey the laws of God and man. If I have no such inclination, I won’t eat the apple. My desire for the apple would thus be useless to the tempter. Another quick one: If someone asks me to join him on a one-way trip to Mars, and I’ve always wanted to go to Mars, I’ll turn him down if I have no inclination to leave my family. I’ll need at least a slight inclination to leave my family before I can agree to go on the voyage.

So Adam's choice presents us with a huge difficulty. When the serpent tempted Adam with the fruit, Adam needed not just a motive for eating the fruit (which he had) but also a motive for disobeying God. Yet he couldn’t have had such a motive without an inclination to disobey. 

Rational spontaneity does nothing to solve this problem. Adam couldn’t have chosen to disobey in accordance with his “true self” unless his true self, prior to his decision to disobey, had been inclined to disobedience. And he couldn’t have inclined himself to disobedience, and made an inclination to disobedience part of his true self, without a sinful inclination to incline himself to sin and to make it part of his true self in the first place. It’s a vicious circle.


----------



## MW

ThomasT said:


> 3) We don’t choose our inclinations, and hence we don’t choose our motives.



We do not presently choose our inclinations, but our inclinations are the result of a past course of rational choices. If it were not so, no person could be inclined to new directions. It would also entail a passive element in the human constitution which makes the consciousness of choosing a deception, since the choice itself would be governed by an inclination which does not genuinely arise from the person.

When you later deny that spontaneity solves the problem, you are correct in a sense, that is, it cannot solve the artificial problem created by a false psychology. But if spontaneity were accepted in the full sense, it accounts for the possibility of new directions. When this is taken in with mutability and probation, and with temptation offering inducement, all the elements are in place to explain the fall.

Your objections keep bouncing off one element onto another, but take them in their cumulative effect and there is no basis to your objections.


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## MW

earl40 said:


> Knowing Adam was created mutable would he have been judged a sinner if he contemplated eating the fruit without eating it? I find it interesting Our Lord tested Adam through satan with something naturally good, and satan also tempted Jesus him with the same natural good.



Once unbelief was born the act of eating followed as a matter of course. The two go hand in hand. I don't think they can be separated. On the other side, the mere contemplation of fruit which was indifferent in its own nature by an upright being would not have constituted an "evil cogitation." Part of the positive benefit of the probation would have been moral maturity as he contemplated his dependence on the Life-giver and Law-giver, and this maturity includes thinking through ramifications.


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## earl40

MW said:


> Once unbelief was born the act of eating followed as a matter of course. The two go hand in hand. I don't think they can be separated. On the other side, the mere contemplation of fruit which was indifferent in its own nature by an upright being would not have constituted an "evil cogitation." Part of the positive benefit of the probation would have been moral maturity as he contemplated his dependence on the Life-giver and Law-giver, and this maturity includes thinking through ramifications.



The contemplation that the fruit "was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise" is interesting. This seems to be a natural inclination over the spiritual inclination which only proceeds from The Mouth of God. I understand we maybe should not enter into the thinking donum superadditum but that concept appears to me to be unavoidable because even a naturally good Adam needed grace to attain to the spiritual good Our Lord commanded.


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## TheOldCourse

earl40 said:


> MW said:
> 
> 
> 
> Once unbelief was born the act of eating followed as a matter of course. The two go hand in hand. I don't think they can be separated. On the other side, the mere contemplation of fruit which was indifferent in its own nature by an upright being would not have constituted an "evil cogitation." Part of the positive benefit of the probation would have been moral maturity as he contemplated his dependence on the Life-giver and Law-giver, and this maturity includes thinking through ramifications.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The contemplation that the fruit "was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise" is interesting. This seems to be a natural inclination over the spiritual inclination which only proceeds from The Mouth of God. I understand we maybe should not enter into the thinking donum superadditum but that concept appears to me to be unavoidable because even a naturally good Adam needed grace to attain to the spiritual good Our Lord commanded.
Click to expand...


No, we can speak about him not being given that persevering and confirming grace that was promised upon fulfilment of the covenant, but he did not need added grace to fulfill the Lord's commands. While the Reformed have rejected the Arminian contention that human responsibility implies human ability in the fallen, they have held that this does obtain in Adam's case where he had not lost the freedom from necessity by guilt. For instance Zanchi:



> Second, the punishment added to the sin even more confirms the same: Otherwise (says God) "at the hour that you eat it, you will certainly die." But why the threat if it stood not free to Adam to keep or not keep the precept? Although we too are threatened with eternal death, if we do not keep the law; and unless he effects by his grace that we fulfill it, we cannot fulfill, yet there is a difference, as I said, between our state of affairs and Adam's. The fact that we cannot keep the law and on the contrary cannot but transgress it, adheres to us as guilt because we lost in Adam the freedom from necessity. For that reason, whether we can or cannot obey, the just punishment awaits us, and therefore God rightly adds his threats. But Adam was rightous and just so that he could obey the law of God if he willed; and consequently if he would not obey, the just punishment was promulgated. So even the punishment added to the law convinces that Adam was completely free from the necessity of doing or not doing good or bad. (from _The Free Choice of our First Parents Before the Fall._)



I would also note that when Zanchi states that Adam was completely free from necessity, he elsewhere elaborates that he is both free from external necessity and coercion, but also internal necessity springing from concupiscence by which he would be "impelled or even attracted towards the bad".


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## MW

earl40 said:


> I understand we maybe should not enter into the thinking donum superadditum but that concept appears to me to be unavoidable because even a naturally good Adam needed grace to attain to the spiritual good Our Lord commanded.



According to those who espouse it, the superadditum was something given to Adam to enable communion with God, and it was something he lost by the fall; it was not an hypothetical thing which might have caused him to stand.

Its falsehood lies in supposing there is a deficiency in the creation of man as the image of God, as if communion with God could not be enjoyed in this state. It is also used to support Rome's unbiblical teaching of infused righteousness.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> 3) We don’t choose our inclinations, and hence we don’t choose our motives.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We do not presently choose our inclinations, but our inclinations are the result of a past course of rational choices. If it were not so, no person could be inclined to new directions. It would also entail a passive element in the human constitution which makes the consciousness of choosing a deception, since the choice itself would be governed by an inclination which does not genuinely arise from the person.
> 
> When you later deny that spontaneity solves the problem, you are correct in a sense, that is, it cannot solve the artificial problem created by a false psychology. But if spontaneity were accepted in the full sense, it accounts for the possibility of new directions. When this is taken in with mutability and probation, and with temptation offering inducement, all the elements are in place to explain the fall.
> 
> Your objections keep bouncing off one element onto another, but take them in their cumulative effect and there is no basis to your objections.
Click to expand...


You said that our inclinations are a result of past rational choices. This is true in a narrow sense but also highly misleading, and I think it forms the heart of our disagreement. In a nutshell, what I’m saying is that rational choice can change our behavior but not our nature.

We’re born with all kinds of terrible inclinations (selfishness, hatred, jealousy, etc). Society uses its considerable influence to suppress these inclinations. But it doesn’t accomplish this very important task by calling upon us to find new inclinations in place of the old ones. Rather it gives us practical reasons to cooperate with its scheme of suppression. Society warns us from an early age that we face prison and other unpleasant penalties if we choose not to suppress the inclinations it disapproves of.

Our suppression of certain inclinations is successful only because we were born with the counterbalancing inclinations to hate social ostracism, to fear the loss of our personal freedom, to loathe the grim specter of the gallows, and to abhor all the other disagreeable penalties society can impose on our self-interested desires. If we didn’t have these socially useful inclinations (love of life and freedom, etc), society would cease to exist. Society would have no leverage over us and we’d all be monsters. So society (and the way our reason responds to society’s threats) succeeds in its limited design but doesn’t change us fundamentally – the inclinations we were born with are the ones we’ll die with.

The point here is that rational choice can’t give us new inclinations; it can only make us act on one existing inclination instead of another. When we move in a new direction, it isn’t because our reason has created a new inclination. It’s because (for example) the penalty for tax fraud has increased from a mere fine to a long prison sentence. We’re still the same old tax-cheat in terms of our moral nature. The difference is that we can live with a fine but not with prison. And that’s not because our reason has simply decreed it to be so. It’s because our reason has recognized and accommodated our inclination to love freedom, an inclination we simply possess but never chose.

And so if Adam moved in a new direction, it wasn’t because he created a new inclination but rather because he acted on an existing one as a result of a change in external influences. 

But without sinful inclinations this wouldn’t have been possible, regardless of the external influences. Adam could have been physically forced by external circumstances to eat the fruit, his mouth moving at the whim of an evil spirit or a powerful alien. But he couldn’t be forced, with rational spontaneity at work, to desire to disobey God. He had to choose this himself, without force. And he couldn’t have chosen this without an inclination to do so. Adam had no “true self” apart from the nature he was given.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> We’re born with all kinds of terrible inclinations (selfishness, hatred, jealousy, etc).



The biblical and reformed doctrine is total depravity, that a person is corrupted throughout the whole of his being, not that he is as utterly wicked as he could be. A person is born with the seeds of vices in their sinful fallen nature, but they are not born with those vices; they develop if and when the person gives himself to them.

What you say about society is true. The good providence of God uses it as a restraint on the sinful inclinations of men. But men choose whether the society is going to exercise that restraint on them. In a court room one might find two kinds of people: one of them is seeking to maintain judgment and justice while the other is a convicted criminal. Sinful inclination cannot explain why one has chosen one path while the other has opted for a different path.

To come back to Adam, your problem is your problem. One school of thought accepts the fact that an upright man had the power to choose contrary to his upright character, and faces none of the problems you raise. When a philosophical theory creates problems for understanding the biblical record I would suggest the philosophy has ceased to serve as the handmaid to theology.


----------



## earl40

MW said:


> earl40 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I understand we maybe should not enter into the thinking donum superadditum but that concept appears to me to be unavoidable because even a naturally good Adam needed grace to attain to the spiritual good Our Lord commanded.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> According to those who espouse it, the superadditum was something given to Adam to enable communion with God, and it was something he lost by the fall; it was not an hypothetical thing which might have caused him to stand.
> 
> Its falsehood lies in supposing there is a deficiency in the creation of man as the image of God, as if communion with God could not be enjoyed in this state. It is also used to support Rome's unbiblical teaching of infused righteousness.
Click to expand...


Not willing to fall into the trap of Rome which I have been gratefully delivered from I wish to ask if permitted....Was pre fall Adam filled "above measure" (WCF 8:3) as Our Lord was while He was on His mission here? If not is this amount or type of grace, less than "beyond measure", maybe a reason why Adam fell? In other words, it is not super added grace, but a lack of grace given that explains why Adam was unable to pass God's test?

I can see there is a difference between regenerate peccable (mutable morality) man before he is in glory, and when he is impeccable (immutable morality) in glory. 

I think I have hit that wall of mystery in that to even ask denies how Our Federal head in the fall was lacking something (knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness)which of course I believe to be not true. For Adam did have knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness.


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## MW

earl40 said:


> Was pre fall Adam filled "above measure" (WCF 8:3) as Our Lord was while He was on His mission here? If not is this amount or type of grace, less than "beyond measure", maybe a reason why Adam fell? In other words, it is not super added grace, but a lack of grace given that explains why Adam was unable to pass God's test?



It suffices to say that Adam was upright and natural, and was probated as such. Personal obedience was required. He was capable in and of himself to stand. He chose otherwise.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> We’re born with all kinds of terrible inclinations (selfishness, hatred, jealousy, etc).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The biblical and reformed doctrine is total depravity, that a person is corrupted throughout the whole of his being, not that he is as utterly wicked as he could be. A person is born with the seeds of vices in their sinful fallen nature, but they are not born with those vices; they develop if and when the person gives himself to them.
> 
> What you say about society is true. The good providence of God uses it as a restraint on the sinful inclinations of men. But men choose whether the society is going to exercise that restraint on them. In a court room one might find two kinds of people: one of them is seeking to maintain judgment and justice while the other is a convicted criminal. Sinful inclination cannot explain why one has chosen one path while the other has opted for a different path.
> 
> To come back to Adam, your problem is your problem. One school of thought accepts the fact that an upright man had the power to choose contrary to his upright character, and faces none of the problems you raise. When a philosophical theory creates problems for understanding the biblical record I would suggest the philosophy has ceased to serve as the handmaid to theology.
Click to expand...


The fact that a) we all have criminal inclinations and b) not all of us are criminals doesn’t take us any closer to explaining how Adam sinned. The reason (or rather partial reason) some of us murder and some of us don’t is that our inclination to murder co-exists with our inclination not to murder. We have an inclination to disobey the law (man’s law) and an inclination to obey the law (through fear of punishment and desire for social approval). Yet Adam’s inclination to obey God didn’t co-exist with a desire to disobey Him.

But stepping away from Adam for second to respond to your observation about the world being divided into law-abiders and law-breakers, yet all of us, law-abiders and law-breakers alike, being inclined to break the law: Why are some of us criminals and not others? It isn’t because of rational choice. Rational choice, when it’s working correctly, serves only to affirm the strongest inclination we experience at any given moment. We don’t simply choose to behave one way or another independently of our inclinations. 

Our inclinations can be – and easily are – inflamed or suppressed by natural conditions, internal and external. It’s the differences in natural conditions between persons that determine, ultimately, why I’m a criminal (say) and you’re not. These natural conditions are endless. Here’s a partial list of the questions we have to ask in terms of natural conditions when we want to determine why someone committed a crime.

1) Was he (the criminal) raised to fear the law? For how long – for just his childhood but not his adolescence? Was he raised to fear the law at home but not at school? At school but not (God forbid) at church? Did he associate with people who knew no fear of the law? We know that the way a person is raised strongly correlates to how he behaves as an adult.

2) What’s his genetic makeup? A study in Finland recently identified two “violence” genes. The study found that persons with these genes are 13 times more likely to commit violent crime than persons without them. 

3) Was he abused as a child? Child abuse very clearly correlates to adult crime.

4) Is he a male or female? If he’s a male, he’s more likely, statistically, to commit crimes, male hormones being more provocative of violence than females’.

5) How educated is he? Higher levels of education correlate to lower rates of crime, and lower levels of education to higher rates of crime. The same is true with intelligence.

6) How healthy is his diet? Even poor nutrition has been correlated to crime. 

We could go on. The point is that natural conditions, external and internal, congenital and environmental, inflame or suppress our inclinations, and at any given moment they create a very complex mix, constantly shifting, of potential motives for our behavior. It’s no accident that the motive we “choose” to follow is always the one that’s derived from our strongest momentary inclination.

Rational choice merely meets the conditions that are necessary for us to act in ways that can be said to express our true nature (and by “nature” I mean our mix of inclinations). And Adam’s true nature contained no inclination to sin. Adam’s sin is thus utterly inexplicable. So to say that Adam’s sin is simply “my problem” strikes me as wishful thinking. There’s a queue a mile long of very intelligent and thoughtful people who look at Adam’s sin the same way I do. And some of these people, incidentally, happen to be Reformed theologians.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> The fact that a) we all have criminal inclinations





ThomasT said:


> yet all of us, law-abiders and law-breakers alike, being inclined to break the law:



Why do you think all are inclined to break the law? Self-preservation and social harmony are civil virtues that the flesh as fallen from God might incline towards.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> Rational choice merely meets the conditions that are necessary for us to act in ways that can be said to express our true nature



Your view of social conditions is nothing more than the sensualistic theory and serves to deny the biblical teaching of rationality and responsibility. People in the worst of conditions have risen above them.


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## earl40

MW said:


> It suffices to say that Adam was upright and natural, and was probated as such. Personal obedience was required. He was capable in and of himself to stand. He chose otherwise.



So was Adam not upright and spiritual? Or was the spiritual aspect not attained because he fell? For it is common to say that Adam died spiritually when he sinned that day.


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## MW

earl40 said:


> So was Adam not upright and spiritual? Or was the spiritual aspect not attained because he fell? For it is common to say that Adam died spiritually when he sinned that day.



"Spiritual" is being used in a different sense there; it is more a reference to his holy union and communion with God. When I say "natural" and "spiritual" I am specifically thinking in terms of the eschatological contrast of 1 Cor. 15, which can be interchanged by earthy and heavenly. While Adam was "spiritual" in the sense that he enjoyed upright communion with God, it was still after the earthy and natural order of things.


----------



## earl40

MW said:


> earl40 said:
> 
> 
> 
> So was Adam not upright and spiritual? Or was the spiritual aspect not attained because he fell? For it is common to say that Adam died spiritually when he sinned that day.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "Spiritual" is being used in a different sense there; it is more a reference to his holy union and communion with God. When I say "natural" and "spiritual" I am specifically thinking in terms of the eschatological contrast of 1 Cor. 15, which can be interchanged by earthy and heavenly. While Adam was "spiritual" in the sense that he enjoyed upright communion with God, it was still after the earthy and natural order of things.
Click to expand...


Thank you.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> The fact that a) we all have criminal inclinations
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> yet all of us, law-abiders and law-breakers alike, being inclined to break the law:
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Why do you think all are inclined to break the law? Self-preservation and social harmony are civil virtues that the flesh as fallen from God might incline towards.
Click to expand...


Just to be clear, I agree that most of us do incline more strongly toward obeying the law than disobeying it. But this is only because of forces we don’t control that encourage the law-abiding inclinations we have and discourage the ones that without social suppression would make us law-breakers. If we were all raised to be criminals or terrorists, our situation with respect to the law would probably be very different. 

It’s true that many people have risen above their circumstances. But this isn’t because they were able to reject the strongest inclinations acting on them at any given moment; it’s because the circumstances that would have normally made for a law-breaker (child abuse, etc) in these lucky few were ineffective, thanks (for example) to an unusually strong counterbalancing inclination in their nature to live in harmony with society. (Call this “natural grace” if you like.) These men didn’t make their choice to obey the law in some kind of autonomous “choice room” sealed off from their inclinations.


----------



## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> Rational choice merely meets the conditions that are necessary for us to act in ways that can be said to express our true nature
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Your view of social conditions is nothing more than the sensualistic theory and serves to deny the biblical teaching of rationality and responsibility. People in the worst of conditions have risen above them.
Click to expand...


We can affirm a Reformed understanding of responsibility without denying that man is a slave to his nature (his inclinations). I think we’re in line with Scripture when we say that most men have an inclination to avoid pain and that rational men know that defiance of society’s laws is a major source of the pain we seek to avoid. But here rational choice (as always) is simply rubber-stamping an inclination we find ourselves in possession of and that society happened to have reinforced in us.


----------



## MW

ThomasT said:


> But this is only because of forces we don’t control



So in the end you have man governed by inclinations which are under the control of external forces, and with no freedom to choose otherwise.

Your view, though, binds you to believe that you could not have chosen otherwise but to think what you think. Since your thoughts have been necessitated by inclinations which are not under your control but bound by external forces, there is no reason to accept your view as a genuine rational belief. It is self-refuting.


----------



## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> But this is only because of forces we don’t control
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So in the end you have man governed by inclinations which are under the control of external forces, and with no freedom to choose otherwise.
> 
> Your view, though, binds you to believe that you could not have chosen otherwise but to think what you think. Since your thoughts have been necessitated by inclinations which are not under your control but bound by external forces, there is no reason to accept your view as a genuine rational belief. It is self-refuting.
Click to expand...


A point of clarification: Our actions are determined by both external (social and physical) forces and internal forces (our inclinations), not just external ones. I’ve been emphasizing external forces only to explain why people who may be more or less similar in their inclinations sometimes act in radically different ways. 

You seem to be saying that your beliefs are reliable because it was your choices that affirmed them. But this can be true only if by “reliable beliefs” we mean beliefs that are “authentically yours” rather than someone else’s. And yet authenticity doesn't make something true. Moreover, the reliability of reason itself has no necessary dependence on choice. Why you seem to think that a brain can’t be capable of reasoning properly unless its processes are directed by some “choice faculty” that no one has ever even defined coherently, much less located, is a mystery to me. 

A rational outcome is one that follows rules of logic and evidence. Our brain can produce these outcomes even when we dream. The fact that something – the brain – works on its own doesn’t make its outcomes – rational belief – unreliable. 

But let’s say for a moment that you’re right, that we can have no confidence in any belief that’s not been approved by this mysterious choice function you talk about. But then how do we know that this choice function is itself reliable? Just because you made what you thought was a rational decision, independently of deterministic forces, doesn’t mean your decision was rational. We choose to act on irrational beliefs every day, all the while believing that we’re acting rationally. We have no power, within ourselves, to simply “know” that a decision we made was rational. No creature has rational infallibility. 

The truth is that all knowledge is unreliable, free will or no free will. Gödel made this clear in his Incompleteness Theorem. So you’re stuck with the same unreliability I am. Perfectly reliable knowledge of anything requires total knowledge of everything. And only God has this kind of knowledge.


----------



## MW

ThomasT said:


> A point of clarification: Our actions are determined by both external (social and physical) forces and internal forces (our inclinations), not just external ones.



But you have stated we don't choose our inclinations. So at no point in the process do you give man any freedom of choice. According to you man only chooses according to his inclinations over which he has no control, whilst external forces are shaping his inclinations.



ThomasT said:


> You seem to be saying that your beliefs are reliable because it was your choices that affirmed them.



I have only spoken about the rationality of the belief. To be rational it must be such that the person could freely adjudge the facts. The reason seeks out the truth just as the will seeks out the good. If you take away freedom to choose the good you equally take away freedom to reason according to truth. Voluntariness is basic to the process.



ThomasT said:


> But let’s say for a moment that you’re right, that we can have no confidence in any belief that’s not been approved by this mysterious choice function you talk about.



There is nothing mysterious about it. To be mine it must be voluntary, and because it is mine I am responsible for it. According to your theory you are not responsible for what you believe. Outward conditions are moving you; you are not moving yourself.

Your subsequent challenge proceeds on the conflation of rationality and reliability. Man is fallen. That accounts for unreliabilty. At the same time it is a free and rational process in which the fallen man is engaged. That is what makes his choices his own for which he is accountable.


----------



## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> A point of clarification: Our actions are determined by both external (social and physical) forces and internal forces (our inclinations), not just external ones.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But you have stated we don't choose our inclinations. So at no point in the process do you give man any freedom of choice. According to you man only chooses according to his inclinations over which he has no control, whilst external forces are shaping his inclinations.
> 
> 
> 
> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> You seem to be saying that your beliefs are reliable because it was your choices that affirmed them.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I have only spoken about the rationality of the belief. To be rational it must be such that the person could freely adjudge the facts. The reason seeks out the truth just as the will seeks out the good. If you take away freedom to choose the good you equally take away freedom to reason according to truth. Voluntariness is basic to the process.
> 
> 
> 
> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> But let’s say for a moment that you’re right, that we can have no confidence in any belief that’s not been approved by this mysterious choice function you talk about.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> There is nothing mysterious about it. To be mine it must be voluntary, and because it is mine I am responsible for it. According to your theory you are not responsible for what you believe. Outward conditions are moving you; you are not moving yourself.
> 
> Your subsequent challenge proceeds on the conflation of rationality and reliability. Man is fallen. That accounts for unreliabilty. At the same time it is a free and rational process in which the fallen man is engaged. That is what makes his choices his own for which he is accountable.
Click to expand...


It's true that the kind of helplessness I'm describing leaves us with mere free agency. But the bad things we do as a (partial) result of the way external forces have shaped our inclinations wouldn't have happened in the first place without bad inclinations. And these bad inclinations aren't themselves a product of external forces. They represent our real nature. They weren't placed in us by society. 

Is this a miserable condition I'm describing for humanity? Yes. But your solution remains maddeningly elusive to me. This contrary choice you talk about strikes me as a kind of circle with no real cause. I'm at a loss to explain, as are many others who've looked closely at contrary choice, how a choice can be made that doesn’t represent the strongest inclination acting on us at the moment we made the choice. A contrary choice is a decision. But a decision made on the basis of what? Why do I choose not to murder? Because murder “seems bad” to me and I "want" to do good? But why do I want to do good? 

Every choice requires a motive, and voluntariness isn’t a motive itself. One can’t explain a choice simply by saying it was voluntary.


----------



## MW

ThomasT said:


> It's true that the kind of helplessness I'm describing leaves us with mere free agency. But the bad things we do as a (partial) result of the way external forces have shaped our inclinations wouldn't have happened in the first place without bad inclinations. And these bad inclinations aren't themselves a product of external forces. They represent our real nature. They weren't placed in us by society.



This "real nature" is in all sinners, yet all sinners do not choose the same things. You are unable to give a genuine account for why one sinner might seek to uphold the law while another breaks it. You can only fall back on something external to the person in order to describe the differences. There is something passive and animalistic in the "helplessness" you describe. There is nothing "wilful" in it on a personal and individual level. It is not true "human" helplessness.

Man's depravity and inability is spiritual. Man's reason and will functioning properly in relation to temporal things is used in Scripture to prove man's inexcusableness when it comes to the evil use of his reason and will in things pertaining to God.



ThomasT said:


> Why do I choose not to murder? Because murder “seems bad” to me and I "want" to do good? But why do I want to do good?



Man is made to do good. His powers of reason and volition are made to function this way. It is the deceitful heart which presents the lie as truth and evil as good. We need go no farther than the explanation which the Bible provides.



ThomasT said:


> Every choice requires a motive, and voluntariness isn’t a motive itself. One can’t explain a choice simply by saying it was voluntary.



The rationality of the choice requires a motive. Voluntariness is the essence of the choice. Evil fathers give good gifts to their children. Why? This is their flesh and blood for which they feel a binding affection. It may also be that their own honour is tied up with it; and there may be many other ulterior motives factoring into it. But the giving of a fish or bread as opposed to a scorpion or a stone is a conscious act of their own choosing and flows voluntarily from their own individual person. They do not do it to the glory of God, and it does not flow from a heart purified by faith, and is therefore a sinful act; but so far as the formal act is concerned it is something good which they voluntarily choose to do.


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## rickclayfan

@ThomasT

I believe the heart of the issue here and the difficulty that you possess in understanding the fall of Adam lies in the fact that we assume that simplistic explanations of our actions and nature are indeed true. We must understand that the soul is an unfathomable abyss. We do it injustice by making such simplistic explanations of it. We must subject our reasonings and understanding to God's word. Who are we to trust more--fallible human comprehension of the soul or the infallible testimony of God? If we are unwilling to do so, we do so to our harm. We cannot continue with the premise that our understanding of our soul should subject biblical doctrines to it. 

In regard to the Edwardsian interpretation of the will and its actions, read Cunningham's (Historical Theology) discussion of it in the chapter about the will. His view subtly makes the will a neutral power that is governed by our inclinations. That is not the view of Scripture.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> The rationality of the choice requires a motive. Voluntariness is the essence of the choice. Evil fathers give good gifts to their children. Why? This is their flesh and blood for which they feel a binding affection. It may also be that their own honour is tied up with it; and there may be many other ulterior motives factoring into it. But the giving of a fish or bread as opposed to a scorpion or a stone is a conscious act of their own choosing and flows voluntarily from their own individual person. They do not do it to the glory of God, and it does not flow from a heart purified by faith, and is therefore a sinful act; but so far as the formal act is concerned it is something good which they voluntarily choose to do.



Your fish/stone hypothetical is highly useful; it takes us straight to the center of our disagreement.

Let’s say we have two fathers, Father A and Father B. Father A gives his son a fish. Father B, who has the same power of reason (and the same economic means) as Father A, gives his son a stone. Why are their choices different?

You said that Father A has a motive (honour) for giving his son a fish. We’ll agree, then, that a motive exists for Father A’s choice. We’ll give Father B a motive as well for his own (evil) choice. We’ll say he hates his son because the son reminds him of his estranged ex-wife. We’ll go a step further in our scenario and say that Father A hates his own son, too, and that he hates the child for the same reason Father B hates his (the son reminds him of his ex-wife). Finally, we'll say that Father B, like Father A, has an inclination for honourable behavior.

So now both Father A and Father B have motives for their choices. But we’re stuck with some obvious problems. 

1) Why did Father A suppress his hatred of both son and ex-wife and choose to give his son a good gift? In other words, why did he allow his sense of honour to overrule his hatred?

2) Why did Father B _not_ suppress his hatred and instead choose to give his son an evil gift? Why did he allow his hatred to overrule his sense of honour?

The answer can’t be either reason or voluntariness. Reason merely explains to us the implications, moral and practical, of our behavior, and reason did the same work for both men. Voluntariness can’t be the explanation, either. There are two problems with using voluntariness as an explanation. First, both men made voluntary choices. Second, voluntariness is merely a particular power of choice and not an explanation for the choice itself. 

You can argue that each father made a choice that was true to himself. Great – but why does one have a true self that suppresses hate and the other have a true self that indulges it?


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## ThomasT

rickclayfan said:


> @ThomasT
> 
> I believe the heart of the issue here and the difficulty that you possess in understanding the fall of Adam lies in the fact that we assume that simplistic explanations of our actions and nature are indeed true. We must understand that the soul is an unfathomable abyss. We do it injustice by making such simplistic explanations of it. We must subject our reasonings and understanding to God's word. Who are we to trust more--fallible human comprehension of the soul or the infallible testimony of God? If we are unwilling to do so, we do so to our harm. We cannot continue with the premise that our understanding of our soul should subject biblical doctrines to it.
> 
> In regard to the Edwardsian interpretation of the will and its actions, read Cunningham's (Historical Theology) discussion of it in the chapter about the will. His view subtly makes the will a neutral power that is governed by our inclinations. That is not the view of Scripture.



If the soul is an "unfathomable abyss" (and it clearly is; we agree here), why wouldn't contrary choice, which resides (assuming it exists) in the soul, not be anything but an unfathomable mystery itself? Why pretend that it makes any sense? Even if it's true it still makes no sense. I've been arguing that contrary choice is inexplicable, not that it absolutely must be false.


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## rickclayfan

ThomasT said:


> If the soul is an "unfathomable abyss" (and it clearly is; we agree here), why wouldn't contrary choice, which resides (assuming it exists) in the soul, not be anything but an unfathomable mystery itself? Why pretend that it makes any sense? Even if it's true it still makes no sense. I've been arguing that contrary choice is inexplicable, not that it absolutely must be false.



I agree that it is inexplicable. However, reading your previous comments, it seems as if you inflexibly hold to the notion that choices cannot be made with a previous inclination (e.g., a sinful choice cannot be performed without a sinful inclination). To me it seems too much of an over-simplification of the nature of our choices to hold to this notion. I understand this is how Edwards sought to explain the bondage of our will. However, that is merely a human conception (not to mention his views on original sin, which were somewhat problematic). Not to diminish his great worth to the Church, he seems to have entertained too much freedom trying to sophisticatedly and inductively explain some things. Where human reason cannot reach, it safest to submit to the testimony of Scripture (why it possesses such authority is a different discussion).

What Scripture teaches in regard to the Fall: 1) Adam was created holy and righteous. 2) He fell into sin. How we can explain this, I do not know; and I do not think it is wise to dissect it with the dim light of reason. If we were arguing using objective facts, the case would be different. But here we are conversing in reference to something very shadowy and incomprehensible, the human soul and its faculties.

This may be of some help: our immutable standing in salvation, our perseverance, is grounded on Christ. Adam stood on a mutable ground, his free will.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> Let’s say we have two fathers, Father A and Father B. Father A gives his son a fish. Father B, who has the same power of reason (and the same economic means) as Father A, gives his son a stone. Why are their choices different?



Indeed, why are they different? This is your inexplicable dilemma. You cannot explain why they are different without having recourse to external forces. But if external forces make the difference you cannot hold the individual responsible for his actions.

A whole series of choices has preceded your scenario and made the fathers what they are at the moment they come to this particular scenario. And their strongest inclination to act in one way or another is owing to this series of choices. If their previous choices were not an originating factor in their attitudes and behaviours you could not say that they are responsible for the "hate" you have ascribed to them.

Moreover, with the power to originate action, the fathers might contemplate the moral evil of hating their own flesh and blood, and be moved by that moral consideration to begin acting in a way that befits their relation.

You state this as a problem because you refuse to accept the obvious solution to your problem. And knowing your previous choices I can almost predict that you will come back without anything substantial to the solution except to say it is a problem you cannot reconcile with your necessarian scheme. But as I also grant you have the power to originate action within yourself, I hope better things of you, so that we do not have to keep going around in circles.

Reactions: Like 1


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> Let’s say we have two fathers, Father A and Father B. Father A gives his son a fish. Father B, who has the same power of reason (and the same economic means) as Father A, gives his son a stone. Why are their choices different?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Indeed, why are they different? This is your inexplicable dilemma. You cannot explain why they are different without having recourse to external forces. But if external forces make the difference you cannot hold the individual responsible for his actions.
> 
> A whole series of choices has preceded your scenario and made the fathers what they are at the moment they come to this particular scenario. And their strongest inclination to act in one way or another is owing to this series of choices. If their previous choices were not an originating factor in their attitudes and behaviours you could not say that they are responsible for the "hate" you have ascribed to them.
> 
> Moreover, with the power to originate action, the fathers might contemplate the moral evil of hating their own flesh and blood, and be moved by that moral consideration to begin acting in a way that befits their relation.
> 
> You state this as a problem because you refuse to accept the obvious solution to your problem. And knowing your previous choices I can almost predict that you will come back without anything substantial to the solution except to say it is a problem you cannot reconcile with your necessarian scheme. But as I also grant you have the power to originate action within yourself, I hope better things of you, so that we do not have to keep going around in circles.
Click to expand...


You seem to be more interested in making the point that my own explanation for human behavior deprives us of moral responsibility than you are in addressing the core problem of contrary choice. So why don’t we say that you’re right about mere free agency – that mere free agency leaves us helpless and thus incapable of making moral choices. 

But where does this leave contrary choice? Is contrary choice our default position? Mere free agency doesn’t give us the moral responsibility we’re looking for and so now we’re stuck with believing in a capacity for a kind of choice that defies all reason?

You explained the choices in the two-fathers scenario by pointing to earlier choices. But doesn’t this simply bring up the obvious question of why the two men made their earlier choices? Aren’t you just using an earlier exercise of choice to explain a later one? If every choice rests on a prior choice, how did we come to make our first choice? 

What you’ve never explained to us is how the power of reason and voluntariness can cause us to act on one motive and reject a competing one. We can’t say that our choice is caused by reason because reason only illuminates the nature of physical and moral reality. It doesn’t make choices. No one’s reason ever made a choice. We can’t use voluntariness, either, because voluntariness merely allows us to make choices that are authentically ours. And it’s no use talking about my choices being authentically mine if we haven’t explained how I have the ability to make choices that shape my true self in the first place. Where did this true self you talk about come from? From my earlier choices? But weren’t those earlier choices also expressions of my true self? 

You’ve run into an infinite-regression problem, and to avoid it you’ve forced us into a loop. The circles you mentioned in your last note are your own creations, not mine.


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## ThomasT

rickclayfan said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> If the soul is an "unfathomable abyss" (and it clearly is; we agree here), why wouldn't contrary choice, which resides (assuming it exists) in the soul, not be anything but an unfathomable mystery itself? Why pretend that it makes any sense? Even if it's true it still makes no sense. I've been arguing that contrary choice is inexplicable, not that it absolutely must be false.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I agree that it is inexplicable. However, reading your previous comments, it seems as if you inflexibly hold to the notion that choices cannot be made with a previous inclination (e.g., a sinful choice cannot be performed without a sinful inclination). To me it seems too much of an over-simplification of the nature of our choices to hold to this notion. I understand this is how Edwards sought to explain the bondage of our will. However, that is merely a human conception (not to mention his views on original sin, which were somewhat problematic). Not to diminish his great worth to the Church, he seems to have entertained too much freedom trying to sophisticatedly and inductively explain some things. Where human reason cannot reach, it safest to submit to the testimony of Scripture (why it possesses such authority is a different discussion).
> 
> What Scripture teaches in regard to the Fall: 1) Adam was created holy and righteous. 2) He fell into sin. How we can explain this, I do not know; and I do not think it is wise to dissect it with the dim light of reason. If we were arguing using objective facts, the case would be different. But here we are conversing in reference to something very shadowy and incomprehensible, the human soul and its faculties.
> 
> This may be of some help: our immutable standing in salvation, our perseverance, is grounded on Christ. Adam stood on a mutable ground, his free will.
Click to expand...


I think the argument I'm really interested in making is that contrary choice is inexplicable. Happily we seem to agree on that. I'll accept your points about the dangers of jumping to conclusions on a subject as murky as the human soul.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> You seem to be more interested in making the point that my own explanation for human behavior deprives us of moral responsibility than you are in addressing the core problem of contrary choice. So why don’t we say that you’re right about mere free agency – that mere free agency leaves us helpless and thus incapable of making moral choices.



I am interested in preserving the biblical teaching of rationality and responsibility. Philosophical necessity invents problems for that teaching. If necessarian views were not imposed on the teaching it would stand fine on its own. The problems only emerge from trying to examine the biblical teaching in the light of an extraneous and needless philosophy.



ThomasT said:


> But where does this leave contrary choice? Is contrary choice our default position? Mere free agency doesn’t give us the moral responsibility we’re looking for and so now we’re stuck with believing in a capacity for a kind of choice that defies all reason?



You conceive of it as defying all reason because you are stuck in the mud of necessary choice. Whether a person chooses A or B it is enough to say that it was rationally motivated and a voluntary choice. There is no power to act contrary to the dependency and interdependency of the human state, but there is a self-determining and voluntary power which introduces an element of contingency into the process.



ThomasT said:


> how did we come to make our first choice?



That goes beyond the scope of philosophical investigation and moves into the realms of child psychology. It suffices, metaphysically, to say that earlier choices were involved in the attitudes which are assumed in the present, and that the power exists for the responsible agent to originate a new course of action based on moral imperatives. If he couldn't be persuaded to move in a new direction all moral discourse would be futile.



ThomasT said:


> What you’ve never explained to us is how the power of reason and voluntariness can cause us to act on one motive and reject a competing one.



That has already been sufficiently explained. The reason and will are not neutral. Man is created to be moved by truth and inclined to good. The deceitful heart presents a lie as truth and evil as good. Who has ever bought a product after hearing a salesman tell you that he is a liar and the product is no good? It is bought on the assumption that the salesman tells you the truth and that the product is good for the consumer.



ThomasT said:


> You’ve run into an infinite-regression problem, and to avoid it you’ve forced us into a loop. The circles you mentioned in your last note are your own creations, not mine.



Voluntary choice means the person has the power to break the cycle and initiate a new course of action. The circle belongs to the theory which supposes the man is necessitated to choose according to prior conditions which he cannot help.


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## ThomasT

When we started this discussion, I noted that I couldn’t make any sense of contrary choice and that therefore I had to regard contrary choice, absent any new compelling arguments for it, as a serious intellectual problem. You responded by saying that contrary choice presents us with _no inherent problem at all and that it doesn’t leave us with any mystery to unravel._

And yet many people I’ve spoken to who believe strongly in contrary choice are just as convinced as I am that it’s a hopeless paradox. Why you seem to think that contrary choice needs to be explicable in order to be true makes me wonder if contrary choice ever had to pass an explicability test in your mind or whether you simply accepted it as an article of faith and then decided automatically that it made sense.

Now you might respond by saying that contrary choice _doesn’t_ need to be explicable in order to be true – that it just _happens_ to be explicable. And yet every attempt on your part to explain this notion of contrary choice has come across as either opaque or circular. 

I’ve been asking you to pinpoint for me the faculty within us that functions as a non-determined choice-maker, a choice-maker that can overrule even our strongest inclinations, a choice-maker that can choose among potential motives independently of the strength of the inclinations underlying those motives.

Your most common response has been to refashion the question into a statement. Me: How can our choices be free? You: Because we exercise voluntary choice. 

Then, when I point out that voluntary choice means only that our choices are authentic, you talk about the role of reason. Which leads me to respond that reason is utterly incapable of making choices. In your last note you talked about choices being rationally motivated. But this is a false understanding of the role and power of reason. If you put a knife in a box that’s difficult to open, I’ll use my reason to open the box so I can slice a loaf of bread. A serial killer, who may be more intelligent and knowledgeable than I am, will use his reason to open the box as well – but not to slice a loaf of bread. Reason merely explains the implications of what we’re contemplating (we can make a sandwich by using the knife, we can face prison or execution by using the knife). It does not, and cannot, make choices itself. 

Lately you’ve been talking about our choices being informed by earlier choices that have shaped who we truly are. I’ve responded by saying that eventually we need to find a non-determined choice somewhere in the choice sequence or we don’t really have true selves that a free choice has shaped – we simply have selves that are truly ours only because they were assigned to us. Your response has been to accuse me of introducing child psychology into a philosophical argument. And yet I’m merely following your line of reasoning to its logical conclusion.

In your last note you brought up the role of deceit in bad choices. But you can’t explain why some people allow themselves to be deceived and others don’t. Everything you propose as a solution to the contrary choice problem invites some immediate and obvious questions, but when I ask these questions you object by telling me that you’ve already answered them.

Which puts us right back to where we started.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> Why you seem to think that contrary choice needs to be explicable in order to be true makes me wonder if contrary choice ever had to pass an explicability test in your mind or whether you simply accepted it as an article of faith and then decided automatically that it made sense.



You are conscious of your choices. What you choose to think, what you choose to believe, what attitude you choose to take, what you choose to imagine, what you choose to feel, what you choose to speak, as well as what you choose to do, are all consciously your own choices for which God will judge you. The very idea that choice is inexplicable takes it out of the realm of the conscious and the accountable. Have a think about it. It is important to uphold divine mysteries, where God is infinite and free; but to speak of ourselves as mysteries to ourselves is ridiculous, and likely indicates a flight from rationality for the sake of escaping accountability.


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## earl40

MW said:


> It is important to uphold divine mysteries, where God is infinite and free; but to speak of ourselves as mysteries to ourselves is ridiculous, and likely indicates a flight from rationality for the sake of escaping accountability.



Is the hypothetical thought that Adam could have contemplated to eat without eating the fruit the mystery? I ask because I believe the contemplation of eating the fruit was part of the fall, or sin, that accompanied the act of eating. Or could the thought about disobeying Our Lord without the act of eating be considered sin? I tend to think such (contemplation of eating the fruit) would be sin in of itself even if he did not eat.


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## MW

earl40 said:


> Is the hypothetical thought that Adam could have contemplated to eat without eating the fruit the mystery?



If it is a mystery there is no factual basis for your hypothetical. An hypothetical supposes you have rationally accounted for the facts in discussion.


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## earl40

MW said:


> earl40 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Is the hypothetical thought that Adam could have contemplated to eat without eating the fruit the mystery?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If it is a mystery there is no factual basis for your hypothetical. An hypothetical supposes you have rationally accounted for the facts in discussion.
Click to expand...


Yes my hypothetical I proposed to simply think about disobeying God to eat would have been sinful even if he did not eat which does indeed not have any factual basis because Adam and Eve were "edendued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after His own image; having the law of God written in their hearts" 

I can see now my hypothetical does not pass muster. 

Thank you


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> Why you seem to think that contrary choice needs to be explicable in order to be true makes me wonder if contrary choice ever had to pass an explicability test in your mind or whether you simply accepted it as an article of faith and then decided automatically that it made sense.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You are conscious of your choices. What you choose to think, what you choose to believe, what attitude you choose to take, what you choose to imagine, what you choose to feel, what you choose to speak, as well as what you choose to do, are all consciously your own choices for which God will judge you. The very idea that choice is inexplicable takes it out of the realm of the conscious and the accountable. Have a think about it. It is important to uphold divine mysteries, where God is infinite and free; but to speak of ourselves as mysteries to ourselves is ridiculous, and likely indicates a flight from rationality for the sake of escaping accountability.
Click to expand...


I think it’s a mistake to use consciousness as evidence of freedom. The two aren’t necessarily related. Consciousness is self-awareness. When we make a choice, we’re aware of it. But did we really make a free choice just because we’re aware of having chosen something? The deterministic school of human nature doesn’t deny for a second that we _believe_ we’re making free choices. But we do deny that self-awareness is evidence for our choices being free. There’s no logical connection here. 

Your assertion that only God, and not humanity, is mysterious in the area of choice strikes me as manifestly false. If human choice (taken for the sake of argument to be free) weren’t mysterious, we should be able, at a minimum, to define the human faculty that exercises this marvelous freedom. But you haven’t told us what this faculty is. We should also be able to explain how this faculty goes about rejecting (in some cases) stronger inclinations in favor of weaker ones. But this, too, is something non-determinists have never been able to do. So I think we have to credit free choice (regarded as either real or hypothetical) as confronting us with some considerable degree of mystery.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> I think it’s a mistake to use consciousness as evidence of freedom.



Given your necessarian position, that is not surprising.




ThomasT said:


> But did we really make a free choice just because we’re aware of having chosen something?



Yes; if it were otherwise your consciousness could not be trusted; and if that could not be trusted you could not make a rational choice. You might think you were Mary one day and Martha the next. There would be no sense of identity or continuity.



ThomasT said:


> The deterministic school of human nature doesn’t deny for a second that we _believe_ we’re making free choices. But we do deny that self-awareness is evidence for our choices being free. There’s no logical connection here.



So there is no logical connection between consciousness and reality -- that is as good as saying it is fiction, not fact.



ThomasT said:


> Your assertion that only God, and not humanity, is mysterious in the area of choice strikes me as manifestly false.



1 Corinthians 2:11, "For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him?"

Romans 9:1, "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost."

Galatians 1:20, "Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not."


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> if [consciousness] could not be trusted you could not make a rational choice. You might think you were Mary one day and Martha the next. There would be no sense of identity or continuity.



To use consciousness, reason, and voluntary choice as an argument for contrary choice actually runs counter to your argument.

Suppose we narrated the fall of Adam to someone who’d never heard it. We’d mention that Adam possessed only good inclinations but that he ended up acting against those inclinations in a terribly self-destructive way.

The first thing our listener would do is ask if Adam had lost his power of reason. We’d tell him that Adam’s reason was working perfectly and that, in your words, he knew “exactly what he was doing.” To the extent that he was deceived, he allowed himself to be deceived. 

Our listener would then ask if Adam had lost the ability to act on his desires – if he’d become a kind of robot, or a man in a sleepwalking state. We’d tell him not only that Adam didn’t act against his desires, but that his actions perfectly reflected those desires, that those desires were authentically his. 

Our listener, thinking hard at this point to explain something that was becoming increasingly difficult to make sense of, might ask if Adam’s consciousness were defective, if perhaps he’d lost his ability to distinguish between himself and the serpent and that he simply acted in place of the serpent without being aware that he was a separate and independent person. We’d tell him that Adam’s consciousness - his self-awareness - was functioning without the slightest flaw and that he had no problem at all distinguishing himself from anybody else.

Our listener, now exasperated and confused, would ask how it was possible for such a creature to act in the manner he did. Here you’d respond by calling his attention to Adam’s consciousness, reason, and voluntary choice – _the very things that could serve as a plausible explanation for Adam’s behavior only if they weren’t working properly. _

If a ship flounders in the middle of the ocean, and we hear about it in the news, we don’t expect the ship’s plight to be explained to us by an assurance that everything was in nautical trim. If we pressed the Coast Guard for an explanation, and we were told that the engine was working the way it was designed to work, the rudder was fine, the hull was watertight, the navigation instruments were perfectly calibrated, the weather was idyllic, and the captain and crew had total control over the ship and possessed no inclination to let their ship flounder, we’d wonder when the Coast Guard official would come around to offering us an actual explanation. We wouldn’t say, well, the ship and crew were models of maritime perfection, and so then there’s obviously no mystery. In fact that’s the last thing we’d say.

And yet that’s exactly what you’re asking us to believe.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> Here you’d respond by calling his attention to Adam’s consciousness, reason, and voluntary choice – _the very things that could serve as a plausible explanation for Adam’s behavior only if they weren’t working properly. _



I would respond with what I responded to you when we were discussing Adam, but now after a number of posts you have either chosen to ignore it or you may have forgotten it -- Adam was created mutable. He had good inclinations. He also had the power to incline towards evil, though he was not created with evil inclinations. This supports contingency; he did in fact make a choice which originated a new course, and he did so with his psychology in perfect working order.

You keep raising your necessarian problem, and posing it to me as if it is my problem. You are the one holding that a person necessarily is what he is, and he necessarily chooses according to what he is, and cannot choose otherwise. The fact of Adam's fall is the necessarian's problem.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> I would respond with what I responded to you when we were discussing Adam, but now after a number of posts you have either chosen to ignore it or you may have forgotten it -- Adam was created mutable. He had good inclinations. He also had the power to incline towards evil, though he was not created with evil inclinations. This supports contingency; he did in fact make a choice which originated a new course, and he did so with his psychology in perfect working order.
> 
> You keep raising your necessarian problem, and posing it to me as if it is my problem. You are the one holding that a person necessarily is what he is, and he necessarily chooses according to what he is, and cannot choose otherwise. The fact of Adam's fall is the necessarian's problem.



What is mutability? I think we agree that mutability is merely a potentiality, a means, a power. But a power to do something doesn’t provide us with a reason for the action. I have the power to cover myself in gasoline and set myself on fire. I could do that tonight. But my mere power to do something so self-destructive and so contrary to my nature doesn’t begin to explain why I’d choose to do it.

The fact is that I wouldn’t set myself on fire unless I found within myself the inclination for such an action. But let’s suppose that I had the power, like Adam, to choose my own inclinations. The problem here is that now I’ve merely got the power to incline myself to desire suicide, but I don’t have a motive for doing so. Even with the power of mutability I still wouldn’t have a _reason_ for setting myself on fire. I’d still need a motive for creating the new inclination in the first place. I wouldn’t be able simply to look into my true self and decide, using my reason and voluntary choice, that death is what I wanted if, when I looked into my true self, I found no inclination for death. My inclination for death would have to precede my decision to incline myself to desire death. 

Which means we’re trapped in a circle again. The fatal flaw of your attempt to explain contrary choice is that it relies on a motive that couldn’t exist until a decision had first been made to incline toward a desire underlying that motive, which itself would require a motive. Mutability is helpless without a motive, and in the case of Adam that motive would have necessarily been a sinful one or he wouldn’t have succeeded in inclining his will toward sin.

That this isn’t a problem for you, that it’s all perfectly explicable in your mind, is almost as mysterious as contrary choice itself.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> Mutability is helpless without a motive,



Mutability means the person can change, including his motives. You don't allow this is possible. So why are you having this discussion? If nobody can change it doesn't matter what you say. Your own belief is necessitated, and everyone else's belief is necessitated, according to your necessarian scheme. You have rendered all moral discourse null and void.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> Mutability is helpless without a motive,
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Mutability means the person can change, including his motives. You don't allow this is possible. So why are you having this discussion? If nobody can change it doesn't matter what you say. Your own belief is necessitated, and everyone else's belief is necessitated, according to your necessarian scheme. You have rendered all moral discourse null and void.
Click to expand...


It’s not mutability _per se _ I’m calling into question. It’s the notion, as you put it, that mutability doesn’t present us with a mystery and that it shouldn’t be regarded as a serious intellectual problem. That’s the issue. In fact to examine mutability we _have_ to regard it, at least for the purpose of our discussion, as true. 

To review:

1) Mutability is simply a power.
2) In order to exercise this power, Adam had to make a choice. 
3) In order to make the choice to exercise his mutability, Adam needed a motive – a sinful one.
4) In order to have a sinful motive, Adam needed a sinful inclination, one that pre-existed his decision to exercise his power of mutability.

You mentioned in your last note that Adam could change his motives, meaning, as I take it, that he could change his motives from good to bad, and that once he’d done that he’d have the motive he needed to make the choice to exercise his mutability and incline himself to sin. But in order to change his motives from good to bad, he’d first need yet another motive. To suggest, as you seem to be doing, that Adam simply chose to change his motives from good to bad with no motive behind the choice is to suggest that Adam acted for no reason. You’re saying that the whole process of Adam exercising his mutability began, ultimately, with a choice based on a motive that was itself independent of an inclination. The fall of man originated in a choice driven by an _ex nihilo_ motive, and hence a choice that came out of thin air. Adam chose what he chose simply because he chose it.

Which would make Adam’s original choice, the one that got the whole process started, not only inexplicable but also amoral.


----------



## MW

ThomasT said:


> In order to have a sinful motive, Adam needed a sinful inclination, one that pre-existed his decision to exercise his power of mutability.



Why did the inclination have to pre-exist? If you grant mutability then you grant the inclination can change. Ahab humbled himself when he heard the word of judgment. He wasn't inclined to humble himself previously. Eve desired the forbidden fruit when she heard that it could make her wise. She wasn't inclined to it previously. Moral suasion is a reality of thinking, willing beings. If you don't grant the power of moral suasion why are you engaging in this discussion?


----------



## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> In order to have a sinful motive, Adam needed a sinful inclination, one that pre-existed his decision to exercise his power of mutability.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why did the inclination have to pre-exist? If you grant mutability then you grant the inclination can change. Ahab humbled himself when he heard the word of judgment. He wasn't inclined to humble himself previously. Eve desired the forbidden fruit when she heard that it could make her wise. She wasn't inclined to it previously. Moral suasion is a reality of thinking, willing beings. If you don't grant the power of moral suasion why are you engaging in this discussion?
Click to expand...


The fact that something happens doesn’t explain why it happens. Your answer to every “why” question is a “how” response. When I ask you why Adam chose to do something he had no inclination to do, your answer, invariably, is that he had the power to do it.

That this doesn’t answer my question is surely obvious to anyone following this thread, even to those who are committed to the contrary-choice hypothesis.

Your attempt at answers are merely responses. They’re dodges rather than answers. If Adam had a pair of wings that gave him the power to fly, but no inclination to fly, and one day we saw him soaring around like an eagle, and I asked you why he was flying, you’d say that Adam’s wings explained the fact that he’s flying. I’d point out that Adam had no inclination to exercise his wings, no desire to make use of his power of flight. Your response would be that Adam had the power to incline himself to the desire for flight. My counter-response (this is what you can’t seem to answer) is that Adam had no pre-existing desire to incline himself to a desire for flight in the first place. Your answer? He’s flying, so he must have been able to incline himself to the desire for flight in spite of not having a pre-existing inclination to do so. 

You haven’t gone the slightest distance at answering the “why” question, and yet you’ve insisted, repeatedly, that there is no mystery, no problem, in Adam’s fall. 

Why did Adam choose to exercise his power of mutability when he had no inclination to behave in such a way? I pose this question to anyone who’d like to respond.


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## rickclayfan

@ThomasT

I'm curious as to why it matters. We must avoid prying into matters which have no explicit scriptural explanation. At best we can simply speculate. Obsession over speculations shatters our faith and leads to heresy. In order to answer your question, we would have to have sufficient knowledge of the soul.


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## ThomasT

rickclayfan said:


> @ThomasT
> 
> I'm curious as to why it matters. We must avoid prying into matters which have no explicit scriptural explanation. At best we can simply speculate. Obsession over speculations shatters our faith and leads to heresy. In order to answer your question, we would have to have sufficient knowledge of the soul.



Why does this matter? Good question. The answer is that when we take something mysterious and try to pass it off as non-mysterious, we make a false claim about the fullness of our knowledge. The job of theology is to teach us about the nature of the unseen world, and this includes letting us know when we’ve reached the limits of our understanding.


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## rickclayfan

That doesn't seem to be the issue here. You seem to be making the mysterious non-mysterious by persistently asking questions about it. That's unless I've misunderstood your intentions.


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## ThomasT

rickclayfan said:


> That doesn't seem to be the issue here. You seem to be making the mysterious non-mysterious by persistently asking questions about it. That's unless I've misunderstood your intentions.



No, I’m doing quite the opposite of what you’re suggesting. MW and I have been arguing over the following proposition:

_The fall of man is not mysterious, not an intellectual problem, and in terms of its essential elements, fully explicable._

I’ve been arguing against the proposition, he’s been arguing for it. So in other words, what I’m saying is that the fall of man _is_ a mystery. I ask questions about MW’s attempts at explanation to show that these attempts of his are inadequate, in the same way (for example) that I'd ask questions about someone's attempts at explaining the Trinity.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> Why did Adam choose to exercise his power of mutability when he had no inclination to behave in such a way? I pose this question to anyone who’d like to respond.



I don't think he was actively choosing to exercise that power. He simply made the choice to do what was forbidden, and this is what the change consisted in.

Your "mystery" is nothing more than a failure to accept the proper meaning of terms. We have been over the terms repeatedly. You say you accept them, but then you raise objections against them. I think if you accept the terms in their proper significations the mystery would be solved for you.

Sin is an "unseen world" in one sense, but it is still a "known world" so far as moral agents are concerned. We see sin in action every day, and Scripture explicates the causes and consequences of those sins. We are not able to see the heart of another, but we are required to know our own hearts. Theology consists in part in knowing ourselves.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> I don't think he was actively choosing to exercise that power. He simply made the choice to do what was forbidden, and this is what the change consisted in.
> 
> Your "mystery" is nothing more than a failure to accept the proper meaning of terms. We have been over the terms repeatedly. You say you accept them, but then you raise objections against them. I think if you accept the terms in their proper significations the mystery would be solved for you.
> 
> Sin is an "unseen world" in one sense, but it is still a "known world" so far as moral agents are concerned. We see sin in action every day, and Scripture explicates the causes and consequences of those sins. We are not able to see the heart of another, but we are required to know our own hearts. Theology consists in part in knowing ourselves.



Misunderstood definitions aren't the problem. No matter how we define our terms, the problem remains. The problem is the sequence of events that make up a choice. In order to make sense of a choice, in order to make it intelligible, we need a motive that _precedes_ the choice. If our motive _coincides_ with the choice itself, the choice becomes an illusion, or, at best, a real choice (as a hypothetical construct) but a totally incomprehensible one. 

You seem to have been saying that the same power of mutability Adam exercised (without being aware that it was a power of mutability he was exercising -- we agree on this point) in his choice to disobey gave him the power to create (or incline himself toward) new motives. But here again it’s the normally understood sequence of events that fails to make sense. Adam either created this motive before he made the choice to disobey, or his choice to disobey coincided with the creation of a new motive. If he created the motive before he made the choice to sin, we need to explain how his creation of a sinful motive was possible given Adam’s sinless nature. If Adam’s motive to sin coincided with his choice to sin, on the other hand, Adam’s choice becomes impossible to explain, as it would have made Adam a passive actor. We can’t make a true choice when we act on a motive that coincides with the choice itself. It’s like saying that someone who chooses to jump off a bridge doesn't have a motive for jumping until he’s already made the choice. There’s no possibility for rational reflection, and more importantly no opportunity to resist a motive, if motive and choice are simultaneous. 

Your "simple" choice is anything but simple.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> we need to explain how his creation of a sinful motive was possible given Adam’s sinless nature.



You use the word "possible." Mutability is the "ability" to change. Mutability is the very "possibility" you are seeking. You say you hold to mutability, but then your question requires a negation of it. Define the terms you say you accept, and hold by the definition, and your problems are solved.

The sinless person actually did become a sinful person. This means he changed. Change was obviously possible if it became a reality. If you agree that rational choice requires motive then you have to accept that the motive changed.

To be a sinful motive Adam would have been responsible for it. When you call it a sinful motive you have conceded the very thing you have denied, which is Adam's power to develop new motives. To call it "sinful" you have to accept that it was his own voluntary action for which he was morally responsible. If you deny the new motive was his own voluntary action you would have to deny the "sinfulness" of the motive.


----------



## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> we need to explain how his creation of a sinful motive was possible given Adam’s sinless nature.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You use the word "possible." Mutability is the "ability" to change. Mutability is the very "possibility" you are seeking. You say you hold to mutability, but then your question requires a negation of it. Define the terms you say you accept, and hold by the definition, and your problems are solved.
> 
> The sinless person actually did become a sinful person. This means he changed. Change was obviously possible if it became a reality. If you agree that rational choice requires motive then you have to accept that the motive changed.
> 
> To be a sinful motive Adam would have been responsible for it. When you call it a sinful motive you have conceded the very thing you have denied, which is Adam's power to develop new motives. To call it "sinful" you have to accept that it was his own voluntary action for which he was morally responsible. If you deny the new motive was his own voluntary action you would have to deny the "sinfulness" of the motive.
Click to expand...


One of the points I’ve been trying to make throughout this thread is that there’s a difference between responding to a question and answering it. When we ask why Adam chose to sin despite having no inclination to sin, and the answer we receive is that “Adam chose what he chose because he wanted what he wanted,” few of us are willing to grant that our question has been answered. It’s been responded to, yes – but answered, no. (In your last note you talked about Adam developing new motives. But why? Why would a sinless creature develop sinful motives? Your answer: _Because he wanted what he wanted_. That's a response, not an answer.)


Your solution to the Adam problem is like solving the problem of election by saying that God elects some people and not others _because he finds a reason within himself to do so_. This solution isn't a solution – it doesn’t de-mystify anything. It doesn’t explain why God elects some people and not others. In the same way, saying that Adam chose what he chose because he found a reason within himself to make his choice, even though he had no inclination for it, doesn’t suddenly vanquish the mystery. You’ve actually gone no further in answering the Adam question than any theologian has ever gone in answering the election problem (why Joe and not Stan?), and yet you consider the Adam problem to be solved.


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## NaphtaliPress

Moderator note: Thomas, please provide a signature in accordance to board rules; see the link in mine for instructions.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> You’ve actually gone no further in answering the Adam question than any theologian has ever gone in answering the election problem (why Joe and not Stan?), and yet you consider the Adam problem to be solved.



I note you jump from the Adam "question" to the election "problem." It is not a "problem," though for some reason you feel a need to present it as a problem.

I haven't claimed to go beyond theologians. I would be suspicious of myself if I did. I feel no need to go beyond what has been attained in this matter. Perhaps because I don't see it as a problem. It only needs to satisfy the criteria it claims to answer. And the "will" as a voluntary power of responsible and rational choice needs no other explanation. God holds man accountable for his actions on this basis. Therefore, so far as giving an account of human action, we need go no farther. An extraneous philosophy like necessity might desire to know more, but nothing more is needed in order to give a rational account of human choice.

Theologians go so far as to show that God choosing individuals does not take away the contingency of second causes or the freedom of human choice. That is, they have explained the doctrine adequately so as to ensure human accountability remains intact, while still acknowledging the cause of God's choice remains within Himself. There is no appeal to "mystery" at the point of human action. If a man perishes he perishes because of his own sin and unbelief. It is something for which the individual is entirely responsible.

"He wanted what he wanted." Yes. That is what "will" is. The irrational theory of "indifference" claims a man can choose what he does not want. But to be a rational choice it must be something the person himself wants; and the actual choice is sufficient to manifest that it is what the person wanted. If it were otherwise no person could be held to account for his choices.


----------



## Ask Mr. Religion

ThomasT said:


> Your solution to the Adam problem is like solving the problem of election by saying that God elects some people and not others because he finds a reason within himself to do so. This solution isn't a solution – it doesn’t de-mystify anything. It doesn’t explain why God elects some people and not others.


Why is demystification necessary? For that matter when is attempting to peer behind the curtain forbidden in your view (Deut. 29:29)?

Adam was made mutable, able to sin or not to sin. A fact. Adam sinned. Another fact. From both it means something welled up within Adam as he was tempted with "hath God said?" leading him to make the wrong moral choice. Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God, in the inward state and habit of the soul, as well as in the outward conduct of the life, whether by omission or commission (1 John 3:4; Romans 4:15; Romans 6:12-17; Romans 7:5-24).

Adam's lack of obedience (his sin) rests in the inward state and habit of his soul, as well as his outward conduct by commission of eating what he was commanded not to eat. Adam was the very best of us, made by God to best represent all of us. And he, our optimum representative, failed. We can know nothing more than this.

Yes it is astounding to our minds how Adam who actually had direct conversations with God in a Garden where lions were but pets, could desire to disobey His maker. It is even more astounding that one third of the angelic host, in the very heavenly presence of God, would sin. And yet another instance wherein we can know nothing more.

Having been taught daily for years by God incarnate, at the moment when they were needed most, the apostles slept away. Three times during that awful night our Lord came to them, "Stay here and watch with me", "What! Could you not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation." Then we read those terrible words, "...the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners." Three times in the direct face of Our Lord's admonishments, those that sat at the feet of Our Lord for three long years failed.

Perhaps the point in all these instances is that we can get so close to the physical aspects of God—keeping the church lights burning nightly with meetings in the "sanctuary", singing about mama's favorite rocking chair, etc.—that we lose sight of the spiritual, commanding God as we sleep walk our way to peril.


----------



## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> You’ve actually gone no further in answering the Adam question than any theologian has ever gone in answering the election problem (why Joe and not Stan?), and yet you consider the Adam problem to be solved.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I note you jump from the Adam "question" to the election "problem." It is not a "problem," though for some reason you feel a need to present it as a problem.
> 
> I haven't claimed to go beyond theologians. I would be suspicious of myself if I did. I feel no need to go beyond what has been attained in this matter. Perhaps because I don't see it as a problem. It only needs to satisfy the criteria it claims to answer. And the "will" as a voluntary power of responsible and rational choice needs no other explanation. God holds man accountable for his actions on this basis. Therefore, so far as giving an account of human action, we need go no farther. An extraneous philosophy like necessity might desire to know more, but nothing more is needed in order to give a rational account of human choice.
> 
> Theologians go so far as to show that God choosing individuals does not take away the contingency of second causes or the freedom of human choice. That is, they have explained the doctrine adequately so as to ensure human accountability remains intact, while still acknowledging the cause of God's choice remains within Himself. There is no appeal to "mystery" at the point of human action. If a man perishes he perishes because of his own sin and unbelief. It is something for which the individual is entirely responsible.
> 
> "He wanted what he wanted." Yes. That is what "will" is. The irrational theory of "indifference" claims a man can choose what he does not want. But to be a rational choice it must be something the person himself wants; and the actual choice is sufficient to manifest that it is what the person wanted. If it were otherwise no person could be held to account for his choices.
Click to expand...


In reading over your last several postings, it occurs to me that you seem to regard Adam’s fall as non-mysterious simply because you happen not to be interested in the “why” question. But the "why" question is precisely what most people are mystified by. The question is a huge puzzle to just about everybody. Never mind that we probably can’t ever hope to answer it. 

Suppose you and I lived on the same street, and a mutual neighbor of ours, a very good man named Smith who’d never caused any trouble, one day took a gun to his neighbor’s house and killed her. Then he killed himself. The next day the police hold a press conference. But before anyone can ask the police a question, an angel from heaven appears and declares the following: “Smith made a free, rational, informed, self-aware, and sinful choice to murder his neighbor.” The angel disappears. Thanks to the angel, we can now conclude that the killing of Smith’s neighbor wasn’t a) an accident, b) the result of ignorance, c) the result of Smith taking leave of his senses, d) the result of Smith acting under someone’s else’s control, or e) self-defense. 

Smith simply committed murder. But this wouldn’t answer the question most of us want an answer to. What we want to know is _why_ Smith did what he did. Yet you, apparently, would consider the same question a waste of time, akin to asking what Smith received from his parents as a birthday gift when he was fourteen years old. And thus you'd be looking at Smith's crime in a very different way from everybody else on our street. Nobody else on the street would consent to write off the question as trivial, or academic, or irrelevant, or non-essential. Quite the opposite. 

And remember that with Adam the same question contains orders of magnitude more mystery. The fact that you’re not interested in it, preferring only to talk about what Adam was capable of doing, what he actually did, what he didn't do, and what he was responsible for, doesn’t make his choice any less mysterious to the rest of us.


----------



## MW

ThomasT said:


> The fact that you’re not interested in it, preferring only to talk about what Adam was capable of doing, what he actually did, what he didn't do, and what he was responsible for, doesn’t make his choice any less mysterious to the rest of us.



Why do you include yourself in there? Didn't you have recourse to external forces? Didn't you deny the testimony of consciousness? There is no room for mystery in your answer. You have denied man any genuine conscious freedom to choose.

Man likes to make mysteries to avoid accountability. They do not come into the light because their deeds are evil and they love their darkness. That is what superstition is built upon. Men depart from the truth, and then they have to come up with their own explanations in order to fill the void they have created; and what they can't explain of that void they call "mysterious." If man simply accepted the truth as God has revealed it there would be less superstition and more genuine fear of His great and dreadful name; and in that posture the true mystery would be truly adored.

Biblical accountability is a matter of great importance. On this basis the law declares men are sinners; and on this basis the gospel proclaims full and free salvation in Christ. Take away biblical accountability and you make void both law and gospel. Create a "mystery" in the place of human accountability and you will have to create a "mystery" to deal with human problems; and then you leave your Smiths with nothing but human mysteries, which self-deceived sinners willingly adopt as a refuge of lies.


----------



## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> The fact that you’re not interested in it, preferring only to talk about what Adam was capable of doing, what he actually did, what he didn't do, and what he was responsible for, doesn’t make his choice any less mysterious to the rest of us.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why do you include yourself in there? Didn't you have recourse to external forces? Didn't you deny the testimony of consciousness? There is no room for mystery in your answer. You have denied man any genuine conscious freedom to choose.
> 
> Man likes to make mysteries to avoid accountability. They do not come into the light because their deeds are evil and they love their darkness. That is what superstition is built upon. Men depart from the truth, and then they have to come up with their own explanations in order to fill the void they have created; and what they can't explain of that void they call "mysterious." If man simply accepted the truth as God has revealed it there would be less superstition and more genuine fear of His great and dreadful name; and in that posture the true mystery would be truly adored.
> 
> Biblical accountability is a matter of great importance. On this basis the law declares men are sinners; and on this basis the gospel proclaims full and free salvation in Christ. Take away biblical accountability and you make void both law and gospel. Create a "mystery" in the place of human accountability and you will have to create a "mystery" to deal with human problems; and then you leave your Smiths with nothing but human mysteries, which self-deceived sinners willingly adopt as a refuge of lies.
Click to expand...


In your last note you defended Adam’s accountability. In my own previous note, I suggested that defending Adam’s accountability is one of your preferred ways of filling up space on a page _in lieu of addressing the question we’re asking_. No one’s trying to undermine Adam’s accountability. Adam’s accountability isn’t on trial. I don’t know how to make this any clearer: We simply want to know why Adam did what he did, and if we can't answer the question, we want an acknowledgment that Adam's fall presents us with a mystery.

You're obviously not comfortable with the question we've been asking. You actually condemned the question, in your last note, as a source of superstition. So you’ve gone from dodging the question (by discussing accountability, which no one is denying) to issuing a vague warning that the question we’re asking could be a way of introducing sin into our minds.

And to make your response even more evasive, you opened your note by charging me (again) with defending necessitarianism. So to repeat – and hopefully the English language is up to the task I have in mind for it – I’m not making a case for necessitarianism. In this discussion we’re assuming that contrary choice is true and that necessitarianism is false. You've been turning our attention to necessitarianism as a diversionary tactic when you perceive the weakness of your position. Necessitarianism came up, much earlier in this thread, as a hypothetical explanation for Adam’s behavior (along with several other theories; this thread is called “Theories about Adam’s fall"). I’ve said that I’ll accept any premise you want regarding Adam’s pre-fallen state. And yet you refuse to let go of necessitarianism as a convenient villain, because attacking it is easier than defending your own highly problematic argument. 

Let’s review: A) You’d rather champion Adam’s accountability, which no one is denying, than admit that you have no answer to my question (and hence that my question points to a mystery). B) You want to scare us away from the question itself by suggesting that the question could lead us into sin. C) You won’t let me agree with you on contrary choice because once I’ve accepted contrary choice you can no longer resort to attacks on necessitarianism as a way of avoiding my question. 

These tactics of yours have succeeded only in making the fact of a mystery even more evident.


----------



## MW

ThomasT,

If you would like to offer something substantial to what I have said I am more than happy to interact with it. As it stands I have no interest in following your line of reasoning beyond Scripture. The thread itself manifests that you have provided necessarian arguments in the course of this discussion. It shows quite plainly that you have tried to give rational explanation for your denials of human freedom. Your appeal to "mystery," therefore, only serves as a disguise for your own rational explanation.

Accountability means ability to be held to account. Your claim to "mystery" (which more appropriately deserves to be called "superstition" since it traces human choice back to external forces beyond man's control) removes the ability to hold man to account. You are saying no account can be given of human choices. If this is not a denial of accountability, I know not what is.

As you have not accepted the basic meanings of terms throughout this thread it might be asking too much of you to accept the basic meaning of "accountability." But believing as I do in the validity of moral discourse and in your conscious freedom to choose one thing over another, I hope you might yet take some time to consider the terms under discussion and grant them their proper meanings.


----------



## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT,
> 
> If you would like to offer something substantial to what I have said I am more than happy to interact with it. As it stands I have no interest in following your line of reasoning beyond Scripture. The thread itself manifests that you have provided necessarian arguments in the course of this discussion. It shows quite plainly that you have tried to give rational explanation for your denials of human freedom. Your appeal to "mystery," therefore, only serves as a disguise for your own rational explanation.
> 
> Accountability means ability to be held to account. Your claim to "mystery" (which more appropriately deserves to be called "superstition" since it traces human choice back to external forces beyond man's control) removes the ability to hold man to account. You are saying no account can be given of human choices. If this is not a denial of accountability, I know not what is.
> 
> As you have not accepted the basic meanings of terms throughout this thread it might be asking too much of you to accept the basic meaning of "accountability." But believing as I do in the validity of moral discourse and in your conscious freedom to choose one thing over another, I hope you might yet take some time to consider the terms under discussion and grant them their proper meanings.



You’re making the entirely unnecessary argument that Adam couldn’t have been accountable for his choice if the choice had been determined by outside forces. I agree with this argument – there’s no denying it. _And yet you won’t let me agree with you_. Necessitarianism is simply a theory that I hoped, earlier in this thread, to give a fair treatment to. I wanted to explore a number of theories in this thread. Necessitarianism leaves me with some grave misgivings, and I’m by no means a proponent of it. 

But I can’t get you to leave necessitarianism alone; I can’t make you understand that you’re fighting a pointless battle. No one is now arguing for necessitarianism. Moreover, my previous arguments were designed merely to provoke discussion; I’ve long since abandoned them as the discussion has progressed and the earlier arguments have achieved their purpose. 

But even if you think that I'm just pretending to have abandoned an argument for necessitarianism, it’s a generally accepted practice not to argue about premises once they’ve been granted. When I say that I grant your premises, and you refuse to accept my concession, you’re doing one thing only: demonstrating the weakness of your position. 

As for accountability, we seem to define it the same way, more or less, despite your protestations. But I don’t make the mistake of assuming that in order for a person to be accountable, the reasons for his actions have to be known to us. When we ask why Adam sinned, we’re not doing anything other than asking why he sinned. We’re not using the question to “disguise” an argument for necessity. And we're certainly not questioning his accountability. 

It seems that you’re following a carefully constructed formula when you talk about the fall of Adam. Any question your formula can’t answer is written off as a false one, an attempt to deny Scriptural truth. That this is a clear sign of weakness won’t be lost on anyone.


----------



## MW

ThomasT said:


> That this is a clear sign of weakness won’t be lost on anyone.



"The weakness of God is stronger than men." I leave you to your "strength."


----------



## Ask Mr. Religion

ThomasT,

What would be an answer you would take as a direct answer to your "_Why_ did Adam sin?" 

Suppose I were to answer, "Because Adam wanted to do what he knew he should not do."

Assuming you would then ask, "Well why did Adam want to do what he did?"

My answer would be something along the lines of...

"Adam was aware of God’s commandment at the moment he ate the forbidden fruit, Adam possessed the capacity and power to obey God’s preceptive will, for reasons sufficient to him (his self-determined inclinations at the moment) Adam _wanted_ to eat the fruit, and Adam was not forced to eat the fruit (no violence done to his will). Thus, because Adam acted knowingly, willingly, with freedom of spontaneity, for reasons that were sufficient to him, with no violence done to his will, Adam was a free moral agent in his act of sin. In fact, given that sin begins in the mind’s choosing and not in the act, it can be said that Adam sinned before he took the first bite of the apple."

Perhaps you would then press me further asking, "Well, why did Adam _want_ to eat of the forbidden fruit?"

I might say, 
"Eve had eaten, and handed Adam the fruit with one bite taken. Neglecting his duty to his wife as her spiritual protector, being beguiled by the Temper's argument—"_hath God said_?"—an argument Adam considered valid through an internal defect in his understanding of what God had actually commanded, Adam acted on his inward inclinations. 
"So in the final analysis, it seems to me the _why_ comes down to Adam's _mutability_, he being made able to act contrarily to that which he _ought_ to do. Blame attaches to actions, and actions are characterized by intentions. Adam was able to sin and able not to sin, but he did not yet have a sin nature. Adam's nature was not neutral. There was nothing in Adam's nature that in any way prompted him to sin. Yet Adam was not yet glorified and Adam had the capability of sinning (and did)."

Is any of the above within the realm of what you are looking for as an answer?


----------



## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> That this is a clear sign of weakness won’t be lost on anyone.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "The weakness of God is stronger than men." I leave you to your "strength."
Click to expand...


So then your argument is God’s argument? Show me a passage in the Bible where Adam’s choice to sin, versus not to sin, is fully explained, and I’ll be happy to deny the mystery I thought Adam’s choice involved. 

Whatever motive Adam had for sinning, he could have just as easily not had. Adam could have chosen to sin or not chosen to sin. He chose to sin. Why? 

Most of us acknowledge that the question can’t be answered. You seem to think you’ve solved the puzzle, but you won’t share with us your solution, preferring instead to identify your (unarticulated) solution with God’s.

It doesn’t take much to say that our argument is on God’s side. It takes a bit more to support such a claim.


----------



## ThomasT

Ask Mr. Religion said:


> ThomasT,
> 
> What would be an answer you would take as a direct answer to your "_Why_ did Adam sin?"
> 
> Suppose I were to answer, "Because Adam wanted to do what he knew he should not do."
> 
> Assuming you would then ask, "Well why did Adam want to do what he did?"
> 
> My answer would be something along the lines of...
> 
> "Adam was aware of God’s commandment at the moment he ate the forbidden fruit, Adam possessed the capacity and power to obey God’s preceptive will, for reasons sufficient to him (his self-determined inclinations at the moment) Adam _wanted_ to eat the fruit, and Adam was not forced to eat the fruit (no violence done to his will). Thus, because Adam acted knowingly, willingly, with freedom of spontaneity, for reasons that were sufficient to him, with no violence done to his will, Adam was a free moral agent in his act of sin. In fact, given that sin begins in the mind’s choosing and not in the act, it can be said that Adam sinned before he took the first bite of the apple."
> 
> Perhaps you would then press me further asking, "Well, why did Adam _want_ to eat of the forbidden fruit?"
> 
> I might say,
> "Eve had eaten, and handed Adam the fruit with one bite taken. Neglecting his duty to his wife as her spiritual protector, being beguiled by the Temper's argument—"_hath God said_?"—an argument Adam considered valid through an internal defect in his understanding of what God had actually commanded, Adam acted on his inward inclinations.
> "So in the final analysis, it seems to me the _why_ comes down to Adam's _mutability_, he being made able to act contrarily to that which he _ought_ to do. Blame attaches to actions, and actions are characterized by intentions. Adam was able to sin and able not to sin, but he did not yet have a sin nature. Adam's nature was not neutral. There was nothing in Adam's nature that in any way prompted him to sin. Yet Adam was not yet glorified and Adam had the capability of sinning (and did)."
> 
> Is any of the above within the realm of what you are looking for as an answer?



When you say, "for reasons sufficient to him [Adam]," you've already acknowledged the mystery I'm arguing for. If a man commits a crime, and we say that his motive consisted of reasons that were "sufficient to him," have we solved the mystery of the crime? No -- we've actually affirmed it. And in the case of Adam the mystery is far deeper, because Adam had no pre-existing set of sinful inclinations to use as a motive. The fact that Adam had the power to sin doesn't mean that he didn't also have the power not to sin. He had the power to do either. This power of his, the power of mutability, explains only the "how" of the fall, not the "why."


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> So then your argument is God’s argument?



I gave you the Scriptural criteria for accountability, but that didn't appear to be mystifying enough.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> So then your argument is God’s argument?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I gave you the Scriptural criteria for accountability, but that didn't appear to be mystifying enough.
Click to expand...


You provided these Scriptural citations in a previous post. 

1 Corinthians 2:11, "For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him?"

Romans 9:1, "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost."

Galatians 1:20, "Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not."

All of the citations serve only to suggest that _we ourselves know why we do what we do_. They don't serve at all as evidence that the _actions of others_ are never mysterious. Even the first citation, the one that seems to have the most relevance to the question of how much we can expect to know about Adam's mental state when he sinned, doesn't work for your argument. This is the same citation (1 Corinthians) in several other translations.

For who knows a person's thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. (NIV)

No one can know a person's thoughts except that person's own spirit, and no one can know God's thoughts except God's own Spirit. (NLT)

For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. (ESV)

For, among human beings, who knows a man's inner thoughts except the man's own spirit within him? In the same way, also, only God's Spirit is acquainted with God's inner thoughts. (WNT)

The passage from Corinthians not only fails to support your argument, it actually runs counter to it. (And the other two citations are barely relevant, if relevant at all, to the mystery question.) Adam had his own reasons that he and only he could tell us about. In other words, Adam's choice presents us with a mystery.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> All of the citations serve only to suggest that _we ourselves know why we do what we do_. They don't serve at all as evidence that the _actions of others_ are never mysterious.



Now you are twisting what I said. I expressly stated we cannot know the hearts of others. But we are to know our own hearts. That is the office of conscience. For there to be a conscience which acts with validity it must be genuine self-conscious knowledge. But you have denied the validity of consciousness. Which means you cannot genuinely know if you have chosen or done anything. You have wrapped up human choice and action in a cloud of unknowing.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> All of the citations serve only to suggest that _we ourselves know why we do what we do_. They don't serve at all as evidence that the _actions of others_ are never mysterious.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Now you are twisting what I said. I expressly stated we cannot know the hearts of others. But we are to know our own hearts. That is the office of conscience. For there to be a conscience which acts with validity it must be genuine self-conscious knowledge. But you have denied the validity of consciousness. Which means you cannot genuinely know if you have chosen or done anything. You have wrapped up human choice and action in a cloud of unknowing.
Click to expand...


If we can't know the hearts of others ("we cannot know the hearts of others"), how can we proclaim that Adam's choice doesn't involve a mystery? How can we a) not know Adam's heart and b) say that Adam acted in a perfectly explicable way? How is this not a gross contradiction?


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> If we can't know the hearts of others ("we cannot know the hearts of others"), how can we proclaim that Adam's choice doesn't involve a mystery? How can we a) not know Adam's heart and b) say that Adam acted in a perfectly explicable way? How is this not a gross contradiction?



Holy scripture says that Adam disobeyed. To disobey he had to have acted rationally and voluntarily. These are the criteria necessary for accountability. We have no need to know anything else. Apart from holy Scripture we could not know that there was an Adam who disobeyed. Natural reason could not find it out. As we depend upon holy Scripture for the facts we do well to allow it to dictate the nature and limits of its own teaching.


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## rickclayfan

"Everyone may err who hath not the rule of righteousness within him: and therefore it is impossible God should err, because his own will is the rule of his actions: He is every way a law unto himself.... Created creatures how perfect soever in their nature, have the will of God for their rule and law: which though it be within them, yet it is not _Them_, and so they may act beside it. The hand of the Artificer often fails in cutting or fashioning the work he is about, because his hand is not the rule by which he works: his hand works by a rule or line, his hand is not that rule or line, Therefore he sometimes strikes right, and sometimes strikes wrong; but if the hand of a man were the rule by which he works, then it were impossible that ever he should work amiss. Thus it is with God, the very will of God which acts, is the rule by which he acts, hence it is impossible for God to fail; Angels and men act by a rule prescribed, their will is one thing, and the rule is another; the power by which they work is one thing, and the direction by which they work is another; and therefore the most perfect creature may possibly swerve and err in acting; _Only he cannot err in anything he doth, whose will is the perfect rule of all he doth._"

Joseph Caryl, _Practical Observations on Job_, 2:140.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> If we can't know the hearts of others ("we cannot know the hearts of others"), how can we proclaim that Adam's choice doesn't involve a mystery? How can we a) not know Adam's heart and b) say that Adam acted in a perfectly explicable way? How is this not a gross contradiction?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Holy scripture says that Adam disobeyed. To disobey he had to have acted rationally and voluntarily. These are the criteria necessary for accountability. We have no need to know anything else. Apart from holy Scripture we could not know that there was an Adam who disobeyed. Natural reason could not find it out. As we depend upon holy Scripture for the facts we do well to allow it to dictate the nature and limits of its own teaching.
Click to expand...



You’ve clearly staked out a comfort zone in this argument – Adam’s accountability. You want to make the point that Adam was accountable.

Yet when I accept your argument that Adam was accountable, and I then go on to ask a different question altogether (why did a being with no sinful inclination choose to sin?), you immediately fall back on accountability. It’s like asking a question about the quantum tunneling that takes place in the core of the sun and then being told, _ad nauseam_, that the sun rises in the east.

How is it that you fail to understand that accountability doesn’t answer the question we’re asking? Imagine if Adam had chosen not to sin – which he could have done. He’d still be just as accountable for his choice, only in this case his choice would have worked out in his favor. One can’t be accountable for a bad choice unless one is also accountable for a good one.

So if Adam was accountable for whatever his choice would have been, whether his choice was to sin or not to sin, we can’t use accountability as an _explanation_ for his choice. We can say only that he made a choice that meets the requirements for accountability. And that by itself does nothing to answer the question we’re asking.


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## ThomasT

rickclayfan said:


> "Everyone may err who hath not the rule of righteousness within him: and therefore it is impossible God should err, because his own will is the rule of his actions: He is every way a law unto himself.... Created creatures how perfect soever in their nature, have the will of God for their rule and law: which though it be within them, yet it is not _Them_, and so they may act beside it. The hand of the Artificer often fails in cutting or fashioning the work he is about, because his hand is not the rule by which he works: his hand works by a rule or line, his hand is not that rule or line, Therefore he sometimes strikes right, and sometimes strikes wrong; but if the hand of a man were the rule by which he works, then it were impossible that ever he should work amiss. Thus it is with God, the very will of God which acts, is the rule by which he acts, hence it is impossible for God to fail; Angels and men act by a rule prescribed, their will is one thing, and the rule is another; the power by which they work is one thing, and the direction by which they work is another; and therefore the most perfect creature may possibly swerve and err in acting; _Only he cannot err in anything he doth, whose will is the perfect rule of all he doth._"
> 
> Joseph Caryl, _Practical Observations on Job_, 2:140.




The fact that Adam was capable of sinning isn’t at issue; no one’s arguing against it. The disagreement is over the question of why Adam chose to sin. I’m saying the question can’t be answered; MW is saying that it can. And yet after a lengthy discussion he hasn’t told me what the answer is. He chooses instead only to reiterate what we’ve already accepted.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> Yet when I accept your argument that Adam was accountable, and I then go on to ask a different question altogether (why did a being with no sinful inclination choose to sin?), you immediately fall back on accountability.



That is plainly incorrect. The earlier posts in the thread demonstrate that when you were moving your necessarian position I referred you to the freedom of will to which Adam was left, which entailed his ability to develop new inclinations. You claim to have since abandoned your necessarian position, which should mean that your necessarian "problem" with the freedom of the will has no bearing on this discussion. If you are now going to return to your necessarian position then your "problem" is of your own making, as I stated earlier. There is no reason why an individual with freedom to initiate a new course of action cannot develop new inclinations.


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## StephenG

I think it is not necessarily helpful to speculate about such things. Some questions we simply need to leave unanswered, as the Word of God does not answer them. Perhaps we will know when we get to Glory.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> There is no reason why an individual with freedom to initiate a new course of action cannot develop new inclinations.




Right -- but there's also no reason why the same individual can't _refrain_ from initiating a new course of action. Adam could have (A) sinned or (B) not sinned. And when I ask you why he chose A over B, your answer is always that he had the power to choose A. 

To which I always respond, "but he also had the power to choose B. So why one over the other?" 

And now you: "He had the power to choose A, and he chose A."

Me: "When someone has the power to do one thing or another thing, and he does the first thing instead of the second thing, or the second thing instead of the first thing, there's always a reason for it. What was Adam's reason?"

You: "You're a necessitarian simply by virtue of asking the question."

Imagine if you were on trial for murder, and the judge said to you, "Answer my question and I'll let you go. Just answer the question and you're free. I'm in a generous mood today. Here's my question: Why did a nice sensible fellow like you murder poor Jones?" 

Now if you said to the judge, "I murdered poor Jones because I had the power to do so," there's little doubt that you'd be stuck in a cage for the rest of your life. No judge on earth would regard your response as an actual answer.


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## ThomasT

StephenG said:


> I think it is not necessarily helpful to speculate about such things. Some questions we simply need to leave unanswered, as the Word of God does not answer them. Perhaps we will know when we get to Glory.



You mean we should accept Adam's choice as a mystery? That's exactly what I'm arguing for on this thread. Adam's choice cannot be explained. Not everything that happens in this world allows for an explanation.


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## earl40

I wonder if this all comes down to the inability of people in glory to sin, based on God's promise after the fall. We will be such in glory, unlike Adam who was created with the ability to sin. Notice how God did not promise redemption till after the fall.  Now because Jesus passed the test and achieved the spiritual goodness Adam did not achieve we will be like Jesus according to His perfect humanity, and we shall not have the ability to sin because of how far the east is from the west because of the work of Jesus.

I guess what I am getting at is man will be immutable in glory, like the man Christ Jesus, which is something Adam lacked because he was created mutable with the the ability to sin but still a naturally good human before the fall. I have no doubt God wanted Adam to become spiritually good (which he was not at the time) but because of satan tempting him and Adam choosing to follow satan instead of God the mutation toward sin began and was consummated with the eating of the fruit.


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## Ask Mr. Religion

I realize this will be long, but I think it bears a review.

Thornwell was Girardeau's mentor, the latter of whom took great issue with Edwards' views on concerning the will of man.

From _The Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell, Volume I - Theological_, Lecture X - Man (all emphasis is my own):

*But it remains to be added, in order to complete the picture of man's primitive estate, that his holiness, though natural, was not indefectible. Adam was liable to fall.* That man, as a creature, was necessarily mutable, in the sense that he was capable of indefinite improvement—of passing from one degree of expansion to another—is easily understood; but that a holy being should be capable of a change from the good to the bad—that he should be able to reverse the uprightness of his make, to disorder his whole inward constitution, to derange its proportions and the regulative principles of its actions—is one of the most difficult propositions that we encounter in the sphere of theology. 

How could sin enter where all was right? If the understanding rejoiced in truth, the will in rectitude, and the affections in the truly beautiful and good, how could error, impurity and deformity find a lodgment within the soul? What was to suggest the thought of anything so monstrous and unnatural? It is clear that there must have been some defect in the moral state of man at his creation, in consequence of which he was liable to fall—some defect in consequence of which he might be deceived, taking falsehood for truth, and confounding the colours of good and evil.

When we speak of a _defect_, we do not intend to convey the notion that anything was wanting to qualify man for his destiny; but that whatever the difference is betwixt a state of confirmed holiness and a state of untried holiness, _that difference was the secret of the possibility of sin; and the absence of what is implied in confirmation is a defect_. It was something which man had to supply by the exercise of his own will in a course of uniform obedience to God. It is certain that no creatures, either angels or men, have been created in immutable integrity. Sin has entered into both worlds, and it is equally clear that there is a great difference betwixt beings in whom holiness has become, as it is with God, a necessity of nature, and beings who are yet capable of being blinded with error and seduced into transgression.

But are we able to say precisely what this difference is? Are we able to point out now the understanding can be deceived and the will perverted in the case of any being that possesses a sound moral and intellectual constitution? This problem, which may be called the psychological possibility of sin, is confessedly one of great difficulty. The solutions which have been attempted are unsatisfactory; either as denying some of the essential facts of the case; or postulating principles which are contradictory to consciousness; or reducing the first sin to an insignificance utterly incompatible with the Divine providence in relation to it.

_The common explanation in all the orthodox creeds is_, that the true ground of the solution is to be sought in the nature of the will. Man is represented as having fallen because he was left to the freedom of his own will. _His transgression was voluntary, and as voluntary had to be deliberate_. His sin was done on principle. It was not an accident, but a serious, solemn and deliberate rejection of the Most High as his God and portion. But this, it will be seen, is not a solution of the problem, but the statement in another form of the fact to be explained. The only approach which it makes to a genuine solution is in indicating the sphere in which the solution must be sought—the sphere of the will. _There must be something in freedom before it has become necessity of nature out of which the possibility of sin can arise_. We must, therefore, turn our attention to this point, and ascertain, if we can, _what is the difference between freedom as necessity and freedom as the beginning of a moral career_.

_Freedom as necessity of nature is the highest perfection of a creature_. It is the end and aim of its moral culture. When a being has the principles of rectitude so thoroughly inwrought into the whole texture of the soul, when it is so thoroughly pervaded by their presence and power, as that they constitute the life of all thought and of all determination, holiness stands in the most inseparable relation to it in which it can be conceived to stand to a creature. This is to be pre-eminently like God, who is perfect truth and perfect righteousness. This entire subjection to the law of God, in which it becomes so completely identified with ourselves that we cannot think or act in contradiction to it, is the ideal of freedom which the Scriptures propose to us as our inheritance in Christ. This is eternal life. 

Now, at the commencement of a _moral career_, our upright constitution has not been completely identified with our personality, because it has not, in its tendencies and dispositions, been taken up by our wills and deliberately chosen and adopted. _It is the determination of the will which fixes our natural dispositions as principles_. When they are reviewed by the understanding and deliberately chosen by the will, they then become ours in a nearer and closer sense; they are reflectively approved, reflectively endorsed, and through that energy by which acts generate a habit they become fixed elements of our life. If such an exercise of reflection and such an act of will must supervene in order to impregnate our personality with holiness and to convert native dispositions into settled principles, it is evident that there must be in the primitive condition of a moral being occasions in which it stands face to face with its own nature and destiny, and _on which it must determine whether the bent of that nature shall be followed and its true normal development promoted, or whether it shall choose against nature another course and reverse its proper destiny_. 

If the will has to decide the case, the issue must be made. Good and evil must stand in actual contrast, and _there must be postulated under these circumstances a power—wilful, heady, perverse, yet a real power—to resist truth and duty_. God gives man a constitution that points to Himself as the supreme good. He places before him the nature and consequences of evil as the contrast of the good. If man chooses the good, he fixes it in his very person; it becomes so grounded in the will that the will can never swerve from it. If he chooses the evil, he also grounds that in the will; it becomes a part of his very person; he becomes a slave, and can never more, by any power in himself, will the good or attain to it. 

This I take to be the sense of the great body of the Reformed theologians, and of all the Reformed Confessions that have expressly embraced the subject. It is what Calvin means by "_an indifferent and mutable will_," which he attributes to man in his state of infancy. It is what the Westminster Confession means when it affirms that man had originally "_freedom and *power* to will and to do that which is good and well pleasing to God, but yet mutably, so that he might fall from it._" Turrettin resolves the first sin into the "_mutability and liberty of man." "The proximate and proper cause of sin, therefore,_" says he, " _is to be sought only in the free-will of man, who suffered himself to be deceived by the devil, and at the instigation of Satan freely revolted from God._" 

This account of the matter is fundamentally different from the Pelagian hypothesis of the natural indifference of the will to the distinctions of right and wrong. On the other hand, it recognizes the law of God as the normal principle of the will; it maintains, farther, that _the spontaneous actions of man_, all his impulses, desires and primitive volitions, were in conformity with that law. His spontaneity was all right. It was reflectively that the will renounced its law, changed its own tendencies, made out and out a new determination. The reflective man, when the ground or root of action was to be himself, perverted the spontaneous man whose ground of action was in God. _The will did not first make a character, but change a character; did not first give man a moral disposition, but perverted the dispositions which God had given_. 

By this theory we preserve the Scripture testimony concerning man's possession of the image of God, and harmonize the malignity which the sacred writers everywhere ascribe to the first sin of the first man. To unfold the psychological process which led to such a perversion of his nature is perhaps impossible; we are not sufficiently acquainted with the mystery of the will. *All that we can say is, that it possessed this power of arbitrary self-determination, in defiance of reason, conscience and nature, as an essential element of its being*. We have the traces of the same power in arbitrary resistance to our own reason and conscience in many events of our present fallen condition. We have lost all holiness, but there are often cases in the ordinary sphere of our activity where our determinations seem to be obstinately wilful and capricious. They seem made only to assert our own intense egoism.

But whatever explanation may be given of the possibility of sin, we know that it now exists, and *that the seeds of it were not implanted in the nature of man as he came from the hands of God*. It is no normal development of his faculties or life. He has introduced it, and therefore we are compelled to say that his primitive condition, though holy and happy, was mutable. He was not established in his integrity. His noble accomplishments were contingent.

*Freedom of the Will*
This is one of the most difficult questions in the whole compass of Metaphysical Philosophy or Christian Theology. Its inherent difficulties have been aggravated by the ambiguities of language. All the terms which are introduced into the discussion have been so abusively employed that it is hard to fix clearly and precisely the points at issue, or to determine the exact ground which we or others actually maintain. We impose upon ourselves, as well as upon others, by the looseness of our terminology. _Liberty, necessity, contingency, possibility_, are all used in various senses, are applied in different relations, and without the utmost caution we are likely to embarrass ourselves by a latent confusion of these different significations.

_Necessity_ is used metaphysically to express that the opposite of which involves a contradiction; naturally, to express the connection betwixt an effect and a cause, an antecedent and a consequent; and morally, in the twofold sense of obligation or duty, and the connection betwixt motive and volition. _Liberty_ is used in relation to the absence of hindrance and restraint in the execution of our plans and purposes, and refers exclusively to the power of acting; or, to denote mere spontaneity—the mere activities and energies of our inner being according to their essential constitution; or, to the exclusion of a cause apart from itself in determining the decisions of the will. _Contingency_ is used in the sense of the undesigned or accidental ; and, in the sense that another reality was at the same time producible by the same cause. The _possible_, again, is the metaphysical nonexistence of contradiction, or the contingent in the sense last explained.

These instances of ambiguity of language are sufficient to illustrate the nature of the difficulties upon this point.

_The will is indispensable to moral agency_. A being without a will cannot be the subject of rewards and punishments. Where there is no will there is no responsibility. *In investigating, therefore, the freedom of the will, the conditions which a just exposition must fulfil are these*:

*1*. Freedom as a confirmed state of holiness—an inward necessity of holiness, in which the perfection of every moral being consists, must be grounded and explained. Any account of the will which leaves the permanent states of heart of holy beings without moral significance; which deprives character and rooted habits of moral value; which attaches importance only to individual acts, and acts considered apart from their expression of inward and controlling principles, is radically defective.

*2*. Any account of the will which does not ground our sense of guilt, our convictions of ill-desert, and which does not show that these convictions are no lie, but the truth, is also defective. I must show that my sin is mine—that it finds its root and principle in me.

*3*. Hence, a just account of the will must show that God is not the author of sin. To say that He is its author is to destroy its character— it ceases to be sin altogether.

*4*. A just account of the will must also solve the problem of the inability, and yet of the responsibility, of the sinner—that he cannot, and yet he ought, and justly dies for not doing what he confessedly cannot do.

The fulfilling of these conditions is indispensable to a broad-sided, adequate exposition of the will. To leave out any of them is to take partial and one-sided views.

*1*. Tried by this standard, the *theory of Arminians and Pelagians* is seen to be essentially defective. Two forms of the theory—indifference and equilibrium.
*(1.)* These theories contradict an established holiness, and deny any moral character to the decisions of the will—they are mere caprice. 
*(2.)* They do not account for character at all—they put morality in single acts.
*(3.)* They deny the sinner's helplessness and even sinfulness—the sinner is as free as the saint, the devil as the angel.

2. The *theory of Edwards* breaks down.
*(1.)* It does not explain guilt; it does not rid God of being the author of sin.
*(2.)* It does not explain the moral value attached to character. 
*(3.)* This theory explains self-expression, but not self-determination. Now, a just view must show how we first determine and then habitually express ourselves. In these determinations is found the moral significance of these expressions. Otherwise my nature would be no more than the nature of a plant. Will supposes conscience and intelligence—these minister to it; the moral law—this is its standard. 

3. There are *two states in which man is found*—a servant and a son.
The peculiarity of the servant is that his holiness is not confirmed. It exists rather as impulse than habit, and the law speaks rather with authority—sense of duty. Now, _the province of the will was to determine—that is, to root and ground these principles as a fixed nature_. *There was power to do so*. When so determined, a holy necessity would have risen as the perfection of our being.

There was also the *possibility of determining otherwise*—a _power_ of perverting our nature, of determining it in another direction. The power, therefore, of determining itself in one or the other direction is the freedom of a servant preparing to become a son, and the whole of moral culture lies in the transition.

This theory explains all the phenomena, and has the additional advantage of setting in a clear light the grace of regeneration. In the moral sphere, and especially in relation to single acts, this freedom is now seen in man. *It is neither necessity nor a contempt of the principle of law*.


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## ThomasT

Ask Mr. Religion said:


> To unfold the psychological process which led to such a perversion of his [Adam's] nature is perhaps impossible; we are not sufficiently acquainted with the mystery of the will.



This is quite a fine piece. Thanks for posting it; it was definitely worth the read. Thornwell’s style is wonderfully clear and precise and his arguments are compelling.

Thornwell gives us a lot to discuss, but if you don’t mind I’d like to call our attention to the fragment I’ve re-quoted here as it directly addresses the primary question this thread has been considering.

Notice that Thornwell seems to be saying exactly what I’ve been trying to say myself. Theologians can shed a great deal of light on Adam’s fall, but they can go only so far before they run up against an insurmountable wall. And of course it isn’t the task of theologians to answer every question we might conjure up. Rather their job is to know when we face a mystery and then to acknowledge it as a mystery without pretending that the mystery is a spurious one.


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## Ask Mr. Religion

ThomasT said:


> Ask Mr. Religion said:
> 
> 
> 
> To unfold the psychological process which led to such a perversion of his [Adam's] nature is perhaps impossible; we are not sufficiently acquainted with the mystery of the will.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is quite a fine piece. Thanks for posting it; it was definitely worth the read. Thornwell’s style is wonderfully clear and precise and his arguments are compelling.
> 
> Thornwell gives us a lot to discuss, but if you don’t mind I’d like to call our attention to the fragment I’ve re-quoted here as it directly addresses the primary question this thread has been considering.
> 
> Notice that Thornwell seems to be saying exactly what I’ve been trying to say myself. Theologians can shed a great deal of light on Adam’s fall, but they can go only so far before they run up against an insurmountable wall. And of course it isn’t the task of theologians to answer every question we might conjure up. Rather their job is to know when we face a mystery and then to acknowledge it as a mystery without pretending that the mystery is a spurious one.
Click to expand...

We do have Thornwell's view that speaks to the "why" of the matter:

*All that we can say is, that it possessed this power of arbitrary self-determination, in defiance of reason, conscience and nature, as an essential element of its being. *

Adam, per Thornwell, possessed the ability of contrary choice.Unless I am misreading, Rev. Winzer, this has been his position throughout the discussion. That seems a sufficient answer beyond which we have no warrant to pursue. Absence of warrant is not necessarily an assignment to _mystery_. I may have missed it, but I have not found the word "_spurious_" used in response to you anywhere in this thread.


----------



## MW

Mystery exists because the finite cannot contain the infinite. In a proper sense all of life is a mystery because it is a gift of God which He has freely purposed for His own glory. The power to will is a gift of God and in that sense is a mystery, but that is all. The actual exercise of our human capacities cannot be a mystery to us because they are our own limited capacities upon which we are given the power of self-reflection. If any person claims to be a mystery to himself it is only because he has failed to reflect on himself and call himself to account for the exercise of his human capacities, and this is properly called wilful ignorance. If there were a genuine mystery at this point it would make the person more than human, something greater than he actually is; and this in turn can only lead to superstition, which draws away from the true and humble fear of the only true and living God.

Adam was under probation. He could refrain from eating the tree, but this itself entailed a self-determining choice in which God was avouched as his supreme good and implicit submission was given to God as his life-giver and law-giver. The tree itself was a test which would progress Adam's character in one direction or another. He could not remain indifferent to this test and simply refrain from the forbidden fruit. The act of refraining required an act of deliberation and determination. If it were otherwise the divine prohibition would have served no purpose.

As for actual rationale behind Adam's choice, it is given in the words of the tempter, and is confirmed in God's own summation of Adam's state after he had eaten of the fruit. Ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil. The man has become as one of us to know good and evil. The rational motive was self-deification, with the power to choose for himself what was good and evil, and a belief that his own life could be sustained and promoted on this basis.

That is the actual rationale; but this discussion is not concerned with the actual rationale behind his choice, but with how an upright man could make such a sinful choice. And that can only be explained if one accepts that the power of free will included the ability to choose something which was contrary to the state in which he was made. That is, that he had a rational and voluntary power to change. The fall of Adam itself proves this ability. To deny that Adam had this ability is to cast doubt on the fact that an upright man actually fell. "Problems" and "mysteries" only arise when the biblical account is not permitted to speak for itself and stand on its own authority.


----------



## ThomasT

Ask Mr. Religion said:


> Ask Mr. Religion said:
> 
> 
> 
> We do have Thornwell's view that speaks to the "why" of the matter:
> 
> *All that we can say is, that it possessed this power of arbitrary self-determination, in defiance of reason, conscience and nature, as an essential element of its being. *
> 
> Adam, per Thornwell, possessed the ability of contrary choice.Unless I am misreading, Rev. Winzer, this has been his position throughout the discussion. That seems a sufficient answer beyond which we have no warrant to pursue. Absence of warrant is not necessarily an assignment to _mystery_. I may have missed it, but I have not found the word "_spurious_" used in response to you anywhere in this thread.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thornwell answers a lot of questions, but he also admits (to his credit) that there’s at least one question he (and we) _can’t_ answer. He singles out this question in order to identify it as a mystery. And this particular mystery happens to be the mystery I’ve been discussing. He states emphatically that a particular component of Adam’s fall – Adam’s use of his mind and will as tools of his own corruption – is “perhaps impossible” to understand.
> 
> Do you disagree with Thornwell? Do you believe that we possess an understanding of the “psychological process which led to such a perversion of [Adam's] nature”?
Click to expand...


----------



## ThomasT

MW said:


> As for actual rationale behind Adam's choice, it is given in the words of the tempter, and is confirmed in God's own summation of Adam's state after he had eaten of the fruit. Ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil. The man has become as one of us to know good and evil. The rational motive was self-deification, with the power to choose for himself what was good and evil, and a belief that his own life could be sustained and promoted on this basis.
> 
> That is the actual rationale; but this discussion is not concerned with the actual rationale behind his choice, but with how an upright man could make such a sinful choice. And that can only be explained if one accepts that the power of free will included the ability to choose something which was contrary to the state in which he was made. That is, that he had a rational and voluntary power to change. The fall of Adam itself proves this ability. To deny that Adam had this ability is to cast doubt on the fact that an upright man actually fell. "Problems" and "mysteries" only arise when the biblical account is not permitted to speak for itself and stand on its own authority.



To identify a rational motive for Adam’s choice doesn't answer our question. Adam could have just as easily chosen not to pursue self-deification. We’re asking why he chose one thing over another. 

You’re eager to limit this discussion, apparently, to the question of how Adam made the choice he did. But that isn’t the question I’m asking. As I said earlier in my posts, you’ve been responding to the question I’m asking by turning me into a straw man who asks the questions you’d prefer I ask and then answering only those. 

You also seem to think that if we admit that a mystery lies at the heart of Adam’s choice, we’re over-turning the whole system we use to explain the fall. But this is a needless concern. No theological system is supposed to answer every question that occurs to us.


----------



## MW

ThomasT said:


> You’re eager to limit this discussion, apparently, to the question of how Adam made the choice he did. But that isn’t the question I’m asking. As I said earlier in my posts, you’ve been responding to the question I’m asking by turning me into a straw man who asks the questions you’d prefer I ask and then answering only those.



Clearly this discussion is a waste of time.


----------



## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> You’re eager to limit this discussion, apparently, to the question of how Adam made the choice he did. But that isn’t the question I’m asking. As I said earlier in my posts, you’ve been responding to the question I’m asking by turning me into a straw man who asks the questions you’d prefer I ask and then answering only those.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Clearly this discussion is a waste of time.
Click to expand...


Not at all. If nothing else, our discussion has shown us the limits of your canned theological formulations.


----------



## Alex the Less

*Excellent Analysis*



MW said:


> Mystery exists because the finite cannot contain the infinite. In a proper sense all of life is a mystery because it is a gift of God which He has freely purposed for His own glory. The power to will is a gift of God and in that sense is a mystery, but that is all. The actual exercise of our human capacities cannot be a mystery to us because they are our own limited capacities upon which we are given the power of self-reflection. If any person claims to be a mystery to himself it is only because he has failed to reflect on himself and call himself to account for the exercise of his human capacities, and this is properly called wilful ignorance. If there were a genuine mystery at this point it would make the person more than human, something greater than he actually is; and this in turn can only lead to superstition, which draws away from the true and humble fear of the only true and living God.
> 
> Adam was under probation. He could refrain from eating the tree, but this itself entailed a self-determining choice in which God was avouched as his supreme good and implicit submission was given to God as his life-giver and law-giver. The tree itself was a test which would progress Adam's character in one direction or another. He could not remain indifferent to this test and simply refrain from the forbidden fruit. The act of refraining required an act of deliberation and determination. If it were otherwise the divine prohibition would have served no purpose.
> 
> As for actual rationale behind Adam's choice, it is given in the words of the tempter, and is confirmed in God's own summation of Adam's state after he had eaten of the fruit. Ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil. The man has become as one of us to know good and evil. *The rational motive was self-deification, with the power to choose for himself what was good and evil, and a belief that his own life could be sustained and promoted on this basis.*
> 
> That is the actual rationale; but this discussion is not concerned with the actual rationale behind his choice, but with how an upright man could make such a sinful choice. And that can only be explained if one accepts that the power of free will included the ability to choose something which was contrary to the state in which he was made. That is, that he had a rational and voluntary power to change. The fall of Adam itself proves this ability. To deny that Adam had this ability is to cast doubt on the fact that an upright man actually fell. "Problems" and "mysteries" only arise when the biblical account is not permitted to speak for itself and stand on its own authority.



Thank you Rev. Winzer for this post. You have comprehensively answered your interlocutor and have helped me formulate the Fall better in my own thinking. Yes, this discussion is a waste of time, but thank you for this post. I suppose I could have arrived at the same place of having your analysis by starting my own thread, but that is how it goes sometimes (I am not saying it is worth pursuing fruitless discussions, but that I am thankful when profitable thoughts are expressed).


----------



## Ask Mr. Religion

ThomasT said:


> Ask Mr. Religion said:
> 
> 
> 
> We do have Thornwell's view that speaks to the "why" of the matter:
> 
> *All that we can say is, that it possessed this power of arbitrary self-determination, in defiance of reason, conscience and nature, as an essential element of its being. *
> 
> Adam, per Thornwell, possessed the ability of contrary choice.Unless I am misreading, Rev. Winzer, this has been his position throughout the discussion. That seems a sufficient answer beyond which we have no warrant to pursue. Absence of warrant is not necessarily an assignment to mystery. I may have missed it, but I have not found the word "spurious" used in response to you anywhere in this thread.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thornwell answers a lot of questions, but he also admits (to his credit) that there’s at least one question he (and we) can’t answer. He singles out this question in order to identify it as a mystery. And this particular mystery happens to be the mystery I’ve been discussing. He states emphatically that a particular component of Adam’s fall – Adam’s use of his mind and will as tools of his own corruption – is “perhaps impossible” to understand.
> 
> Do you disagree with Thornwell? Do you believe that we possess an understanding of the “psychological process which led to such a perversion of [Adam's] nature”?
Click to expand...

I agree with Thornwell. The more full quote you have lifted includes the following from your partial quote:

"The solutions which have been attempted are unsatisfactory; either as denying some of the essential facts of the case; or postulating principles which are contradictory to consciousness; or reducing the first sin to an insignificance utterly incompatible with the Divine providence in relation to it."

Thornwell then goes on to treat the matter, disposing of the unsatisfactory attempted solutions, especially in noting Adam's possession of the power of arbitrary self-determination, said power being in defiance of reason, conscience, and nature. Thornwell's draws our attention to the matter: 

_There must be something in freedom before it has become necessity of nature out of which the possibility of sin can arise. We must, therefore, turn our attention to this point, and ascertain, if we can, what is the difference between freedom as necessity and freedom as the beginning of a moral career._

If the will has to decide the case, the issue must be made. Good and evil must stand in actual contrast, and _there must be postulated under these circumstances a power—wilful, heady, perverse, yet a real power—to resist truth and duty. God gives man a constitution that points to Himself as the supreme good. He places before him the nature and consequences of evil as the contrast of the good. If man chooses the good, he fixes it in his very person; it becomes so grounded in the will that the will can never swerve from it. If he chooses the evil, he also grounds that in the will; it becomes a part of his very person; he becomes a slave, and can never more, by any power in himself, will the good or attain to it. _

Thornwell affirms Calvin and the Confessional view"

"It is what Calvin means by "_an indifferent and mutable will," which he attributes to man in his state of infancy. It is what the Westminster Confession means when it affirms that man had originally "freedom and *power to will and to do that which is good and well pleasing to God, but yet mutably, so that he might fall from it." Turrettin resolves the first sin into the "mutability and liberty of man." "The proximate and proper cause of sin, therefore," says he, " is to be sought only in the free-will of man, who suffered himself to be deceived by the devil, and at the instigation of Satan freely revolted from God." "

*_Thornwell notes that it was reflectively that Adam's will renounced its law, changed its own tendencies, made out and out a new determination. The reflective man, when the ground or root of action was to be himself, perverted the spontaneous man whose ground of action was in God. _The will did not first make a character, but change a character; did not first give man a moral disposition, but perverted the dispositions which God had given.
_
Thornwell notes that it was Adam that introduced the possibility of sin, and therefore *we are compelled to say* that Adam's primitive condition, though holy and happy, was _mutable_. Adam was not established in his integrity. Adam's noble accomplishments were contingent. Accordingly, Adam possessed the possibility of determining otherwise—a power of perverting his, and therefore, our nature, of determining it in another direction.


----------



## MW

Alex the Less said:


> Thank you Rev. Winzer for this post. You have comprehensively answered your interlocutor and have helped me formulate the Fall better in my own thinking. Yes, this discussion is a waste of time, but thank you for this post. I suppose I could have arrived at the same place of having your analysis by starting my own thread, but that is how it goes sometimes (I am not saying it is worth pursuing fruitless discussions, but that I am thankful when profitable thoughts are expressed).



Alex, It is good to know something positive came out of it. Thankyou for the encouragement.


----------



## MW

ThomasT said:


> Not at all. If nothing else, our discussion has shown us the limits of your canned theological formulations.



Your refusal to permit anything positive in answer to your OP is what makes this discussion a waste of time. I leave it there.


----------



## ThomasT

Ask Mr. Religion said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ask Mr. Religion said:
> 
> 
> 
> We do have Thornwell's view that speaks to the "why" of the matter:
> 
> *All that we can say is, that it possessed this power of arbitrary self-determination, in defiance of reason, conscience and nature, as an essential element of its being. *
> 
> Adam, per Thornwell, possessed the ability of contrary choice.Unless I am misreading, Rev. Winzer, this has been his position throughout the discussion. That seems a sufficient answer beyond which we have no warrant to pursue. Absence of warrant is not necessarily an assignment to mystery. I may have missed it, but I have not found the word "spurious" used in response to you anywhere in this thread.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thornwell answers a lot of questions, but he also admits (to his credit) that there’s at least one question he (and we) can’t answer. He singles out this question in order to identify it as a mystery. And this particular mystery happens to be the mystery I’ve been discussing. He states emphatically that a particular component of Adam’s fall – Adam’s use of his mind and will as tools of his own corruption – is “perhaps impossible” to understand.
> 
> Do you disagree with Thornwell? Do you believe that we possess an understanding of the “psychological process which led to such a perversion of [Adam's] nature”?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> I agree with Thornwell. The more full quote you have lifted includes the following from your partial quote:
> 
> "The solutions which have been attempted are unsatisfactory; either as denying some of the essential facts of the case; or postulating principles which are contradictory to consciousness; or reducing the first sin to an insignificance utterly incompatible with the Divine providence in relation to it."
> 
> Thornwell then goes on to treat the matter, disposing of the unsatisfactory attempted solutions, especially in noting Adam's possession of the power of arbitrary self-determination, said power being in defiance of reason, conscience, and nature. Thornwell's draws our attention to the matter:
> 
> _There must be something in freedom before it has become necessity of nature out of which the possibility of sin can arise. We must, therefore, turn our attention to this point, and ascertain, if we can, what is the difference between freedom as necessity and freedom as the beginning of a moral career._
> 
> If the will has to decide the case, the issue must be made. Good and evil must stand in actual contrast, and _there must be postulated under these circumstances a power—wilful, heady, perverse, yet a real power—to resist truth and duty. God gives man a constitution that points to Himself as the supreme good. He places before him the nature and consequences of evil as the contrast of the good. If man chooses the good, he fixes it in his very person; it becomes so grounded in the will that the will can never swerve from it. If he chooses the evil, he also grounds that in the will; it becomes a part of his very person; he becomes a slave, and can never more, by any power in himself, will the good or attain to it. _
> 
> Thornwell affirms Calvin and the Confessional view"
> 
> "It is what Calvin means by "_an indifferent and mutable will," which he attributes to man in his state of infancy. It is what the Westminster Confession means when it affirms that man had originally "freedom and *power to will and to do that which is good and well pleasing to God, but yet mutably, so that he might fall from it." Turrettin resolves the first sin into the "mutability and liberty of man." "The proximate and proper cause of sin, therefore," says he, " is to be sought only in the free-will of man, who suffered himself to be deceived by the devil, and at the instigation of Satan freely revolted from God." "
> 
> *_Thornwell notes that it was reflectively that Adam's will renounced its law, changed its own tendencies, made out and out a new determination. The reflective man, when the ground or root of action was to be himself, perverted the spontaneous man whose ground of action was in God. _The will did not first make a character, but change a character; did not first give man a moral disposition, but perverted the dispositions which God had given.
> _
> Thornwell notes that it was Adam that introduced the possibility of sin, and therefore *we are compelled to say* that Adam's primitive condition, though holy and happy, was _mutable_. Adam was not established in his integrity. Adam's noble accomplishments were contingent. Accordingly, Adam possessed the possibility of determining otherwise—a power of perverting his, and therefore, our nature, of determining it in another direction.
Click to expand...


I have no objection to anything you've quoted in your last post. As I said earlier, I liked Thornwell's essay. (For some reason both you and MW seem to think that I'm arguing against mutability, freedom, and accountability even though I've stated over and over again that I'm not. I think I'm stuck with being a necessitarian no matter what I say. I guess it could be worse.)

Anyway, I have one question for you. Thornwell describes a particular aspect of Adam's fall as being "perhaps impossible" to understand. At no point in the essay does he then go on to say that he's now figured out what he previously considered to be inexplicable. He leaves this thing as a mystery and then proceeds to talk about other things (freedom, accountability, mutability -- the things you won't let me sign on to). 

*So here's my question: What did Thornwell mean by an element of Adam's fall being "perhaps impossible" to understand? What aspect of the fall was he talking about?*


----------



## Ask Mr. Religion

ThomasT said:


> So here's my question: What did Thornwell mean by an element of Adam's fall being "perhaps impossible" to understand? What aspect of the fall was he talking about?


I could only speculate. In Lecture XII, _The Covenant of Work_s, (_op. cit.)_ Thornwell offers more insights related to the essence of his earlier discussion:*
The First Sin*

There are three points to be considered—
I. What was the formal nature of the sin?
II. How it was possible that a holy being could sin.
III. The consequences of this sin.

*I. *What was the formal nature of the sin?—that is, what was the root of it? Was it pride? Was it unbelief?
1. It was a complicated sin; it included in it the spirit of disobedience to the whole law.
2. It was aggravated—(1) by the person; (2) by his relations to God; (3) by the nature of the act; (4) by its consequences.
3. The germ of it was estrangement from God, which is radically unbelief. It was an apostasy, which in falling away from God set up the creature as the good.

*II.* How could a holy being sin?
1. We must not lower the account so as to remove difficulties. Many make it the growth of an infant to maturity, having its powers quickened by errors and mistakes.
2. Others make it allegorical, representing the conflict of sense and reason. This is contradicted by the narrative. Intellect is prominent in the cause of sin. Eve desired wisdom.
3. Others make it an apologue intended to illustrate the change from primitive simplicity.
4. Others, as Knapp, make the thing venial, but degrade the meaning to physical phenomena.
5. We must regard it as the natural history of sin—the manner in which it was introduced into our world.
*6. It is not enough to say that man was mutable; that explains the possibility, but not the immediate cause of sin.*​*(1.) It was owing to temptation. Here explain the nature of temptation.*
*(2.) Desires might be excited, in themselves innocent, accidentally wrong.*
*(3.) The general principle of virtue—Watch. Here was the first slip. Desires produced inattention to the circumstances under which they might be indulged; here was a renunciation of the supreme authority of God. Want of thought, want of reflection.*
*(4.) These desires, by dwelling upon the objects, engross the mind and become inflamed. They become the good of the soul. Here was the renunciation of God as the good. They prevail upon the will and the act is consummated.*​
*III.* Consequences—immediate and remote.
1. Shame and remorse.
2. Loss of the image of God. This a penal visitation. Not the mere force of habit.​
Perhaps Thornwell had in mind the difficulty of explaining how Adam's desires lacked the proper thought and reflection upon the circumstances under which he might indulge his desires. Or, even better, the difficulty in explaining how Adam's mind became engrossed and inflamed such that the true good was supplanted by something else.


----------



## ThomasT

Ask Mr. Religion said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> So here's my question: What did Thornwell mean by an element of Adam's fall being "perhaps impossible" to understand? What aspect of the fall was he talking about?
> 
> 
> 
> I could only speculate. In Lecture XII, _The Covenant of Work_s, (_op. cit.)_ Thornwell offers more insights related to the essence of his earlier discussion:*
> The First Sin*
> 
> There are three points to be considered—
> I. What was the formal nature of the sin?
> II. How it was possible that a holy being could sin.
> III. The consequences of this sin.
> 
> *I. *What was the formal nature of the sin?—that is, what was the root of it? Was it pride? Was it unbelief?
> 1. It was a complicated sin; it included in it the spirit of disobedience to the whole law.
> 2. It was aggravated—(1) by the person; (2) by his relations to God; (3) by the nature of the act; (4) by its consequences.
> 3. The germ of it was estrangement from God, which is radically unbelief. It was an apostasy, which in falling away from God set up the creature as the good.
> 
> *II.* How could a holy being sin?
> 1. We must not lower the account so as to remove difficulties. Many make it the growth of an infant to maturity, having its powers quickened by errors and mistakes.
> 2. Others make it allegorical, representing the conflict of sense and reason. This is contradicted by the narrative. Intellect is prominent in the cause of sin. Eve desired wisdom.
> 3. Others make it an apologue intended to illustrate the change from primitive simplicity.
> 4. Others, as Knapp, make the thing venial, but degrade the meaning to physical phenomena.
> 5. We must regard it as the natural history of sin—the manner in which it was introduced into our world.
> *6. It is not enough to say that man was mutable; that explains the possibility, but not the immediate cause of sin.*​*(1.) It was owing to temptation. Here explain the nature of temptation.*
> *(2.) Desires might be excited, in themselves innocent, accidentally wrong.*
> *(3.) The general principle of virtue—Watch. Here was the first slip. Desires produced inattention to the circumstances under which they might be indulged; here was a renunciation of the supreme authority of God. Want of thought, want of reflection.*
> *(4.) These desires, by dwelling upon the objects, engross the mind and become inflamed. They become the good of the soul. Here was the renunciation of God as the good. They prevail upon the will and the act is consummated.*​
> *III.* Consequences—immediate and remote.
> 1. Shame and remorse.
> 2. Loss of the image of God. This a penal visitation. Not the mere force of habit.​
> Perhaps Thornwell had in mind the difficulty of explaining how Adam's desires lacked the proper thought and reflection upon the circumstances under which he might indulge his desires. Or, even better, the difficulty in explaining how Adam's mind became engrossed and inflamed such that the true good was supplanted by something else.
Click to expand...


I think that the two hypotheticals you’ve offered are probably, absent any other commentary Thornwell may have made, the closest we can hope to come to identifying what Thornwell meant by the “psychological processes” that led to Adam’s fall. 

So can we reach any conclusions here regarding the larger discussion we’ve been having? I think we can. Thornwell is arguing from the distant to the immediate, or rather to the nearly immediate. He says that mutability made Adam’s fall _merely possible_ (a point I’ve emphasized many times on this thread as well) and that mutability doesn’t give us an “immediate cause.”

He then identifies temptation as the thing to which the immediate cause is “owing to,” but he doesn’t identify temptation as the cause itself (otherwise Adam would have no freedom). In attempting to move closer to the immediate cause we’re seeking, he resorts to a kind of reasoned conjecture: desires being excited, the mind now under the influence of excited desires not making a proper distinction between desire for divinity in one set of circumstances and the same desire under another set. Etc.

But as your earlier Thornwell quote suggests, Thornwell doesn’t pretend to know what actually took place in Adam’s mind to make his inflamed and misplaced desire _gain the assent of his will_. (Thornwell talks about the “mystery of the will.”) And it is here, just when we seem poised to answer the question of immediate cause, that Thornwell declares we’ve gone as far as we can go – we’ve reached a question “perhaps impossible” to answer. 

So we can safely conclude, I think, that according to Thornwell, the true beginning of Adam’s corruption, the moment when sin was conceived in Adam’s soul, is covered by an impenetrable veil. And I think we have to grant as well that this immediate cause, this moment of conception, _isn’t a peripheral question _– it isn’t like asking what Adam had for breakfast the day he sinned. It’s an essential question, meaning that without this immediate cause there would have been no sin. We may not _need to know _what this immediate cause is, and the doctrines of mutability and freedom _may not be threatened by it_, but it’s an essential question nonetheless. 

And again, it’s a question that Thornwell says we haven’t answered and probably can’t answer. Which makes it by definition a mystery. And that’s the proposition I’ve been arguing for.


----------



## MW

ThomasT said:


> And that’s the proposition I’ve been arguing for.



Although I expect this will be regarded as another straw man, the fact is that Thornwell explicitly rejects your "mystery." In your OP you stated, "The key problem is that Calvinism teaches that any person not acting from external force *can only will to do what is in his nature to do*." This is the problem as you stated it. Thornwell rejected this teaching. He stated, "It is the determination of the will which fixes our natural dispositions as principles." Again, when he says, "we are not sufficiently acquainted with the mystery of the will," he immediately follows it with the affirmation, "All that we can say is, that *it possessed this power of arbitrary self-determination*, *in defiance of *reason, conscience and *nature*, as an essential element of its being." So your "mystery" is based on a view of human nature which Thornwell rejected.


----------



## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> And that’s the proposition I’ve been arguing for.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Although I expect this will be regarded as another straw man, the fact is that Thornwell explicitly rejects your "mystery." In your OP you stated, "The key problem is that Calvinism teaches that any person not acting from external force *can only will to do what is in his nature to do*." This is the problem as you stated it. Thornwell rejected this teaching. He stated, "It is the determination of the will which fixes our natural dispositions as principles." Again, when he says, "we are not sufficiently acquainted with the mystery of the will," he immediately follows it with the affirmation, "All that we can say is, that *it possessed this power of arbitrary self-determination*, *in defiance of *reason, conscience and *nature*, as an essential element of its being." So your "mystery" is based on a view of human nature which Thornwell rejected.
Click to expand...



I started this thread because I’d recently read some commentaries on the Fall by Reformed theologians. One of these commentaries was by RC Sproul. I disagree with some of Sproul’s views, but he argues effectively and I found myself wishing that Sproul could make a case for his views on the Board; I thought the discussion would be illuminating. (I started this thread by saying, “As Sproul has pointed out…”)

But obviously Sproul isn’t available for internet discussion, so I thought I’d try to argue his position as a spur to discussion.

Sproul isn’t convinced that Adam was either free or determined, so this was the position I initially took – a position of freedom and necessity both failing to explain the Fall. The discussion then quickly digressed into how _fallen_ man makes choices, and in order to maintain consistency with Sproul’s views, I took his view (which I don’t accept) that fallen man (not Adam) acts out of necessity (as I understand Sproul; there may be some nuances in his views I’ve missed).

While we argued about necessity, it occurred to me that there was a larger question about Adam’s fall (the “why” question”), which, as I saw it, remained apparently unanswerable regardless of whether we take Sproul’s view (it isn’t clear that Adam was either determined or possessed of true free choice) or the dominant one on this Board (Adam was free – which, again, happens to be my view as well). 

Because my defense of necessity was merely a spur to discussion, I thought the discussion could become far more useful if I “conceded” what I believe anyway, which is that Adam was sufficiently free to make moral choices.

And this is where the discussion became circular. After I’d conceded your point about Adam being free, and about his will being mutable, I tried, thinking that we’d settled the freedom/necessity argument, to take a closer look at the “why” problem. But you kept returning to the necessity argument long after I’d abandoned it. (The quote of mine you posted in your last note was from the 19th of March.) 

No matter how I tried to focus our attention on the “why” problem, you kept accusing me of defending necessitarianism. At first I thought that this was understandable – I had, after all, been acting as a gadfly. I couldn’t reasonably expect someone who’d been arguing against a “necessitarian” to come to terms, all of a sudden, with the fact that he was now arguing with someone who accepts freedom and mutability and accountability. But after the sixth or seventh attempt of mine to convince you that I’d conceded your main points, it became clear that I wasn’t going to have any success at getting you to believe that you and I were in agreement on the basic questions surrounding the Fall. 

Even in your latest post you’ve chosen to represent my current position with a position that has long since been superseded. So I’m at a loss as to how to break this discussion out of the eddy it’s trapped in. 

But moving on to the latest issue. Mr. R posted a quote from Thornwell in which Thornwell acknowledges a mystery at the heart of Adam’s fall. I suggested that this mystery – why it is that Adam’s will cooperated with his misplaced desires instead of _not_ cooperating with them – was precisely the mystery I’d been trying to discuss. 

Your response was that Thornwell _rejects the very mystery he identifies_. But of course this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Thornwell’s affirmation that Adam’s will “possessed this power of arbitrary self-determination, in defiance of reason, conscience and nature” explains only _how_ Adam’s will behaved the way it did. It doesn’t tell us _why_ Adam chose sin over obedience. Thornwell would have been highly forgetful, or highly illogical, to tell us in one passage that Adam’s “psychological processes” that led to his corruption are “perhaps impossible” to understand and then just a few paragraphs later tell us that these processes can be perfectly understood. 

Thornwell is talking about two different things here. On the one hand he’s telling us the bad news, which is that Adam’s choice is shrouded in ultimate mystery, but on the other hand he’s telling us that Adam’s will had the power to act autonomously, and thus that Adam is accountable. He doesn’t pretend for a second to know why Adam used his autonomy to sin; he simply affirms that Adam’s choice wasn’t determined by a defect of “reason, conscience, or nature.” The whole point of Thornwell bringing up reason, conscience, and nature is that he wants us to know that Adam had perfect forms of all three and that his sin has to be blamed on him alone. The mystery of Adam’s sin, Thornwell tells us, _exists in parallel with his freedom and mutability_. 

Thornwell never repudiates his “mystery” statement. You seem to be the only one doing that.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> Even in your latest post you’ve chosen to represent my current position with a position that has long since been superseded.



What you are basically saying is that the straw man comes from your original post and that you later came to see that it wasn't the correct position. Yet you blamed me for the straw man. Poor form!

Even granting your change of opinion mid-discussion, Thornwell's mystery is not your mystery. Thornwell's mystery lies in the will itself, not in the exercise of the will which caused the fall. He rationally accounted for the fall by tracing it back to Adam's self-determining power which was able to act contrary to nature. As soon as one allows the power of the will to act contrary to nature there is no "mystery" in the fact that an upright nature chose to sin. It was in the power of the will to do so.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> Even in your latest post you’ve chosen to represent my current position with a position that has long since been superseded.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What you are basically saying is that the straw man comes from your original post and that you later came to see that it wasn't the correct position. Yet you blamed me for the straw man. Poor form!
> 
> Even granting your change of opinion mid-discussion, Thornwell's mystery is not your mystery. Thornwell's mystery lies in the will itself, not in the exercise of the will which caused the fall. He rationally accounted for the fall by tracing it back to Adam's self-determining power which was able to act contrary to nature. As soon as one allows the power of the will to act contrary to nature there is no "mystery" in the fact that an upright nature chose to sin. It was in the power of the will to do so.
Click to expand...


I’m not sure how closely you read my last post, so let me try again to dispel the misconception you seem to be laboring under.

You said: “What you are basically saying is that the straw man comes from your original post and that you later came to see that it wasn't the correct position. Yet you blamed me for the straw man. Poor form!”

And yet this is what I actually did say: “I thought the discussion could become far more useful if I 'conceded' what I believe anyway, which is that Adam was sufficiently free to make moral choices.”

I spelled it out for you in plain English that what I was “conceding” was something I already accepted. If I’d come to see that my position was wrong, I couldn’t have called it something “I believe anyway.” My decision to “concede” your points happened in spite of the fact that I had nothing to concede in terms of my actual beliefs – I was conceding only someone else’s position (Sproul’s), and only to move the thread into a new direction.

To summarize, and hopefully clarify once and for all: I started the thread by speaking (or trying to speak) for Sproul, because his arguments are interesting and I wanted the Board’s reaction to them – not because I accepted them. Then, after I’d heard the counterarguments and thus achieved my initial aim of getting the Board’s reaction, I decided to concede Sproul’s position – not mine. 

But in any case, even if you won’t accept my statement that I was speaking for Sproul and not myself, you should be aware that in an intellectual disputation, once a disputant has conceded a position, one does not continue to attack the position that’s been conceded. _That’s_ poor form. And that’s what you did, repeatedly. Even after I stated ad nauseam that I’d conceded your position, you continued to treat me as a proponent of the position I'd been taking on behalf of Sproul. In other words, _you made me into a straw man_. 

As for Thornwell: You acknowledge that Thornwell identifies a mystery in Adam’s will, but then you go on to make a case nobody’s denying. No one’s asserting that Adam didn’t have the power to sin, or that this power came from something other than his ability to act contrary to his nature. We’re not trying to make a mystery out of this. What we’re asking is why Adam used his power in the way he did. You seem to think that a mystery of the will isn’t a real mystery.


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## MW

ThomasT, You may recall that my aim throughout has been to dispel the idea that the fall of Adam is a "problem" for Calvinist theology. When you disclaimed necessarianism you did not refer back to the "problem" of the OP. As far as I knew you were still pursuing the same "problem" you had raised in the OP. If you have come to another resolution my objective is accomplished. Thornwell has given a rational cause-effect explanation of the fall, and you seem to accept it. There is no reason to continue to debate a point on which we apparently agree.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT, You may recall that my aim throughout has been to dispel the idea that the fall of Adam is a "problem" for Calvinist theology. When you disclaimed necessarianism you did not refer back to the "problem" of the OP. As far as I knew you were still pursuing the same "problem" you had raised in the OP. If you have come to another resolution my objective is accomplished. Thornwell has given a rational cause-effect explanation of the fall, and you seem to accept it. There is no reason to continue to debate a point on which we apparently agree.



We do seem to be in agreement on the main points, but I’m still a little puzzled by your discomfort with the word “mystery” as it applies to Adam. In some of your posts you dismiss both “mystery” and “problem” as unbiblical. For example, on 8 May you wrote: "’Problems’" and ’mysteries’ only arise when the biblical account is not permitted to speak for itself and stand on its own authority.”

And yet isn’t the mystery of Adam’s will a) an actual one and b) a profound one? And doesn’t it create not just a genuine problem (intellectually) but also a problem so difficult that it has to be regarded as “perhaps impossible” (Thornwell) to understand? 

I think it’s important to note here that a problem isn’t necessarily the same thing as a fatal flaw. We know that nuclear fusion takes place in the core of the sun, and we know that the process is possible only because of quantum tunneling. We know a great deal about quantum tunneling, but we have no idea why quantum tunneling takes place. This mystery, this problem, doesn’t pose a challenge to the truth of quantum tunneling. 

In the same way, the mystery at the heart of Adam’s fall poses no necessary threat to Adam’s freedom or accountability. And yet you can’t seem to talk about Adam’s choice to sin as involving a mystery at all.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> In the same way, the mystery at the heart of Adam’s fall poses no necessary threat to Adam’s freedom or accountability. And yet you can’t seem to talk about Adam’s choice to sin as involving a mystery at all.



If we have cleared the power of self-determination, and regard that as a sufficient cause for the effect we are describing, then there is nothing specific in Adam's choice which makes it mysterious. Any mystery here is part of the general mystery of life, in which second causes bow to the First Cause. Why do we breathe? Why does a new day dawn? In the end all human explanation has really only described the attributes of things. It never penetrate the essence. Such penetration belongs to the Maker of heaven and earth alone.

Genuine mystery should produce fear and adoration of the great and dreadful Name of God. It only poses problems to those who will not bow to Him.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> In the same way, the mystery at the heart of Adam’s fall poses no necessary threat to Adam’s freedom or accountability. And yet you can’t seem to talk about Adam’s choice to sin as involving a mystery at all.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If we have cleared the power of self-determination, and regard that as a sufficient cause for the effect we are describing, then there is nothing specific in Adam's choice which makes it mysterious. Any mystery here is part of the general mystery of life, in which second causes bow to the First Cause. Why do we breathe? Why does a new day dawn? In the end all human explanation has really only described the attributes of things. It never penetrate the essence. Such penetration belongs to the Maker of heaven and earth alone.
> 
> Genuine mystery should produce fear and adoration of the great and dreadful Name of God. It only poses problems to those who will not bow to Him.
Click to expand...



I think it’s a mistake to conflate the “mystery of life” with the specific dilemma that confronted Adam in the garden of Eden. The true nature of a proton, the substance we’re all made of, is hidden from us. But the nature of a proton has little, if anything, to do with why Adam chose to commit spiritual suicide. We shouldn’t pretend to have answered the “why” question by pointing to other questions we can’t answer. We’re taking a pass on one of the most profound questions we can ask when we simply appeal to the brute fact of nature as an answer for everything.


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## MW

ThomasT said:


> We’re taking a pass on one of the most profound questions we can ask when we simply appeal to the brute fact of nature as an answer for everything.



I don't believe there are brute facts of nature. All things exist by the power and will of God, and facts are knowable because God revealed them. But digressions are best left for new threads. The OP has been asked and answered, so this thread has served its purpose.


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## ThomasT

MW said:


> ThomasT said:
> 
> 
> 
> We’re taking a pass on one of the most profound questions we can ask when we simply appeal to the brute fact of nature as an answer for everything.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't believe there are brute facts of nature. All things exist by the power and will of God, and facts are knowable because God revealed them. But digressions are best left for new threads. The OP has been asked and answered, so this thread has served its purpose.
Click to expand...



I think we’re in agreement on roughly 95% of what we mere mortals can say about an event as remote as Adam’s fall. We seem to be at an impasse on the remaining 5%, but that’s to be expected – disagreements will inevitably arise even when we take Reformed theology as common ground. 

Anyway it’s been an illuminating discussion for me, despite the occasional semantic frustrations both of us experienced from reading the other’s posts, and I’m glad you took the trouble to engage as vigorously as you did on this issue; your comments have served as thoughtful and provocative counterpoints to my own way of interpreting Adam's behavior.


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