Coercion vs. Necessity
by John Hendryx
Those who believe in the freedom of the will, that is, the moral ability of unregenerate men to believe the gospel apart from a supernatural work of grace in the heart, are being excessive in their praise of human powers. The danger of this view (aside from being unbiblical) consists in the subtle boasting within us that believe what makes us to differ from other men is not the grace of God but the liberty of our natures and wills over against others who were not so wise or spiritually softened in heart so as to believe. If I can really soften my own heart by my own will (i.e. soften my naturally hardened will by my own will’), then it would appear that our will is what makes us to differ from others...that our will, not God is what makes our heart of stone into a heart of flesh. But what is it that ultimately saves us? The grace of God or the will of the natural man? If you say "both" the same problem still exists for why did one man make better use of the grace given to him that the other. Both had the same grace (in this view) so it was something beyond grace (some confidence in the flesh) which would make one person to differ with others in their response to the gospel.
Revelation, however, teaches us that man has
fallen into a desperate and ruined condition from which he is impotent to arise
by his own capacity. His desires are corrupted so as to love darkness and hate the light and cannot (and will not) love Christ in his natural fallen state. The bondage of the
will is a concept so prevalent in both Old and New Testament Scriptures that it
is crazy that so many evangelicals embrace the ‘freedom of the will’ as it were a biblical axiom. That all men have free wills
is such a widely held assumption among Christian groups and that anyone
who doesn’t believe the evangelical consensus is an obvious heretic or
wildly misunderstand Christianity. The Bible is actually read by most
people with this assumption in the background, but if you ask persons
to produce direct biblical evidence to prove the existence of free will
it is not forthcoming. So puzzling has the prevalent belief in free
will been to me that I have taken it upon myself to look more deeply
into the question. My
discovery is that the simple fact of the matter is, all evangelicals, without
exception, really believe in the truth that man has lost his free will and is
in bondage to sin. This I will prove
below.
If you were to ask any evangelical,
Arminian or Calvinist, (1) whether the Holy Spirit has any role at all in bringing one to faith
in Christ, then all would gladly be obliged to answer in the affirmative.
Similarly all evangelicals believe that (2) apart from any action of
the Holy Spirit, that no man has the natural capacity/desire to convert himself
to Jesus Christ. Left to our unregenerate
nature the will is held captive to sin until Christ sets it free. Take note:
This is ALL that is meant when we confess that man has no free will. It is not a discussion about coercion by some
outside force, for none of us believes that, rather it is about necessity
due to our nature. The two above assertions themselves should be totally sufficient,
for all time, to settle the issue, once and for all, among Christians as to
whether man has a free will. So the
contention between evangelicals is not the nature of the will, for we have
already determined above that man has no free will; the issue, rather, where
evangelicals truly differ is the nature of God’s grace (Is it monergistic
or synergistic?). But I have discussed that issue elsewhere.
So I want
to get back to the issue of “free will” because it is VERY important that this
begin to become clear in all our minds and that we have unity as evangelicals
on this subject. Up to this point many church traditions have made the belief
in fallen man’s free will one that is beyond challenge. But if you agreed with
assertions 1 & 2 above it is time to recognize some distinctions and
conclude this matter among us.
When the
concensus of evangelicals speak of ‘free will’ or that choice is ‘free’ it
seems to convey the idea that the will is autonomous, meaning that whatever
a person chooses to do, it is done, not out of necessity, but is able to choose
otherwise. Now if asserting that free will simply means
that it is opposed to all coercion or puppetry, then we openly acknowledge
and affirm with them that the will or choice is free. We have no objection
to saying that our choices, as fallen creatures, are free in the sense that
it is not subject to being coerced forcibly by some external power, but instead
moves according to what it wants voluntarily.
“…if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the
knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the
snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.”
Now if we are held
captive to do someone else’s will then it is clear that our will is
not free, and according to the above passage, freedom comes to an individual
only when God's grants it. Likewise
when Jesus promises freedom to the captives to sin, He says, “if the Son sets
you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)
Clearly since the will has been subdued by the corruptions with which
it has fallen, unregenerate man has a total lack of freedom.
This passage reveals to us that the gift of grace is itself not an
attribute of our unregenerate natures. Furthermore Paul describes mankind’s
state as prisoners who are bound with chains of sin, that is, until we are
set free by the Holy Spirit. Therefore
we must conclude that those who continue to assert that man has free choice
use a different expression than the Holy Spirit. For what Christian would
dare to claim that we serve the righteousness of God by free choice which
is innate within us, but not through the Holy Spirit which is given to us.
For the Scripture declares that “no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the
Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3).
Augustine once said that the
will is always free [self-determined], but it is not always good. It is
important here that we pay careful attention and remember this because we must
bring clarity as to what is meant by “free will” because many persons are
simply confusing coercion with necessity. In his very helpful
book, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, John Calvin stated that
there are four expressions regarding the will which differ from one another:
“namely that the will is free, bound, self-determined,
or coerced. People generally understand a free will to be one
which has in its power to choose good or evil [many evangelicals believe
this]…[But] There can be no such thing as a coerced will, since the two
ideas are contradictory. But our responsibility as teachers is to say what it
means, so that it may be understood what coercion is. Therefore we describe [as coerced] the will which does not
incline this way or that of its own accord or by an internal movement of
decision, but is forcibly driven by an external impulse. We say that it is self-determined
when of itself it directs itself in the direction in which it is led, when it
is not taken by force or dragged unwillingly.
A bound will, finally, is one which because of its corruptness is
held captive under the authority of its evil desires, so that it can choose
nothing but evil, even if it does so of its own accord and gladly, without
being driven by any external impulse.
According to these definitions we allow that man has choice
and that it is self-determined, so that if he does anything evil, it should be
imputed to him and to his own voluntary choosing. We do away with coercion and force, because this
contradicts the nature of the will and cannot coexist with it. We deny that choice is free, because
through man’s innate wickedness it is of necessity driven to what is
evil and cannot seek anything but evil.
And from this it is possible to deduce what a great difference there
is between necessity and coercion.
For we do not say that man is dragged unwillingly into sinning, but that
because his will is corrupt he is held captive under the yoke of sin and
therefore of necessity will in an evil way.
For where there is bondage, there is necessity. But it makes a great difference whether the
bondage is voluntary or coerced. We
locate the necessity to sin precisely in corruption of the will, from which
follows that it is self-determined. (John Calvin, BLW pp 69, 70)
The difference between coercion
and necessity is really where the misunderstandings among evangelicals have
come about. But even after all this
there is still confusion. Lets attempt
to end it here. Some erroneously say that there can be no
sin where there is necessity – these are the ones who defend free choice
against the grace of God. The holdouts
should recognize that this argument does not hold water because God Himself
is good of necessity and we praise Him for the fact that He can only be
good. Our opponents would like us to believe that being voluntary is wholly
inconsistent with necessity but here we have shown that the two are combined
together in the nature of God and his goodness.
And consider that you yourself are longing for the Day when we will
be transformed into our resurrected bodies in glory as we stand upon the earth. At that time there will be no more tears, death
or sin. So then we will be sinless of necessity because of our nature.
Others
ask, if men are not free then why does God ask of them what they cannot deliver.
Isn’t this unjust? Well if we borrow $1 million and squander it
in riotous living and cannot repay, does our inability alleviate us of the
responsibility? The fact is that we are debtors and that God owes us nothing
since we willfully disobey Him. The Law’s work is to thoroughly empty all
misplaced confidence in ourselves which alone makes room for the grace of
God. God’s commands do not take into consideration
our natural strength for in the gospel itself He gives what He commands –
and does so for the purpose of revealing that by ourselves we are helpless.
(Augustine). Whenever we proclaim
the word of the gospel to men, it is without question that when someone hears
so as to believe, it is a gift wrought by God in him. It is God’s work to fulfill through grace
what He commands by the Law (Calvin).
In
the Old Testament sometimes God would discipline Israel by telling them their
crops would fail even though they labored to sow seed. This is proof that all
that we do in this world such as planting crops requires the prior blessing of
God if it is to be fruitful. Similarly
Paul uses an agricultural metaphor when speaking of casting the seed of the
gospel. He says, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So
neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the
growth.” This simply means that people need to hear the gospel in order to be
saved, but we can preach till we a blue in the face and nothing will take root
unless the Holy Spirit sovereignly applies that word to the heart that one
might hear. Even though it is common
knowledge among Christians that they are saved by grace, why is it in our
moralizing crusades do we easily fall into the trap of believing ourselves
better or more moral than the average pagan? The two are mutually exclusive.
The sins of both left and right, of Christian and Pagan, stem from the belief
in the autonomy of man, or quite simply, the belief in free will, that we can
do any good apart from the prior blessing of God. Otherwise couldn’t we say,
God I am so glad I am not like other men ... when you distributed grace equally
among men, I took hold of it and not others. I had the wisdom to believe but my
neighbor did not.” Away with such
boasting, which the cause of so much self-righteousness among Christians. How easy it is to fall into the trap of
believing that it was something other than the grace of Christ that God is
pleased by in us. Where is the
sufficiency of the cross in this?
To believe that faith is self-produced, innately present in our
unregenerate fallen nature is a deeply flawed unbiblical theology. And
finally
if all men receive equal grace to choose Christ, then what need of
there is
prayer? If everyone already has as much grace as they are going
to get
prior to salvation, then what more can God do to help them? It
would make prayer for the salvation of others irrelevant and useless
since such a theology must lead one to conclude that man has to make
has own decision apart from the work of the Spirit.
Because
all Christians believe in the necessity of the work of the Holy Spirit in coming to
faith in Christ, we can only conclude than man has no free will, until Christ sends His Spirit to set us free. If you want to define the will differently then do
so recognizing that when we teach that man has no free will, all we mean is that,
due to a corruption of nature, man is in bondage to sin and cannot and will not help himself out of it. Let me
conclude this discussion with a quote from the Council of Orange (529 AD). “…if
anyone makes the assistance of grace depend on the humility or obedience of man
and does not agree that it is a gift of grace itself that we are obedient and
humble, he contradicts the Apostle who says, "What have you that you did
not receive?" (1 Cor. 4:7), and, "But by the grace of God I am what I
am" (1 Cor. 15:10).”