Freedom of the Will (1754)

INTRODUCTION

Listed as one of the five hundred most important books in American history, A Careful and Strict Enquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of the Will, Which Is Supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency, Vertue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame (Freedom of the Will, for short) is one of Edwards’s most enduring performances. In this monumental work, Edwards is at pains to combat the “prevailing notions,” advanced primarily by Arminians, that the will is “self-determined” in the sense that our choices are not predetermined by any other cause but the exercise of will itself, or are exercised from a state of “indifference.” For Edwards, this was nonsensical and dangerous, because it denied the sovereignty of God as first cause. Famously, Edwards reduced such a view of the will to an absurdity by using the infinite regress argument—causes of a supposedly “indifferent” choice were actually linked, as in a chain, stretching back infinitely. In its place Edwards offered a “compatibilist” view of the will and moral agency based on inclination that attempted to reconcile freedom and necessity. A person acted according to predisposition either towards sin, if unregenerate, or holiness, if regenerate. Choice was a matter of strongest motives. Humans have a “moral inability” to resist their strongest motives. According to one’s spiritual state, then, there was a “necessity” to choices and actions that, at the same time, did not violate freedom and liberty to make those choices and perform those actions.