) on the essay Human Freedom by GC Berkouwer, found here:http://www.the-highway.com/freedom1_Berkouwer.html
and here:
http://www.the-highway.com/freedom2_Berkouwer.html
I notice there is much talk of 'free will' on these forums, and this essay may be very thought-provoking. I wholeheartedly agreed with it. This is, in short, what it says:
Most people who defend free will are conscious that there is a degenerated freedom. So when you define free will, you have to ask: free from what? True freedom apparently has limits.
Often the discussion about human freedom has centered around determinism and indeterminism. However, these concepts are religiously neutral and should not play a part in a theological, Bible-centered discussion.
What a theological discussion of freedom should be about, is the slavery of man to 'the dark powers of apostasy, which overpowered and ruled him in all his ways'.
Is man under this slavery, or does he have the freedom to accept divine grace 'negatively as well as positively, so that the decision as to salvation lay in man's own hands only'?
The Reformation said: no. Catholics and humanists saw this as an attack on free will, which they saw as part of man's essence.
The Reformation did not want to defend determinism. There was no compulsion involved. They stressed that man was active and willing, only his activity and will were bent on evil.They saw in the denial of freedom of the will a proclamation of a divine grace which was overwhelming and which could affect human life only in irruptive and mechanical fashion, overpowering defenseless and enslaved man. The Reformers' teaching on the will of man was interpreted as coactio, as necessitas, and over against this the so-called physical freedom of the will was stressed, a freedom not destroyed through the power of sin because it belonged to the essential structure of man's nature.
Calvin said that man had 'free will', but he thought the term confusing. Man has the psychological freedom to do as he pleases, he said, but 'why give such an unimportant thing so proud a title'? It's nice man isn't compelled to sin, but he is still a sinner.
Before the Fall, there was free will, so Calvin has certainly no deterministic view. After the Fall, man lost the freedom of his will.
There is something in here which is the basic thought of the entire article: Sin enslaves man.And this distinction also marks Calvin's judgment of the term. If freedom of the will means that man sins with his will and not through compulsion, then Calvin has no objection; but he considers that the term must be used with great caution, and would prefer that it not be used at all (Institutes, II, II, 8 ). For, he says, he has found that the usual connotation of the term is not merely that the will is not externally compelled but also includes the idea that man can freely determine his own path and the direction of his whole life in autonomy, as if the man who wills is not a fallen and falling man, whose life's direction is already decided because of the fall.
In the New Testament, freedom is not a formal power, but an actuality that is only found in Christ. God's actions in man's life do certainly not compete with free will.
According to the NT, freedom is actualized in Christ.If we place divine power and human freedom in a relation of opposition — even if we refer to a mystery in connection therewith — we are actually operating with a secularized and autonomous concept of freedom. When such a concept, which implies some sort of competition in the relation between God and human freedom, is held consistently, one cannot but conclude that the divine greatness and power rob man of his due, and threaten man in his true humanity. But such a concept actually involves a serious misapprehension of freedom, a misapprehension that really presupposes the idea of the jealousy of a God who begrudges man his proper nature, viewing it as a threat to His own power.
So there are different kinds of 'freedom'. There is a lust for lawlessness posing as 'freedom'. There are false teachers promising 'freedom' but bringing slavery. But the only true freedom is found in submission to God.
From here, it starts to get really interesting.
Theologians have tried to distinguish between 'true freedom' and 'formal freedom'. True freedom is freedom in God, while formal freedom is the power to choose good or evil. This formal freedom is manifest at the Fall, where Adam uses this gift of God for bad purposes, according to many theologians (and people at the forum who use the term 'free will').
The origin of sin is also explained this way. God wanted man to be free, so He gave man the possibility to sin. As Berkouwer puts it,Such a formal freedom has often been posited alongside true freedom, and as an illustration thereof reference is often made to the situation before the fall and especially to the “probationary command” given to man in paradise. Does not this “test command” clearly imply formal freedom? And how must we then view the relation between the positive nature of true freedom and this “uncertain” freedom, with which man faced a choice? For we can hardly describe true freedom in terms of standing at a crossroad; it means, rather, walking along one road, and being continually reminded thereof by way of the gospel of freedom. And how is this to be understood when we see next to it freedom as choice, as a power not to sin (posse non peccare) but also as the power to sin (posse peccare)? Do we not face here a dual concept of freedom, implying an unmistakable antinomy?
Heard that before?Men tried, within this antinomy, not so much to explain the origin of sin as to indicate the sphere within which it could arise, the sphere of human freedom of choice. This formal freedom was thus generally so defined that man was created free to choose for himself between good or evil, placed before a crossroad, in a situation which was still open. Against the background of the contrast between freedom and compulsion, a further idea was often added, that man was necessarily created with this freedom of choice because God did not wish compulsion and desired this kind of freedom.
Berkouwer strongly disagrees!
Because, he says, freedom can be found in God. Free will is the will that is not enslaved to sin. This is what freedom is. So if God loves freedom so much, why does He give man the opportunity to get rid of his freedom? That is why you can't say, 'Man could / We can choose to do evil instead of good because God has given us free will.' Free will is the choice to do good.
Berkouwer devotes attention to the way in which Julius Muller, Emil Brunner and Herman Bavinck tried to solve the problem. Berkouwer himself thinks you can't have both 'real freedom' and 'formal freedom': either man is free because he obeys, or he is free because he has the power not to obey. Not both.In spite of the undeniable problems which in this manner are always revived, theologians have time and again asked the question whether when we examine man's originally good nature we do not encounter de facto an ability to sin, a posse peccare, and if so whether we should not honor this possibilitas with the name of freedom. Can we escape postulating a formal concept of freedom — an ability to choose at the crossroads — along with true freedom? As answer to such questions, it has often been said that God created the “possibility” of sin, that He created man so that he could fall and then let man choose, freely, whether he would follow God's way or his own way.
Berkouwer comes to the following conclusion:
For me, this was a new and rather refreshing view on 'free will'. Still, is there anyone here who thinks that Adam's sin -- and yes, our sins today ARE manifestations of free will? I'd like to hear comments.Man — the man of God — must seek inventions because they are not there, because he does not see them before him, neither in communion with God nor in his own good life. Thus sin is the senselessness of unjustified rebellion dashing with God's own work, clashing with the richness and goodness of the human nature created by Him. In that sense, sin is a riddle. This riddling character occurs again in every sin, as in Israel, where it led to the question of divine concern for His sinful people: “O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me” (Micah 6:3, and see 4, 5). That is more than simple unintelligibility or simple riddle.
The depth of man's guilt is here revealed, which Christ Himself with respect to the sin against Him described thus: “They hated me without a cause” (John 15:25. See Ps. 35:19 and 69:5, and John 15:22: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin”). This is a different description of the “riddle” of sin than that given when men try to escape its force in the “tragedy” of evil or the “fatality” of freedom or in an ineluctable dualism.
The darkness of this “without cause,” this contra voluntatem Dei, can only be understood and confessed in the light of the love of God, which is not an answer to our love but to our enmity: “God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in sins . . .” (Eph. 2:4-5).
These fatiguing cogitations on the origin of sin, on unde malum, can never find rest except at the point where there is vision — without reason — that penetrates sin in all its riddling character; and this vision is from within the freedom of the sons of God. This freedom in its fullness is an eschatological fruit of salvation. It is the fruit of the Holy Spirit in the power of the “once” of Hebrews, of the revealed mysterion (Rom. 16:25) and the deep content of the profession of the perseverance of the saints.
