A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory

by Albert Taylor Bledsoe

The Pelagian platform, or view of the relation between the divine and the human power.

The doctrine of Pelagius was developed from his own personal experience, and moulded, in a great measure, by his opposition to the scheme of Augustine. According to the historian, Neander, as well as to the testimony of Augustine himself, the life of Pelagius was, from beginning to end, one “earnest moral effort.” As his character was gradually formed by his own continued and unremitted exertions, without any sudden or violent revolution in his views or feelings, so the great fact of human agency presented itself to his individual consciousness with unclouded lustre. This fact was the great central position from which his whole scheme developed itself. And, as the history of his opinion shows, he was led to give a still greater predominance to this fact, in consequence of his opposition to the system of Augustine, by which it seemed to him to be subverted, and the interests of morality threatened.

The great fact of free-will, of whose existence he was so well assured by his own consciousness, was so imperfectly interpreted by him, that he was led to exclude other great facts from his system, which might have been perfectly harmonized with his central position. Thus, as Neander well says, he denied the operation of [pg 172] the divine power in the renovation of the soul,[135] because he could not reconcile its influence with the free-agency of man. This was the weak point in the philosophy of Pelagius, as it has been in the system of thousands who have lived since his time. To reject the one of two facts, both of which rest upon clear and unequivocal evidence, is an error which has been condemned by Butler and Burlamaqui, as well as by many other celebrated philosophers. But this error, so far as we know, has been by no one more finely reproved than by Professor Hodge, of Princeton. “If the evidence of the constant revolution of the earth round its axis,” says he, “were presented to a man, it would certainly be unreasonable in him to deny the fact, merely because he could not reconcile it with the stability of everything on the earth's surface. Or if he saw two rays of light made to produce darkness, must he resist the evidence of his senses, because he knows that two candles give more light than one? Men do not act thus irrationally in physical investigations. They let each fact stand upon its own evidence. They strive to reconcile them, and are happy when they succeed. But they do not get rid of difficulties by denying facts.

“If in the department of physical knowledge we are obliged to act upon the principle of receiving every fact upon its own evidence, even when unable to reconcile one with another, it is not wonderful that this necessity should be imposed upon us in those departments of knowledge which are less within the limits of our powers. It is certainly irrational for a man to reject all the evidence of the spirituality of the soul, because he cannot reconcile this doctrine with the fact that a disease of the body disorders the mind. Must I do violence to my nature in denying the proof of design afforded by the human body, because I cannot account for the occasional occurrence of deformities of structure? Must I harden my heart against all the evidence of the benevolence of God, which streams upon me in a flood of light from all his works, because I may not know how to reconcile that benevolence with the existence of evil? Must I deny my free-agency, the most intimate of all convictions, [pg 173] because I cannot see the consistency between the freeness of an act and the frequency of its occurrence? May I deny that I am a moral being, the very glory of my nature, because I cannot change my character at will?”[136]

If this judicious sentiment had been observed by speculatists, it had been well for philosophy, and still better for religion. The heresy of Pelagius, and the countless forms of kindred errors, would not have infested human thought. But this sentiment, however just in itself, or however elegantly expressed, should not be permitted to inspire our minds with a feeling of despair. It should teach us caution, but not despondency; it should extinguish presumption, but not hope. For if “we strive to reconcile the facts” of the natural world, “and are happy when we succeed,” how much more solicitous should we be to succeed in such an attempt to shut up and seal the very fountains of religious error?

Nothing is more wonderful to my mind, than that Pelagius should have such followers as Reimarus and Lessing, not to mention hundreds of others, who deny the possibility of a divine influence, because it seems to them to conflict with the intellectual and moral nature of man.[137] To assert, as these philosophers do, that the power of God cannot act upon the human mind without infringing upon its freedom, betrays, as we venture to affirm, a profound and astonishing ignorance of the whole doctrine of free-agency. It proceeds on the amazing supposition that the will is the only power of the human mind, and that volitions are the only phenomena ever manifested therein; so that God cannot act upon it at all, unless it be to produce volitions. But is it true, that God must do all things within us, or he can do nothing? that if he produce a change in our mental state, then he must produce all conceivable changes therein? In order to refute so rash a conclusion, and explode the wild supposition on which it is based, it will be necessary to recur to the threefold distinction of the intelligence, the sensibility, and the will, already referred to.

In the perception of truth, as we have seen, the intelligence is perfectly passive. Every state of the intelligence is as completely necessitated as is the affirmation that two and two are [pg 174] equal to four. The decisions of the intelligence, then, are not free acts; indeed, they are not acts at all, in the proper sense of the word. They are passive states of the intellect. They are usually called acts, it is true; and this use of language is, no doubt, one of the causes which has given rise to so many errors and delusions in regard to moral and accountable agency. With every decision or state of the intelligence, with every perception of truth by it, there is intimately associated, it is true, an act of the mind, a state of the will, a volition, by which the attention is directed to the subject under consideration; and it is this intimate association in which the two states or mental phenomena seem blended into one, which has led so many to regard the passive susceptibility, called the intelligence, as an active power, and its states as free acts of the mind. A more correct analysis, a finer discrimination of the real facts of consciousness, must prevail on this subject, before light can be let in upon the philosophy of free and accountable agency. The dividing knife must be struck between the two phenomena in question, between an active state of the will and the passive states of the intelligence, and the obstinate association be severed in our imagination, before the truth can be seen otherwise than through distorting films of error.

As every state of the intelligence is necessitated, so God may act upon this department of our mental frame without infringing upon the nature of man in the slightest possible degree. As the law of necessity is the law of the intelligence, so God may absolutely necessitate its states, by the presentation of truth, or by his direct and irresistible agency in connexion with the truth, without doing violence to the laws of our intellectual and moral nature. Nay, in so acting, he proceeds in perfect conformity with those laws. Hence, no matter how deep a human soul may be sunk in ignorance and stupidity, God may flash the light of truth into it, in perfect accordance with the laws of its nature. And, as has been well said, “The first effect of the divine power in the new, as in the old creation, is light.”

This is not all. Every state of the sensibility is a passive impression, a necessitated phenomenon of the human mind. No matter what fact, or what truth, may be present to the mind, either by its own voluntary attention or by the agency of God, [pg 175] or by the coöperation of both, the impression it makes upon the sensibility is beyond the control of the will, except by refusing to give the attention of the mind to it. Hence, although truth may be vividly impressed upon the intelligence, although the glories of heaven and the terrors of hell may be made to shine into it, yet the sensibility may remain unaffected by them. It may be dead. Hence, God may act upon this, may cause it to melt with sorrow or to glow with love, without doing violence to any law of our moral nature. There is no difficulty, then, in conceiving that the second effect of the divine power in the new creation is “a new heart.”

Having done all this, he may well call on us to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for God worketh in us to will and to do of his own good pleasure.” We have seen that the state of the will, that a volition is not necessitated by the intelligence or by the sensibility; and, hence, it may “obey the heavenly vision,” or it may “resist and do despite to the Spirit of grace.” If it obey, then the vivifying light and genial shower have not fallen upon the soul in vain. The free-will coalesces with the renovated intelligence and sensibility, and the man “has root in himself.” The blossom gradually yields to the fruit, and the germ of true holiness is formed in the soul. This consists in the voluntary exercise of the mind, in obedience to the knowledge and the love of God, and in the permanent habit formed by the repetition of such exercises. Hence, in the great theandric work of regeneration, we see the part which is performed by God, and the part which proceeds from man.