1. That they are inconsistent with the free agency of man.
To this we reply that:
A. The objection confounds the decrees with the execution of the decrees. The decrees are, like foreknowledge, an act eternal to the divine nature, and are no more inconsistent with free agency than foreknowledge is. Even foreknowledge of events implies that those events are fixed. If this absolute fixity and foreknowledge is not inconsistent with free agency, much less can that which is more remote from man's action, namely, the [pg 360] hidden cause of this fixity and foreknowledge—God's decrees—be inconsistent with free agency. If anything be inconsistent with man's free agency, it must be, not the decrees themselves, but the execution of the decrees in creation and providence.
On this objection, see Tyler, Memoir and Lectures, 244-249; Forbes, Predestination and Free Will, 3—“All things are predestinated by God, both good and evil, but not prenecessitated, that is, causally preördained by him—unless we would make God the author of sin. Predestination is thus an indifferent word, in so far as the originating author of anything is concerned; God being the originator of good, but the creature, of evil. Predestination therefore means that God included in his plan of the world every act of every creature, good or bad. Some acts he predestined causally, others permissively. The certainty of the fulfilment of all God's purposes ought to be distinguished from their necessity.” This means simply that God's decree is not the cause of any act or event. God's decrees may be executed by the causal efficiency of his creatures, or they may be executed by his own efficiency. In either case it is, if anything, the execution, and not the decree, that is inconsistent with human freedom.
B. The objection rests upon a false theory of free agency—namely, that free agency implies indeterminateness or uncertainty; in other words, that free agency cannot coëxist with certainty as to the results of its exercise. But it is necessity, not certainty, with which free agency is inconsistent. Free agency is the power of self-determination in view of motives, or man's power (a) to chose between motives, and (b) to direct his subsequent activity according to the motive thus chosen. Motives are never a cause, but only an occasion; they influence, but never compel; the man is the cause, and herein is his freedom. But it is also true that man is never in a state of indeterminateness; never acts without motive, or contrary to all motives; there is always a reason why he acts, and herein is his rationality. Now, so far as man acts according to previously dominant motive—see (b) above—we may by knowing his motive predict his action, and our certainty what that action will be in no way affects his freedom. We may even bring motives to bear upon others, the influence of which we foresee, yet those who act upon them may act in perfect freedom. But if man, influenced by man, may still be free, then man, influenced by divinely foreseen motives, may still be free, and the divine decrees, which simply render certain man's actions, may also be perfectly consistent with man's freedom.
We must not assume that decreed ends can be secured only by compulsion. Eternal purposes do not necessitate efficient causation on the part of the purposer. Freedom may be the very means of fulfilling the purpose. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 74—“Absolute certainty of events, which is all that omniscience determines respecting them, is not identical with their necessitation.” John Milton, Christian Doctrine: “Future events which God has foreseen will happen certainly, but not of necessity. They will happen certainly, because the divine prescience will not be deceived; but they will not happen necessarily, because prescience can have no influence on the object foreknown, inasmuch as it is only an intransitive action.”
There is, however, a smaller class of human actions by which character is changed, rather than expressed, and in which the man acts according to a motive different from that which has previously been dominant—see (a) above. These actions also are foreknown by God, although they cannot be predicted by man. Man's freedom in them would be inconsistent with God's decrees, if the previous certainty of their occurrence were, not certainty, but necessity; or, in other words, if God's decrees were in all cases decrees efficiently to produce the acts of his creatures. But this is not the [pg 361] case. God's decrees may be executed by man's free causation, as easily as by God's; and God's decreeing this free causation, in decreeing to create a universe of which he foresees that this causation will be a part, in no way interferes with the freedom of such causation, but rather secures and establishes it. Both consciousness and conscience witness that God's decrees are not executed by laying compulsion upon the free wills of men.
The farmer who, after hearing a sermon on God's decrees, took the break-neck road instead of the safe one to his home and broke his wagon in consequence, concluded before the end of his journey that he at any rate had been predestinated to be a fool, and that he had made his calling and election sure. Ladd, Philosophy of Conduct, 146, 187, shows that the will is free, first, by man's consciousness of ability, and, secondly, by man's consciousness of imputability. By nature, he is potentially self-determining; as matter of fact, he often becomes self-determining.
Allen, Religious Progress, 110—“The coming church must embrace the sovereignty of God and the freedom of the will; total depravity and the divinity of human nature; the unity of God and the triune distinctions in the Godhead; gnosticism and agnosticism; the humanity of Christ and his incarnate deity; the freedom of the Christian man and the authority of the church; individualism and solidarity; reason and faith; science and theology; miracle and uniformity of law; culture and piety; the authority of the Bible as the word of God with absolute freedom of Biblical criticism; the gift of administration as in the historic episcopate and the gift of prophecy as the highest sanction of the ministerial commission; the apostolic succession but also the direct and immediate call which knows only the succession of the Holy Ghost.” Without assenting to these latter clauses we may commend the comprehensive spirit of this utterance, especially with reference to the vexed question of the relation of divine sovereignty to human freedom.