A Review of Edwards's "Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will"

by Henry Philip Tappan

Now if we have reconciled contingence with both cause and certainty, and have opposed it only to necessity, thus separating cause and certainty from the absolute and unvarying dominion of necessity, then this reasoning is truly and legitimately set aside.

Necessity lies only in the eternal reason, and the sensitivity connected with it:—contingency lies only in will. But the future acts of will can be calculated from its known union with, and self-subjection to the reason and sensitivity.

These calculations are more or less probable, or are certain according to the known character of the person who is the subject of these calculations.

Of God we do not affirm merely the power of calculating future contingent events upon known data, but a positive prescience of all events. He sees from the beginning how contingent causes or wills, will act. He sees with absolute infallibility and certainty—and the events to him are infallible and certain. But still they are not necessary, because the causes which produce them are not determined and necessitated by anything preceding. They are causes contingent and free, and conscious of power not to do what they are actually engaged in doing.

I am persuaded that inattention to the important distinction of the certainty implied in the divine foreknowledge, and the necessity implied in the divine predetermination or decree, is the great source of fallacious reasonings and conclusions respecting the divine prescience. When God pre-determines or decrees, he fixes the event by a necessity relative to himself as an infinite and irresistible cause. It cannot be otherwise than it is decreed, while his decree remains. But when he foreknows an event, he presents us merely a form of his infinite intelligence, exerting no causative, and consequently no necessitating influence whatever. The volitions which I am now conscious of exercising, are just what they are, whether they have been foreseen or not—and as they now do actually exist, they have certainty; and yet they are contingent, because I am conscious that I have power not to exercise them. They are, but they might not have been. Now let the intelligence of God be so perfect, as five thousand years ago, to have foreseen the volitions which I am now exercising; it is plain that this foresight does not destroy the contingency of the volitions, nor does the contingency render the foresight absurd. The supposition is both rational and possible.

It is not necessary for us to consider the remaining corollaries of Edwards, as the application of the above reasoning to them will be obvious.

Before closing this part of the treatise in hand, I deem it expedient to lay down something like a scale of certainty. In doing this, I shall have to repeat some things. But it is by repetition, and by placing the same things in new positions, that we often best attain perspicuity, and succeed in rendering philosophical ideas familiar.

First: Let us consider minutely the distinction between certainty and necessity. Necessity relates to truths and events considered in themselves. Certainty relates to our apprehension or conviction of them. Hence necessity is not certainty itself, but a ground of certainty. Absolute certainty relates only to truths or to being.

First or intuitive truths, and logical conclusions drawn from them, are necessary with an absolute necessity. They do not admit of negative suppositions, and are irrespective of will. The being of God, and time, and space, are necessary with an absolute necessity.

Relative necessity relates to logical conclusions and events or phenomena. Logical conclusions are always necessary relatively to the premises, but cannot be absolutely necessary unless the premises from which they are derived, are absolutely necessary.