The academic distinction Witherspoon employed more vigorously had a long and complicated history. Would the debate about the nature of the human will be captive or free?It goes back at least to the time of Augustine (354-430). To understand this recurring problem, medieval scholastics such as Pedro Lombardo (1096-1164) and Bernardo de Claraval (1090-1153) created distinctions between different types of needs, distinctions calvin used to explain how man could be a slave. sin and, at the same time, responsible for their sin. Our sin, which the fallen will chooses out of necessity, is also voluntary, because the choice is due to our own corruption. [1] There is no external restriction, no external restriction that makes us sin. The will, even captive of evil, is always self-determined. [2]
Turretin argued in the same line when he requested six different types of needs: it can be said that the will is free, even if he is captivated by a moral need (with the need to depend on God, rational need and need for an event), provided that he is free from physical need and coertion. This means that if the intellect has the power to choose (free from physical coertion) and the will can be exercised without external restrictions (freed from the need for coertion), then our sins can be considered voluntary and we can be held accountable for them. . . [3]
- Unsurprisingly.
- Witherspoon maintained the same basic distinction.
- Albeit with a much less scholastic nuance.
- On several occasions Witherspoon defended the necessary.
- Albeit voluntary.
- Character from our sin.
- Explaining the difference between natural and moral incapacity.
- See.
- For example.
- Witherspoon discussing the issue at some point in his Regeneration Treaty:.
Again, the sinner can say, “But why should the sentence be so severe?The law may be fair in itself, but it is difficult, if not impossible, for me to respect it. I have no strength; I can’t love the Lord”. with all my heart. Am I completely unsuitable for what’s good? Oh, can you consider what kind of inability to keep God’s commandments subject?Was it really a lack of capacity or was it just a foul?Could it not be anything but the depravity and corruption of their hearts, which is in itself criminal and source of all transgressions?Don’t you have natural faculties, understanding, will and affections, a wonderful body structure, and a variety of What prevents you from dedicating yourself completely to God?[4]
Using this simpler distinction between natural and moral incapacity, Witherspoon aligned himself with Pictet, who argued that the impotence of the sinner does not serve as a pretext for sin, since it is not involuntary and merely physical, emerging from a natural disadvantage but voluntary and moral. power, emerging from a depraved nature? [5]
The distinction has been the subject of controversy in the reformed tradition, with some theologians defined as ”natural capacity” in such a way that the un regenerated man is empowered to repent and believe in himself. This was the Swiss Triumvirate, heard in the Saumur doctrine and that is why the Helvetic Consensus Formula maintained a moral and natural disadvantage (Canon XXI-XXII) . Didn’t the consensus completely reject the distinction?After all, the formula was devised by Turretin with Pictet’s support. Swiss theologians wanted to protect themselves from the idea that faith was born in some way (Canon XXII). This controversy in 17th-century Europe was no different from the controversy surrounding theology reformed in the 18th and 19th centuries in the United States.
In The Time of Witherspoon, the theologian most famous for talking about natural or moral incapacity was Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), who used family distinction as an important part of his attack on Harmony in Freedom of the Will (1754). [6] In the following years, the theologians of Jonathan Edwards-inspired “new theology” would make the notion of natural ability the cornerstone of his thinking, attributing greater voluntary power to un regenerated man and, in some cases, rejecting doctrine. of imputing Adam’s sin, it was a step Edwards did not take and would not have encouraged. [7] Such was the controversy in the following century that in 1863 Lyman Atwater moved to the pages of Charles Hodge’s biblical repertoire and Princeton magazine to explain that when Witherspoon spoke of natural skill and moral incapacity, he used the term in its classical and orthodox sense, taken from Turretin. [8]
?
Grades:
[1] Calvin quotes Bernardo?for this purpose in institutes, II. iii. 5. See Inst. II. v. 1; Bondage and Liberation, 143-44; Commentary on Rom 7. 14.
[2] Calvin holds this point to exhaustion. See Bondage and Liberation, 67-70, 103, 115, 118, 122, 182, 200, 204; Inst. II. iii. 14, II. v. 7,14-15; The commentary of Fp 2. 13. Moreover, Calvin’s vehement rejection of any idea of necessity that might involve coercion or coercion is by no means original. See Augustine, City of God, Vx. Philip Schaff [Peabody: MA: Hendriksen, 2004], 2: 92-93); Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q. 82 a. 1; D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Abteilung Werke (WA), (Weimar, 1883 -), 18: 634.
[3] Electronic theology, X. xii. 3-12; See. Van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholastics, 160-163.
[4] Works, 1: 215; cp. 1: 142. Witherspoon also uses distinction in the Essay on Justification (Works, 1:53) and in its sermon before the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) in 1758 (Works, 2: 357).
[5] Christian theology, 200 (Theologia Christiana V. x. 12). Italics are in the original Latin and in the English translation. The distinction is found in other authors of the reformed tradition, including William Twisse (1578–1646), moderator of the Westminster Assembly, and Thomas Manton (1620–1677), one of the assembly’s delegates (William Twisse, The Riches of God’s Love to the Ships of Mercy [Oxford: Printed by LL and HH for Tho. Robinson, 1653], 1. 1. 72; Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton [London: James Nisbet and Co. , 1873], 21:332).
[6] See Part I, Section 4 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 1: Freedom of the Will, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). There is no indication that Witherspoon was drinking at Edwards by using distinction. Although John Erskine, Witherspoon’s colleague in the People’s Party, was close to Edwards, Witherspoon never quoted Edwards and the only volume of Edwards that remained in his library was the devotional book The Life of David Brainerd (1749 [Witherspoon?S edition, 1765]).
[7] See E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 127-156.
[8] Lyman Hotchkiss Atwater, Witherspoon Theology,? The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review (1863), 598-599. Ashbel Green refuted the same claim in his Witherspoon biography, responding to this statement: he publicly and in writing stated that Dr. W. would support the idea that unsanctified men have the natural ability to love God and keep his commandments. ? Green argues that Witherspoon’s claims regarding natural abilities and moral disability were the sanctification of nature’s faculties; and also, that every un regenerated man is responsible for any act of disobedience to divine demands and for any omission of ordained duties, for in everything he acts voluntarily and by choice?(Life of the Reverend John Witherspoon, 265-266).