Free to Say No? by Jenkins Eric L.;

Author:Jenkins, Eric L.; [Jenkins, Eric L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781621899198
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2015-11-03T08:00:00+00:00

It is certain that we will when we will, but he causes us to will what is good, of whom were said the words I cited a little before, “The will is prepared by the Lord.” Of him it was said, “The Lord will direct the steps of human beings, and they will choose his path” (Ps. 37:23); of him it was said, “It is God who produces in you the willing as well” (Phil. 2:13). It is certain that we do an action when we do it, but he who says, “I shall make you walk in my ordinances and observe and carry out my judgments” (Ex. 36:27), makes us do the action by offering fully efficacious strength to the will.151

Augustine summarizes, “He works, therefore, without us so that we will, but when we will and will so that we do the action, he works along with us.”152 This is a clear statement of his evolved theology of grace, which works “without us” to convert us, then works with us to ensure that we carry out the action he has ordained.

Rebecca Weaver contends that Augustine’s teaching of sovereign grace challenges the “genuinely human character” of prayer, exhortation, and rebuke, by insisting that the interaction between humans and God is actually controlled from outside the human sphere, so that the results of these interactions are based on God’s prior decision and not on the interactions themselves.153 Augustine’s belief in unconditional election, the Platonic definition of immutability, and his own theory that evil is the privation of good, all support Weaver’s hypothesis and call into question the nature of the relationship between God and humans.

In Letter 217, written about the same time as Grace and Free Choice, Augustine says, God works on the will to prepare it, in such a way that he “produces a person’s will” and moves a person’s mind, “so that he gives his assent.”154 The human agent prays, repents, or believes only as God moves his mind to do so. Narve Strand says, “God sees to it that man’s will is inwardly prepared, converted, strengthened and sustained unto the end by His unmerited mercy and grace.”155 This unilateral divine action that secures the assent of the will undercuts Augustine’s early claim that God wants men to serve him freely and not from necessity, since the will has no power to say “No” to this divine action.

Near the end of Letter 217, Augustine returns to Prov 8:35, “The will is prepared by the Lord,” and reasserts that God does not wait for human beings to believe in him, but converts their wicked wills “with his omnipotent ease, making them willing instead of unwilling.”156 “But we are now speaking about the very beginnings,” he writes, “when people who were turned away from and set against God are turned back to him and begin to will what they did not will and to have the faith that they did not have.”157 In closing, he resolves, “you ought undoubtedly to admit that the wills of human beings are anticipated by the grace of God and that God .

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