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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Freedom of the Will," Jonathan Edwards engages in a profound exploration of the nature of human choice and divine sovereignty through a rigorous philosophical and theological lens. Written as a response to the prevailing views of free will during the early 18th century, Edwards meticulously dissects the intricacies of human action, arguing for a compatibilist interpretation that reconciles human freedom with the omnipotence of God. With an eloquent, yet accessible prose style, Edwards weaves together scriptural exegesis and rational argumentation, providing a comprehensive examination of moral agency that has influenced both theological discourse and contemporary debates on free will. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was an American theologian, preacher, and philosopher whose intellectual pursuits were shaped by the turbulence of his time, including the First Great Awakening. His engagement with the philosophical currents of his era, particularly those emerging from the Enlightenment, positions him as a pivotal figure in American religious thought. Edwards's own deep convictions and experiences as a preacher, grappling with the existential questions of sin and redemption, imbued his work with urgency and clarity. Readers seeking a deeper understanding of the intersection between faith and reason will find "The Freedom of the Will" an invaluable resource. It invites contemplation on the complexities of human existence and the nature of divine grace, making it essential reading for anyone interested in theology, philosophy, and the historical context of American thought. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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The Freedom of the Will (Vol. 1-4)
Table of Contents
Introduction
Freedom of the Will confronts the electrifying tension between human choosing and the order of causes that seem to press upon every decision. Jonathan Edwards invites readers into a disciplined inquiry rather than a sermon, asking what it really means to say that a person acts freely. The book does not hurry; it defines terms, tests assumptions, and traces consequences. Edwards’s project is ambitious yet exacting: to examine whether human liberty, moral responsibility, and divine sovereignty can coherently stand together. The result is a sustained, methodical argument that turns questions of will and choice into a precise study of motives, necessity, accountability, and agency.
This work is considered a classic because it fuses philosophical rigor with theological depth while shaping the vocabulary of later debates about freedom. Across centuries, readers have returned to it for the clarity of its distinctions, the careful staging of objections, and the refusal to confuse piety with imprecision. It occupies a prominent place in American intellectual history and remains a touchstone for discussions of determinism, moral agency, and responsibility. Its endurance owes as much to the lucidity of its method as to the audacity of its topic: whether the will is genuinely free and, if so, in what sense. Few books have sustained such durable, focused influence.
Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), a leading figure of the eighteenth-century New England ministry and a major voice of the First Great Awakening, wrote the treatise in the early 1750s while living in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It was published in 1754 under a longer title that emphasizes its nature as a careful, strict inquiry into prevailing notions of free will. The work here appears in four parts, a structure sometimes presented across multiple volumes. Its subject is philosophical theology: defining the will, analyzing liberty, considering necessity, and examining divine foreknowledge. Edwards’s aim is to test competing accounts of freedom and to defend moral accountability with conceptual precision.
Edwards’s stated intention is not to dazzle with eloquence but to clarify, distinguish, and reason. He seeks to expose where common language about choice conceals confusion, and where popular theories smuggle in assumptions that cannot be sustained. The project is polemical in a principled sense: he addresses positions then called Arminian, which asserted a stronger notion of self-determination, and asks whether they can withstand scrutiny. At the same time, he strives to safeguard moral praise and blame by explaining how responsibility is compatible with a world in which events, motives, and character exert real causal force. The result is both critical and constructive.
Part I develops the vocabulary of the debate. Edwards defines the will as the mind choosing and then distinguishes liberty from mere ability, and necessity from compulsion. He separates moral from natural inability, arguing that these terms track different kinds of limitation. By shaping the grammar of the question before advancing conclusions, he ensures that later arguments rest on shared meanings rather than contested slogans. This groundwork is crucial: without settled definitions, disputes over freedom devolve into equivocations. For readers, Part I functions like a map, fixing the coordinates—will, choice, cause, motive, necessity—so that subsequent claims about freedom can be evaluated with care.
Part II scrutinizes the notion of a self-determining will that stands uncaused or indifferent at the moment of choice. Edwards argues that choices do not float free of reasons; they emerge within a nexus of motives, dispositions, and perceptions of good. He contends that the will inclines toward what the agent judges to be most compelling at that moment, so that preference, perception, and character jointly shape decision. By examining supposed cases of indifference, he claims that such indifference either dissolves under analysis or fails to produce genuine action. The critique aims to show that a certain picture of uncaused choosing is neither intelligible nor necessary for moral responsibility.
Part III addresses necessity and moral agency. If choices have causes, does responsibility vanish? Edwards answers by distinguishing coercion from a kind of necessity consistent with voluntary action. On this view, the certainty of an act’s occurrence, grounded in motives and character, does not negate the agent’s ownership of the act. He insists that accountability concerns the source in the person—what one loves, values, and intends—rather than the metaphysical isolation of choice from all prior influence. Moral inability, then, describes the entrenched conditions of the heart, not a physical restraint. The argument seeks to show that responsibility depends on voluntariness and sourcehood, not on causeless indeterminacy.
Part IV turns to divine foreknowledge and its implications for freedom. Edwards reasons that if future acts are certainly known by God, their occurrence is fixed, raising questions for accounts of liberty that require ultimate contingency. Rather than treating foreknowledge as a threat to responsibility, he uses it to test the coherence of rival definitions of freedom, pressing whether they can accommodate omniscience without contradiction. The discussion does not detour into speculation; it remains tethered to the earlier distinctions about cause, motive, and necessity. In bringing theology and philosophy together, Edwards argues for a picture in which sovereignty and moral agency can stand without mutual erosion.
The book’s standing within the canon arises from the reach of its influence and the resilience of its method. It helped shape subsequent New England theology and set terms for Protestant discussions of grace, choice, and accountability. In philosophy, its compatibilist analysis became a benchmark for later treatments of motivation and moral responsibility. Even those who disagree find themselves using Edwards’s distinctions, if only to refine alternative views. The work’s intellectual longevity also stems from its discipline: it builds carefully, answers objections, and resists rhetorical shortcuts. That model of argument—measured, lucid, thorough—has made it a classroom staple and a perennial point of reference.
Readers also value the book’s literary and rhetorical qualities. Edwards writes dense but transparent prose, moving step by step, often with illustrative examples that clarify without distracting. He anticipates objections, reframes them in the strongest terms, and then replies in language that aims to persuade the mind rather than stir the passions. The four-part architecture gives a sense of progression: from definitions to critique, from construction to theological testing. Although the subject can be abstract, the stakes are unmistakably human—how we evaluate actions, assign praise and blame, and think about character. The style mirrors the argument’s aim: to replace confusion with principled clarity.
For contemporary readers, the book’s relevance lies in questions that continue to animate ethics, law, psychology, and public life. Debates about determinism, the influence of upbringing and environment, the findings of neuroscience, and the fairness of holding people responsible all echo themes Edwards investigates. His framework assists readers in distinguishing kinds of causation and in separating compulsion from accountability, an exercise valuable beyond theology. Even when one rejects his conclusions, the structure of his reasoning trains habits of careful analysis. The work remains a living interlocutor for anyone curious about how freedom, responsibility, and character relate in a world of pervasive causes.
The Freedom of the Will endures because it unites a fearless question with a disciplined method. Its central ideas—moral agency rooted in the person, liberty distinguished from indeterminacy, and sovereignty examined alongside responsibility—continue to provoke, clarify, and refine. Across four closely argued parts, Edwards offers a sustained conversation rather than a mere position, inviting readers to test their assumptions and measure their terms. That invitation, more than any single conclusion, explains the book’s lasting appeal. It asks how we can be answerable for our choices without denying the forces that shape us, a problem as urgent now as when it was first posed.
Synopsis (Selection)
Jonathan Edwards’s Freedom of the Will is a theological and philosophical treatise examining what kind of freedom is essential to moral agency, virtue, vice, reward, and punishment. Written amid debates about human liberty and divine sovereignty, it aims to clarify terms, assess rival accounts of freedom, and defend a coherent view of choice consistent with accountability. The work proceeds in ordered stages, defining key concepts, evaluating the notion of a self-determining will, analyzing the role of motives, and relating human action to divine foreknowledge and grace. Across its parts, Edwards maintains a steady sequence: from conceptual groundwork, through argument, to replies to objections and concluding synthesis.
Edwards begins by establishing definitions. He distinguishes natural inability, such as lack of faculties or opportunity, from moral inability, which arises from prevailing dispositions and inclinations. The corresponding types of necessity follow: natural necessity involves coercion or external restraint, while moral necessity consists in the certainty of an event given motives and character. Liberty is not the absence of causation but the power to act according to one’s will without compulsion. With these terms fixed, he can evaluate claims about contingency and indifference. The clarity of this framework anchors the subsequent analysis of whether human choices can be both certain and genuinely voluntary.
He then examines the idea that the will determines itself by a sovereign power of contrary choice. Edwards argues that if an act of will determines a subsequent act, one must still account for the prior determining act, creating an explanatory regress. If volitions are uncaused, they become acts of chance, which undermines rational agency. If they are caused, they must be caused by something other than a prior undetermined volition. He concludes that the notion of a self-determining will does not coherently secure responsibility and instead dissolves into either randomness or a chain requiring an initial uncaused choice.
In place of indifference, Edwards proposes that the will follows the strongest motive, or what appears as the greatest good to the mind at the moment of choice. Motives gain strength from perceptions, affections, and established dispositions, so the state of the heart shapes which consideration prevails. On this account, volitions are connected to reasons and character, preserving intelligibility and moral significance. The causal link does not impose external force; rather, it expresses internal inclination. This line of thought yields a moral necessity explaining why certain choices are certain without transforming them into coerced acts, and why patterns of conduct reflect settled tempers.
Edwards next argues that such moral necessity is compatible with liberty and moral responsibility. Genuine freedom consists in doing what one wills without external restraint, not in an indeterminate ability to choose otherwise at the decisive moment. Praise and blame attach to the person insofar as actions proceed from the person’s character and motives. He appeals to common experience, where strong habits and forecasts of conduct coexist with accountability, and to the stability required for promises, laws, and social expectations. On this view, certainty about choices does not excuse them, because the certainty arises from the very attributes that constitute the agent’s moral identity.
Turning to divine foreknowledge, Edwards contends that if God infallibly knows future free actions, those actions are certain. Certainty, so understood, implies necessity of consequence, not compulsion or natural restraint. Denying such certainty would compromise omniscience. He maintains that foreknown events can still be voluntary, because they occur according to agents’ motives and desires. The relation between foreknowledge and event is logical rather than coercive. Thus, divine omniscience and human liberty, rightly defined, stand together. This section situates human willing within a comprehensive providence while preserving the difference between certainty grounded in reasons and any notion of mechanical force upon the will.
Edwards then addresses human moral inability regarding spiritual good. Because of a corrupt disposition, people are unable, in the moral sense, to choose God and holiness apart from renewing grace. This inability is not excusing, since it arises from the very heart and love that determine choices. Efficacious grace remedies the inability by changing the disposition, thereby making holy motives appear supremely good. When renewed, the person freely wills the good because the will now follows a transformed inclination. This account preserves responsibility, explains the need for grace, and clarifies how divine influence can be effectual while leaving the act itself voluntary and self-expressive.
Finally, Edwards considers objections. Does moral necessity make God the author of sin, insincere in commands, or unjust in punishments and rewards? He replies by distinguishing between moral and natural necessity, differentiating divine decree and wise permission from coercive causation, and affirming the role of secondary causes. Commands reveal duty; inability reflects corruption, not want of faculties. Punishment addresses the agent’s heart as the source of action. He underscores that providential order and human intentions operate on distinct levels, so that God ordains events without violating creaturely voluntariness. Scriptural examples and reasoned analogies support the coherence of sovereignty with responsibility and moral desert.
The treatise concludes by synthesizing its claims. True liberty is the capacity to act according to one’s will without external constraint, and this liberty is consistent with moral necessity arising from motives and character. The will is not an independent self-mover but is determined by the strongest present reasons as apprehended by the heart and mind. Divine foreknowledge and efficacious grace fit this framework without negating accountability. Edwards presents a structured case that rejects indifference and chance while upholding praise and blame. The overall message is a compatibilist account that secures moral agency, clarifies human dependence on grace, and affirms a stable providential order.
Historical Context
Jonathan Edwards composed The Freedom of the Will in the mid-eighteenth century, within the British colonies of North America, chiefly in Massachusetts. The intellectual and social milieu was shaped by a Congregational establishment, town-based church governance, and a lingering Puritan moral vision, even as Enlightenment rationalism circulated from London and Edinburgh. Colonial life was unevenly distributed between coastal mercantile towns and interior agrarian settlements. Religious obligations were intertwined with civic obligations, including parish taxes and ministerial support. This era witnessed recurrent imperial wars, fluctuating economies, and contested authority in churches and town meetings. The book’s analytical rigor reflects a culture negotiating tradition, reason, and expanding transatlantic exchange.
Edwards wrote most of the treatise at Stockbridge, on Massachusetts’s western frontier, after his dismissal from Northampton in 1750. Stockbridge was a mission town for the Mahican (Muh-he-con-ne-ok) people and other Native groups, established in the 1730s under missionary John Sergeant. Edwards arrived in 1751, amid disputes over land, trade, and governance involving colonial elites such as the Williams family. In this borderland, with Fort Massachusetts to the north and Albany markets to the west, daily life was shadowed by imperial tensions. The book appeared in Boston in 1754 through printer Samuel Kneeland, with rapid transatlantic circulation to Scotland and England via Edwards’s correspondents.
A decisive backdrop was the Northampton awakening of 1734–1735. In western Massachusetts, Edwards’s parish experienced widespread conversions, prompting his published Faithful Narrative (London, 1737). The local revival featured intense preaching on sin, grace, and the sovereignty of God, accompanied by communal reforms and contested reports of bodily effects. Town records and correspondence suggest a marked decline in disorderly conduct and an uptick in devotional gatherings in 1734–1735. The treatise connects to this event as a later theoretical effort to explain how motives, affections, and divine influence bear upon volition. It seeks to clarify why human choices, so powerfully stirred in revival, require a precise account of necessity and liberty.
The First Great Awakening, spanning 1740–1742 in New England and connected to revivals in Britain, brought itinerant preaching by George Whitefield (Boston, October 1740) and intensified debates over religious experience. Edwards preached Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God at Enfield, Connecticut, on 8 July 1741, exemplifying the era’s urgent appeals. Newspapers and pamphlets multiplied controversy between pro-revival New Lights and skeptical Old Lights. The Freedom of the Will is tethered to this ferment: it distills lessons from transitory fervor into durable principles about moral agency. Edwards argues that enduring spiritual change cannot rest on an abstract power of contrary choice detached from the strongest motive.
The post-awakening years, 1743–1750, were marked by critical responses from Boston clergy such as Charles Chauncy, whose Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England (1743) accused the revivals of enthusiasm and disorder. Ecclesiastical councils convened to investigate charges against ministers, and towns confronted divisions over discipline and admission to sacraments. Edwards’s own pastoral conflicts in Northampton deepened his engagement with issues of evidence for grace and the nature of genuine religious affections. The work’s argument arose from this crucible: it seeks to secure a theological basis for stable piety by grounding freedom in the will’s determination by moral motives, under the comprehensive sovereignty of God.
A transatlantic Calvinist–Arminian controversy furnished Edwards’s immediate intellectual opponents. The earlier Synod of Dort (1618–1619) had condemned Arminian claims about conditional election and prevenient grace. In England, Daniel Whitby’s Discourse on the Five Points (1710) defended a libertarian self-determining power of the will, shaping Anglican and dissenting debates. John Wesley, in the 1740s, promoted Arminian views within Methodism and published anti-predestinarian tracts. Edwards’s treatise directly targets Whitby’s formulations and related arguments, contending that a will insulated from motive causality becomes arbitrary and that moral responsibility coheres with moral necessity. The book mirrors these disputes by supplying a systematic Calvinist reply.
Edwards’s communion controversy at Northampton (1749–1750) crystallized long-standing tensions over church membership. His grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, had championed a more open approach to the Lord’s Supper, effectively modifying strict conversion requirements. Edwards reversed course, requiring credible profession of saving faith. In June 1750 an ecclesiastical council consented to his dismissal, with the parish voting by an overwhelming margin to remove him. This conflict sharpened his analysis of moral ability and inability: The Freedom of the Will articulates why human capacities are bound to prevailing dispositions, and why sacramental discipline must reflect inward renewal rather than mere external consent.
The Stockbridge mission community, founded in the 1730s, functioned under the New England Company’s patronage, with John Sergeant as the first missionary and schools for Mahican youth. After 1751, Edwards supervised the mission, while figures such as Gideon Hawley prepared to labor among the Six Nations. Local politics involved the Williams family’s land claims and trade interests; Ephraim Williams Jr., later killed at Lake George in 1755, left a bequest that eventually founded Williams College. Edwards’s daily engagement with Native students, interpreters, and colonial agents reinforced his interest in moral psychology across cultures. The book reflects this frontier vantage, seeking universal principles of agency amid cultural and political contestation.
The outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in North America (French and Indian War) in 1754 encircled Stockbridge with anxiety. The Albany Congress met in June–July 1754 to secure Iroquois alliances; Mohawk leader Hendrick Theyanoguin participated. Nearby militias fortified routes between Albany and the Connecticut River Valley; Hendrick fell at the Battle of Lake George in September 1755 alongside Colonel Ephraim Williams Jr. Stockbridge Indians served as scouts for British forces. Edwards wrote under the pressures of war alarms, troop movements, and supply shortages on the frontier. The work’s insistence on providential order and moral causality implicitly counters political chaos, framing human choosing within a larger divine governance.
Eighteenth-century debates on liberty and necessity in Britain formed a crucial intellectual backdrop. Thomas Hobbes had defended a compatibilist necessity in Leviathan (1651). John Locke’s Essay (1690) redefined power, ideas, and volition, while Anthony Collins’s Philosophical Inquiry (1717) argued for necessity, prompting replies by Samuel Clarke emphasizing active power and rational agency. David Hume’s Enquiry (1748) offered a regularity view of causation and a reconciling account of liberty with necessity in human action. Edwards absorbed these arguments through Yale training and transatlantic correspondence. The Freedom of the Will adapts compatibilist insights, integrating them with Augustinian theology by positing the will’s determination by the strongest motive and the primacy of moral disposition.
Colonial print and correspondence networks transmitted the book rapidly. The Boston edition appeared in 1754 with Samuel Kneeland, while Scottish allies like John Erskine promoted Edwards’s writings in Glasgow and Edinburgh. American periodicals and London booksellers ensured reviews and reprints; ministers cited the treatise in ecclesiastical debates from New England to Ulster. The work’s scholastic structure and copious citations suited a learned audience accustomed to polemical sermons, synod minutes, and pamphlet exchanges. This circulation history connects directly to its argument: a public, reasoned adjudication of contested doctrines, designed for councils, colleges, and pulpits negotiating the boundaries of orthodoxy and toleration.
Edwards’s education and learned networks shaped his philosophical vocabulary. He entered Yale College in 1716 at age thirteen, studied logic and natural philosophy, and completed his M.A. in 1722 with theses reflecting Reformed scholastic method. He read Newton and Locke, and maintained correspondences with Scottish evangelicals, notably John Erskine, who encouraged publication and facilitated British reception. His use of causal language, analysis of motives, and appeal to experiential evidence reflect a synthesis of theology and early modern science. The book’s careful definitions and distinctions reveal Yale discipline and the Republic of Letters’ standards of proof, anchoring its claims within a recognizably Enlightenment discourse.
The Half-Way Covenant (1662) and Stoddardism in Northampton provided deep background to Edwards’s later positions. The Half-Way Covenant admitted baptized but unconverted adults to partial church privileges, aiming to preserve civic-religious unity. Solomon Stoddard, minister in Northampton from 1669 to 1729, extended admission to the Lord’s Supper as a converting ordinance, loosening traditional requirements. Edwards ultimately opposed this policy, insisting on evidence of regeneration. The Freedom of the Will supports this posture by defining true moral ability as a matter of renewed disposition rather than nominal eligibility. In colonial churches, these sacramental debates were inseparable from town identity, taxation, and political cohesion.
The colonial legal-religious framework in Massachusetts mandated parish taxes for ministerial support and enforced church attendance norms, though dissent grew after the 1691 charter. The Great Awakening destabilized these arrangements by validating itinerancy and lay testimony, challenging clerical monopolies in Boston and Hartford. Town meetings and ecclesiastical councils wrestled with competing claims of authority. Edwards’s treatise functions within this milieu by offering a metaphysical account that underwrites ecclesial discipline without resorting to coercion. By arguing that moral responsibility coheres with motive-shaped necessity, it furnished a rationale for rigorous pastoral practice while acknowledging that civil compulsion cannot produce genuine spiritual change.
Missionary expansion to Native peoples formed a significant social movement with political implications. The New England Company funded missions like Stockbridge, while colonial governors sought Native alliances in imperial wars. John Sergeant began the Stockbridge mission in 1735, establishing schools and catechesis; after his death in 1749, Edwards took charge. Translation efforts, language notes, and negotiations with sachems were routine. These activities placed questions of will, habit, and moral suasion in cross-cultural perspective. The book mirrors this setting by articulating principles intended to apply beyond English congregations, contending that moral motives and divine grace operate within, and not against, the cultural particularities of human agents.
As a social and political critique, The Freedom of the Will confronts the period’s confidence in autonomous self-fashioning. By denying an abstract, self-determining power detached from the strongest motive, Edwards challenges civic ideologies that ground virtue in unaided will or polite manners. His account exposes the limits of legal or educational programs that presume moral neutrality in agents and emphasizes the formative power of social environments, affections, and habits. The work implicitly rebukes clerical complacency and lay consumerism, insisting that communal reform depends on transformed dispositions. It thereby contests facile appeals to freedom that mask entrenched interests and moral inertia in town and parish life.
The book also interrogates injustices of the era, even if primarily through theological argument. Its stress on moral causation highlights how elite patronage, economic inducements, and factional pressures shape choices, evident in controversies from Boston pulpits to frontier land deals in Stockbridge. By subordinating human liberty to divine governance, Edwards critiques triumphalist narratives of progress common among urbane elites and underscores accountability before God rather than status. The treatise’s implications reach class divides, revival schisms, and Native-colonial negotiations: it calls for humility, disciplined institutions, and equitable practices, warning that rhetoric of liberty without renewed character perpetuates disorder and exploitation.
Author Biography
Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was a New England theologian, pastor, and philosopher whose work helped define the First Great Awakening and left a lasting mark on American intellectual history. Known for fusing rigorous Calvinist convictions with engagement in Enlightenment thought, he wrote influential sermons and treatises that probed religious experience, moral psychology, and the nature of human freedom. His prose combined vivid imagery with analytical precision, shaping both popular piety and scholarly discourse. Edwards became emblematic of a transatlantic evangelical movement that prized heartfelt devotion alongside doctrinal clarity, and his writings remain central to studies of early American literature, Reformed theology, and the history of philosophy and revivalism.
Educated at Yale College in the early eighteenth century, Edwards received a classical and theological formation grounded in the Reformed tradition while reading broadly in natural philosophy and empirical psychology. He was attentive to developments in British philosophy, especially debates about ideas, perception, and causation, which informed his early notebooks and private reflections on mind and reality. After study, he served as a tutor at Yale, honing skills that would later appear in his systematic writings. This educational background provided him with analytic tools and a vocabulary for religious experience that was unusually precise for the period, enabling him to bridge clerical leadership, philosophical argument, and rhetorical persuasion.
Edwards’s pastoral career centered first in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he emerged as a compelling preacher and careful observer of spiritual awakenings in the 1730s. He documented local revivals in A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, offering accounts that linked intense affections to transformed conduct. During the wider transatlantic revival known as the Great Awakening, he preached the sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, renowned for its arresting imagery and moral urgency. Tensions later arose over church discipline and admission to the Lord’s Supper, leading to his dismissal from the pastorate. These conflicts sharpened his thinking on conversion, authenticity, and ecclesial order.
Edwards sought to distinguish genuine religious transformation from transient enthusiasm. In The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion, and Religious Affections, he evaluated signs of true piety, arguing that lasting, God-centered affections expressed in obedience were more trustworthy than momentary ecstasies. His analysis borrowed the language of sense and evidence while insisting upon supernatural renovation of the heart. These works circulated widely and shaped evangelical self-understanding on both sides of the Atlantic. Critics and admirers alike recognized his effort to discipline revival fervor through pastoral care, scriptural reasoning, and a psychological acuity unusual for an eighteenth-century divine.
Alongside pastoral writings, Edwards produced major philosophical and theological treatises. Freedom of the Will defended a compatibilist account of moral agency consistent with divine sovereignty, challenging views that equated freedom with indeterminacy. Original Sin argued for the pervasive moral corruption of humankind within a federal theological framework. Posthumously published essays such as The Nature of True Virtue and The End for Which God Created the World articulated a radically God-centered moral vision and teleology, in which divine glory is both ultimate end and the ground of creaturely good. Together these works positioned him within Enlightenment-era debates while preserving a distinctively Reformed metaphysics of grace and creation.
In the 1750s, Edwards served as a missionary pastor in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, ministering among English settlers and Indigenous communities with the aid of interpreters, while continuing intensive writing. The relative seclusion allowed him to complete some of his most ambitious projects and to revise earlier materials. Late in the decade he accepted the presidency of the College of New Jersey, an institution devoted to training ministers and cultivating learning. Shortly after assuming the office, he died from complications following a smallpox inoculation. The brevity of his tenure did not diminish the significance of his final period, which consolidated his legacy as thinker, pastor, and educator.
Edwards’s reputation has grown through scholarly editions and sustained debate about his theology, rhetoric, and philosophy. His sermons remain staples of American literature courses, while his treatises continue to inform discussions of free will, virtue, and religious experience. Evangelical movements draw on his emphasis on affections and holiness, and historians study him as a mediator between Puritan piety and Enlightenment inquiry. The publication of comprehensive critical editions has clarified the scope of his thought, including notebooks and sermons that reveal a disciplined, experimental intellect. Today, Edwards is read both devotionally and analytically, his work serving as a touchstone for conversations about revival, ethics, and the aims of theology.
The Freedom of the Will (Vol. 1-4)
Preface
Many find much fault with calling professing Christians, that differ one from another in some matters of opinion, by distinct names; especially calling them by the names of particular men, who have distinguished themselves as maintainers and promoters of those opinions: as calling some professing Christians Arminians, from Arminius; others Arians, from Arius; others Socinians, from Socinus, and the like. They think it unjust in itself; as it seems to suppose and suggest, that the persons marked out by these names, received those doctrines which they entertain, out of regard to, and reliance on, those men after whom they are named; as though they made them their rule; in the same manner, as the followers of christ are called Christians, after his name, whom they regard and depend upon, as their great Head and Rule. Whereas, this is an unjust and groundless imputation on those that go under the forementioned denominations. Thus, say they, there is not the least ground to suppose, that the chief divines, who embrace the scheme of doctrine which is, by many, called Arminianismt believe it the more, because Arminius believed it: and that there is no reason to think any other, than that they sincerely and impartially study the Holy Scriptures, and inquire after the mind of Christ, with as much judgment and sincerity, as any of those that call them by these names; that they seek after truth, and are not careful whether they think exactly as Arminius did; yea, that, in some things, they actually differ from him. This practice is also esteemed actually injurious on this account, that it is supposed naturally to lead the multitude to imagine the difference between persons thus named, and others, to be greater than it is; so great, as if they were another species of beings. And they object against it as arising from an uncharitable, narrow, contracted spirit; which, they say, commonly inclines persons to confine all that is good to themselves, and their own party, and to make a wide distinction between themselves and others, and stigmatize those that differ from them with odious names. They say, moreover, that the keeping up such a distinction of names, has a direct tendency to uphold distance and disaffection, and keep alive mutual hatred among Christians, who ought all to be united in friendship and charity, though they cannot, in all things, think alike.
I confess, these things are very plausible; and I will not deny, that there are some unhappy consequences of this distinction of names, and that men’s infirmities and evil dispositions often make an ill improvement of it. But yet, I humbly conceive, these objections are carried far beyond reason. The generality of mankind are disposed enough, and a great deal too much, to uncharitableness, and to be censorious and bitter towards those that differ from them in religious opinions: which evil temper of mind will take occasion to exert itself from many things in themselves innocent, useful, and necessary. But yet there is no necessity to suppose, that our thus distinguishing persons of different opinions by different names, arises mainly from an uncharitable spirit. It may arise from the disposition there is in mankind (whom God has distinguished with an ability and inclination for speech) to improve the benefit of language, in the proper use and design of names, given to things of which they have often occasion to speak, which is to enable them to express their ideas with ease and expedition, without being encumbered with an obscure and difficult circumlocution. And our thus distinguishing persons of different opinions in religious matters may not imply any more, than that there is a difference; a difference of which we find we have often occasion to take notice: and it is always a defect in language, in such cases, to be obliged to make use of a description, instead of a name. Thus we have often occasion to speak of those who are the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of France, in distinction from the descendants of the inhabitants of Spain; and find the great convenience of those distinguishing words, French and Spaniard; by which the signification of our minds is quick and easy, and our speech is delivered from the burden of a continual reiteration of diffuse descriptions, with which it must otherwise be embarrassed.
That there is occasion to speak often concerning the difference of those, who in their general scheme of divinity agree with these two noted men, Calvin and Arminius, is what the practice of the latter confesses; who are often, in their discourses and writings, taking notice of the supposed absurd and pernicious opinions of the former sort. And therefore the making use of different names in this case cannot reasonably be objected against, as a thing which must come from so bad a cause as they assign. It is easy to be accounted for, without supposing it to arise from any other source, than the exigence of the case, whereby mankind express those things, which they have frequent occasion to mention, by certain distinguishing names. It is an effect, similar to what we see in cases innumerable, where the cause is not at all blameworthy.
Nevertheless, at first, I had thoughts of carefully avoiding the use of the appellation, Arminian, in this Treatise. But I soon found I should be put to great difficulty by it; and that my discourse would be too much encumbered with circumlocution, instead of a name, which would better express the thing intended. And therefore I must ask the excuse of such as are apt to be offended with things of this nature, that I have so freely used the term Arminian in the following Discourse. I profess it to be without any design to stigmatize persons of any sort with a name of reproach, or at all to make them appear more odious. If, when I had occasion to speak of those divines who are commonly called by this name, I had, instead of styling them Arminians, called them ” these men“ as Dr. Whitby does Calvinistic divines, it probably would not have been taken any better, or thought to show a better temper, or more good manners. I have done as I would be done by, in this matter. However the term Calvinistic is, in these days, among most, a term of greater reproach than the term Arminian; yet I should not take it at all amiss, to be called a Calvinist, for distinction’s sake: though I utterly disclaim a dependence on Calvin, or believing the doctrines which I hold, because he believed and taught them; and cannot justly be charged with believing in every thing just as he taught.
But, lest I should really be an occasion of injury to some persons, I would here give notice, that though I generally speak of that doctrine, concerning free-will and moral agency, which I oppose as an Arminian doctrine; yet I would not be understood as asserting, that every divine or author, whom I have occasion to mention as maintaining that doctrine, was properly an Arminian, or one of that sort which is commonly called by that name. Some of them went far beyond the Arminians; and I would by no means charge Arminians in general with all the corrupt doctrine which these maintained. Thus, for instance, it would be very injurious, if I should rank Arminian divines, in general, with such authors as Mr. Chubb. I doubt not, many of them have some of his doctrines in abhorrence; though he agrees, for the most part, with Arminians, in his notion of the Freedom of the Will. And, on the other hand, though I suppose this notion to be a leading article in the Arminian scheme, that which, if pursued in its consequences, will truly infer, or naturally lead to all the rest; yet I do not charge all that have held this doctrine, with being Arminians. For whatever may be the consequences of the doctrine really, yet some that hold this doctrine, may not own nor see these consequences; and it would be unjust, in many instances, to charge every author with believing and maintaining all the real consequences of his avowed doctrines. And I desire it may be particularly noted, that though I have occasion, in the following Discourse, often to mention the author of the book, entitled An Essayon the Freedom of the Will, in God and the Creature, as holding that notion of Freedom of Will, which I oppose; yet I do not mean to call him an Arminian: however, in that doctrine he agrees with Arminians, and departs from the current and general opinion of Calvinists. If the author of that Essay be the same as it is commonly ascribed to, he doubtless was not one that ought to bear that name. But however good a divine he was in many respects, yet that particular Arminian doctrine which he maintained, is never the better for being held by such an one: nor is there less need of opposing it on that account, but rather more; as it will be likely to have the more pernicious influence, for being taught by a divine of his name and character; supposing the doctrine to be wrong, and in itself to be of an ill tendency.
I have nothing further to say by way of preface; but only to bespeak the reader’s candour, and calm attention to what I have written. The subject is of such importance, as to demand attention, and the most thorough consideration. Of all kinds of knowledge that we can ever obtain, the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of ourselves, are the most important. As religion is the great business for which we are created, and on which our happiness depends; and as religion consists in an intercourse between ourselves and our Maker; and so has its foundation in God’s nature and ours, and in the relation that God and we stand in to each other; therefore a true knowledge of both must be needful, in order to true religion. But the knowledge of ourselves consists chiefly in right apprehensions concerning those two chief faculties of our nature, the understanding and will. Both are very important: yet the science of the latter must be confessed to be of greatest moment; inasmuch as all virtue and religion have their seat more immediately in the will, consisting more especially in right acts and habits of this faculty. And the grand question about the Freedom of the Will, is the main point that belongs to the science of the Will. Therefore, I say, the importance of the subject greatly demands the attention of Christians, and especially of divines. But as to my manner of handling the subject, I would be far from presuming to say, that it is such as demands the attention of the reader to what I have written. I am ready to own, that in this matter I depend on the reader’s courtesy. But only thus for I may have some colour for putting in a claim; that if the reader be disposed to pass his censure on what I have written, I may be fully and patiently heard, and well attended to, before I am condemned. However, this is what I would humbly ask of my readers; together with the prayers of all sincere lovers of truth, that I may have much of that Spirit which Christ promised his disciples, which guides into all truth; and that the blessed and powerful influences of this Spirit would make truth victorious in the world.
Part I.
WHEREIN ARE EXPLAINED AND STATED VARIOUS TERMS AND THINGS BELONGING TO THE SUBJECT OF THE ENSUING DISCOURSE
Section 1. Concerning The Nature Of The Will.
It may possibly be thought, that there is no great need of going about to define or describe the Will; this word being generally as well understood as any other words we can use to explain it: and so perhaps it would be, had not philosophers, metaphysicians, and polemic divines, brought the matter into obscurity by the things they have said of it. But since it is so, I think it may be of some use, and will tend to greater clearness in the following discourse, to say a few things concerning it.
And therefore I observe, that the Will (without any metaphysical refining) is, That by which the mind chooses any thing. The faculty of the Will, is that power, or principle of mind, by which it is capable of choosing: an act of the Will is the same as an act of choosing or choice.
If any think it is a more perfect definition of the Will, to say, that it is that by which the soul either chooses or refuses; I am content with it: though I think it enough to say, It is that by which the soul chooses: for in every act of Will whatsoever, the mind chooses one thing rather than another; it chooses something rather than the contrary or rather than the want or non-existence of that thing. So in every act of refusal, the mind chooses the absence of the thing refused; the positive and the negative are set before the mind for its choice, and it chooses the negative; and the mind’s making its choice in that case is properly the act of the Will: the Will’s determining between the two, is a voluntary determination; but that is the same thing as making a choice. So that by whatever names we call the act of the Will, choosing, refusing, approving, disapproving, liking, disliking, embracing, rejecting, determining, directing, commanding, forbidding, inclining, or being averse, being pleased or displeased with; all may be reduced to this of choosing. For the soul to act voluntarily, is evermore to act electively.
Mr. Locke1 says, “The Will signifies nothing but a power or ability to prefer or choose.” And, in the foregoing page, he says, “The word preferring seems best to express the act of volition;” but adds, that “it does it not precisely; for, though a man would prefer flying to walking, yet who can say he ever wills it?” But the instance he mentions, does not prove that there is any thing else in willing, but merely preferring: for it should be considered what is the immediate object of the Will, with respect to a man’s walking, or any other external action; which is not being removed from one place to another; on the earth, or through the air; these are remoter objects of preference; but such or such an immediate exertion of himself. The thing next chosen, or preferred, when a man wills to walk is not his being removed to such a place where he would be, but such an exertion and motion of his legs and feet &c, in order to it. And his willing such an alteration in his body in the present moment, is nothing else but his choosing or preferring such an alteration in his body at such a moment, or his liking it better than the forbearance of it. And God has so made and established the human nature, the soul being united to a body in proper state that the soul preferring or choosing such an immediate exertion or alteration of the body, such an alteration instantaneously follows. There is nothing else in the actions of my mind, that I am conscious of while I walk, but only my preferring or choosing, through successive moments, that there should be such alterations of my external sensations and motions; together with a concurring habitual expectation that it will be so; having ever found by experience, that on such an immediate preference, such sensations and motions do actually, instantaneously, and constantly arise. But it is not so in the case of flying; though a man may be said remotely to choose or prefer flying; yet he does not prefer, or desire, under circumstances in view, any immediate exertion of the members of his body in order to it; because he has no expectation that he should obtain the desired end by any such exertion; and he does not prefer, or incline to, any bodily exertion, under this apprehended circumstance, of its being wholly in vain. So that if we carefully distinguish the proper objects of the several acts of the Will, it will not appear by this, and such like instances, that there is any difference between volition and preference; or that a man’s choosing liking best, or being pleased with a thing, are not the same with his willing that thing. Thus an act of the Will is commonly expressed by its pleasing a man to do thus or thus; and a man doing as he wills, and doing as he pleases are in common speech the same thing.
Mr. Locke2 says, “The Will is perfectly distinguished from Desire; which in the very same action may have a quite contrary tendency from that which our Wills sets us upon. A man, says he, whom I cannot deny, may oblige me to use persuasions to another, which, at the same time I am speaking, I may wish not prevail on him. In this case, it is plain the Will and Desire run counter.” I do not suppose, that Will and Desire are words of precisely the same signification: Will seems to be a word of more general signification, extending to things present and absent. Desire respects something absent. I may prefer my present situation and posture, suppose sitting still, or having my eyes open, and so may will it. But yet I cannot think they are so entirely distinct, that they can ever be properly said to run counter. A man never, in any instance, wills any thing contrary to his desires, or desires any thing contrary to his Will. The forementioned instance, which Mr. Locke produces, is no proof that he ever does. He may, on some consideration or other will to utter speeches which have a tendency to persuade another, and still may desire that they may not persuade him; but yet his Will and Desire do not run counter all: the thing which he wills, the very same he desires; and he does not will a thing, and desire the contrary, in any particular. In this instance, it is not carefully observed, what is the thing willed, and what is the thing desired: if it were, it would be found, that Will and Desire do not clash in the least. The thing willed on some consideration, is to utter such words; and certainly, the same consideration so influences him, that he does not desire the contrary; all things considered, he chooses to utter such words, and does not desire not to utter them. And so as to the thing which Mr. Locke speaks of as desired, viz. That the words, though they tend to persuade, should not be effectual to that end, his Will is not contrary to this; he does not will that they should be effectual, but rather wills that they should not, as he desires. In order to prove that the Will and Desire may run counter, it should be shown that they may be contrary one to the other in the same thing, or with respect to the very same object of Will or Desire: but here the objects are two; and in each, taken by themselves, the Will and Desire agree. And it is no wonder that they should not agree in different things, though but little distinguished in their nature. The Will may not agree with the Will, nor Desire agree with Desire, in different things. As in this very instance which Mr. Locke mentions, a person may, on some consideration, desire to use persuasions, and at the same time may desire they may not prevail; but yet nobody will say, that Desire runs counter to Desire; or that this proves that Desire is perfectly a distinct thing from Desire.—The like might be observed of the other instance Mr. Locke produces, of a man’s desiring to be eased of pain, &c.
But, not to dwell any longer on this, whether Desire and Will, and whether Preference and Volition be precisely the same things, I trust it will he allowed by all, that in every act of Will there is an act of choice; that in every volition there is a preference , or a prevailing inclination of the soul, whereby at that instant, it is out of a state of perfect indifference, with respect to the direct object of the volition. So that in every act, or going forth of the Will; there is some preponderation of the mind, one way rather than another; and the soul had rather have or do one thing, than another, or than not to have or do that thing; and that where there is absolutely no preferring or choosing, but a perfect, continuing equilibrium, there is no volition.
1. Human Understanding. Edit. 7. vol. i. p. 197
2. Human Understanding, vol. i. p. 203, 20.
Section 2. Concerning The Determination Of The Will.
By determining the Will, if the phrase be used with any meaning, must be intended, causing that the act of the Will or choice should be thus, and not otherwise: and the Will is said to be determined, when, in consequence of some action, or influence, its choice is directed to, and fixed upon a particular object. As when we speak of the determination of motion, we mean causing the motion of the body to be in such a direction, rather than another.
The Determination of the Will, supposes an effect, which must have a cause. If the Will be determined, there is a Determiner. This must be supposed to be intended even by them that say, The Will determines itself. If it be so, the Will is both Determiner and determined; it is a cause that acts and produces effects upon itself, and is the object of its own influence and action.
With respect to that grand inquiry, “What determines the Will?’’ it would be very tedious and unnecessary, at present, to examine all the various opinions, which have been advanced concerning this matter; nor is it needful that I should enter into a particular discussion of all points debated in disputes on that other question, “Whether the Will always follows the last dictate of the understanding?” It is sufficient to my present purpose to say, It is that motive, which, as it stands in view of the mind, is the strongest, that determines the Will. But may be necessary that I should a little explain my meaning.
By motive I mean the whole of that which moves, excites, or invites the mind to volition, whether that be one thing singly, or many things conjunctly. Many particular things may concur, and unite their strength, to induce the mind; and when it is so, all together are as one complex motive. And when I speak of the strongest motive, I have respect to the strength of the whole that operates to induce a particular act of volition, whether that be the strength of one thing alone, or of many together.
Whatever is a motive, in this sense, must be something that is extant in the view or apprehension of the understanding, or perceiving faculty. Nothing can induce or invite the mind to will or act any thing, any further than it is perceived, or is some way or other in the mind’s view; for what is wholly unperceived and perfectly out of the mind’s view, cannot affect the mind at all. It is most evident, that nothing is in the mind, or reaches it, or takes any hold of it, any otherwise than as it is perceived or thought of.
And I think it must also be allowed by all, that every thing that is properly called a motive, excitement, or inducement to a perceiving, willing agent, has some sort and degree of tendency, or advantage to move or excite the Will, previous to the effect, or to the act of the Will excited. This previous tendency of the motive is what I call the strength of the motive. That motive which has a less degree of previous advantage, or tendency to move the Will, or which appears less inviting, as it stands in the view of the mind, is what I call a weaker motive. On the contrary, that which appears most inviting, and has, by what appears concerning it to the understanding or apprehension, the greatest degree of previous tendency to excite and induce the choice, is what I call the strongest motive. And in this sense, I suppose the Will is always determined by the strongest motive.[1q]
Things that exist in the view of the mind have their strength, tendency, or advantage to move, or excite its Will, from many things appertaining to the nature and circumstances of the thing viewed, the nature and circumstances of the mind that views, and the degree and manner of its view; of which it would perhaps be hard to make a perfect enumeration. But so much I think may be determined in general, without room for controversy, that whatever is perceived or apprehended by an intelligent and voluntary agent, which has the nature and influence of a motive to volition or choice, is considered or viewed as good; nor has it any tendency to engage the election of the soul in any further degree than it appears such. For to say otherwise, would be to say, that things that appear, have a tendency, by the appearance they make, to engage the mind to elect them, some other way than by their appearing eligible to it; which is absurd. And therefore it must be true, in some sense, that the Will always is, as the greatest apparent good is. But only, for the right understanding of this, two things must be well and distinctly observed.
1. It must be observed in what sense I use the term “good;” namely, as of the same import with “agreeable.” To appear good to the mind, as I use the phrase, is the same as to appear agreeable, or seem pleasing to the mind. Certainly, nothing appears inviting and eligible to the mind, or tending to engage its inclination and choice, considered as evil or disagreeable; nor indeed, as indifferent, and neither agreeable nor disagreeable. But if it tends to draw the inclination, and move the Will, it must be under the notion of that which suits
