/lit/ - Literature

>>23306899
Is that so? Could you explain to me why? It seems to me that if God's Will were not free, then it would necessarily be bound to some extent, and so no longer omnipotent. I also don't see how admitting the free Will of God admits the possible existence of another kind of God as a matter of course. Furthermore, if Adam were created — as Calvin indicates in Book I, Ch. XV. of his Institutes — with free will, and only lost it after he was corrupted with sin, then wouldn't your denial of the free Will of God suggest that He had created a creature not in His own image, but rather quite far from it? Wouldn't it be much more blasphemous, then, to imply that Adam, being a creature with an unbound Will, was in truth more alike to God post casum hominis?
>God has furnished the soul of man, therefore, with a mind capable of discerning good from evil, and just from unjust; and of discovering, by the light of reason, what ought to be pursued or avoided; whence the philosophers called this directing faculty το ἠγεμονικον, the principal or governing part. To this he has annexed the will, on which depends the choice. The primitive condition of man was ennobled with those eminent faculties; he possessed reason, understanding, prudence, and judgment, not only for the government of his life on earth, but to enable him to ascend even to God and eternal felicity. To these was added choice, to direct the appetites, and regulate all the organic motions; so that the will should be entirely conformed to the government of reason. In this integrity man was endued with free will, by which, if he had chosen, he might have obtained eternal life. For here it would be unreasonable to introduce the question respecting the secret predestination of God, because we are not discussing what might possibly have happened or not, but what was the real nature of man. Adam, therefore, could have stood if he would, since he fell merely by his own will; but because his will was flexible to either side, and he was not endued with constancy to persevere, therefore he so easily fell. Yet his choice of good and evil was free; and not only so, but his mind and will were possessed of consummate rectitude, and all his organic parts were rightly disposed to obedience, till, destroying himself, he corrupted all his excellencies. Hence proceeded the darkness which overspread the minds of the philosophers, because they sought for a complete edifice among ruins, and for beautiful order in the midst of confusion. They held this principle, that man would not be a rational animal, unless he were endued with a free choice of good or evil; they conceived also that otherwise all difference between virtue and vice would be destroyed, unless man regulated his life according to his own inclination.