Common and Philosophical Necessity – Evaluation of Arminian grounds for LFW
Edwards’ arguments in part V.III and part V.IV
Edwards splits necessity into two categories: natural and moral. Natural necessity relates to our actions, moral necessity relates to our wills. If an act is naturally necessary, it is either against or without our will, and whether we will or not the result is the same. Edwards says that natural necessity is the common meaning of necessity and moral necessity is philosophical. Natural necessity (common necessity) is a sense wholly different than that used in the Calvinist/Arminian debate. Most people go through their whole lives without thinking about moral necessity (philosophical necessity) and its relationship with responsibility.
People use the terms “must, cannot, necessary, unable, impossible, unavoidable, and irresistible” signifying natural necessity. Natural necessity is incompatible with responsibility. The common notion of responsibility is A) doing what we please and B) what we please being wrong.
Arminians equivocate common and philosophical necessity. People don’t notice when they move the inconsistency of necessity from the actions of our body (common necessity) to the actions of our wills (philosophical). Thus, they mistakenly conclude that the actions of our wills must be free, based on the common sense notion that the actions of our bodies must be free.
My Response
The division between natural and moral necessity into two alternative senses is invalid. What we have is one sense for necessity applied within two different contexts. X is necessary if the opposite is impossible. X can either be actions of our bodies or actions of our wills.
When we ask if choices are necessary or free, we are not using a new sense for the term necessary. It’s the same term people use in every day conversation.1 Are we able to choose X? Thus we are not equivocating.
An odd consequence of Edwards view is that many of his interpretations of scripture end up being philosophical. The ideas of irresistible grace, total depravity and even God’s commands applying directly to acts of the will, end up in the “philosophical necessity” category that Edwards says most people don’t think of throughout their whole lives.
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1In philosophical discussions we do distinguish between causal, accidental, logical and joint-logical necessity, but these categories relate to the source of necessity, not the type of necessity. But these distinctions are not required to understand LFW, even if they may be required to discuss some exotic topics.
Edwards splits necessity into two categories: natural and moral. Natural necessity relates to our actions, moral necessity relates to our wills. If an act is naturally necessary, it is either against or without our will, and whether we will or not the result is the same. Edwards says that natural necessity is the common meaning of necessity and moral necessity is philosophical. Natural necessity (common necessity) is a sense wholly different than that used in the Calvinist/Arminian debate. Most people go through their whole lives without thinking about moral necessity (philosophical necessity) and its relationship with responsibility.
People use the terms “must, cannot, necessary, unable, impossible, unavoidable, and irresistible” signifying natural necessity. Natural necessity is incompatible with responsibility. The common notion of responsibility is A) doing what we please and B) what we please being wrong.
Arminians equivocate common and philosophical necessity. People don’t notice when they move the inconsistency of necessity from the actions of our body (common necessity) to the actions of our wills (philosophical). Thus, they mistakenly conclude that the actions of our wills must be free, based on the common sense notion that the actions of our bodies must be free.
My Response
The division between natural and moral necessity into two alternative senses is invalid. What we have is one sense for necessity applied within two different contexts. X is necessary if the opposite is impossible. X can either be actions of our bodies or actions of our wills.
When we ask if choices are necessary or free, we are not using a new sense for the term necessary. It’s the same term people use in every day conversation.1 Are we able to choose X? Thus we are not equivocating.
An odd consequence of Edwards view is that many of his interpretations of scripture end up being philosophical. The ideas of irresistible grace, total depravity and even God’s commands applying directly to acts of the will, end up in the “philosophical necessity” category that Edwards says most people don’t think of throughout their whole lives.
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1In philosophical discussions we do distinguish between causal, accidental, logical and joint-logical necessity, but these categories relate to the source of necessity, not the type of necessity. But these distinctions are not required to understand LFW, even if they may be required to discuss some exotic topics.
Comments
A former-Calvinist dormmate of mine at Southeastern complained that Arminian delve too much into philosophical conversations and not enough into biblical exegesis.
I laughed, and then asked him to exegete a few biblical passages for me on limited atonement, regeneration preceding faith, hard and soft determinism, and supralapsarianism. The silence was deafening!
He later concluded that I was right. Both sides are obligated to view their systems philosophically as well as biblically. And our philosophical conclusions are merely the result of our hermeneutical grid. How could anyone not love this stuff???!!!
I've enjoyed these posts.
Billy
Going thru Edwards leads me into lots of philosophical argumentation. That's just the style he used. To answer his arguments, I have to get into it.
But my philosophical basis comes out of scripture. I use Ockham’s razor to reconcile apparent contradictions, I hold to LFW, Molinism, and my particular brand of the relationship between LFW and responsibility, because of the biblical doctrines of choice, providence, and depravity.
Happy 4th,
Dan
You described Edwards view as:
“Edwards splits necessity into two categories: natural and moral. Natural necessity relates to our actions, moral necessity relates to our wills. If an act is naturally necessary, it is either against or without our will, and whether we will or not the result is the same. Edwards says that natural necessity is the common meaning of necessity and moral necessity is philosophical. Natural necessity (common necessity) is a sense wholly different than that used in the Calvinist/Arminian debate.”
In response to this division you wrote:
“The division between natural and moral necessity into two alternative senses is invalid. What we have is one sense for necessity applied within two different contexts. X is necessary if the opposite is impossible. X can either be actions of our bodies or actions of our wills.”
One of the reasons that Edwards is virtually ignored in modern discussions of agency and free will (ignored except by calvinists who like to try to use Edwards in support of their determinism) is distinctions like this one. The fact is that all of our **intentional actions** involve our wills.
While I like your definition of necessary as “X is necessary if the opposite is impossible”. I would modify it only slightly: “X is necessary if any other possibility in the same situation is impossible.” I say this only because choices are not always opposites (“I could wash the car or not wash the car”), sometimes another kind of choice not involving opposites is involved: “should I have a regular burger or a double burger”; “I love this, but love that even more, so I think I will pick that”; etc. etc.
Where necessity becomes critical in the debate with calvinists/determinists is when discussing our intentional actions (that involve our wills and our bodies and our minds): could we do “this” or “that” (and thus have Libertarian free will; the ability to do otherwise; some of our intentional actions are not necessitated by some external or internal factors) or are all events predetermined and necessitated so that we will do “this” and it is impossible for us to do “that” or anything else than “this”?
This becomes critical because if we have any choices then any and all forms of determinism are false.
This is true because choice and determinism are **mutually exclusive** concepts (if you have one then you cannot have the other, and vice versa).
Some folks are intentionally unwilling to understand this point. Recently you had a person calling himself “Magnus” posting here who refused to see this. You explained clearly how determinism eliminates choices (he didn’t want to hear it). I repeatedly made the same point and he just rambled on and on about how our “nature”, how “who I am” **necessitates** our actions. Well it does not matter what necessitating factor you want to claim or believe in, whether it be external (e.g. the laws of nature, our “environment”, etc.) or internal (our “nature”, “who I am”) to the person. Once you claim that our actions are necessitated by these factors, then the possibility of having choices is gone.
“Magnus” kept going back to his example of if we went back in time and the circumstances were identical that he believed that we would always do the exact same thing. Well if we have to do something, so that we have to do that action, then our action is necessitated. And if you always had to do the same thing every time (it was impossible for you to do otherwise) when we rolled back the tape, then your action is necessitated. I think it was the movie “Ground Hog day” or something like that, with Bill Murray that comically presented this aspect of determinism.
Sometimes I think we ought to call calvinists/determinists “necessitarians” to make this point absolutely clear. We could even represent this by the “necessatarian formula”:
[X necessitates action Y, so if X is present then the person must do Y and it is impossible for them to do any thing else.]
{with X referring to the necessitating factor; Y being the actual action that is necessitated, the action that must occur if X is present} And it works just as mechanistically as any chemical reaction; given X then Y must occur. One thing I used to like about chemistry was how precisely you could describe, formulate and completely predict things if you knew what chemicals were present. It is too bad that human persons are much more messy and not as mechanical or predictable! :-)
If you want to find out what version of determinism a person holds, just find out what **necessitating factor** they choose to believe is the necessitating factor.
From engaging numerous Necessitarians, such as “Magnus”, it does not appear that they are forthright and honest on this point. I could respect the Necessatarian who openly and honestly acknowledged that his view entailed the unreality of choices, that if our actions were completely necessary then we never ever have a choice. But that is not what they typically do. What they usually do is try to redefine the word “choice” (I witnessed one Necessatarian call it a “choiceless choice” when discussing it with a friend) or minimize the reality and importance of choices (“Oh the reality of choices isn’t really important, let’s just talk about why we make the choices that we make . . .”). All of this is just throwing out smoke screens and is dishonest and evasive. Why not just admit that your necessatarian view eliminates choices? In the case of “Magnus” he engaged in the same kind of dishonesty and evasiveness.
I have met Muslims who are Necessitarians and they are quite up front and honest about their view and will tell you without flinching that we never have choices, it is all according to Allah’s will with no exceptions. At least they are honest about what their view entailed and what they really believe.
Robert
You made some great points here. Edwards comes up with a definition of necessity to fit his system and then says people use his definition in everyday conversation, while at the same time people don't normally consider his system.
It's funny how we as people are able to be inconsistent. To an extent we all are a bit inconsistent. No one has perfect theology in this life. But sadly some inconsistency is born of stubbornness although most is of ignorance. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I personally keep searching these issues, so that God may use these discussions to root out my own ignorance and inconsistency.
God be with you,
Dan