The Reality of Human Action and the Power of Contrary Choice — John Murray

The Gospel Hope of Resurrection and Justification

Let us pray. O Lord, we praise and bless Thy great name, that Thou art not as we are, but we are not, as the lost demons outwoke. Praise and blessing be unto Thy eternal name, for the light and immortality came in Jesus Christ, that He rose from the dead for the world, that He was delivered up for our offenses and was raised again for our justification, that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly.

May we all give diligence to make our calling and election till this light, in this hope, that we may walk with confidence. The general proposition that I was making, and this is the first time that I use the word freedom in the title, up to this point I was dealing with the relationship of the dispositional complex to action.

Self-Determination and the Dispositional Complex

The spiritual cognition of the self-determination of human action, meaning by that you see that the action is determined if the character of the action is determined by the character of freedom. Now the inclusiveness of freedom, number six, the inclusiveness of freedom, and I had almost finished with that, that freedom as I have defined it.

Almost finished inclusiveness of freedom, but I noticed you hadn't begun it. Hadn't begun it? No, no, no. See how I want to hop ahead? I didn't even begin it yet. All right then, you have the title, don't you?

No. I think the last thing then I said was that a man is responsible for his acts because they are due to his volitions. He is responsible for his volitions because they are his own. Exercise to self-compulsion, express what he is in the inner tendency of his heart and mind, and that free agency is therefore rational spontaneity or self-determination in the sense of which self-determination can probably be used in this discussion.

Is that the last I said, Mr. Turner? Now six, the inclusiveness of freedom, the inclusiveness. What is in view here is simply that this natural liberty not to be restricted in the sphere of actual volition, but must also be applied to that, that in scripture is called the heart and that in present day usage might be called the dispositional complex.

I say this natural liberty of freedom must be applied to the heart because God's judgment extends to the heart and mind as well as to actual volition. But God looks upon the heart. Natural liberty applies to that which is most determinative in human personality simply for this reason that the heart or dispositional complex characterizes a man as his own.

It is his own. It defines a religious identity. The individual members of the race, subsequent to Adam and Eve, the individual members of the race did not become betrayed from a voluntary act of occupation and inheritance from Adam.

But nevertheless it belongs, this depravity belongs to the heart because the heart belongs to the dispositional complex characterized by it. I would have to reckon with this principle that a good disposition is good and a bad disposition is bad.

The Heart, Depravity, and Moral Responsibility

These dispositions may have come to be. That is that the moral character, criteria by which God judges upon their origin, puts that way and not simply upon their origin. Now to give a few examples. In creation man was endowed with a holy disposition, a good heart.

He was endowed with a holy disposition. He did not himself originate that. It was a good disposition. And he was characterized as good accordingly. And so he did not by any action on his part originate a good heart.

Now in the opposition man became depraved. It was due to a movement of defection in the heart of man, the heart and mind of man. He was the author of having become depraved, having become depraved. The judgment of God rested upon the depravity as a condition upon the way by which it originated.

Descending from Adam, surely depraved. Disinfliction, disinvolvement, the relationship to Adam, to the solidarity constituted with Adam. And that's an end of it. We may not like it. We may gnash our teeth against it, but there it is.

And that's all I can say. That's enough of it. In posterity the depravity is traced back to involvement in the sin. And not a voluntary decision on the part of the subsequent members of the race. There, since posterity has this depraved heart, the judgment of God must be registered accordingly.

Being registered accordingly is a judgment of God with respect to the person. To be honest, I say the judgment of God must rest upon the person whose depraved heart is that. The way it originated for posterity, I mean now, the way it originated for posterity, not to this degree interfere.

The judgment to pervade upon it because of its nature. Now we come to regeneration, another example. In regeneration, a new heart, a clean heart, a good heart, principally so. A new heart, a clean heart, a pure heart, a good heart is implanted simply by the grace of God.

Regeneration and Divine Monergism

Simply by the grace of God and divine monergism, convenient word sometimes. Divine monergism is just as conspicuous in this case as in the original creation. Conspicuous in this case as in the original creation, when God created man good.

Now he recreates a man good, and goodness in the human heart now originates that way. But the judgment, the judgment that is registered with reference to that heart is a judgment that applies to the person.

Such thing as a heart, nor such thing as moral predication of a heart, disposition, apart from the predication that belongs to the person. And why does it belong to the person? Why is that same judgment predicated of the person?

Just because the heart is his own, the divine religious identity, this natural liberty is influenced in the sense that it extends to him because that heart of man is man's own. And he comes under condemnation for it.

In the case of a corrupt heart, it violates the criteria of holiness and justice which God must apply. If it is a good heart, God's regenerating way, of course, the divine authority is the source of the criteria in terms of which he is judged.

The Power of Contrary Choice

Now seventh, not the last, there is an eighth. Finished today, gentlemen. Well, the seventh proposition is that the power of contrary choice is not of the essence of free agents. Contrary choice, Mr. Turnow, is not of the essence of free agents.

Seventh proposition. Now I have to analyze this more fully than any other one proposition. I'm sorry it has to be that way, but it is necessary to be that way because of the confusion that often arises and that has arisen throughout the whole history of Christianity on that issue.

You see, we are here dealing with the great cleavage that has been in Africa. Eastern orthodox between Greek orthodoxy on the one hand and Catholic orthodoxy on the other. That has more repercussions.

This particular one, the power of contrary choice, is not of the essence of free agents. Now, before we proceed to deal with this just an introductory by way of distinction, it is necessary to distinguish between contrary choice and alternative.

It is not sufficient to speak of it. You must distinguish between contrary and spiritually antithetical. Religiously antithetical. Clean alternatives. In the realm of the evil, there are religious alternatives, but they're all evil.

They're still alternatives. They don't. They are not alternatives. There are no situations in which man is of contrary choice. You make sin a necessity. If you deny the fact that Adam had the power of contrary choice, then you make sin a necessity.

Or, you deny that Adam was able to sin because he did sin. He was able not to sin in his regenerative state. The power of contrary is ability to do good, the power of good arising from regeneration and sanctification.

And ability to do evil, that is the power of evil arising from regeneration and sanctification. And ability to do evil, that is the power of evil because of remaining in dwelling sin. John 25 is perhaps the most explicit statement of that duality, which exists in our regeneration.

Romans 7 and the Regenerate Person's Moral Conflict

With the mind, I myself serve the law of God. With the flesh, confessing that he does two kinds of things. The purpose of action, one ethically good and the other ethically bad. He tells us the point.

With the mind, I myself serve the law of God. The flesh, the law of God. So you see, there were two types of action characterizing the apocryph. There are two types of action characterizing you. Two types of action characterizing me.

Well, if there are these two different ethical confections of acts, you must have the power for both. You must have the agency for both, the ability to do both. You have, in the case of the regenerate man, two-fold ability.

You have duality. That means the power of contrary choice in terms of oppression. That's the first meaning of duality, oppression. The proposition does not mean that depraved men are deprived of the power of altruism.

A depraved man is under an unholy necessity of sinning. He's under an unholy necessity of sinning because he is in a state of confirmed unholiness. His good God, in the ultimate sense of that definition, cannot choose what is good and what is evil.

God, in the absolute sense of that definition, cannot choose what is good and what is evil. Furthermore, in the case of the regenerate man, the regenerate man, the regenerate man has the power of alternative choice in both realms.

Good, he has alternatives within which he may choose in the realm of good because of regenerative sanctification. He has alternatives within the realm of evil which he may choose because of his remaining in dwelling sin.

Foreordination, Omniscience, and Human Choice

Well, that's nearly enough. We will be now to read the proposition. If you are dealing with the power of conflict, I would not be interested in the agency. The proposition is not concerned with the determinism proceeding from foreordination.

It is here that within Calvinism there is a great deal of confusion. To me it is thought that that is what the proposition is dealing with. Acts are foreordained by God. Man does not have any alternative choice.

It is due to confusion of thinking that all our acts are foreordained. Only what God foreordains will come to pass. Only what God has foreordained will come to pass. And if we are shut up, let us say, to two alternatives.

The future, as it were, is shut up in a particular instance to two alternatives. God has only foreordained one. And it is certain from the standpoint of his foreordination what that one will be. This is not the consideration we have in mind in this proposition, not the consideration.

If that were the intent of the proposition, then the power of conflict and the power of alternative choice would be ruled out entirely. Human existence would apply to Adam as God. That Adam would eat the forbidden fruit, of course, had been foreordained by God that he would eat the forbidden fruit.

That is what certainly would come to pass. Not only from the Augustinian point of view or the Calvinistic point of view, but from the Arminian point of view. Certainly what would come to pass. It was certain that even the Arminian would give foresight to God, the absolute omniscience of God, foreknowledge.

His foreordination, and according to his foreknowledge, contrary choice, which belonged to Adam and Eve, does it? Does it rule out the power of contrary choice in those situations in which it actually exists among men today?

In the case of the regeneration, does it? Does it rule out the power of alternative choice in the numberless situations in which men are placed? Not because when we are dealing with this proposition. We are dealing simply and solely.

We are dealing simply and solely. The absence of the power of the morally opposite, the morally antithetical, the absence of the power of the morally opposite, does not interfere with the reality of free agency or natural liberty.

It interferes with the reality of freedom. And if you've got that down to the level of that, all, to the whole extent of the proposition, and that in the history of the Western Church, particularly in the history of the First Ordinance of Faith.

Depravity, Common Grace, and the Inability to Please God

Now, to be very concrete, men in his foreign state are not able to do that which is well. Don't take notes for a minute, please. Let me make a parenthetical remark. There are all sorts of degrees of disbelieving but don't let that consideration perplex your thinking of this petition.

There are endless disdegrees which men displease God. There are endless inhibitions prevent men from the most aggravated forms of disbelief. There are those judgments of God that one man crosses men which intensifies, intensifies their depravity, their displeasing.

God visits men with judgment. He gives them over to a reckoning. He hardens judicial, by judicial consequence. You have to make all sorts of allowance for inhibitions in the direction of preventing more aggravated expressions, and on the other hand, instigations to more aggravated.

But don't allow all the variety that enters in in connection with that. Perplex your thinking on the fundamental proposition which does not feel pleasing to you. He may do many things that are formerly in accordance with the will of God, of good use to himself, to himself alone.

Under the operations of common grace he may be incited to do a great many things that are of good use to himself, to his family, to society and to the whole. But the point is that if he's still a non-regenerate man, he can't do anything in accordance.

They that are in the flesh cannot please God. That's what I'm saying. You're saying nothing else. No. Man in his depraved state, you can start taking notes now if you want. Man in his depraved state cannot please God.

Free Agency as the Basis of Moral Accountability

I do that which is well pleasing to God, but there is no interference. This is free age. Because that which he does, does in accordance with the acts of the principle that I speak today. His depraved nature is his own, defying his morals and religious identity.

In fact, it is only within the realm of free agency, natural liberty, and fraternity can be credited. It is as well. And so, what we mean by free agency, or otherwise called natural liberty, is presupposed in all moral translations.

The saints in glory, the saints, they are now one and there are four in the sanctity of you. By the confirmation of God. Free agency is now exercised for the first time. Oh Lord, it's integrity. It is now their will yet.

It is then, glory, their will yet. Hey, all liberty. Take the elect angels. They are also confirmed in holiness. Otherwise they wouldn't be elect. Confirmed. Interference. See, it's all together. That is, the proposition is all together.

With the necessities inherent in a statement of badness or confirmed goodness. Knowledge. Proposition is confirmed with necessities inherent in a condition of confirmed badness or confirmed goodness. And not with the kind of despise from God for ordination and for knowledge.

In fact, the ordination of God and the providence by man of his agency and of his rational free agency.