Chapter II: Free Choice According to the Four States of Man.
CHAPTER II: ON THE CONSIDERATION OF FREE CHOICE
ACCORDING TO THE FOUR STATES OF MAN
The four states of man.
§ 16. But here the different states of man must be distinguished, for there was one freedom of choice in man before the fall, while he still flourished and was strong in the state of concreated integrity. There is another state after his fall, after he refused to serve righteousness, was stripped of the divine image, and, as Augustine says ([Sermon] 12 de verb. apost.), “surrendered himself freely to the yoke of that wicked mistress, iniquity.”
§ 17. In turn, because the lost divine image in this life begins to be reformed and cleansed in its nature and is to be restored fully in the life to come, there is a freedom of choice in people not yet reborn, before their conversion, and another in the reborn after conversion. And, likewise, there is one freedom of choice in reborn people while they struggle in this life, as they still remain partly under the old flesh, but there will be another in the coming life which ultimately will produce a full freedom and security.
§ 18. From this fount there flows the well-known distinction among the four states of man. It demands that we consider man: first, in his established nature, that is, in his concreated, original perfection before the fall. Second, in his destitute and corrupted nature after the fall, both before renewal as well as in the very act of conversion as he is related to the grace of God. Third, in the nature which has begun to be restored, that is, in the state of new obedience after conversion has occurred. Fourth, in his completely and consummately restored nature, that is, in the revelation of the other world after the resurrection. (See Lombard, Sent., 2, dist. 25, letter G, where he distinguishes these four states quite aptly.)
The words of Augustine in his explanation of the Epistle to the Romans come very close to this distinction. He omits a consideration of the first state and sets forth the three later states of man in this way:
Let us distinguish four grades of man: before the Law, under the Law, under grace, and in peace. Before the Law we follow the concupiscence of the flesh. Under the Law we are drawn away by it. Under grace we neither follow it nor are we drawn away by it, and in peace there is no concupiscence of the flesh. Therefore before the Law we do not fight because we not only desire and sin but even approve of sins; under the Law we fight, but we are defeated. Under grace we fight and win; and in peace we do not fight, but we rest in perfect and eternal peace.
Freedom of choice before the fall.
§ 19. Anselm (De lib. arbitr., ch. 7) writes: “Freedom of choice in man before the fall was the faculty of reason and of the will by which a person could sin and could not sin.” That is, he could know God rightly in his mind and give Him complete obedience with the spontaneous movement of his will. On the other hand, he also could turn away from God and fall away. In fact, he had not yet been confirmed in good; that is, his will had not yet been immutably determined toward good in such a way that he could not turn away from good. Instead, there was in his will the “power to be contradictory” [δύναμις ἀντιφἀσεως]: he could will good and not will evil, and he could also not will good and will evil.
It can be called “freedom from slavery and misery,” “the freedom of uprightness.”
§ 20. Let us name this “freedom from slavery,” because man had not yet freed himself from sin and its tyranny, and also “freedom from misery,” because man had not yet disentangled himself from that miserable need to sin. It can also be called the “freedom of uprightness,” because the mind could know God rightly, the will could act rightly, the judgment of the mind and the choice of the will agreed exactly with the norm of the Law of God as long as man continued in that state of integrity. Yet “freedom from changeability” had not yet been connected with this freedom, because the will of man could be changed and freely choose evil, as he also did choose it.
§ 21. This freedom in the first man must be carefully distinguished from what we earlier called “freedom from compulsion,” because that freedom from compulsion is an essential property of the will—or, rather, the very essence of the will itself—and is thus said by Bernard (De gra[t]. et lib. arb.) to be something which cannot be lost. But the freedom of uprightness was a separable accident,1 established in such a way that the healthy essence of the will could be lost, as it also was lost.
It was lost through the fall.
§ 22. Therefore if there is a question about freedom of uprightness or the power to do this or that, that is, possessing the ability to select or reject good or evil, we say that it has been lost. “For as man used his free choice badly, he lost both himself and it; for when he sinned with his free choice, sin was the victor, and he lost also his free choice. For anyone who has been overcome by anything has become its slave.” These are the words of Augustine (Enchirid., ch. 30). In this respect he also calls it “the choice of man no longer free but slave” (Contra Julian., bk. 2); “captive” (Contra duas epistol. Pelag., bk. 3, ch. 8), because it has power only to sin; and “lost” (Hypogn., bk. 3). He calls the will “not free but a damnable maidservant” (Sermon 13 de verb. apost.) and “stubbornness, not freedom” (Letter 89 ad Hilar.).
§ 23. For after the image of God was lost through sin, the power to choose the good was also lost at the same time (in fact, it was part of the divine image); and because man was not only despoiled through sin but also was wretchedly corrupted, thus in place of that freedom there succeeded an unrestrained impetus to evil in such a way that, after the fall, choice was free only for evil in corrupt and not yet reborn people (whether they were corrupted by their own will, as the first people were, or are born of corrupt parents, as all their descendants were), because such corrupt and not reborn people can do nothing but sin.
Freedom of choice after the fall: freedom from righteousness.
§ 24. Thus there is another freedom of choice in people now after the fall which we can call “freedom from righteousness” by the example of the apostle in Rom. 6:20. It is by this [freedom] that it happens that the corrupted will of man is carried freely and willingly only to evil. John 8:34: “Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.” 2 Pet. 2:19: “By whatever someone is conquered, to that he is enslaved.”
§ 25. This is a wretched freedom and, more than that, a deplorable slavery. Augustine (Ench., ch. 30): “I ask, can it be freedom to be given over as a slave to sin, except when it delights one to sin? For he more freely serves who freely does the will of a master, and, in this respect, he who is a slave to sin is free to sin.” Letter 89 ad Hilar.: “Freedom without grace is nothing but obstinacy; it is not freedom. For you will be truly free if the Son has freed you [cf. John 8:36].”
§ 26. Bernard (on Song of Songs, sermon 81) expresses this very emphatically:
I know not in what corrupt and miraculous way the will itself acts on its own so that necessity is unable to excuse the will, nor is the will able to exclude necessity; for this necessity is somehow voluntary. We are burdened with a yoke, yet it is none other than a yoke of a voluntary servitude. Thus we are to be pitied due to the slavery but are without excuse due to our will because, though the will may be free, it has made itself a slave to sin. Under this voluntary and wickedly free necessity the soul is bound as both handmaid and free woman: handmaid because of necessity, free because of the will. What is even more strange and even more wretched: the soul is guilty because it is free, and by this very fact it is a servant because it is free.
§ 27. You say: “Because a man acts freely, therefore he stands in an equal position toward both good and evil. For will he otherwise be free?” We respond with the words of Bernard (De grat. et lib. arb.): “No one should think that it is called ‘free choice’ because it deals with an equal power or capability between good and evil. Otherwise neither God nor the angels, whether good or evil ones, would be said to have free choice. But on this basis choice is said to be free: because it does its free will equally whether in good or in evil, because no one ought to be called nor can be called good or evil unless he is willing.”
§ 28. Freedom from compulsion is properly considered in free choice, but not the exterior freedom in regard to its objects, by which the will can be carried to either good or evil. The greatest freedom is in God, who yet cannot will something evil. There is a greater freedom in the good angels than in man before the fall, yet this is because the former have been confirmed in good and cannot want something that is not good. The greatest freedom is to be unable to be wretched. The greatest happiness is to be unable to be unhappy.
§ 29. Therefore freedom of choice exists in man along with slavery to sin, for he both sins and is unable not to sin; yet he sins freely, and it delights him to sin. Although he is carried only to evil, yet this happens freely, that is, of himself and willingly, not unwillingly nor coerced. He chooses [something] and is carried to it with full force. Furthermore, in that delight for wicked things he employs a sort of freedom. Augustine (Contra Julian., bk. 1, ch. 2): “Free choice has not perished in a sinner so much; through it, all who sin with pleasure sin very greatly.”
§ 30. But in this sense and respect—as “freedom” means the free power and capability to select the good and reject the evil, which existed in Adam—Dr. Luther (Assert. art., art. 36) declared very correctly: “Free choice is a name without a reality or a reality about a name only.”2 Indeed, after the fall, man still understands with his mind, selects freely with his will, and acts with his heart. But because of the fall of the first parents and the following corruption of [human] nature, it happened that the mind errs in judging and the will in choosing; or if the mind at times judges correctly, yet the will divorces itself, so to speak, from it and joins itself to sinful dispositions and follows their lead. For in the mind the true and complete knowledge of God ceases; in the will and heart, the true fear and love of God, trust in God, the sincere intent and eagerness to obey God cease. But in their place in the mind came ignorance, blindness, doubts; and in the will and heart came stubbornness against God and corrupt inclinations of every kind.
§ 31. But because the heart of the entire matter consists in this, we shall confirm and explain this in greater detail by the foundations of Holy Scripture so that in this way, secondarily, we will learn: just what the choice of man is able to accomplish by its powers before his conversion and rebirth with the powers still left to it after the fall; and also whether in the first moment of conversion, when the Word of God is being preached and grace is being offered to us in it, a person can, by the power of his free choice, begin spiritual impulses or cooperate with the Holy Spirit and thus aid in his own conversion, whether that choice be strong or weak.
1 On “accident,” see above, p. 12 n. 6.
2 Cf. Vindication of All the Articles of Luther Condemned by the Recent Bull of Leo X (1520), WA 7:142.23–24, 146.5–6 (AE 71).