Blog 6: Free will or pre-destination part 1 – Erasmus and the Freedom of the Will

By Richard Keeble

I ask that the reader cast his mind back to the theological tension of 1520. The papal bull, Exsurge Domine, has called for a certain monk to recant his 95 Theses or face excommunication. The lethargic Pope Leo X has effectively declared war on the reformer, and battle lines which have long been in the making are now being actualised. The books of Martin Luther begin to fuel the fires, while Luther himself prepares to face the Catholic Church and select the life of a hunted outlaw.

Caught within this deadly standoff was the prominent Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus. This was a man who also had urged the Church to reform, who had held a somewhat amiable correspondence with Luther, and had hitherto reserved judging the young man. It is perhaps therefore not surprising that Erasmus found himself attacked at the pulpit of Louvain, the preacher demanding: “You wrote for Luther, now write against him!”

This was the first of many such “suggestions”, which were quickly being heard from many corners. Frantically, Erasmus yearned:

“Let us not devour each other like fish. Why upset the whole world over paradoxes, some unintelligible, some debatable, some unprofitable? The world is full of rage, hate, and wars. What will the end be if we employ only bulls and the stake? It is no great feat to burn a little man. It is a great achievement to persuade him.”

But neither Luther nor the Church would budge. From all sides the pressure mounted for Erasmus to denounce the monk, and in so doing wipe away his own suspected heretical leanings. This was no easy choice, for Erasmus had abhorred the abuses of the Church just as he resisted the Lutheran wrath. “I am a heretic to both sides”, he complained.

When he eventually bowed to the pressure, Erasmus sought a suitable topic to distance himself from Luther. Henry VIII had proposed one some time before: the freedom of the will. Even in this Erasmus sought to heal the great divisions, for he saw in this topic the chance for reconciliation; a potential debate on a subject he considered non-essential to the faith.

Erasmus finally published his treatise in September 1524, designating it: On the Freedom of the Will: A Diatribe or Discourse by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. He knew this subject would find disagreement from Luther, a scholar so inspired by Augustinian theology. Here follows most of the essential arguments the reluctant Erasmus pit against his controversial opponent:

“Certainly I do not consider Luther himself would be indignant if anybody should find occasion to differ from him, since he permits himself to call in question the decrees, not only of all the doctors of the Church, but of all the schools, councils and popes; and since he acknowledges this plainly and openly, it ought not to be counted by his friends as cheating if I take a leaf out of his book.”

Erasmus elucidates the great danger of Luther’s position, which is the view that the individual’s actions are not the result of free will but are pre-destined. Such a view removes the responsibility each individual holds for his own actions, and so in Erasmus’ view opens “a window to impiety… especially in view of the slowness of mind of mortal men, their sloth, their malice, and their incurable propensity toward all manner of evil.”

As well as citing the vast majority of the Church Fathers as supportive of his cause, the primary meat of Erasmus’ argument concerns itself with: “Scripture Passages That Support Free Choice”. Pride of place is given “to a passage in the book called Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Sirach, ch. 15(:14-17)”:

“God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel. He added his commandments and precepts. If thou wilt observe the commandments, and keep acceptable fidelity forever, they shall preserve thee. He hath set water and fire before thee; stretch forth thine hand for which thou wilt. Before man is life and death, good and evil; that which he shall choose shall be given him.”

The Book of Ecclesiasticus is a Jewish work of ethical teachings from approximately 200-175 BC and is generally considered the earliest witness to a canon of the books of the prophets. Not only does Erasmus see the exclusion of this book from the Bible as unjustified, but he goes on to identify Biblical passages which also uphold free choice. He draws attention to God’s command in Genesis: “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (2:16-17). Since the Fall of Mankind, where free choice was indeed exercised, one has been able to identify good from evil, a significant ability according to Erasmus:

“If the power to distinguish between good and evil and the will of God had been hidden from men, it could not be imputed to them if they made the wrong choice. If the will had not been free, sin could not have been imputed, for sin would cease to be sin if it were not voluntary, save when error or the restriction of the will is itself the fruit of sin.”

The Old Testament seems to Erasmus the best location for support of the existence of free choice. He observes God’s conditions depending on the choice of Cain (Genesis 4:6-7) and draws special attention to the Divine interaction with Moses: “‘I have set before your face the way of life and the way of death. Choose what is good and walk in it.’ What could be put more plainly? God shows what is good, what is evil, shows the different rewards of death and life, leaves man freedom to choose”. Yet the most recurring aspect of the texts Erasmus utilises is the significance of the word “if”: “If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword” (Isaiah 1:19-20); “If you will not listen to me, to walk in my law” (Jeremiah 26:4). There are many other Old Testament passages which Erasmus identifies, including Joel 2:12; Jonah 3:8; Isaiah 46:8; Jeremiah 26:3; Psalms 81:13 and 34:12-13.

Yet Erasmus does not limit his focus to such passages from the Old Testament: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess” (Matthew 19:21); “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). As Erasmus observes from Matthew 19:17 “Again, elsewhere: ‘If you would enter into life, keep the commandments.’ With what effrontery would it be said: ‘If you will…’ to one whose will is not free?” As before, many passages are provided, including Matthew 11:28; Luke 23:34; John 1:12 and 6:67; but, as Erasmus says, “we will not weary the reader by going over all the passages of this kind, since they are so countless that they will readily catch the eye of any reader… I prudently pass over many texts which are in The Acts and in the Apocalypse lest I tire the reader. These many texts have induced learned and holy men not to take free choice entirely away”.

One feels one must credit Erasmus with the point that all such passages do seem to presuppose the ability of the listener to choose freely. This positivity applies further when he tackles the significant issue of Exodus 9:12 “But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them”. If God had hardened Pharaoh’s heart, then it seems that no matter what the will of Pharaoh may have been, he would not have listened. To maintain the role of free will, Erasmus uses the explanation of the Church Father Origen from his Peri archōn (On Beginnings):

“Origen… declares that an occasion of hardening was given by God, but he would throw back the blame on Pharaoh who, by his evil deeds, was made more obstinate through those things which should have brought him to repentance, just as by the action of the same rain cultivated land brings forth excellent fruit, and uncultivated land thorns and thistles, and just as by the action of the same sun, wax melts and mud hardens, so the forbearance of God that tolerates the sinner brings some to repentance and makes others more obstinate in wrongdoing.”

Another possible objection to Biblical free will is the case of Judas Iscariot. For Erasmus this is not a matter of pre-destination but foreknowledge on the part of God. In this sense Judas’ betrayal was necessary. Yet in another sense, it was committed utterly freely, and Judas retained the power to refuse to undertake it. “You say, ‘What if he had changed his mind?’ The foreknowledge of God would not have been falsified, nor his will hindered, since he himself would have foreknown and intended beforehand that Judas should change his mind”.

The final significant Biblical extract Erasmus addresses which seems to deny free will is that of the potter and the clay: “‘Oh house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter had done?’ says the Lord. ‘Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel’”, taken from Jeremiah 18:6 and referred to by Paul in Romans 9:21-23. Clearly this seems to imply that man is governed not by the freedom of the will, but the design and intent of God. Yet Erasmus calls for us not to read this as a detailed comparison: “This potter makes a vase for dishonour not on account of preceding merits, just as he rejects some Jews, but on account of unbelief”. Erasmus argues that if one takes the potter and the clay comparison literally, then so too must one literally interpret another certain passage: “If anyone purifies himself”. Thus Erasmus contends:

“this interpretation of Paul will be found to contradict himself, for in the former passage he puts everything in the hands of God, but here he puts it all in the hands of man. And yet each passage is right, though each makes a different point. The first shuts the mouth murmuring against God, the other incites to endeavour and is a warning against complacency or despair.”

Erasmus compares the potter and the clay with the Isaiah 10:15, “Shall the axe vaunt itself over him who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it?” The difference between such tools and a human being is that the human being is living and rational, thus Erasmus states that “if an axe had been such, it would not have been absurd to say that they had shared in the action of the craftsman”. Another comparison is made between the potter and the clay and the master and his servant. Though the servant carries out the will of the master, he retains his free will: “The master lays down his commands and supplies what is needed, nor could the servant do anything apart from his master, and yet nobody says the servant does nothing at all when he follows the orders of his lord”. Finally Erasmus addresses the context of the original analogy, “These things are said against a wicked king, whose cruelty God has used to chastise his own people… So this analogy does not fit the taking away of free choice, but rebukes the pride of a wicked ruler who attributed his deeds not to God but to his own might and wisdom”.

Despite Erasmus’ support of free will, he never denies the role of God’s grace in gaining salvation: “since our own efforts are so puny, the whole is ascribed to God, just as a sailor who has brought his ship safely into port out of a heavy storm does not say: ‘I saved the ship’ but ‘God saved it.’ And yet his skill and his labour were not entirely useless”. For Erasmus, reaching salvation was not a matter of pre-destination or purely free choice, though free choice initiates. He envisaged man working with the grace of God, having freely chosen to do so:

“But as to the phrase in Phil. 2(:13): ‘For God is at work in us, both to will and to work for his good pleasure,’ this does not exclude free choice, for when Paul says, ‘for his good pleasure,’ if you refer it to man, as Ambrose interprets it, you understand by it that a good will cooperates with the action of grace.”

All such passages as Matthew 10:20, “For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you”, is seen by Erasmus as referring to the will of man striving with the Spirit and grace of God. He applies this also, for instance, to Acts 4:8, “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them…” etc.

The notion of pre-destination remains a suspicious and dangerous one for Erasmus. In his Epilogue he illustrates a number of apt analogies, this perhaps the most striking:

“if a master were to free a slave who had merited nothing, he might have reason perhaps to say to the other servants who murmured against this, ‘You are no worse off if I am kinder to this one; you have your due.’ But anyone would deem a master cruel and unjust who flogged his slave to death because his body was too short or his nose too long or because of some other inelegance in his form. Would not the slave rightly cry out to his master under the blows, ‘Why am I punished for what I cannot help?’ and he would say this with still more justice if it were in his lord’s power to alter the bodily blemish of his slave, as it is in the power of God to change our will, or if the lord had himself given the slave this deformity which had offended, as for example by cutting off his nose or making his face hideous with scars. In this same way God, in the view of some, works even evil in us.”

Thus Erasmus awaited Luther’s inevitable literary onslaught, and I leave it for the reader to decide for himself or herself whether this wait should have been endured with trepidation. As Erasmus himself concludes:

“Although I am getting on in years, I am not, and shall never be, ashamed or annoyed to learn from any young man if he teaches me more evident truths with evangelical courtesy… I have completed my discourse; now let others pass judgment.”

Blog 5: Pascal’s Pensées part 2 – The Wager

By Richard Keeble

The common and incorrect conception of Pascal’s Wager is an argument for belief in God being a safer bet than retaining an atheistic life. This guise holds that if one commits to belief in God and is right, they gain eternal salvation and if they are wrong, they have lost nothing. On the other hand, it holds that if one remains an atheist and they are right nothing is gained, whereas if they are wrong eternal damnation and suffering is theirs. Therefore, it concludes, faith in God is the more reasonable gamble with the odds stacked in its favour. The arguments against this position are naturally manifold, including the issue of choosing the correct god, or the fact that this “wager” could apply to any figment of the imagination. Furthermore, to base one’s spiritual investment in God on a mere weighing up of odds is widely, and rightly, considered dubious and highly questionable.

The tragedy is that this argument in no way reflects the true Wager presented in the Pensées, not only demonstrating that most who attack the Wager have not even read Pascal, but consequently that he has not fulfilled his vast potential to spiritually enlighten.

The Wager builds on Pascal’s notion that the human condition includes, whether the individual is conscious of it or not, the need for God in his or her life. Unlike René Descartes, a contemporary of Pascal, he held that one cannot simply reason distantly one’s way to God. Abstraction jeopardises the individual’s personal relation to God, a relation so important to Pascal that he sewed his religious experience testimony into his jacket, and would move it from one jacket to the next as he wore them. In this testimony he declared:

“He can be found only in the ways taught in the Gospel. Greatness of the human soul. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I have known thee… He maintains himself in me only in the ways taught in the Gospel. Renunciation total and sweet.”

The Pensées directly address this personal relation with God, thus here is where the true context of the Wager is to be found. Essentially, Pascal asks what harm there is in attempting to know God through a loving, personal and faithful relationship with him. The Wager is not concerned with the multiplicity of apparent deities, the notion is proposed solely with the Christian God in mind. Abstract reasoning can only take one so far; the God of the Bible is a personal God, and thus relating to him is primarily a personal affair. This is why Pascal states:

“Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”

One has the potential to know God personally if only one will attempt to do so. This further builds on Pascal’s negativity towards those to whom such matters seem trivial and inconsequential. Confronted with the possibility of knowing God there is little reason not to attempt to engage with it, for nothing is lost and the greatest could be gained. Atheism does not feature in the Wager. No comparison between the odds of religious belief and refusal to believe is made as the common conception holds; purely because atheism is irrelevant. The Wager is for he or she who wishes to reach God and it presents Pascal’s view on how to go about it. Such reasoning is not abstract but immanent and practical, a perfect example of what I would call experiential or existential rationalism.

However, Pascal greatly accentuates the Wager’s consequences for the individual, to the extent that its effects are swiftly felt and one’s choice to wager immediately vindicated by God’s love and grace. Thus he concludes:

“Now what evil will happen to you in taking this side? You will be trustworthy, honourable, grateful, generous, friendly, sincere, and true. In truth you will no longer have these poisoned pleasures, glory and luxury, but you will have other pleasures.  I tell you that you will gain in this life, at each step you make in this path you will see so much certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you stake, that you will know at last that you have wagered on a certainty, an infinity, for which you have risked nothing.”

Therefore Pascal’s Wager ceases to be a wager in the normal sense as clarity is received as soon as one’s relation to God is earnestly embarked upon. The gifts of God’s grace are immediately made known to the individual. This is Pascal’s way of reaching certainty through faith, as opposed to an impious weighing up of odds for personal gain:

“Thus you will naturally be brought to believe, and will lose your acuteness.- But that is just what I fear.- Why? What have you to lose? But to show you that this is the right way, this it is that will lessen the passions, which are your greatest obstacles”

Pascal sought to find God via the “ways taught in the Gospel”, thus the Wager mirrors Christ’s declaration in John:

“If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority” (7:17)

But what of those who have never experienced faith? Is it so easy to come to a spiritual life, described by Pascal himself as “Forgetfulness of the world and of all save God”? No indeed, Pascal recognises the difficulty of this task. The process may be slow at first, and is utterly a personal affair:

“Labour then to convince yourself, not by increase of the proofs of God, but by the diminution of your passions… Learn of those who have been bound as you are, but who now stake all that they possess; these are they who know the way you would follow, who are cured of a disease of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began, by making believe that they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc.”

Pascal’s mistrust of abstract reasoning, “the proofs of God”, to reach God is again demonstrated. Essentially, Pascal instead calls for an immersion in the life of a believer, in order to become a believer; to spend time with those who have travelled as you do and have reached faith before you. This is reflected by C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:

“The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him… There is, indeed, one exception. If you do him a good turn, not to please God and obey the law of charity, but to show him what a fine forgiving chap you are, and to put him in your debt, and then sit down to wait for his ‘gratitude’, you will probably be disappointed”

Lewis’ position is equally as experiential as Pascal’s, and just as Pascal does, Lewis calls for the individual to seek to live like a believer, for that is how one becomes a believer.

What also helps to further distinguish Pascal from the more individualist stance of Kierkegaard is his veneration for Catholic ecclesiology, a factor that would also place John Henry Newman’s direction at odds with Kierkegaard’s during their mutual reaction against the rise of liberalism in 19^th Century Christendom.

Therefore the purpose of Pascal’s Wager is to initiate an existential transformation, to bring the individual to God whilst at the same time enabling spiritual and practical improvement. Yet the initial decision finds quick vindication and justification, as if the side-effect of the decision to wager is itself the reward. Of course Pascal has made clear that this is to some degree the case, and even in itself is the justification to commit to the Wager.

Finally, the Wager must also be seen in the context of Pascal’s life. Having contributed so greatly to mathematical probability theory, he saw his friends use this to successfully gamble and profit financially, a situation distressing to such a pious mathematician as Pascal. Therefore the Wager, in addition to what has been described here, is this mathematician’s personal idea of atonement; to turn his forces of probability away from the propagation of vice and toward contemplation of the divine.