Word of Caution

Before I begin, I would like to offer a word of caution and a fair warning. The conversation and debate on free will can often be more harmful than helpful. Calvin himself discusses this at the beginning of his section on free will in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. 

Therefore, my aim in this post is to offer a holistic picture of how he defines the problem and answers its questions. This, of course, means only one side of the many-sided discussion will be presented here. As of now, I do not aim to elaborate on the full spectrum of debate around the will of man. The goal is simply to lay out John Calvin's take on it as is described in The Institutes of the Christian Religion.

As always, my mission is to make the complex simple. To boil down the writings of others to their most essential form. So sit back, grab a cup of your favorite beverage, and enjoy the following post. 

The Problem and Quick Answer

We should start with some facts and work our way up to the problem that arises. There are, of course, many ways to get to the same place in this, but the following is, in my opinion, the quickest.

They have all turned aside, altogether they have become worthless; There is no one who does good, not even one. – Psalm 14:3

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God – Romans 3:23

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned – Romans 5:12

We know that all have a sin nature, that through Adam we have inherited sin into us. However, we also know that God saves us from this sin.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. – Matthew 1:21

The question comes up, then, who initiates this interaction? At the heart of this whole debate, I believe, this is the central question. Of course, there are tons of tangents and side conversations, not to mention all the impacts the answer to this question can have on other theological questions. 

But for Calvin, the main doctrine in play is what we now know as Total Depravity. That is to say that his answer to the question is that man can never reach out to God without God first reaching out to him. Therefore, it is God who initiates this interaction. 

Quite honestly, this is probably as far as most people should go. To go further than this is to step into heavy philosophical and systematic thinking. If you stop here, you will still have the humility that comes with total depravity, you will not be committed to many more positions than what's explicitly said, and you will also not lose your sanity trying to keep in balance the many moving parts at play.

For those who do wish, and I hope you do if you're reading this, to go forward, the next question to ask is, "How come I cannot reach out to God first?" Good question! That is what the remainder of this post will cover. I will separate it into four different sections: The Fallen, The Renewed, The Fully Realized, and The Adam.

The reason for the separation is due to the different states that people can be in. These states change the abilities that people have and thus change the conversation slightly. This is also kind of how John Calvin separates his chapter, and interestingly enough, even how St. Augustine frames his teachings on the same topic. This is because much of what Calvin teaches here is straight out of Augustine, only more rigid and systematic.

❔

Throughout the post, I will have these to signify a point where an assertion or conclusion is made on a question that is not commonly agreed on. I cannot possibly include all of the points where people deviate, but I'll try to include many of the relevant ones. You can use these to help you think through your own answers to the discussion. Or you can ignore them if they are unhelpful. 

The Fallen

Definitions

The Will of People: The voluntary, non-compulsive acts that people do.

Total Depravity: The complete inability to be the author or owner of righteousness.

Righteousness: The things that are found in God's nature. (Fruit of the Spirit)

Argument

To answer the question, "How come I cannot reach out to God first?" you must first know that the act of reaching out to God is an act of righteousness, and since you are totally deprived of righteousness, you cannot do it. So then, the next question becomes, "Why can I not do any righteous acts?" And now we are in the thick of it; this is where the real fun begins. Calvin's short answer to this is because your will is corrupt, through Adam's sin in the garden, Genesis 3 (this is called Original Sin). 

❔

How corrupt is the will? Does some seed of righteousness remain in us that allows us to seek God?

It would be helpful to go into how Calvin defines the relevant parts that make up a person. There are two pieces here: (1) the nature and (2) the will. Both are corrupted from original sin, but the nature is where the will takes its cues from. Take, for example, a cat; it is in a cat's nature to eat, sleep, and play. The cat’s nature does not contain the ability to form logical strings of arguments to come to a conclusion. The cat, therefore, cannot will to debate; it can only will to eat, sleep, and play. Much like this, the fallen person's nature is corrupted and lacks righteousness, and therefore, the fallen person cannot will to do righteousness.

❔

Is it only the nature and will that are present in a person? Can we find other parts of us that can come into play?

So we are now left with a person whose nature is fully corrupt, without the capability of righteousness. Calvin emphasizes multiple times that while nature is hamstrung and lacking righteousness, man is not forced or coerced into sinning. We still chose to sin. We are balancing two things here: (1) a broken nature with limited options, (2) the reality of our unforced acts of sin. 

Having already discussed where number one comes from, this is the reason for number two. It is to remove any claim that people are forced to sin by God, therefore making God the author of sin, and removing our liability for our actions.

When dealing with two seemingly opposing truths in the Bible, we must think about it like a river; the goal is to stay floating down the river. 
The east bank of the river here is God being the author of sin, and man not being responsible for his actions. This completely undermines the work of redemption that God has done and is therefore not Biblical. 
The west bank of the river is man's ability to save himself. This too undermines the work of salvation. God must be the author of salvation, no matter what, or else we take on too much pride and ability that we cannot bear.

❔

Does asserting a lack of ability allow for asserting liability for sin? Or, do these things contradict each other so much that one must be taken over the other? Or are these assertions missing a piece that allows them to remain in tandem? This question is a part of the common objection to Calvinistic thought called the asymmetrical objection to monergism.

Summary of the Fallen

What you need to know about the fallen in short is that their nature has been corrupted by original sin and limited in ability. Because of this, their will cannot will righteousness. Therefore, they lack free will as their will is in bondage to sin.

The Renewed

The next stage of this argument is about the renewed person. The renewed person is defined by the initial act of salvation. God reached out and pulled you out of your sin and made you new. Because of this, your will is actually freer than before. You are able to seek righteousness, but also able to sin. 

You're not totally free, as your nature is not fully restored. Calvin says there remains a smoldering cinder of evil in the renewed. Because of this, you will continue to sin while also enjoying the wonderful acts of God inside of you. Calvin asserts that every righteous thing you do here is attributed to God; give Him the glory. But the smoldering remnants of sin are attributed still to you as they were before. That has been paid for by Christ on the cross, yes, but it is still not God causing you to sin. 

A good way to think of this is that the fallen person lacks God's righteousness in their nature. Whereas the renewed person has began the process of recovering it. To put this into precise theological terms, the renewed person has been fully justified and thus can begin to move towards Christ, but not fully sanctified. Calvin describes this dynamic by saying that the Spirit and the flesh still struggle with each other before the resurrection and second coming of Christ.

So, to put it shortly, the state of the renewed person is one of conflicted freedom. God ultimately does the righteous works in them, but they may still choose to reject Him for the moment.

The Fully Realized

The next state to cover is the one that professing Christians all hope for. The fully realized is the resurrected body. This is when Christ returns again and makes a new heaven and earth. Here, we actually have less free will than Adam did in the garden. 

This is because the resurrected body will no longer want to sin. It will walk in step with the Lord and not ever reject Him. In keeping with the language used here, the nature contains only righteousness and therefore cannot allow the will to sin. It is fully realized in its righteousness, not just living with a smoldering remnant of sin.

The key phrase to know here is: the fully realized will have a limited nature containing only God's righteousness and will only will to do righteousness. 

The Adam

Now, for one that contains the final huge mystery and debate in Calvin's teaching of man's will. Adam and Eve, before the fall, are said to have been the only ones with total free will. Why? This is because they had the ability to choose God and to reject Him. They had not been corrupted by sin at this point and were pure and blameless. Therefore, they walked perfectly with God while having a fully capable nature. 

Unfortunately, due to this free will, they did, for whatever reason, choose to reject God. This is, in fact, a point of contention in Calvin's thought. Why and how did Adam choose to sin that first time? Ultimately, we do not know, and Calvin admits as much. He says it must be a mystery in the will of God as to why Adam chose to sin and why God allowed it to happen. 

Nevertheless, he did, and because of that, we now enter the state we are all born into: sin. 

Summary

I want to point out here that if you have ever read or heard about what St. Augustine taught on this subject, then this should all be a review. Calvin probably (I have not confirmed this) quotes Augustine more than anyone else in his book, aside from the Bible. This is because Calvin saw his work as mostly an extension of the work of Augustine. So I will summarize Calvin's teachings by using Augustine's own teaching:

• Before the fall (Adam): able to sin and able not to sin

• After the fall (The Fallen): unable not to sin

• After grace (The Renewed): able not to sin

• In glory (The Fully Realized): unable to sin

There are, of course, some minor differences between the two, mostly due to Calvin being more rigorous and strict on definitions and usage of words, but this summary puts it really well. 

One final reminder, do not simply read this and take it for Gospel. Read the Bible and search God for wisdom. There is not one systematic theology that is perfect, and there never will be. That is part of the beauty of studying the Word. 

As I said in the beginning, if you only take from this the understanding that God first called you, then you are in good standing. If you do desire to go deeper, understand this is only the beginning of a much larger conversation. Go read the other reformers on what they have to say about the will of man, read the early church fathers, read theologians who disagree with the reformers entirely (like the Arminians), and anyone else you can find. Don't ever take one side of an argument as fact without exploring other explanations.

Thank you for reading this post! Please comment down below what questions or thoughts you have. As always the book I used in reference here is listed below. It is a pretty massive one but this is mostly off of the second chapter labeled "knowledge of man and free will."

Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin

Here's the Amazon link to the copy I have. I am not sponsored or an affiliate, just providing the resources for your benefit.

Take me to the book!

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The Weight of Glory, is the title of a book, but it is really just a short message that C.S Lewis gave, which was later put onto paper. The book contains this message along with a handful of other letters and messages by C.S. Lewis.

In The Weight of Glory, Lewis deals with the concept of glory as laid out in the Bible. Pulling from imagery given in the Bible, he delves into what it means to have the glory which God promises to us.

It is my aim to break down this short message to convey the simple, yet beautiful truth which Lewis gives us here.

If you want the short, quick answer to what the Weight of Glory is, skip to the section labeled What is Glory. I highly recommend reading the whole post to get the context, but you're free to do as you please!

Are Rewards a part of Christian Doctrine?

Lewis starts off by giving us a juxtaposition about virtues.

If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love. (p25)

He goes on to say that this reflects a shift in the minds of people today. We are more consumed with abstinence than with the blessing of others. That forgoing our own pleasure is the focus of life. Lewis is challenging us to think deeply about that. Does Christ call us to abstain from all pleasure and reward, or is this shift of asceticism ungodly?

Christ does in fact call us to deny our selves and pick up our cross to follow Him (Matthew 16:24). But Lewis says that there is more to this.

... and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. (p26)

If we read the next verse from Matthew 16 we see Jesus saying that we will gain life and much more if we deny our self and follow Him. Just as Lewis says, we find an appeal to desire, not a command of self-denial as an end unto its self.

Lewis takes this a step further by saying that we do not have a problem of wanting too much, but of wanting too little. The answer here is not to abstain of all things, but to look higher, to look at God.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (p26)

Three Kinds of Rewards

He goes on to talk about the three kinds of rewards that exist. They are as follows:

1. The natural outcome of an action, marriage as the outcome of love.

2. The barbaric outcome of an action, money as the outcome of love.

3. The unknown, longed-for outcome of an action.

The first two are self-explanatory, but the third is the important one here. It is when you have a longing or desire in you that can only be fully known and fulfilled when you have gone through an action or series of actions.

That was quite wordy, so C.S. Lewis explains it with an analogy. Imagine a Greek language student who goes through pain to learn Greek for school, but on the back end of it is able to experience the joy of Greek poetry. They did not know what that joy would be like; they may have been told, but could not experience it firsthand. However, they endured to the end and can now fully experience a new kind of reward, Greek poetry.

Lewis points out as well that this student might have been enjoying English poetry before learning Greek, and that the student really had a longing for the more enjoyable Greek poetry. However, this longing can only be fulfilled once the Greek language has been mastered.

So this kind of reward is twofold, (1) There is a longing in you for something which you may or may not know about. (2) That longing can only be fulfilled upon completing the actions required to illuminate the longing and enable you to fulfill it.

Longing for Christ

Just as the student enjoys English poetry before the Greek poetry ever comes into the picture, we have a longing and desire for Heaven before Heaven is ever even hinted to us. Our English poetry, as Lewis says, is a secret in us which we label nostalgia, longing, desire, or romanticism; that thing which you, "cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both." (p30)

We think we have resolved this secret, our English poetry, by labeling it with these names and feeling their feelings, but here Lewis calls us to go deeper.

These things–the beauty, the memory of our past–are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers.

Lewis says that this nostalgia is not just that; it is the door to the delayed, longed-for reward. All we must do is learn Greek, to use the former analogy. We must go deeper and discover what's on the other side.

The other side, we find, is the center of what it means to find meaning and joy. To act as if that small voice in you, which tugs on your heart, is simply nostalgia or the good ol' days is a pitfall that leads to pain. Rather, they are the signpost, the road, the hand that God guides us to the real place where we can find true fulfillment and reward.

The issue here is that this secret never truly points to anything in this world. It may seem like it with its memories of the past, longing for more time with that loved one, or to hear that song from high school that you love so much. However, these things are all a part of a greater category; they all tug at the deeper longing in you for something higher than this world.

There is another analogy Lewis makes here that is helpful to tie up this point. Being hungry does not mean we will get food, but it does mean we are of the kind who requires food and live in a world where food exists. Or, put another way, it would be odd if we had the idea of romantic love in a sexless world.

Just the same as these, it's a good indication that our longing, this secret that we have, shows that there is something to fulfill it, Heaven, and that some will attain it.

The Five Promises of Christianity

What then is this fulfillment of our longing, this Heaven? Firstly, all descriptions we can give are merely symbols. Some are Biblical and carry authority but because Heaven is outside of us it is by definition unknowable to us directly, therefor it can only be described symbolically.

There are five promises that Lewis gives to describe Christianity and Heaven.

1. We will be with Christ.

2. We will be like God.

3. We will have 'glory'.

4. We will be fed or feasted or entertained.

5. We will have some official position in the universe.

Lewis asks a question here, why do we need any other promise than the first one? His answer is quite simply that you don't, but the others will be filled in whether we explicitly say them or not. Each of us has our own idea of what Heaven will be like, and each idea is only a symbol of what it will really be. So to keep us from bringing in unbiblical ideas, God gives us more symbols than just the first.

And finally after much discussion about rewards, longing, and promises we get to the heart of the message, Glory. What is it, and what do we do with it? These are the questions that will be answered going forward.

To review what has already been discussed, we have established that God does offer rewards to us, and they are quite central to the Christian claim. We have shown that humanity is made for Heaven and we each long for it. And we have established a few promises or symbols of what Heaven will be.

What is Glory?

Glory as Recognition

C.S. Lewis puts forward two kinds of Glory to examine. The first is glory as recognition. This is the kind of glory which most would point to first if they thought of it. Where someone pats you on the back and lifts you up for a deed you have done or for some other reason. In our case, it is God patting us on the back and saying, "Well done, good and faithful servant." (Matthew 25:23)

This is one half of the glory which we bear, and an important half as well. For, "How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important." (p38) You see it is not by your own power, doing, or even thoughts of God that saves you. It is God's view of you alone that has real power, infinite power.

This makes glory as recognition one of the central tenants of the Christian faith, the tenant of divine grace. For we know we are evil in the sight of God but through Christs' blood, death, burial, and resurrection God now is able to look on us and say, "Well done good and faithful servant."

One more important point on glory as recognition. Lewis describes that at first, this might seem like an evil kind of glory. It might seem competitive, as fame and recognition tends to be. However, when we dig deeper into scripture, we find that it is not this way with God. God's love and knowledge is not limited. He can fully love and know each and every one of us without taking from someone else.

This glory is the fulfillment of our longing. It is the reward to our searching. It is being known by God and knowing God, thus fulfilling what is generally put forward as human's two basic needs: to be fully known and fully loved.

However, if there is fully known and fully loved, then there must be the opposite. Painfully, this is a reality that our Lord puts to us clearly by saying, "Depart from me, I never knew you." (Matthew 7:23)

Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache. (p42)

Glory as Radiance

The second half of glory is radiance. We are to shine like the sun and stars in the Kingdom of God. (Matthew 13:43 & Daniel 12:3) This is the imagery that C.S. Lewis is pulling from to explain glory as radiance.

When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory which Nature is only the first sketch (p43)

Nature, as beautiful and wondrous as it is, is only the first sketch of the glory which we will bear. We are made in His image, and a part of this means we are made to bear the glory of God that nature reflects. And one day, when heaven and earth pass, and we are united fully with our Lord, we will fully bear that glory in all its radiance. Being completely one with God, fully known and fully loved.

Lewis warns us that this kind of glory is not implying some kind of mystical idea of becoming one with nature. It only uses nature as a picture or symbol, as scripture invites us to do. God is the source and center of this glory, not us or nature. He imparts this glory in all His creation, and we have the great privilege to live in it and bear it.

The Weight of Glory

Now to the namesake of this message. We know what this glory is, now to discover what the weight that it holds. These last two pages of the message are, in my opinion, some of the most beautiful writing ever to put paper. If anything, I highly recommend picking up the book to read just page 45-46.

Lewis answers the question of, "now what" that follows any good string of logic or exposition. Now we must come to terms with the fact that everyone we meet is made to bear the glory of God. That each of them is working towards hearing one thing or another, "well done" or "depart from me". Not only do we bear this glory ourselves, but the weight of the glory in others. We help each and every person towards one of these two ends.

This of course is from the eyes of humanity and not the eternal all-knowing eyes of God who controls winds and seas. Ultimately, it is God who calls, but it is us who are the hands and feet that God uses to do so. How weighty and lofty a role it is to play. We would do well to maintain our unending prayers and supplication with God to not miss a moment of His divine plan. For, as Lewis says, it is only the humble which can bear this weight.

Here's the Amazon link to the copy I have. I am not sponsored or an affiliate, just want to provide the resources to this amazing work by C.S. Lewis.

Take me to the book!

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