John Owen

Again, even in spiritual things, we deny that our wills are at all debarred¹⁷ or deprived of their proper liberty. But here we say, indeed, that we are not properly free until the Son makes us free (Joh 8:36)…We do not claim such a liberty as should make us despise the grace of God, whereby we may attain true liberty indeed, which addeth to, but taketh nothing from, our original freedom. But of this, after I have showed what an idol the Arminians make of free-will. Only take notice in the entrance that we speak of it now, not as it was at first by God created, but as it is now by sin corrupted. Yet being considered in that estate also, they ascribe more unto it than it was ever capable of…

“Herein,” saith Arminius, “consisteth the liberty of the will, that all things required to enable it to will anything being accomplished, it still remains indifferent¹⁸ to will or not.” And all of them at the Synod:¹⁹ “There is,” say they, “accompanying the will of man an inseparable property, which we call liberty, from whence the will is termed a power, which when all things prerequired as necessary to operation are fulfilled, may will anything or not will it.” That is, our free-wills have such an absolute and uncontrollable power in the territory of all human actions, that no influence of God’s providence, no certainty of His decree, no unchangeableness of His purpose can sway it at all in its free determinations or have any power with His highness to cause him to will or resolve on any such act as God by him intendeth to produce! Take an instance in the great work of our conversion. “All unregenerate men,” saith Arminius, “have by virtue of their free-will a power of resisting the Holy Spirit, of rejecting the offered grace of God, of contemning²⁰ the counsel of God concerning themselves, of refusing the gospel of grace, of not opening the heart to Him that knocketh.” What a stout idol is this, whom neither the Holy Spirit, the grace and counsel of God, the calling of the gospel, the knocking at the door of the heart, can move at all, or in the least measure prevail against him! Woe be unto us then, if when God calls us, our free-will be not in good temper and well disposed to hearken unto Him! For it seems there is no dealing with it by any other ways, though powerful and almighty.

“For grant,” saith Corvinus,²¹ “all the operations of grace which God can use in our conversion, yet conversion remaineth so in our own free power that we can be not converted; that is, we can either turn or not turn ourselves,” where the idol plainly challengeth the Lord to work His utmost and tells Him that after He hath so done, he will do what he please. His infallible prescience,²² His powerful predetermination, the moral efficacy of the gospel, the infusion of grace, the effectual operation of the Holy Spirit, all are nothing, not at all available in helping or furthering our independent wills in their proceedings. Well, then in what estate will you have the idol placed?

“In such a one wherein he may be suffered to sin or to do well at his pleasure,” as the same author intimates. It seems then as to sin, so nothing is required for him to be able to do good but God’s permission? No! For the Remonstrants²³ “do always suppose a free power of obeying or not obeying, as well in those who do obey as in those who do not obey”…where all the praise of our obedience, whereby we are made to differ from others, is ascribed to ourselves alone, and that free power that is in us.

Now, this they mean not of any one act of obedience, but of faith itself, and the whole consummation thereof. “For if a man should say, that every man in the world hath a power of believing if he will, and of attaining salvation, and that this power is settled in his nature, what argument have you to confute²⁴ him?” saith Arminius triumphantly to Perkins,²⁵ where the sophistical innovator²⁶ as plainly confounds grace and nature as ever did Pelagius. That, then, which the Arminians claim here in behalf of their free-will is, an absolute independence of God’s providence in doing anything, and of His grace in doing that which is good—a self-sufficiency in all its operations, a plenary indifferency²⁷ of doing what we will, this or that, as being neither determined to the one nor inclined to the other by any overruling influence from heaven. So that the good acts of our wills have no dependence on God’s providence as they are acts, nor on His grace as they are good, but in both regards proceed from such a principle within us as is no way moved by any superior agent.

Now, the first of these we deny unto our wills because they are created; and the second because they are corrupted. Their creation hinders them from doing anything of themselves without the assistance of God’s providence; and their corruption from doing anything that is good without His grace. A self-sufficiency for operation without the effectual motion of Almighty God, the first cause of all things, we can allow neither to men nor angels unless we intend to make them gods. And a power of doing good equal unto that they have of doing evil, we must not grant to man by nature unless we will deny the fall of Adam and fancy ourselves still in Paradise….

Endued we are with such a liberty of will as is free from all outward compulsion and inward necessity, having an elective faculty of applying itself unto that which seems good unto it, in which it is a free choice. Notwithstanding, it is subservient to the decree of God, as I showed before…Most free it is in all its acts, both in regard of the object it chooseth and in regard of that vital power and faculty whereby it worketh, infallibly complying with God’s providence and working by virtue of the motion thereof. But surely to assert such a supreme independency and every way unbounded indifferency as the Arminians claim, whereby, all other things requisite being presupposed, it should remain absolutely in our own power to will or not to will, to do anything or not to do it, is plainly to deny that our wills are subject to the rule of the Most High…And against its exaltation to this height of independency, I oppose—

First, Everything that is independent of any else in operation is purely active, and so consequently a god; for nothing but a divine will can be a pure act, possessing such a liberty by virtue of its own essence. Every created will must have a liberty by participation, which includeth such an imperfect potentiality as cannot be brought into act without some pre-motion28…of a superior agent. Neither doth this motion being extrinsical²⁹ at all prejudice the true liberty of the will, which requireth indeed that the internal principle of operation be active and free, but not that that principle be not moved to that operation by an outward superior agent. Nothing in this sense can have an independent principle of operation which hath not an independent being…

Secondly, if the free acts of our wills are so subservient to the providence of God as that He useth them to what end He will and by them effecteth many of His purposes, then they cannot of themselves be so absolutely independent as to have in their own power every necessary circumstance and condition, that they may use or not use at their pleasure. Now the former is proved by all those reasons and texts of Scripture I before produced to show that the providence of God overruleth the actions and determineth the wills of men freely to do that which He hath appointed. And, truly, were it otherwise, God’s dominion over the most things that are in the world [would be] quite excluded. He had not power to determine that any one thing should ever come to pass which hath any reference to the wills of men.

Thirdly, all the acts of the will being positive entities, were it not previously moved by God Himself, in whom “we live, and move, and have our being” (Act 17:28), must needs have their essence and existence solely from the will itself; which is thereby made…a first and supreme cause, endued with an underived³⁰ being.

Let us now, in the second place, look upon the power of our freewill in doing that which is morally good, where we shall find not only an essential imperfection, inasmuch as it is created, but also a contracted effect, inasmuch as it is corrupted. The ability which the Arminians ascribe unto it in this kind—of doing that which is morally and spiritually good—is as large as themselves will confess to be competent unto it in the state of innocency, even a power of believing and a power of resisting the gospel, of obeying and not obeying, of turning or of not being converted.

The Scripture, as I observed before, hath no such term at all nor anything equivalent unto it. But the expressions it useth concerning our nature and all the faculties thereof in this state of sin and unregeneration seem to imply the quite contrary: as that we are in “bondage” (Heb 2:15); “dead in…sins” (Eph 2:1); and so “free from righteousness” (Rom 6:20); “servants of sin” (v. 17); under the “reign” and “dominion” thereof, (vv. 12, 14); all our members being “instruments of unrighteousness” (v. 13); not “free indeed” until the Son make us free (Joh 8:36); so that this idol of FREE-WILL, in respect of spiritual things, is not one whit better than the other idols of the heathen.

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From “A Display of Arminianism,” in The Works of John Owen, Vol X, reprinted by The Banner of Truth Trust.

John Owen (1616-1683): called “The Prince of the Puritans” and committed to the Congregational way of church government. He was a chaplain in the army of Oliver Cromwell and vice-chancellor of Oxford University, but most of his life he served as a minister in Congregational churches. His written works span forty years and run to twenty-four volumes representing among the best resources for theology in the English language. Born to Puritan parents in the Oxfordshire village of Stadham.

17.debarred –hindered or prevented.
18. indifferent – impartial.
19. Synod of Dort (1618-19) – the gathering of Reformed theologians at Dordrecht (Dort) in the Netherlands to counter and condemn the teachings of Jacobus Arminius and his followers (Remonstrants). The quote here is from the Remonstrants or Arminians.
20. contemning – treating as despicable; rejecting as disdained.
21. Johannes Arnoldus Corvinus – supporter of Arminius and signer of the Remonstrance.
22. prescience – knowledge of actions or events before they occur.
23. Remonstrants (lit. objectors or rejectors) – Dutch followers of Jacobus Arminius who rejected the teaching of the Reformed churches and provoked the Synod of Dort.
24. confute – refute decisively.
25. William Perkins (1558-1602) – influential English Puritan theologian. Referred to by some as the “principle architect of Elizabethan Puritanism.”
26. sophistical innovator – one who introduces something new with elaborate and devious arguments. The reference is to Arminius.
27. plenary indifferency – a complete impartiality or neutrality
28. pre-motion – a previous motion or excitement to action.
29. extrinsical – external; outward.
30. underived – not obtained from another source.

Courtesy of Chapel Library