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Calvin, Bernard and the Freedom of the Will

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Vincent Brümmer
Vincent Brümmer
Affiliation:
Faculty of Theology, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80105, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands
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Abstract

In his Institutes 2.2.5 Calvin declares that he ‘willingly accepts’ the distinction between freedom from necessity, from sin and from misery originally developed by St Bernard. It is remarkable that a determinist like Calvin seems here to accept a libertarian view of human freedom. In this paper I set out Bernard's doctrine of the three kinds of freedom and show that all its basic elements can in fact be found in Calvin's argument in chapters 2 and 3 of the Institutes part II. Towards the end of chapter 3, however, Calvin's doctrine of ‘perseverance’ makes him revert to a deterministic view of the divine-human relationship. I show that the considerations which prompt Calvin to this can be adequately met on the basis of Bernard's libertarian concept of human freedom.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , December 1994 , pp. 437 - 455
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 Calvin, John, ‘Articles concerning Predestination’ in Reid, J. K. S. (ed.), Calvin: Theological Treatises (Philadelphia, 1954).Google Scholar

2 That Calvin does not necessarily reject a libertarian view of human freedom, is also suggested by van den Brink, Gijsbert. See his Almighty God. A Study of the Doctrine of Divine Omnipotence (Kampen, 1993), 214, 217.Google Scholar

3 All quotations from Calvin's Institutes are taken from the edition by McNeill, John T. in volume 20 of The Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia, 1960).Google Scholar

4 Quotations from these works in the text below are all taken from the English translation of the works of St Bernard brought out by Cistercian Publications Inc. in Kalamazoo (Mich.): the treatise On Grace and Free Choice (1988) and the sermons On the Song of Songs, vol. IV (1980).Google Scholar

5 Luther, Martin, Table Talk 584. According to Bernard McGinn, ‘it cannot be denied that Luther's views on the relation of grace and the human will would naturally have led him to take a jaundiced view of a number of the tenets of [St Bernard's] Grace and Free Choice, such as… its defence of the permanence of free choice in fallen man.’ See p. 47 of McGinn's introduction to the English translation of St Bernard's treatise.Google Scholar In this connection Etienne Gilson declares that ‘one must be blind indeed not to see that Cistercian mysticism and Lutheranism are as opposed as fire and water’. The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard (Kalamazoo, 1990), p. 224.Google Scholar

6 The rather confusing terms which are usually employed for these two concepts of freedom, are the ‘liberty of spontaneity’ and the ‘liberty of indifference’. For a useful discussion of this distinction, see chapter 7 of Kenny, Anthony, Will, Freedom and Power (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar, and chapter 2 of Kenny's, Freewill and Responsibility (London, 1978). Kenny correctly argues that these two concepts presuppose each other. For this reason they should be taken as specifying two necessary conditions for an adequate concept of moral freedom. It is therefore wrong to view them as alternative complete concepts of freedom, as is usually done.Google Scholar

7 In Sermons 80–85 Bernard uses the terms ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ in a different sense: there Christ is called the ‘image’ of God and we are said to bear a ‘likeness’ to this image to the extent that we share in the threefold freedom (as well as in the simplicity and the immortality of the image). Here too the freedom from necessity belongs to our nature, but it becomes ‘concealed’ or ‘stained’ by the fact that sin deprives us of the other two freedoms. I agree with Bernard's comment in Sermon 81 that all this does not necessarily contradict the view defended in the Treatise. The difference is terminological and not substantial. Bernard does say something different in the two texts but they are complementary and do not necessarily contradict each other. In what follows I shall use the terms ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ in the sense denned in the Treatise.

8 Here again Bernard is not consistent in his terminology. In the Treatise 6.19–20 he connects the liberum consilium with the gift of ‘wisdom’ and the liberum complacitum with the gift of ‘power’. In Sermon 85 he distinguishes between three gifts of grace: ‘enlightenment’, ‘strength’ and ‘wisdom’ (or ‘taste’). Although he does not use the terms liberum concilium et complacitum here, it could plausibly be argued that he associates enlightenment and strength with the former and wisdom (or ‘ taste’) with the latter. On this point I will follow the terminological distinctions of the Sermon since that seems to produce the most elegant form for the argument.

9 For a more detailed discussion, see my The Model of Love. A Study in Philosophical Theology (Cambridge, 1993), chapter 3 on Bernard and chapter 5 on Augustine.Google Scholar

10 See my The Model of Lose, chapter 7.

11 Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness (New York, 1956), 367. See also chapter 7 of my The Model of Love.Google Scholar

12 Quotation taken from ‘On the Morals of the Catholic Church’, in Schaff, Philip (ed.), The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, 1979).Google Scholar

13 For a more extended discussion of this point, see chapter 5 of my Speaking of a Personal God (Cambridge, 1992).Google Scholar

14 Lucas, J. R., Freedom and Grace (London, 1976), 4.Google Scholar

15 Lucas, , Freedom and Grace, 13.Google Scholar

16 For a more extended discussion of this point, see chapter 3 of my Speaking of a Personal God.