I’m currently reading Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. He writes in his introduction of 1559 that “it has been my purpose in this labour to prepare and instruct candidates in sacred theology for the reading of the divine Word, in order that they may be able both to have easy access to it and to advance in it without stumbling”. That’s basically why I’m reading it: not necessarily to agree with Calvin, but through reading it and considering his ideas, to develop my understanding of what the Bible teaches, and where necessary to adjust my thinking in light of what God’s Word says.

One area I want to understand better is the relationship between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility and freedom. I’ve occasionally referred to myself as a “freewill Calvinist”, mainly to be provocative and wind up Swithun (who’s an open theist a.k.a. a heretic). But I’ve got a serious point: although I generally agree with Calvinism, with its insistence that our salvation is all of God, it seems to me that our lack of free will in the area of salvation does not mean that we don’t have free will generally, and that God’s complete sovereignty and free will properly understood can in fact go together.

Reading the Institutes has confirmed my suspicion that we often misread theologians of the past when they discuss free will, because they are discussing it not in the sense of freewill vs. determinism, but man’s works vs. God’s grace. (I think this is in part because of the problems that scientific naturalism raises for free will)

Book 2, chapter 2 is entitled “Man Has Now Been Deprived of Freedom of Choice and Bound Over to Miserable Servitude”. But is this talking about freedom of choice in general, or freedom of the choice to reject sin and choose God?

“Now in the schools, three kinds of freedom are distinguished: first from necessity, second from sin, third from misery. The first of these so inheres in man by nature that it cannot possibly be taken away, but the two others have been lost through sin. I willingly accept this distinction, except in so far as necessity is falsely confused with compulsion…”
(Institutes of the Christian Religion, II, ii, iv.)

In the following chapter, Calvin argues that “man sins of necessity, but without compulsion”:

For man, when he gave himself over to this necessity [of sinning], was not deprived of will, but of soundness of will. Not inappropriately Bernard teaches that to will is in us all: but to will good is gain; to will evil, loss. Therefore simply to will is of man; to will ill, of a corrupt nature; to will well, of grace.
(Institutes of the Christian Religion, II, iii, v.)

So the loss of free will Calvin talks about seems to be the loss of the free will to “will well”. That doesn’t mean we’re robots, just that choosing the true good, which always involves loving God, is outside the reach of our wills because of the Fall.

But if free will in the general sense is compatible with a Calvinistic understanding of salvation, is it compatible with a Calvinistic understanding of the sovereignty of God generally? I suspect that it is, but I’ll come back to this question later.