The title sound like it belongs in an introductory philosophy class, but the doctrine is very important in our day. Many voices deny what the Confession teaches: that God has given the will of man a natural liberty so that it is neither forced nor by any absolute necessity determined to do good or evil. The denial today is sometime in terms of genetics (man does what his genes make him do) or brain chemistry. The effect is to deny moral responsibility for our actions. But Jesus teaches that we have liberty to make true choices that come out of what we are and what we desire; our choices come from our hearts. God made man part of the material world but also able to transcend it as creatures who relate to Him. The Confession goes on to teach that man exercises his free agency in innocency, hereditary sin, grace, and glory. Adam has innocent, had both the liberty and the power not to sin, but chose to sin. We are born with Original Sin and corrupted in nature: we have the liberty to do spiritual good, but not the power. The regenerated man has a new power to do spiritual good, but the remaining corruption of sin still produces evil in him. When Christ returns and we see him as he is, we will be like him with full power to do spiritual good and the perfect will to do so. Both the Pelagians and semi Pelagians (Roman Catholics and Arminians) regarding the state of hereditary sin and Holiness groups regarding the state of grace overestimate our power of doing spiritual good. In our cultural battles today, determinism denies human responsibility.
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Bill Edgar has been the pastor of the Broomall Reformed Presbyterian Church since 1981 and a teacher of mathematics at East High School in West Chester, Pennsylvania since 1980. He was graduated from Swarthmore College in 1968, attended the Reformed Presbyterian Theological...