Let us examine some teachings of Jonathan Edwards on the point of responsibility and inability. The sermon we will mostly look at is taken from Knowing the Heart: Jonathan Edwards on True and False Conversion. This book contains a series of sermons that currently cannot be found anywhere else except in this volume. It is put out by International Outreach. This particular sermon, “Persons Ought to Do What They Can for Their Salvation,” is called by John Gerstner perhaps the most important of the general writings of Edwards on his view of evangelism.
Edwards tells us that “’tis impossible that man should be under obligation to do anything that is above the capacity of his nature because his incapacity for it is from God.” He also says that “God never requires anything of man but what is commensurate to the faculties that he has given him. He never commands him to do anything above the capacity of the human nature.” While God does not command man to do things that are above his capacity, for example, do certain things that only the angels can do, however He does command man to do things that he cannot do in his fallen state without new principles. Those things are “to know God, to love God, and to believe in Christ, to exercise a gracious humility, repent, [be] submissive, [exercise] charity, or to perform any spiritual or gracious action. These things are none of them above the capacity of man’s nature.”
We are told that man is obliged and obligated to do things that he is wholly impotent (inability) to do. Yet his impotence in these things is not that which excuses him from it. The reason for this is because his inability or impotency is from himself and not from God. This is a very important point. God gave man the capacity to do certain things and man still retains that capacity. However, man’s perversion of will is of himself and so his inability leaves him without excuse. Man’s inability does not give him any excuse at all but rather shows how he is even more without excuse. If we try to excuse our badness by saying that we are so bad that we are unable to do good this is no excuse at all. What it does is show a greater degree of our badness.
We can look at this now with the term “responsibility” in mind. The terms itself at the very least seems to imply ability. The Arminians say that one must have the ability in order to have an obligation to do something. Reformed people have said the same thing in the past. Man does have the ability in terms of his pre-fall nature and even his present capacity, but the Reformed have gone on to say that man has an inability that he is still without excuse for. Again, man is responsible in that he is obligated but it is also true that he has the capacity to do. His inability is in the moral realm and it is that inability that darkens his mind and his whole nature. But since man bears the fault of his moral inability and the standards of God never change, God commands man to do what is holy in accordance with the nature and capacity that God gave man. Man still has the capacity to do what God commands so God is holy in commanding man to do them. But since man has changed as a result of the fall and he has a moral inability which is of himself, man is still at fault and liable to the judgment of God.
We can also look at this in one other way. What God commands man to do is still possible for man in Christ. God still commands every man everywhere to repent and believe (Acts 17:30-31). Man is now commanded to humble himself and believe in Christ. The problem with this, however, is that man is too self-sufficient, independent and proud to trust completely in Christ. Man still wants some control and just a little power in the situation. But man still wants to be in charge and trust in his own free-will just a little because man does not want to quit trusting in himself and be cast totally in the arms of sovereign mercy. One real problem is that man still thinks that it is in his power to repent and believe. Hear Jonathan Edwards again: “If you imagine that you have it in your own power to work yourselves up to repentance, consider, that you must assuredly give up that imagination before you can have repentance wrought in you” (Vain Self-Flatteries of the Sinner). If we take this statement by Edwards and apply it to what he has said above, what we end up with is something far different than what is taught in our day. Man has the capacity to do certain things, but man’s fallen nature does not have a spiritual capacity. Man must recognize his deadness in sin and give up trying to obey the commands of Christ from his fallen nature because it does not have the spiritual capacity to obey. It is not until man gives up trying to repent and believe and submit to the work of God in the heart that God may work in man a spiritual capacity to repent and believe. It is not, then, just a minor issue about free-will or responsibility, it is about eternal life and how God works that in people. If man must give up all hope in self in order to be saved, Arminianism is not just a little wrong. It is drastically and fatally wrong.
