Introduction

The wider intellectual trend of the “age of light” (as Jonathan Edwards referred to the Enlightenment) was the emphasis on man’s libertarian free will—the individual’s wholly unfettered will as the final determining factor in all things. René Descartes (1596–1650) objectified the individual by isolating the self as a philosophical certainty. People learned to think of themselves within this Enlightenment framework as self-defined, the essence of which was unhindered choice.

Rousseau

According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), people are born in the “state of nature.” This means that all men are equal and they only have an obligation to themselves. Men are defined by primitive, animal-like behaviors expressed without moral constraint or dependence on anything external. The only limitation on a person’s freedom is their own strength and physical impulse, expressed in an obligation only to self.[1]

Rousseau’s view of libertarian freedom means that “Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.” And “To renounce freedom is to renounce one’s humanity.” By this, he means that “each individual . . . by himself is entirely complete and solitary.”[2] Libertarian Freedom means that to be authentic, to be authentically human, one’s unfettered libertarian choices must function as the primary value. Libertarian choices provide authenticity for what it means to be human.

Rousseau claims that the structure of government throughout the history of the world has chained man’s inborn state of nature by enforcing rules, laws, and morality. Rousseau’s presupposition is that man is good and society makes him bad. His objective in The Social Contract is to maintain the libertarian freedom of human beings while also providing civil government. Rousseau wishes to convert society from the promoter of perdition to the servant of salvation. All men will voluntarily give up their rights to the whole community. This allows individuals to express their libertarian freedom while simultaneously generalizing it into the sovereign will—a general will. In Rousseau’s scheme, this binds all men together in equality so that no one loses their freedom.

The Christian Tradition

Augustine

In striking contrast to the anthropology of Rousseau lies the Christian conviction concerning the inherent nature of humanity, which is explained by the doctrine of Original Sin. Within this theological framework, sin is not merely an acquired trait but an inherited legacy passed through generations. Adam, progenitor of mankind, possessed the freedom to choose virtue or transgression. By willingly choosing transgression humanity found itself shackled by an unwillingness to opt for righteousness, ensnared in the chains of sinful desires.

Original sin, as expounded by Augustine, permeates through what he terms concupiscence—a profound inclination and yearning within human nature toward sinful tendencies. This proclivity, a legacy of the primordial transgression, becomes the unwelcome inheritance of all descendants of Adam. Consequently, humanity finds itself bereft of the unfettered freedom postulated by Rousseau. The assertion that man enters the world endowed with unbridled freedom of choice stands in stark contrast to the Christian doctrine, which contends that the human condition bears the indelible mark of a pervasive tendency toward sinfulness from birth (Rom. 3:10-18).

Martin Luther

In his 1525 book, The Bondage of the Will, Martin Luther emphasizes the moral inability of human beings. Man is dead in sin (Eph. 2:1), blinded by Satan (2 Cor. 4:4), and bound by iniquity because all inherit Adam’s sinful nature (Rom. 5.12-21). This means that man’s nature is morally corrupt, naturally carrying out the desires of the heart, incapable of spiritual good, and always moving away from God (1 Cor. 2:14). All those “in Adam” inherit moral inability (Rom. 5:12-21).

Moral inability means that people, born in Original Sin, neither want nor are inclined to spiritually good things. Mankind is unable to choose contrary to his strongest motivation. What is man’s strongest motivation? Sin. Therefore, man is morally unable to choose spiritual things, not because he can’t, but because he doesn’t want to.

Yet, as Luther argues in On the Freedom of a Christian, Christians are freed from their moral inability by faith in Jesus Christ. In Christ, people are new creatures (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15). Luther states “A Christian man is the most free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to everyone.” As forgiven children of God, Christians are free from sin and rule their own life, but as a follower of Christ, choose to serve others in love. Christians, therefore, are not bound by society but are free in it.

Jonathan Edwards

In 1754, Jonathan Edwards wrote a book called The Freedom of the Will. While the title seems to be in contradiction to Luther’s The Bondage of the Will, the two books agree more than they disagree. Edwards affirms  Luther’s explanation of the moral inability of all those “in Adam.” The Edwardsian distinction is that while people are born with moral inability, they still retain natural ability, which means there is no natural obstacle in the human constitution that keeps man from freely choosing his greatest desire. Man is free to do whatever he finds in his heart to do. His will has full natural ability, thus the title The Freedom of the Will. Original Sin doesn’t change the fact that human beings are made in the image of God.

Natural ability states that man is able. Moral inability states that man is not willing. The Edwardsian distinction explains how it is that humans are made in the image of God, yet are born “in Adam.” Human beings are free slaves. They simultaneously have freedom of the will (natural ability) and bondage of the will (moral inability).

The Apologetic Challenge

Why does this topic matter? Because the church won’t experience revival until we explicitly repent of the post-Enlightenment view of the individual that has plunged Western culture into a revel of self-destruction. John Seel writes that expressive individualism “is a primary source of the different issues we are facing culturally. Rather than dealing with surface culture war conflicts, we'd be far wiser to explore, understand, and address the deeper framing assumptions behind these conflicts.”[3]

This means twenty-first-century apologetics must have two unique features

First, apologetics must start with a robust biblical anthropology. C.S. Lewis began talking about this eighty years ago in his book The Abolition of Man. Lewis disclosed the central problem of the modern age, namely, a crisis of anthropology. But the problem isn’t merely the bloated sense of self. It’s worse than that. It’s expressive individualism in a modern world of impersonal social systems regulated by haughty potentates. Industry, bureaucracy, and technology need impersonal disembodied human agents who are interchangeable parts of globalized processes. The modern world abolished man. People don’t know what it means to be human. Who are we? What is our relationship to God, to others, to the world, and ourselves? Some assume the answers are discovered with an Enneagram test. Others assume each person designs their own answer. But whatever the test results; whatever the self-design, if there is no divinely disposed human nature then there is no providential purpose to human activity. It’s a silly deceitful trick that produces the vulgar ruling principle of human desecration. What is man? Nothing much. Here today; gone tomorrow. Yet life goes on with the scraps and fragments of gnawing anxiety in infinite combinations.

Our very unhappy brethren need something—Someone—to fill the gloomy void. The Bible assumes that each person and all people are derived from God—created for an ongoing relationship with Jesus Christ. It is a relationship with set boundaries and definitions. God is not only the author of life but the independent and self-sustaining author of the metaphysical dictionary. Human beings are the dependent image-bearers who receive life from the external authority whose name is Alpha and Omega. Kant and Rousseau call for the rejection of external authority. Peter and Paul call for the worship of the One True External Authority.

Second, apologetics must begin in the home and the church. This means that parents, schools, and churches should be doing apologetics to set young people’s frame.[4] Yes, Christians should know how to make a defense of the faith. However, the primary defense of the faith is creating a plausibility structure of significant relationships. Since Ultimate Reality is relational—Christian theology calls it the Trinity—then human reality is relational. The greatest philosophical lesson a child can learn is that self-denial is worth celebrating and self-fulfillment is only possible by faith in Jesus Christ, the most fulfilled human who ever lived. This lesson is best learned in thick communities that feature face-to-face interaction. Christian faith is communal. More properly, it is the covenantal law of social union to the body of Christ. It ought to create a distinctive culture, one that is superior to the profligacy, negligence, and rapacity of secularism. It’s a culture where wonder and metaphor are free to roam and personhood is embodied. It’s a culture that prioritizes imagination and story, mystery and faith, slavery and obedience, singing and dancing. It’s a culture that is thoroughly habituated to faith, hope, and love. In other words, it’s an explanatory scheme that has a double prejudice against the fixed estate of the Enlightenment self.[5]

Conclusion

“Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”

Romans 6:16-18

In the ultimate reckoning, all people are slaves to what they obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness (Rom. 6:16). Rousseau, in his hopeful premise, extols a state of nature wherein Adam is exalted over Christ, "I" over God, and independence over dependence. Yet in this celebration of self, Rousseau fundamentally misconstrues the essence of freedom and slavery. At the heart of his gibberish misconception lies the erroneous notion that man and freedom sprout forth simultaneously. The fallacy persists in the belief that the capability to revolutionize existence hinges upon liberation from unchosen responsibilities. However, the crux of the matter revolves around the identity of the true master. If the vaunted "I" assumes mastery, then it claims authority as the fount of liberty. Conversely, if the supreme "I AM" reigns as master, then true freedom emanates from the divine source.

The potency of gospel freedom manifests in Christ liberating humanity from the law of sin and death, binding them instead to the life-giving law of the Spirit in Christ Jesus. True freedom, therefore, does not reside in unshackling oneself from external authority. Rather, it lies in the profound commitment to Christ, in an utter reliance upon grace—an emancipation found in being securely tethered to Christ, trussed in radical dependence on the sovereign God of the universe. This is the only way to rouse the children of the Lord to their sacred function.

[1] Jean Jacques-Rousseau, The Social Contract (London: Penguin Classics, 1968), 56-65.

[2] Ibid., 49, 55, 84.

[3] https://www.exploradelphia.com/publications

[4] George Lakoff defines frames as “the mental structures that shape the way we see the world.”

[5] Holly Ordway, Apologetics and the Christian Imagination: An Integrated Approach to Defending the Faith (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2017).