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<\/h3>\nI\u2019ve been thinking lately about the relationship between God\u2019s love and creaturely freedom. Some people say we are free to do just about anything. Others don\u2019t think we\u2019re free in any genuine sense.<\/p>\n
Those who emphasize our near total freedom rightly build upon our commonsense notion that we make choices that seem, at least to some degree, free. And they rightly argue that moral responsibility seems to make little sense if freedom is illusory.<\/p>\n
But the kind of radical freedom some profess does not account for what it means to be embodied and relational beings. For good reason, scientists of various sorts point to constraints to our freedom. And those who explore human behavior point to predictable patterns that suggest our freedom is not as great as we might sometime think. Christians rightly point to the habits of sin as denying us the capacity to do some things.<\/p>\n
<\/h3>\nOthers read the scientific literature or have theological reasons for saying we have no freedom whatsoever. They believe we are entirely controlled by the atoms or genes below. Or a sovereign God entirely controls all creation and us.<\/p>\n
John Wesley offers a helpful middle ground between these two views. Wesley emphasizes creaturely freedom \u2013 what he typically called \u201cliberty\u201d \u2013 and its relation to love.<\/p>\n
Wesley rejects views of divine sovereignty and doctrines of predestination that undermine the logic of give and recieve love. They imply that Christians cannot freely participate in the work of salvation. \u201cThe God of love is willing to save all the souls that he has made,\u201d argues Wesley. \u201cBut he will not force them to accept of it; he leaves them in the hands of their own counsel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wesley considered God persuasive not coercive. God \u201cstrongly and sweetly influences all,\u201d says Wesley, \u201cand yet without destroying the liberty of his rational creatures.\u201d God empowers others rather than overpowering them.<\/p>\n
Creaturely freedom is not entirely self-derived, however. God gives freedom to creatures. In one of his most important sermons, \u201cOn Working Out Our Own Salvation,\u201d Wesley argues from a portion of an Apostle Paul\u2019s letter (Phil. 2:12-13). In light of this passage, Wesley says, \u201cthe very first motion of good is from above, as well as the power which conducts it to the end.\u201d In other words, we rely upon God.<\/p>\n
This initial work of divine love empowers free creaturely response. Wesley called this \u201cpreventing\u201d grace; we now call it \u201cprevenient grace.\u201d This is God\u2019s grace that precedes and empowers creaturely response. \u201cThrough the grace of God assisting me,\u201d says Wesley, \u201cI have a power to choose and do good as well as evil.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because God first acts on our behalf, says Wesley, we can and must respond to work out our salvation. God offers all people \u201csome measure of that light, some faint glimmering ray, which sooner or later, more or less, enlightens every man that cometh into the world.\u201d For this reason, \u201cno man sins because he has not grace,\u201d says Wesley. He sins, \u201cbecause he does not use the grace which he hath.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of the most perplexing questions Christians face are at least partially answered by affirming the idea that God empowers creatures by granting freedom to respond. If Christians follow Wesley\u2019s lead on this issue, they will discover conceptual resources for making sense of God\u2019s call in their lives.<\/p>\n
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