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Bible Dictionaries
Freedom of the Will
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or 1. Introduction.-Properly speaking, the phrase ‘the freedom of the will’ is a misnomer. As Locke pointed out, the question is not whether the will is free, but whether man is free. Either the will is in the same psychological category as the desires, in which case it is obviously limited by a man’s mental universe and his powers of concentration, or it is identical with the man’s self. It is quite evident that a man is not determined always by external force, and that neither others nor he himself can always predict what he will do. But this alone does not make him free. On the other bond, set any two men among the same alternatives, and their attitude will be different; in each case it will be conditioned by education, tastes, habits, range of perceptions-in fact, by the whole previous life, by all that goes to make up what we call character. Yet the consciousness of freedom persists; we feel that between given alternatives we have the power of effective choice. Hence, the antinomy has often been solved by the word ‘self-determination’; but this only moves the difficulty further back. What of the self which determines? Is that distinct from the other self? If so, what is its relation to environment and character? And if not, how can anything be the agent of its own determination?
The interest of the question is great, but it is speculative or else merely juristic; that is, whatever the answer may be, men will continue to form their own ends and pursue them, and to ‘weight the alternative’ in trying to influence the conduct of others. It is not determinism, but fatalism, which has any power to influence conduct, and fatalism is something entirely different. The only result of determinism in practical life is in the formation of judgments with regard to personal responsibility and the infliction of punishment. Punishment would become, what it is indeed at present often held to be, non-retributive; it would be only disciplinary and deterrent. But this too would leave a man’s way of conducting his own life untouched.
The theoretical problem is hardly noticed in the NT. The interest of the NT writers is predominantly practical. All that does not directly or indirectly affect a man’s relation to his universe is ignored. At the same time, the intellectual world of the NT is identical with that of the OT, but invaded and fertilized by the conceptions of the Incarnation and Redemption of Christ. For the thought of the OT, the problem of freedom did not exist. Not only were there no practical considerations to call attention to it; it was excluded by the heartiness with which the Hebrew mind accepted the two convictions of the responsibility of man and the omnipotence of God. Even for Ezekiel, who came nearest to realizing the antinomy, the problem was one of individual and social responsibility rather than of freedom and necessity (see 14, 18, 33). On the other hand, God can always intervene, though man may still be answerable (1 Kings 22:22 f., Amos 3:6, 2 Samuel 24:1, compared with 1 Chronicles 21:1).
2. The attitude in Acts.-The same ingenuous yet serviceable attitude (to pass over instances in the Gospels) is found in the Acts of the Apostles. While actions are regularly spoken of (as in all normal literature) as originated by their agents, yet new powers, unattainable otherwise, are bestowed by the Spirit (e.g. Acts 2:4), whose coming, however, may he hastened or caused by prayer (Acts 8:18). Men may be frustrated in some purpose by the Spirit of Jesus (Acts 16:7), constrained by the Word (Acts 18:5), or bound in the spirit (Acts 20:22). So, too, they may act in ignorance (Acts 3:17); or sin may even be the result of Satan’s ‘filling their heart’ (Acts 5:3, but contrast Acts 5:9). But this interference with normal powers of choice is neither felt to limit man’s freedom, nor does it affect the writer’s faith therein. The conception of some Divine power as temporarily displacing a man’s control over his speech or thought was by no means strange to the Hebrews, or to the Greeks and Romans, who had not learnt to think in terms of the sub-conscious; and when we, forgetting or improving on our philosophy, say ‘he was not himself,’ they would have said ‘God, or some evil spirit, entered into him’ (1 Samuel 16:14; cf. Verg. aen. vi. 77ff.). But while cases of more or less permanent possession by demons were familiar, the entrance or the Spirit of God was felt chiefly on special occasions (Acts 19:13 ff; cf. Acts 4:8; Acts 6:3).
This persistence of familiar categories of thought in the presence of new experiences is seen especially in references to the Holy Spirit. He ‘falls upon’ the disciples; he gives them to speak with ‘other tongues’ (cf. also Acts 18:5; Acts 20:23); but from the Acts alone it is impossible to say how far this is regarded as permanent; we must go to the Epistles for descriptions of the power of the Spirit in renewed lives, quickened hopes, and abiding impulses of joy; and although the choicest graces of the Christian life are set down as the fruit of the Spirit (as opposed to the works of the flesh. Galatians 5:19; Galatians 5:22), yet they are all subjects of exhortation as well (e.g. Romans 12:18, Philippians 2:18).
3. St. Paul’s view of the problem.-But when we turn to St. Paul, we find a definite recognition and discussion of the problem of freedom. Yet it is not the freedom of the will or even of the self. It appears in two forms, each arising from St. Paul’s own experience or observation, and each approached only when necessitated by some unavoidable antagonism. First, the actual experience of slavery to sin, or (what to St. Paul himself was involved in this) to the Law, Second, the apparent inability of an individual or groups of individuals (Esau, Pharaoh, Israel) to will what is right because of some dealing of God with them. A third aspect is also suggested, though St. Paul seems to offer a formula for its solution without recognizing its difficulty. What is the relation of the redeemed soul to God’s indwelling and invoking? Yet a fourth form of the problem appears, which is predominantly ethical. What actions am I as a Christian man at liberty to perform? What restraints, if any, am I bound to observe? This, however, springs naturally out of the first form of the problem. It will be advisable to consider these in order.
(1) The problem of freedom from sin and from the Law.-To St. Paul, as a Hebrew sprung from Hebrews, the great end of man is righteousness. It was to him more than an end: it was a passion. But he felt it to be unattainable: a mountain height which he had no strength to scale. His life was one long fruitless struggle towards it. He could only describe that life as a bondage, as if he had been sold like a slave to a master who would always prevent him from following his own wishes (Romans 7:14), or as if he were actually tied to a weight which kept him from moving-the weight of a dead body (Romans 7:24). This master was sin; but as in a fevered dream the patient sometimes imagines his own pain to be external to himself and torturing him, so St. Paul speaks of sin as something external, exercising an alien and hateful tyranny over him which can only end in death (Romans 5:21). It is not that his will is not free; it is not that he cannot will in a particular way; it is that he cannot act as he wills. The compulsion is external. And this tyranny further makes a tyrant of what should have been a guide, namely, the Law. The term ‘law,’ it must be remembered, is used by St. Paul in at least three ways; for the Law of Moses, for the natural law, written ‘on the heart’ of the Gentiles, and for the Law of Moses considered as a system of law in general. Now the Law, either as known to the Gentiles, or revealed more fully to the Jews, with its lists of forbidden acts, should have helped man to righteousness; but, enslaved as he was, it only pointed out in detail what he had no power to do, thus making his tyrant doubly hateful, and himself doubly a slave (Romans 2:14; Romans 3:20).
Now, it will be observed that there is no metaphysics here, and no psychology, though, it may be that St. Paul is giving us data for both. He is simply stating his own experience-an experience which in his case was happily only temporary, and which, as he believed, was intended to be only temporary for others. No conclusions could be drawn from it as to the will in general. For what happened? In this hopeless extremity a solution was found in Christ. St. Paul could not free himself; but Christ, as the Son of God, was free; and through His reconciliation the spirit of freedom, of sonship, of life, was sent forth (Romans 8:11; Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6). To exercise faith in Christ was to be placed, so to speak, where Christ was, i.e. in the position of one to whom complete righteousness was possible and actual. We cannot consider here the rationale of St. Paul’s conception of the Atonement (see article Atonement); but just as his active and untiring mind worked out into a Divine drama what to most of his contemporaries, was the simple experience of the consciousness of forgiveness of sins through Christ, so, to him, ability to do right was imaged forth as the change from being the slave of a tyrant to being a son in the house of his father. He is no longer kept from doing what he longs to do; he does it as if he had been born to do it. And this is what has happened: he has been born anew, he is a new creature.
Yet we must be careful not to drive the figure too far; or rather, we must be prepared to go far enough. The change has not simply been wrought for him, but in him. It is not merely a change from a master to a father; but from the Spirit of a slave to that of a son, by the spirit of sonship. Cowed and overpowered before, acquiescing, with a true slave’s mind, in the very things he hated, now he is confident, self-controlled as a son; not an emancipated slave, apt to mistake a broken chain for a charter of licence; his freedom from sin is freedom for righteousness. He can thus speak of the old Law as replaced by a new one. He is actually a slave once more; but a slave to Christ. He has gained his freedom, only to surrender it; or rather, he has surrendered it, only to find it in a form which is entirely stable and absolutely satisfying (2 Corinthians 3:17, no more ‘veils, reservations, inconsistencies’ now [A. Menzies, Second Ep. to Cor., 1912, ad loc.], 2 Corinthians 5:14, Romans 7:6, Galatians 5:8; Christians are even slaves to one another, because slaves to Him whose law is love Romans 8:2; Romans 6:18; cf. 1 Peter 2:16, John 8:34 ff.).
This experience St. Paul regarded as normal for all Christians. But in the Galatian church he was confronted with a return to the Jewish Law by those who ought to have learnt that circumcision could profit nothing. This raised once more the question of freedom. To go back to the Law was to go back to bondage; not, however, to the exact type of bondage from which St. Paul himself had been delivered at his conversion. There, the real tyrant had been sin, and the Law, coming in upon it, had made it appear in its true character (Romans 5:20; Romans 7:13). But at the same time its hold upon its prisoner was tightened. Here the Law is regarded in its other aspect, as a παιδαγωγός, a boy’s slave-attendant; and thus as an integral part of the Divine plan (Galatians 3:24). Man is intended to live as a son in his father’s house, with a son’s freedom; but before this is possible, he must obey; he has to submit himself to attendants (who, in a Hellenic or Roman household, would themselves generally he slaves). Only as he grows up and ‘puts away childish things’ does he leave behind him this régime, and become a son in actuality. But, having once left this state of things behind, to return to it is preposterous. It is like preferring the state of the handmaid to that of the wife, Hagar to Sarah; or leaving Jerusalem, our mother, for the barren heights of Sinai (Genesis 4:24-26). It is not simply refusing to live as a son; it is rejecting the spirit of sonship, bestowed on him, which made such a life possible.
This is what the Galatians were doing in listening to their Judaizing teachers. It was more than a relapse from freedom to bondage; it was a relapse from Spirit to flesh. Instead of the free impulse of the Spirit within them, or of Christ’s living in them, they were being guided by rules which demanded a merely external obedience and appealed to merely selfish desires, aptly symbolized by an operation on the external surface of the body. The case might not be so serious if entire obedience to these rules could ever be given. But even if this were possible, the spirit of a life so lived would still be hopelessly wrong. Freedom is life; and its absence is nothing less than death.
This is not the place to discuss St. Paul’s whole view of the relation of the Law and the works of the Law to grace. But the bearing of the question on freedom will be best seen by comparing the position of St. Paul with that of Kant. At first sight, the two might seem to be absolutely opposed. Kant finds freedom just where St. Paul denies its presence-in strict obedience to the Moral Law. But law has a very different meaning for Kant and for St. Paul. Law to Kant is essentially that which does not speak from without but from within. It appeals to no interested motives, either of hope or fear; it promises no rewards, threatens no punishments. It speaks with the sole authority of reason; its voice is the voice of the man himself. It is the experience of his true and proper rational self. ‘The will is not subject simply to the law, but so subject that it must be regarded as itself giving the law, and on this ground only subject to the law’ (Kant, ‘Metaph. of Morals,’ in Theory of Ethics, ed. Abbott, 1879, p. 70f.). Hence, only by obedience to it is freedom possible; for freedom is not determination by oneself; it is obedience to oneself. To be influenced by anything else is to recognize the right of an external authority, to relate oneself, as a Stoic would say, to things outside one’s power. But this recognition of external authority is just what St. Paul means by the Law; whether he thinks of it as the assessor of a tyrant, as in Romans, or the slave-attendant in the father’s house, as in Galatians. And what Kant calls law, St. Paul calls sonship. The difference-for of course there is a difference-is that Kant is barely a theist, St. Paul is wholly a Christian. Where Kant is conscious only of an imperative within his emancipated breast, St. Paul is conscious of a Divine Power who has sent forth the spirit of sonship into him, and a Saviour who has lifted him clean out of the sweep of every influence of heteronomy. Freedom, for Kant, is obedience to self; for St. Paul, obedience to a Person in whose will he acquiesces with enthusiasm. Both systems, however, are definitely opposed to Butler’s expedient of placing ‘reasonable self-love’ on a level with conscience. In so far as Butler’s conception of conscience corresponds with Kant’s categorical imperative, reasonable self-love leads to sheer heteronomy; and if we may compare obedience to conscience with the new life of freedom which, in St. Paul’s view, is enjoyed by the Christian, self-love is nothing more than obedience to the flesh which the Christian has crucified with the passions and lusts thereof (Galatians 5:24).
One word, however, may usefully be added at this point with reference to Spinoza, as enthusiastic an exponent of freedom as Kant or St. Paul. Human freedom Spinoza defines as ‘a form of reality which our understanding acquires through direct union with God, so that it can bring forth ideas in itself, and effects outside itself, in complete harmony with its nature, without, however, its effects being subjected to any external causes, so as to be capable of being changed or transformed by them’ (Short Treatise on God, Man, and Human Welfare, ch. xxvi.). In the moral system of Spinoza, God is as central as in that of Kant He is peripheral; and since God alone has freedom, the soul can be really free only through union with God. Such a view lays every pantheist open to one retort: if God is substance, or the All, and therefore universally immanent, how can union with Him be a thing which the soul may possess or lack? Spinoza does not attempt to grapple with this difficulty. St. Paul, on the other hand, does not habitually think in terms of union with God, either in the sense of Spinoza or of the Fourth Gospel. The centre of his system is not God, as a Divinely immanent Being, so much as the will of God, with which his own will has been brought to more in entire conformity. With St. Paul, freedom implies no merging in a wider Being; the man who is a Christian is like the son who not only lives in his fathers house, but moves in the atmosphere of perfect sympathy and understanding, confidence and obedience (cf. also Hebrews 3:6). The thought underlying the references to freedom in John 8:32-36 is substantially the same. There is no mention of law, but sin is felt to mean slavery; and freedom is only attained through the gift of the Son. Through Him we know the truth, and recognize and receive the message which the Son brings of the Father’s love and of His purpose that men through faith in the Son should be, as He is, members of the Divine family (cf. John 15:15). This breaks the slavery: to believe in the Son makes the believer himself a son.
(2) Relation of individual will to purpose of God.-We now pass to the second question, which seems to touch more closely the familiar questions of modern philosophy. Two things, however, are here to be noticed. The discussion is not philosophical, but religious: it deals with the relation of the human will to the purpose of an omnipotent God. And it is not general but specific: how can we explain the fact that the Jews have been rejected? And this leads to a third point, namely, that the question of freedom is raised only by accident. The real question is approached thus. In Romans 8 the Apostle’s thought has reached the victorious love of Christ. But the Jews are outside. Is then God’s promise to them broken by the rejection of His people? No: to suppose this would be to limit God’s power; for He was supreme enough to put conditions on that promise (Isaac was chosen, and not lshmael; Jacob, and not Esau). Thus, St. Paul carries the supremacy of God further than his opponents; his argument is similar to that of the prophets, who had to oppose the rooted Israelite belief that Jahweh must save His people. But the argument does not stop here. God’s will is not capricious. His real purpose is to secure ‘the righteousness which is of faith’ (Romans 9:30), which the Jews rejected. Hence, a new element enters into the discussion: human responsibility. As far as the Jews themselves are concerned, faith is open to all (Romans 10:8), and preaching can be heard by all (Romans 10:21). Thus, the Jews have only themselves to thank for their fate. Then, St. Paul returns to his original question. Are God’s people rejected? (Romans 11:1). No, their revolt was their own sin; the salvation of the remnant is His grace. But if there is revolt, God confirms, yet only so as to over-rule; it is all the better for the Gentiles, and, in the end, for the Jews also. Next, St. Paul turns to the Gentiles: ‘You too will find that resistance is followed by severity. But, behind all, is goodness. If there has been blindness, it is in part; the gifts and calling of God are without repentance’ (Romans 11:21-29).
A contradiction between chs. 9 and 10 has often been felt. This is because St. Paul in ch. 9 is Looking at only one side, viz. God’s power to shut out or reject. But we must remember that he is arguing about Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not Esau. It is the same with his reference to Pharaoh (Romans 9:17). He is writing as a Jew, and his purpose in mentioning Pharaoh is to show the sweep of God’s power, not the limitations of Pharaoh’s freedom. Otherwise, he would doubtless have written in accordance with the general principle which we find in ch. 1: ‘God gave them up’ (Romans 1:24; Romans 1:26; cf. also Acts 13:46, ‘we turn to the Gentiles,’ Acts 18:6). Two analogies will illustrate St. Paul’s thought: that of a disease, in which morbid conditions and acts, if persisted in, become hopeless; and that of family life, wherein conditions are laid down by a father to fulfil his desire of mutual love-if the son refuses to accept these conditions, he is rejected. These are not analogies simply; they show the working of the same universal law. St. Paul’s view of freedom is not atomic. Are we free at any given moment? No, we are conditioned by our past, and by our environment. To St. Paul, the past can be made up for; and the environment is one of love. Hence, St. Paul’s conclusion: mercy is the supreme law. All are ‘shut up’ unto disobedience, in order to come under the scope of mercy; i.e. all are allowed to suffer the inevitable results, both of ignorance and of rejection, so that God’s mercy may have its way with them (Romans 11:35).
If, however, there were any inclination to press ch. 9 as identifying St. Paul with a specific speculative opinion, it would be enough to point out that his whole attitude, to both Jews and Gentiles, belies it. Practice even went beyond theory: men might be ‘given up’; but this did not prevent a single appeal to them. If St. Paul turned to the Gentiles in one town, he would go straight to the synagogue in the next. Thus the two questions, though apparently unrelated in St. Paul’s mind, really point to the same general view. The spiritual, like the natural, world rests on certain sequences: if A takes place, then B follows. We are responsible for choosing or not choosing A, and so for the consequent presence or absence of B. The only modifications are that (a), if we may judge from the practice of St. Paul and of all early Christian evangelists, we are never justified in acting as if the consequences of evil were finally fixed; and (b) even when the time for choice seems to have gone by, and man, racially or individually, is dead in trespasses and sins, the atoning death of Christ provides means for another appeal to the will (see article Atonement). In reality, therefore, freedom and necessity are not exclusive states. If psychology, in common with all observation, would point out that choice is never unconditioned, religious insight shows that it is never to be treated as non-existent.
(3) Relation of redeemed soul to God’s indwelling and inworking.-The third form of the question of freedom arises when St. Paul is analyzing the distinctively Christian experience. Here also puzzling antinomies are met with. The Christian is in Christ, saved; he shows the fruit of the Spirit; all things are his. Yet he must watch and pray, and ‘buffet his body’ (1 Corinthians 9:27): his salvation is not complete; it needs working out. Each Epistle ends with practical exhortations, often quite elementary. Hero St. Paul takes refuge in what seems a contradiction in terms: ‘work out your own salvation … for it is God that worketh in you’ (Philippians 2:12). The meaning here is, however, ‘you must no longer be dependent on me; you must live your life yourselves as Christians; and you need not be apprehensive; for it is Cod that worketh in you.’ The exact question of the relation of the human to the Divine will is not raised here (see article Will); but a conception is implied which is of the first importance. When a man is freed, i.e. made a son instead of a slave, he is not simply transferred to a new kind of obedience; he is entered by a new spirit; his freedom is the freedom of the Father Himself; he suffers no cancelling of personality; nor is he really subjected again to law in any full sense; he attains the only freedom which is complete. But this is obviously not freedom of choice; nor can God’s freedom be so described: it is rather freedom of unimpeded activity; not self-determination, but self-manifestation (see articles God, Union with God).
(4) What actions is a Christian at liberty to perform?-The fourth form is practical and ethical, raised by a community which, newly rescued from the licence of heathenism, recognizes the need of laws for its guidance as well as of guidance for its attitude to law. This was particularly necessary for a community of Gentile converts, at once containing a Jewish leaven which held to the whole body of Mosaic restrictions (cf. the discussions in the Aboda Zara), and, apart from this, liable to various puzzles, e.g. about food which, offered for sale in heathen markets, had been contaminated by connexion with idolatry. On such points ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ brethren would easily differ. ‘We are free from the Jewish Law; but how far does that freedom take us?’ St. Paul is unhesitating; he does not even refer to the Jerusalem Decree (Acts 15:29); he replies: ‘all things are lawful; freedom is absolute; but not all things are expedient; and the inexpedient must be avoided’ (1 Corinthians 6:12; 1 Corinthians 10:23). Was this a backstairs way for the return of law? Not in reality. The contrast is expressed later in ‘all things do not build up’ (1 Corinthians 10:23). There is for the Christian no body of Jewish regulations; but the Christian is not therefore left to do as he likes. That would, in the end, involve falling under the old tyranny of desire and passion. He gained his freedom from law by coming into the family of God. The new relation to God means a new relation to men. His freedom is that of a member of a free society. Obviously this means that he will always act in full recognition of his fellow-members. To deny their claims would be to deny his own existence. It would destroy freedom and everything else. He can no more do that which will hinder his brother’s life than he can take the limbs of Christ and join them to a harlot. But is not this, then, after all, simply exchanging one law for another? Yes; the difference is that under the old Law there could be no acquiescence, and hence there was always a stimulus to disobedience and sin. The essence of the new Law is that the Christian sees in it the expression of the life that he has chosen. It becomes once more the embodiment of the real Torah (‘law,’ properly and by derivation ‘instruction’) as we meet it, e.g., in Psalms 119, the actual outworking in detail of the experience of the grace of God in the heart.
4. Other NT books.-The remaining NT writings call for little notice. The well-known passage in St. James (James 1:25) speaks of the law of freedom into which the doer of the word looks, as opposed to the careless glance at the reflexion of himself in a mirror, as it were, which is cast by the man who is only a hearer. There is nothing except propinquity to suggest that St. James is here referring to what a few verses later he calls the royal law; ‘thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ (James 2:8); and he says nothing further in explanation of a phrase which would have aptly summarized St. Paul’s argument. But a metaphor which he had just used (James 1:18), though with no direct reference to freedom, may be referred to at the close of this article, as summing up one aspect of NT teaching: ‘of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth.’ The paragraph begins with a call to resist temptation; it goes on to show the inevitable results of attending to the suggestions of evil; it ends with the assertion that God brought us forth to be first-fruits, as it were, of His own creation-that is, around man’s freedom of choice lies God’s purpose of blessing and salvation; and we complete the NT view if we add that the fulfilment of this purpose means a freedom which is no more of choice but of absolute oneness with the great orbital movement of God’s love.
5. Apostolic Fathers.-These two views-of St. Paul and St. James-are implied, sometimes more, sometimes less clearly, in the Apostolic Fathers. But they are only implied; and in general, we find the two opposite convictions, of man’s choice and God’s omnipotence, held with hardly a suspicion that they might be opposed. Here, as elsewhere, the sub-Apostolic Age is far nearer to the OT, or to the early chapters of Acts, than to the Pauline and Johannine writings. In 1 Clem. the Corinthians are said to have conflict for all the brotherhood, that the number of God’s elect might be saved (2). We are not justified through ourselves, but through faith (32). None can be found in love, save those to whom God shall vouchsafe it (50). A similar paradox is Sound in Ignatius, Ep. ad Ephes. 8: ‘let none deceive you, as indeed ye are not deceived, seeing ye belong wholly to God.’ Ignatius himself dice of his own free-will (ἑκών), yet as a freedman (ἀπελεύθερος) of Christ; and he will rise free in Him (ad Romans 4). So in the Ep. Barn.: ‘Before faith, the heart is given up to evil’ (16); and even now, accurate knowledge of salvation is necessary lest the Evil One should enter and fling us away from our life (2).
Literature.-For an exposition of the relevant passages, see the Commentaries, especially Sanday-Headlam on Romans (5International Critical Commentary , 1902), and Lightfoot on Galatians (51876). For the theory of Freedom as a part of Christian Ethics, see J. A. Dorner, System of Christian Ethics, Eng. translation , 1887, pp. 253-283; T. B. Strong, Christian Ethics, 1896, pp. 245-251, pp. 35-46; G. F. Barbour, A Philosophical Study of Christian Ethics, 1911, pp. 326-354, For fuller discussions of the Pauline doctrine, see J. B. Mozley, A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination2, 1878; D. Somerville, St. Paul’s Conception of Christ, 1897; F. R. Tennant, The Origin and Propagation of Sin2, 1906; E. Weber, Das Problem der Heilsgeschichte nach Röm. 9-11, 1911; see also articles (in addition to those referred to above) on Grace, Law, Liberty, Sin.
W. F. Lofthouse.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Freedom of the Will'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/f/freedom-of-the-will.html. 1906-1918.
