Part 40

The word "will" is a misleading word. What is will? Will is not a faculty, like the faculty of speech or touch. The word will is a symbol, and means the balance between two motives or desires.

Will is like the action of balance in a pair of scales. It is the weights in the scales that decide the balance. So it is the motives in the mind that decide the will. When a man chooses between two acts we say that he "exercises his will"; but the fact is, that one motive weighs down the other, and causes the balance of the mind to lean to the weightier reason. There is no such thing as an exterior will outside the man's brain, to push one scale down with a finger. Will is abstract, not concrete.

A man always "wills" in favour of the weightier motive. If he loves the sense of intoxication more than he loves his self-respect, he will drink. If the reasons in favour of sobriety seem to him to outweigh the reasons in favour of drink, he will keep sober.

Will, then, is a symbol for the balance of motives. Motives are born of the brain. Therefore will depends upon the action of the brain.

God made the brain; therefore God is responsible for the action of the brain; therefore God is responsible for the action of the will.

Therefore Man is not responsible for the action of the will. Therefore Man cannot sin against God.

Christians speak of the will as if it were a kind of separate soul, a "little cherub who sits up aloft" and gives the man his course.

Let us accept this idea of the will. Let us suppose that a separate soul or faculty called the will governs the mind. That means that the "little cherub" governs the man.

Can the man be justly blamed for the acts of the cherub?

No. Man did not make the cherub, did not select the cherub, and is obliged to obey the cherub.

God made the cherub, and gave him command of the man. Therefore God alone is responsible for the acts the man performs in obedience to the cherub's orders.

If God put a beggar on horseback, would the horse be blamable for galloping to Monte Carlo? The horse must obey the rider. The rider was made by God. How, then, can God blame the horse?

If God put a "will" on Adam's back, and the will followed the beckoning finger of Eve, whose fault was that?

The old Christian doctrine was that Adam was made perfect, and that he fell. (How could the "perfect" fall?)

Why did Adam fall? He fell because the woman tempted him.

Then Adam was not strong enough to resist the woman. Then, the woman had power to overcome Adam's will. As the Christian would express it, "Eve had the stronger will."

Who made Adam? God made him. Who made Eve? God made her. Who made the Serpent? God made the Serpent.

Then, if God made Adam weak, and Eve seductive, and the Serpent subtle, was that Adam's fault or God's?

Did Adam choose that Eve should have a stronger will than he, or that the Serpent should have a stronger will than Eve? No. God fixed all those things.

God is all-powerful. He could have made Adam strong enough to resist Eve. He could have made Eve strong enough to resist the Serpent. He need not have made the Serpent at all.

God is all-knowing. Therefore, when He made Adam and Eve and the Serpent He knew that Adam and Eve must fall. And if God knew they must fall, how could Adam help falling, and how could he justly be blamed for doing what he must do?

God made a bridge--built it Himself, of His own materials, to His own design, and knew what the bearing strain of the bridge was.

If, then, God put upon the bridge a weight equal to double the bearing strain, how could God justly blame the bridge for falling?

The doctrine of Free Will implies that God knowingly made the Serpent subtle, Eve seductive, and Adam weak, and then damned the whole human race because a bridge He had built to fall did not succeed in standing.

Such a theory is ridiculous; but upon it depends the entire fabric of Christian theology.

For if Man is not responsible for his acts, and therefore cannot sin against God, there is no foundation for the doctrines of the Fall, the Sin, the Curse, or the Atonement.

If Man cannot sin against God, and if God is responsible for all Man's acts, the Old Testament is not true, the New Testament is not true, the Christian religion is not true.

And if you consider the numerous crimes and blunders of the Christian Church, you will always find that they grew out of the theory of Free Will, and the doctrines of Man's sin against God, and Man's responsibility and "wickedness."