A SENSE of freedom of choice is the invariable accompaniment of the asserted knowledge of good and evil, and it would seem therefore to come under the Scriptural condemnation of that knowledge. Regardless, however, of the questionable, company this "freedom of the will" is wont to keep, theology has declared that it is a desirable thing; that it is a gift from God; that it pertains to the spiritual man, and that it supplies this man with an essential basis for the attainment of character. This is the doctrine of "free moral agency," which means that God has endowed His child with a capacity to do that for which He condemns him if he do it.
A reverend apologist for this view has fairly represented a great body of religious teaching when he said recently, "There is an eternal necessity for choice, ... a choice which comprehends the whole of a man's nature: body, soul, and spirit, ... God gave to His creatures a gift full of peril, but one without which their service could not so efficiently tend, either to His glory, or to their happiness and good."
Such a theory may seem very plausible, and especially in view of the universal human consciousness of the present possession of this freedom. Nevertheless, it is utterly fallacious, and for every man whose thought is free, it can but awaken many pertinent queries. Since man is the image and likeness of God, that likeness must appear in every part of his nature and possible activity. Every going forth or manifestation of God being embraced in the divine consciousness, is at-one with that consciousness: any other likeness or sonship would be self-contradictory and impossible, and hence the necessary conclusion that if a power of choice between good and evil pertain to the spiritual man, it pertains also to God. But, if God endows His child with the freedom to do evil, He is surely responsible for the possibility of the child's evil doing, and if God is thus responsible for the initiative of evil, how can He be relieved of all responsibility for its consummation? Surely if man is to be saved it must be by a God who in His being and activity presents the very antipode of all that from which man is to be saved. God's every law must be parallel with His nature, and hence there can be no possibility of evil in Him or in anything which comes from His hand.
