Freedom vs Freedom: One Example of Equivocation in "That All Shall be Saved"

 

While reading David Bentley Hart’s That All Shall be Saved, one thing that stood out for me (apart from the book's many positive qualities) is Hart's tendency to equivocate. Without warning or comment he will slide between different meanings of the same term in the same argumentative sequence. Here's one particularly telling example, from pp. 178-79.

 

For those who worry that this all amounts to a kind of metaphysical determinism of the will, I may not be able to provide perfect comfort. Of course it is a kind of determinism, but only at the transcendental level, and only because rational volition must be determinate to be anything at all. Rational will is by nature the capacity for intentional action, and so must exist as a clear relation between (in Aristotelian terms) the “origin of motion” within it and the “end” that prompts that motion—between, that is, its efficient and final causes. Freedom is a relation to reality, which means liberty from delusion. This divine determinism toward the transcendent Good, then, is precisely what freedom is for a rational nature.

 

Here Hart defines freedom as a certain “relation to reality” which implies “liberty from delusion.” He also defines it as the “divine determinism” of the rational will or the person “toward the transcendent Good.”

 

This is rather confusing. Let’s begin with the second definition (freedom as the “divine determinism” of the rational will toward the Good). Hart appears to be saying that freedom is the intrinsic orientation of a person (or the rational will, or a rational nature) toward God, the transcendent Good. Following that definition, a person has freedom even when he is caught up in sin and delusion. For surely, Hart does not want to say that sin and delusion remove a person’s basic orientation toward the Good (for his argument here rests on the claim that a person can never extinguish his basic orientation toward the Good). Nor does Hart deny that sin and delusion are possible for a human person in this life. He explicitly affirms that possibility later on (p. 179):

 

That is not to deny that, within the embrace of this relation between the will's origin and its end in the Good (what, again, Maximus the Confessor calls our "natural will"), there is considerable room for deliberative liberty with regard to differing finite options (what Maximus calls the "gnomic will") and considerable room in which to stray from the ideal path.

 

But if a sufficient condition for having “freedom” is being a rational nature that is intrinsically oriented toward the Good, and if this sufficient condition is fulfilled—and the person still “free”—even when he is caught up in sin and delusion, then freedom does not mean liberty from delusion. And yet Hart says, in the first defining sentence, that “freedom is a relation to reality, which means liberty from delusion."

 

Perhaps we need to go back and re-interpret Hart when he says that “divine determinism toward the transcendent Good … is precisely what freedom is for a rational nature.” I assumed above that, for Hart, the “divine determinism toward the transcendent Good” is just the person’s intrinsic orientation toward the Good (and that the orientation is “divine” in the sense that it is caused by and directed to God). But as we just saw, this assumption doesn’t fit with Hart’s other claim that “freedom means liberty from delusion.” So let’s make a different assumption. Perhaps what Hart means is that a person is free—and conditioned by a certain “divine determinism toward the transcendent Good”—inasmuch as he is liberated from sin and delusion. If that is the case, then what Hart means by freedom in this passage is perfect liberty from sin—the inability to sin (non posse peccare) (See Augustine, Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love, ch. 28, §105). On this definition of freedom, a person is “free” insofar as he is able to love God and unable to reject God.

 

For the sake of clarity--which is always necessary in a theological or philosophical debate--I will refer to freedom in this sense (non posse peccare) as “true freedom*” (the reader should not automatically assume that when Hart writes “true freedom” he means “true freedom* as defined here).

 

“Freedom” appears in two consecutive sentences in the quoted passage. “Freedom is a relation to reality, which means liberty from delusion. This divine determinism toward the transcendent Good, then, is precisely what freedom is for a rational nature.” One would assume that Hart doesn’t mean freedom in two different senses here. To slip from one definition or understanding to another, in such a short space, with no warning, while making an argument about freedom, would indicate a momentary lapse of reason, if not philosophical incompetence. It would be uncharitable to assume that Hart’s logic is flawed in that way. So let's assume that Hart doesn’t flit from one meaning of “freedom” to another from one sentence to the next. What then does he mean by “freedom”? He means “true freedom*” (non posse peccare). What else could he mean, given his claim that “freedom is a relation to reality, which means liberty from delusion”?

 

From here we should go back and reinterpret Hart’s claim that “This divine determinism toward the transcendent Good … is precisely what freedom is for a rational nature” (my emphasis). By “divine determinism toward the transcendent Good”, Hart must mean something over and above the intrinsic orientation of a person toward God. For by “freedom” Hart means true freedom* (such at least is our working hypothesis). And presumably, Hart doesn’t want to say that, by simply being oriented toward the Good as a rational nature, a person has true freedom* and is therefore unable to sin!

 

Unfortunately, this cannot be right. For Hart says later on (on the same page--p. 179):

 

yes, there is an original and ultimate divine determinism of the creature’s intellect and will, and for just this reason there is such a thing as true freedom in the created realm.

 

There is no indication in that statement, or in the paragraphs immediately preceding it (these concern the “natural end” of the will), that Hart is distinguishing between the intrinsic orientation of the person toward God on one hand, and the “divine determinism” of the person (or his/her intellect and will) on the other. And why would Hart qualify said “divine determinism” as original if he understood it to be some further condition of grace or liberation that might be added to the person over and above her intrinsic orientation toward God?

 

As it turns out, then, Hart does flit from one understanding (definition/sense) of “freedom” to another in the space of just two sentences! “Freedom is a relation to reality, which means liberty from delusion. This divine determinism toward the transcendent Good, then, is precisely what freedom is for a rational nature.” In the first sentence, “freedom” is true freedom*: the spiritual condition of being so liberated from disorder and illusion that one necessarily (yet voluntarily) loves God above all things (non posse peccare). In the second sentence, being intrinsically oriented toward God as created spirit is a sufficient condition for having “freedom”—indeed it is “precisely what freedom is for a rational nature”—and this freedom is not true freedom*, for it is compatible with sin and delusion.

 

If there is another way of interpreting the quoted passage that does not involve Hart in either self-contradiction or equivocation in respect to the meaning of “freedom”, perhaps Hart or one of his defenders should come forward with it. I think it's more likely that Hart didn't think through the meaning and implications of his two "definitions" of freedom in this particular sequence, and so wrote something that he didn't really mean.

 

What makes this unsettling is the fact that the equivocation occurs across two sentences in a row, where a particular term is being explicitly defined! To make things worse, in the second case Hart says he is being "precise": "This divine determinism ... is precisely what freedom is for a rational nature [my emphasis]."

 

To be fair, there are other passages concerning freedom in the book; Hart isn't always this unclear in his use of terms. (See, e.g., pp. 36-38).