Of Free Will, IX:1

God has endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that it is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined to good, or evil.

Before proceeding with our discussion of this deceptively-brief paragraph, I'll set out a few definitions.

1. The will is a component of man's being, one of his faculties. It is the capacity of choice. Some synonyms include intentionality and inclination. Jonathan Edwards famously described the will as "the mind choosing." We always choose according to our strongest inclination at the moment; whatever we most want to do at any given moment, that we do.

2. Liberty is freedom, the state of lacking external coercion, not being forced to do anything. There are varying degrees of freedom, however. God is free, we are free, but God is more free than we are because he is a higher order of being.

3. Ability, on the other hand, is capacity or endowment. If one is able, one can. If one is not able, one cannot.

4. Autonomy is "self law." To be autonomous is to be completely free of any constraint outside oneself, beholden or responsible to no one else.

5. Determinism is the belief that all events in a finite world must be caused by previous states of affairs. In other words, there are no uncaused events. This would seem simply to be a statement of the law of causality, but there is an undercurrent of a lack of freedom that appears in some people's use of the word. There are two related concepts:
a. fatalism--the false view that because all things are caused human choices have no meaning or are irrelevant to the outcome. Fate is often conceived of as blind mechanical necessity. Karma and destiny are ideas linked to fatalism. But God is not fate, for he is a person.
b. self-determination--the idea that a man's choices are determined by himself. This is really the same thing as freedom. In fact, we often define freedom as self-determination.

So, taking all these into consideration, in what sense is the will free? We always do what we want to do; we choose according to our natures. There is no external coercion upon our wills. Our choices are real and are really ours. But this does not mean that we are able to make all types of choices. It is crucial not to confuse liberty with ability.

Hence the Confession affirms that God created man with liberty. He made free choices according to his nature, which was originally created good and righteous. This is the subject of our next discussion.

Tomorrow: Man's original state of innocence.