If you have opened Freedom of the Will and felt your head spin at its long sentences and relentless chains of reasoning, you are not alone — and you are not doing it wrong. Jonathan Edwards wrote what many regard as the most rigorous work of philosophy ever produced in America, and he wrote it to settle one question that touches every prayer, every conversion, and every account we will one day give of our lives: are we free, and in what sense? This guide is here to make that argument approachable. Read it first, or keep it beside you as you work through the book, and the fog should begin to lift.
What the book is, and why Edwards wrote it
Published in 1754, its full title is a warning label and a promise at once: A Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of Will which is supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency. Edwards, a New England pastor and later a college president, was answering a view he calls throughout the book Arminian — the teaching that the will possesses a “self-determining power,” a sovereignty over itself by which it can choose one way or the other with nothing deciding the matter but the will’s own bare act.
Why did this matter enough to spend a book on it? Because Edwards believed that if grace is to be grace — if salvation is God’s gift and not our achievement — then the human will cannot be the ultimate, uncaused master of its own choices. Yet he also believed Scripture holds us genuinely responsible: “Choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19) is a real command to real agents. The whole book is his attempt to show that these two truths do not collide. It is a defense of the sovereignty of God that refuses to purchase that sovereignty by making us puppets.
The core argument in plain terms
Edwards begins by clearing the ground with definitions, and this is where a patient reader is rewarded. First, what is the will? Not some mysterious inner ruler, but simply the faculty of choosing:
“the Will (without any metaphysical refining) is, That by which the mind chooses any thing.”
Jonathan Edwards
Second, and this is the hinge of the whole work: the will always follows the strongest motive. We never choose in a vacuum. In any moment, the thing that appears most agreeable, most eligible, most good to us in that instant is the thing we choose. Edwards puts it carefully:
“it must be true, in some sense, that the will always is, as the greatest apparent good is.”
Jonathan Edwards
Notice what he is not saying. He is not saying we are forced against our wills. He is saying our choosing is not random — it flows from who we are and what we love. To imagine a choice with no reason behind it, a will that determines itself out of nothing, is, Edwards argues, either an infinite regress (a choice before the choice before the choice) or an effect with no cause at all — which is absurd. This is exactly the freedom the Arminian scheme requires, and Edwards spends much of Part II showing it cannot stand.
Here is the reframing that changes everything: real liberty is not the will hovering with no reason above its choices. Real liberty is simply being able to do what you want to do.
“The plain and obvious meaning of the words Freedom and Liberty, in common speech, is The power, opportunity, or advantage, that any one has, to do as he pleases.”
Jonathan Edwards
By that ordinary definition — the only one, Edwards says, that anyone who has “learned to talk” actually uses — we are free. Nobody drags us to our sins; we run to them. And that is precisely why we are responsible for them.
The great distinction: natural inability versus moral inability
If there is one idea to carry away from this book, it is this one. Edwards observes that we use the word cannot for two very different situations.
Natural inability is when something outside your will blocks you: you cannot fly, cannot see in the dark, cannot love God if you have never heard of him. The obstacle is in your nature or circumstances, not in your wanting.
Moral inability is different — it lies in the wanting itself:
“Moral Inability consists not in any of these things; but either in the want of inclination; or the strength of a contrary inclination; or the want of sufficient motives in view, to induce and excite the act of the Will, or the strength of apparent motives to the contrary.”
Jonathan Edwards
A loving mother “cannot” abandon her child; a man of integrity “cannot” be bribed. They are perfectly able in the natural sense — nothing stops their limbs — but their hearts will not go there. This is moral inability. And here is Edwards’s decisive point: moral inability never excuses us. The reason a sinner “cannot” come to Christ is not a locked door but an unwilling heart, and an unwilling heart is not an alibi — it is the very thing we are guilty of.
This is where the philosophy becomes pastoral. Scripture says of the natural mind that it “is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Romans 8:7). Jesus says “No man can come to me, except the Father draw him” (John 6:44). Jeremiah asks whether the leopard can change his spots (Jeremiah 13:23), and Paul groans that “to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not” (Romans 7:18). All of these describe a real cannot — but a moral one, a bondage of the affections that leaves us fully accountable and utterly in need of grace to give us a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26).
Central themes to watch for
- Causation and God’s foreknowledge. Edwards argues that if God certainly foreknows our choices, those choices must be certain — which the self-determining will cannot allow. Divine foreknowledge and human choosing are woven together, not rivals.
- Necessity is not compulsion. A great deal of confusion, Edwards says, comes from hearing “necessary” and imagining chains. Moral necessity is simply the sure connection between a heart and what it loves — and the surest, freest, most praiseworthy being of all is God, whose goodness is necessary yet infinitely virtuous.
- Virtue lives in the nature of the heart, not its origin. Whether a good disposition was caused matters not at all to whether it is good; what makes an act praiseworthy or blameworthy is what it is, its love or its rebellion, not some uncaused pedigree.
- Christ and human freedom. The sinless obedience of Jesus was, in Edwards’s terms, morally necessary — he could not sin — and yet supremely virtuous and rewardable. If necessity destroyed virtue, it would destroy the worth of Christ’s own obedience, which no Christian will grant.
- Grace does the deep work. Behind all the logic stands Philippians 2:13: “it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” The will that runs to Christ is a will God has renewed.
Who should read it — and how to approach a demanding book
Let us be honest: this is not a devotional you read with your morning coffee. It is a sustained philosophical argument, written in the dense periodic prose of the 1750s, engaging opponents by name. It rewards the reader who is willing to slow down.
It is for you if you have wrestled with the questions of free will and predestination and want more than slogans; if you are a pastor, teacher, or serious student of theology; or if you simply love to watch a first-rate mind build a case brick by brick. If that is not your season, that is fine — start with a more accessible Edwards, such as his Religious Affections or his sermons, and return here later.
When you do read it, a few habits help enormously:
- Master the definitions in Part I before going further. Edwards defines will, motive, necessity, and inability with great care, and every later argument leans on them. Do not skim these pages; they are the keys to the house.
- Read in short sittings. One section at a time. Restate each argument in your own words before moving on — if you cannot, reread it.
- Keep the natural/moral distinction in front of you. Nine times out of ten, when a passage feels tangled, this distinction is the thread that untangles it.
How to read it today
Modern readers sometimes fear that Edwards leaves us as mere machines. He answers that objection directly and at length in the final part: means, prayers, and endeavors are not made “vain” by his view — they are the very instruments through which God moves hearts. You pray, you preach, you strive, precisely because these are the motives by which God draws the will.
Read the book, then, not as a cold determinism but as a defense of amazing grace. Its practical payoff is enormous. It frees you from the exhausting notion that your salvation finally rests on a self-generated act of your own autonomy, and it grounds your assurance in the God who works in you. It also deepens gratitude: if Christ has set you free (John 8:36), if you now find yourself wanting him where once you did not, that new wanting is itself the fruit of the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17), the giving of a heart of flesh for a heart of stone. Even the great evils of our story, Edwards would remind us, God can weave for good, as Joseph confessed: “ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (Genesis 50:20).
Pair your reading with the Gospels and with Romans, and let Jesus’s own words settle over the whole inquiry: “without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5). That single sentence is the pastoral heart of a very long book.
For reflection
- Edwards defines true liberty as the power “to do as he pleases.” Where in your life do you actually experience freedom that way — and does it change how you think about being “free”?
- Think of something you “cannot” bring yourself to do or to stop doing. Is that a natural inability or a moral one? What does the answer reveal about your heart?
- If our choices always follow what seems most good to us in the moment, what does that say about the importance of what we behold, love, and set before our eyes?
- How does the truth that “it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do” (Philippians 2:13) shape the way you pray for yourself and for others?
- Does grounding your salvation in God’s work rather than your own autonomy make you more anxious or more secure — and why?
When you are ready, the full text is here to read for free at Freedom of the Will. Take it slowly, keep this guide at hand, and let one of history’s greatest theological minds train your own.
