Jonathan Edwards on Original sin & the human will
Will in bondage; needs sovereign grace to be freed
A great degree of habitual wickedness may lay a man under an Inability to love and choose holiness; and render him utterly unable to love an infinitely holy Being, or to choose and cleave to him as his chief good.
THE POSITION
Two arguments, and the second is distinctively his. First the empirical one: a tendency is known from what is constant in event, and sin is constant without a single exception across all nations and ages, which proves "a propensity of nature, which is prevalent and effectual" to ruin. Second, on imputation, he refuses the usual defence and argues that all created oneness — the identity of a body, a tree, a person with its own past — rests on "the sovereign constitution and law of the supreme Author," so a constituted oneness of Adam and his posterity is no fiction. Freedom of the Will then supplies the mechanism: the will always follows the strongest inclination, so the bondage is a want of inclination, not a want of power.
46 When they sin against You—for there is no one who does not sin—and You become angry with them and deliver them to an enemy who takes them as captives to his own land, whether far or near,
17 OTHERS HOLD THIS
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
New England pastor, revival theologian and philosopher of the First Great Awakening, dismissed from his Northampton pulpit in 1750 over who may come to the Lord's Table. This entry rests on Freedom of the Will (1754), Original Sin (1758), Religious Affections (1746), An Humble Inquiry (1749), Distinguishing Marks (1741), Some Thoughts on the Revival (1742), An Humble Attempt (1747) and A History of the Work of Redemption, read in the Hickman edition.
Cite this page
"Jonathan Edwards on Original sin & the human will", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/edwards/original-sin (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/edwards/original-sin).