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Yeongmo Yoo examines John Edwards' (1637-1716) doctrine of free
choice, focusing on his understanding of the relation between
divine necessity and human freedom. Even though free choice is an
important theme in the history of Reformed theology, Reformed
teaching on free choice has gained much less attention by modern
scholars than other Reformed themes such as faith, grace and
predestination. Moreover, the traditional Reformed doctrine of free
choice has been frequently criticized as metaphysical or
philosophical determinism by modern scholars. The crux of this
criticism is the claim that the classical Reformed doctrine of
divine necessity such as divine decree, providence, and grace rule
out human freedom or contingency of events in the world.Filling the
historiographical gap, Yoo raises a fundamental question concerning
the criticism of the Reformed doctrine of free choice in
relationship to divine necessity as determinism. Unlike the
deterministic interpretation of traditional Reformed thought on
free choice, the substantive and careful study of Edwards' writings
on free choice in the intellectual context of the seventeenth and
the eighteenth century shows that in Edwards' view, human beings
retain the natural freedom from compulsion and freedom of contrary
choice even after the Fall, and divine necessity such as decree,
predestination, and foreknowledge does not exclude human free
choice at all. Therefore, in so far as human freedom and
contingencies are maintained by Edwards, especially with respect to
divine necessity, his thought does not conform to the stereotype of
Reformed theology as a deterministic system. Consequently, the
examination of Edwards' view of free choice points toward the need
for a broad reassessment of Reformed understanding of free choice
in the Reformation and Post-Reformation eras.
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