Faithfully Seeking Understanding: Selected Writings of Johannes Kuhn

Grace and the Problem of Freedom

122 Gr ace a n d the Proble m of Fr eed om “die christliche lehre von der göttlichen gnade nach ihren innern Zusammenhang,” ThQ 35 (1853): 86–92 This brief selection comes from an 1853 essay entitled, “The Christian Teaching Concerning Divine Grace According to Its Internal Coherence,” where Kuhn treats the problem of human freedom. No question loomed larger in the nineteenth century than the question of freedom. Kuhn realizes that the problem stems from conflating freedom with independence. Viewed from this angle, Pelagians and Predestinarians represent two sides of the same coin, for both regard human freedom and divine operation on the human will as incompatible. To make his point Kuhn borrows the language of German Idealism, especially Kant. Kuhn connects these recent concerns with older treatments of grace found in Augustine and Aquinas. Augustine’s concerns arose from a well-known existential basis, although they quickly became quite speculative. Aquinas, the great systematizer, prefaces the Secunda Pars of his summa with a declaration of the human will’s freedom, which no doubt served as a starting point for Kuhn’s treatment of the topic. His connection to these two figures —as well as to the anthropology undergirding the Council of Trent—is made apparent in the sections of this essay not translated here. C Grace and Freedom C 123 In a m a nner a na lo gous to the external world, that is, the world of nature, the realm of the human will or the ethical [sittlich] world is self-contained. The ethical world has its own principle [Princip]— the free will that is self-determining and determines itself. its components are the self-determinations [Selbstbestimmungen] of this will and the composition [Bestimmtteilen] of the will given by these self-determinations. The composition on the other hand influences the will and its selfdeterminations in such a way that they are at the same time cause and effect . We will never escape from this recurrent circle of self-determinations and composition through an empirical consideration. likewise in nature, regardless of where we would begin, we would not escape from the connection between cause and effect into what could be only a cause without any effect, and come to a pure cause as the ultimate ground of everything else. irrespective of the cyclical natural system, and of the infinite series of things that mutually condition, maintain, and advance each other, we still look for an absolute cause as foundation of the whole and as the ultimate cause of everything causal—a divine power. likewise, in the ethical world, we posit an absolute cause that undergirds this world as a good and that is the moving principle of all good willing, namely, divine grace. The person is dependent on god not simply in that the person wills and wills freely to the degree that god has given him this free will and has created him. The person’s dependence also consists in the fact that he wants the good to the degree that god continually pours into him this good will. The divine will wills the human will, which explains the existence of the human will. The divine will still operates in the finite will after the orientation to the good has already been established, leaving the capacity for doing evil alone to the person [das Vermögen des Bösen dem Menschen allein überlassend]. hence one cannot speak of a diminution of freedom. Such a diminution would arise only if the influence of god were bound to a simultaneous suppression of the will’s capacity for both good and evil. if this were true, then god would only destroy through his grace what he had already given rise to through his power. and we are in no way justified in opposing divine grace to divine power. instead we are called upon to think the exact opposite. This would mean that god effects the 124 C Grace and Freedom good into human willing so that freedom is possible only alongside the possibility of evil. Put another way: how is the will itself free for the good? Obviously, in no other way than that divine, operating grace moves the will toward a free self-determination for the good. The fundamental error of all those who depart from the Church’s teachings concerning this question lies in the following false presupposition : for the will to be free...