Dewey J. Hoitenga weist in seinem Werk “John Calvin and the Will” auf Inkonsistenzen Calvins bei der Frage des Willens im gefallenen Zustand hin. Zunächst steckt er die Übereinstimmung ab:
The intellect’s knowledge of right and wrong , which is the other condition for guilt, survives in the fallen state, since like the will it is a natural gift of the created state and cannot, therefore, be destroyed by any defection of the will. On that point, Calvin is clear and even emphatic. Even though the knowledge of good and evil is diminished in certain ways by the fall and some of this is due to the will itself, which typically seeks to avert the intellect from its own testimony about good and evil, the intellect’s knowledge of right and wrong (and even of God himself in the sensus divinitatis) remains sufficiently present to accuse fallen human beings of their willful defection from God.
Die Frage ist jedoch:
But what about the fallen will? Has the will as God created it, with a natural inclination to goodness and capacity for choice beween good and evil, persisted into the fallen state?
In dieser Frage des gefallenen Willens weicht Hoitenga von Calvin ab, indem er differenziert:
Calvin rightly teaches that the inclination to faith in God and the capacity to choose this faith and its consequent acts of pious worship, service, praise, and thanksgiving to God are indeed lost and can be regained only by saving grace. … But in the sate of moral conflict and corruption, the natural goodness and freedom of the will are still evident. As a result, human life, in spite of its pervasive moral corruption … still manifests signs of moral goodness and even splendor, at least with respect to what Calvin identifies as ‘earthly things’.
It is by divine creation that human beings possess a rational-moral nature consisting of reason and will; by divine revelation and regeneration that God’s grace restores to that nature the spiritual gifts of faith, hope, and love that is lost in the Fall.
Das Buch des reformierten Philosophen Hoitenga ist lesenswert, wenn auch nicht leicht verdaulich: Dewey J. Hoitenga Jr. John Calvin and the Will. Baker: Grand Rapids 2003. (Preface)
