FREE Moral Agency, T.S. Dalton Some people desire our views on the subject of free agency, and lay as a base for their belief of this unscriptural doctrine, that when God gave to Adam a law in the garden of Eden, he made him a free agent to choose or refuse as he pleased; consequently, man became a free agent.

It is strange to us that men of talent, men of good sound minds and judgment cannot see that the term free agent is a contradiction of itself. An agent is one employed by another, to act for another, and is held accountable by his employer for all of his acts, and all that he does must be done in the name of the employer.

If Adam was ever free it was before God ever gave him the law, for when God gave him the law, he restricted him, and man cannot be free and restricted at the same time. The law says, “Of all of the trees of the garden thou mayest freely eat, save the tree of knowledge of good and evil; thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

This doesn’t sound to us much like Adam was free. But Satan (the serpent) believed in free agency, and he appeared to the woman in a subtle manner, and says, “Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of the trees of the garden?” And the woman said, “God hath said ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it lest ye die,” and the serpent (Satan) said to the woman, “Ye shall not surely die.” The idea is, you are free agents, you have a right to eat of any of the trees of the garden if you wish. The devil always has believed in free agency.

If the above texts prove anything, they surely prove that man is not free, but is under rigid restrictions, and the penalty is death, if he acts contrary to the prescribed rules in the law of God.

Therefore, there is no rule in logic, or scripture by which we can prove man to be a free agent, while there is any law, either human or divine, that restricts his liberties, and holds him bound under penalty of death for its violation.

After Adam had violated the law and had fallen under its curse, he surely was not free then, for God immediately cast him forth from the garden, and placed the Cherubim, and a flaming sword, pointing every way to keep the way of the tree of life, lest man should reach forth his hand and pluck and eat and live forever.

Now if it can be proven that God had removed the Cherubim and that flaming sword, and had given man free access to the tree of life, and had removed the penalty due to his crime for the violation of the law of God, and had exonerated him from all obligations to observe the moral precepts of any law, and has so released him from the clutches of Satan, as that he is no longer a servant of Satan in any sense, neither is he under any obligation to serve the Lord in any way, then, and not till then can it be proven that man is free.

The Bible teaches us that after the violation of the law “God reserved them in chains of darkness until the judgment of the great day. And again the Bible teaches us that “We were taken captive by Satan at his will.” How there can be such a thing as a free captive, we confess we are unable to see, and throughout the scriptures we are represented as being captives and servants of Satan, and Paul says, “His servants ye are, to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of righteousness unto holiness.”

What sense could there be in a free servant? A man is either a servant of sin, (or Satan) or a servant of the Lord, and in either case he is not free; therefore man cannot be a free agent. The prophet Jeremiah said, “O Lord, I know that the way of a man is not in himself; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.”

Surely, if the old prophet speaking under the direct and immediate influence of the Holy Spirit, has told us the truth, “that the way of man is not in himself,” man cannot be a free agent. There would be as much sense in saying a white black bird, as there would be in saying a free agent, for in either case one term contradicts the other.

You will have to excuse us from the belief that God has set evil before the man, for we cannot believe that God tempts man to evil. The Bible says, “God tempts no man to evil.”

If God sets evil before the man, and leaves him free to choose either good or evil, then it is God that tempts man to evil. We cannot believe that. God sets all good before man, we fully believe, but that God leaves man free to do either good or evil, we do not believe, but God holds man under obligation to obey the moral precepts of the law, and where man does evil or wrong, by violating the law of God, he is held under obligation to pay the penalty of a violated law; hence man is not free to do either, or choose either, but is morally bound to obey the precepts of the law, therefore there is no period of a man’s life that he can truthfully be called a free agent.

The next text to which our mind is directed is Matt. 7:21. “For not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” There is a grand difference between doing the will of the Father, and doing what some people think is the will of the Father, and how any man could think that this proves that a man is a free agent, we confess we are not able to see, for a man striving to do the will of God must of necessity be the servant of God.

In this language the Savior was contrasting between those that serve him, and those that serve him not, or rather contrasting between those that obey the Lord, in humility and fear as his humble children, and those who profess to be doing the work of God. And the Lord in this chapter is warning his disciples against those people who do so many good works, and says to them that “many shall come up and say in the last day, Lord, we have prophesied in thy name, and in thy name done many wonderful works,” and the Lord says, “I will profess unto them, I never knew you, depart from me ye that work iniquity.”

These are to be known by their fruits. “Men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles.” And when men assume to themselves the power to convert a world of sinners to a knowledge of the truth, and start out prophesying with this end in view, they are not doing the will of God, but are professing to do God’s work, and God says that “he is a jealous God, and will not give his glory to another, nor his praise to graven images.”

But the humble, meek and lowly saint of God, who from a pure principle of the love of God shed abroad in his heart, walks in the ordinances and commandments of the Lord humbly claiming no glory, nor honor to himself, but ascribing it all to God, and goes to him, as an humble beggar, who is willing, yea, anxious to eat of the crumbs that might fall from his table, and ask of God the things that they so much need is “doing the will of his Father which is in heaven, for God says “to him that is of a poor, and contrite heart will I look.” (T.S. Dalton Zions Advocate April, 1893)