Note 202 — Chapter IV · THE PROBLEM OF MORAL FREEDOM

Evaded, because, even granting the satisfactoriness of the solution for the special case of Adam, there would still be the problem of reconciling the alleged “free will” of his descendants with their inheritance of “original sin.” The more rigid Calvinism, with its insistence on the natural corruption of man’s heart and the absoluteness of predestination, seems to secure logical consistency at the expense of outraging our moral convictions. Like so many popular theological problems, this of the conflict between God’s omniscience and justice arises from a misconception of the issue. It is only when the category of time is illogically applied to the ex hypothesi perfect, and therefore timeless, nature of God that God’s knowledge comes to be thought by as fore knowledge before the event, and thus occasions the difficulty which the “free-will” theory was intended to remove. See on this point, Royce, The World and the Individual, vol. ii. lect. 8, and compare Bradley, Ethical Studies, p. 19. Of course, the case would be altered if we thought of God as finite and imperfect, and therefore in time. But there would then be no longer any reason for believing either in His omniscience or His omnipotence, and so no problem would arise.