# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1861_S97
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.

Volume VII.    April 1861.    No. 4.

Theological Axioms.

(Continued.)
XII. On the Free Will.

1. Voluntas, quatenus talis, libere agit.

The will, as such, acts freely.

2. Voluntatem non liberam dicere, est perinde, ac si quis dicere velit calidum absque calore.

To say that the will is not free is just as if someone wished to say that what is warm is without warmth.

3. Si respicias libertatem a coactione, homo semper habet liberum arbitrium, etiam post lapsum; si respicias libertatem ab obligatione, homo nunquam habet liberum arbitrium, nec ante lapsum, imo nec ipsi angeli.

If one has in view freedom from coercion, then man always has a free will, even after the fall; if one has in view freedom from obligation, then man never has a free will, not even before the fall — indeed, not even the angels.

4. Homo non intellectu, sed intellectus luce, non voluntate, sed voluntatis sanitate post lapsum privatus est.

Man was deprived after the fall not of the understanding, but of the light in the understanding; not of the will, but of the soundness of the will.

5. Vera libertas est, justitiae servire.

True freedom is to be a servant of righteousness.

6. Voluntas post lapsum libere, non coacte agit.

After the fall the will acts freely, not under compulsion.

7. "Erga Deum vel in rebus, quae pertinent ad salutem et damnationem, homo non habet liberum arbitrium, sed captivus, subjectus et servus est vel voluntatis Dei vel voluntatis Satanae."

Toward God, or in things that concern salvation and damnation, man has no free will, but he is a captive, a subject and servant either of the will of God or of the will of the devil.