Man’s Will in the Marrow of Theology

 INTRODUCTION

 “A doctrine must first be rightly found out, and then afterward rightly handled… Every doctrine being now sufficiently explained, we must insist that they must quickly be brought to use.” So writes the renowned Puritan theologian William Ames (1576-1633) on the subject of preaching in his famous systematic theology entitled the Medulla Theologiae (1627) or The Marrow of Theology. This entails that Ministers of the Word not only have a firm grounding in Biblical truth and a personal acquaintance with vital religious experience but also wisdom concerning how to apply what God has revealed in a practical way.   

An Englishman with considerable influence in the Netherlands as well as New England in his own day, Ames continues to serve Christ’s church through his theological writings that are still used of God to equip gospel ministers. Ames is particularly known for integrating objective truth and practical living and has much to offer those seeking to grow in the area of practical theology. The following paper will contend that this work’s emphasis upon human volition greatly contributes to its abiding relevance in this regard. This can be seen in two ways, namely: the significance of human volition to theology and the significance of human volition to faith.

1. HUMAN VOLITION AND THEOLOGY 

To recognize the extent to which Ames’ Marrow places a strong emphasis upon human volition it is helpful to survey how this work classifies theology as a discipline. The very first section of the Marrow defines theology in the following way: “Divinity is the doctrine of living to God” or “that good life whereby we live to God… [which is] according to the will of God, to the glory of God, with God inwardly working.” In this way, Ames holds that the true motive that ought to drive Christians to study theology is a life that is glorifying to God with all that this entails. 

As Jan van Vliet notes concerning Ames’ definition of theology: “from this emphatic assertion one immediately comes to expect a more activistic view of faith and the Christian life.” Ames’s passion is the promotion of vibrant piety in a context of a lived reality of faithful obedience. His conviction is that true theology results in the fruit of pious activity. While “pietism” can have the connotation of passivity and introspection, what is in view here is something totally different: a Biblical pietism where lives of service consecrated to Christ through the work of His Spirit are the goal of theologians.

This definition carefully eschews alternative approaches of understanding theology commonly held among other theologians that tend towards rationalism. During the Middle Ages, influential theologians like Thomas Aquinas were heavily influenced by the thinking of Aristotle which resulted in a significant focus upon reason within scholastic theology. This resulted in theology being defined as “wisdom concerning divine things.” Ames was open to using Aristotelian and Thomistic categories when useful, but militated against what he perceived to be a tendency towards abstraction, speculation, and even impiety that he saw as flowing out of this deficient definition. His concern was that theology was often “reduced to partisan squabbling over dialectical subtleties on theological issues more and more remote from the church.” 

It is important to recognize that Ames’ more doxological and practical definition of theology guards against an overly intellectual approach by linking it with human volition. This is evident in his elaboration upon the life to which true theology calls its students:

[S]eeing that this life is a spiritual act of the whole man, whereby he is carried on to enjoy God, and to do according to his will — and seeing that it is manifest that those things are proper to the will — it follows that the prime and proper subject of Divinity is the will… But seeing that this life and will are truly and properly our most perfect practice, it is manifest in itself that Divinity is a practical, and not a speculative discipline — not only in that common respect whereby other disciplines have their eupraxia, well-doing, for their end, but it is practical, in a particular and special manner, above all others. 

For Ames, stressing godliness in life as the goal of theology means that influencing the human will or volition by God’s grace is what the theologian is seeking to do. Approaching theology in this way is vitally important to guard against the tendency to treat the theological enterprise as just another academic subject. Theology ought not be studied without recourse to “the light of the Spirit” and application to the lives of its students. 

In defining theology as a discipline especially concerned with human volition, Ames was greatly influenced by the French Protestant pedagogue and dialectician Petrus Ramus (1515-1572). Ramus sought to reform the way logic, grammar, and other subjects were taught so as to make them maximally accessible to a broad audience of lay people rather than specialists only. In his chapter in the Marrow concerning virtue Ames approvingly cites the following quotation by Ramus which shows how this project was bound up with a motive of religious devotion:

If I were to wish for what I would obtain, I would rather that this learning of philosophy were delivered to children out of the Gospel, by some Divine that is learned and of approved manners, than out of Aristotle by a Philosopher.

Distinctive features of the philosophy of Ramism clearly made a significant imprint upon Ames’ theology. In particular, its method of organizing information by reasoning from the direction of universals to particulars, generals to specifics and known truths to consequents in ubiquitous within the Marrow. Imbedded in this way of thinking is the driving concern to address the student at the level of a volitional actor with practical guidance. 

The consequences of this vision of teaching theology in a thoroughly applicatory fashion by addressing the volition throughout is highly consequential. Most conspicuously, the Marrow follows a different ordering than other systematic theologies in the Reformed tradition. Whereas a common method of discussing the various loci is to arrange them in a strictly logical order (beginning with prolegomena, followed by theology proper and ultimately terminating in eschatology) Ames opts for the more experiential approach of placing the student’s self-knowledge and pursuit of piety at the beginning. Dr. Fred Sanders helpfully explains the difference of the two approaches in his essay “Learning from William Ames”:

The standard orthodox way of describing theology was as a cognitive discipline, taking its starting point with the analysis of propositional revelation. From such a beginning, the next step was to carefully determine the epistemic reliability of doctrines, and the Protestant Orthodox tradition followed this path with its long prolegomena. Ames took a different starting-point, beginning theology on the spiritual reality available to the believer.

Consequently, the various categories of theological subjects are arranged by Ames according to their relationship to the two branches of theology: faith and observance. This goes far beyond merely addressing right belief in the first half of the book and right conduct in the second. Rather, the point is to highlight their organic relationship in the Christian life where the foundational principle of saving faith always precedes spiritual obedience. As Ames puts it: “These two parts in use, deed, and exercise, are always joined together; yet they are then distinguished in their nature and precepts.” 

What is striking about Ames’ definition of theology is that it is profoundly practical as well as doxological. The dynamic interrelatedness and harmony of the various theological subjects (ie: Christology to Soteriology, ecclesiology to convenant theology, etc.) are readily discerned by highlighting their place and relevance within the religious experience of the Christian. And having addressed them in this light, the student is presented with the pressing necessity of living to God’s glory from each loci. This is one way in which Ames’ emphasis upon volition makes the work distinctive and helpful to Christians today. 

2. HUMAN VOLITION AND FAITH

Clarity concerning the doctrine of justification by faith alone is a vital and precious inheritance of the Reformed faith. The welfare of the church and individual souls is horribly threatened when this doctrine is not held with all purity and proclaimed with boldness. It is therefore worth emphasizing that the Marrow’s careful treatment of the doctrine of saving faith has the potential to greatly profit contemporary Christians where this subject is concerned.

As was discussed previously, Ames carefully organized his various loci within the categories of faith and observance, the sum of which is a life lived to the glory of God. One of the noticeable consequences of this approach is that Ames unambiguously defines faith as a volitional act. In other words, he contends that the will is the seat of faith: 

Faith is a resting of the heart on God, as on the author of life and eternal salvation. That is to say, that by him we may be freed from all evil, and obtain all good…it is an act of election, an act of the whole man, which in no way agrees to a mere act of the understanding... Therefore, even though Faith always presupposes a knowledge of the Gospel, yet there is no saving knowledge in anyone (which differs from that which is found in some who will not be saved) except what follows this act of the will, and depends upon it. 

Thus for Ames, there is a vitally important role of knowledge in bringing one to saving faith in that “Faith always presupposes a knowledge of the Gospel,” but prior to the Holy Spirit’s work of regeneration acting upon the will, this knowledge does not essentially differ from the knowledge of the reprobate. On the other hand, after the will rests upon the finished work of Christ there is new knowledge that “follows from this act of the will and depends upon it” which differs in kind.

In rightly discerning the implications of this position, it is helpful to outline the logical order of the conditions of true faith. Ames outlines these various graces as follows:

These five things concur to make Divine Faith: 1. Knowledge of the thing testified by God. 2. A pious affection towards God, which causes his testimony to greatly prevail with us. 3. An assent which is given to the thing testified, because of this affection towards God who is the witness of it. 4. Resting upon God for obtaining that which is propounded. 5. An election or apprehension of the thing itself, which is exhibited to us in the testimony.

Ames notes that the first condition (knowledge) is in the understanding and cannot be a certain indication of true faith because “it is common to us and to unbelievers, heretics, apostates, and the devils themselves.” The third condition (assent) is likewise in the understanding but occurs as a consequence of the understanding submitting to the regenerated will and so is classified by Ames as an “effect” of faith. In contrast, the second, forth and fifth conditions can only be true of a sinner regenerated by God’s Holy Spirit and are volitional in nature. Ames’ contention is that: “if Faith depends upon the will, then it must be that the first beginning of Faith is in the will.”  

In this regard, Ames diverges from the commitments of other Reformed theologians. As Dr. Joel Beeke and Dr. Mark Jones note: “This position differed from much of established orthodoxy in the early seventeenth century, which said that faith proceeded from the understanding and then shapes the will.” While it is important to emphasize that no Reformed theologian excluded the will from faith, the position argued in the “Marrow” is that it is an act of the will essentially.

Recognizing that his perspective is not universally held, Ames carefully argues that “whereas some place true Faith partly in the understanding, and partly in the will, that is not so accurately spoken.” Why does he take this position? Unquestionably, at the root of this issue are important exegetical disagreements. For Ames, the statement in Philippians 2:17 “It is God that works in you both to will and to do, of his own good pleasure” is taken as sufficient confirmation “that the Will is the most proper and prime subject of this grace, because the conversion of the Will is an effectual principle of the conversion of the whole man.” Other Scriptural references to faith, such as 1 Corinthians 13:13, likewise lead him to conclude that it “is one single virtue and it brings forth acts of the same kind, not partly of science and partly of affections.” 

In addition, Ames’ makes some deductions about human anthropology of a philosophical nature which he argues necessitate that the saving change wrought in the will by the Holy Spirit must be reckoned an immediate change rather than a mediate change that follows from an illumination of the understanding:

The enlightening of the mind is not sufficient to produce this effect [of conversion], because it does not take away that corruption which is in the will; nor does [enlightening] communicate to [the will] any new supernatural principle by virtue of which it may convert itself. 

It is worth emphasizing that it is possible to exaggerate the difference between Ames and his Reformed interlocutors on this matter. Ames does not deny a role for understanding in saving faith nor does the other side deny a role for volition. But they certainly differ as to what the seat of faith is: whether the Holy Spirit regenerates the understanding via the volition or the volition via the understanding.

Following from and bound up with Ames’ reasoning is a deeply pastoral concern that the proclamation of the gospel be presented so as to cohere with Scripture and religious experience. In particular, Ames sees this disagreement as having great import to how one presents the demands of the gospel to an unbeliever: 

Seeing also that Faith is the first act of life whereby we live to God in Christ, it must consist in union with God, which giving assent to the truth concerning God cannot in any way do.  Further also, seeing someone that is about to believe out of a sense of his misery, and a defect of any deliverance either in himself or in others, he must cast himself upon God in Christ as a sufficient and faithful Savior; he cannot in any measure cast himself upon God in Christ by an assent of the understanding, but only by a consent of the will.

In this way, Ames is seeking to press his fellow Reformed theologians to be perfectly clear in their gospel proclamation to avoid leaving hypocrites in a state of complacency. Someone whose response to God’s revelation ends with a bare understanding of the factual propositions communicated in the gospel should be told plainly that he remains under God’s condemnation. Moreover, their deficiency is not something to be rectified simply by knowing more about God’s truth or knowing it more resolutely. What they lack is the act of trust, or coming to Christ in the gospel, with the heart. While only the Holy Spirit through regeneration can overcome their inability to do so, their defect or lack needs to be understood as a culpable resistance in the will or volition. 

CONCLUSION

In the chapter entitled “Of Ordinary Ministers, and their Office in Preaching,” Ames spells out the principle that he himself models throughout his own writing – namely, that sacred truths ought to handled with the goal of practically applying them to needy souls: 

Those fail, therefore, who stick to a naked discovery and explication of the truth, and by neglecting its use and practice — in which Religion and so blessedness consist — do little or nothing to edify the conscience. Nor yet are all the doctrines which may be drawn out of the text to be propounded, or all the uses to be inculcated; but only those should be chosen which the circumstances of place, time, and persons teach to be most necessary; and of those, those especially are to be chosen which do most to stir up or confirm the life of Religion in the hearers. 

Instead of simply expounding a doctrine and passively leaving it to the Holy Spirit to apply it, the edification of the hearers (which Ames calls “the chief scope of the Sermon”) is served when the preacher plainly presents the uses of the doctrine. And this kind of practical theology is well served by Ames’ important insights concerning the nature of human volition in relation to theology and faith. 

In this and other areas The Marrow of Theology is a wonderful deposit of balanced wisdom and insight for Ministers desiring to be used in a preaching and teaching ministry for the salvation of souls and the glory of the Triune God. It represents a thoroughly God-centered, Christ centered, and Bible centered Christianity that is well worth the attention of contemporary Christians. In a day when many confessing Christians fall prey to a man-centered intellectualism this balanced and wholistic approach to Biblical teaching still has the potential to greatly enrich the piety of believers.

- Benjamin Hicks

BIBLIOGRPAHY

Ames, William. The Marrow of Sacred Divinity. Translated by William Gross. London: Overtun Publishing, 2014.

Beeke, Joel R., and Mark Jones. A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life. Grand Rapids: Mich: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012.

Sanders, Fred, ers on April 23, and 2012. ‘Learning from William Ames’. The Scriptorium Daily, 23 April 2012. http://scriptoriumdaily.com/learning-from-william-ames/.

Vliet, Jan Van. The Rise of Reformed System: The Intellectual Heritage of William Ames. London: Wipf & Stock, 2013.