Will 2
Reasons for acting
‘Perhaps the first thing we need to take into account is that strength of will is not self-created or self-evoked. I can no more make myself strong by saying “I will be strong” than I can fill my lungs in a vacuum. The human will cannot set itself in motion nor keep itself in motion; it can only act at all in response to some influence acting upon it. The will is moved by the emotions, and our emotions are fed by our thoughts, our visions and ideals. Strong and persistent effort of will is only the active outcome of prolonged and repeated concentration of the mind upon the end we have in view, until we are, as it were, obsessed by it and held in its grasp.’
Robert Law, ‘The Emotions of Jesus’, p 75.
This short interlude on the will draws on a further quote from Robert Law’s essay. What moves the will? What causes us to choose, and then to do? Law firstly says that action is not self-generated. The ‘self-made man’ deludes himself, as does the one who claims ‘I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul’ however stirring it sounds - a bit like ‘I did it my way’. No man, as another man of letters reminds us, is an island. Something has to move the will, for it will not move of itself any more, says Law, than my lungs can fill with air in a vacuum.
Law takes then what to us today may seem like a surprise turn: ‘The will is moved by the emotions…’ What? Our feelings? Even if that seems to be true superficially for some people, it hardly seems worthy of a Scottish theologian or good advice for his readers. Yet Law stands in an honourable line of thinkers who see the will and intellect as the two parts of the mind, and if we were to ask them ‘what of the emotions?’, they would say, ‘the will is the emotions’ (affections is the word they would use) ‘heated up to the point of action.’ Read Law carefully and you will see that of course he is not saying that our actions have their roots in the emotions, for he immediately goes on to say that ‘our emotions are fed by our thoughts and our visions and ideals. Strong and persistent effort of will is only the active outcome of prolonged and repeated concentration of the mind upon the end we have in view, until we are, as it were, obsessed by it and held in its grasp.’
The minds feeds the emotions and when sufficient pressure is brought on the will, it acts. The implication of this is that what you do, is always what you want to do. Think about it!
It also means that the will is not a separate free-floating faculty in the human soul. It can’t be free of your character and mind. It is ‘you’ willing, it is you deciding and acting, the whole person that is you, at the point of action. And it is moved by the complex of thoughts, ideals and visions that make up your intellect and move your emotions.
In biblical terms, it means too that the will is / you are a slave to sin, and it means that the whole you is accountable to God.