The Four-Fold Estate of Man

Dear Church Family,

This past Sunday, I began the adult Sunday school class by saying that we, as Reformed Christians, do in fact believe in free will, and that human beings will always choose to do  that which we most want or desire to do. Unfortunately, many people outside of the Reformed faith – and even some within – do not understand or believe this truth.

In his book The Westminster Confession of Faith for Study Classes, G.I. Williamson helpfully introduces this topic and provides some helpful categories:

    “It is all too common to bring the railing accusation against the Reformed faith that it denies free will. Many reject the Reformed faith (or Calvinism) out of hand because they assume that divine sovereignty (of which predestination is but one aspect) cancels all true human liberty and responsibility. Yet, ironically, no other system of teaching safeguards true human liberty and responsibility as does the Reformed faith.

    But in order to grasp this fact we must carefully note what freedom of the will is and what it is not. By free will we mean that man’s will is not coerced. We mean that man is not forced by some external force greater than himself to do something he does not want to do. We mean that man is free to do what he wants to do within the limits of his ability. What else can freedom or liberty be than to do as we please?

    However, we must carefully note that liberty is not identical with ability.” (Williamson, 112).

The ninth chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF), “Of Free Will,” is a helpful summary of the Bible’s teaching regarding this distinction between liberty and ability. The first paragraph of WCF, chapter 9, gives a definition of the free will of man:

WCF 9.1  God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that it is neither forced, nor by any absolute necessity of nature determined, to good or evil.

As Chad Van Dixhoorn writes in Confession the Faith: A reader’s guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith, it is “…important to recognize that this first paragraph of chapter 9 is not considering human beings only as they were created, or as they are fallen, or as they are redeemed, or as they will be one day in heaven or hell. It is saying something that is true of the will though every stage of history and at any point in our lives in time or eternity. ...[N]either a fall into the fullness of sin nor salvation by sovereign grace destroys the will or obliterates its liberty” (Van Dixhoorn, 137).

This is what we mean when we say that man has free will or liberty. We will always choose to do that which we most desire to do. But, here is where the distinction between liberty and ability becomes important. Perhaps an illustration might be helpful: man has the freedom to choose to flap his arms and fly, but only certain birds actually have the ability to do so. In the same way, man has the freedom to do good; however, man’s ability to do good is different depending on where he is in the four-fold estate of man. That’s what the rest of chapter 9 of the Confession is about.

The remaining four paragraphs describe the four-fold estate of man in the four major eras of redemptive history. Here is a summary of the chapter.

WCF 9.1	Definition of the free will of man
	Estate of Man	Will	Ability to do good	Augustin / Thomas Boston
WCF 9.2	Pre-Fall	Free	Yes, but mutable	posse non peccare (able not to sin)
WCF 9.3	Post-Fall	Bound	No, and immutable	non posse non peccare (not able not to sin)
WCF 9.4	Converted	Freed	Yes, but corrupted	posse non peccare (able not to sin)
WCF 9.5	Glorified	Immutably Freed	Yes, and immutable	non posse peccare (not able to sin)

Estate of Man (1) – Innocence

9:2  Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom and power to will and to do that which was good and well-pleasing to God; but yet, mutably, so that he might fall from it.

Estate of Man (2) – Fallenness

 9:3  Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as, a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.

Estate of Man (3) – Conversion

 9:4  When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, He freeth him from his natural bondage under sin, and by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so as that, by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly nor only will that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil.

Estate of Man (4) – Glory

 9:5  The will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to do good alone in the state of glory only.

Conclusion

Thomas Boston (1676-1732) argued that for all that would see heaven, it is necessary to know these four things (the four-fold estate of man). Perhaps one does not need to understand all of the details or the names of these estates to see heaven; however, Boston does have a point regarding the necessity of knowing that all have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), and that since the Fall, all men are born dead in sin (Ephesians 2:1-3). For only when we are able to understand the bad news of our sinful estate are we then able to embrace the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ and find true freedom (Romans 6:18-22).

The Lord be with you! 

Pastor Peter M. Dietsch