FREE WILL AND THE DESCENT OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION INTO NARCISSISM.

The Protestant Reformation marked a decisive break with the Catholic Church over three issues: the magisterium, justification, and determinism. The last of these breaks was less obvious initially than the first two, since the first wave of Protestant Reformers considered themselves firmly within the arc of Augustine's teachings on free will and predestination. But free will soon became fully as much a point of Protestant departure as the first two. Protestants were dependent on secular princely authority for protection, and secular princes preferred notions of human willing which relocated sovereignty on a human plane. The Enlightenment struck a second blow in favor of free will by posing a universe governed by irresistible natural law, and from which only indeterminism (in the form of an unfettered human will) offered a meaningful key to personal identity. In the American environment, the republican experiment placed human willing at the center of identity, either directly (through secular market forces or through varieties of free will theology) or indirectly (through the subtler distinctions crafted by Edwards and nineteenth-century Calvinist moral philosophers). The principal casualty was any sense of community, which was sacrificed to benevolence, influence, or interest. Modern American opinion on determinism, whether philosophical or theological, is dominated by a free-willism which supports a rabid narcissism wholly at odds with Augustine and divine predestination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]