The Freedom of the Will: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Freedom of the Will, credited to Jonathan Edwards, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Freedom of the Will by Jonathan Edwards. Read in English by Philip Naudus & Jim Locke As religion is the great business, for which we are created, and on which our happiness depends; and as religion consists in an intercourse between ourselves and our Maker; and so has its foundation in God's nature and ours, and in the relation that God and we stand in to each other; therefore a true knowledge of both must be needful in order to true religion. But the knowledge of ourselves consists chiefly in right apprehensions concerning those two chief faculties of our nature, the Understanding and Will. Both are very important: yet the science of the latter must be confessed to be of greatest moment; inasmuch as all virtue and religion have their seat more immediately in the will, consisting more especially in right acts and habits of this faculty. And the grand question about the Freedom of the Will, is the main point that belongs to the science of the Will. Therefore I say, the importance of this subject greatly demands the attention of Christians, and especially of Divines. - Summary from the preface

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Freedom of the Will
• Author credits: Jonathan Edwards
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 41
• Listed recording duration: 13:32:40

Catalogue topics

• freedom
• Calvinism
• jonathan edwards
• free will
• arminianism
• providence
• responsibility

Opening tracks: first 24 of 41

1. 00 - Preface — 14:38
2. 01 - I.I - Concerning the nature of the will — 11:45
3. 02 - I.II - Concerning the determination of the Will — 26:40
4. 03 - I.III - Concerning the meaning of the terms Necessity, Impossibility, Inability, etc.; and of Contingence — 21:10
5. 04 - I.IV - Of the distinction of natural and moral necessity and inability — 19:50
6. 05 - I.V - Concerning the notion of liberty, and of moral agency — 9:52
7. 06 - II.I - Showing the manifest inconsistence of the Arminian notion of liberty of will, consisting in the will's self-determining power — 10:46
8. 07 - II.II - Several supposed ways of evading the foregoing reasoning considered — 13:49
9. 08 - II.III - Whether any event whatsoever, and volition in particular, can come to pass without a cause of its existence — 16:36
10. 09 - II.IV - Whether volition can arise without a cause, through the activity of the nature of the soul — 11:30
11. 10 - II.V - Showing, that if the things asserted in these evasions should be supposed to be true, they are altogether impertinent, and can't help the cause of Arminian liberty; and how (this being the state of the case) Arminian writers are obliged to talk inconsistently — 10:44
12. 11 - II.VI - Concerning the will's determining in things which are perfectly indifferent, in the view of the mind — 19:43
13. 12 - II.VII - Concerning the notion of liberty of will consisting in indifference — 25:23
14. 13 - II.VIII - Concerning the supposed liberty of the will, as opposite to all necessity — 9:23
15. 14 - II.IX - Of the connection of the acts of the will with the dictates of the understanding — 19:03
16. 15 - II.X - Volition necessarily connected with the influence of motives; with particular observations on the great inconsistence of Mr. Chubb's assertions and reasonings, about the freedom of the will — 34:51
17. 16 - II.XI - The evidence of God's certain foreknowledge of the volitions of moral agents — 51:00
18. 17 - II.XII - God's certain foreknowledge of the future volitions of moral agents, inconsistent with such a contingence of those volitions, as is without all necessity — 37:10
19. 18 - II.XIII - Whether we suppose the volitions of moral agents to be connected with anything antecedent, or not, yet they must be necessary in such a sense as to overthrow Arminian liberty — 8:59
20. 19 - III.I - God's moral excellency necessary, yet virtuous and praiseworthy — 9:37
21. 20 - III.II - The acts of the will of the human soul of Jesus Christ necessarily holy, yet truly virtuous, praiseworthy, rewardable, etc. — 35:58
22. 21 - III.III - The case of such as are given up of god to sin, and of fallen man in general, proves moral necessity and inability to be consistent with blameworthiness — 18:12
23. 22 - III.IV - Command, and obligation to obedience, consistent with moral inability to obey — 28:52
24. 23 - III.V - That sincerity of desires and endeavors, which is supposed to excuse in the nonperformance of things in themselves good, particularly considered — 23:16

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.