Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 29:3 (Fall 2025)
Article: Compatibilist Freedom In The Garden: A Defense For The Possibility Of Adam’s Fall
Author: Benjamin Wesley Cottrell

Compatibilist Freedom In The Garden: A Defense For The Possibility Of Adam’s Fall

Benjamin Wesley Cottrell

Benjamin Wesley Cottrell is a MDiv student and PhD applicant at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky studying philosophy and theology. Ben lives with his wife, Cheyenne, in Louisville and is a member at Kenwood Baptist Church.

The compatibilist view of human freedom and divine sovereignty claims that a person is only free when permitted to act according to his or her strongest desire at any moment. Furthermore, it insists that everything is ordained or determined by God, and that he is not morally responsible for any evil committed. Given these requirements that the compatibilist view demands, how could Adam, who was presumably created in the image of God and possessed fully good desires, have sinned, and sinned in a manner excusing God of reprehensibility? This problem of original sin is perhaps the greatest stress point of the compatibilist view. Can a defense be made that is both logical and consistent with the Bible? In this article, I will provide a defense for the possibility of Adam’s fall under a compatibilist view of freedom, arguing that Adam was able to be influenced to sin due to a lesser understanding of God’s glory, was necessarily mutable, and outwardly introduced to the idea of sin by Satan’s temptation which provided sufficient intramundane cause for the development of a false imagination leading to sinful action. To accomplish this, I will first give two helpful compatibilist views on the problem of the first human sin given by Francis Turretin and James Anderson. Then I will provide a defense of my own view with a

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summary of the greater-glory theodicy proposed by Scott Christensen and a response to two possible objections to my view.

Francis Turretin: Primary And Secondary Causation

In his Institutes of Elenctic Theology, on his discussion of the first sin, Francis Turretin ponders how it is that a perfect creature could sin. Adam fell despite his existence as an “innocent man” in which there could be found no “error ... in his mind” or “disorder in his will.” How could such a man “in whom was original righteousness” have sinned? To answer this question, Turretin first denies the view that Adam was created with “a headlong inclination to vice.” Adam and Eve could not have been created as individuals with an inherent inclination to rebel. This would make God the immediate creator of all moral evil, since the possession of such a flaw would indicate that God created a flawed thing. Furthermore, as Turretin points out, “all things were very good in man before the fall, since he was made in the image of God.” To say that mankind was created in the image of ...