Some texts during the Second Temple Period and just after the destruction of the Second Temple appear, at first blush, to teach strict determinism (a “Proto-Calvinism” if you will). However, while some texts, such as 4 Ezra, does teach a form of determinism, they still teach genuine human free-will in man, even after the fall, similar to most other texts such as Sirach:
The Evil Heart
Fourth Ezra 3.21
states that God himself created the evil heart within Adam when he created him,
an evil heart that led him to sin. All of Adam’s descendants have inherited
this evil heart, and so all have sinned. It is this sin which leads to death.
Death in 4 Ezra refers not only to the end of one’s mortal life but also to
eternal punishment as opposed to eternal life. Later, Ezra even suggests that
it would have been better had Adam never been created (7.116-20). By viewing
human sinfulness as inevitable and also predetermined, 4 Ezra diverges from
Sirach, who emphasized human choice (15.11-20), and moves in a direction
different from the rabbis. Like 4 Ezra, the rabbis believed in an evil
inclination (Heb “yetzer ha-ra”). But the rabbits believed that the evil inclination
found its equal in a good inclination (Heb “yetzer ha-tov”), and that each
person was endowed with both (m. Ber. 9.5). IN agreement with 4 Ezra,
the rabbis believed that the evil inclination was a powerful source of human
evil (m. Avot 2.11). But unlike the more pessimistic 4 Ezra, the rabbits
believed that individuals had the capacity to follow the good inclination and
over-power the evil one (m. Avot 4.1).
Alongside the view
that God created in Adam an evil heart, which all have inherited, the author
assumes free will (cf. 7.21-24). These two ideas stand in tension: Does an evil
heart have the ability to choose righteousness? Ezra himself stands as an
example that the ability does exist. (Jonathan Klawans and Lawrence M. Wills,
eds., The Jewish Annotated Apocrypha [New York: Oxford University Press,
2020], 349, emphasis in bold added)
4 Ezra 7:21-24, referenced above, reads:
For the Lord strictly
commanded those who came into the world, when they came, what they should do to
live, and what they should observe to avoid punishment. Nevertheless they were
not obedient, and spoke against him; they devised for themselves vain and
thoughts, and proposed to themselves wicked frauds; they even declared that the
Most High does not exist, and they ignored his ways. They scorned his law, and
denied his covenants; they have been unfaithful to his statues, and have not
performed his works. (NRSV)
