Board index ‹ Free Will

[Newbie]

I've seen this kind of question asked before, but usually about God's omniscience not allowing for him to have free will. I actually disagree with this notion, for if God exists, and he is the perfect being Christians say he is, then his will would be unchanging and he would have no need to "change his mind," thus no violation.

My question comes about when discussing his free will in relation to ours. Christians like to point to free will as the reason that evil exists, but then say that God (who has free will) doesn't commit evil acts, because it's against his character. In other words, God freely chooses to always do good, again no violation.

So if God is capable of free will, and he always does good, then why couldn't he create us with free will, but also with a character in which we always choose to do what's right? If God can always choose right, and still have free will, then why can't humans, if created differently?

For those that don't accept the argument that one can still freely choose to do right, even when the "wrong" option is unavailable due to it violating one's character, here's a little analogy by a Christian theologian:

‘Imagine a man with electrodes secretly implanted in his brain who is presented with a choice of doing either A or B [for our purposes, we’ll let A stand for good and B stand for evil]. The electrodes are inactive so long as the man chooses A; but if he were going to choose B, then the electrodes would switch on and force him to choose A. If the electrodes fire, causing him to choose A, his choice of A is clearly not a free choice. But supposed that the man really wants to do A and chooses it of his own volition. In that case his choosing A is entirely free, even though the man is literally unable to choose B, since the electrodes do not function at all and have no effect on his choice of A. What makes his choice free is the absence of any causally determining factors of his choosing A. This conception of libertarian freedom has the advantage of explaining how it is that God’s choosing to do good is free, even though it is impossible for God to choose sin, namely, His choosing is undetermined by causal constraints. Thus, libertarian freedom of the will does not require the ability to choose other than as one chooses.’

Side note: I actually don't believe in libertarian free will and am assuming it for the argument.

[jimwalton]

I think the nature of love is the key player here. Love is a unique entity in our existence. It can only exist as an act of the will, and it can only exist as a moral and positive act of the will, otherwise, it isn't love. Therefore the only way love can truly exist is if there is a legitimate choice for non-love, since it is not self-contradictory for humans (as it is for God) to make the choice of non-love. Hence it is not possible for God to have created a world in which humans were free in all other respects, except to do evil. For love to truly exist, it is necessary to have world containing creatures free to decide between love and non-love, good or evil, and impossible that God would create a world of quasiautomata who are free in all other respects except to do evil because they are unable to do otherwise. God can create creatures with free will, but he cannot causally or otherwise determine them to do only what is right. If he did that, they are not doing right freely, or loving freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, those same creatures must necessarily be capable of moral evil. Nor is it possible for him to create the possibility of moral evil and at the same time prohibit its actuality.

Now, you may wonder then about God's free will, and is he free to choose moral evil? I would say that God and humans have different parameters circumscribing the set of what falls as the potential for free will decisions. Maybe an analogy (though all such things fail when pressed too hard): Donald Trump has a different set of possibilities for life than I do by virtue of his assets. His range of prospects is simply different than anything that will ever be available to me. God's nature gives him a different set of possibilities than those that I have, by nature of the kinds of beings that we are, and therefore I can't define love and free will the same for him as I do for me. For me, love is defined by my choice to act sacrificially in someone else's behalf; for God, love is defined by his omnibeneficent nature and his acting in compliance with it. Since I don't have such a nature, the parameters defining what is in the scope of free will for me are different than they are for a divine being.