GOD AND FREEDOM

 

N. F. Gier, Theology Bluebook (University of Idaho, 3^rd ed., 1994), chapter 7.

 

The Lord engages the living entity in pious activities so he may be elevated. The Lord engages him in impious activities so he may go to Hell.... By the will of the Supreme Lord he can go to Heaven or Hell, as a cloud is driven by the air.

Kaushitaki Upanishad 3.8

In his heart man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.

Proverbs 16:9 (NIV)

The lot is cast into the lap, but it is every decision from the Lord."

Proverbs 16:33 (NIV)

Our life is, at every moment supplied by him, our tiny, miraculous power of free‑will only operates on bodies which his continual energy keeps in existence – our very power to think is his power communicated to us.

                            -- C. S. Lewis

The world has allowed itself to be seduced by the flattery doctrine of free‑will which is pleasing to nature.

                            —Martin Luther

Therefore, to teach something [free‑will] which is neither prescribed by a single word inside the Scriptures nor demonstrated by a single fact outside them is no part of Christian doctrine.

--Martin Luther

God from all eternity did...freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass...Yet...thereby is no violence offered to the will of creatures.

--The Westminster Confession

. . . Freedom is found only in subjection to God and His truth; and the more subject, the more free.  This is the biblical paradox of Christian liberty.  Man becomes free only in bondservice to Jesus Christ.

--J. I. Packer

If there is a God, then it is always His will, and I can do nothing against His will.

--Kirilov in Dostoevsky's The Possessed

I act freely whenever I act, and unfreely whenever some other agency acts through me.

--Roger Scruton on Kant

 

A.  Determinism and Morality

The freedom of the will is one of the most difficult problems that challenges the human mind. We all would like to assert with confidence that we do have free‑will; indeed, our basic notions about morality require free‑will.  Close and honest reflection, however, reveals a disturbing contradiction.  On the one hand, we immediately feel the spontaneity and freedom of our mental processes, especially if the world is going our way.  On the other hand, we habitually concede the assumption that all events and things have causes, causes which are independent of their effects. The contradiction is this: free‑will requires a situation in which the will is not externally caused or coerced; but this is incompatible with our otherwise strong intuitions that every event has causes independent of itself.  The principal assumption of morality is at odds with the principal assumption of science.  In science we assume that all effects are rendered inevitable by their causes; in morality we attempt to make an exception to this universal law for the human will.  Many philosophers agree that we are simply wrong in making this exception.

 

What does it take to say with assurance that the will is free?  Let us first make an important distinction between a free‑will and a free act. The necessary conditions for a free‑will are internal. We can almost always observe human actions, but we cannot observe the will. A free‑will must stem from an originative power within us, i.e., a power that is truly our own.

Actions, on the other hand, are externally observable and the conditions for a free act are two: (1) open alternatives from which we can decide, choose, and act; and (2) an absence of external constraints or barriers in the acting out of a choice. It is clear then that a person can have free‑will and yet be prevented from acting freely.  A person chained from head to foot may have the originative power necessary for a free act, but obviously is prevented from using that power by external constraints.

 

Let us use the case of Patty Hearst as another example.  F. Lee Bailey probably advised his client to plead “no contest” on the sporting goods store charge because of the fact that Patty was at one time completely alone outside in the getaway truck.  In other words, there were no external constraints preventing her from driving off without her companions.  On the other hand, Bailey did take the bank robbery charge to court, hoping to convince the jury that the SLA gang coerced her to go along with the crime, thus leaving her no alternatives. Bailey was foiled: the jury was not even persuaded in this case. A court of law deals with the external conditions of a person's behavior, not the internal conditions.  A jury can decide whether or not a person acted freely but it cannot decide whether the will is free.  It is here where science and philosophy step in; and it is here, unfortunately where the real dilemma lies.

 

The major stumbling block is the necessary condition for a free‑will.  Is it possible for any agent to have the originative power to perform those acts for which the agent is morally responsible?  If that power is derivative and not originative, then the agent cannot be held responsible for her acts. Is a self‑determining moral being a possibility given what we know about the causes and conditions of human behavior and the nature of reality?  The physical sciences tell us that there is no escape from determinism; therefore, human will cannot be exempted from the universal law of cause and effect.  (Incidentally, some free‑will theorists are wrong in appealing to Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle for a metaphysical basis for self‑determinism.  See Section G.) The behavioral sciences are now telling us the same thing:  humans are in no way self‑determining; rather, they appear fully determined by the environment, previous conditioning, and general psycho‑physiological laws. Some “socio‑ biologists” are even now adding genetic determinism as well.

 

B.  God and Free‑Will

Some people have thought that if we bring God into the picture, the problem is somehow miraculously solved. But calling on God makes the problem worse rather than better.  The God of orthodox Christianity is all‑powerful; God is the only being with originative power.  Most theologians (Descartes and Luther excluded) thought that God has the power to do anything short of self‑contradiction. For example, God could have created a world in which all people would have been saved; or God could have created a world in which all people would have been damned.  God finally decided, at least according to some religions, to create a world in which some will be damned and some will be saved.  But there is one choice that even God is not allowed:  to create a world in which all would be damned and all would be saved.  For philosophical theology, at least, God must be limited by the laws of logic.

 

Some people have the misconception that God's causal relations with the world ended with the Creation.  God must continue to sustain this creation, because all entities depend upon God's originative power. God is the only necessary being in the universe; everything else is contingent, i.e., all things would cease to exist without God's sustaining power. Luther contends that people “live under the absolute sovereignty of God...in such a way that they cannot subsist for a moment by their own strength.”¹ For Luther this meant that God is the active cause of all things and all events, even the acts of Satan himself.  Recall that Paul asserts that Jesus Christ has a “power that enables him to bring everything under his control” (Philip. 3:21, NIV).

 

J. L. Mackie states that “if men's wills are really free, this must mean that even God cannot control them, that is, that God is no longer omnipotent.”² Some Christians do in fact hold that God controlled the wills of some important agents in biblical history, e.g., his son Jesus and Judas.  If God can control the wills of some people, then God can constrain the will of anyone.  If immunity from this sort of control is a necessary condition for genuine free‑will, then free‑will is impossible in the biblical perspective.

 

C. “Our Tiny, Miraculous Power”

The evangelical writer C. S. Lewis unwittingly confirms the impossibility of free‑will within the orthodox Christian framework.  In his book, The Problem of Pain, Lewis states: “Our life is, at every moment supplied by him, our tiny, miraculous power of free‑will only operates on bodies which his continual energy keeps in existence – our very power to think is his power communicated to us.”³ Free‑will is the action of an autonomous, self‑determining being with the power to think and decide on its own without external support or impediment. If, according to Lewis, our “very power to think” is supplied by God, how can the Christian be called a free and autonomous being?

 

In this same book, Lewis reiterates the biblical analogy of the potter and the clay. Such an analogy leaves no room for free‑will in “clay‑like” humans.  Is the clay “free” to be what it wants to be?  As Lewis states: “He makes us, we are made:  he is original, we derivative.”⁴ The doctrine of free‑will assumes originative power on the part of humans.  Lewis' Christianity gives us no metaphysical ground for such power.  As Roger Scruton says of Kant's ethics:  “I act freely whenever I act, and unfreely whenever some other agency acts through me.”⁵  In orthodox Christianity God is always acting through us. Lewis stresses the derivative nature of human beings in this passage:  “For we are only creatures; our role must always be that of patient to agent, female to male [sic!], mirror to light, echo to voice.”⁶ A mirror is worthless without light, an echo is a mere epiphenomenon, but a female, contrary to Lewis' sexism, is perfectly able to take care of herself.  These are definitely not appropriate images for free agents and morally responsible beings.

 

Let me quote more in order to emphasize the utter lack of any foundation for free‑will in Lewis' evangelical theology:  “Our highest activity must be response, not initiative.  To experience the love of God...is to experience it as our surrender to his demand, our conformity to his desire... but in the long run the soul's search for God can only be a mode...of his search for her, since all comes from him, since the very possibility of our loving is his gift for us, and since our freedom is only a freedom of better or worse response.”⁷ It is obvious that if there is free‑will here, it must indeed be a miracle, a paradox, or more bluntly, a logical contradiction.  Another evangelical writer, J. I. Packer, concurs with Lewis:  “...Freedom is found only in subjection to God and His truth; and the more subject, the more free.  This is the biblical paradox of Christian liberty.  Man becomes free only in bondservice to Jesus Christ....”⁸

 

D.  Luther and Free‑Will

In his famous response to the Christian humanist Erasmus, Martin Luther admits that “you would not call a slave free, who acts under the sovereign authority of his master; and still less rightly can we call a man or angel free, when they live under the absolute sovereignty of God.”⁹ In terms of the humanism which is at the basis of our western civilization and which in forms modern political systems of representative democracy, any form of slavery, even slavery to God, would be an abomination. In terms of our epigram from John Fowles, the orthodox God is not “the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.” Fowles goes on to give implicit support the view I prefer:  “The novelist is still God, since he creates...What has changed is that we are no longer the gods of the Victorian image, omniscient and decreeing; but in the new theological image, with freedom our first principle, not authority.”¹⁰

 

If one were to ask most Christians if humans had free‑will, they would not hesitate to say “Yes.” Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Reformation, saw the implications differently.  Luther was unflinching in his recognition that divine omnipotence implied that God was the original cause of all things and actions, including the actions of Satan. Our own Jonathan Edwards was also emphatic about the absence of human free‑will, and he, like Luther, provided both scriptural and philosophical arguments for this view.  Edwards was convinced that divine foreknowledge recorded in the Bible pre‑empted any idea of self‑determination.¹¹

   

        Luther's position is also clear:  “God works all in all...God even works what is evil in the impious....[Judas'] will was the work of God; God by his almighty power moved his will as he does all that is in the world.”¹² All contingent wills then are extensions of God's will, including the will of Satan. “Since God moves and does all, we must take it that he moves and acts even in Satan and the godless;...evil things are done with God himself setting them in motion.”¹³  Luther, therefore, concludes that “the world has allowed itself to be seduced by the flattering doctrine of free‑will which is pleasing to nature.”¹⁴ Since most Lutherans believe in free‑will, more quotations might be appropriate:  “Man, even when he does and things what is wrong, is not responsible”; and “all is of necessity, for we...live and act not as we will, but as God wills.  In God's presence the will ceases to exist.”¹⁵ The following passage from The Bondage of the Will not only continues the point, but shows Luther's supreme rhetorical skills:  “The human will is like a beast of burden.  If God mounts it, it wishes and goes as God wills; if Satan mounts it, it wishes and goes as Satan wills.  Nor can it choose its rider....The riders contend for its possession.”¹⁶ In Luther's reading of divine omnipotence, there is no basis for human autonomy and self‑determination.

 

Rem B. Edwards states that divine omnipotence means that “all power and the exercise of all power belong to God.”¹⁷ Luther is not always philosophically astute, but his definition of omnipotence contains an important clarification:  “By the omnipotence of God...I do not mean the potentiality by which he could do many things which he does not, but the active power by which he potently works all in all....”¹⁸ John Locke concurs: God has no passive power, but has complete active power.¹⁹  This is the first type of divine power in “Three Types of Divine Power.” In other words, God is not like a power plant, upon which many autonomous electrical machines draw their current.  In such a system, it would be absurd, for example, to blame the power plant for a fire caused by a short‑circuit in one of the appliances. The notion of God as some passive source of power is of course totally foreign to revealed religion as well as most natural religion. If one were to add attributes like active will, intelligence, and providence to the power plant, then one is forced to a very different conclusion about our hypothetical fire.  An omnipotent agent with these attributes would not allow such a disaster to take place in the first place.  Furthermore, if such a agent were also the creator of the appliances, then it would also be responsible, in the same way that manufacturers are responsible, for the defect that caused the fire.

 

E.  Objections and Responses

        Augustine offers a brilliant analysis of the nature of the will:  he contends that the will is not a will unless it is free.  To say, for example, that my willing to sin is not in my power is to say that I will to sin even though I do not will to sin.  This of course is impossible, since willing is defined as that which is in my power. Another way to make Augustine's point is to say that the proposition “the will is free” is a necessary truth, i.e., it is analytic and not synthetic.  If we analyze what the concept “will” really means, we will discover that it means a capacity for voluntary, uncoerced action.  To say that the will is not free is to say that circles are not round.  We are not adding any new knowledge to the concept of the will when we say that it is free (in other words, the concept is not synthetic); and we contradict ourselves if we contend that it is not free. Augustine is perhaps correct in his analysis of the will, but can his own theology allow for the existence of the originative power required?  The answer must be “No.” Augustine maintains the orthodox position on the omnipotence of God, and it can be shown how this undermines the concept of an autonomous will. (See “Three Types of Divine Power.”)

A possible solution to the God vs. free‑will dilemma is the following:  if God is a free being then God can choose not to be the originative cause of every event.  God can allow human creatures to be morally autonomous and to choose good or evil for themselves. But the deficiencies of this argument are numerous.  By choosing not to cause some events (and this will involve at least every event in which human will is or has been involved), then the deity has chosen to limit itself.  God, in order to remain the orthodox God, cannot do this.  God's power and control over the universe would be severely compromised.  God would no longer be the omnipotent being that Christians assume God is. If, for example, Adam's decision to disobey God originated from Adam, then God was not the cause of this act.  But this would also mean that God, then, is not all‑powerful, but shares power with other agents in universe.  This is the solution of process theology, and it requires a different view of divine power. (See “Three Types of Divine Power.”)