The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Free Will: Its Essential Nature and Implications

An awareness of the power of contrary choice is necessary as well. A severely abused child MIGHT have the power of contrary choice - in the arena of doing ‘good’ or doing ‘evil’ (I’m not convinced of that) - but not ‘know it’, and thus follow a path of life that has been narrowed, by her abuse and subsequent perceptions of what is real and possible, to more and more degradation.

Tom, you indeed restated precisely my own impression of a common central definition that I glean from those who emphasize ‘free-will.’ I resonate with your implication that this would not provide sufficient conditions for a ‘freedom’ that we would value. I imagine another desired condition would be ability to rationally recognize the realties entailed in the choices that we face.

I didn’t read the original post until today, and I thought I would be the first respondent. But no, there was at least 6 others before me! People jumped into this discussion pretty fast! It must be an important topic, as indeed I consider it to be of paramount importance with relation to Christianity, or even morality. I am unable to believe in moral responsiblity in the absence of free will

That is precisely the way I define “free will”. But before discussing your statements which immediately follow, I would like to address your first words from the OP:

Arminians and other free will theists typically suppose that, if we are genuinely free in relation to God, then the following rejection hypothesis (RH) is at least possibly true:

(RH) Some persons will, despite God’s best efforts to save them, freely and irrevocably reject God and thus separate themselves from him forever.

First let me say that I believe in the ultimate reconciliation of all people to God, and so I am not merely “a hopeful universalist”. And yet I believe in libertarian free will. I do not see these two positions as contradictory.

While I think that RH is theoretically possible, I don’t see it as practically possible. I would compare it with tossing a thousand coins and asking whether it is possible that everyone of them could turn out to be heads. As unlikely as that would be, it is definitely a possibility. But what if, when they didn’t all turn out to be heads, and one decided to continue tossing them until they did. It is likely that one might toss them for the rest of their lives and never get all heads. But what if they were tossed endlessly by someone until all became heads. Theoretically and conceptually, the coins could be tossed forever without turning up heads. But practically, the time would come when all of the coins turned up heads.

So it is with RH. Theoretically, some would never submit to God throughout eternity. But practically with God continuing to work on them, and possibly the perfected saints as well, the time will come when every last one of them submits to the authority of the Lord.

Dr. Talbott, the description of free-will actions which you so clearly stated is precisely how I see free will:

It is my belief that my abililty to have chosen contrary to the choice I actually made is both a necessary and sufficient condition of my acting freely. Indeed, this condition is what DEFINES “acting freely.” This would not be the case, only if “acting freely” is understood differently, and if “acting freely” is understood differently, then exactly how is it understood?

That would mean that “doing A freely” has a different connotation.

As I see it, your illustration may not fit the case, since the young man is delusional. In my opinion, mentally ill people, or brain damaged people, or people of a very low level of awareness, in some cases, do not have free will. But ordinary persons without such a condition—those whom we regard as “normal” do.

Is the discussion about free will in general, or is the focus on our free will before God? Is it the moral aspect that is the concern here only? And if so, how legitimate is it to bifurcate a person’s will? I would argue, I think, that everyday will and a special aspect of it are really talking about the “same” thing.

If, as Paidion points out, we limit ourselves to ‘normal’ people - and I see the point he’s making - it will be tempting to explain one difficult concept - free will - by another - ‘normal’. If as traditionally taught, we are a fallen race, then normal is what we are not; some of us just fit in better with the crowd, are more ‘normal’.

Is the ‘will’ of the libertarians a different ‘will’ than humans exercise on a normal basis?

I think I agree with several of the things already said, but to draw them together . . . In order for an action to be freely taken, it seems to me that the actor must understand the implications of his action. For example, if he, intending only to start his car and drive to the corner drugstore, unwittingly sets off a car bomb that kills him, we couldn’t reasonably say that he has committed suicide even though he acted freely in turning the key. No, not even if he had been warned and had not believed the warning. If a sinner who doesn’t understand the truth of the gospel for one reason or another, whether he’s heard it and not believed, or heard it amiss, or has never heard it, refuses or fails to accept the salvation of Christ and repent from his sin, can we fairly say that he’s acted freely? Had he been able to take advantage of all the information that is available (for example) to you or me, would he have acted differently?

Furthermore, if he is delusional or irrational for any other reason – if he is organically or emotionally or otherwise unable to act as he would act were he possessed of normal human faculties, can we say he’s acting freely in choosing or failing to choose any action at all? I do think that sanity and reasonable disclosure of information is necessary in order for a person to act freely. In addition, I might also petition for a certain degree of maturity as a prerequisite to being able to make use of information and sane thought.

Maybe there are other things as well, but I can’t think of any at the moment.

Looking forward to hearing more from all the others as well. :slight_smile:

Paidion wrote:

That seems to me exactly right, Paidion. So if someone suffering from an irrational delusion, or from severe mental illness, or from serious brain damage should do A in a context where it remains psychologically possible for this person to refrain from A, such a person would not, I take it, do A freely, despite having the power of contrary choice. Are not you and I in perfect agreement on this matter?

Bob Wilson seems to agree with us as well. For Bob wrote:

And so does Cindy, who wrote:

Wonderful discussion! :smiley:

The idea of a fully informed decision to reject God eternally brings to mind the concept of “informed consent” that we use in the medical field before performing a “healthcare intervention”–usually an invasive procedure or operation. Here’s part of the wiki entry:

The main difference, I think, between “informed consent” and a “fully informed decision” (at least as I see it) is the degree of certainty in the consequences. When informing patients about a possible procedure or treatment, we are dealing with possibilities with a certain statistical likelihood of happening whether these possibilities involve a “good” result or a “bad” one. The patient is asked to make a decision without knowing what the actual outcome of their decision would be. If for example, they knew for certain the planned by-pass surgery would result in a major stroke or death, they would be insane to elect to make a decision to undergo the surgery. If they* only* know that the odds of a good outcome are, say, 85% and a bad outcome 15%, a decision to undergo surgery would seem to be reasonable. Additionally,(and perhaps most important :wink: ) to be fully informed, the patient would need to know exactly what the experience of having a major stroke or, in fact, dying would be like for them.

Edit: I said

I should add that they would need to know what the implications of them “having a major stroke or dying” would be for others—especially those they love.

Great example with the consent form, Steve. I’ve often thought it inadequate since many patients sign it under extreme duress – that is to say, if I DON’T do this, it can have serious consequences for me, but if I DO submit to the surgery/procedure, it could kill me faster or incapacitate me worse than the disease/injury it’s meant to treat. They act in fear which seems to me to be a significant impediment to rational thought. :frowning: Still, it’s probably the best we can do. But it is NOT the best God can do. That is perhaps an argument against threatening people with hell in order to obtain a conversion to the God who (reputedly) will impose hell upon them if they decline to convert. But that’s probably another topic.

Anyway, my point is – I think we need a greater degree (at least on a human level) of competence and knowledge in order to choose our final destiny (the Kingdom of God or (reputedly) never-ending hellfire) than we can give to patients who sign a consent for treatment. Father gives some of us the faith to believe without seeing, and that’s a great blessing. Others like Thomas, and I suspect some of the other disciples as well, need to see before they can believe. God does not therefore damn them. He meets their need.

I have an opinion about this, but I barely know how to put it into words-- I’ll try my best, but perhaps you all here can help me figure out what I’m trying to say. :wink:

John 8:36 says, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” I wonder, then, if it is possible for anyone to make a free choice–whether for or against God–before coming to Christ. It seems free will comes only after entering Christ’s presence (thus receiving full information of God’s goodness.) Free will must come after knowledge. I remember as a child, I decided one day to grasp my mother’s hot curling iron. Obviously, it burnt my hand. Before that point, I did not have the “free” will to decide whether or not I should grasp the hot metal-- I had a “will” or sorts, but it was marred by my ignorance. Only after experience had opened my eyes did I have fully “free” will to touch or avoid the curling iron.

So Christ sets us free through His very presence. In knowing him, we have no reason to refuse God’s gifts anymore and thereby will naturally make a decision to accept Him. Since Christ clarifies in John 12:32 that he will draw all people to Himself, then we can only assume that all humanity will one day gain full information about God and ultimately make a fully informed decision toward the only logical choice of accepting His love.

I think that when God tears down all the barriers of our ignorance, shame, doubt, and sin, everyone’s core nature can do nothing but accept the Savior of the World. Following this logic, coming to Christ is both a free choice and an inevitable action for all of humanity.

I think that when God tears down all the barriers of our ignorance, shame, doubt, and sin, everyone’s core nature can do nothing but accept the Savior of the World. Following this logic, coming to Christ is both a free choice and an inevitable action for all of humanity.

You may be right Kate. Paul’s paradigm changed in less then a minute once he saw Christ.

This is a good point and essential to understanding our freedom. It seems that there is a necessarily rational component, if not to freedom per se, at least with the type of freedom an all-good God would grant or ultimately give his creatures. (For a freedom which only included exercising actions the consequences of which were unpredictable or in a context which was not truly reflective of reality would be a curse, not a gift, and would only be given by an evil being.)

Yet I do think freedom is real, and that we are in truth actually in situations like the schizophrenic described above. The question then becomes this. For what purpose is this type of freedom, which seems so different than a “pure” freedom which makes it, as Lewis says, “not really possible to do otherwise” - for what reason is this different kind of freedom given to us? I suspect it has something to do with the making of our individuality and separateness from God, a necessary condition for our ultimate unity with him. Does this make sin inevitable? Can it be that sin (and therefore death?) is a free yet nevertheless unavoidable consequence of being a separate being from God, exercising an independence and existence of one’s own?

Also of interest are some other thoughts of Lewis on freedom.

"I would say that the most deeply compelled action is also the freest action. By that I mean, no part of you is outside the action. It is a paradox. I expressed it in Surprised by Joy by saying that I chose, yet it really did not seem possible to do the opposite.”

He said the above in his “last” interview.

“All that Calvinist question - Free Will and Predestination, is to my mind undiscussable, insoluble. Of course (say us) if a man repents God will accept him. Ah yes, (say they) but the fact of his repenting show that God has already moved him to do so. This at any rate leaves us with the fact that in any concrete case the question never arrives as a practical one. But I suspect it is really a meaningless question. The difference between Freedom and Necessity is fairly clear on the bodily level: we know the difference between making our teeth chatter on purpose and just finding them chattering with col. It begins to be less clear when we talk of human love (leaving out the erotic kind.) “Do I like him because I choose or because I must?” - there are cases where this has an answer, but others where it seems to me to mean nothing. When we carry it up to relations between God and Man, has the distinction perhaps become nonsensical? After all, when we are most free, it is only with a freedom God has given us: and when our will is most influenced by Grace, it is still our will. And if what our will does is not “voluntary” and if “voluntary” does not mean “free” what are we talking about?”

Letters Vol. 3.

“The whole struggle was over, and yet there seemed to have been no moment of victory. You might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. On the other hand, you might say he had been delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged in unassailable freedom. Ransom could not for the life of him, see any difference between these two statements. Predestination and freedom were apparently identical. He could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heart on the subject.”

Perelandra

Also, a quick question for Dr. Talbott.

Do you plan on including the Lewis quotes on freedom (e.g. about his own conversion, etc.) in the update to Inescapable Love of God? They would be a delightful and helpful addition!

Chrisguy asked:

Yes, I include these and other quotes from Lewis in a new Chapter entitled “Predestination unto Glory.” I divide this chapter into the following five sections: “Hopeful Versus Necessary Universalism” (where I put myself in the latter camp); “The Essential Role of Free Will in Universal Reconciliation”; “God’s Respect for Human Freedom”; “Freedom, Necessity, and the Right Kind of Compulsion”; and “Concerning the Purpose of an Earthly Life.”

But I’m inclined to disagree with Lewis when he says: “"All that Calvinist question - Free Will and Predestination, is to my mind undiscussable, insoluble.” I also disagree with his implication that we are here dealing with a paradox. For as I see it, such remarks give far too much credence to Calvinist theology and, in addition, threaten to undermine Lewis’ own response to the problem of evil. Beyond that, St. Paul’s pre-philosophical understanding of God’s all-pervasive grace provides a perfectly clear picture, I contend, of how free will, indeterminism, and even sheer chance, if you will, might fit into a predestinarian scheme in which a glorious end is guaranteed for all of us. For God simply has no need to control our specific choices or to bypass our own reasoning processes in order to checkmate each one of us in the end.

Those are extremely important quotations, however, and I am ever so grateful to you for having shared them with us.

-Tom

Hi Tom et al

I have a question. We are talking about freedom in the context of our ability to, for want of a better expression, damn ourselves eternally. I would certainly agree that this sort of freedom entails both the power of contrary choice and rationality. (And I anticipate that this discussion will ultimately hang on the rationality or otherwise of any decision to reject God eternally.)

Unless I’m mistaken, the power to choose contrary to a particular action or inaction is sometimes referred to as libertarian freedom - and it is this sort of freedom Arminian hellists claim we have. If I am correct in these assumptions, my question is this: is it not unrealistic - even irrational - to claim that we have this sort of libertarian freedom in the infinitely weighty matter of salvation, when we so patently do not possess it in life generally. After all, does anyone really believe that everything we ever do we could genuinely have refrained from doing, and vice versa?

Cheers

Johnny

Thank you Johnny, that was the point I was trying to make in a couple of earlier entries. Mainly: is the libertarian free will to choose eternal destiny of a different sort than our everyday libertarian free will? Or is it the same process in both cases? I would contend that, if we LOOK at our life and the lives of others,

I think the excellent discussion thus far is narrowly focused -

; we have been working toward a defined outcome, and tailoring our answers to fit into that outcome. Which of course is entirely acceptable; the scope of one’s inquiry has to be limited or we end up going in all directions.

I would like to see more effort put into the specifics of actual behavior, before jumping to theological interpretation. Maybe that is best done on another thread someday.

Anyway, this is a useful thread for its intended purpose.

Kate wrote:

I think you have expressed yourself very well, Kate, and the excellent point you make also casts doubt upon the libertarian assumption, which we have been discussing here, that moral freedom always requires a power of contrary choice. For what about the perfected saints in heaven? Do they no longer obey God freely merely because they no longer have any reason to disobey him and because, therefore, disobedience is no longer psychologically possible for them? Or what about the loving mother, to which I referred in another thread, who finds it unthinkable (and therefore psychologically impossible) to abandon her beloved baby? If this mother nonetheless cares for her baby freely, as I believe she does, then once again the relevant freedom does not always require a power of contrary choice.

Or finally, what about God himself? If, as we read in Titus 1:2, God cannot lie, are we to conclude that God does not act freely when he refrains from lying and thus reveals the truth to us? For my own part, I think that God is the freest of all beings and, indeed, always acts freely. He is the freest of all beings even though it is logically impossible that he should ever act unjustly or ever act in an unloving way.

Johnnyparker expressed a similar point when he wrote:

My own inclination, Johnny, is to say that none of us have the power to resist God’s grace forever, but we nonetheless do submit to him freely in the end. For when God employs the consequences of our own actions to remove the kind of ignorance that makes our resistance possible in the first place, he in effect removes an obstacle to a fully realized freedom. That, I take it, is the whole point of Kate’s example above in which, as a child, she grasped a hot curling iron. Her ignorance of what this would do to her was in fact an obstacle to a fully realized freedom, and the lesson she learned after grasping it removed this obstacle, thereby enhancing her true freedom.

All of which raises an important question: If I hold that freedom sometimes does and sometimes does not require a power of contrary choice (I do hold this), am I simply equivocating on the term “freedom”? I don’t think so. But to defend myself against such a charge, I no doubt have some “s’plainin” to do.

-Tom

I believe that every normal, healthy person who has done action A, could have refrained from doing A.
If is is not true that he could have refrained from doing A, then how can we hold him responsible for doing A, if A is a crime or a very hurtful act against humanity? Why punish a woman for murdering her husband if she could not have done otherwise? Or a man who has tortured someone?
How can we blame Hitler for the atrocities which were carried out against 6,000,000 Jewish people if he could not have done otherwise?
Why blame Ted Bundy for assaulting and murdering many young women and girls during the 1970s, if he could not have refrained from doing so?

However, when you ask whether we could have refrained from everything we do, the answer may be “no”, because we might have been physically forced to do some things, or if we have been given drugs to create abnormalities in our brain, then we could not have refrained.
But the proponent of libertarian free will assumes that the free will agent is normal. As long as you are normal, and there are no physical causes, then I contend that you could have refrained from having done anything that you did in the past. You could have chosen other than that which you actually chose.

The perfected saints in heaven? I’m not sure that there are any yet. However, assuming there are, is disobedience no longer psychologically possible for them? Do we know this? Or is this wishful thinking? After all the angels who disobeyed were perfect from the beginning, weren’t they? And yet some of them disobeyed.

*And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 6,7 ESV)

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment… (2Pe 2:4 ESV)*

It is true that when a person’s character is formed, they usually act according to that character. But I not convinced that it is psychologically impossible for a person to act contrary to their character. We often read in news articles of people who have done some unloving act, an act which was most unexpected by neighbours and relatives who knew them well.

But even though people may sometimes act inconsistently with their character doesn’t necessarily imply that they have a greater degree of free choice than those who do. Take the ultimate example of God. He is doubtless the most free of all free-will agents. Yet He consistently acts according to his character. For example it is impossible for God to lie…at least concerning two unchangeable things:

…so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie… (Heb 6:18)

The Greek word actually means “powerless” rather than “impossible”, but that fact doesn’t make much difference. If God is powerless to lie, then it would seem to be impossible for Him to do so. So clearly, I don’t yet have my belief in free will, tidied, wrapped up, and placed in an indisputable box.

I want to thank you, Dr. Talbott, for introducing this subject. It has certainly helped me to think more deeply about the matter.