Hi Daniel,

I appreciated your post, and I appreciate your thought. I would like to comment on the following paragraph:

God is the cause of all people, but He is not the cause of anyone’s choices. We all have the ability to choose, and that very ability is what I believe to be libertarian freewill.

I agree that all people will submit to the authority of God or “be saved”, and I believe it will be of their own free will. There is no chance of this not happening—not because of limitations on man’s will, but on the fact of an everlasting future. If you throw ten dice in the air, there’s not much chance of them all turning up as sixes. The chance, in fact is 1 out of 6 exponent 10 (which is a very large number indeed!) If one continues to throw the dice for a year or ten years or even a hundred years or more, there is a chance that not all dice will turn up sixes. But what if you toss the dice FOREVER? Is there any chance that the dice will NEVER turn up all sixes?

I think this is analagous to the matter at hand concerning the reconciliation of all people to God. God never gives up on anyone. He will continue to work with the rebels, and do whatever it takes to induce them to turn to Him in repentance. It may be that He will even use the fully mature sons of God in this work. Sooner or later, EVERY individual OF HIS OWN FREE WILL will come to God!

Great posts and thoughts guys, I really enjoy reading them ay!

efrisad - Yeah I suppose you could call me a Compatibolist-Universalist. I like what Einstein and Schopenhauer said “Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.” Free Will for me is redefined as Free Agency.

Chrisguy90 - Very interesting and thought provoking idea. It sounds like you are saying that all of history has already been decided and it is really a “theatrical play” where God is outworking what people have already Freely decided before the world began. I agree that this is a workable view in many ways, but I still struggle to comprehend the concept of Libertarian Freewill when compared to Causal Determinism.

Paidion - I also think that your view can work rather well if likened to rolling dice. Essentially this is what I believe any concept of Libertarian Freewill boils down to. Libertarian Freewill has no character or grounding by which choices are made, if the choices are truly free. I assume in this view Paidion that people “lose” their Freewill once they are God’s. If not I suppose they could just as easily be randomly rolled out of his “Grace”. I personally like to think that when people do choose God, it is more than the result of a throw of the dice but because God is actually changing and moulding their character to be more like Him.

I am not sure that any Libertarian Freewill view absolves God of creating evil. Even if God may not directly cause evil, He still causes it to happen by creating situations where it is inevitable that it will happen. Evil is not isolated to one person experiencing their own evil. People do evil to one another, even to children. God’s “allowance” for evil through giving man Freewill as an attempt to get away from responsibility, is likened to throwing a child into a pool of sharks and then blaming the sharks for the evil they commit against the child…

In Arminianism, God doesn’t really have control over evil as far as utilizing it for good somehow. There seem to be a lot of “accidents” that God causes. In Calvinism, God does have control, but doesn’t have much hope for everyone. However, in a Compatibilist Universalist framework, evil at least is for the purpose of a greater good, even if that greater good cannot be understood in its actual moment (I concede).

Daniel, if you think I was comparing free will to the “random” rolling of dice, you didn’t get my point at all.

Unless people have the ability to choose, then God is the author of evil, the cause of every rape, torture, and cruelty that takes place constantly, night and day.

If people’s choices originate with people and not with God, then God is not responsible for those choices. Stating that God is the creator of mankind won’t do in trying to pass the responsibility over to God. It’s like saying that your wife and you produced a baby, and though you brought him up right, you are responsible for the fact that he committed a murder later on in life. After all, you produced him!

I agree with Paidion here. If compatibilism is true, it’s just another way of saying that God has determined everything. You can say that people are responsible because they have particular intentions and ‘do what they want to do’, but at the back of it all God has simply determined these intentions and ‘want tos’. If there is no ‘place’ for creaturely causation independent of God, then God is ultimately the cause of all that happens - evil included.

I want to do justice to both compatibilist and libertarian notions of freedom. I well understand the major point of compatibilism: namely, that we do not choose our states of intention; we just find ourselves already in them. But I also see the point of libertarianism: unless we are the ultimate cause of our acts, we cannot be responsible for them. But how can you cause an intention that you do not choose? I would submit that a theory of pre-existence, which posits an initial, unconditioned act makes the most sense of all these facts. We are still the ‘cause’ of our intentions, even though we do not ‘choose’ those intentions moment by moment.

You mentioned that this would lead to everything being like ‘a play’. Could you expound? And also, how is this any different on your view of compatibilism?

*My point may be more clear by saying a little more about three words: intention, choice, and act. Choices presuppose intentions. I cannot ‘choose’ a hamburger over pizza if I don’t first have some intention of trying to find food. The reverse, however, does not seem to be true. Intentions do not presuppose choices. That is, you do not choose to intend to find food. You could disagree with this and say that it’s easy to choose to intend to find food. And you could, I believe, choose to do this, but even this choice presupposes some prior intention, such as ‘intending to prove to chrisguy90 that I CAN choose to intend to find food.’ CS Lewis put the point in a nice analogy: choice is more akin to the steering of a ship; without some intention or motive power already present, it doesn’t do any good.

The real question, then, is how can we cause our intentions without choosing them? (Again remember, if we don’t cause them, we cannot be responsible for them. There is no way for them to be ‘our’ intentions’. ) Well, I think we must posit some unique kind of ‘act’, which is different than both intention and choice as they are used above. I submit that a pre-existent state, in which we are at an ‘epistemic distance’ from God, is a reasonable hypothesis to entertain.

Hi Paidion and Chris!

Paidion - I personally liken Libertarian Freewill to rolling a dice, and thought you were using the same concept It sounds like you are only using it a on a broader scale, rather than individual? Could you please let me know your views on once we are saved. Do we have Freewill to walk away from God in heaven or do we lose it then?

Chris - I think what you are saying is that people choose their intentions more or less before the world began and state that these intentions influence their decisions within creation. What I would like to know is, in your view, what is the purpose of creation or sin if people already have intentions to chose God before creation?

Chris you were saying here that you - agree with Paidion here. If compatibilism is true, it’s just another way of saying that God has determined everything. You can say that people are responsible because they have particular intentions and ‘do what they want to do’, but at the back of it all God has simply determined these intentions and ‘want tos’. If there is no ‘place’ for creaturely causation independent of God, then God is ultimately the cause of all that happens - evil included.

I totally agree with you here. I do believe God causes evil and believe it is impossible to get around it. I explore this further below. The difference is that I find it palatable because I know that God’s nature is good and that even the events of evil will be worked into a grand narrative that would be more beautiful than pure evil or pure good. John Newton for example. Writing Amazing Grace would have little significance if evil did not exist. Because evil does exist it gives greater value to what is good.

Could you please tell me how I would not be responsible for placing children in situations where there is a high risk of evil being done to them? (Which God does)
In Freewill thought, I wouldn’t be responsible because I didn’t actually hurt the child directly. Alternatively, I argue that my actions directly caused a situation that was more or less inevitable. Causing evil and knowingly Allowing situations where evil is likely to be inevitable is more or less synonymous in my vocabulary. James 4:17 “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.” Therefore I believe that all the “sin” that God causes/allows is actually for a good cause that only God can see at times. God doesn’t’ intervene, because He is upholding a reality that He prefers. Because God is ultimately good, in the long run all things will work out for good.

Here is an excerpt from one of my posts about how I see Freewill, and Cause and Effect as technically a dichotomy:

When observing the concept of cause and effect and its relation to Freewill, it leads to a dichotomy about the nature of our Freewill. Either our decisions have direct causes, or they have ‘random’ causes. In Arminianist thought, people must have ultimately (in the end) an EQUAL choice between salvation or absence from God. If it is not equal then it implies that our circumstances, our experiences, and our nature would be the deciding influences to tip the balance on what we ultimately decide. Some Arminianists say that our surroundings do have an influence, but that we still have a choice to override that influence. However, if something does influence me then it must definitely have an effect on me. Can I really be held responsible for responding to an influence that had an effect on me, especially if that effect had no opposing influence to pull me in the other direction? If it were really true that we had a free choice to choose against influences, then reality would reflect that. As demonstrated earlier and clearly seen in reality, influences heavily determine the outcome of individuals in society - the way we think, the god (or lack of) we believe in, and even the prevalence of generational or societal sin! If we deny that influences determine outcomes then we must look at the alternative, which would mean something even more drastically unsettling. If we have a perfectly equal choice with no influencing factors, then what is it within us that makes any particular choice? What would cause me to choose to be saved, but the person across the road to choose not to be? I cannot say that it is because I wanted to be saved more, because that would be a predisposition of mine, or created by an outside influence. The only other disturbing option is that the decision would be completely random. If the decision is completely random, then there is no basis to discuss the importance of making any choices whatsoever. So any particular decision either has a cause (or a largely determining factor) or is completely random.
In my opinion, according to cause and effect, God ultimately created my circumstances, and He created my predisposition that makes me me.

Sorry for the long post! Will have to keep it shorter next time…

Thanks for the replies!

As to your question: the purpose of creation is to bring everyone’s intentions into a state of perfect goodness. Since God cannot unilaterally guarantee that this will happen if creatures have freedom, He must ‘put up with’ the evil or sin along the way that ‘leads to’ perfection. Pain, suffering, evil, etc are just what it takes to bring about this free transformation. Further, since the pre-mortal act cannot be ‘absolutely evil’ (which is a metaphysical impossibility), then there is a point in temporal becoming that will eventually be a state of perfect creaturely intention. At this point the will will be built totally, perfectly good.

With regard evil, I hold all your conclusions (that God allows evil only to bring out a greater good, which is how evil’s existence is justified). I just deny that God has caused the evil. In my view, it is a metaphysical impossibility for evil to come from God. He is all perfect, all good, in whom is no darkness at all. He doesn’t ‘need’ evil to make the universe better. If he created a universe with no free creatures, evil would not exist (where would it come from?) Evil comes from misused freedom. It is allowed because without freedom it wouldn’t be US who become ultimately good and perfected.

In short, if we say God ‘needs’ or ‘causes’ evil then I think this ultimately equates to Dualism. You should see my essay on pre-existence over in the philosophy forum. Control F Calvinism and read that critique, if you’re more interested! (or of course just ask more questions!)

Daniel, it’s obvious that you have been thinking. I appreciate that. How can we get anywhere otherwise?

No, I don’t think we lose our freewill at any time. Influences is what will hold us—the presence of God, and the joys of the resurrected life (whether in heaven or on earth). But yes, I think it possible to rebel in spite of the magnitude of those positive influences. Popular theology teaches that one-third of the angels in heaven rebelled against God, and aligned themselves with that great angel of light, Lucifer, who later became Satan, the Adversary. Influences on people, no matter how strong, are not causes. A criminal can hold a gun to your head and demand your money. That’s a pretty strong influence on you. But you can still choose not to fork over your money.

I disbelieve that God causes evil. People cause evil.

I’ve been trying to follow this thread, but I know of no one who is making that claim. My claim is that you would not be responsible for your child’s choice to kill someone in later life.

No that is not the case. I possess “free-will thought” and I don’t make that claim. Again it’s a matter of influences. Even an older person or child is more likely to make a poor choice if he is influenced to do so. That doesn’t mean his choice was caused. He could still choose not to act in accordance with the influence. But because it is more likely that he will, you are responsible for placing him under those influences. However, if he is a young child, he is more susceptible to influence, and so your responsibility is thus greater. But I have seen even young children rebel against strong influences.

Causation and strong influence may seem similar, but they are not synonymous.

I think the familiar notion that God causes or allow pain and suffering for a deeper purpose is an unrealistic attempt to get God off the hook. What deeper purpose, what “working out for good”, could possibly result from the torture, rape, and murder of little girls, which is constantly occurring somewhere in the world? And why doesn’t God ever reveal that deeper purpose or greater good? And is there no other way he omnipotent God could bring about that greater good without “allowing” little girls to go through such fearful and painful experiences? I think the explanation lies in the fact that God seldom interferes with free will. For he is interested in a race of free-will agents who will submit to him. He is not interested in a race of robots.

As I see it, this is a false dichotomy. Those do not exhaust the options. I think our decisions have only ourselves as the cause.

First, I don’t believe in “chance” or “randomness”. Such words are used only to describe conditions that people are unable to predict. You toss a die, and a six turned up. So you affirm that that was a random event. However, that event had a cause. If one understood the relation between the manner in which you tossed the die, the pressure exerted, the angle at which you tossed it, the air resistance, and all other conditions, it could have been predicted in principle that a six would turn up. But human choice, unlike the matter of tossing a die, is unpredictable. Even if you knew every influence upon an individual, you would be unable to predict his action. For he might act contrary to the expected reaction to all of these influences. For that reason, God is not responsible for human decisions. The only cause of a person’s actions is the person himself.

Thanks for your reply Chris.

It sounds like we do have a similar understanding of the purpose for evil. However, we disagree on the fundamental cause.

I reject Libertarian Freewill for several reason:

1. I do not believe it can be explained and has never been explained as far as I have read. Freewill is either Random or from a certain character with traits, resulting from the ultimate first cause - God. I also don’t believe God has Libertarian Freewill… that would be scary… a random God not based on character! We couldn’t call God good then!

2. I agree that God “puts up with” evil. By God putting up with evil though, means that he allows it to happen when He could do an act of good to stop it… how is that not a definition of evil?

I get around this by saying that good and evil can be grey concepts with its various implications depending on its context. It might be ok for God to judge others in a way that wouldn’t be right for us to do so due to our limited understanding and knowledge of the Universe. I agree that God allowing (and I argue “causing”) evil does not make Him “evil” if that intention has a greater good. I don’t see how this view necessarily equates to Dualism.

I am not sure how people can have good intentions in a pre-existent form. Isn’t that taking their Freewill away… to say that they have a character that will always end up good?
Is it impossible to be absolutely evil in a pre-mortal state because it doesn’t involve other characters? Evil and good require context I would have thought. I am not sure how much context there would have been in a pre-existent world

I see people as the image of God and so believe that we will be restored to this image once through the experience of evil. Without evil we wouldn’t be able to experience the "unconditional love of Christ on the cross… nor the experience of forgiveness…

I’ll have to head over and have a read of your other thread when I get some free time

Hi Paidion, I see you have replied as I finished my other comment. I’ll aim to answer when I get a chance to

Paidion. It appears that we disagree and that is fine

You said:
“I’ve been trying to follow this thread, but I know of no one who is making that claim. My claim is that you would not be responsible for your child’s choice to kill someone in later life.”

I mentioned throwing children into a pool of sharks earlier which is what I was refering to.

I will just say that God allowing babies to be born into abusive families (In a Libertarian Freewill context) may not mean He directly caused it, but is definitely an accomplice of sorts. He either new the baby would be abused or likely would be. In the context of James I think it may have been better for God to not allow babies and children to be born into dangerous situations, unless God new it result in a greater good. I concede that I cannot explain why God does or allows things in certain situations, but I trust Him

No matter what view is taken, we cannot get away from the problem of evil.

Libertarian Freewill can be believed but it can’t be explained further than “I just choose”. As soon as reasons are given we enter into cause and effect. The other end of the continuum of cause and effect is chance. I agree that chance is not chance at all but an unknowable chain of causal events. However, Libertarian Freewill is not made up of Causal events and so effectively is absolute chance with no causal chain of events (knowable or not)…

That’s just how I see it and it can’t be explained except by taking Libertarian Freewill by faith alone.

Daniel, thanks for the reply.

I don’t believe in the free will you’re describing - at least I don’t think I do. The argument in favor of libertarianism, however, has always been that if we are not the cause of our actions, then we cannot be responsible for them. In other words, these ‘characters’ that you speak of as being the ultimate cause of our choices - do we choose these? I don’t doubt the compatibilist claim that we cannot make choices without some underlying inclination or preference. The more important question, however, is how we can be responsible for these preferences if they are not something we consciously choose.

Do you see this difficulty?

My response would be the classic ‘greater good’ response. God could stop an act of evil, but if the permission of the evil was necessary in the bringing about of a greater good otherwise impossible, would He not be bound to allow it to occur?

I’m glad you agree that the word ‘allows’ is meaningless if God is the sole causative force in the universe. But let us press the point further.

If you say that God is ‘forced’ to make evil in order to bring about a greater good, then good must somehow be metaphysically dependent on evil. Mind, I don’t say that certain goods are not possible without evil, but to suppose that the greatest universe is one that necessarily contains evil is to say that the divine will somehow depends on creating evil in order to be most fulfilled, which is a practical Dualism, as far as I can see. At the heart of God would be a good/evil nature, both sides of which must be displayed in His creation.

What outside constraint, in other words, is acting on God to ‘force’ Him to create evil? At the back of it all there is no other force but his omnipotent will.

Well again, I don’t say that the first pre-existent act is either an intention or a choice insofar as we understand these terms right now as humans. I would simply call it a ‘free act’, a free expression of being. I would further speculate that this act was made at an ‘epistemic distance’ from God that provides a ‘space’ for freedom such that we were ‘sufficient to stand, though free to fall’.

Libertarian free will is NOT tantamount to random action. I say that God DOES have libertarian free will. He can do what he wants. There’s nothing scary about it. This does NOT mean that he performs random acts. I know of no Libertarian Free Willist who considers the choices of a free-will agent to be random. This is determinist doctrine. Rather, a free-will agent has the ability to choose what he wants. Choices are not random or they wouldn’t be choices. This does not imply, of course, that a free-will agent (other than God) has the ability to carry out what he wants.

Yes, God’s acts DO result from his character. That is what we mean by libertarian free will. We choose according to our character—not randomly. That does not mean that our choices are determined by prior causes. We, ourselves, are the cause of our choices, or our character, if you prefer is the cause. It doesn’t matter. Our character has been formed. That is who we are. Concerning a free-will agent’s chosen actions, one cannot go further back in the chain of causes than the free-will agent himself.

Excellent discussion. Thanks guys!

Chris - I see the difficulty in who to consider to be responsible for the root cause. I see either way that God is responsible (as you seem to admit) for evil, either by allowing it or directly causing it. We both agree that this is for a greater purpose of good. Personally I don’t think that responsibility needs to be seen in a negative light. I see “criminals” as practically responsible for the evil they commit. I am also aware that there are so many more factors involved with why people commit crime, which means that it is far more complicated than saying “stupid people chose to” (Libertarian Freewill). Criminals deserve rehabilitation rather than a broad spectrum judgement based on their hopeless “libertarian freewill”.

I would not say that all good is dependant on evil, but I would say that some greater forms of good is dependant on evil. For example Jesus said… what does it profit you to love someone that is good to you? Love your enemies.
Without enemies how can we experience the greater good/value of forgiveness and grace. With these qualities learnt and acknowledged by all, we could live in an amazing society.

Paidion- To carry the discussion on “Free will” further, I am delighted that you do not hold to Libertarian Freewill as being Random. I say that Libertarian must be Free from all constraints (i.e. Random) if we were to logically be totally “responsible” (in a negative connotation). Free from all constraints means that we must be Random.
But you and I disagree with Randomness and so we do have a character of sorts that determines what choices we make. Like the quote I gave before **“Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.” **

But I ask, if we are not random and we do act according to our characters (or nature), then who or what gave us our characters? The creation story gives us this causal chain of events and ultimately points to God. We are made in His image. If God made me different to someone else, then there must be something definite that makes me… Me. God is my Maker.

So how does this work systematically and theologically? I believe (and could be wrong ) that God created all of humanity, each with our unique characters designed to ultimately find refuge in Christ. However, I believe that God did not want to just make us “good” from the beginning. God values process and narrative, and wanted us to experience good and evil, in order to experience what is truly good through the reality of the cross (which was arranged from before the beginning of time). Some people come to God sooner than others possibly because of the different characters He has bestowed us with, but God will not give up on all of us - His image. Importantly, God wants us to experience evil, but for the purpose of choosing good over evil. He will restore us eventually through the unique paths that we take, but in a way that we experience “choosing” Him over evil. Our choice stems from our agent or our character. We are free to express our unique characters, but not in a way that we can freely at any moment decide what our characters will be, because that lacks a causal reality and would end up in Randomness. We are subject to the characters that God has made us to be.

A good friend of mine put it like this. God is like the sun. We are the plants growing towards the sun. Outside factors of wind, rain etc influence how quickly we grow towards God, but also the type of plant we are determines the rate of growth. Through the storms of life we grow stronger and stronger until we mature into healthy plants that ultimately have been created, planted, and trained by God.

Hope I am clear…

Hi Daniel,

No one gave you your character. God didn’t create you directly. He created Adam and Eve with the propensity of generating human offspring. Your character developed. You didn’t have it ready-made at birth (although you inherited some characteristics both physical and mental from your parents). Your character formed as a result of 1)Your biological characteristics, 2) the influences upon you, and 3) your choices.

No, I don’t believe God created each human being uniquely. Rather he “got the ball rolling” by creating Adam and Eve, and in creating them, he made them neither good nor evil. Theirs was a clean slate, to develop according to their choices and the influences upon them. Obviously “the serpent” was a powerful influence on them, and they chose to follow his suggestion. They could have chosen otherwise.

Hi again Paidion,

I agree that our characters do change and are influenced. However, I see that our characters still reflect the flavour that is us. The character that we reveal at any given moment is a version of what our characters would be like given certain variable circumstances and past experiences.

The first two are causal links as far as a chain of events. Number 3. is seemingly the non-deterministic flavour to this three part formation of our character and brings us back to square one.

You also said earlier that

It seems you are saying that we choose according to our characters, at the same time as we choose what our characters are. It seems circular. I believe we feel like we experience Freewill, which might be what you are alluding to, however I doubt we actually do for the same reasons given in the posts above.
It is ok not to explain Libertarian Freewill, but it just can’t be explained other than “We choose who we are”. I personally think it generally welcomes detrimental and unmerciful thinking in society, but I understand it is an important concept to many people. I don’t however, think it is necessary to believe from a philosophical point of view, nor a Biblical one. In fact there a many, many scriptures that speak of the absolute sovereignty of God.

Here are a collection of verses that point to the absolute determined sovereignty of God - thebenevolenthecklers.blogspot.c … l-and.html

Hi Daniel,

Yes, Daniel, I AM saying both. The development of character is rather complex. It may seems circular but both are processes which go on sequentially as well as simultaneously. We didn’t choose the characteristics, physical or mental that we inherited from our parental line. This was determined by our parents’ bodies. We did not choose the various influences (not causes) to which we were subject as young children. But we chose our response to these influences, and depending on our choices, our character further developed. Then as our character developed, we also chose the influences to which we wished to be subject, and these chosen influences further developed our character—not causally. For we sorted out these chosen influences and submitted to some of them and rejected others.

Perfectly said. Fully agreed.

Ok, thank you for your honesty.

So the question I pose to Libertarian Freewill is. Why (since God’s way is so good) was I able to respond to God’s Influences far better/sooner than my neighbour. To be “fair” or “Free” in a Libertarian sense would say my response cannot be my genes or parental context, and so must be my personal choice. However, what makes one person choose God over another if all of us have this Freedom to choose? What is the determining factor?
Why am I “lucky” or “Free” enough to see the goodness in God and His ways of living, and the person across the street keeps making decisions that do not lead to joy in Christ?

Ultimately, the answer you have expressed is some kind of belief in “Freewill” that boils down to “we just choose”.

That is why Libertarian Freewill cannot be explained (which is ok for many), but is ultimately one of the reasons why I do not believe in it’s validity.

Thank you for your thoughts though Paidion! This forum is a place full of people who like to think which I appreciate

Hi again Daniel,

A person who believes in libertarian free will does not think this question should be asked, if the expected answer is that there is some external cause to each of person’s choice. There is no cause to a person’s choice other than himself. There is no “determining factor” outside himself. Nothing external “makes” a person choose. However, there are external influences. These influences are not causes, but they are influences, and because of them, if we kept a record of the influences and the choices, we might find a statistical correspondence between them. But that doesn’t prove causation. There are always those who choose contrarily to what one would expect from the influences exerted upon them.