The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Part Determinism + Part Free Will = UR?

I hope I will be forgiven for dragging this key topic in to yet another thread, but it really does seem like there are many ways of stating and quantifying the problem. And each arrives at his/her stance via slightly different paths it seems. However, I’m having an awkward time trying to categorize and systematize my thoughts. Guidance appreciated here. (And where does the idea of free will properly fit? Theology? (Biblical vs General?) Philosophy? General Discussion? Hmmmm…

It has been my experience that most who would like to embrace UR but feel they can’t cite the issue of Free Will as the barrier. This takes some form of objection to the idea of a choice being Determined. Free Will and Determination thus are placed in tension with each other. If it’s Determined it’s not Free, and if it’s Free it may not be Determined.
On the face of things both “sides” agree that Free Will is a crucial aspect of the Love by which and to which God is drawing us all. That is, it can’t be called Love unless it is rendered Freely. Thus the common problem must involve Determinism.

However, even those who reject UR are compelled, it seems to me, to admit to at least some degree of Determinism; most often cited are genetics and environment. Less often cited is this “thing” we call sin. Paul, it seems clear, speaks of being under the control of sin whether we like it or not; whether we choose it or not. We don’t control sin; it controls us. (Hence our need for saving) If there are other factors “determining” us, are we even capable of detecting them? And, as others have pointed out here, we are not so Free that we choose to live a self sustained existence apart from God.

Hence the above simple equation: Part Determinism + Part Free Will = UR

How “much” free will is “enough” to make a decision valid to God?
How “much” determinism does it take to negate free will?
Is it possible we are – already – being determined in ways we are unable to detect?
Does God “adjust” the ratio so that His Will is ALWAYS going to be done? (Seems any believer in UR would affirm this)

Only problem is knowing how to measure each part…

Seems to me that the only real gripe these skeptics have is that IF God ever gets to the point of having to use ONLY determinism to effect His purposes, doing so will somehow invalidate that persons salvation PLUS the question of why didn’t God just do that in the first place and avoid all histories suffering? I have friends who insist that people have the “freedom” to negate their freedom. My response is that when this point is reached, it is no longer freedom so God, because He IS love, intervenes and restores at least enough freedom so that it’s not completely irrational.
Would it be proper/correct to say something like “the image of God IN us is the ability to be free; God will never let His image in us die, so if we destroy our freedom WITH our freedom, God simply cannot, WILL not, let that happen.”

This is really a biggie for lots of people.
Any help is appreciated.

TotalVictory
Bobx3

PS – I’m still trying to digest the comment by TGB over on the “Rationality, free choice, and sin” thread

Bob, there can be no such thing as “part determinism and part free will”. Either determinism is true and our “choices” are illusory, or else we have genuine choices which have not been pre-determined. In the latter case, determinism is false.

Of course, by your phrase “part determinism and part free will”, you may have in mind “soft determinism” which is still determinism nontheless. Soft determinism redefines “free will” in such a way that it makes it compatible with determinism. According to soft determinism, your will is “free” if it is under no compulsion by other people. But your choices have been pre-determined by prior causes nonetheless. In other words, “You could not have done otherwise than what you actually did.”

In my opinion, belief in universal reconciliation does not require one to believe in either determinism or indeterminism. I happen to believe in both UR and indeterminism. I believe that we have the genuine ability to choose. If I am offered my choice of vegetable in a restaurant, and I choose corn, it is also the case that I could have chosen otherwise. A determinist, hard or soft, believes I could not have. For the determinist, there was a chain of prior causes which caused me to select corn.

The concept of “libertarian free will” is that the ability to choose is such that one’s choice was not determined by prior causes, but that the person himself determined his choice, and that he could have chosen otherwise.

I see no conflict whatever between the universal reconciliation of all to God, and libertarian free will.

Bob-

I agree that IF human being can solidify into an irrevocable state of alienation and rejection of God (a point to which no room whatsoever remained for LFW, no room for “Godward becoming”) then UR is dead in the water. And IF God WERE to step in and wave his magic wand over such persons in deterministic fashion, the resultant relationship couldn’t be an interpersonal and loving one since that (I’d argue) requires LFW on the creature’s part.

But why believe that first ‘if’ clause? Why think that creatures have the capability to solidify irrevocably into evil? I tried to express in a post some time ago that we ought to think such solidification is impossible. No created thing can ever get to such a point, and the reason is because all existing things have God as the ground of their very being. Just dwell a bit on what it means to have the all-present, all-pervasive sustaining presence of infinite love as the very ‘stuff’ in which we exist (Acts 17, “…in God we live and move and have our being”). If infinite love is the very ground of being for creatures, wouldn’t it follow that there would ALWAYS be room for Godward becoming? What would constitute that room? The very presence of God in/with the creature would constitute that room. God just IS the ever present invitation to become, to move in his direction, and that means there can be no “point of no return” so long as God is present to my being and existence. We literally exist, or have our being, in an “invitation to become,” to move in God’s direction. Whatever God is present to, God endows with the freedom to move in his direction. Thus, God is his own invitation and his sustaining presence an irrevocable endowment of freedom. So “to exist” is to be, under achievable circumstances if not present ones, invited by God into relationship.

So irrevocable solidification into evil is a theological fantasy (in my opinion). No creature can freely extinguish the ground of its own being and existence. There’s no reason to think God’s purposes for us include his giving us THAT much ‘say-so’, and good reasons to think he couldn’t do so anyhow. God is free to create or not, but he’s not free to create and then relate to created entities as other than he is, infinite love and freedom. So long as I exist, even in hell, I cannot snuff out all possibility (freedom) for moving in God’s direction. There’s always some room, even in Satan (who is sustained and held in existence by the same infinite love that God is).

If something like this is true, then God never has to resort to deterministic means of getting us to relate to him, even with the most hardened of sinners in the afterlife. Does this address the point of your post? All God needs is time, and he’s got plenty of that. And if the sufferings of hell are a measurement of the level of solidification into evil with respect to each individual, then what we suffer in hell are the consequences of our own choices. We suffer because we’re being brought face to face with the truth of our sinful selves. No place to hide. Nowhere to run. All the false selves and lies we’ve constructed to hide in eventually are stripped from us. THAT, I imagine, will be the worst kind of suffering imaginable. But eventually the air is cleared, so to speak, and persons become free to embrace God’s love (or reject it, of course) on a conscious level.

Now, technically speaking one would be free to perpetually renew her rejection of God forever. My insistence upon LFW means I have to admit this possibility. And just because I admit it, I can’t (strictly speaking) be a 100% confirmed, died-in-wool, proof-positive confident-that-all-‘WILL’, without any possibility otherwise sort of universalist. I could be wrong, for example, in believing that God’s being the ever present ground of being for all existent beings entails the inextinguishable invitation/opportunity for Godward becoming. It might be that there is a point of no return. If so, annihilation follows for such beings. I can live with that.

But once you distribute the possibilities out over an infinite future (like Reitan described with the shoe box), what real possibility is there that even one person will forever freely renew their rejection of God? Another analogy. If I toss a barrel of scrabble letters out into the air from the top of the Eiffel Tower, there really is a probability (which we could calculate if we were able to take into consideration the wind speed and direction, weight of each letter, trajectory of falls, and all the physical variables right down to quantum events) that all the letters will fall to the ground and form Psalm 23 in nice, neat, correctly spelled rows. It’s not–strictly speaking–impossible. But who would make an issue of such a possibility? Who would ever bet anything on it? Who could figure it’s occurring into any of their future plans? It’s so insignificant as to not warrant consideration. And that doesn’t come close to the unlikelihood of someone’s persisting forever in their rejection of God. So in the end, if someone wants to get anal and say, “Well, technically speaking you can’t make universalistic claims and insist on freedom throughout because there really IS a possibility that someone will forever renew their rejection of God,” I would just ask in return, “If I tossed a bucket of Scrabble letters from the Eiffel Tower and then made the claim that ‘The letters will NOT fall to ground so as to form Psalm 23’, what possible motivation would you have for disputing my claim? Wouldn’t you just agree and say, ‘There is no way those letters are gonna form Psalm 23 on the ground’?” Of course the latter. So I have a difficult time ‘feeling’ those who object to universalism on grounds of the necessity of LFW. Fine, if one doesn’t want to ‘technically’ say all ‘will’ (with probability of 1) eventually be saved, say what you can say, namely, that all will (with a probability incalculably close to 1) eventually be saved.

But since what’s REALLY crucial about discussing hell at all is the problem it presents for people who find it difficult to believe because of irrevocable, eternal, conscious torment, then we can probably agree on what to tell such people:

a) Irrevocable eternal conscious torment is a false belief,
b) Nobody spends one second more in hell than they deserve,
c) WHOSOEVER WILL may come to the Father’s table WHENSOEVER they will. The door is open SO LONG AS we exist.
d) If it turns out that there really is an irrevocable point that can be crossed, then to cross it would entail annihilation, in which case annihilation may be the fate of some. But ULTIMATELY hell is emptied out, either via annihilation or by free choice to embrace God’s love. Isn’t this the fundamental apologetic point we want to make in sharing the gospel with people?

Tom

Bob-

The Eastern Orthodox (and others) view sin as a ‘privation of the good’. The point is, evil has no objective metaphysical status per se. It exists only insofar as it is a privation of God’s creation; kinda like a cancer that feeds of its host. So long as there’s a host to feed off of, it persists. But only in that sense. It has no objective status as a ‘created entity’ as such. It is a shadow of the real.

Similarly, I’m arguing that ‘hopelessness’ has no objective metaphysical status either. There can be no created entity which both ‘exists’ and which is ‘hopeless’ as such. No matter how privated or cancerous, if we exist, we have God as the ground of our being and as such have ‘hope’. To exist in utter hopelessness would be to have erased God from the totality of factors that define me. But if God is constitutive of (though not reducible to) what defines a thing (that is, if we cannot define what a created entity is without mentioning God as the ground and sustainer of its being), then it’s quite impossible for any created thing to cross the line into utter hopelessness. If irrevocable solidification into evil is impossible, then so is hopelessness. It has no objective metaphysical status.

We all have to admit we could be wrong on a lot of this stuff. It gets speculative. But I hope this clarifies where I am.

Tom

In a very general sense (unrelated to UR), I’d agree that creation’s future has to be a mixture of determinate and indeterminate (closed and open) states of affairs. Absolutizing either one would make life meaningless (in my view)–either everything about the future follows determinately as effect from present causes OR everything about the future is open ended and unpredictable. A bit of both, in the right mixtures, is presumed by how we actually live our lives.

T

TGB, it is incredible how close my thinking is to yours. As you indicate, holding out forever in rebellion against God, may be theoretically possible, but practically impossible. I don’t think there will be even a single individual, including Satan, who will have to be annihilated because of being “solidified” in rebellion.

The only aspect of what you wrote with which I disagee is that part of the future is determined because of a prior chain of causation. I think that as long as there are free will agents in the universe, such a chain of causes can be interrupted.

Because of our human experience we believe that some events are inevitable, particularly astronomical events. We believe that, at a particular time in the future, the sun, moon, and stars must be in a particular position relative to our position on earth, all of which has been, or can be, calculated with precision by astronomers. However, none of those astronomical events are inevitable. For example, after having predicted the position of the moon for a particular time next week, we may find that the moon is not there at all. Somebody somewhere, in a bizarre experiment has exploded the moon with huge nuclear blasts!

God Himself could intervene in any predicted astronomical event. After all, He created it all!

I believe that as long as free will agents exist, NONE of the future is inevitable. Even events which have been prophesied to occur don’t HAVE TO HAPPEN, if God changes His mind ---- and there are several instances recorded in the Old Testament where God did change His mind and decided not to bring to pass what He had intended.

Paidion-

I like the name!

Well, if we’re that much agreed, then chances are I’m not going crazy! Thanks.

I see your point, and I agree of course in a sense. Everything about the future of the very next moment is contingent in the sense that God could decide he doesn’t want to pursue this whole project any longer and so just poof it all out of existence. I guess that’s ‘possible’. God only knows, of course. God’s free to make unconditional choices. He’s free to decide that he won’t under any circumstances change his mind about something. Sustaining the present universe and the laws that govern it until all is redeemed may be one such choice. If so, then much of our future is determined, including the movement of planets and moons.

So given the continuance of God’s will to sustain the universe and the physical laws that govern it, and given that there are no unforeseen meteors on their way into our solar system, wouldn’t you agree that it follows that much of the future of our solar system follows determinately from its present state? Our sun ‘will’ (barring divine intervention or some huge planetary event that’s presently in motion [which assumes the determinism we’re talking about!]) burn out in so many years. That much of the future of our solar system is determine by the present state of our solar system. So long as God decides to keep sustaining the universe and its laws, the law of cause and effect is one of those laws. Thus, when we’re talking macro-level events like the rotation of planets (and not subatomic particles), it seems we have genuine examples of causally determined events.

As an open theist, I completely agree with you that God is free to change his mind if he wants to (a kind of virtuous flexibility). And I agree with you that theoretically speaking, God could poof this universe out of existence (should he want to). I’m just assuming God’s intention to keep the universe going. For the sake of argument, assume this with me for a moment, OK? Now, assuming the continuation of the universe under its present laws, would you agree that ANYTHING about the future is determined even if we can’t say just what that is (though God would know)?

And even with respect to the more mundane events of our lives. History itself seems to exercise a determining influence of the present and the possibilities for the future, no? Could I wake up as a female tomorrow morning (all else being equal)? Could we wake up and it be the case that I did not post these comments on this board? If retroactive causation (changing the past) isn’t possible (and I don’t think it is), then whatever happens to or in the universe tomorrow, certainly the TRUTH about what happened today will remain the truth about this universe’s past. In other words, is there really a possible world branching out from THIS actual world we’re in (that is, a world reachable from this world), in which I was never married and never had kids, and never believed in UR? I don’t see how. This world simply cannot become that world. This world’s past delimits (i.e., determines) the scope of its possible futures. That’s determinism at work. But I’m OK with that. The events in my past determine the shape of my present and the scope of my future possibilities. I wouldn’t know how to live, how to adjudicate between viable options and possible futures, if it was REALLY the case that the past determined nothing about the present. What would that even be like? I just don’t think there are any future possibilities for me that include my becoming a person who was never married. But is this not simply a case of the past determining the future? Sure seems so.

Sorry for the length!

Tom

First off, immense thanks to both of you for your answers. Much appreciated and very helpful.

The reason I consider this possibility is that there seem real reasons to think that free will is not quite “enough” to get me saved. On the other hand, not being a Calvinist, I don’t believe we are “determined” into the kingdom. If determined into salvation, why bother with choice? Just do it and leave us out of it! But then I bounce back to ideas like Ephesians 2 - for by Grace are you saved, and that not of yourselves. This hints to me that it’s more than “just” free will. I am not so “free” that I can chose heaven apart from God. And it’s ALWAYS God’s Grace that saves.

Further, I have heard people argue that yes, God does all He can with everyone, but eventually, we can extinguish that “spark” of freedom within us. These people then feel that the only logical option next for God is to “let us go” which will result in our annihilation. (ie apart from God you can’t live) But I am suggesting that IF freedom dies, then God is now FREE to intervene and restore freedom again. That is, He is NOT violating freedom since there IS no freedom to BE violated.

I do not think this is how it actually works (I share Tom’s view above that “irrevocable solidification into evil is a theological fantasy”) but IF it does, I still do not hold God liable for violating freedom since it no longer exists.

So in the end, as I hear Tom Talbott describe things, we will be free to reject God, but God will also be free to arrange our circumstances so that we WILL, eventually, and with the caveats mentions by many, choose God. Sorta like He did with Paul on the road to Damascus.

Am I making any sense??

TotalVictory
Bobx3

I’d agree with Paidion that with respect to an event, it can’t be the case that its occurrence is both determined and undetermined (or indeterminate). I see three options that are jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive:

X is determined to occur (X will occur)
~X is determined to occur (X will not occur, or ~X will occur)
X is indeterminate (X might and might not occur)

I’d say that the world is a mixture in the sense that some X’s follow (or do not follow) deterministically from previous states while other X’s follow (or do not follow) indeterministically. But I don’t see how the occurrence (or not) any X can follow both deterministically and indeterministically from previous states. I was sure if Bob was saying that this IS what is sometimes the case. God could determine us with respect to X or leave us free with respect to X, but he can’t do BOTH with respect to the same X.

T

I’m hearing that it is false (ie unhelpful, incorrect, incoherent, etc) to place Determinism and Free Will in any kind of tension or competition with each other. Still however, I wonder how to relate the two and how they interact?
Also, I’m hearing that perhaps the proper place for my understanding of Determinism is that of “soft determinism”.

I guess I’m asking, in part, something like "to what extent can God’s grace be considered “determinism”? Clearly there seems to be a large component of God’s involvement in causing (is allowing a better concept here?) our response. (eg Can God’s actions or His interactions with Paul on the road to Damascus be considered in any way deterministic?)

It really does seem to me that in a real way, God has bound Himself by certain rules which constrain certain types of activity on His part; that is He constrains Himself from acting in completely deterministic ways. (apologies to Calv types who clearly do not have the trouble with this dynamic that I have) But how can we deny matters of degree? None of you are dong that – right?

I’m toying with a way of saying it whereby God acts as deterministically as He must to enable our free choice. Which means God sees determinism and Freedom as, somehow, complimentary and not in tension. Maybe like Justice and Mercy are complimentary, and not in tension as so many seem prone to putting it.

Slogging my way to resolution,

TotalVictory
Bobx3

Bob: I’m hearing that it is false (ie unhelpful, incorrect, incoherent, etc) to place Determinism and Free Will in any kind of tension or competition with each other. Still however, I wonder how to relate the two and how they interact?

Tom: Not in competition, just different tendencies to become, different measurements of causal influence upon events as possibilities get realized. Causal influences inherent in some state of affair might be maximal, in which case what that state of affairs transitions into in the next moment is limited to one possible outcome. That’s an instance of causal determinism. But causal influences inherent in some state of affairs might be minimal, in which case there are a number of possibilities for becoming which that one state faces for the next moment. The future of THAT state would be ‘open’. The future of the former state (maximal causal influence) would be ‘closed’. For any discrete entity (or state of affair, or event, let’s say), its future is either ‘open’ or ‘closed’. It can’t be both. That’s the “mixing” of determinism and indeterminism that I’d deny.

Paidion argues that the future of ALL entities and events is always ‘open’ to some extent. He denies the category of ‘maximal causal influence’ per se. Nothing is THAT determined by its present existence that it only ever has ONE possibility it can actualize (that would mean there’s only ONE thing that can happen with it in the next moment, only ONE direction it can take). I think there ARE maximally influenced events in the universe. Some things DO follow deterministically from previous states. No biggie though.

Bob: I guess I’m asking, in part, something like "to what extent can God’s grace be considered “determinism”? Clearly there seems to be a large component of God’s involvement in causing (is allowing a better concept here?) our response. (eg Can God’s actions or His interactions with Paul on the road to Damascus be considered in any way deterministic?)

Tom: This is more difficult to be sure. Since for Paidion there is no ‘determinism’ per se, your question can be dismissed. God cannot determine anything in the world, including us, our choices, the circumstances of our lives and existence, whatever. No determinism of events.

But I have to chime in because I think God may (within the range of variables, or the rules of engagement, which are grounded in God himself and which govern interpersonal relationships) determine a good deal about the world and our lives, except for the ‘choice’ for him (or against him). That has to reflect ‘me’ coming into relationship (or not) with God. That’s the only way the resulting relationship can be an ‘inter-personal’ one. And the only way a choice can be uniquely reflective of me is if I’m the final arbiter in determining the choice. I have to be free. In other words, I think there’s room within those creational variables for God to kick the furniture over, show up and ‘do stuff’, part the red sea, incarnate, raise the dead, send dreams and visions, etc., heal the sick (all which appear to involve determining the created order in some fashion on some level), and even determine much about my circumstances (send me to hell, turn the heat up, burn away all my false selves, etc. (again, looks like there’s some determining of the created order there)…but God cannot manhandle the human ‘will’ with respect to choosing for or against God, love, etc., and hope to get what he wants out of the person. Determine THAT and you lose what you want, someone on the other end ‘loving’ you.

So I’d be inclined to deny that Paul on the Damascus road was psychologically incapable of blowing Christ off and continuing on with his pogrom of Christians. I’d say that WAS possible.

Bob: It really does seem to me that in a real way, God has bound Himself by certain rules which constrain certain types of activity on His part; that is He constrains Himself from acting in completely deterministic ways. But how can we deny matters of degree? None of you are doing that – right?

Tom: God can determine some things and not determine others, sure. I’m not sure what it would mean for God to determine the occurrence of some event “a little bit” and not determine its occurrence “most of the way.” Not sure that’s even meaningful. But I suppose God can make the right choice as ‘likely’ as possible by providing us with optimal chances to make the right choice. And personally I do think that given ALL the contributing factors and rules of engagement that God set in place to govern the God-World relationship, God is always doing all God can do (given those variables) to maximize good and minimize evil in the world. We never have his bird’s eye view, so the world will often appear as if God is uninvolved. But I think that’s just our limited perspectives. If we saw everything at play and comprehended all the contributing influences, we’d conclude that divine action in the world always maximally supervenes upon the world to maximize good and minimize evil. But in this world those variables permit, say, the death of the unevangelized who die without any knowledge of the love of God. But there are good reasons to think that the variables governing the afterlife will guarantee an eventual optimal measure of revelation and knowledge (and the restoration of rationality, for the mentally handicapped, for example) for the right choice to be made.

Bob: I’m toying with a way of saying it whereby God acts as deterministically as He must to enable our free choice.

Tom: Oh, OK, then. That’s different. God acting deterministically to “enable” rational and free choice is one thing. God can do that without determining “the choice” itself, which is another thing. No problem there. I can, for example, relate deterministically to my drug addicted loved one by locking them away in a room to dry out, and I can do so “to enable” them to make wise choices again. I restore their faculties to give them a fresh start. That’s determination of another, yes. But I don’t think it’s an unloving thing to do or that it violates them in illegitimate ways. But only so far as to “inform” and “enable,” sure. But what can’t be determined in the same manner is the actual exercise of the person’s will for God.

At least that’s where I am right now!

Tom

My problem with free will is, I suppose, largely with the definition of the “free” part of free will. Free will does not seem to be something the scriptures indicate that we have as finite beings. We have a will, certainly, and choices to make, yes. I do not think the wording of scripture supports the notion of actual free will on our part though, particularly in light of verses such as “God works all (things) according to the counsel of His will.” or “In Him we live and move and have our being.” In my view, the clear witness of scripture overall is that God is absolutely sovereign and knows the end from the beginning, because He is the beginning and the end. I think we are able to make choices in much the same way as a computer does within the confines of a program; in other words, within certain prescribed boundaries. But this does not seem to me to be anything like “free” choice. Perhaps some good scriptural examples would be satan’s activities in Job, or the story of Jonah. In any case, I certainly do not believe that we have anything like libertarian free will.

For years as I have debated and discussed subjects on forums I have found that God by His Spirit always seems to add to what I am prayerfully seeing in regard to the subject at hand. Such is my discovery of this seven hunded year old writing where the author pin points Adam’s sin and I believe the sin of those that espouse their right and ability to freely make choices.

I have over and over stated within the “free will/sovereignty” debate it is a spirit that brings about a man’s desire for his own will or even the belief that he has one. Truly it is the Adamic spirit that says or even believes “I will.” Yes it as the author states (below) with regard to Adam and his sin. So it is also the cause of those that sin today. Speaking of Adam’s sin:

He is Sovereign! Job said, “In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath (spirit) of all mankind” (Job 12:10).

Truly it is the Adamic spirit that says or even believes “I will.”
The creature was made vain and totally futile in his vanity. Thus it takes an act of God to break the mindset of “I, Mine, Me, and the like.”

Oh, the folly of man that even thinks there be an, “I, Mine, Me, and the like.”

It is so simple it is almost scary that so many will balk at the simple knowledge that all sin is born of vanity ingrained into the creature. The creature was made vain and totally futile in his vanity. Thus it takes an act of God to break the mindset of “I, Mine, Me, and the like.”

It’s a nasty little circle … the ““I,” “Mine,” “Me” and the like.” But praise God, by His grace we will all be set free from it.

As a last note I read some advise this morn than rent my heart as it would never be something I would say to this young lady nor a child of mine. This one advised " follow your heart" with regard to a matter.

I’ll tell ya, that is the way of world and we that have been awakened to our condition know the "heart is desperately wicked and decietful beyond all measure.

If we should ever advise, let us tell our children and those that might come to us while in a quandry to “ask God for the heart of Christ for evey matter and every situation.”

God bless,

John