Free to be or not to be

November 20, 8:49 PMSan Francisco Apologetics ExaminerMaryann Spikes

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Most of us do not ask if we have free will.  We feel responsible for our choices, hold people responsible for their choices, and never give it much thought whether we or they are really free to choose.  If we had to respond to the question of free will, we might respond with more questions:  Why do we even use the word “intend” if we never freely intend anything?  Why do we distinguish between unintentional behavior and intentional behavior, if the intentional behavior is no more free than unintentional behavior?  Why do we deliberate between our options, if we are not free to choose?  Why do we reward children and punish criminals if they are not free to choose?  Granted, we have limited options, but it seems that we are free to choose from among those options (“I did not have the option” does not equate to “I did not have free will”), and that we can shape which options will occur to us as conceivable by refusing to entertain thoughts about options we do not want to occur to us, and choosing to entertain thoughts about options we do want to occur to us.  Those thoughts we entertain most will occur to us most, which is part of why it is so hard to break a habit, and which is why part of breaking a habit is distracting yourself and keeping your mind busy with other things.  Habitual behavior is free behavior, because actions, including thoughts, performed as a matter of habit, confirm a pattern of past intention, and habits can be broken with new intentions.  Certainly not all of the behavior of our body is voluntary, like cell reproduction and habitual thoughts that occur when we are trying to break a habit, but one could argue that the involuntary behavior of our body is not “our” behavior, and hopefully, if necessary, we learn how to bring that behavior under our control.  How we think about this is important, because if we truly feel that we do not have free will and cannot control our thoughts and behavior, this will be reflected in our choices, especially if we think that in the end, none of it matters.  Look at Joseph Duncan’s blog at http://fifthnail.blogspot.com as an example, albeit an extreme one (47).  To ask if Duncan’s choice of evil was compelled begs the question of whether or not evil is even a real option.  Did Duncan commit evil?  Was it sin?  Was he free to have chosen better, and would it have been essentially better than what he chose, or is “better” an illusion, is there no alternative to evil, because there is no essential good, and therefore no evil (no privation, absence, of essential good), and so he did not choose evil in the first place?

There are five opposing positions to choose from on sin or evil and what it implies about God, the first four being insufficient and answered by the fifth, which is correct (some or all of these alternatives are discussed in Ravi Zacharias’ “Jesus among Other Gods” and Geisler and Feinberg’s “Introduction to Philosophy / A Christian Perspective”)—you will see we cannot discuss sin or evil without discussing free will.

1. Evil and suffering exists, therefore a Good/omnipotent Creator does not exist. This explanation contradicts itself because it implies an objective, transcendent good and then denies the existence of that good.  Fulfilled love, if it corresponds to reality, requires eternal personhood (God).  Without good, there can be no evil, because evil is the privation of good, explained in option five.  All forms of suffering (whether or not it is punishment for sin) can draw us closer and into a deeper relationship with God, who is there regardless of circumstances, a never-changing anchor in the stormy vicissitudes of life (a Melville-ism).  Thesis:  God is good and all-powerful.  Antithesis:  Evil and suffering are real, so either God is not good, or is not all-powerful to prevent evil and suffering.  Synthesis:  God is good and all-powerful when He allows us to choose or reject love-despite-circumstances.  (Also see the article on the problem of evil argument.)

2. All is god (pantheism) and there is no evil (see Dawkins quote in #4). Hinduism explains the perception of evil as induced by ignorance (3; 120). However, Hinduism’s doctrine of reincarnation, of paying your debt of karma (known to Jews and Christians as the debt of sin -- the consequence of which is death, complete separation from God, rather than...), having to ‘suffer’ through another life (although an infant has done nothing to earn your debt... and what debt did the first human incur?) inadvertently acknowledges the reality of evil (the corruption of good) while denying it and utterly missing the point.

3. Dualism:  Good and evil in eternal opposition.  This assumption:  “If the past, present, and future are complete before it all started, then from God’s perspective there is no change, and even evil is unchanging, essential to reality…” fails to distinguish between temporal and eternal.  Absolutes are anchored in the eternal, reflected in the temporal.  Evil is limited to the temporal (changing), is not an opposite of love (unchanging), and is certainly not a reflection of it, but a privation of it (explained in option five).  There is an argument that centers around the narrative of the Fall found in the book of Genesis.  This argument claims God failed to provide a consequence Adam and Eve would understand (because they had no idea what death was), and so they were acting in ignorance and didn’t mean to sin; they didn’t possess free choice, they didn’t ‘know’ what they were doing, until after eating the fruit from the Tree of the ‘Know’ledge of Good and Evil.  Entangled in this argument is the belief that in order to know “good” they had to know “evil” (and vice versa)—and so God’s command to not eat of that tree was a command against knowledge.  However (if this narrative actually happened, and if we grant they had no idea what death was), in Eden, Adam and Eve knew the difference between eating and not eating the fruit.  It is not that their freedom began when they ate of the fruit and God killed an animal to demonstrate death and make them clothing.  Before they ate the fruit, they were freely following God.  Understanding the consequences was not necessary for them to ‘know’ that they were doing something God warned them not to do, and we should not only do right when there is a reward for it or a punishment for doing wrong (our only motivation should be God’s unmerited love, by which they were surrounded).  Additionally, how would God have given a proper demonstration of the kind of death He meant—breaking unity with Him (essential life and goodness)?  Adam and Eve could have had as much knowledge as God could give them if they had asked Him for it. He knew the difference between good and evil, and could have explained it to them in a way that would not corrupt them, if they had sought the answer in Him.  That they broke unity to try to be like God apart from Him (essential love) is how they came to be able to distinguish good from evil in a corrupt way, rather than in God’s pure, immune way of knowing, and rather than only knowing good (though, before disobeying God, they didn’t know they knew good, like spiders don’t know they know webs and birds don’t know they know nests).  Some have said that we don’t know what good decisions are (and so are not free to make them) until we make ourselves capable of committing and empathizing with the opposite evil.  Actually, we don’t know evil without knowing first the good which becomes corrupted (evil).  We shouldn’t seek to learn how to better help people by hurting them—it would be better to, say, take a CPR class.  The only good purpose of knowing evil is to develop antibodies against it (in ourselves and others), but our focus should primarily be to educate ourselves in God’s love.  “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good,” Romans 12:21.  Dualism neglects that without the eternal default of good, there is nothing to become corrupted (evil).  Consider this dialectic:  Thesis:  Good and evil are opposites (dualism), antithesis:  There is no good or evil (because without preexistent good, there can be no evil), synthesis:  Evil is the privation of a preexistent good.  This synthesis will be discussed further below—but now we come to our antithesis:

4.  There is no such thing as evil, because evil implies an essentially objective, transcendent moral law, which only exists if God exists, and God does not exist. This explanation cannot logically demand an explanation for why God allows evil or what He is going to do or has done about it, since it does not allow for the existence of God or evil.  To repeat atheist Richard Dawkins’ words, “In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.  The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no other god.  Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.  DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is.  And we dance to its music,” [24; 133.]  Sartre (atheist existentialist) might have said that, even if Dawkins is a good dancer, he is a bad-faith dancer (*ba dum bum pshhh*).  And again, one cannot proceed from is (nature) to ought, and one cannot anchor the unchanging to what changes, so one must discover the unchanging, supernatural standard in an eternal, supernatural God who is essentially good.  Alas, Sartre wouldn’t have liked that solution, either, nor this one:

Some, like Nietzsche, have argued that we are not responsible for our actions and evil is an illusion because we do not have free will, as the universe, including all of our actions within it, is physically determined (upwards causality) (theists would add to or correct determinism with ‘predestined by God’).  Schopenhauer said: "A man can do as he will, but not will as he will" (32) because, "Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity," (32; Einstein).  However, the universe is not physically determined (it is probabilistic), we can influence the universe (downwards causality), and God’s predestination of the universe from beyond time (He knows all the probabilistic outcomes) includes our freely willed, self-determined, downward-causing, co-creative actions (with His interaction).  A causal relationship is maintained between God and His creation [prayer requests, though directed upward (from within temporality), are granted downward from beyond the beginning], as the temporal came from the eternal but did not become divorced from it—God is both immanent (60) and transcendent.  [Note that Karl Popper (30) spoke of downward and upward causality but had a much different view of the universe and God.]  Many factors, including what we know, determine our conceivable and viable options, but only influence our actions.  Free will (thesis) and predestination (anti-thesis) appear to contradict eachother, but that is resolved by the synthesis that predestination includes our freely willed actions [for more, see part 2].  And now to discuss further the previous synthesis that evil is the privation of a preexistent good.

5. Sin is co-creating (exercising free will) apart from God (love).  Love is not love if it is not chosen (if it is forced upon us), and so requires free will.  Without the possibility of rejecting God’s love (at the root of all sin), there is no possibility to choose it.  “In a world where love is the supreme ethic, freedom must be built in,” (3; 118).  Evil is a privation of love, like blindness is a privation of sight.  Evil is “good messed up.”  Sin is not an eternal opposite of good, rather, the target (good) must first exist before it can be missed.  “The Greek word hamartia (?μαρτ?α) is usually translated as sin in the New Testament; it means ‘to miss the mark’ or ‘to miss the target’ which was also used in Old English archery,” (11).  With moral autonomy comes the ability to go one’s own way, set one’s own standards, yes -- “become one’s own law-maker” (44) – but the point of moral autonomy is to be able to adopt God’s requirement as our own:  Our ultimate fulfillment:  Love.  Since love is perfectly relating (the original point), then sin is de-relating (missing the point).  Our ultimate fulfillment and happiness is realized in oneness with God – sin separates us from God, atonement reunites us.  This understanding was developed using the old sacrificial system and Jesus’ final sacrifice – communicating that it is God who provides the means of atonement, it is He who rights the wrong and brings us back to Him – communicating, “Yes, you have used the freedom I gave you to go your own way and have separated yourself from Me, but I forgave you for all of that before and beyond the beginning.  I created you to share my love with you, to share that I love you no matter what, so much that I would die for you.” 

However, it is our choice to accept the truth He has revealed about His love, or accept total separation from God and from His unforced approval—that’s the only alternative… and there must be an alternative in order for there to be a choice to love.  The ultimate consequence of sin is hell:  “In short, hell is simply one’s freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory into infinity” (2; 78). It's like you buy everyone a round of drinks -- those who are your friends, those who will become your friends, and those who will reject you. Only some people accept it. For those who reject it, you offer it to them all over again. They still don't want it--they don't want a hand-out, they throw it back in your face and ask you who you think you are. Your second offer was pointless, and rather than shoving beer down their throats, you let them go without. The ones who wanted a free beer, enjoyed it. What God is offering (never mind turning water into wine--he who believes in Him will never be thirsty) is eternal life – full being.  “‘Sin is:  In despair not wanting to be oneself before God. … Faith is:  That the self in being itself and wanting to be itself is grounded transparently in God,’ [Kierkegaard]” (2; 162).  Speaking of transparency; when our face is down in it... that is where He is... that is when we come to Him and are known by Him the closest.  We don't get our act together and then come to Him.  That defeats the whole point.  If you can't be completely transparent, guts and all, in front of God, then the whole universe is a sham.  And it isn't.  Hell is the ultimate result of choosing to reject transparency and full existence.  Sin is a sort of “denaturizing” and our co-creating apart from God might better be termed “de-creating” as long as one acknowledges that the total creation was complete before it started, including our poor choices (in other words, God is never forced to come up with a “plan b”).

Sin is marketed as moral “independence” though some may view it as “independence from morality.”  Those intentionally rebelling against God think they are surpassing Him.  What they do not realize is that there is no surpassing perfection, and that what they are actually doing is degenerating apart from His perfect love (apart from the Vine, we wither).  Our freedom to reject love and responsibility to choose love is a built-in part of this grand creation over which God is sovereign—nothing surpasses Him, and nothing surprises Him.  To say we can be good without God (i.e., follow the Golden Rule as if we designed it rather than discovered it) is similar to discovering e=mc^2 and maintaining that it is created and needs no physical universe (but love is eternal and essential, whereas e=mc^2 describes the created).  Apart from Him, we are not free to do good. He designed our moral sense and capacity to love (after His image) and apart from His eternal goodness (love), the term “good” in the phrase “freedom to do good” has no essential meaning (is a mere idea).  Further, if we think doing good on our own, apart from God, makes us good and worthy of love, not only do we have an unanchored definition of good, we are also enslaved in a Pharisaical performance mentality and do not understand God's unmerited love.  All definitions of good apart from God’s essential, unmerited love are as sandcastles for the tide.  His love cannot be bought, He cannot be manipulated into loving us, and to assume so is to misunderstand His nature.  That we choose to reject love, that we choose to sin in His creation, does not equate to His endorsing what we choose – but it does equate to His endorsing “choice” (for He is not a dictator). God, like a good father, allows us to learn from our mistakes (including the mistake of neglecting to nurture our children’s moral sense), rather than dysfunctionaly protecting us from them by a) preventing us from making them, or b) preventing us from experiencing the consequences.  C.S. Lewis writes, “(Our) free will is what has made evil possible.  Why, then, did God give (us) free will?  Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.  A world of (robots) would hardly be worth creating.  The happiness which God designs for (us) is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water.  And for that (we) must be free,” (18; 48).

Some have argued that it is too limiting, too stifling to adopt God’s definition of good and love.  Many of us grow up in ultra-conservative, Pharisaical, no-dancing, restrictive fellowships which warp our conception of right and wrong, and instead of reevaluating those human-created values to discover the eternal, we abandon the whole project, until we are far enough removed from it to be able to look upon it with fresh eyes.  What a blessing it is when we find a fellowship that harbors dialogue which explores what Jesus meant by “I came that they may have life” and “the truth will set you free”—which asks, “What then is the moral-spiritual reality we must acknowledge to thrive?  What is the environment that liberates us if we confine ourselves to it, like water liberates the fish?” while anchored to the knowledge that “Love is the most liberating freedom-loss of all,” (2; 47, 49).  May we be authentic, liberated beings who accept responsibility for our sin and choose full existence, accepting His unmerited love, transparently basing our identity on what we are made to look like through His eyes.  Does embracing full existence even mean anything, if we reject the essence of love?  Don't answer that until you've put yourself in the shoes of those children in the picture.

A working bibliography can be found here.