Free will: Encyclopedia II - Free will - In theology

Free will - In theology

The theological doctrine of divine foreknowledge is often alleged to be in conflict with free will. After all, if God knows exactly what will happen, right down to every choice one makes, how can one's choices be free? God's already true or timelessly true knowledge about one's choices seems to constrain one's freedom. This problem is related to the Aristotelian problem of the sea-battle: tomorrow there will or will not be a sea-battle. If there will be one, then it was true yesterday that there would be one. Then it would be necessary that the sea battle will occur. If there won't be one, then by similar reasoning, it is necessary that it won't occur. This means that the future, whatever it is, is completely fixed by past truths — true propositions about the future. (However, some philosophers hold that necessity and possibility are defined with respect to a given point in time and a given matrix of empirical circumstances, and so something that is merely possible from the perspective of one observer may be necessary from the perspective of an omniscient.) Some philosophers believe that free will is equivalent to having a soul, and thus that (at least some) animals do not have free will. Jewish philosophy stresses that free will is a product of the intrinsic human soul (neshama).

Free will - In Christian thought

In Christian theology, God is described as not only omniscient but omnipotent, which some people, but not most, (Christians and non-Christians alike) believe implies that not only has God always known what choices you will make tomorrow, but actually chose what you would choose. That is, they believe, by virtue of His foreknowledge He knows what will influence your choices, and by virtue of His omnipotence He controls those factors. This becomes especially important for the doctrines relating to salvation and predestination. Other branches, however, believe that while God is omnipotent and knows the choices that you will make, He still allows you to make the decisions, hence creating "free" will and making you responsible for your actions.

Proponents of the opposing view would make the point that knowledge of a future happening is entirely different than causing the event to happen. The definition of predestination varies among Christians. Many hold that it does not imply that God chose certain people to receive salvation and the rest have no chance of salvation, but rather, He knows that not everyone will choose salvation, and He specifically knows who will and who won't. The Bible says of God, "...God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:3-4, NIV).

Free will is also a point of debate among both sides of the Christian communism theory. Because some Christians interpret the Bible as advocating that the ideal form of society is communism, opponents of this theory maintain that the establishment of a large-scale communist system would infringe upon the free will of individuals by denying them the freedom to make certain decisions for themselves. Christian communists adamantly oppose this by arguing that free will has and always will be limited to some extent by human laws.

Calvinists embrace the idea that God chose who would be saved from before the creation. They quote Ephesians 1:4 "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight." In its purist form, Calvinism is an extreme version of theological determinism. One of the strongest defenders of this theological point of view was the Puritan-American preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards.

Edwards believed that indeterminism was incompatible with our dependence on God and hence with his sovereignty. He reasoned that if our responses to God's grace are contra-causally free, then our salvation depends partly on us and therefore God's sovereignty isn't "absolute and universal." Edward's book Freedom of the Will defends theological determinism. In this book, Edwards attempts to show that libertarianism is incoherent. For example, he argues that by ‘self-determination’ the libertarian must mean either that one's actions including one's acts of willing are preceded by an act of free will or that one's acts of will lack sufficient causes. The first leads to an infinite regress while the second implies that acts of will happen accidentally and hence can't make someone "better or worse, any more than a tree is better than other trees because it oftener happens to be lit upon by a swan or nightingale; or a rock more vicious than other rocks, because rattlesnakes have happened oftener to crawl over it." (Freedom of the Will, 1754; Edwards 1957-, vol. 1, 327).

Non-Calvinist Christians attempt a reconciliation of the dual concepts of Predestination (determinism) and free will by pointing to the situation of God as Christ. In taking the form of a man, a necessary element of this process was that Jesus Christ lived the existence of a mortal. When Jesus was born he was not born with the omniscient power of God the Creator, but with the mind of a human child - yet he was still fully God. The precedent this creates is that God is able to abandon knowledge (or ignore knowledge) while still remaining God. Thus it is not inconceivable that although omniscience demands that God knows what the future holds for us, it is within his power to deny this knowledge in order to preserve our free will.

However, a reconciliation more compatible with non-Calvinist theology states that God is, in fact, not aware of future events, but rather, being eternal, He is outside time, and sees the past, present, and future as one whole creation. Consequently, it is not as though God would know that Jeffrey Dahmer (for example) would become guilty of homicide years prior to the event, but that He was aware of it from all eternity, viewing all time as a single present.

Free will is important in the Catholic Church, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas being major early figures in the history of the concept. Catholic Christianity's emphasis on free will and grace is generally in contrast to the emphasis on predestination in Protestant Christianity (see the link to Catholic Encyclopedia below for more).

Mormons or Latter-day Saints, believe that God has given all humans the gift of free will (agency) where the ultimate goal is to return to His presence. David O. McKay, former prophet and president of the Church, stated, "It is the purpose of the Lord that man become like him. In order for man to achieve this it was necessary for the Creator first to make him free." (In Conference Report, Apr. 1950, 32.)

As for the conflict between predestination and free will, Latter-day Saints believe that God foreordained men to particular stations in life in order to advance His plan to lead humanity back to His presence. These foreordinations were not unalterable decrees, but rather callings from God for man to perform specific missions in mortality. Men are ultimately responsible for their own destiny, through their faith and obedience to the commandments of God. "Free agency" therefore should not be interpreted to mean that actions are without consequences; "free" means that it is a gift from God and consequences must necessarily come as a result of choices made. Thus free agency and accountability are complementary and cannot be separated.

A major difference, and a key insight to Mormons' understanding of free agency (will), between mainstream Christians and Latter-day Saints involves the belief of a life before mortality. Latter-day Saints believe that before the earth was created, all mankind lived in a pre-existent life as spirit children (Hebrews 12:9) of God. Here God, their Father, nurtured, taught and provided means for their development, but never robbed them of their free agency (Doctrine and Covenants 29:35). In this pre-existing state they could learn, choose, grow or retrograde even as on earth. This preparation would allow them to later become the men and women of earth, to be further educated and tested in the schoolhouse of mortality in order to return to God's presence and become like Him. Thus the pre-existent life is believed to have been an infinitely long period of probation, progression, and schooling. Some of the spirit children of God, so exercised their agency and so conformed to God’s law as to become "noble and great"; these were foreordained before their mortal births to perform great missions for the Lord in this life (Abraham 3:22-28). But even these who were foreordained for greatness could fall and transgress the laws of God. Therefore, mortality is simply a state wherein progression and testing is continued from what began in the pre-existence. Without free agency, mortality would be useless.

Arminians believe that humans always have free will, but God's prevenient grace is always calling them.

Free will - In Jewish thought

The belief in Free will (Hebrew: bechirah chofshith בחירה חפשית, bechirah בחירה) is axiomatic in Jewish thought, and is closely linked with the concept of reward and punishment, based on the Torah itself: "I [God] have set before you life and death, blessing and curse: therefore choose life" (Deuteronomy 30:19). Free will is therefore discussed at length in Jewish philosophy, firstly as regards God's purpose in creation, and secondly as regards the closely related, resultant, paradox.

The traditional teaching regarding the purpose of creation, particularly as influenced by Jewish mysticism, is that "This world is like a corridor to the World to Come" (Pirkei Avoth 4:16). "Man was created for the sole purpose of rejoicing in God, and deriving pleasure from the splendor of His Presence… The place where this joy may truly be derived is the World to Come, which was expressly created to provide for it; but the path to the object of our desires is this world..." (Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim, Ch.1). Free will is thus required by God's justice, “otherwise, Man would not be given or denied good for actions over which he had no control” [1]. It is further understood that in order for Man to have true free choice, he must not only have inner free will, but also an environment in which a choice between obedience and disobedience exists. God thus created the world such that both good and evil can operate freely [2]; this is the meaning of the Rabbinic maxim, "All is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven" (Talmud, Berachot 33b).

In Rabbinic literature, there is much discussion as to the contradiction between God's omniscience and free will. The representative view is that "Everything is foreseen; yet freewill is given" (Rabbi Akiva, Pirkei Avoth 3:15). Based on this understanding, the problem is formally described as a paradox, beyond our understanding.

(The paradox is explained, but not resolved, by observing that God exists outside of time, and therefore, His knowledge of the future is exactly the same as His knowledge of the past and present. Just as His knowledge of the past does not interfere with man's free will, neither does His knowledge of the future [3]. One analogy is that of Time travel: The time traveller, having returned from the future, knows in advance what x will do, but while he knows what x will do, that knowledge does not cause x to do so; x had free will, even while the time traveller had foreknowledge. This distinction, between foreknowledge and predestination, is in fact discussed by Maimonides' critic Abraham ibn Daud; see Hasagat HaRABaD ad loc.)

Although the above represents the majority view in Rabbinic thought, there are several major thinkers who resolve the paradox by explicitly excluding human action from divine foreknowledge. Both Saadia Gaon and Judah ha-Levi hold that "the decisions of man precede God's knowledge" [4]. Gersonides holds that God knows, beforehand, the choices open to each individual, but does not know which choice the individual, in his freedom, will make. Isaiah Horowitz takes the view that God cannot know which moral choices people will make, but that, nevertheless, this does not impair His perfection. See further discussion in the article on Gersonides.

The existence of free will, and the paradox above (as addressed by either approach), is closely linked to the concept of Tzimtzum. Tzimtzum entails the idea that God "constricted" his infinite essence, to allow for the existence of a "conceptual space" in which a finite, independent world could exist. This "constriction" made free will possible, and hence the potential to earn the World to Come. Further (according to the first approach), it is understood that the Free-will Omniscience paradox provides a temporal parallel to the paradox inherent within Tzimtzum. In granting free will, God has somehow "constricted" his foreknowledge, to allow for Man's independent action; He thus has foreknowledge and yet free will exists. In the case of Tzimtzum, God has "constricted" his essence to allow for Man's independent existence; He is thus immanent and yet transcendent.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "In theology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki