[Chad]

I don’t think the kinds of choices nor how many we have are indicative of free will. I think the absence of causally determining factors is the only thing required. If God is the only necessary being, there would exist nothing besides Him. So, nothing would exist that could causally determine how He decided to choose anything. If God, sans creation, simply chooses to be who He is, The Good, then He is freely choosing to be the sole reality. I don’t see any reason why the addition of evil in the world as a result of His contigent creation would have any bearing on the libertarian free will of God. If anything, His sending His Son, Jesus, would only cement the reality of libertarian free will since Jesus is the physical manifestation of God Himself. Having all of our cognitive limitations (his human nature), Jesus still chose to be who He is (his Divine nature).

[Poul]

I think you have put your finger on a problem that destroys Christianity. In so many ways.

[Chad]

Free will doesn’t require choosing between opposites. All it requires is the absence of external factors which may causally determine the outcome (such as Craig’s mad scientist illustration). Also, on divine command theory, God doesn’t have moral duties to fulfill. God doesn’t say to himself, “I need to be good and therefore choose the good.” God is essenitally The Good, this is His moral value. So, every free choice He makes is good. Absent any actual refutation in your response, there exists no inconsistency here, neither in God, sans creation, or in the personhood of Jesus. I really enjoy the conversations here, but my experience is that most people only want to respond to simply disagree.

[Jabberwock]

God does not have external factors that limit his choices, but he certainly has internal factors that do, namely his nature. Thus God could create humans in such a way that our internal nature would not allow us to sin. Given that no external factors would limit our choices, we would still be free, yet we would be completely unable to sin.

[Chad]

I’m in agreement except when you say “unable to sin.” We are not morally perfect beings like God, we were, however, created morally innocent. While it is possible for God to create a world with beings that never sin, this doesn’t mean it is necessarily feasible for Him to do so given creaturely freedom. This doesn’t make such a world logically inconsistent, it only means God did not prefer such a world to this one. Maybe a world where no one ever sins only has 4 people in it. Given free will, God knew we would eventually sin, and He decided He wanted more than 4 people in heaven with Him. We are really in no position to say one way or the other, but this doesn’t disprove God’s, nor our, free will. Thanks for your response.

[Jabberwock]

Inability to sin does not have to equal ‘moral perfection’. God could make us so that whenever we wanted to sin, we would be e.g. paralyzed. That, by your own words, would not constitute an infringement of our free will (as there would be no external constraints beside our own nature).

[Chad]

I agree, the inability to sin does not require moral perfection concerning human nature; but such a world may not have been feasible for God to create. Thankfully, He didn’t. Obviously, if such internal factors kept us from sinning, they would be a hinderance to free will. If I were to condede your points, I would simply reformulate and drop the “external”. However, I consider God’s nature and human nature different. God is The Good and freely chooses to be who He is. He doesn’t need an opposite choice to freely choose to be who He is. We have a natural propensity for self-preservation and self-interest at the expense of others. We can freely choose God, sometimes giving up such self-seeking luxuries, or not. He isn’t forcing us to do anything nor is God forced to be anything other than who He is. I see Him as the incommensurable Good. If I receive eternity at the expense of temporary pleasure. I gladly and freely choose Him.

[Jabberwock]

So you are saying now that God is not necessarily good? That he just happened to choose to be good, but might as well chosen to be evil? Then the obvious question is: how can you know that? If God has chosen evil and decided to deceive us, we would never know, right?

[jayceeii]

God could deceive even the angels. Compared to that deceiving humans is simplistic. In fact unhooking them from a deception would be hardest of all as their minds are literalist.

[Chad]

I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion. Sounds to me as though you are implementing the Euthyphro Dilemma. God isn’t Good because He wills it, nor does He will things because they are Good. He simply is The Good. Being the only metaphysically necessary being, He would be necessarily Good. This would not hinder His free will to be who He is. Nor would it hinder our free will to freely choose The Good that God is or our own natural propensity towards selfish desires. You need to show how a God who is The Good can’t have free will to be who He is. Having a perfect nature isn’t a coercion anymore than having an imperfect nature.

[Jabberwock]

You wrote: ‘God is The Good and freely chooses to be who He is’. If God is necessarily the good, then he cannot freely choose to be who he is – he cannot freely choose to be not-good.

[Chad]

I see no difficulty here. You didn’t include the last part of that quote. God doesn’t need an opposite choice to have free will. All that is required for free will is an absence of causally determined factors. As long as nothing is causing us to choose, we have free will. Same with God, especially since He is a metaphysically necessary being.

[Jabberwock]

I do not think that incapability of making a choice is what would typically be called ‘freedom’ (at best, it is compatibilistic free will and not libertarian free will). Besides, this is quite prone to reductio ad absurdum: suppose that God’s nature is such that he has no choice but to create us in a certain way. This in turn makes us behave in a certain way. Thus, every single thing God and us would do be fully decided by God’s nature. In other words, there would be only one possible world, fully determined from the beginning by God’s nature. Yet you claim that only in our case that would be ‘causally determined factors’. That seems rather inconsistent…

[Fred]

Chad –

Many define “libertarian free will” (LFW) as entailing the PAP (Principle of Alternative Possibilities). This implies that for some past choice (A) he could have instead chosen (B). Are there any choices God has made (or could make) that are consistent with the PAP?

[Chad]

The way I see free will is one can freely choose to do what is on one’s mind. Given a molinist perspective, God knows what one would freely do in certain circumstances. God can bring about those circumstances so that individual freely does what God knows they will do. Even if the person is incapable of doing anything else, there is nothing causing the individual to do otherwise. Concerning God, He could have not created at all or created a universe without life. Instead, He chose to create this world. To say God doesn’t have free will would mean he had to create this world, I don’t believe this nor do I think it is a tenable position to hold. In any case, according to the free will you are postulating, I should be able to murder at will. Because I am incapable due to my convictions, I don’t have free will? Sounds absurd to me.

[Jabberwock]

Saying that God has free will because he could do one particular thing is technically true, but then we could as well be capable of making a single meaningful choice in life and then we would also be technically free. Still, it is not what one would call ‘freedom’.

A simple example: if I have LFW, I can lie. God cannot lie because of his nature. It would appear that I am more free in that respect than God, right?

And if you are incapable of murder due to your convictions, we can trace how exactly your convictions came to be and we will end up ultimately with some external causes.

[Chad]

You and I will disagree concerning the definition of “freedom” as it pertains to free will. I don’t believe God having the ability to lie would make Him more free, it would be contradictory to His nature (He would cease to be who He says He is). This seems to me to be an existential problem not one of freedom as it pertains to God (why would God have “less” freedom? He is a metaphysically necessary being). Concerning external factors, I’m not talking about situations that can influence our decisions; I’m talking about the reality that we have choices we can make in our minds that are independent of those external factors. Free will seems like a given to me; otherwise, things are simply deterministic. No overriding reason has presented itself for me to think determinism is true. Since we are made in God’s image, it makes sense He would have free will, too. Otherwise, He had to create this universe and us. I think a theist would have a hard time proving that. I find, personally, the Molinist perspective offers a nice balance to God’s sovereignty and LFW.

[Jabberwock]

It is not so much a matter of disagreement as of definitions. The view that LFW can exist without PAP is rather controversial. To quote Molina himself:

That agent is free, which, when all requisites for acting are present, can act and not act, or act in such a way that it can equally act in a contrary way. And it is because of such a freedom that the faculty through which such an agent can act this way is said to be free

This is the principle that you specifically deny. If God’s (or ours) actions are determined only by the internal factors, they are still determined. This again indicates that your view is compatibilistic, not libertanian.

[Poul]

It seems to me like you have cast God for a role in a play. A rather trivial role if the choices he is faced with are easy, as you seem to imagine.

But they are not. It may have been Douglas Adams who pointed this out, but the choice to introduce humans on Earth was definitely not good from every point of view. From the point of view of all the species that have had their biosphere destroyed by humans, it looks like a very bad and probably selfish choice.

[Maeve]

I understand your logic of God not having free will, and at prima facie, it may appear to be correct. However, I believe that God does have free will and that it is simply not in His nature to choose to do evil. I object to your second premise that God cannot choose between right and wrong. God has a nature that is all good and all powerful. Because He is all powerful, He can choose what He desires to do. Because He is all good, He desires to do good. This means that in the choices made, He simply chooses what He wants to do. It is not the case that He cannot choose between good and evil, but just that it is a part of His nature to act on the good. He can decide which decision is bad and which is good, and He consistently chooses good. Let’s use an analogy: it is not part of human nature to breathe underwater. Physically, we can do it, but it does much more damage than good. Because it causes so much damage, we decide to not breathe underwater. A fish’s nature includes breathing in water, so it causes no problem for the fish. However, for humans, we decide to not do so because it is bad, not because we don’t have the choice. In a similar way, God does not desire to do evil because of the harm it produces. It is not that he lacks free will to make the choice; but rather, He does not wish to do evil and chooses good. Like the fish, there are beings who choose bad nad God is not one of them. I would define free will as not being able to make the choice, rather than knowingly choosing one option every time. In this regard, it’s not the case that God can’t sin; He simply won’t. Because of His perfect nature, God will not choose to sin. As an example of God’s free will, He created humanity. He is perfect and self-sufficient; He still created mankind, as He knew the value that would come from it. The good that comes from humanity is worth the creation of it. This is one important instance of free will and decision making.

[jayceeii]

Most of this can be said about an angel, too. It is only humans who think evil is freedom. Angels are powerful, not all-powerful, and I am not convinced creating humans was best.

[Jarod (Christian)]

Angels must have some sort of free will, since some of them rebelled. But something is different between their moral design and ours. Fallen angels appear to be irredeemable, while humans can be redeemed.

• This reply was modified 2 months ago by  Jarod (Christian). Reason: typo

[jayceeii]

It has always been a mistake to read the Bible like a textbook, full of peer-reviewed facts. What you learn by it may have been made to fit your mind, not fitting your mind to truth.

[Someone Catholic]

A counterargument to your objection:

P1: If you are imperfect, then you can choose to do evil

P2: If you can choose to do evil, then you have free will

C: Therefore if you are imperfect, then you have free will

If this argument is sound, then God cannot have free will because God is a perfect being. This argument emphasizes that having free will is not an advantageous attribute when compared to having the will of God. God not being able to choose any outcome that is less than the best possible outcome, which would necessitate choosing what is good, is a feature of God’s nature and highlights the perfection of His will. It should be the case that God does not have free will, as free will is so flawed and limiting in its own nature—free will is restricting in that you cannot always choose what is good.

While it may superficially appear that God is limited if He has no free will, God is the only free and unimpeded being to always choose what is good—a being that has no ability to fall into an outcome resulting from temptation. If God did have such free will, then He would be less than the perfect and ideal God that He is. If God had the ability to choose to do evil, then it follows that God would have the ability to sin, thus God would not be perfect.

By nature God and humans are different in their ability to be influenced or swayed. Humans have a “free will” in the sense that we are untethered and inconsistent whereas God is rooted and unwavering. Being able to remain fully the same, especially when good, is a freedom that only God possesses. Furthermore, your analogy is disanalogous, as “breathing” means to inhale air or any gaseous substance into your lungs and exchange these components through your blood. Physically, we cannot do this because our lungs cannot function if filled with water. We don’t decide to not breathe underwater, just as God does not decide to not do evil.

• This reply was modified 2 months ago by  Someone Catholic.

[jayceeii]

The arguments you make apply to angels. Thus how God differs from the angels must lie beyond your arguments and conceptions. The concern of humanity is its own perfection. God is not immediately relevant to that project. And attaining perfection He still is not immediately relevant, because the angels have their own domain of goodness below Him.

To make this more explicit, you use the word “God” but all of these conceptions are answered by the angelic nature, and you are therefore not really thinking about God. It is my contention that in the long-term humans will know it is their role to seek angels, leaving conceptions about God to them. Your Maker is much higher than you’re thinking.

[Anika]

I do not believe that this is a sound argument. My main objection here is that I do not see how just because an imperfect being can have free will, this means that a perfect being cannot. Just because humans are imperfect and have free will, by no means implies that God as a perfect being does not have free will. I believe the main concern is with the matter of choice. What makes humans imperfect and God perfect is the fact that God consistently chooses to do the right thing, whereas humans often fail and do what is wrong (in other words they make the wrong choice, whereas God always makes the right one). I also wonder why you say that “freewill is restricting in that you cannot always choose what is good”. This is confusing to me because I believe that freewill has no such restriction. There is nothing to suggest that freewill can prevent a person from making the same type of choice over and over again. For example, if someone were to give me the option to eat healthy food or unhealthy food everyday, I could certainly choose to eat healthy food everyday. However, just because I choose to eat healthy food everyday does not mean that I could not eat unhealthy food if I wanted to. In the same way, I do not believe that just because God always does what is right means that he does not have the choice to do something else. One of the factors that influence the choices we make is nature. If a person’s nature is such that they always want to stand out from others, then they will make choices that are unorthodox or strange in comparison to what the majority would choose. In the same way, since God’s nature is good, he makes choices that are good. This is not to say however that he does not have a choice. He chooses to do what is good.

[jayceeii]

Although you use the term “God” here, the actual discussion is about a “good person.” You give good examples of why choosing the evil way is not really a form of freedom, but this is only talking about the way it is in and around human beings. You can’t make a leap to authentic statements about God, from thinking about a foot above your shoulder.

[Sam (Agnostic)]

The original argument presented by Cat discussed whether or not God has free will, the argument is laid out below:

1. If one has free will then one can choose between right and wrong.

2. God cannot choose between right and wrong.

3. Therefore, God does not have free will. (MT 1,2)

I would like to object to both premise 1 and 2. Firstly, free will does give you the ability to choose between right and wrong, but it is misleading to just specify right or wrong here. Not only does free will give you the ability to choose between right and wrong, but it also gives you the ability to choose anything. Moreover, it is important to note that the definition of rightness and wrongness could vary across different individuals and cultures, therefore one “can” choose between right and wrong, but it might not necessarily be the right choice or wrong choice you have in mind and they might not be aware of whether right or wrong their choice is.

In objection to premise 2, if by “choose” you mean by identifying what is right or wrong, God certainly can choose between right and wrong because he made the rules that define rightness and wrongness so he is clear about what is right and wrong. He is also omnipotent so he can do whatever he likes. He has full control and full knowledge of everything which gives him the power to choose between right and wrong. However, if you mean “choose” by choosing to do what is right or wrong, then it is more debatable whether or not God can do that. I think he can. Although he should always be just, there could be situations where he can only choose between two outcomes which are both wrong, but he can identify which is more wrong and go with the less wrong option. Also, it is unfair to use human values of rightness and wrongness to judge God because his thoughts might not be comprehendible by humans, so he may be always right, we just don’t understand him.

[James]

A being that is maximally great is maximally excellent (and therefore, omnibenevolent) in every possible world. If a being is omnibenevolent in every possible world then by definition, there is no possible world in which that being does wrong. It follows that it is metaphysically impossible for such a being to do wrong and a being cannot choose what it is metaphysically impossible for it to do. So, if God is being defined as a maximally great being then P2 is correct. However, I hold that P1 is a non-sequitur because being omnibenevolent in every possible world does not entail the absence of choice between good actions.

[Baili]

I would like to refute premise (2). This premise presupposes a narrow conception of free will that is limited to choosing between right and wrong, that is, moral choices. However, the concept of free will can extend beyond morality to encompass moral, non-moral, or even trivial choices. Then, from this viewpoint, free will can be understood as the capacity to make decisions on our own without external interference or coercion.

One objection arises from compatibilism, which argues that God’s omniscience and omnipotence are compatible with human free will. God’s knowledge of all possible outcomes, including choices made by humans, does not negate our freedom to choose freely. Compatibilists further argue that free will is compatible with determinism if it is understood as the ability to act according to one’s desires, even if those desires are predetermined by preceding causes and circumstances. God possesses attributes such as omnipotence (all-powerful), omniscience (all-knowing), and omnibenevolence (all-good). These attributes are considered essential to God’s nature and are believed to be eternal. Therefore, God’s free will is not limited to choosing between moral options, but understood as conforming to his wisdom and his eternal nature, and that while God could theoretically choose otherwise, his wisdom and his divine nature ensure that his choices are always in line with his divine purposes.

In addition, theological voluntarism (also known as divine command theory) proposes that “God should be defined as an omnipotent being whose actions should not and cannot be ultimately rationalized and explained through reason” due to the limitations of human understanding when grappling with the divine plan. From this perspective, God’s choices are not constrained by a pre-existing moral standard, but rather God establishes that standard.

Hence, my argument is as follows:

1. If one has free will, then one possesses the ability to make choices.

2. God possesses the ability to make choices.

3. Therefore, God has free will. (1,2)

[James]

I fully agree with your initial summary that the lack of ability to choose between good and evil does not entail a lack of ability to make choices between various good or trivial options. However, your closing argument is invalid. Your premise 2 affirms the consequent of premise 1.

Affirming the Consequent (logicallyfallacious.com)

You could swap the antecedent and consequent in premise 1, then it would be a valid argument.

1. If one possesses the ability to make choices then one has free will.

2. God possesses the ability to make choices.

3. Therefore, God has free will. (1,2)

However, if our choices are determined by factors external to ourselves (our external circumstances) then we still have the ability to make choices but they are not free ones. So the ability to make choices is a necessary but not sufficient condition for free will to exist. I think this is sufficient to point out that your P1 would still be a non-sequitur as-is. You could easily overcome this by including the term “uncoerced” or something like that.

1. If one possesses the ability to make uncoerced choices then one has free will.

2. God possesses the ability to make uncoerced choices.

3. Therefore, God has free will. (1,2)

   (2) is now easily defensible. God chooses to create, absent creation and under circumstances where only he exists. Under those circumstances, he is making choices and it is not possible that he is being coerced by anything external to himself. Therefore, he must be acting freely. This leaves open the question, is it necessary that he could have acted otherwise, in order for his uncoerced actions to be free?

logicallyfallacious.com

Affirming the Consequent

An error in formal logic where if the consequent is said to be true, the antecedent is said to be true, as a result.