The nature of human free will

PREDESTINATION seems to cast a shadow on the very heart of human freedom. If God has decided our destinies from all eternity, that strongly suggests that our free choices are but charades, empty exercises in predetermined playacting. It is as though God wrote the script for us in concrete and we are merely carrying out his scenario.

To get a handle on the puzzling relationship between predestination and free will, we must first define free will. That definition itself is a matter of great debate. Probably the most common definition says free will is the ability to make choices without any prior prejudice, inclination, or disposition. For the will to be free it must act from a posture of neutrality, with absolutely no bias.

On the surface this is very appealing. There are no elements of coercion, either internal or external, to be found in it. Below the surface, however, lurk two serious problems. On the one hand, if we make our choices strictly from a neutral posture, with no prior inclination, then we make choices for no reason. If we have no reason for our choices, if our choices are utterly spontaneous, then our choices have no moral significance. If a choice just happens—it just pops out, with no rhyme or reason for it—then it cannot be judged good or bad. When God evaluates our choices, he is concerned about our motives.

Consider the case of Joseph and his brothers. When Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, God’s providence was at work. Years later, when Joseph was reunited with his brothers in Egypt, he declared to them, “You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20). Here the motive was the decisive factor determining whether the act was good or evil. God’s involvement in Joseph’s dilemma was good; the brothers’ involvement was evil. There was a reason why Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery. They had an evil motivation. Their decision was neither spontaneous nor neutral. They were jealous of their brother. Their choice to sell him was prompted by their evil desires.

The second problem this popular view faces is not so much moral as it is rational. If there is no prior inclination, desire, or bent, no prior motivation or reason for a choice, how can a choice even be made? If the will is totally neutral, why would it choose the right or the left? It is something like the problem encountered by Alice in Wonderland when she came to a fork in the road. She did not know which way to turn. She saw the grinning Cheshire cat in the tree. She asked the cat, “Which way should I turn?” The cat replied, “Where are you going?” Alice answered, “I don’t know.” “Then,” replied the Cheshire cat, “it doesn’t matter.”

Consider Alice’s dilemma. Actually she had four options from which to choose. She could have taken the left fork or the right fork. She also could have chosen to return the way she had come. Or she could have stood fixed at the spot of indecision until she died there. For her to take a step in any direction, she would need some motivation or inclination to do so. Without any motivation, any prior inclination, her only real option would be to stand there and perish.

Another famous illustration of the same problem is found in the story of the neutral-willed mule. The mule had no prior desires, or equal desires in two directions. His owner put a basket of oats to his left and a basket of wheat on his right. If the mule had no desire whatsoever for either oats or wheat he would choose neither and starve. If he had an exactly equal disposition toward oats as he had toward wheat he would still starve. His equal disposition would leave him paralyzed. There would be no motive. Without motive there would be no choice. Without choice there would be no food. Without food soon there would be no mule.

We must reject the neutral-will theory not only because it is irrational but because, as we shall see, it is radically unbiblical.

Christian thinkers have given us two very important definitions of free will. We will consider first the definition offered by Jonathan Edwards in his classic work, On the Freedom of the Will.

Edwards defined the will as “the mind choosing.” Before we ever can make moral choices we must first have some idea of what it is we are choosing. Our selection is then based upon what the mind approves or rejects. Our understanding of values has a crucial role to play in our decision-making. My inclinations and motives as well as my actual choices are shaped by my mind. Again, if the mind is not involved, then the choice is made for no reason and with no reason. It is then an arbitrary and morally meaningless act. Instinct and choice are two different things.

A second definition of free will is “the ability to choose what we want.” This rests on the important foundation of human desire. To have free will is to be able to choose according to our desires. Here desire plays the vital role of providing a motivation or a reason for making a choice.

Now for the tricky part. According to Edwards a human being is not only free to choose what he desires but he must choose what he desires to be able to choose at all. What I call Edwards Law of Choice is this: “The will always chooses according to its strongest inclination at the moment.” This means that every choice is free and every choice is determined.

I said it was tricky. This sounds like a blatant contradiction to say that every choice is free and yet every choice is determined. But “determined” here does not mean that some external force coerces the will. Rather it refers to one’s internal motivation or desire. In shorthand the law is this: Our choices are determined by our desires. They remain our choices because they are motivated by our own desires. This is what we call self-determination, which is the essence of freedom.

Think for a minute about your own choices. How and why are they made? At this very instant you are reading the pages of this book. Why? Did you pick up this book because you have an interest in the subject of predestination, a desire to learn more about this complex subject? Perhaps. Maybe this book has been given to you to read as an assignment. Perhaps you are thinking, “I have no desire to read this whatsoever. I have to read it, and I am grimly wading through it to fulfill somebody else’s desire that I read it. All things being equal I would never choose to read this book.”

But all things are not equal, are they? If you are reading this out of some kind of duty or to fulfill a requirement, you still had to make a decision about fulfilling the requirement or not fulfilling the requirement. You obviously decided that it was better or more desirable for you to read this than to leave it unread. Of that much I am sure, or you would not be reading it right now.

Every decision you make is made for a reason. The next time you go into a public place and choose a seat (in a theater, a classroom, a church building), ask yourself why you are sitting where you are sitting. Perhaps it is the only seat available and you prefer to sit rather than to stand. Perhaps you discover that there is an almost unconscious pattern emerging in your seating decisions. Maybe you discover that whenever possible you sit toward the front of the room or toward the rear. Why? Maybe it has something to do with your eyesight. Perhaps you are shy or gregarious. You may think that you sit where you sit for no reason, but the seat that you choose will always be chosen by the strongest inclination you have at the moment of decision. That inclination may merely be that the seat closest to you is free and that you don’t like to walk long distances to find a place to sit down.

Decision-making is a complex matter because the options we encounter are often varied and many. Add to that that we are creatures with many and varied desires. We have different, often even conflicting, motivations.

Consider the matter of ice cream cones. Oh, do I have trouble with ice cream cones and ice cream sundaes. I love ice cream. If it is possible to be addicted to ice cream then I must be classified as an ice cream addict. I am at least fifteen pounds overweight, and I am sure that at least twenty of the pounds that make up my body are there because of ice cream. Ice cream proves the adage to me, “A second on the lips; a lifetime on the hips.” And, “Those who indulge bulge.” Because of ice cream I have to buy my shirts with a bump in them.

Now, all things being equal, I would like to have a slim, trim body. I don’t like squeezing into my suits and having little old ladies pat me on the tummy. Tummy-patting seems to be an irresistible temptation for some folks. I know what I have to do to get rid of those excess pounds. I have to stop eating ice cream. So I go on a diet. I go on the diet because I want to go on the diet. I want to lose weight. I desire to look better. Everything is fine until someone invites me to Swenson’s. Swenson’s makes the greatest “Super Sundaes” in the world. I know I shouldn’t go to Swenson’s. But I like to go to Swenson’s. When the moment of decision comes I am faced with conflicting desires. I have a desire to be thin and I have a desire for a Super Sundae. Whichever desire is greater at the time of decision is the desire I will choose. It’s that simple.

Now consider my wife. As we prepare to celebrate our silver wedding anniversary I am aware that she is exactly the same weight as she was the day we were married. Her wedding gown still fits her perfectly. She has no great problem with ice cream. Most eating establishments only carry vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Any of those make my mouth water, but they offer no enticement to my wife. Aha! But there is Baskin Robbins. They have pralines and cream ice cream. When we go to the mall and pass a Baskin Robbins my wife goes through a strange transformation. Her pace decelerates, her hands get clammy, and I can almost detect the beginning of salivation. (That’s salivation, not salvation.) Now she experiences the conflict of desires that assaults me daily.

We always choose according to our strongest inclination at the moment. Even external acts of coercion cannot totally take away our freedom. Coercion involves acting with some kind of force, imposing choices upon people that, if left to themselves, they would not choose. I certainly have no desire to pay the kind of income taxes that the government makes me pay. I can refuse to pay them, but the consequences are less desirable than paying them. By threatening me with jail the government is able to impose its will upon me to pay taxes.

Or consider the case of armed robbery. A gunman steps up to me and says, “Your money or your life.” He has just restricted my options to two. All things being equal I have no desire to donate my money to him. There are far more worthy charities than he. But suddenly my desires have changed as a result of his act of external coercion. He is using force to provoke certain desires within me. Now I must choose between my desire to live and my desire to give him my money. I might as well give him the money because if he kills me he will take my money anyway. Some people might choose to refuse, saying, “I would rather die than choose to hand this gunman my money. He’ll have to take it from my dead body.”

In either case, a choice is made. And it is made according to the strongest inclination at the moment. Think, if you can, of any choice you have ever made that was not according to the strongest inclination you had at the moment of decision. What about sin? Every Christian has some desire in his heart to obey Christ. We love Christ and we want to please him. Yet every Christian sins. The hard truth is that at the moment of our sin we desire the sin more strongly than we desire to obey Christ. If we always desired to obey Christ more than we desired to sin, we would never sin.

Does not the Apostle Paul teach otherwise? Does he not recount for us a situation in which he acts against his desires? He says in Romans, “The good that I would, I do not, and that which I would not, that I do” (Rom. 7:19, KJV). Here it sounds as if, under the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit, Paul is teaching clearly that there are times in which he acts against his strongest inclination.

It is extremely unlikely that the apostle is here giving us a revelation about the technical operation of the will. Rather, he is stating plainly what every one of us has experienced. We all have a desire to flee from sin. The “all things being equal” syndrome is in view here. All things being equal, I would like to be perfect. I would like to be rid of sin, just as I would like to be rid of my excess weight. But my desires do not remain constant. They fluctuate. When my stomach is full it is easy to go on a diet. When my stomach is empty my desire level changes. Temptations arise with the changing of my desires and appetites. Then I do things that, all things being equal, I would not want to do.

Paul sets before us the very real conflict of human desires, desires that yield evil choices. The Christian lives within a battlefield of conflicting desires. Christian growth involves the strengthening of desires to please Christ accompanied by the weakening of desires to sin. Paul called it the warfare between the flesh and the Spirit.

To say that we always choose according to our strongest inclination at the moment is to say that we always choose what we want. At every point of choice we are free and self-determined. To be self-determined is not the same thing as determinism. Determinism means that we are forced or coerced to do things by external forces. External forces can, as we have seen, severely limit our options, but they cannot destroy choice altogether. They cannot impose delight in things we hate. When that happens, when hatred turns to delight, it is a matter of persuasion, not coercion. I cannot be forced to do what I take delight in doing already.

The neutral view of free will is impossible. It involves choice without desire. That is like having an effect without a cause. It is something from nothing, which is irrational. The Bible makes it clear that we choose out of our desires. A wicked desire produces wicked choices and wicked actions. A godly desire produces godly deeds. Jesus spoke in terms of corrupt trees producing corrupt fruit. A fig tree does not yield apples and an apple tree produces no figs. So righteous desires produce righteous choices and evil desires produce evil choices.

"Charis Seminary and Bible Institute"

Charis "Seminary"????

$30 per class???????

Hey Woody, I think you found your Cracker-Jack Theology Degree! Also found this: "Distinguished" Alumnus of Charis "Seminary":

The "Reverend" Lisa Berry-Dockery
Host of the weekly "Person to Person" on AM 1430 KCOH
Associate Pastor of St. Agnes Baptist Church
She is an alumnus of Houston Baptist University and Charis Theological Seminary (source)

"The station also happens to have community-minded personalities, the likes of Lisa Berry Dockery, who openly supports Quannel X (New Black Panthers) and the Black United Front" (source)

Perhaps rdb3 can enlighten us as to the positions of these groups.

Jean

The material world had a beginning, because the material world is temporal and constrained by the laws of material existence. The supernatural world of which God is the source, and it all "springs" from him is eternal. That does not mean that everything in the supernatural realm is eternal, but that the realm itself must be, else it could not be God's realm. The natural world is a subset of the supernatural world, and was (as a technical explanation) differentiated from the supernatural world by the imposition of those qualtities we call the spatial/temporal(physical)laws of nature. If you say God made the material world out of nothing, it makes God nothing.

Classical Hank, so deep nobody gets you. :)

As I understand it, God made the created world, including the seen and the unseen, out of Himself. When the physicists "discover" that the mysterious black matter of the universe is really light, call me. Always a delight to see your mind at work. JS

"Also, wasn't Custance a Calvinist? "

It looks like Custance's "calvinism" is irrelevant.

It appears they like him for his goofy 'Gap-Theory' of Creation:

Historical Evidence of The Gap Theory

Pre-Geologic Age
Almost without exception, the Gap theory is credited to Dr. George Chalmers of Edinburg University in 1814. Supposedly Dr. Chalmers introduced this theory in an attempt to harmonize the Genesis account with the vast periods of time demanded by uniformitarian geologists. It is then claimed to have been elaborated by George H. Pember in his work (Earth's Earliest Ages) in 1876, and finally popularized in the footnotes of the Scofield Reference Bible beginning in 1917. Today, it is said that only pinheads and nitwits of dubious scholastic background maintain a belief in the "Gap Theory". If, as it is today asserted, the theory can only be traced back to Dr. Chalmers, then the statement of its reason for introduction should not be discounted. On the other hand, if the theory antedates both Dr. Chalmers and any uniformitarian geologist, then it should and indeed must be investigated by any serious student of scripture to determine why such a Gap exist.
Mark E. Howerter, in his work "Creation VS Evolution: The Gap Theory Explained", follows the now accepted view when he wrote:

Uninformed Christians have propagated two theories that have tried to reconcile the Bible with evolution. They have done this because from kindergarten through graduate school it is taught that evolution is a proven scientific fact. Christians have swallowed this hook, line and sinker. They have tried to get God out of a bind, so to speak, because the Bible is in direct contradiction with the theory of evolution. People who take the Bible seriously and literally have introduced two theories to explain how the Bible and evolution can be reconciled. These theories are commonly known as the Gap Theory and the Day-Age Theory.

Again, the above statement is typical of the majority view of the "informed" world of Christian theology and treats anyone who holds to the Gap Theory as being a child like uninformed Christian. It is further and again insinuated, that the theory was developed in order to reconcile the Bible and evolution. However, D. F. Payne, in his paper published by Tyndale Press entitled, "Genesis One Reconsidered", makes a brief statement which alludes to a different view than that of the majority: "The 'gap' theory itself, as a matter of exegesis, antedated the scientific challenge, but the latter gave it a new impetus". The right question to such a statement should have been, 'by how long did it antedate the scientific challenge, and how explicit are the earlier references.' Arthur C. Custance, rightly asserts in the book entitled "Without Form And Void." "If its antecedence can be established with any certainty, one then has to find some other reason than the threat of Geology for its having arisen".
It seems fair to state that if the Gap Theory was an accepted view held by earlier Christian commentators, it was presented without any intention of refuting a geological challenge to the veracity of the Holy Scriptures. It must therefore have arisen either because of a careful study of the original text of Scripture itself had given intimations of it, or perhaps due to some ancient tradition about the after-effects of the catastrophe itself. Why then has modern Christianity continued to assert that the Gap Theory is of modern origins? But, lest we get ahead of ourselves, let us continue our search backwards to find the true origin, if any, of the Gap Theory.
History records that during and after the Babylonian Captivity, the Jewish people began accumulating the comments and explanations of their best-known teachers of the Old Testament. These teachings were gathered together and are called the Midrash, the oldest pre-Christian exposition of the Old Testament. Louis Ginsberg, in his work entitled, "The Legends of the Jews," recorded this excerpt from the first chapter of Genesis:
from the Charis "Seminary" website

Jean

Classical Hank, so deep nobody gets you. :)

As I understand it, God made the created world, including the seen and the unseen, out of Himself.

I don't expect everyone to "get" me, but obviously you have no problem.

In this case, what I said is very close to what you said yourself. I almost agree with you. (Most theologians, I think, would be upset at the expression, He made everythint "out of Himself." I like it, because it neatly does away with the ex nihilo notion, because certainly God is not nothing.

My only problem is I believe to say God exists is logically meaningless if nothing else exists, for two reasons: 1. by way of analogy, since God is not limited by material space and time, for anything to exist it must exist "somewhere" (what I call the supernatural realm) in "some form" (what I call God's nature; and 2. Since God's nature is eternal, and one aspect of that nature is creator, it is impossible that there was ever a state where God had not "created."

I take the verse in Ecclesiates 3:14, "I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him." to mean "eternal," in the sense of without beginning or end:

(By the way, do you know how long it took man to discover the law of conservation of matter and energy? ...and here it was all along.)

Psalms 102:12 But thou, O LORD, shalt endure for ever; and thy remembrance unto all generations.

Certainly God endures "for ever" without beginning or end.

Psslms 119:160 Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.

Again, God's righteous judgements did not have a beginning.

John 12:34 The people answered him, We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou, The Son of man must be lifted up? who is this Son of man?

So Christ abides forever, that is, eternally, without beginning or end.

Rom. 9:5 Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.

Chirst is certainly "God blessed" eternally.

Often "for ever" means, "from now on and never to end," but, except where that meaning is clear, it usually means, "eternally, without beginning or end."

Hank

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