Does God Have Free Will?

Moral Orel · Jul 28, 2015

aiki said:
I am incapable of possessing any more arms than the two I already have. Does that mean I don't have free will? I don't see how that would be a reasonable conclusion to make

That's why I didn't really define free will in the beginning. No one (not even God) has 100% free will. It is stated explicitly in the Bible that he can't lie, for instance, so that isn't a choice he can make. But you're right about the arms thing. Physical constraints can impact a person's free will, why can't it? Who cares what it is that limits choices? The point is the lack of choice.

So the question is how much free will does any person have? There are lots of limits to my abilities that hamper my ability to do whatever I might will. Some physical, some intellectual. Morally, though, as long as I physically can or intelligently can, I have complete free will over that aspect of my actions.

What if I was omnibenevolent? What if I couldn't ever choose evil? Not even in my thoughts. Would you say that I have free will? To what degree?

Moral Orel · Jul 28, 2015

aiki said:
In any case, the fact that God created the universe demonstrates pretty clearly, I think, that in fact He does have a free will. He was certainly under no compulsion to make the universe. As I said, doing so was a completely gratuitous - and thus necessarily free - act.

Zippy suggested this as well, but I wonder about how "certainly" it is that he wouldn't be doing something bad by not creating the universe. I mean, he had all that love to give, would it be wrong to keep it to himself? Wouldn't that be a waste if he didn't love anyone else?

For instance, imagine the world has no poverty whatsoever, so that everyone is comfortable and no one has a need that is not met. Some folk are rich, but no one is less than middle class, not even lower middle class: totally and completely without worry. If you won the lottery and became super-rich, should you keep all the money to yourself? No one needs any more money, they would all be just fine without you sharing. But shouldn't you anyways?

Moral Orel · Jul 28, 2015

aiki said:
Your question would make His perfection a liability, which is such a very human way to think of perfection.

You're reading that into my argument because you think free will is a good thing. I stated in an earlier post in response to someone else that I think it is a curse. I think things would be better if all people were incapable of doing evil as well.

elopez · Jul 28, 2015

Nicholas Deka said:
I'm not one for determinism either, that's why I agree that first argument is weak.

The first argument isn't the only one for determinism, and like we agree, it is weak. There are other more sound arguments. Determinism is true in a theological sense as God created the world, which set off a causal chain of events, and again as God has foreknowledge, since what He knows about the future is necessarily going to happen. So if you believe in a creator God who is omniscient, determinism is rather hard to deny.

Nicholas Deka said:
Even your amended version hangs on "if God knows he will create" so it starts first with whether he decides he will create to determine whether he knows it or not. That was a mouthful.

What do you mean "hangs on"? Do you believe God is omniscient? God knows He is going to create! There is not a time when God lacks that knowledge. As cited previously, God is not subject to time, and more to the point, God has eternal knowledge of everything.

Nicholas Deka said:
I really only mentioned it because I wanted to hear other people's thoughts on determinism.

I posit it to be true in the two ways I referred to.

Nicholas Deka said:
I, for one, think that simply predicting someone's actions doesn't mean that destiny controls them. I know my wife pretty well. I can predict her actions based on some stimulus to about 99% accuracy (she's pretty predictable). Does crossing that last percent to 100% really mean that she didn't have a choice? I don't think so.

We aren't talking about "simply predicting" though. We are talking about God's infallible foreknowledge of all of creation. That isn't so straightforward and it's more profound than a prediction. By God having foreknowledge it is not as if said knowledge is "controlling" anyone, indeed, this was something I mentioned in my first post. What this knowledge does mean is the logical certainty necessitates the actuality of the event. If God foreknows x, x is going to happen. Y cannot happen and nor can z in replace of y. If x is me eating a steak at a restaurant this evening, that proposition was true hundreds (to say the least) of years ago. This does not, as you say, make my choice to eat the steak any less of a choice, which gets into the whole compatibilist view I brought up in the last post.

Moral Orel · Jul 28, 2015

deleted. Dumb thought

aiki · Jul 28, 2015

Nicholas Deka said:
That's why I didn't really define free will in the beginning. No one (not even God) has 100% free will. It is stated explicitly in the Bible that he can't lie, for instance, so that isn't a choice he can make. But you're right about the arms thing. Physical constraints can impact a person's free will, why can't it? Who cares what it is that limits choices? The point is the lack of choice.

So the question is how much free will does any person have? There are lots of limits to my abilities that hamper my ability to do whatever I might will. Some physical, some intellectual. Morally, though, as long as I physically can or intelligently can, I have complete free will over that aspect of my actions.

What if I was omnibenevolent? What if I couldn't ever choose evil? Not even in my thoughts. Would you say that I have free will? To what degree?

Does God never have an evil thought in His mind? I don't see how, given His omniscience, one could make this assertion...

Selah.

aiki · Jul 28, 2015

Nicholas Deka said:
Zippy suggested this as well, but I wonder about how "certainly" it is that he wouldn't be doing something bad by not creating the universe. I mean, he had all that love to give, would it be wrong to keep it to himself? Wouldn't that be a waste if he didn't love anyone else?

For instance, imagine the world has no poverty whatsoever, so that everyone is comfortable and no one has a need that is not met. Some folk are rich, but no one is less than middle class, not even lower middle class: totally and completely without worry. If you won the lottery and became super-rich, should you keep all the money to yourself? No one needs any more money, they would all be just fine without you sharing. But shouldn't you anyways?

It has been said that "love is not love until you give it away." I'd agree with that. If we say God is perfectly loving (rather than all-loving, which He is not) how did He love truly before the universe and its occupants existed? The answer is that He loved Himself: God the Father loved God the Son and God the Holy Spirit and they loved Him and one another. And they all did so perfectly. There wasn't, then, a need for God to create an object for His love that He might properly and truly love.

Your analogy doesn't work, I'm afraid. It starts with a situation where there is an inequity (albeit more academic than material) and suggests that the right thing to do is to eradicate the inequity (even though it wouldn't make a significant difference to the well-being of those benefiting from the erasure of the inequity). But, prior to the beginning of the universe, God did not exist in a situation where there was such an inequity, so there was no need for God to act to resolve it.

Selah.

aiki · Jul 28, 2015

Nicholas Deka said:
You're reading that into my argument because you think free will is a good thing. I stated in an earlier post in response to someone else that I think it is a curse. I think things would be better if all people were incapable of doing evil as well.

I think free will is a very good thing - and a very necessary thing. If God wants us to love Him truly - which He does - He must give us the capacity to love Him freely; for that is the only way love is really love. It seems to me that the absence of true, real love would be an evil in itself. Perhaps the greatest of evils. It is out of genuine love that the very best things arise: Self-sacrifice, joy, mercy, grace, patience, integrity, bravery and so on are all contingent to one degree or another upon love. Would you wish to live in a world without love and all its positive attendant effects? I wouldn't. And neither, it seems, would God. Such a world, I believe, would be ultimately far more evil than one wherein love (and the freedom to choose) exists.

Selah.

Moral Orel · Jul 28, 2015

aiki said:
Does God never have an evil thought in His mind? I don't see how, given His omniscience, one could make this assertion...

Selah.

Knowing that evil exists and wanting evil to happen are two very different things. God cannot lie, but he must know what it is like to lie given his omniscience right?

Moral Orel · Jul 28, 2015

aiki said:
Your analogy doesn't work, I'm afraid. It starts with a situation where there is an inequity (albeit more academic than material) and suggests that the right thing to do is to eradicate the inequity (even though it wouldn't make a significant difference to the well-being of those benefiting from the erasure of the inequity). But, prior to the beginning of the universe, God did not exist in a situation where there was such an inequity, so there was no need for God to act to resolve it.

It's not about solving inequity, it's about making something better for someone else who is totally content. I think that non-existence would be the definition of absolute contentment. The question is whether you should do what you can to make someone happier than they are if they would be perfectly happy to stay at the same level of contentment.

aiki · Jul 28, 2015

Nicholas Deka said:
It's not about solving inequity, it's about making something better for someone else who is totally content. I think that non-existence would be the definition of absolute contentment. The question is whether you should do what you can to make someone happier than they are if they would be perfectly happy to stay at the same level of contentment.

Um, there was no one but God when the universe did not exist, so there was no obligation pressing upon God to make the circumstance of someone else better. As I said, God made the universe perfectly freely, under no compulsion to fulfill any need or obligation.

Contentment is a feeling, an experience, unique to humans. Therefore, if one does not exist, one cannot be content; contentment necessitates existence.

Selah.

Dialogist · Jul 28, 2015

I don't think it makes sense to anthropomorphize God.

elopez · Jul 28, 2015

Nicholas Deka said:
deleted. Dumb thought

Oh yeah? I missed it.

zippy2006 · Jul 28, 2015

Nicholas Deka said:
That's a tricky one though isn't it? Because angels are higher than humans on Earth, and when a human goes to heaven he will be higher than the angels.

Yes, that's a good point. Those who are saved and infused with God's own life will be raised higher than the angels. Yet ontologically speaking, angels are higher than humans.

Bad phrasing on my part. Creation is the ultimate good "action". Making it a vague noun like that would make God the ultimate good thing, and not his creation.

Okay.

I think the most comparable thing would surround abortion actually. This is going to feel a bit like an appeal to emotion, but bear with me. Imagine that abortion could only happen before the fetus has any nerve cells to feel any pain, and that's the only kind we're talking about.

So it would still be wrong to prevent a life from coming into the world even if that life feels no pain, and feels no sorrow for missing out on what life would be, would it not? Why is killing wrong if you aren't taking something from someone that they don't really have yet?

Sure, it would be wrong because you are taking innocent human life. I guess I don't see how this relates to sins of omission?

I wouldn't go that far. If we start in with what God "ought" to have done, then we have to consider the fact that God knows everything and everything has a purpose. For the sake of the argument, I am stating that of course what has been done is the best thing and being less than perfect would have some purpose that we may not understand.

Okay.

But if you have an unlimited supply of something, but keep it to yourself instead of sharing it, then wouldn't that be bad?

If I have an unlimited supply of food and others are starving then it would be bad. I don't think God's situation is analogous. God's act of creation couldn't be based on a kind of distributive justice, for nothing else even exists (not to mention the fact that the creator could not be indebted to his creatures or owe them something in strict justice).

Again, I'm just saying that what God did is good, and he couldn't have done better. I'm not getting into the "why didn't God do it this way" argument that I have been in in other threads. In the end you have to add up all the good that was done, and see what was ultimately better than if what was done wasn't done. It's more complicated than just suffering/happiness, that's why we have to use terms like good and bad, but there is still a balance that must be reached.

For instance, God can't smite someone just for fun, because that would be evil, but he can smite someone to save someone else. So we compare the smiting to the saving to determine a good act was done. Of course, we can't see every single impact of every single decision for us to make that measurement ourselves, so we are supposed to trust that it balances out on the side of good.

Okay, sure, that makes sense to me.

I am just saying that God didn't need to create. There wasn't some lack in God that creation fulfilled. Creation is good, but not necessary. Thus God's act of creation is an example of a free act.

Katallina · Jul 28, 2015

My favorite way to look at this is to consider the co-relation between Romans 9, Jeremiah 18 and the Book of Job.

In Romans 9:18, it is often assumed that Paul is telling us that God has had everything planned out about every minute of every day of everyone's life since before the dawn of time. By this logic, God is essentially watching his own personal collection of Human DVRs. But if you look at the whole of Romans 9, the fact that it ties in with Romans 10 and 11, and the fact that Paul references back to what happened in Jeremiah 18:4, a different interpretation can be found.

Essentially, in Jeremiah 18 God has Jeremiah go to someone working on a pot made of clay. The potter's original design is not working out the way he intended. Instead of throwing the clay out and deeming it useless, the potter ends up changing his plans and using the clay to make something else instead.

Enter the Book of Job. Essentially, this book can teach us three things:

(1) That God is NOT the cause of our suffering, evil, etc. Notice that while he permits Satan to test Job, he refuses to be the one to do this and tells Satan that HE must do it.

(2) That we, as humans, are often effected essentially by elements of spiritual warfare that we cannot see or understand.

(3) That even though we get frustrated, make up crazy theories to try and understand, and generally make fools of ourselves, God still ultimately loves us.

Therefore, my personal view--and to be 100% clear no one else needs to share this; it's just what I believe--is that God has free will, but his free will is impeded not by his own Goodness, but by the amount of free will he has bestowed upon humans, angels, etc. Could God have chosen another course? Absolutely! We read of him hardening Pharoah's heart in the Book of Exodus so that Pharoah will continue to resist Moses. God does this so that the Israelites will have sufficient faith to follow him. (And it is they that fail this, not He.) If God can harden a man's heart, there is little doubt that he could just as easily turn us into fleshy little puppets if he so desired.

But that's not what God wants. God's greatest desire is to have a close, loving relationship with his creations. The reason sin separates us from him, from how I've come to see it, is that God is so good and so loving and so wonderful that anything vile and nasty simply cannot withstand being in his presence. Being saved is not about being in some spiritual clique. It's about opening one's heart so that it can be healed of all ills that keep us from our one true purpose: to be eternally and purely enveloped in God's perfect, joyous, all consuming love.

I hope this helps. Definitely an interesting topic!

Moral Orel · Jul 29, 2015

zippy2006 said:
Sure, it would be wrong because you are taking innocent human life. I guess I don't see how this relates to sins of omission?

Well it's tricky finding an analogy that works between us and God. I mean, we can't instantly create something out of nothing like he can, so I had to consider some way that we determine whether a life is going to exist or not. If you take away all the pain and suffering of later term abortions than just say taking Plan B, then all you're left with is taking away that soul's right to existence. And that is still bad.

zippy2006 said:
If I have an unlimited supply of food and others are starving then it would be bad. I don't think God's situation is analogous. God's act of creation couldn't be based on a kind of distributive justice, for nothing else even exists (not to mention the fact that the creator could not be indebted to his creatures or owe them something in strict justice).

Take a look at the example I gave Aiki. In a situation where everyone has enough, I should still give some money away. It doesn't have to do with an even distribution, it has everything to do with not sharing at all. To more directly compare the situation, we are supposed to love God first, but we are also supposed to love our neighbor as well. God loves himself and the trinity and however that works to whomever, but then he should love more than himself shouldn't he? You don't think it's selfish to only love yourself? Even if you have to create more persons, shouldn't you in order to not keep the greatest thing ever all to yourself? I think that if God is love, as it says in the Bible, he would be compelled to love as much as possible, not just himself, but even stuff he would need to create just to love even more.

I suppose you may be right that such a being would be content to be alone with himself though and wouldn't feel compelled to make more persons. But then what after that? If you're right, which I still won't concede to as of yet, does that mean any other part of my argument is wrong? When he decides to create the universe, does it not have to be a certain way like I proposed in order for there to be that cosmic balance of perfection? Could God really make another totally different universe and plan for life that somehow comes to an exact balance of good/evil as we have now? Isn't there a "best" and only one "best"?

chilehed · Jul 29, 2015

Nicholas, I think your question involves a category error. Our will is only analogous to God's. We change from potentiality to actuality, and with our will freely choose which actions we take. But there is no potentiality with God: he is pure act, he does not change and all of his actions are eternal. So you can't talk about God's will and our wills as if they're the same thing.

Moral Orel · Jul 29, 2015

chilehed said:
Nicholas, I think your question involves a category error. Our will is only analogous to God's. We change from potentiality to actuality, and with our will freely choose which actions we take. But there is no potentiality with God: he is pure act, he does not change and all of his actions are eternal. So you can't talk about God's will and our wills as if they're the same thing.

This actually sounds as though it supports the theory though. There is no potentiality with God right? So there is no potential other actions that he could take? He acts according to his nature, which is love and goodness, without considering other possibilities that would be contradictory to his nature, so there is one and only one action that he will ever take. Now you may phrase it by saying it doesn't apply to him, but that also means that he doesn't have it.

God is spirit and isn't confined to our three dimensions of space either right? So we can't talk about him having a form because that just doesn't apply to something that is outside of the dimensions of space. But that also means he doesn't have one.

Moral Orel · Jul 29, 2015

Dialogist said:
I don't think it makes sense to anthropomorphize God.

Why not? The Bible does. If we didn't anthropomorphize God at all we would have no way of interacting with him in any way at all. He has to have a voice to hear him, he has to speak a language for us to write it down, etc...

Moral Orel · Jul 29, 2015

Katallina said:
My favorite way to look at this is to consider the co-relation between Romans 9, Jeremiah 18 and the Book of Job.

In Romans 9:18, it is often assumed that Paul is telling us that God has had everything planned out about every minute of every day of everyone's life since before the dawn of time. By this logic, God is essentially watching his own personal collection of Human DVRs. But if you look at the whole of Romans 9, the fact that it ties in with Romans 10 and 11, and the fact that Paul references back to what happened in Jeremiah 18:4, a different interpretation can be found.

Essentially, in Jeremiah 18 God has Jeremiah go to someone working on a pot made of clay. The potter's original design is not working out the way he intended. Instead of throwing the clay out and deeming it useless, the potter ends up changing his plans and using the clay to make something else instead.

Enter the Book of Job. Essentially, this book can teach us three things:

(1) That God is NOT the cause of our suffering, evil, etc. Notice that while he permits Satan to test Job, he refuses to be the one to do this and tells Satan that HE must do it.

(2) That we, as humans, are often effected essentially by elements of spiritual warfare that we cannot see or understand.

(3) That even though we get frustrated, make up crazy theories to try and understand, and generally make fools of ourselves, God still ultimately loves us.

Therefore, my personal view--and to be 100% clear no one else needs to share this; it's just what I believe--is that God has free will, but his free will is impeded not by his own Goodness, but by the amount of free will he has bestowed upon humans, angels, etc. Could God have chosen another course? Absolutely! We read of him hardening Pharoah's heart in the Book of Exodus so that Pharoah will continue to resist Moses. God does this so that the Israelites will have sufficient faith to follow him. (And it is they that fail this, not He.) If God can harden a man's heart, there is little doubt that he could just as easily turn us into fleshy little puppets if he so desired.

But that's not what God wants. God's greatest desire is to have a close, loving relationship with his creations. The reason sin separates us from him, from how I've come to see it, is that God is so good and so loving and so wonderful that anything vile and nasty simply cannot withstand being in his presence. Being saved is not about being in some spiritual clique. It's about opening one's heart so that it can be healed of all ills that keep us from our one true purpose: to be eternally and purely enveloped in God's perfect, joyous, all consuming love.

I hope this helps. Definitely an interesting topic!

I'm not sure how to respond to this since it is a lot about our free will, but not God's. It isn't that I disagree with you, I'm just not sure how to respond. But I also didn't want you to think that I didn't read it or that I am ignoring you.

Does God Have Free Will?

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