Will You Give Up Your Free Will to Rid the World of Evil?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most common objections to belief in God is the problem of evil.  One form of the problem of evil sounds like this: “I can’t believe in a God who allows children to be sexually molested.  If there was a God, He wouldn’t allow such things to occur.”

I can understand the objection, and it’s an objection that all Christians have struggled with one time or another.  However, there is a response to this challenge.

The sexual molester has free will and has chosen to exercise that free will to commit an act of evil against another person.  In fact, every human being has free will and makes choices every day to do good or evil.  God has given each of us this power of choice.

The objector wants God to take away the power of free choice from the molester to prevent him from doing evil.  Even though this crime is particularly heinous, the objector must surely want God to stop a variety of other acts of evil as well.  After all, why stop with child molestation when genocide, rape, and torture go on every day?

The only way for God to stop all of these crimes, these acts of evil, is to remove the power of free will from every person.  Some of you might say, “Wait a minute!  I don’t commit these horrible crimes.  Why do I have to lose my free will?”  You may not commit these kinds of crimes, but you commit acts of evil every day, most likely.  They are just more subtle.

Do you lie?  Do you steal?  Do you gossip about other people?  Are you committing adultery? If you don’t think that you ever do evil, just ask your spouse or a sibling.  I’m sure they can provide some examples to you.  The truth is that we all do bad things and that we are all capable of horrible crimes.

So, if God is going to rid the world of moral evil he is going to have to take away every person’s free will first.  Would you be willing to lose your power of free will to rid the world of evil?  If not, then you can hardly blame God for the evil in the world.  You must blame yourself.  After all, when given the chance to rid the world of evil, you declined!

If you would give up your free will, your ability to choose between good and evil, then I encourage you to become a Christian, because that’s exactly what Christians, in a sense, are doing.  Christians acknowledge that the world would be a much better place if we would follow the one man who consistently chose good for his entire human life, Jesus Christ.

When we submit to him, we are submitting our power of free choice to his direction and instruction.  We are saying to Jesus, “We want to do what you did.  We want to choose the way you chose, because you always chose good and never chose evil!”  Instead of every day demanding that our own choices be paramount, we strive to subject our free will to him, and he gives us the power to live as he did.

Our reward for submitting our free will to Jesus results in our spending eternity in heaven.  In heaven, our free will is perfected, as we will always and forever only choose the good.

Does God Know What I Will Freely Do? Part 2

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Yesterday, I posted on the issue of free will and God’s knowledge of of human free acts in the future.  This is an area the church has grappled with for centuries.  But how do other major worldviews deal with this issue?

Most atheists think they can avoid the issue by denying that God (or divine fate) exists.  Unfortunately, once you banish an ultimate mind as the source of the universe, you are only left with impersonal physical laws operating on matter and energy.

So free will, for the atheist, is just an illusion that our highly evolved brain gives us.  Fundamentally, we are completely determined in our actions and choices by chemistry and physics, by the mechanistic movement of atomic particles .  Free will, under atheism, does not exist.  So the atheist does not really solve the problem of fate and free will.  He just rids us of both, thus denying that the problem is real.

Monistic Pantheists argue that all of earthly life is just an illusion, that we are actually part of one ultimate, impersonal being.  When we realize that we are part of this one ultimate being, the illusion of our individual lives ends as we merge with the ultimate being.

In this sense, our individual free will is also an illusion because we, ourselves, are an illusion.  The only thing that really exists is this ultimate, impersonal being.  Their solution to the problem is to affirm divine fate at the complete expense of human free will or even true human existence.

Oddly enough, even though the theistic God seems to cause problems with the existence of human free will, without a personal God, free will cannot exist!

The Christian concept of God allows for mind to precede and transcend matter, which allows human free will to exist, in opposition to atheism (who only believe matter exists).

Christians also recognize that individual people exist apart from God, in opposition to pantheism.  The concept of human free will cannot exist without individual humans truly existing.  This the Pantheists deny.

Even though we Christians struggle with this doctrine, as do other theistic religions, at the end of the day a personal God is the best ground and source for free will.  Get rid of God, and free will quickly vanishes.

Does God Know What I Will Freely Do? Part 1

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Some people get hung up on the idea that God can know, for sure, what I will freely do in the future.  Their argument goes something like this:  if whatever God knows will certainly occur (as virtually all Christians agree), then either I am not free to act or God does not know what free acts I will perform in the future.

Some Christians take one horn of the dilemma and claim that humans are not really free because human free will would spell the end of God’s infallible knowledge and sovereignty over all creation.  They severely throttle back the meaning of free will to the point that most people would not recognize it any more.  These folks understand humans to be far more similar to animals, operating on instincts, impulses, and desires – all properties that God exercises direct control over.

Others grab the second horn of the dilemma and claim that God does not really know what free creatures will do in the future.  At best, he is making educated guesses, but he cannot know, for sure, what humans will do.  The future free acts of humans are unknown, even to God, until they are actually executed.

I, and most traditional Christians, reject both of these positions.  The Bible seems to clearly teach that God does infallibly know the future, including all free acts that will be performed, and that humans possess a robust free will.  Admittedly, it is difficult to hold these two concepts without tension, but Christian theologians have always done so.

Do we know precisely how God’s infallible knowledge of future free acts coordinates with human free will?  No, I don’t think so.  We always run into the intractable problem of an infinite being interacting with finite creatures.  God knows everything we will do and we are free to do those things, but I don’t think we can ever explain exactly how it works.  There is a mystery to it, but there is no contradiction.

It isn’t just Christians that have had to deal with this issue.  Throughout history, great thinkers have struggled with the seeming paradox of fate and freedom.  If all things are decreed as part of an unchangeable fate, then how is it that we humans are free to do anything?  Rather than toss one of these notions aside, many thinkers have proposed solutions to retain both realities – that some sort of divine fate exists along with human free will.  Two viewpoints – atheism and pantheism – have found other ways around the problem.

Check back tomorrow to see if their worldviews better deal with this problem.

Can Man Choose God On His Own?

No.  The Bible seems to clearly teach that God must call on man before man will respond.  Original sin has caused man to reject God without God’s intervention.  Jesus said, ““This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him” (John 6:65).  The Psalmist said, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Ps. 51:5).  God must initiate salvation because man cannot.

So does God intervene to convict all men of their sins and call them toward him?  Yes, he does.  All men are given the chance to accept or reject God because God calls all men.  According to 2 Pet. 3:9, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”  According to 1 Tim. 2:3-4, “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”

God will freely offer the gift of salvation to everyone, but each person must decide to accept or reject this free gift.  God must call us first, as we are incapable of inclining our wills toward God on our own.

The belief that mankind is born innocent of original sin and can freely choose God without God first initiating salvation is called Pelagianism.  This heresy was condemned by the Council of Carthage (A.D. 416-418).

Can God Be Sovereign and Man Be Free at the Same Time?

Yes.  There is absolutely nothing contradictory about an infinite God being in control of every little electron in the universe, but creating creatures in that same universe who have a special power of free will.  God can accomplish everything he wants to accomplish in human affairs through human free will.

While he commands volcanoes to erupt and water to flow as inanimate objects, he commands humans as free creatures.  He works in coordination with human freedom, not without it or against it.

Philosophers refer to this as primary and secondary causation.  God is the primary cause, and he uses the secondary cause of human free will to accomplish his purposes.

It’s ironic to me that some of my 5-point Calvinist friends say that allowing man to choose takes away from the glory of God.

The reality is that claiming God cannot create free creatures and still bring his plans to fruition is really the position that takes away from God’s glory.

Smoke that in your theological pipe for a minute.

Does Man Have Free Will?

Let’s define free will first.  I define free will as the human ability to make contrary choices or decide between multiple options.  Free will is the power of self-determination.  It gives human beings the power to make real moral decisions.

Some Christians deny that humans have free will because they say it diminishes God’s sovereignty.  If humans have the ability to choose, then God cannot be in control of human choices, they argue.  But this is just not so.  God could have created humans with the power of free will, and also have known from the beginning of time exactly what humans would do with their free choices, because everything that humans will do pre-existed in the mind of God “before” it was actualized by God.  God wrote us in as characters in a cosmic drama, but as characters who make real choices.  We are not rocks or robots, but people with free will.

Since God is the cause of free will in humans, then he absolutely has complete control over it in the sense that nothing has happened or will ever happen without his knowledge and determination.  God knowingly determines and determinedly knows every choice we will ever make.  Does this take away free will?

No.  The church, with little exception, almost universally held that God is sovereign over everything and that man is free, until the 1500’s.  During the Reformation, some of the reformers took the position that man cannot be free because it necessarily follows that God is not sovereign, but as we’ve seen, that is not true.  God is still in control, even with free creatures wandering around.  Even today, most Christians still hold that man has free will.

How exactly does God have control over everything, but humans possess free will?  Bottom line: we don’t know exactly how this works because we are dealing with a being, God, who exists outside of time and space.  God’s interactions with humans will necessarily remain mysterious, but the Bible clearly teaches both the sovereignty of God and man’s free will.  A sound Christian theology will retain both of these teachings.

Who or What Is the Cause of Moral Evil?

In a previous post, we showed that God is not the direct cause of moral evil.  But if God is not the cause, then who is?

Christians answer that free creatures are the direct cause of moral evil.  How does this work?  God gave human beings the power of free will.  Free will is defined as self-determinism.  It is the ability to make choices that are not forced by an external state or condition.

Free will is a good power that God gave human beings.  Nobody marches against free will.  In fact, to argue against free will is to use free will!  Every one of us is happy that God has given us this power.  It was supposedly Socrates who said, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.”

But there was a price to be paid for giving finite creatures free will.  By giving us this power, God introduced the possibility that we would abuse or misuse this good power.  According to Christianity, that is exactly what happened.  When given the choice to love God or to reject God, humans rejected him.  This is known as the Fall.  Ever since the Fall, humans have been actualizing moral evil upon themselves and one another.  Every person who searches his heart for even a moment realizes that they are tinged or stained with evil.  We think evil thoughts and we often act on those evil thoughts.

God is responsible for creating the possibility of evil, but free creatures are responsible for making it actual.

One final note.  Many people, when they hear this argument, blame God for giving humans free will.  They argue that he could have done better.  I’ve noticed, however, that the very people who blame God for allowing evil to exist refuse to relinquish their own free will in order to make the world a better place.  The truth is, almost every person would rather live in this world which contains both good and evil than live in a world where they aren’t free.  Until the critic of God agrees to be the first to give up his free will, his protests ring hollow.