Does God at times override free will? If so, can we really call that free will?

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hmikell7

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There are several passages in the OT Bible where it talks about God hardening the hearts of man. He did it with Pharoah in Moses’ Egypt, and I know he did it with a bunch of the kings of the neighboring nations of Israel and Judah in the Books of Kings. This would seem to suggest that God will at times take deliberate steps to heavily influence decisions so as to reach a desired ending to events. Does this then disqualify the idea that we have free will?

I just don’t see how we can say that we have absolute free will when it seems that there’s evidence to show that that free will is at times overridden. Which in my mind: free will most of the time isn’t absolute free will at all.

You could of course make the argument that Pharaoah was free to go against his heart and make the right decision anyway, but that’s sort of an unrealistic expectation to have of someone who’s heart has been hardened to the point that he probably doesn’t even recognize it as the right thing to do anyway.
 
Never heard that before. That always bothered me. Thanks Deacon Jeff.
 
The Calvinists, of course, use that as a proof text for the non-existence of free will (I’ve seen some Thomists do it too).
 
Depends on what free will is.
So did Calvin believe in free will? That all depends on the meaning. If by free will one means that the unbeliever is in no way necessitated by sin, but has it in his power to either do good or evil toward God, then the answer is no. But if one means that the unbeliever is in total bondage to sin, sinning willfully yet under necessity (not coercion), making him utterly dependent upon God’s irresistible grace to liberate him, then Calvin is your man.
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www.thegospelcoalition.org

Did John Calvin Believe in Free Will?

Matthew Barrett discusses whether or not John Calvin believed in the concept of Free Will.
www.thegospelcoalition.org www.thegospelcoalition.org
 
I think when Scriptures say “God hardened the heart of men”, it means He turned away from them, not allowing His grace to operate on these men.

In the case of the pharaoh, it seems to me that God simply wouldn’t operate or allow anything that would make the pharaoh change his mind and let the hebrews go.

I think this way because only through God (and now His Church) we are able to turn our evil hearts into good hearts. Without them, I guess we just can’t.
 
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I guess I shouldn’t be surprised the Calvinists believe this, this is essentially the view my grandmother holds, to my unending chagrin.
 
Aulef said:
I think this way because only through God (and now His Church) we are able to turn our evil hearts into good hearts. Without them, I guess we just can’t.
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I’d disagree pretty heartily with this point. This would seem to indicate that it’s impossible to be a good person outside of Christianity, which just simply isn’t true. The Dalai Llama I think would be a good example. I can’t detect an ounce of evil in that man. I truly believe that he wants what’s best for humanity. The same goes for many Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, atheists, etc.
 
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God might use others outside His Church to do good, but only for His glory. He would never do it to promote other religions.
 
So what you’re saying is that anyone who belongs to another religion and actively attempts to bring others into their religion could not possibly be a good person?

Personally I don’t believe that it is necessary for a person to belong to my religion to be a good person, only that it can help a great deal in that endeavor.
 
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They could be good people in general.

But attracting people to other religions than the Catholic Church is a bad thing.
 
Well yes of course, and if you include pullling people into the Church as one of the qualifiers for a being a truly good person then I suppose you’re right.

I guess there’s nothing wrong with it if you do, just me personally I don’t include that as a qualifier. No one intentionally leads others into false religions, because everyone assumes that theirs is the true religion. For me it’s more about the person’s intent than it is the actual action, and if a person’s intent is to lead others into truth and if they meet the other qualifications for being considered a good person then I’m going to regard them as such. Obviously I would prefer that they lead people into actual truth, but this just is all the more reason for us to evangelize to others so as to bring them into the Church and get them to preach the actual truth
 
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hmikell7 said:
There are several passages in the OT Bible where it talks about God hardening the hearts of man. He did it with Pharoah in Moses’ Egypt, and I know he did it with a bunch of the kings of the neighboring nations of Israel and Judah in the Books of Kings. This would seem to suggest that God will at times take deliberate steps to heavily influence decisions so as to reach a desired ending to events. Does this then disqualify the idea that we have free will?

I just don’t see how we can say that we have absolute free will when it seems that there’s evidence to show that that free will is at times overridden. Which in my mind: free will most of the time isn’t absolute free will at all.

You could of course make the argument that Pharaoah was free to go against his heart and make the right decision anyway, but that’s sort of an unrealistic expectation to have of someone who’s heart has been hardened to the point that he probably doesn’t even recognize it as the right thing to do anyway.
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No answers on this are perfectly pat. The Church teaches thusly:
600 To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of “predestination”, he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace: “In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness.
 
God is really the only one with " Free Will " to do as He pleases for what ever reason at any time, and anyone who says anything against why God does what he does, is always wrong no matter what.

People only have a choice, people can not act with out impunity; we either choose to follow a law or we dont and in turn get punished for not following a law, be it a fair law or not.

Can God stack the cards against someone so that a certain outcome is achieved, sure, why cant God do that ? Now will that person choose to go the route that God has put in his or her path… who knows but if the choice is to go left but to go left you have to walk through a pit of snakes and burning fire, or go right, which will take you 40 years to get to the final destination versus left which will take maybe 2 years but will probably kill you by the time ya get to the destination… dunno…

Though the hardening of hearts is interesting because if God does or did or can harden someones heart to the point it forces the person to do something immoral or wrong so that in turn God has this desired out come for the better good, is that person in turn damned by God ?

Same thing for Judas Iscariot I suppose, I mean what was the big temptation for him to turn on Jesus ? 30 pieces of silver ? I mean did 30 pieces of silver, set someone up to be rich for the rest of their life back then ? People kill each other for less money today I suppose , so maybe it was more jealousy than money, or what ever the technical reasoning has been reached on what it means that Judas either sided with satan or that satan entered / possesed him. what ever…
It does come back to that Judas served a purpose. If Judas had not betrayed Jesus then what ??? I suppose a logical out come would be that the leaders of the time would have eventually found another person to entrap Jesus, or find an excuse to murder him.

But again, what if they didn’t ? What if the leaders of Jesus time, instead of serving their purpose in life … to as they say crack a few eggs to make an omlette , what if they werent jealous ? What if the leaders of Jesus time were just not interested in Jesus, ignored him, werent jealous and didnt feel threatened ?

An in turn didn’t murder Jesus…

Dunno hmikell7…

what I do know is i personally do not like the Old Testament.
 
Alright. You made a good point.

However, you just reminded of the Roman Catechism regarding evil acts and good intentions. I’ll just quote what the Magisterium says.
IN BRIEF
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1757 The object, the intention, and the circumstances make up the three “sources” of the morality of human acts.
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1758 The object chosen morally specifies the act of willing accordingly as reason recognizes and judges it good or evil.
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1759 “An evil action cannot be justified by reference to a good intention” (cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Dec. praec. 6). The end does not justify the means.
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1760 A morally good act requires the goodness of its object, of its end, and of its circumstances together.
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1761 There are concrete acts that it is always wrong to choose, because their choice entails a disorder of the will, i.e., a moral evil. One may not do evil so that good may result from it.
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You and I seem to be interpreting this passage very differently. The way I see this is that it is saying that an action can still be evil even if it is committed with the purest of intentions. This is fine, I agree with this wholeheartedly. Nowhere does it say (at least not in the excerpt you posted) that a person is not a good person because they commit evil acts. If that were the case then you couldn’t call any person on this earth a ‘good person’, for the simple reason that everyone who has ever lived has sinnned.

You can commit an evil act and still be a good person (provided your intentions are generally pure), at least in my humble opinion. If not, then we’re all terrible terrible people, and good people are as fictional as unicorns or leprechauns.

Also wouldn’t the words of the Roman Catechism be kind of moot in light of the fact that it was replaced by the CCC in 1992? Or have I got that wrong? Are we still under the Roman Catechism as well as the CCC?

Essentially if your intentions are to lead people into truth, to place others ahead of yourself, to seek for the betterment of mankind, then I’m going to consider you to be a good person, and pretty good company to keep. Even if the truth your teaching isn’t actually the truth, at least you’re trying

@Aulef
 
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First reply and somehow I didn’t see it until just now. That actually helps a lot, and pretty much resolves any issues I was having with the idea of free will. Thanks 🙂
 
I’ve run into some Thomists who were indistinguishable from Calvinists…
 
In response to the title of your post, I don’t believe any theologian would deny that God can move a person with an efficacious grace that will infallibly obtain the effect, an irresistible grace that would override the resistance of the human free will. I would not call such a grace a bad thing, but it does seem to make the free will a secondary like freedom and not autonomous. Such a grace can be called an extraordinary or miraculous grace according to God’s extraordinary providence bestowed according to his wisdom and purpose. Extraordinary or miraculous in contrast to God’s ordinary providence in bestowing grace in accord with the nature of things such that a human’s free will can either resist or not resist God’s grace. Normally, humans with their free will need to cooperate with God’s grace. Miracles by definition are events that happen beyond the ordinary course and the laws of the nature of things and seem to be rather rare events from our perspective.

From God’s perspective who governs and exercises control over the world and all its events in a supernatural and invisible manner (divine providence) as the first cause, ‘miracles of nature’ so to speak may be rather common. I mean, have you ever experienced in your life that God may have saved you from some danger or evil? I have, for example, just missing from being involved in some bad accidents on the road. As we learn from Holy Scripture and Jesus’ teaching, God’s exercises a special providence over those people who are trying to do his will by keeping his commandments. Grace itself is supernatural and only comes from God himself and anything we do in the way of the salvation of our souls is preceded by God’s grace which is called prevenient grace which is followed by what is called cooperating grace though it is really one grace.

St Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus was extraordinary and miraculous. But, after this event, I don’t believe St Paul was under any compulsion from God or his grace to remain in His grace without having to freely cooperate with that grace. St Paul himself says:

‘For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me’ (1 Cor. 15: 9-10).

And also:

‘Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure’ (Philippians 2: 12-13).

If God works in some ( how many I don’t know) people’s conversions through an extraordinary or ‘miraculous’ grace,’ though not necessarily an event like that of St Paul’s conversion, I don’t believe at all such people are under any compulsion from God or his grace to continue or persevere in his grace without freely cooperating with it. Consider what happened to Solomon in his later years.
 
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