Does God have free will?

[Mystophilus]

bogeyjlg:

What I said was God can do no evil because He is all good. If God does something, it is good.

These are two very different statements. The latter is a declaration of the nature of God’s actions: whenever they happen, they are thus. The former is a declaration of the nature of God: God cannot do this because God is thus.

The former statement is inconsistent with omnipotence, because an omnipotent God can do anything. The latter is not, because it makes reference only to God’s habits, not God’s capabilities.

My reason for going through all of this is that I would like to suggest that God can do evil, and that this capacity is very important. To put it simply, were God unable to do evil, God would not have free will, and would be merely a robot. If God is able to do evil, then the fact that God consistently chooses to do good is all the more important.

This is significant, because God is the ultimate autocrat. Acton’s comment was inexact: it is not power which corrupts, it is lack of accountability. God is not required to be accountable to anyone; who is mightier than God? God could be evil, and no one would have the power to punish God for it. However, God freely chooses not to do evil, and, in my heretical opinion, also freely chooses to be accountable, hence the fact that God permits dissent.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Myst, where I differ from you is that you seem to have a dualist approach regarding “good” and “evil”, as if they were two equal things.

I believe that a better way of looking at the question is that there exists 'good" and “spoiled good”–IOW, evil.

There is nothing “evil” that exists separately from the good. The good is the original (God created the world, and it was good. . .says the Scripture). NOT “God created the world, and it was good and evil”.

Think about it. Can you think of ANY evil which is independent from a good? Can you think of any “evil” which came FIRST, BEFORE the corollary good?

Evil is always inferior, lesser, and weaker. To even consider the possibility of the Supreme Being having it as an “option” insults said Creator’s intelligence. . .

 

[Mystophilus]

Tantum ergo:

Myst, where I differ from you is that you seem to have a dualist approach regarding “good” and “evil”, as if they were two equal things.

I believe that a better way of looking at the question is that there exists 'good" and “spoiled good”–IOW, evil.

I am not sure that I would describe them as “equal”, any more than that other dyad of light and dark are equal. Nevertheless, I think that, in both cases, we are looking at two ends of one cline, which might then make evil your “spoiled good”.

There is nothing “evil” that exists separately from the good. The good is the original (God created the world, and it was good. . .says the Scripture). NOT “God created the world, and it was good and evil”.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” (Genesis 1:1-2)
Was the darkness good?

Having moved the idea of “good” and “evil” from the sphere of actions to the sphere of entities, I am not sure that the same words have quite the same application. As for the separation between evil and good, if they are two ends of a cline, then neither is ever really separate from the other, in which case there is always the possibility for something which is good to become evil.

Evil is always inferior, lesser, and weaker. To even consider the possibility of the Supreme Being having it as an “option” insults said Creator’s intelligence. . .

This is a question of general capability, not one of intelligence only, but I would have to say that any being which was not capable of conceiving of the possibility of performing evil acts was not a very intelligent being.

 

[Nan_S]

God is completely omniscient - He already knows everything that all beings on earth and in heaven (including Himself) have done, are doing, and will do.

Our omniscient God created Linear Time, and pre-existed omnisciently when Linear Time did not exist - before He created time, He had already simultaneously experienced all of eternity, past, present, and future.

Is is possible for a being who already knows everything he will do, and the results of those actions, to have Free Will? Yes, because God could not give to us something He did not also already have.

However, our limited human understanding of Free Will is tainted by being ourselves constrained by Linear Time and being ignorant of our futures. We don’t know our futures, so we consider the future to be an unwritten slate.

More importantly, we tend to impose the restriction on defining Free Will in terms of Linear Time, which is to say that if absolute knowledge of the future exists, whatever we do must be therefore pre-ordained or predestined, and therefore not Free sofar as God is concerned, and only an illusion of freedom between us.

That is man’s Linear Time perspective, not God’s omniscient outside-of-linear-time perspective.

Isn’t this fun?

 

[The_Augustinian]

As usual, the problem is one of definition of terms.

True free-will is not the ability to choose between good and evil. Rather, it is the ability to choose what is good. Evil and sin have harmed our freedom, our ability to reason and use our consciences. Therefore, the “free” man who freely chooses evil is destroying his own will. Remember, we cannot choose God of our own free will, if not for His grace.

God, who is not burdened by evil, is fully able to choose good. In fact, God *is *good. Therefore God is the only one who is truly free.

 

[fix]

The Augustinian:

As usual, the problem is one of definition of terms.

True free-will is not the ability to choose between good and evil. Rather, it is the ability to choose what is good. Evil and sin have harmed our freedom, our ability to reason and use our consciences. Therefore, the “free” man who freely chooses evil is destroying his own will. Remember, we cannot choose God of our own free will, if not for His grace.

God, who is not burdened by evil, is fully able to choose good. In fact, God *is *good. Therefore God is the only one who is truly free.

Right. We are free to choose good. Choosing evil is not authentic freedom, but license. God has an authentically free will.

 

[FCEGM]

Prodigal_Son:

Answer: yes.

Reference: Jesus in the desert. The story would be meaningless, if there wasn’t the possibility of Jesus giving in.

Just a personal belief, not a theologically rigorous evaluation.

Christ as a healer must have what He is going to share, i.e., He must be fully, i.e., perfectly human and Divine or He could not heal us. He gives us the health, as it were, He has. If He did not have this health we, being sick, could not receive healing.

He therefore has the fully human nature, i.e., one not wounded by sin. His humanity is therefore graced and in harmony with the Divine. For us to be tending toward sin is for us not to be fully human; therefore we are not the vantage point of healing of our wounded nature but He is. If follows that for Him to heal our infirmity He must bring health to our infirmity. We can’t give what we don’t have, so He must have this health of being fully human, i.e., in harmony with God in order to give it to us by grace. He therefore could not sin, which makes him perfectly human, not less human.

We must realize that it is abnormal for human nature to suffer and die. Our Lord chose to suffer and die; temptation for Him is not exactly the same as for us. The world and the devil would tempt Him from outside, but there was no concupiscence in Him that could pull Him towards sin within His humanity. What He experienced in the desert and in the Passion is the natural repulsion of the flesh which ought not to die, is not supposed to die, to undergo that separation of body and soul.

Since He was fully human, He would have felt this separation and its preliminaries more than we do. Moreover, He would have felt the abandonment of His Father more than we do (since He was closer to Him than we ever were or could be). It is because He could not sin that when he undergoes this separation of death He experiences “temptation” in a way as we do. But in another way He doesn’t; He was not bent towards sin. He would not have experienced inordinate lust or greed, or gluttony, etc… His trials came from outside though they are experienced inside, e.g., suffering and death. While He has consciousness of being the Son, in His sacred humanity He is able to suffer from forces outside Himself (hunger, thirst, obduracy of others, etc.); and as Man He acquired sensible knowledge, had human emotions and thus could feel sorrow and fear; so He brings what He encounters in His Body to His Father because He is in relation to Him and is the Perfect Man at prayer, submitting His human will (Christ Jesus has two wills, Divine and Human) to the Will of the Father.

 

[seagal]

Does God have the ability to make choices? Or must He always do what is right?

These questions are not mutually exclusive. As other posters have pointed out, God has made countless choices that have been documented, and countless more that we will never know about. And He must always do what is right because that is His essence, His being. You can’t separate God from goodness - He is goodness.

A poster in another forum made the statement that evil does not exist in an of itself, it is just the absence of good. He or she (can’t remember who it was, sorry) used the analogy of turning on a lightbulb. Where the light shines there is no darkness. Can the lightbulb “shine” darkness? No, because it’s essence is light. Darkness is merely the absence of light.

Since we know God is good, and we know God is perfect, then we conclude that God is perfectly good. There is no evil in Him.

Take your question to the logical conclusion, that God could do something evil. How could we ever trust Him?

 

[tomem]

Mystophilus:

So you do not believe that God is omnipotent, then. I find this interesting, because I could not worship a God whom I did not understand as being omnipotent, since such a being would merely be a more powerful version of me.

“Let us make him in our own image,after our likeness.” Gn 1:26

That is exactly who we are, an image of the one Holy, Omnipotent God. He even said so. We just an imperfect image as a photograph is an imperfect image of a friend or loved one. It looks like them, but it isn’t them.

 

[BayCityRickL]

InSearchOfGod:

. . . If free will is the ability to choose between right and wrong, to make moral decisions for ourselves, and God must always do good (God can not do evil, nor would He ever want to do evil, nor does He have the ability to want to do evil). So God does not have free will. . . .

Freedom does not consist in the choice of doing good or evil.

The Bible describes sin as bondage and slavery, the most vivid examples of which are the periods in which the nation of Israel was enslaved in Egypt and in Babylon.

Committing sin is like putting the handcuffs of Hell on oneself. Mortal sin is like throwing away the key.

It is not in the nature of God to sin, God is incapable of sinning. Besides God wouldn’t need to sin, with so many of us sinners around.