Does God have free will?

[NeuralMonk]

Show me where in the real world two truths are contradictory.

Thus it would make sense that only actuality exists, not potential, and therefore free will does not exist.

The issue is not two truths in contradiction, the issue is “only actuality exists.” That statement assumes a fact not in evidence which cannot and is not known.

If actuality is not the only existence, then there could be actualities not known which contradict the perceived truth in this existence. Even that point cannot be known, so any argument based on that assumption is a guess, not fact.

However, this thing we do know, God is known and has reveled himself to mankind. That is a much more tangible fact. Since God has made himself known, He has declared his free will and that free will chooses love for mankind, His creation. We also know that love, as God defines love, is a very, very good thing, because God is good.

 

[blase6]

The issue is not two truths in contradiction, the issue is “only actuality exists.” That statement assumes a fact not in evidence which cannot and is not known.

If actuality is not the only existence, then there could be actualities not known which contradict the perceived truth in this existence. Even that point cannot be known, so any argument based on that assumption is a guess, not fact.

However, this thing we do know, God is known and has reveled himself to mankind. That is a much more tangible fact. Since God has made himself known, He has declared his free will and that free will chooses love for mankind, His creation. We also know that love, as God defines love, is a very, very good thing, because God is good.

Rejecting that a contradiction can exist is necessary for pretty much any rational argument.

 

[NeuralMonk]

Rejecting that a contradiction can exist is necessary for pretty much any rational argument.

Your statement once again is making the assumption that this existence is the only existance.

I agree that a contradiction is a combination of statements, ideas, or features of a discussion which are opposed to one another within the same construct. I agree that having the agreement of the definition is key to rational arguments. However, what I just agreed, contradicts (in this existence) what you stated above because you fail to see that your world is not the only world.

What I know is contradictory is placing God into our existance and I know that avoiding that contradiction is key to rational discussions regarding Him.

Since you fail to yield to my point about your finite knowledge of alternate existences, and that God may be in one of them, I must assume one of two things:

1. You have knowledge beyond most all other human beings you don’t share.
2. You have a desire to be contradictory.

This think I know, God does exist outside our context, He is good, and He revealed he has free will.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I did not mean that God considers “choices” within a sense of time. I was simply stating that it seems that God’s eternal act is necessitated by his nature. Saying God “can” or “cannot” do something is meaningless, because possibility/potential are not found to exist apart from human ideas, but actuality is readily observed. Thus it would make sense that only actuality exists, not potential, and therefore free will does not exist.

If you cannot understand it, just accept and believe because God has revealed it and the Church teaches it as something we must believe.

Pax
Linus2nd

 

[blase6]

If you cannot understand it, just accept and believe because God has revealed it and the Church teaches it as something we must believe.

Pax
Linus2nd

I believe it against reason because I want to be happy. I could not be profoundly happy if I did not believe I had personal freedom. But my belief is shaky simply because it appears contradictory to how the world is.

 

[blase6]

Your statement once again is making the assumption that this existence is the only existance.

I agree that a contradiction is a combination of statements, ideas, or features of a discussion which are opposed to one another within the same construct. I agree that having the agreement of the definition is key to rational arguments. However, what I just agreed, contradicts (in this existence) what you stated above because you fail to see that your world is not the only world.

What I know is contradictory is placing God into our existance and I know that avoiding that contradiction is key to rational discussions regarding Him.

Since you fail to yield to my point about your finite knowledge of alternate existences, and that God may be in one of them, I must assume one of two things:

1. You have knowledge beyond most all other human beings you don’t share.
2. You have a desire to be contradictory.

This think I know, God does exist outside our context, He is good, and He revealed he has free will.

I did not assume that this existence is the only instance. I simply stated that in world A, the statements “X is false” and “X is true” cannot both be true if they refer to exactly the same thing in every regard. The idea of alternate worlds we do not have knowledge or experience of is purely speculation, and really not relevant.

 

[Tomdstone]

I did not assume that this existence is the only instance. I simply stated that in world A, the statements “X is false” and “X is true” cannot both be true if they refer to exactly the same thing in every regard. The idea of alternate worlds we do not have knowledge or experience of is purely speculation, and really not relevant.

Take for example the statement: this is my car.
It is both true and false.
It is true since I have the title to the car.
It is false, because the bank has a lien on the car.

 

[fide]

Does God have free will? That is, could God have chosen otherwise? Chosen not to create the world (as traditional theism holds)?

God’s “choice” (if that is the right word) to create the world would have to be an eternal choice because God is eternal. And if God’s choice to create the world was eternal, then the world would be co-eternal with God. IOW, there would never be a time when the world did not exist even though the world exists in time and God outside of it.

There appears to be two paradoxes (or contradictions) here:

1. How could God have chosen otherwise if his choice was eternal?
2. How can the world exist everlastingly in time? This would seem to imply an infinite regress?

God’s will is completely free to will for good. This is what free will means: freedom to will good, freedom from willing evil. The Catechism can teach much wisdom concerning this:

I. FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY

1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.
1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.
1733 The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to “the slavery of sin.”<Cf. Rom 6:17>

Thus God in the perfect freedom of His perfect holiness, having no darkness in Him at all, is free to will only good, free from ever willing any evil.

There is still an infinity of goods that God can will! He is not “constrained” by His freedom for good and from evil! For example, God can will an imperfect creation that He has designed and provided for such that it can progress in time toward perfection. He can will an infinity of time-bound creations to succeed one another, each a variation on the theme - or very different in theme while still being a good.

 

[blase6]

Take for example the statement: this is my car.
It is both true and false.
It is true since I have the title to the car.
It is false, because the bank has a lien on the car.

Those examples are not contradictory. What would be a contradiction is to say that you both have and have not the title to the car.

 

[NeuralMonk]

The idea of alternate worlds we do not have knowledge or experience of is purely speculation, and really not relevant.

Unless they are revealed, then considering the source, one has to place importance on the revelation. In the case of God, and his plane of existence, it is highly relevant. This is especially true in a discussion about God.

 

[DanAl]

I’ve already furnished you with an explanation. God’s decision to create the world is eternal because God is eternal. This implies that the creation is co-eternal with God. It’s that simple.

I will not go in depth as to to how you misuse the word must (in another post directed to me) or the ambiguity behind “eternal.”

Even if God’s choices were timeless, it does not follow that he could not had done otherwise, in epistemic, logical, or even metaphysical senses.

Asserting that there are only two options to willing (determinism, or chance) goes against common sense and morality.

I have yet to see an argument that explains away this “illusion,” Ambiguity follows when you speak of libertarian free-will and what it means to have free-will, what is libertarian free-will?

1-Freedom to do otherwise?

2- Freedom of indifference?

3-Freedom between what is obligatory morally and is naturally good?

Lastly, why should God’s free-will be like human free-will?

 

[NeuralMonk]

I will not go in depth as to to how you misuse the word must (in another post directed to me) or the ambiguity behind “eternal.”

Even if God’s choices were timeless, it does not follow that he could not had done otherwise, in epistemic, logical, or even metaphysical senses.

Asserting that there are only two options to willing (determinism, or chance) goes against common sense and morality.

I have yet to see an argument that explains away this “illusion,” Ambiguity follows when you speak of libertarian free-will and what it means to have free-will, what is libertarian free-will?

1-Freedom to do otherwise?

2- Freedom of indifference?

3-Freedom between what is obligatory morally and is naturally good?

Lastly, why should God’s free-will be like human free-will?

Dan,
This is a good start, however, all these questions must be posed in context.

For those who are in the current time journey, free-will is only something to be understood in the context of what is yet to occur. You cannot prove free-will (in any definition) to events which are in our past. Example: I chose my wife as my bride. That choice was an exercise in my free will in 1990, but now, that choice is captured in time like the snapshots we have which represent that event. I cannot state that my choice to choose her is a current act of free will today because it is a completed and closed event (although, I would do it again for the joy).

To ask about God, who dwells outside time (which is contained in Him), if He has the ability to make a choice in what we might consider his future (but is really in the eternal now), we have evidence from Him. He clearly states that He has not only the dominion but also has the power to choose this “future” event and shape it to the outcome He desires regardless of the choices of other more finite beings within that context. He is the context.

An old example I have used goes like this:
You are at a busy intersection. You have choices before you as to when or even if to cross the street. However even though you make your choice, you don’t have the ability to control the truck which hits you regardless of your decision. Causality plays a part in our free will choices.

But with God, He is the causality where He chooses. He doesn’t choose the bus or influence our choice, but can either remove the bus’s molecules (causing it to pass through you, if He desires), BUT also heal your body fully in moments after you have been crushed (been there/done that option myself). The beauty of this is that we still experience the time slices and our choices, but He who is outside time and our existence has the ability and freedom to alter events to HIS-story.

God - the causer of all causation seated outside His created time outside the eternal now in an existance He freely chooses. aka Jesus who is our reference version of the same.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I believe it against reason because I want to be happy. I could not be profoundly happy if I did not believe I had personal freedom. But my belief is shaky simply because it appears contradictory to how the world is.

We believe it because God has revealed it, not because we are capable of understanding it. None of us understand it really. How can we understand an Intellect that just knows, wills, and does. How can we understand the Virgin birth, the Incarnation, the Resurrection? We accept them on faith because God has revealed them all. And God does not lie.

Pax
Linus2nd

 

[blase6]

We believe it because God has revealed it, not because we are capable of understanding it. None of us understand it really. How can we understand an Intellect that just knows, wills, and does. How can we understand the Virgin birth, the Incarnation, the Resurrection? We accept them on faith because God has revealed them all. And God does not lie.

Pax
Linus2nd

A contradiction is not beyond reason. It is opposed to reason. Any Catholic philosopher would agree with that. If it appears to be a contradiction, then I can only hope someone can clear it up for me. So far no one has because their arguments for free will have been insufficient.
It seems that whenever an argument comes up against free will, you can only say that it is Church teaching and that one must accept it. If you would argue philosophically about it, maybe I could see that it is at least non-contradictory.

 

[fide]

A contradiction is not beyond reason. It is opposed to reason. Any Catholic philosopher would agree with that. If it appears to be a contradiction, then I can only hope someone can clear it up for me. So far no one has because their arguments for free will have been insufficient.
It seems that whenever an argument comes up against free will, you can only say that it is Church teaching and that one must accept it. If you would argue philosophically about it, maybe I could see that it is at least non-contradictory.

You wrote, " possibility/potential are not found to exist apart from human ideas, but actuality is readily observed. Thus it would make sense that only actuality exists, not potential, and therefore free will does not exist."

Potential for change, for growth and development, for maturation must exist or else nothing could change. But every living thing we observe does exhibit change.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

A contradiction is not beyond reason. It is opposed to reason. Any Catholic philosopher would agree with that. If it appears to be a contradiction, then I can only hope someone can clear it up for me. So far no one has because their arguments for free will have been insufficient.
It seems that whenever an argument comes up against free will, you can only say that it is Church teaching and that one must accept it. If you would argue philosophically about it, maybe I could see that it is at least non-contradictory.

If God were not free, what is there that could compel him to do something against his will? There is nothing because he is Omnipotent, there is nothing more powerful than Himself… If he could be forced to do anything, he would not be free and he would not be God. But because he is free, he wills to do what is good, and nothing can stop him. Nothing can keep him from doing what he wills. Therefore he is free.

Pax
Linus2nd

 

[blase6]

If God were not free, what is there that could compel him to do something against his will? There is nothing because he is Omnipotent, there is nothing more powerful than Himself… If he could be forced to do anything, he would not be free and he would not be God. But because he is free, he wills to do what is good, and nothing can stop him. Nothing can keep him from doing what he wills. Therefore he is free.

Pax
Linus2nd

He is free to do as he wills but he cannot change what he wills because that is contrary to his nature. If this is what free will is, then God is still acting out of necessity.

 

[NeuralMonk]

So far no one has because their arguments for free will have been insufficient.

I also find that the arguments against free will are insufficient. Every one I have seen makes the definition of free will a fluid definition, or assumes that all we can know is imperially bound to this blue marble.

So until someone makes a good philosophical case against it, I will believe it exists.

 

[blase6]

I also find that the arguments against free will are insufficient. Every one I have seen makes the definition of free will a fluid definition, or assumes that all we can know is imperially bound to this blue marble.

So until someone makes a good philosophical case against it, I will believe it exists.

Cause and effect is a very simple philosophical concept that can be observed in both the physical world and the spiritual world. It is one of the biggest issues to resolve with free will.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

He is free to do as he wills but he cannot change what he wills because that is contrary to his nature. If this is what free will is, then God is still acting out of necessity.

God does not change what he wills, because what he wills is good. He is free to do good, and he wills to do it, nothing compels him. He does good because he is free to do so. As Imelahn and others have pointed out, you are transferring human necessity for thinking about alternate choices to God. But God is not like us, he doesn’t have to puzzle over things. He knows eternally what is good and wills eternally to do what is good. He doesn’t have to but he does, so he is free.

Pax
Linus2nd