Does God override free will?

[number1rocketma]

Can anyone tell me if the Church teaches that God has ever overridden a person’s free will in scripture? A Calvinist posed this question to me, and my thought was that He obviously could but that He does not, but I wasn’t sure of the Church’s position.

 

[Vico]

Can anyone tell me if the Church teaches that God has ever overridden a person’s free will in scripture? A Calvinist posed this question to me, and my thought was that He obviously could but that He does not, but I wasn’t sure of the Church’s position.

No. The free will dogma is: The Human Will remains free under the influence of efficacious grace, which is not irresistible. (De fide.) - Denzinger, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma

It is from the Council of Trent against the Reformers, and from Innocent X condemnation of propositions of Cornelius Jansen.

PAUL III 1534-1549, COUNCIL OF TRENT 1545-1563, SESSION VI (Jan. 13, 1547)​

Denzinger 814
Can. 4. If anyone shall say that man’s free will moved and aroused by God does not cooperate by assenting to God who rouses and calls, whereby it disposes and prepares itself to obtain the grace of justification, and that it cannot dissent, if it wishes, but that like something inanimate it does nothing at all and is merely in a passive state: let him be anathema [cf. n. 797].

Denzinger 797
It [the Synod] furthermore declares that in adults the beginning of that justification must be derived from the predisposing grace [can. 3] of God through Jesus Christ, that is, from his vocation, whereby without any existing merits on their part they are called, so that they who by sin were turned away from God, through His stimulating and assisting grace are disposed to convert themselves to their own justification, by freely assenting to and cooperating with the same grace [can. 4 and 5], in such wise that, while God touches the heart of man through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, man himself receiving that inspiration does not do nothing at all inasmuch as he can indeed reject it, nor on the other hand can he [can. 3] of his own free will without the grace of God move himself to justice before Him. Hence, when it is said in the Sacred Writings: “Turn ye to me, and I will turn to you” [Zach. 1:3], we are reminded of our liberty; when we reply: “Convert us, O Lord, to thee, and we shall be converted” [Lam. 5:21], we confess that we are anticipated by the grace of God.

INNOCENT X 1644-1655​

Denzinger 1093
2. In the state of fallen nature one never resists interior grace.
Declared and condemned as heretical.

http://patristica.net/denzinger/

 

[dscath]

Can anyone tell me if the Church teaches that God has ever overridden a person’s free will in scripture?

No, never, nada, end of sentence, hard stop, over and out!

 

[Gorgias]

Can anyone tell me if the Church teaches that God has ever overridden a person’s free will in scripture?

The Church does not teach this.

However, there are folks out there who claim that we see exactly that dynamic in the Exodus narrative, when it says that “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.”

I think that interpretation is erroneous, though: in those days, they believed that God directly caused each and every event that ever happens on earth. Interestingly, they believed this for much the same reasons as Calvinists claim: an absolute belief in the total and complete sovereignty of God. So, if you stub your toe – God did it. If you get a stomach-ache – God caused it.

In his The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin re-introduces this claim (which the Catholic Church had rejected – Aquinas discusses ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ causation and the notion that God gives us free will and allows us to make personal choices), and Calvin’s take on it is unrelenting:

If one falls among robbers, or ravenous beasts; if a sudden gust of wind at sea causes shipwreck; if one is struck down by the fall of a house or a tree; if another, when wandering through desert paths, meets with deliverance; or, after being tossed by the waves, arrives in port, and makes some wondrous hair—breadth escape from death — all these occurrences, prosperous as well as adverse, carnal sense will attribute to fortune. But those who have learned from the mouth of Christ that all the hairs of his head are numbered (Matthew 10:30), will look farther for the cause, and hold that all events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God.

For the ancient Hebrews, if a Pharaoh could do whatever he pleased, at his own personal whim, then that meant that God wasn’t sovereign. Since that was unacceptable, then the only other alternative was that it was God who caused the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart.

Therefore, some conclude, God does not allow the operation of free will. The Catholic Church teaches that this is an erroneous understanding – He gives free will to humans, and asks us to use it wisely, but allows us to use it foolishly.

 

[Dan_Defender]

A Calvinist posed this question to me

Calvinists believe in double predestination so it makes sense that you get this type of question from him. But no, the Church does not teach this.

 

[Pattylt]

I don’t think the ancient Israelites had a conception of free will as we define it today, did they?

 

[Julius_Caesar]

Those who use Pharaoh’s heart being hardened forget that Pharaoh mistreated the people of Israel. God wasn’t making Pharaoh go against his will. He was basically abandoning Pharaoh to destruction.

 

[Gorgias]

I don’t think the ancient Israelites had a conception of free will as we define it today, did they?

They really didn’t. The notions of primary and secondary causation really didn’t get developed until much, much later. Until then, the whole “absolute sovereignty of God” notion held sway. (And, it made a comeback with Calvin’s novel theologies!)

 

[Mintaka]

First off, the Egyptians (and the Israelites) considered the heart to be the organ of thought primarily, and only secondarily to be concerned with feelings. For an Egyptian, a “hard” or “strong” heart was a resolved mind, like a stern general in battle. It was considered good for a king to harden his heart, just as it was good to harden the defenses of a fortress. It’s very likely that God answered Pharaoh’s prayers by hardening his heart.

But the point was that, just like the fortress defenses were already there, pointed toward enemies, Pharaoh’s mind was already turned against Moses and the Israelites. His mind was made up; God just made his resolve harder.

And yes, Exodus uses a lot of Egyptian expressions and situations, just like Joseph’s story in Genesis.

 

[Richca]

It is written “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established” (Proverbs 19:21).

And " The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to naught; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations" (Psalm 33: 10-11).

God’s providence over creation extends over the free actions of human beings. Human beings cannot act whether for good or evil without God. It is obvious from our own lives, from what is happening in the world today, and throughout the history of mankind that God allows a lot of freedom whether for good or evil to human beings who He created with free will in his own image and likeness. Still, as the Church teaches following Sacred Scripture, God is the Lord of history and what human beings do or not do. God can prevent us from doing something or He can cause us to do something without violating our freedom though this might not be the norm, we cannot act or use free will without him - He is the first cause of it, and I think He probably often does prevent human beings from doing things especially in regards to evil and to evil being done to those who trust in him, though he often allows it as well such as we see in Jesus’ passion and death but only for good. We trust that God will protect us as he is our Father and we pray in the Our Father that Jesus taught us “deliver us from evil”. For example, if someone wanted to murder you or I, could God prevent this from happening? Absolutely.

 

[fhansen]

Definitely not for the purpose of the individuals salvation-not totally; He leaves the choice to us at the end of the day. And yet we cannot even be moved towards the choice without His “intervention”, without grace. From the catechism:

1989 The first work of the grace of the Holy Spirit is conversion , effecting justification in accordance with Jesus’ proclamation at the beginning of the Gospel: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."38 Moved by grace, man turns toward God and away from sin, thus accepting forgiveness and righteousness from on high. "Justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.39

1993 Justification establishes cooperation between God’s grace and man’s freedom . On man’s part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his assent:

When God touches man’s heart through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, man himself is not inactive while receiving that inspiration, since he could reject it; and yet, without God’s grace, he cannot by his own free will move himself toward justice in God’s sight.42

In Catholic understanding we cannot possibly be saved without God, and yet we can always refuse to be saved, or reject it-reject Him- later at any point among the way.