Free will in heaven and with Mary

[Truthstalker]

I saw a post in the AAA forum that Michelle Arnold ably answered, and that prompted the following spasm:

I posted this on another forum months ago. Someone was lamenting the loss of free will in heaven.

Good grief! You act like the will of God is smaller than what is outside it. Sin is limited. Opportunities to sin are limited to earth. When we are united with God in heaven so that our will is to do His will, only then will our wills be perfectly free. Adam had the whole garden to play in, but he hung around the tree. There are a million things to do that are not sin, but we choose the one thing to do that is sin. When we are free from that perverse desire, we will be free to enjoy the million things to do that are not sin. God will set us free. You sound like heaven is a row of miserable angels chained in position and afraid to move because that might be outside God’s will. Perfect love casts out fear. We will be freed, we will be liberated, because we will no longer desire to transgress God’s will. We will be free to be within it, unhampered by the desire to exit it. It is only in the area outside His will that there are stop signs. It is only in hell that there is the “thou shalt not”: in heaven the sign says Love God, and Do What You Please. Since our natures will be unfettered by sin and the desire for sin, we will be able to love Him without constraint. And in that love will be perfect freedom, not bondage, because Christ broke our chains. We will be free to cut ice-figures in the middle of the rink and unhampered by the clutziness of forever running into the walls at the edge of the rink.

For some reason those Calvinists never responded.

Mary had free will. Sinless, her will was more free than ours. There is more room within the will of God than outside it, because God is infinite and sin, though vast, is limited in time and possibility and energy. Her “yes” to God was because she had free will, not in spite of it, not as a trick or a divine ravaging of a virgin through making someone who would say “yes” and could not say “no.”

There are more things to do on earth that are pleasing to God than there are ways we can sin. Free will is at work.

 

[JimG]

There is more room within the will of God than outside it, because God is infinite and sin, though vast, is limited in time and possibility and energy.

I like your reply. Many people seem to assume that we can prove our freedom only by sinning, when it is sin that limits our freedom. Or that we can have freedom of choice only if we choose to do wrong, when it is doing good that expands our freedom. That’s why St. Paul admonishes us not to be “slaves to sin.” In doing so, we become less free, sin enslaves us.