Free will, time, eternity

[MaximilianK]

I cannot understand - how and why- our free will can become eternally be fixed on good or evil, and still be free… We now can be saved, because we are in life, but after d along time, the will become impress with good or evil, and this for eternity, is a problem of time and chose, and after death the will will fight against us, if we not use now in a properly way… This free will is a very very dangerous and difficult thing. Please comments and responds, from Church, Holy Fathers, other speculation or theological opinions.

 

[Wesrock]

What do you mean that after death the will will fight against us? Your will is you and what you seek. You won’t have a sub-will fighting a surface-will.

 

[MaximilianK]

We see that even in this life the will can be destroyed by passions, and “fight somehow fight against us”, if we don’t work in properly way… if we use in a wrong way…

the will and the character of “persona” is something that we have, and something that we work and achieve, and probably something what WE CAN LOSE…

 

[Richca]

The perfection of God’s will which cannot will evil and its liberty is the measure of the perfection of any created will. So, the more a created will approaches the perfection and liberty of God’s will the more perfect and free it will be. For a created will to choose evil which is to sin is not a perfection of the will but a defect. Sinning is not a perfection of the will but a defect and it is a kind of slavery of the will as Jesus says whoever sins is a slave to sin (John 8:34). Jesus came to save us from the slavery and tyranny of the devil and sin through his grace and prefigured in God’s deliverance through Moses of the Israelites in their slavery to the ancient Egyptians.

The good angels and human souls in heaven who behold God in the beatific vision possess wills that are like unto the will of God and cannot sin and so they are free of the defect of sinning and possess a greater liberty of will. The created wills in heaven are wholly captivated by the beatific vision of God who is the infinite Good that it is impossible for them to turn aside from the infinite Good as it is with God himself to turn aside from his own infinite goodness. Again, sinning is to choose evil though under the form of apparent good which is the contrary of true good and a defect of the will. The good angels and human souls in heaven are perfect.

From the Summa Theologica of St Thomas Aquinas, Pt. I, Q. 62, art. 8, “Whether a Beatified Angel Can Sin?”

I answer that, The beatified angels cannot sin. The reason for this is, because their beatitude consists in seeing God through His essence. Now, God’s essence is the very essence of goodness. Consequently the angel beholding God is disposed towards God in the same way as anyone else not seeing God is to the common form of goodness. Now it is impossible for any man either to will or to do anything except aiming at what is good; or for him to wish to turn away from good precisely as such. Therefore the beatified angel can neither will nor act, except as aiming towards God. Now whoever wills or acts in this manner cannot sin. Consequently the beatified angel cannot sin.

Objection 3: Further, it belongs to the liberty of free-will for man to be able to choose good or evil. But the freedom of will is not lessened in the beatified angels. Therefore they can sin.

Reply to Obj: 3. Free-will in its choice of means to an end is disposed just as the intellect is to conclusions. Now it is evident that it belongs to the power of the intellect to be able to proceed to different conclusions, according to given principles; but for it to proceed to some conclusion by passing out of the order of the principles, comes of its own defect. Hence it belongs to the perfection of its liberty for the free-will to be able to choose between opposite things, keeping the order of the end in view; but it comes of the defect of liberty for it to choose anything by turning away from the order of the end; and this is to sin. Hence there is greater liberty of will in the angels, who cannot sin, than there is in ourselves, who can sin.

 

[STT]

I have the same problem in my mind. People in Heaven are still free to sin therefore they should be repelled from Heaven to somewhere else upon performing the sin. This is against the idea of the final judgment.

 

[MaximilianK]

Thanks for answer. Probably we cannot understand and misunderstand the concept of final judgement, I think we will do, but now we cannot, probably for eternity our will will become fixed in something, God or outside God, and this is a rational thing, because the time must stop, if not, the rationality of the world like to be governed by a law, unconscious. Our will will be fixed after judgement, even if we will it or not. Eternal hell or eternal heaven, and if eternal hell and eternal fix of the will dint exist, time and life and earthly life don’t have any meaning and are total without rationality…

 

[STT]

I don’t think that eternity (state of Heaven) means that time stops and we freeze. It is the state of experiencing everything possible. If experiencing eternity is ever possible we are still are free to do other ever possible things.

Moreover, I think we understand the situation well. There is contradiction in here.

 

[MaximilianK]

Yea. We cannot probably repent after a time (or with very much efforts, the proud man consider himself not a great sinned) in this life and afterlife and after final judgement, very probably because our mind can’t remain the same, when we lost our capacity to think to God, to love Him, to fight against passions, we don’t have same power, we lose, we go down, probably even to totally deform the Reality of God… Probably hell must exist because man is free, and time to have purpose, and fight against passions to have meaning… I think people in hell doesn’t even think to God, because their mind don’t remain same, in same healthy…

 

[MaximilianK]

And also I think that this is the process of lost of soul: first don’t want to repent, and second: cannot repent.

 

[Vico]

I cannot understand - how and why- our free will can become eternally be fixed on good or evil, and still be free…

There is a particular judgment after which the will is not free to choose.

Hebrews 9: 27-28

Just as it is appointed that human beings die once, and after this the judgment, so also Christ, offered once to take away the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to take away sin but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await him.

Catechism

1741 Liberation and salvation . By his glorious Cross Christ has won salvation for all men. He redeemed them from the sin that held them in bondage. "For freedom Christ has set us free."34 In him we have communion with the "truth that makes us free."35 The Holy Spirit has been given to us and, as the Apostle teaches, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."36 Already we glory in the "liberty of the children of God."37

1021 Death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifested in Christ [592] …

[592] Cf. 2 Tim 1:9-10

9 He saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began, 10 but now made manifest through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus, who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel,

1874 To choose deliberately - that is, both knowing it and willing it - something gravely contrary to the divine law and to the ultimate end of man is to commit a mortal sin. This destroys in us the charity without which eternal beatitude is impossible. Unrepented, it brings eternal death.

 

[o_mlly]

Our free will is already eternally fixed on the “good” and continues to do so after death. Our intellect, with the help of grace, discerns the real good from the merely apparent good.

If we reject God’s grace then we choose evil, the merely apparent but not real good. In time, we may remedy our prior evil rejections of grace through repentance and conversion. At the end of time, so to speak, our time is up.

The disposition of our soul through faith to habitually choose the real good at our death now becomes the disposition to choose the good, no longer through the grace of faith, but through the direct knowledge of Goodness itself, the Beatific Vision. Free will persists in heaven.