Things designed are indeed designed or created for being functional, as you say in your second sentence. This is the wisdom of God that knows us and creates us for operation as humans.
It is true that functioning is either determined by design or functioning is freely (un-determinedly) chosen by the being who is functioning.
The fact is, for our actual designed functions we are not free, as you suggest - we are indeed “slaves” to carrying out our designed functioning.
Then the question is, “What are our designed, created, functions?”
Our first functions can be considered our Primary functions, or we could look from the other direction starting with our most simple functions and then look finally to our primary functions.
From the simple level, our determined functions by design / creation are:
- Animating biological movement to animal maturity
- Animating animal movement
- Animating sensitive apprehension of the material world that is outside the self (through the senses and then brought into the animal reasoning faculties for reasoning)
- Immaterial intellective consideration and understanding of what is apprehended (for evaluation of “truth” about what is sensed, evaluation about whether it is “good to be united to what is sensed”, and movement of the will to actualize actual unity with what is evaluated as “good for union”.
All of these things we do in a determined design. We are not free in these.
The will MUST desire what is called Good for Union.
The reason MUST evaluate all known things for Goodness of Union.
The intellect MUST consider all sensed objects for Truth of whether it is Understood.
But, we are not designed to understand only fixed things, such as BALL or CARROT or RED or APPLE. If the eye were designed to only see RED and the brain designed to only recognize things that had red coloration, then we would not be free to see all the other objects in reality that are of other color surfaces. In fact, we are not free to recognize physically with our sight any objects outside the visible spectrum of light from a distance (although with our hearing or close up, via our other senses of touch, etc., we can even sense other objects)
Instead of only sensing and understanding fixed things, we are able to sense and understand many things, and beyond sensing Many Things, we are able to understand, to know, all things. We are not free in our function of knowing, but we are free in What things we know.
It is the same with the reasoning judgement of what is good for union. We are determined to do this function of judging what we think is good, but we are free to judge great varieties of things as good for union, and we may judge differently than other humans judge. (I say chocolate ice cream is good for being in my mouth, while I do not judge vanilla as good for my tongue - some other person like my wife judges the opposite). So, I am not free (I must judge), but I am free (to judge differently of many things).
And with the will, we are not free to ignore what we judge good for union, but must love it, we must desire and get it. But again, we can love many things, as many things as the reason says are good to have. I am not free “not to desire”, but I am free to desire many and various things. I am also free to desire one thing more than another thing and then my own Will forces my own will to ignore the Lesser Desired Thing.
Real human freedom comes when in our intellect and reason we “imagine a new reality of an object that does not exist outside us”, when we then judge that it would be good for this object to really exist outside us, and then with the will desire to make it happen and move our bodies to “build this imagined object”. Something material now exists in the world that would not exist apart from our slavery to be human then doing its slavery of knowing and judging and willing, yet with freedom of CONTENT of what is known, judged and willed, and freely imagining and loving and building.
