God's free will and contingency

[LeonardDeNoblac]

Every Catholic should agree that God has free will, and that His decisions to create the world and to save mankind were free acts.
However, free will is an intrinsic contingency, because it has no necessary relation to the things willed, so it is possible for a free agent not to will something that he/she/it wills.
But God is by nature a necessary being, and it seems absurd to attribute any contingency to a necessary being.
How do we solve this apparent difficulty?

 

[Richca]

God’s existence is necessary as I believe St Thomas Aquinas argues in the third proof for the existence of God in the Summa Theologica. But God’s existence includes all perfections in an infinite degree. God does not exist as just like an inanimate rock. He possesses the fullness of being which includes infinite knowledge and an infinite and supreme free will which are one with his existence or being.

 

[Wesrock]

Looking at it in most limited terms, and for the skeptics I’ll just say that I’m “importing” a Thomist background and arguments as a supposition without going through it all again, on the grounds that the OP and I are already informed on the background.

Q. Is God determined by anything external to himself to be what he is?

A. No. If what we are calling God is determined by anything external to be what he is then he would not be God (the Prime Mover, First Cause, Necessary Being). Something prior to him would have to be God.

Q) Does God act in any way without knowledge?

A) No, God is Intellect, and any immaterial being must exist as intellect. There is no “part” of God that is not intellect. The will follows the intellect. Therefore all actions follow God’s knowledge.

Q) Does God will things other than himself by absolute necessity? That is, would he fail to exist, would his essence not be his own actuality, if he did not will things other than himself?

A) No. God would not fail to exist or be his own actuality if he did not will things other than himself.

The will of God in creating things other than himself is therefore knowledgeably made, without being determined by any external cause, and is not absolutely necessary for him to exist. But to act based on knowledge and via intrinsic principles is the basis of free will. Therefore we have at least this limited definition that the will of God is free/voluntary.

 

[lelinator]

The will follows the intellect.

But does the will voluntarily or necessarily follow the intellect? If it does so voluntarily, then isn’t it contingent upon something? If it does so necessarily, then how is it free?

To clarify, my will cannot "choose" whether or not to make a choice. It has to make a choice. Is God’s will the same, in that it has no choice, but to make a choice? And if the will must follow the intellect, then does God have no choice in what the outcome of that choice will be?

 

[John_Martin]

But God is by nature a necessary being, and it seems absurd to attribute any contingency to a necessary being.
How do we solve this apparent difficulty?

We do it like St. Augustine did it. (Read his Confessions where he discusses the first couple verses of Genesis - a modern translation is most useful since most modern readers do not know how to deal with translations of one hundred years ago.)

What if with created reality, both spiritual and material, both angelic and earthly, God does not do anything by himself?
What if all the working of God in created reality is done in “co-operation” with a contingent being (angel or human, etc.)?

Thus, if God knows eternally that he will “will” some “action” at the moment when some creature also “wills” the “action”, then the work of God will only be done when “willed by a Team” (by God and creature), therefore in Time, even though God always knows (I do not “always know”, so when I pray, at that moment in temporal reality, both I and my “Co-Operator” (God) are effecting his will as co-agents and the work is done in time.)

I am contingent; all creation is temporal. But when I know what God knows in conjunction with me knowing, then his intent is fulfilled - “I am the contingency in the doing of God.”

God always knew Mary pregnant, but she did not become pregnant until she knew with Him.

 

[Magnanimity]

To clarify, my will cannot " choose" whether or not to make a choice. It has to make a choice. Is God’s will the same, in that it has no choice, but to make a choice? And if the will must follow the intellect, then does God have no choice in what the outcome of that choice will be?

Shouldn’t we consult the master of nuance in philosophical theology? I think St. Thomas should always be our go-to in these questions.

Article 3. Whether whatever God wills He wills necessarily?​

 

[Wesrock]

Wesrock:

The will follows the intellect.

But does the will voluntarily or necessarily follow the intellect? If it does so voluntarily, then isn’t it contingent upon something? If it does so necessarily, then how is it free?

To clarify, my will cannot "choose" whether or not to make a choice. It has to make a choice. Is God’s will the same, in that it has no choice, but to make a choice? And if the will must follow the intellect, then does God have no choice in what the outcome of that choice will be?

Your intellect and will aren’t external principles or pieces. They are intrinsic principles that belong to what you are. They are, in a sense, essential to being you. Talking about your will being out of your control, as if it’s not you is nonsense to me.

Your ability to voluntarily intend actions is what we mean by your will. To ask if the will is itself voluntary is a bit of an absurd regress. Do you voluntarily intend to voluntarily intend to voluntarily intend…

Your will doesn’t choose whether or not you get to make a choice. The fact that you can voluntarily make choices is why we say you have a will. It also makes no sense to speak of intentional choices if the choices made are not based on knowledge. What makes your rational choices voluntary is that they proceed from intrinsic principles to you. You are not a hollow shell or a philosophical zombie simply being puppetted about like a marionette by external things, you’re not just a boulder rolling down a hill.

I think to speak of a “voluntary will” is a bit redundant in this case. To act and intend based on knowledge in a voluntary way (as opposed to something like your heart just beating, or you being a man which is an animal) is what it means to have a will.

Sorry if I’m being a bit redundant in this post.

Can God not make a choice? That is a bit of a logical absurdity to me. He knows and in simply being he acts. To not make a choice would be equivalent to non-existence. God certainly chooses the outcome of his acts. I think we need to refrain from thinking of God as a human-like actor, though. He is all things known, and our ability to know things bears some similarity to that. And he is not determined to any end by anything external to himself. That is, in the most basic sense, what it is to choose (stripping away the human baggage of discursive thinking and material processes or the need to process things at all). Action following from knowledge without being determined by an external cause.

 

[po18guy]

The God of Islam has free will - He is not immutable and can change His mind, turning against his own for no apparent reason. Muslims believe that this is what occurred when they lost the battle of Lepanto.

The God of Israel (same God - different perception) is immutable and thus cannot decide for evil. He has a Divine Will, but it is not “free” as we think of free.

 

[Gorgias]

Every Catholic should agree that God has free will

Why? I think you’d have to define what you mean by “free will” in the context of God and His will.

How do we solve this apparent difficulty?

God’s will is unconstrained. But, it is not contingent. “Free will”, on the other hand, is something predicated of humans.

 

[STT]

Every Catholic should agree that God has free will, and that His decisions to create the world and to save mankind were free acts.
However, free will is an intrinsic contingency, because it has no necessary relation to the things willed, so it is possible for a free agent not to will something that he/she/it wills.
But God is by nature a necessary being, and it seems absurd to attribute any contingency to a necessary being.
How do we solve this apparent difficulty?

You are right. You need to give up God’s free will or God as a necessary being. You cannot have both.

 

[o_mlly]

However, free will is an intrinsic contingency …

Only true if the relationship of subject to the object willed is variable. God is love. In one eternal act, He exists, knowing all, being in all, and willing all in love. His disposition toward all that is is love. Thank goodness!

 

[LeonardDeNoblac]

Actually, you are wrong.
I’ve done further researches, and I think I’ve found a satisfying solution to the problem.

There is a relation between the will of God and the things willed by God.
A relation always involves three things:

• the subject (for example, the father )
• the term (for example, a son )
• the foundation (for example, the generation of the son by the father )

There are two kinds of relations:

• real relations (the foundation is real )
• relations of reason (the foundation isn’t real, but exists only in the mind )

Is the will of God’s relation to the things willed by God a real relation or a relation of reason? The answer is the latter, because from Divine Simplicity it follows that the act of willing the things God wills (the foundation of the relation ) is one and the same with God’s will (the subject of the relation ), so there is no foundation that exists as something distinct from the subject.
Now, in a relation of reason, the term doesn’t imply anything in the subject really, but only conceptually. Therefore, the contingency of some things willed by God doesn’t imply any real contingency in God’s will.

Conclusion: God’s will can be both necessary in its own nature and free in regards to the contingent things willed, without any real contradiction.

P.s.: a point needs to be adressed. It is true that God has no real relation to created beings, but created beings do have a real relation to God, because the creative act of God (the foundation of the relation ) does exist distinctly from created beings (the subject of the relation ). So God is really the Creator of the created beings.

 

[po18guy]

Every Catholic should agree that God has free will…

I have no idea where you got this. God having ‘free will’ is the same as the laws of physics changing randomly. Chaos ensues.

Rather, all that God does flows from His perfect, unchanging will. We humans experience great difficulty grasping this, as we are neither perfect, nor infinite.

 

[Wesrock]

A lot of people saying God doesn’t have free will. It perhaps depends on how you define it. Many theologians do defend God as having a free will, which is also immutable. I gave some parameters in my first post. It is free of determination by external causes. It is voluntary. We can even say God’s will is more free than ours, that no other will can actually be more free.

 

[STT]

Actually, I am right. The state of decision is not an pure actual. It is the state of potentiality.

 

[LeonardDeNoblac]

A decision already made is not in a state of potentiality, but of actuality.

 

[o_mlly]

I have no idea where you got this. God having ‘free will’ is the same as the laws of physics changing randomly. Chaos ensues.

Rather, all that God does flows from His perfect, unchanging will. We humans experience great difficulty grasping this, as we are neither perfect, nor infinite.

The contemplation of the nature of God is a most satisfying act and doing so gives one a foretaste of the ecstasy hoped for in the union with Them in eternity.

• That we have free will substantiates that God has free will (Nemo dat quod non habet).
• That our free will always chooses the good substantiates that the Almighty always chooses the good.
• That our knowledge of the good and our virtue of charity are imperfect explains why we do not always choose the real good.
• That God is omniscient and is love explains why Their will eternally chooses the real good.

 

[lelinator]

Actually, I am right. The state of decision is not an pure actual. It is the state of potentiality.

A decision already made is not in a state of potentiality, but of actuality.

These two posts highlight some questions that I’ve been contemplating for the last few days. And those questions are:

What things are necessarily true? What things are only eternally true? Is there actually a difference? And does this imply that in some sense at least, God has potentiality?

For example, if we believe what theists tell us, then Christ’s death on the cross is eternally true, but it’s not necessarily true. God could have chosen to do otherwise. But because God exists outside of time, all of His acts are eternally true. They’re acts which take place outside of time, and that means that from our perspective at least, they’ve always been true. These are eternal acts, but they’re not necessary acts. They didn’t need to be. According to theists the only thing that needs to be, is God Himself. Therefore God is the only thing that’s necessary, and everything else is the result of God’s willful act of creation.

But don’t these willful acts by God imply potentiality? If not in a temporal sense, which would require change over time, but at least in a more esoteric sense, in that they could have been otherwise.

But if it’s true, that these acts of God could have been otherwise, then that implies potentiality. However, if they couldn’t have been otherwise, then that implies that they were necessary. And if God’s acts are necessary, then it would seem that everything is necessary.

These questions have left me with a bit of a conundrum. Willful acts would seem to require potentiality, otherwise they would be necessary acts, not willful acts.

So how does one reconcile the seeming contradiction between God’s willful acts, and His supposed lack of potentiality? Simply appealing to the fact that His acts occur outside of time doesn’t alter the fact that they could’ve been otherwise. The very fact that they could’ve been otherwise implies potentiality, perhaps not from our temporal perspective, but at the very least it implies potentiality in the essence of God. I.E God can act willfully, He can choose to do one thing or another thing, therefore God has potentiality.

So far I haven’t found a satisfactory solution to this problem, but perhaps someone else can offer some insight.

 

[LeonardDeNoblac]

Have you seen my post above?

 

[lelinator]

Have you seen my post above?

If you’re referring to this post:

A decision already made is not in a state of potentiality, but of actuality.

Then of course I saw it…I quoted it.

But a decision/choice implies that that decision/choice could’ve been otherwise. Even the choices that you’ve made in the past could’ve been otherwise. The very fact that they were choices means that they involved the actualization of potential. This would logically seem to be true of all choices, whether past or present, they involved the actualization of potential.

Here’s where it’s important to keep in mind the difference between what’s necessarily true, and what’s only eternally true. The two things aren’t the same. After all, from God’s perspective every moment of your existence is eternally true. But the fact that it’s eternally true doesn’t mean that your choices, be they past, present, or future, don’t involve the actualization of potential. So God’s choices are eternally true, but they’re not necessarily true, and the very fact that they’re “choices” means that they must, in some sense at least, involve the actualization of potential.

To me, simply pointing out that God’s choices are eternal choices, doesn’t alter the fact, that a choice, by its very nature, involves the actualization of potential.