In death we lose free will?

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As far as i understnad churchs teaching the choice for heaven or hell is set at death.

Wouldn’t that imply, that after dying one no longer has free will?

Otherwise one could still sin and fall from heaven (like Satan did) or while in hell deciding to ask the Lord for forgiveness and submit oneself to His will (in which case God would do all in his power to help the sinner, if there is hope and if he has a free will, there is always the possibility he might stop rejecting Him). And in that case the choice would not be set.
 
I have often wondered if I was in Hell, would I be able to continue to pray and glorify God. However; I cannot even fathom the idea of being in Heaven and wanting for ANYTHING. I cannot imagine being in any state other than blissful joy or, at least blissful content.

I don’t know the answer to your question. But I will watch closely for someone who does.
 
In heaven we lose the ability to deny our free will. (I think)

you have the churches idea about free will wrong.

free will according to the church isn’t the ability to choose right or wrong. Rather free will is the freedom to do the good. Doing evil or wrong, is the opposite of freedom. When we sin we give ourselves over to something that if we do it enough will entrap us in prison us. Sinning is not an act of free will, rather it is an act against free will.

So in heaven we do not lose free will acutely we never disobey free will. We always do the good, and we never do evil.

So in death we do not lose free will. If we are designed for heaven we gain it perfectly

in hell it is the exact opposite you became so in trapped in your sin that you are trapped apart from the glory of God for all eternity.

This would be a entirely different discussion if we talk about free CHOICE, not free will.
 
i noticed I didn’t mention something

but

another way to look at your question I think is this

if we are in hell do we have the ability to choose god and obtain heaven? No, hell is like a house which can only be entered or exited from the outside, once inside you are entrapped for eternity.

if we are in heaven do we have the ability to deny God and be condemned to hell? while I’m not sure about this answer my guess would be no as well. Being connected to the beatific vision and connected to God in a perfect was we do not have the ability to Sin. Or it may be that we have the ability not to sin, and we in heaven fully realize the ability not to sin.

I don’t know how to explain this theologically. But I would guess no to both.
 
Philotheatoo said:
I have often wondered if I was in Hell, would I be able to continue to pray and glorify God.
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I believe losing that ability, or at least a complete awareness that your prayers are not heard has to be one of the “features” of hell. Otherwise, you might remain hopeful in a place that seems intended to be without hope. But I am no authority on the matter and hope not to gain the experience that would make me one. :coolinoff:
 
carn said:
As far as i understnad churchs teaching the choice for heaven or hell is set at death.

Wouldn’t that imply, that after dying one no longer has free will?

Otherwise one could still sin and fall from heaven (like Satan did) or while in hell deciding to ask the Lord for forgiveness and submit oneself to His will (in which case God would do all in his power to help the sinner, if there is hope and if he has a free will, there is always the possibility he might stop rejecting Him). And in that case the choice would not be set.
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The explanation that was given me for a similar question is that during the particular judgement, we have perfect knowledge and clarity of our lives. We are able to see ourselves as God sees us. Given this knowledge, there is no ability to lie or fool oneself about the sinfulness/righteousness of our lives. We pass judgement upon ourselves. Our judgement is identical to that of God because we are able to “see” through His eyes. So, even after death we have free will.

The only way that a person can be contrite is through the grace of God. That grace is lacking in Hell. Once a soul is in Hell, asking for forgiveness is impossible.
 
There was all the answers you need. But,I would like to point out a very human aspect on this matter hoping I am not doing anything wrong,but why would anyone choose hell if heaven is available? We have free will,but that comes with much responsibility. As Christians our free will is to serve,talk about,and above all,thru our example,do God’s will as the RCC teach. Free will does not mean that we can take one teaching and think that it can’t be right so I do as I please. Free will is God’s gift.
 
I can only add that also we will be confirmed in grace in heaven. Being so close to God, the source of our and all perfection, there will be no desire to disobey. We sin now because we deny our nature that God created and choose that which creates inner strife and discord in us. We heap distraction upon this strife and discord to drown it out, like the phones with music players in them so that in between the distraction of inane chatter we can drown out our thoughts by inane chatter put to music. Heaven won’t have this.
 
This was discussed on EWTN and catholic.org.

In Heaven we will have free will or else we wouldn’t be persons and it wouldn’t be Heaven.

Will we be able to sin? Yes, but we won’t.
Human beings are psychologically unable to turn away from all goodness already possessed.

Imagine you won the quarter billion dollar Powerball lottery. This will make you rich, your family rich, you can give to the poor, everybody will love you and honor you. Would you refuse to accept the jackpot? Ridiculous. Of course you’ll take it.

Infinitely more would we not fail to accept the infinite goodness of God in Heaven!

There is an old saying that if a person living on Earth could see God as he really is, the soul would rip itself from the body and fly to Heaven, abandoning the lifeless body on Earth. Well, that’s a little melodramatic, but it makes a point.

In hell things are different. Having already committed ourselves to evil, we lose free will. Jesus referred to hell as death and destruction, and the Old Testament frequently speaks the same way. The death is the “death” of the person, and as person means active agent, the lost soul loses free will and becomes a “slave to sin”, another phrase used fy Jesus and Biblical writers. Acquinas refers to such a soul as being “disordered”. The right order of the soul is to have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to give the soul sanctifying grace and unable the soul to desire God. The lost soul has banished the Holy Spirit and sanctifying grace.
It’s like a queen ant who bites off its own wings and starts a colony underground. It can no longer fly away somewhere. The wings are gone.
 
carn said:
As far as i understnad churchs teaching the choice for heaven or hell is set at death.

Wouldn’t that imply, that after dying one no longer has free will?

Otherwise one could still sin and fall from heaven (like Satan did) or while in hell deciding to ask the Lord for forgiveness and submit oneself to His will (in which case God would do all in his power to help the sinner, if there is hope and if he has a free will, there is always the possibility he might stop rejecting Him). And in that case the choice would not be set.
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I can’t help but believe that part of our justification, taking place here and finished in purgatory if need be, entails our coming to freely choose only the Good, God, Himself, above all else. IOW for us to come to love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, placing nothing in creation above that love, as we’ve come to learn the reason why He is worthy of it.

In that way God, the Potter, will have succeeded in molding humans into greater beings, and into those who’ve sort of definitively reversed the decision, within themselves, that Adam & Eve made to oppose the will of God. We enter into a loving self-subjugation, having learned why rebellion against God is wrong and disordered, with the help of His grace.

And the Beatific Vision then cinches the deal-we’ve finally found what we’d been striving for-we’ve come to fully know the object of our love and be fully known by Him, as scripture puts it-and nothing more could ever distract our gaze from that vision.
 
carn said:
As far as i understnad churchs teaching the choice for heaven or hell is set at death.

Wouldn’t that imply, that after dying one no longer has free will?

.
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after death you are no longer in time you are in eternity so your free will choice is once and for all and cannot be changed because you exercise that free will choice in the eternal present. It is like saying once you exercised your free will to jump off a cliff you can change your mind, or if not, be denied free will. You can’t undo what has been done.
 
OK, my limited understanding. Please correct me if I stray from church doctrine.

Here on earth, we may or may not feel God. We can easily convince ourselves that God is not there, does not see, or simply does not exist.
So we can easily fall into temptation.

After death, we are no longer here, and God is no longer deniable.

As we have lived on earth, God will provide us in the hereafter…or rather our actions here will dictate our choice of heaven or hell.

In heaven, God is there, and apparent, and we are surrounded by his love.
Love begets love, and our decisions our guided by this love.
To choose something that is outside of this love is as unthinkable as it would be to choose to hold your hand above a candle and let the flame burn through.

In hell, God is not there. There is no love, and without love, there is nothing left except our own selfishness and sin. And we continue to sin further and further in hell.

In a sense, our decision capability is not curtailed, but instead our decisions are taken to their logical conclusion.
Our choice is fixed by the eternal presence or eternal abscence of God.
 
Since mankind is made in the image of God, and since free will is one of the many gifts that come with being made in God’s image, it is probably a safe thing to believe that mankind retains the ability to make free choices in Heaven. I think that the difference between the free choice on earth and the free choice in Heaven, though, is that mankind, having either seen or experienced the terrible effects of sin while earthbound, but now entering into the spiritual abode of God and experiencing His grace and perfect love, will naturally choose to do the right thing every time.
 
shoe said:
Since mankind is made in the image of God, and since free will is one of the many gifts that come with being made in God’s image, it is probably a safe thing to believe that mankind retains the ability to make free choices in Heaven. I think that the difference between the free choice on earth and the free choice in Heaven, though, is that mankind, having either seen or experienced the terrible effects of sin while earthbound, but now entering into the spiritual abode of God and experiencing His grace and perfect love, will naturally choose to do the right thing every time.
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Yes, having literally* known* good and evil as a result of the Fall, we should gain the experience to always choose the good.
 
So the solution seems to be that free will as “i sit down and think and then decide what i do” is actually not free will or at least is something a human is not capable of without God. Instead one should label this thing “free choice”, which can be lost at death in case one loses God. (In the other case one chooses not to act against God.)

But then what is free will exactly, if it is not the ability to choose one of several theoretically possible alternatives?
 
puzzleannie said:
after death you are no longer in time you are in eternity so your free will choice is once and for all and cannot be changed because you exercise that free will choice in the eternal present. It is like saying once you exercised your free will to jump off a cliff you can change your mind, or if not, be denied free will. You can’t undo what has been done.
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If that is the case all God’s decisions would be predictable - if we had sufficient knowledge - and reality would be one immense machine…
 
MtnDwellar said:
We pass judgement upon ourselves. Our judgement is identical to that of God because we are able to “see” through His eyes.
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That phenomenology you just gave is actually pretty much identical to the sort recounted in many NDEs.
 
I asked a similar question to a priest one time, and this is what he told me… In heaven, we will have beatific vision. The angels before the fall and man before and after the fall did not have beatific vision, even though in communion with God.

The angels were given one choice… those who disobeyed fell, and those (like St. Michael) who followed entered into beatific vision. We, as humans, do not encounter this beatific vision until death. We have corporeal bodies so as to grow and learn about God in order to make our final, “yes.”

Once we have beatific vision, we will be 100% united with God. We will be entirely embraced by love and completely fulfilled. Once experiencing that, how could we say no? We still will have free will, but it will be an eternal, “yes.” Our final “yes” will be an eternal “yes.”

As a side and very imperfect analogy, imagine something you absolutely love to do. Let’s say you love to go fishing, and your best friend invites you on the best fishing trip of your lifetime. There are no obstacles or any bad consequences for going on this fishing trip. You are thrilled to go. So why would you say no? There is absolutely no reason to. It would go against your nature and desire to say “no.” You have the free will to say no, but why would you?

In heaven, our nature will be made perfect. We “could” say “no,” but we wouldn’t.
 
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