And this is where the debate really rests. The bolded text is EXACTLY why I say it’s ultimately arbitrary if you take the position that you do. Because at the end of the day, if there’s no predetermined reason for why a person makes a choice and there’s nothing inherently designed into the person that compels them to make one choice or another, then it’s just an essentially random choice. It could have gone either way! As you said, “It’s simply the choice they made.” Well if that’s the case, then every person who has faith has faith because “it’s simply the choice they made,” and then it becomes virtually impossible to explain why the world that has been exposed to Christ isn’t split 50/50 between believers and non-believers. If it’s just a choice without any design to it, then why don’t the law of averages play out the way they would in any other arbitrary situation? Obviously there is something inside the people who choose faith that leads them to that choice that the people who do not choose faith don’t have!
Thank you for this challenging discussion.
First, it might be helpful if you make the distinction that what you mean by the OP question is not really “isn’t free will arbitrary?” but rather “isn’t the exercise of free will arbitrary?” I point this out because of what you say above. Read the way the OP is stated, it gives the impression that you’re questioning the reality of free will itself, which is why this thread is full of arguments defending just that, rather than addressing your real concern.
As to your real concern, as elucidated above, I respond that we do not have a perfectly free will. To understand this, we have to delve a little bit into metaphysics. What you’re asking is a very complex question, and I feel like you’re not treating it with the depth that it deserves. I don’t think that’s intentional on your part though.
To begin, the Church teaches that humans are a body/spirit unity. Though we are not a duality, as though I had a spirit attached to a body, but rather a perfect blending of the two such that we do everything bodily and spiritually at the same time. Our thoughts are spiritual (intellectual), and occur in the body (electrical impulses), for example. Our wills move in a certain direction, and our bodies move in accordance to that will. You cannot do anything purely spiritually, and you cannot do anything purely bodily.
That said, the fact that we are a blend of two opposing natures nevertheless produces within us an effect of mental and wilful duality. Not a true duality, but an apparent one.
All bodies move. All movement is directed toward the good, in accordance with the nature of the moving body. More complex bodies (like animals, for example) perform more complex movements, but they are always directed toward the good in accordance with their nature. This is non-free will in action. They move because they have been acted upon (such as a rock rolling downhill after it has been pushed), or their natures impulse them toward particular movements (or actions, as in an animal consuming food to satisfy its need for sustenance).
Non-free will, as described above is irrational. Not that it is illogical or doesn’t make sense. It is irrational in that the will is not directed by reason, but by impulse. The animal didn’t sit down and think, “my stomach is producing within me an unpleasant feeling, and I recognize this to mean that my body is in need to food to sustain it in good health. I wish to continue living, and to avoid this suffering, besides the fact that eating food for this reason is good for me anyway, so I’m going to go find something to eat.” No, it just feels hungry so it eats.
Spirits are everything that bodies are not. They are intelligent (rational), unextended (non-spacial), freely willing, immutable beings. Bodies are irrational, spirits are rational. Bodies are extended, spirits are unextended. Bodies are in a constant state of change, spirits are not in a state of change. Bodies are not free of will, spirits are free of will.
But humans are a unique unity of the two. Humans are both rational and irrational. Humans are both extended and unextended. We are both changing, and unchanging. We are both free of will, and unfree of will. In us, these things (rationality, extension, change, free will) are scales, rather than absolute bookends. The degree to which we are at one end of the scale or the other is the degree to which our bodily faculties dominate our being, or our spiritual faculties dominate our being. The more animalistic we are, the less rational, the more erratic, the less free we become, and the material world, more and more, is all that really makes sense to us. The more angelic we are, the more rational, stable, and free we become, and the spiritual world, more and more, is what really makes sense to us (we begin to have mystical experience, etc.).
Our starting point, as a species, was that of more freedom in will than we’ve had since. No one, save Mary and Jesus, were more free than Adam and Eve were. This is because the proper order of our nature is the dominance of our spiritual faculties over our bodily faculties, and this is how they were created. This makes sense because the spirit is a higher order of being (i.e., more like God) than the body. And what is higher has greater authority, as well as greater duty.
Our starting point, however, is different than theirs. We begin in concupiscence and original sin. Our natures have been disordered such that our bodily faculties now dominate our spiritual faculties, and we struggle to overcome our bodily urges in light of greater goods.
To continue…
