Isn't Free Will Arbitrary?

[steve_b]

I never said they didn’t have a choice in the matter. Everyone agrees they had a choice. Even Calvinists would say that and do in their confessions!

Calvinists teach Predestinarianism which is heresy
j:

The question is WHY did they make the choice they did? Why did Adam and Eve reject the commands of God? This is the whole point. You keep applying arguments to my position as if I’ve said them, when in reality, I haven’t! Even if we exist in a Pelagian world, which is basically the most extreme position we can take, my point is the same. People make choices for a reason and those reasons can reasonably and ultimately be traced back to God’s design for the world.

How about

Rom 11:32 For God has consigned συνέκλεισεν all men to disobedience ἀπείθειαν,, that he may have mercy upon all. 33 O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

IOW, God did not make us immune to, nor does He block us from temptation or disobedience. That’s the true power of free will that He gave us. God made us with the awesome freedom to use our will to say yes or even no to Him.

As an aside

freedom ≠ liscense

 

[Frankenfurter]

If people are free to make choices, that still doesn’t explain why they make the choices they do and how it’s possible those reasons for making choices should not ultimately be traced back to God.

OK, try this then.

The reason you cannot trace Free Will back to God is that God gave the Free Will itself to man, and in fact infused the entire universe with it to various degrees. Why did he do that? Because he wanted to give us a part in creation itself.

An act of Free WIll therefore is an act of creation, not merely a thought. If you only think something and never do anything about it, that is not Free WIll. When you write a song, or a story, or create a new person, or something new in the universe, you are invoking your ability to take part in the unfolding creation of the universe.

You are questioning why some people choose one path while others chose another. But either choice is an act of Free WIll. No choice is an act of Free WIll too. For example you could decide not to have faith in God. That is an act of creation. Perhaps a negative one in God’s eyes, but still a creative act.

Free Will is NOT arbitrary. That is quite cynical. The choice to create something new in the universe given the talents given to you by God is a giving back, of saying Thank You to God for your gifts, no matter how humble. Beetoven’s music is not arbitrary. Picasso’s art is not arbitrary. Einstein’s theory’s are not arbitrary. The man choosing to feed the hungry today down at the soup kitchen is not arbitrary.

I think you are having trouble with the notion that God would allow us to have a part in creation. That is a typical stumbling block for folks that follow Luther. Luther could not accept that fact. He did not seem to believe that man could be that intimately connected to God. Catholics don’t believe that because Jesus never told us anything of that kind, in fact told the exact opposite, that God wants to make a home in your soul. If we have God in our soul, we share some of his creative power. We call that Free WIll, or the power to take part in creation.

 

[Good_Fella]

One of the great flaws I see in free will, however, is that it ultimately boils down to an arbitrary choice. If all people can choose, by God’s grace, to reject or accept Him in faith, then why does one person have faith while the other does not?

Opposing persuasive influences. Conversions often happen on a sudden impulse just as moral transgressions do, and not by necessity.

If it’s because of some positive quality in the one who chose faith, or some circumstance in life, or really anything at all, then couldn’t it easily be said that God is in fact ultimately behind the decision?

Since God has put everything in motion by creating the world, He is certainly the physical cause. But morally we all are responsible for our own decisions having the ability to judge and discern for ourselves.

In other words, if there is a reason one person chooses and another doesn’t, then isn’t that reason also ultimately foreseen and foreknown at the time of creation?

Foreknowledge doesn’t determine events, but may permit them.

If God knew this particular external force would keep people from faith, why did God create a universe with that external force within it?

The only force strong enough to keep people from having faith (a steadfast love) in God is that internal subjective force of human selfishness. God foresaw that human beings would have the potential of being selfish when He created the world, but this force is not so strong that we can’t resist it. There is not one commandment of God that is too difficult for us to obey, if only we didn’t love ourselves so inordinately. God has permitted this to happen to test our love for Him in His goodness. Without free will we cannot truly love God or anything for that matter. If we love someone, it is not by necessity, for someone I love might be despised by another person. We freely choose whom to love or to hate notwithstanding persuasive influences.

I just don’t see how a person can honestly escape God’s sovereignty in all things at the end of the day.

We can’t escape whatever God allows to freely happen by chance for the sake of a greater good. Being in control to allow something to happen isn’t tantamount to determining it.

PAX
:heaven:

 

[Ignatius]

Isn’t Free Will Arbitrary?.

No, not if it is properly conformed to the Divine Will.

 

[jinc1019]

I would say most choices can be traced back to God, in immediate ways. However, in a broader, more mediate sense, most human choices can be traced back to God due to the nature of will. Will is drawn to the good. That’s just how it works. Intellect informs the will, such that as the intellect informs it of what is good, so it is drawn.

However, those choices we make that are against God, so to speak, that are evil, are irrational in nature. For, even when our intellect informs us of the good, we proceed to will the evil. Such choices run contrary to our created nature, contrary to the informed intellect, and cannot be said to be rational. Trying to find reason for what is inherently unreasonable is futile. Moreover, such choices should not be “traced back to God” as though God were the primary cause of them.

Sure, but even if all of this is true, it doesn’t explain why some sin more often than others or why some people are born seemingly more violent than others. Why do some ultimately choose faith over others?

 

[jinc1019]

I can find several reasons for “why” in Genesis 3. Can you? How are any of them arbitrary?

There are absolutely no reasons presented in Genesis 3. It does not at all explain why God made Adam and Eve the way He did KNOWING they would sin. Why not make two people who would be obedient?

 

[jinc1019]

OK, try this then.

The reason you cannot trace Free Will back to God is that God gave the Free Will itself to man, and in fact infused the entire universe with it to various degrees. Why did he do that? Because he wanted to give us a part in creation itself.

An act of Free WIll therefore is an act of creation, not merely a thought. If you only think something and never do anything about it, that is not Free WIll. When you write a song, or a story, or create a new person, or something new in the universe, you are invoking your ability to take part in the unfolding creation of the universe.

You are questioning why some people choose one path while others chose another. But either choice is an act of Free WIll. No choice is an act of Free WIll too. For example you could decide not to have faith in God. That is an act of creation. Perhaps a negative one in God’s eyes, but still a creative act.

Free Will is NOT arbitrary. That is quite cynical. The choice to create something new in the universe given the talents given to you by God is a giving back, of saying Thank You to God for your gifts, no matter how humble. Beetoven’s music is not arbitrary. Picasso’s art is not arbitrary. Einstein’s theory’s are not arbitrary. The man choosing to feed the hungry today down at the soup kitchen is not arbitrary.

I think you are having trouble with the notion that God would allow us to have a part in creation. That is a typical stumbling block for folks that follow Luther. Luther could not accept that fact. He did not seem to believe that man could be that intimately connected to God. Catholics don’t believe that because Jesus never told us anything of that kind, in fact told the exact opposite, that God wants to make a home in your soul. If we have God in our soul, we share some of his creative power. We call that Free WIll, or the power to take part in creation.

Ok, great. Let’s say everything you say is true. You’re still not answering the question of why one person wills a life of obedience to God while another does not! I understand that free will exists and people have choices. That’s not the issue. The issue is why do we make the choices we do. And you seem to suggest that anyone anywhere can make a choice for God or a choice against God, which is fine, but then you have to explain why one person makes the choice FOR and the other AGAINST. Ultimately, doesn’t it all just come back to God? Aren’t the choices we make really just based on our experiences or our natural inclinations, which vary from person to person?

 

[jinc1019]

Opposing persuasive influences. Conversions often happen on a sudden impulse just as moral transgressions do, and not by necessity.

Since God has put everything in motion by creating the world, He is certainly the physical cause. But morally we all are responsible for our own decisions having the ability to judge and discern for ourselves.

Foreknowledge doesn’t determine events, but may permit them.

The only force strong enough to keep people from having faith (a steadfast love) in God is that internal subjective force of human selfishness. God foresaw that human beings would have the potential of being selfish when He created the world, but this force is not so strong that we can’t resist it. There is not one commandment of God that is too difficult for us to obey, if only we didn’t love ourselves so inordinately. God has permitted this to happen to test our love for Him in His goodness. Without free will we cannot truly love God or anything for that matter. If we love someone, it is not by necessity, for someone I love might be despised by another person. We freely choose whom to love or to hate notwithstanding persuasive influences.

We can’t escape whatever God allows to freely happen by chance for the sake of a greater good. Being in control to allow something to happen isn’t tantamount to determining it.

PAX
:heaven:

If God, before Creation, knew everything that would happen before it happened and chose to create THIS existence with all of the events He knew would come to be, didn’t he in essence ELECT this existence and everything in it by simply not choosing another form of creation with another set of outcomes?

 

[Vico]

…Aren’t the choices we make really just based on our experiences or our natural inclinations, which vary from person to person?

There is the effect of supernatural grace. We are not able to avoid sin by our human nature.

 

[davidv]

There are absolutely no reasons presented in Genesis 3.

Please check again. Here is what I found:

1. But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,[a] knowing good and evil.”
2. the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
3. that it was a delight to the eyes
4. tree was to be desired to make one wise

Which of these is arbitrary?

It does not at all explain why God made Adam and Eve the way He did KNOWING they would sin. Why not make two people who would be obedient?

To do so would be to deny His own nature. God is Love. That kind of love that can only exists if it can be freely given. Made in His image, Adam and Eve were fully capable of this love. They chose to abandon that love, for that which they could take for themselves.

 

[Frankenfurter]

Ok, great. Let’s say everything you say is true. You’re still not answering the question of why one person wills a life of obedience to God while another does not! I understand that free will exists and people have choices. That’s not the issue. The issue is why do we make the choices we do. And you seem to suggest that anyone anywhere can make a choice for God or a choice against God, which is fine, but then you have to explain why one person makes the choice FOR and the other AGAINST. Ultimately, doesn’t it all just come back to God? Aren’t the choices we make really just based on our experiences or our natural inclinations, which vary from person to person?

The problem is that things compound. If you decided to work hard and keep your job, that might mean you can afford school, which leads you to getting a better job. then you might choose to look into why come Christians believe in God because you have enough spare time to do that. One thing leads to another.

Or you may have been affected by someone else’s free will and been say involved in a car accident that changed your life which made you thankful for your life.

Indeed you can trace it back to God, but he gives us (collectively) a hand in it too, so it is both us and God. Our Free will is not given directly to do anything we want. It is limited,or guided by the laws that God has given us. One of those laws Christ gave us, to love one another. That law makes sense given the power of our Free Will.

You are toying with predestination which denies the gift of Free Will and is an insult to God in light of the gift he has given.

Stay humble to see the light.

.

 

[steve_b]

I actually agree that this is the position of the historic Church -]prior to Augustine/-]

-J

It’s the position of the historic Church.

 

[Good_Fella]

If God, before Creation, knew everything that would happen before it happened and chose to create THIS existence with all of the events He knew would come to be, didn’t he in essence ELECT this existence and everything in it by simply not choosing another form of creation with another set of outcomes?

I’m sure God made the right choice for the right purpose.
*
For my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord. *
Isaiah 55, 8

PAX
:heaven:

 

[Mintaka]

Um… y’all know that “arbitrary” originally meant “voluntary, of one’s own choice, by one’s own discretion”, right? Turning it into “by personal whim, by random choice, by chance” is the modern meaning. (The word comes from “arbiter,” an eyewitness, and hence an umpire or judge who says which side is right after you submit something for “arbitration.”)

So it’s a funny thread title from that perspective.

 

[MrSnaith]

Sure, but even if all of this is true, it doesn’t explain why some sin more often than others or why some people are born seemingly more violent than others. Why do some ultimately choose faith over others?

Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? A free choice is a free choice. If you’re looking for a causality for peoples’ free choices, you won’t find one, except that it’s the simply the choice they made. In most cases, sure, you’ll find causality, whether that be genetics, upbringing, individual circumstances, etc, but these shouldn’t be considered free choices, strictly speaking. This is because most of the choices we make, we make without deliberation. But the freer the choice, the less explanation you’re going to find outside of a person’s simple decision to indulge concupiscence or submit to the Divine Will.

There are absolutely no reasons presented in Genesis 3. It does not at all explain why God made Adam and Eve the way He did KNOWING they would sin. Why not make two people who would be obedient?

Why not insert a microchip into your childrens’ brains to ensure they love and obey you? The answer, because you want them to love you by their own free choice. A true loving relationship cannot be forced, it has to be free. That’s the mystery of love.

God is essentially Love. Love extends outward from the self, to give of itself. God created anything at all because His nature is to share Himself. He does so within the Divine Life of the Trinity, between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but He also chose to create outside of Himself in order to share Himself beyond Himself. But, being Love, that ultimately means creating creatures who have the capacity to return that love freely, that means creating persons. And having that freedom implies the capacity to withhold from that love exchange, otherwise it’s not really a personal relationship.

Moreover, you’re misunderstanding God’s omniscience as prescience. God it s not prescient. Prescience is a temporal quality. That is to say, to know the future is to be in the present looking forward to a future moment and foreseeing what it will be. That’s in time. That’s not what’s going on with God at all.

God is eternal, which you might mistake to mean that He lives forever. Yes, God does live forever, but that’s not His eternality. When we think of our souls never dying, that they live forever also, that does not mean they are eternal. They are everlasting, which is distinct from being eternal.

Termporality and Eternality you can think of as being opposite. Temporality, or time, is the duration of sequence. One moment proceeding logically to the next. Eternality is the duration of simultaneity, all moments present before God at once. God understands their sequence, but is not subject to proceeding through time as we are. God’s knowledge, therefore, is not a prescience, a looking forward in time to a future reality, but rather an omniscience, whereby all reality, all truth, is present to Him at once. Our choices are not “foreknown” by God, they are seen by God as we make them. All of them, all at once. God knows our final destiny, because to Him, we’ve already arrived there, not because He sees ahead in time toward it.

 

[steve_b]

Um… y’all know that “arbitrary” originally meant “voluntary, of one’s own choice, by one’s own discretion”, right? Turning it into “by personal whim, by random choice, by chance” is the modern meaning. (The word comes from “arbiter,” an eyewitness, and hence an umpire or judge who says which side is right after you submit something for “arbitration.”)

So it’s a funny thread title from that perspective.

all the ways it is used today

Arbitrary Thesaurus

 

[jinc1019]

Please check again. Here is what I found:

1. But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,[a] knowing good and evil.”
2. the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
3. that it was a delight to the eyes
4. tree was to be desired to make one wise

Which of these is arbitrary?

To do so would be to deny His own nature. God is Love. That kind of love that can only exists if it can be freely given. Made in His image, Adam and Eve were fully capable of this love. They chose to abandon that love, for that which they could take for themselves.

Hi David,

I appreciate your responses, but honestly, you’re just not even close to being on the same page here. I’m not talking about that, or anything else you seem to be talking about. Perhaps I’m not explaining it well, but I just don’t think you’re grasping what I’m saying.

I understand Adam and Eve had free will. John Calvin would have said that too! That doesn’t really have anything to do with what I’m talking about. We’re talking about predestination here, and whether predestination effectively means your free will is actually just a designed choice by God. You need to go another layer back and think about why Eve made that choice. What made her inclined to do it?

 

[jinc1019]

It’s the position of the historic Church.

There are lots of people after Augustine who disagree.

 

[jinc1019]

The problem is that things compound. If you decided to work hard and keep your job, that might mean you can afford school, which leads you to getting a better job. then you might choose to look into why come Christians believe in God because you have enough spare time to do that. One thing leads to another.

Or you may have been affected by someone else’s free will and been say involved in a car accident that changed your life which made you thankful for your life.

Indeed you can trace it back to God, but he gives us (collectively) a hand in it too, so it is both us and God. Our Free will is not given directly to do anything we want. It is limited,or guided by the laws that God has given us. One of those laws Christ gave us, to love one another. That law makes sense given the power of our Free Will.

You are toying with predestination which denies the gift of Free Will and is an insult to God in light of the gift he has given.

Stay humble to see the light.

.

You have touched on my point here so I’m thankful for your comments…You said that ultimately it can all be traced back to God…That’s right! It can! Well, if it can all be traced back to God, then really, what does it mean to say “we have a hand in it too”? How is that even possible.

Think about this for a minute. Nothing exists except God. God decides to create the universe. Before doing so, God has to decide what kind of universe he wants, what it’s going to look like, whether there will be intelligent creatures in it, etc. The moment God decides what he’s going to, even before creating it, he instantly knows everything that will ever happen, right? So if God knows everything that’s going to happen BEFORE creating everything, then BY creating the universe, God ELECTED that universe and all of its events to occur.

What you want to do is to act as though God created the universe either without knowing what was going to happen (which I’m sure you’d say is wrong) or without any sort of a plan. Any other possibility logically means God knew what was going to happen and made that choice to create.

Yes, we humans make decisions for ourselves, but ultimately, those choices are part of God’s larger choice for this creation and this particular universe.

 

[jinc1019]

Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? A free choice is a free choice. If you’re looking for a causality for peoples’ free choices, you won’t find one, except that it’s the simply the choice they made. In most cases, sure, you’ll find causality, whether that be genetics, upbringing, individual circumstances, etc, but these shouldn’t be considered free choices, strictly speaking. This is because most of the choices we make, we make without deliberation. But the freer the choice, the less explanation you’re going to find outside of a person’s simple decision to indulge concupiscence or submit to the Divine Will.

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!