Understanding Free Will

[Nelka]

Scenario:

Jack wants to hurt Fred and Fred knows it.

Fred prays to God that Jack doesn’t hurt him but Jack has free will to hurt Fred, therefore God won’t stop Jack.

God can give Jack the Grace to not hurt Fred but ultimately Jack’s free will must be stronger than Fred’s prayers?

 

[CatholicSpirit]

Richard Leonard Kuklinski, a mafia hitman and serial killer once said he gave a religious man he was going to kill 1/2 an hour to allow God to change his circumstances before he killed him and “god never showed up.”

People have the free will to hurt or kill one another without divine intervention, that much we do know. But I believe that person was therefore martyred as a result. For those who’s lives are spared, we call those miracles.

 

[Nelka]

Nobody understands it then?

 

[fhansen]

The world is radically free to do whatever is conceivable and physically possible; what else is new? God doesn’t force anyone to do His will, or free will wouldn’t exist at all. So we know that said freedom is God’s will.

To override this “rule” is a supernatural act that means God intervenes in the natural order of things, which He has already deemed to be worthwhile in spite of the evil that He allows and, as the Church teaches, ultimately intends to bring an even greater good out of. So, IOW, God, knowing the beginning from the end, isn’t obliged by the dictates of His justice and love to answer such prayers even as He may, of course.

Having said that, the Church acknowledges that there isn’t any perfectly pat answer to the “mystery of evil”. But our faith nonetheless addresses evil head-on. Consider this: God, Himself, allowed evil to have its way with Him, on the cross, in human flesh, at the hands of His own creation, forgiving the evil He suffered all the while. He offers this as the remedy for evil, for sin, by overcoming it with love, not with power. And then He does demonstrate His power, of life over death by the resurrection, so that we’ll know that His love triumphs over both: sin and death.The cross stands as this offer, that we can navigate to anytime we wish, to join Him in overcoming evil with love as we choose between the two. Our hero is a humiliated and crucified one, unlike the world’s heroes and superstars. From the CCC:

385 God is infinitely good and all his works are good. Yet no one can escape the experience of suffering or the evils in nature which seem to be linked to the limitations proper to creatures: and above all to the question of moral evil. Where does evil come from? “I sought whence evil comes and there was no solution”, said St. Augustine, and his own painful quest would only be resolved by his conversion to the living God. For “the mystery of lawlessness” is clarified only in the light of the “mystery of our religion”. The revelation of divine love in Christ manifested at the same time the extent of evil and the superabundance of grace. We must therefore approach the question of the origin of evil by fixing the eyes of our faith on him who alone is its conqueror.

 

[Latinitas]

God most certainly could move Jack’s will to do that which is good and not hurt Fred, and this will infallibly guarantee that Jack does not hurt Fred. God does not violate Jack’s free will here: the Divine movement of Jack’s will doesn’t take away the power to hurt Fred, only the act. Put another way, the Divine motion ensures that Jack won’t hurt Fred, not that he can’t hurt Fred.

Benedicat Deus,
Latinitas

 

[Richca]

Jack’s will is not stronger than God’s will and ultimately whatever happens in this world whether by rational beings who have free will or irrational beings, animate or inanimate, depends on God’s will. God’s will is the first cause of things. This is what is called divine providence. St Augustine said “Nothing is done, unless the Almighty wills it to be done, either by permitting it, or by actually doing it”.

St Paul said ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28). Jesus said ‘Without me, you can do nothing’.

And, ‘Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will be established’ (Proverbs 19:21). And, ‘For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure’ (Phil. 2:13). This applies not only to supernatural grace but to the works of the natural man or nature itself and much more so to irrational creatures, animate or inanimate, who do not have free will.

Concerning divine providence, the CCC#308 says ‘God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes’. And as St Thomas Aquinas teaches, God is the first efficient cause and the first mover so that no creature, great or small, can proceed to it’s act unless God moves it to act.

Free human actions are not outside the governance of divine providence. This is plain from a simple reading of the Old Testament, the writings of the prophets, and the history of the Israelites. Whether Jack actually hurts Fred is ultimately going to depend on whether God permits Jack to do this evil act according to his plan of providence. For God governs the world and the all the nations as the psalmist declares in many places “But the LORD sits enthroned for ever, he has established his throne for judgment; and he judges the world with righteousness, he judges the peoples with equity” (Psalm 9:7). Without God, no creature can do anything nor preserve its own existence.

 

[Gabika50]

And, what would have been the Good Samaritan’s obligations if he came upon a robbery in progress?