3.6: Free Will and the Traits of God (Noah Levin)

21 Free Will and the Traits of God
Noah Levin³¹

When the 16^th Century Christian religious reformer John Calvin considered the impact of God’s omnipotence and omniscience on free will, he was left to conclude that, in a very real sense, we have no free will. His belief is succinctly captured in his doctrine of providence, which holds “All events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God” and that “nothing happens but what [God] has knowingly and willingly decreed.” There is no such thing as choice, free action, making our own decisions, fortune, or chance. The Westminster Confession of Faith (part of other traditions) echoes a similar sentiment and states that God “freely and unchangeably ordained whatsoever comes to pass.” God is the only free being, and we only do what we can because either God has made it so or allows it to be so. This view is controversial, at the very least because it seems to go completely against any notion of “free will.” If God knows everything, how can we be free? If God only allows us to act, in what sense are our actions our own?

First, it is prudent to get clear on what is meant by “free will.” The colloquial way of thinking about it is rather straightforward: we make decisions and take actions for ourselves. We think freely with no one controlling what we do or how we think, and we decide to take actions based on this deliberation. The term for this in philosophy is “libertarian free will.” The existence of libertarian free will, however, is doubted by many philosophers, as its very conception conflicts with the apparent facts of physical existence. The opposing view (that there is nothing like this type of free will) is often called “determinism,” which takes its name from the notion that explanations for all actions are determined by factors outside of our control. Often, this determinism is based in “physicalism,” the viewpoint that only physical things exist, so free will does not exist because there is no physical basis for it (that we have yet discovered). The main motivation for this view comes in the form of a challenge: where does free will come from if we are made up entirely of physical components and subject to laws of physics that themselves aren’t free? Importantly, there are other types of determinism, such as that described by Calvin (“religious determinism”), which will be covered in more detail shortly. But since we generally like the idea that we do have some sort of free will, the type of free will many philosophers believe we might have is described by an interesting phrase: the ability to do otherwise (even if we may never do otherwise). This view is often ascribed to the view called “compatibilism” that attempts to make free will compatible with determinism. What this captures is that we have the ability to choose between multiple actions whenever we do anything, and this real option is what is important for having free will. A contrary position would be that we can only ever choose to do a single thing and are thus not only determined but also limited to a single choice for every action. For example, if you go to a restaurant and you are thirsty and the only drink they have is water, you are not free to choose what you want to drink: there is only one option and one action you can take (if you want to drink), and that is to have water. You are determined. If they have water, tea, and coffee, and you can genuinely pick which one you want (even if you are predictable based on past drinking habits and might always pick, for example, water), then if you can make a decision and choose from multiple actions to take, having a this ability to choose whichever of the three you want, is what free will is like. While this looks very different than libertarian free will, there is still some sense in which we have free will.

So why is not having free will a problem? Why even go for something like compatibilism and not just concede that our knowledge of our existence entails that we have no free will? There are two important motivating reasons, one religiously based and one, for lack of a better word, instinctually based. Most Western religious traditions imply that we have free will and it is an integral part of what we are. Indeed, the decision to believe is supposed to be one that we can freely make, and we are also supposed to constantly be faced with moral decisions in which we might later be judged by our abilities to choose to do the right thing (at the “pearly white gates of heaven” perhaps). It explains why there is evil in the world despite there being a very powerful and good God: we choose to be evil. Apart from religion, most people feel like they really do have free will. Indeed, it is hard to deny that it really feels like we make decisions every moment of the day. If we aren’t free to choose even though it really feels like we do, we should want some explanation for this disconnect. Beyond this, many people have a deep desire for it to be true that we have genuine free will, as life would seem empty if we are not the masters of our fates. It’s unpalatable for many if any decisions we make are merely the consequences of physical laws, as we are thus deprived of any choices to give our lives meaning. So, there are strong reasons that people believe in, and desire, genuine free will. However many reasons for us to believe we have free will, Calvin could not reconcile its existence with the type of God he believed in. If God is all-powerful, there is no room for free will to enter the picture. For those that want free will, I maintain that free will is only compatible with the existence of God if God is not infinite in any way, as if God has any infinite trait, the possibility for our individual free will disappears.

We either have free will or we don’t. If we start from the assumption that there is no free will, then those that believe in it ought to provide a positive explanation of where it comes from. I’d like to move through the major infinite traits of God and illustrate how each of them prevents free will: omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omniscience, and omnipresence.

Omnipotence: If God is all-powerful, then everything happens either because he takes direct action or allows it to happen. One half of this, that God “makes” us do things, clearly undermines free will. If God is all-powerful, he can make us do anything. The other side, that we only do things if God allows it, isn’t directly a problem for free will in some sense: perhaps we do make decisions and act upon them, as God has not directly forced us to do those things or think in those ways. But are they really free if we are only doing them because God is allowing it? In moral philosophy this is known as the distinction between “doing” and “allowing.” Some people believe it is important; others do not. There are a lot of classic examples that discuss this distinction, but I’ll just present one of the more relevant ones right now: Two men both want their nephews dead, they both go into the bathroom while he is bathing and plan on drowning him to gain an inheritance; in one case, the nephew has a seizure and begins to drown in the tub, with the uncle standing by smiling instead of saving his life, and in the other, he holds his nephew’s head underwater until he drowns. Is the first man less guilty than the second? If not, then there might not be any significant moral difference between taking an action and allowing that action to happen when we are able to prevent it. God would be able to prevent anything from happening that he wants (and thus forcing us into always choosing what he wants us to). Perhaps this results in a compatibilist view of free will, but in compatibilist views of the world, there is already the concession that we are determined. The truth and importance of each of these views is hotly debated in the philosophical community, but I think they contain enough force to say that, at the very least, our free will is severely undermined if the only way we ever can do anything is if God makes us or allows us to do it.

Omniscience: If God is all-knowing, then we don’t have free will since God knows everything that will happen, and this foreknowledge undermines the genuineness of our decision-making processes. If we are completely predictable, then how can we be free? If everything we are going to do is already known by God, how can we ever do otherwise? In many traditions, it is said that our lives are already written in the book of life when we are born, and everything we do is already known to God. In what sense can we do otherwise? God knows what we’ll do, and if we could be inside the mind of God, we’d know, too. Thus, no meaningful free will occurs in this situation.

Omnipresence: If God is everywhere, then if we have free will, it is the either the free will of God and not our own or we have free will of our own that overrides God’s free will in our bodies. On this view, God is everywhere, including inside of us. Anything we do is thus also done by God. If God is “just along for the ride” then it would remove anything special about God. We could have free will, but then it would seem that God’s ability to act is greatly lessened. So, if we have free will, then, it would seem, in an odd way, God has none, as he would just be doing whatever we do. On the other hand, if God is acting through us, then our free will disappears and is overcome by divine action. Thus, we could potentially have free will in this instance, but in our having it, God becomes less powerful than us.

Omnibenevolence: I have saved this trait for last because I don’t think it is entirely incompatible with free will in the same sense free will is incompatible with other infinite divine traits. I do, however, think that other issues arise. If God is all-good, but nothing else, then he seems to lack the traits of something that we generally think of as God. A God that is only all-good isn’t exactly the sort of thing that we think of when we think of God. But, let’s say that God is omnibenevolent and extremely powerful, very intelligent, and almost everywhere. Could we have free will? I think we would have problems similar to an omnipotent or omniscient God: in what sense are we free if God is all-good and is capable of controlling (or knowing) a lot of our actions? If he’s all-good, then concerns related to the problem arise, as God should be able to prevent a lot of evil from occurring and should be wont to make things better for us.

Why think that free will is compatible with infinite traits? If we just have free will, then so many contradictions and problems would seem to disappear, most importantly the intricacies of human actions that involve things like evil or immoral acts. God’s sovereignty, goodness, power, and knowledge are not entirely compromised if we can act for ourselves. But, in many ways, if we have free will, it would seem that God would be inherently limited. God would not be all-powerful, since he couldn’t control our actions; he wouldn’t be all-knowing since he wouldn’t know what we were going to do; he wouldn’t be everywhere since he wouldn’t be within our parts that give us free will; and he wouldn’t be all-good since he would permit bad things to happen, something a presumably all-good being would take issues with. It is also somewhat comforting and empowering to believe that we do actually make decisions for ourselves. However, John Calvin had a very keen insight, and either we have free will and God is not infinite or God is infinite and we do not have anything we can meaningfully call free will. Free will is simply not compatible with an infinite God.

For Review and Discussion

1. How do you think free will works? Do you believe you have it? What are the reasons for your view?

2. Describe the general reasons that are offered to support the view that God is incompatible with free will. Which traits make it difficult to have free will?

3. What are the benefits of having free will for religion? Are these benefits, and reasons for them, enough to support the idea that we have free will?