Let's talk about free will. [View all]

[Htom Sirveaux]

It's possibly the most popular response to the Problem of Evil, and it's recently popped up in a couple of discussions in this forum (and no doubt in others that I haven't seen). Briefly, the idea is that the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God allows suffering and/or evil (that he could and would want to prevent, otherwise) because doing so is the price of granting humans free will. Free will is necessary for them to be moral agents. The ability to choose implies the ability to choose wrongly, and at least some humans will inevitably do so. The alternative is thought to be for God to have created robots who would always choose correctly, at the price of rendering the action of obeying God meaningless. Philosophers have debated free will for centuries: whether it exists, how it relates to scientific law and history, and so on.

I'd like to focus on the theological consequences of this doctrine. As previously stated, I'm discussing the "omnimax" God of classic theism: all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, unchanging, simple, eternal, perfect creator. The concept of free will is commonly thought to conflict with both God's knowledge and God's power. If God knows which decision I will make before I exist to participate in said decision, then the decision has nothing to do with my choice or action. Therefore, it seems that genuine free will must limit God's knowledge to that which exists, with the results of free will choices deemed not to exist yet (this is commonly called "open theism" ). Furthermore, if my decision really is free, then it is under my control, not God's. But that means that I have some power that God does not, and God's power is accordingly limited.

But further consequences follow, and here is where things can get really problematic: the doctrine of divine simplicity means that God is not made of parts (this part is his power, that part is his omniscience, etc). God isn't divisible because divisibility implies time and space; different locations, different times. God transcends the time and space he created, so he transcends those differences. Therefore, his power, his knowledge, his very existence: all the same thing. To limit one is to limit all. God then becomes a finite, limited being who has not always existed (his existence has been limited just as his power, knowledge, etc.), and is himself in need of a creator. But the very necessity of invoking God as creator was to limit an infinite regress, and that limit has just been nullified.

And more still. Another traditional way of talking about God is to call him the necessary being: an entity that cannot fail to exist, the uncaused cause. That's how the infinite regress I just referred to was stopped. But if humans are the ultimate authors of their actions, then *they are necessary beings* (their actions are contingent on them, and the chain stops there). We just said that necessary beings cannot fail to exist, they are uncaused causes. Humans, as necessary beings, would have always existed, and not needed a creator. This may be the path to the doctrine of reincarnation and karma: every human being has always existed in one form or another, with the nature of the form dependent on previous actions, all of which each of us is ultimately and solely responsible for.

One way or another, belief in free will seems to point away from the omnimax God as creator.