Dealing with Free Will

I want to direct our attention to an examination of what we MEAN by those words “free will.”  What does it mean to HAVE a free will?  What does it mean to be a free moral agent, a volitional creature under the sovereignty of God?  First of all, let me say that there are different views of what free will comprises that are bandied about in our culture and I think it’s important that we recognize these various views. 

The first view is what I’m going to call the humanist view of free will, which I, I would say is the most widely prevalent view of human freedom that we find in our culture, and I’m sad to say, in my opinion, it’s the most widely held view within the Church as well as outside of the Church.  In this scheme, free will is defined as, “Our ability to make choices spontaneously; that is, that the choices we make are in no wise conditioned or determined by any prior prejudice, inclination, or disposition.”  Let me say that again, that we make our choices spontaneously, nothing previously, previous to the choice DETERMINES the choice, no prejudice, no prior disposition or prior inclination, but the choice comes literally on its own as a spontaneous action by the person.

Well I see, at the outset, TWO serious problems that we face as Christians, with this definition of free will.  The first is a theological or moral problem, the second one is a rational problem.  And I should really say that there are three problems, because the whole lecture, will focus on the third one, but on the, at the outset we immediately see two problems. 

The first is, as I said, a theological moral problem.  IF our choices are made PURELY spontaneously, without any PRIOR inclination, any PRIOR disposition, in a sense what we’re saying is that there is no REASON for the choice.  There is no MOTIVATION or MOTIVE for the choice.  It just happens spontaneously.  And if THAT is the way our choices operate, then we immediately face this problem:  how could such an action have any MORAL significance to it at all?  Because one of the things, for example, that the Bible is concerned about in the choices we make is not only WHAT we choose, but what our INTENTION was in the MAKING of that choice. 

We recall, for example, the story of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brother [sic], and when he has his reunion with his brothers many, many years later, and they repent of that former sin, what does Joseph say to his brothers, and when he accepts them and forgives them, he says, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”  So that God made a choice in the matter, God had chosen to at least to allow this thing to happen and to befall Joseph.  His brothers made a choice about what to do with Joseph.  Their inclination in the making of that choice was wicked.  God also made a choice in allowing it to take place.  But God’s reason, God’s INTENTION in this activity was altogether righteous and holy.  And so God, in considering a good deed, for example, not only examines the outward deed itself - the ACTION, but He’s also considers what the inner motivation, the INTENT behind the deed.  But if there ARE no inner motivations, there are no INTENTS, there’s no INTENTIONALITY, to use the philosophical term, then how could the action be of any moral significance?  It just HAPPENS.

But even deeper than THAT problem, we face immediately the question whether or not such a choice could actually be made.  Not, not simply whether it would be moral if it WERE made, but COULD a CREATURE, WITHOUT any prior disposition, inclination, bent or reason, even MAKE a choice?  Let’s look at this by way of a couple of examples:  IF I have NO prior inclination or disposition, what is attractive about that idea is that that would mean that my will is NEUTRAL.  It’s inclined neither to the left, nor to the right.  It’s neither inclined toward righteousness, nor towards evil, but is simply neutral.  There is no previous bent or inclination to it.  I think of the story of Alice in Wonderland when she, in her travels, comes to the fork in the road, and she can’t decide whether to take the left fork or the right fork.  And she looks up and there’s the Cheshire cat up in the tree, grinning at her, and she ASKS of the Cheshire cat, “Which road should I take?” And the Cheshire cat replies by saying, “That depends.  Where are you going?”  And she says, “I don’t know.”  Then what does HE say?  “Then I guess it doesn’t matter!”  If you have no intent, no plan, no desire to go, get anywhere, what difference does it make whether you take the left or to the right.  Well in that situation, we look at it and we think, well Alice now has two choices.  She can go to the left or she can go to the right, when in fact she has FOUR choices: she can go to the left, she can go to the right, or she can turn back and go back where she came from, OR she can stand there and do nothing, which is also a choice, and stand there until she perishes from her inactivity. 

So she has four choices, and the question we’re going to ask is WHY would she make ANY of those four choices?  If she has no reason or inclination behind the choice, if her will were utterly neutral, what would, in fact, happen to her?  No reason to prefer the left to the right, or standing there as far as going back - what choice would she make?  She wouldn’t make a choice.  She’d be paralyzed.  And so, the problem we have with the humanist notion of freedom, is that it’s the old problem of the rabbit out of the hat, without a hat, and without a magician.  It’s something coming out of nothing, an effect without a cause.  A spontaneous choice, in other words, is a RATIONAL IMPOSSIBILITY.  It would have to be an effect WITHOUT a cause. 

Now, just in passing, I may add that from a biblical perspective, from a Christian view, man, in his fallenness, is not seen as being in a state of neutrality with respect to the things of God.  He DOES have a prejudice.  He DOES have a bias.  He DOES have an inclination, and his inclination is toward wickedness and away from the things of God.  But let me just say that in passing as we look at various Christian views of freedom of the will. 

I personally think that the greatest book that has ever been written on this subject is entitled simply The Freedom of the Will by America’s greatest scholar, Jonathan Edwards.  That, incidentally, that designation as America’s greatest scholar is not my own.  That comes from Encyclopedia Britannica that has voted Jonathan Edwards the greatest scholarly mind that the United States ever produced.  And his work, The Freedom of the Will, is the closest examination and analysis of this thorny question I’ve ever read.  Of course, Martin Luther’s famous work on The Bondage of the Will, is also very important that Christians, I think, need to read. 

But let’s look for a moment at Edwards’ definition of the freedom of the will.  Edwards says that, “Freedom, or free will, is the MIND CHOOSING.”  Now what he’s saying there is that though he distinguishes between the mind and the will, he is saying that the two are inseparably related.  We do not make MORAL choices without the MIND APPROVING the direction of our choice.  That is one of the dimensions that c-, is closely related to the biblical concept of conscience.  That moral choices are, that the mind is involved in moral choices.  I become aware of certain options.  And if I prefer one over the other to make, have a preference before I can MAKE the choice, I have to have some awareness of what those options are for it to be a moral decision.  So that the will is not something that acts INDEPENDENT [sic] from the mind.  But acts in conjunction with the mind; whatever the mind deems as being desirable is what the will is inclined to choose. 

Now in addition to definitions, Edwards gives us sort of an iron rule that I call “Edwards’ Law of Free Will.”  And I think this is perhaps his most important contribution to the discussion of human freedom.  Edwards declares this: “That free moral agents ALWAYS act according to the STRONGEST inclination they have at the moment of choice.”  To say it another way, we ALWAYS choose according to our inclinations.  And we always choose according to our STRONGEST inclination at a given moment.  Let me put it in simple terms.  Anytime that you sin, what that action indicates is that at the moment of your sin, your desire to commit the sin is greater, in that moment, than your desire is to obey Christ.  If your desire to obey Christ were greater than your desire to commit the sin, what would you do?  You would not sin.  But at the moment of choice, we always follow our strongest inclination, our strongest disposition, or our strongest desires. 

Now, it seems to us, however, in this business of choosing, that there are lots of times we choose things for no apparent reason whatsoever.  For example, if I were to ask you, “Why are you sitting in the chair that you are sitting in right now?”   Could you analyze your own internal thought processes and responses to the options that were before you when you came into this room?  And say with clarity, “The reason why I’m sitting on the end here is because I always like to sit on the end chair.”  Or, “Because I wanted to sit next to Jean.”  Or, “I wanted to be on the front row so I could be on the video camera.”  Or, “This was the only chair left open and I didn’t want to stand and I’d rather sit than stand and so my desire for sitting was stronger than my desire for standing and so I sat down.”  What I’m saying to you is that there’s a reason why you are sitting where you are sitting.  And it may have been a very quick decision.  It may be simply that you’re lazy and you don’t like to walk, and that the chair that you saw vacant was the closest one available to you.  Chances are the reasons go deeper than that.  There are some people, if you walk them into a park where there is a park bench that is vacant and room for three people, that these people if you walked them into a park bench, walked them into a park and there’s an empty park bench there and sit on the park bench, a hundred times out of a hundred, they’ll sit on the end of the bench rather than the middle of the bench.  In fact, it’ll usually be on the left and or the right end, where OTHER people will always choose the MIDDLE.  Why?  Some people enjoy a crowds , they like to be in the middle of the action, they have a gregarious personality.  Other people like to stay safely where they can have a safe exit, will stay on the end on the-, of the bench.  And now let’s just say, we’re not always sitting there ANALYZING very carefully WHY we make the choices we make; but there is a reason for every choice that we make.  And we always act against, according to the strongest inclination of the moment.

Now, there are two things that we may raise immediately to object to Edwards’ law of choosing.  The first one is, “Well I can tell you lots of occasions where I have done things that I didn’t really want to do, and I have experienced coercion.”  Well what coercion involves is external forces coming into our lives that seek to force us to do things that, all things being equal, we would not choose to do.   But in most instances, the power of coercion can, a-, a- just reduce our options to two.  It can severely reduce our options.  The gunman comes up to me on the sidewalk and he puts a gun to my head, and he says, “Your money or your life.”  He has just reduced my options to two.  Ok, by external force and coercion.  Hasn’t he?

Now all things being equal, I was not looking for someone to give my wallet away to that night, so I had no great desire to, to give this man my money.  But when the gun’s at my head, and my options are: my brains on the sidewalk or my billfold in his pocket, suddenly I have a stronger desire to live and lose my money than to die and STILL lose my money.  And so, at that moment, my desire level to live may be stronger than my desire level to resist this man, and so I give him my wallet.  Now there MAY be people in that same situation who says [sic], “I would rather DIE than give in to coercion.  Even though I know if I refuse to give him this wallet he’s going to kill me anyway, and take my money, still I’m not going to help enable him.”  So they say, “Shoot me.”  But even then, their desire to resist is greater than their desire NOT to resist, and so, they resist.  Is that clear?  

So even when our options are severely reduced, and external forces change our desire levels, because this is the other point that we have to be aware of, is that human desires fluctuate.  And they are many.  In our situations where we are making choices, it’s rare that we’re only choosing between TWO options.  Or even just between a good option and a bad option.  One of the toughest moral choices for a Christian to make is between rival goods.  We have two opportunities, but I’m not sure which is the one in which I can most serve Christ.  And that becomes very difficult.  We know that our desire levels change and fluctuate.

But the second objection that I can hear coming is a statement from the Apostle Paul when he says, “The good that I would, I DO NOT, and that which I WOULD NOT is the very thing I do.”  And it seems to suggest right there that the Apostle Paul, by apostolic authority, is telling us that it is indeed possible for a person to choose against his wishes, to choose against his desires.  I can only say in response to that that I do NOT believe it was the Apostle’s intention there to give us a technical treatment of the intricacies of the working out of the faculty of choosing.  But what he is expressing is something that we all experience, that I have within me a desire to please Christ.  But that desire that is present does not always win out when the moment of truth comes.  All things being equal as a Christian, I would not-, if you say to me, “Brother, would you like to be free from sin?”  I would say, “Of course, I’d like to be free from sin.”  However, I say that now, until the temptation of sin presses in upon me, and my desire for that sin intensifies, and then I surrender to it.  Freely.  Because when I work and act according to my desires, I am working and acting freely. 

Alright, let me continue.  Calvin, in examining the question of free will, says that, “If we mean by free will, that fallen man has the ability to choose what he wants, then of course fallen man has free will.  If we mean by that term that man, in his fallen state, has the moral power and ability to choose righteousness, then,” said Calvin, “is far too grandiose a term to apply to fallen man.”  And with that sentiment, I would agree.

Now we’ve seen Edwards’ view.  We’ve seen Calvin’s view.  Now we’ll go into the Sproulian view of free will by appealing to irony or to a form of paradox.  I would like to make this statement, that in my opinion:  Every choice that we make is free AND every choice that we make is determined.  Every choice that we make is free AND every choice that we make is determined.  Now that sounds FLATLY contradictory because we normally see the categories of “determine” and “free” as being mutually exclusive categories, saying that if something is “determined” by something else, which is to say it’s “caused” by something else, would se-, would seem to indicate that that couldn’t possibly be “free.”  But what I’m speaking here, but of what I’m speaking is NOT determinism.  Determinism means that things happen to me strictly by virtue of external forces.  But in addition to external forces that are determining factors, in what happens to us, there are also internal forces that are determining factors.   What we’re saying , along with Calvin, is that if my choices flow out of my disposition and out of my desires, and if, my actions are an effect that have causes and reasons behind them, then my personal desire, in a very real sense, determines my personal choice.

Now if my desires determine my choice, how then can I be free?  Remember I said that in every choice our choice is both free and determined.  But what determines it, is ME.  And this we call self-determination.  Self-determination.  Which is not the DENIAL freedom, but is the ESSENCE of freedom for the self to be able to determine its own choices is what free will is all about.  Now, the simple point I’m trying to make is that not only MAY we choose according to our own desire, but, at, but, in fact we DO always choose according to our desires.  And I’ll take it even to the superlative degree and say, in fact, we MUST choose always according to the strongest inclination at the moment.  THAT is the essence of free choice: to be able to choose what you want. 

Now the problem with the sinner, obviously, is not that the sinner, in his fall, has lost the faculty of choice.  Sinners still have minds.  Sinners can still think.  Sinners still have desires.  Sinners still have wills.  And the will is still free insofar as it is able to do what the sinner wants it to do.  Where is the problem?  The problem is in the ROOT of the desires of the heart in fallen man.  That  because he has an evil inclination, a desire for sin, he sins.  Sinners sin because the want to sin.  Therefore, they sin freely.  Sinners reject Christ because the WANT to reject Christ.  Therefore, they reject Him freely.  And before a person can ever respond POSITIVELY to the things of God, and CHOOSE Christ, and  CHOOSE life, he MUST have a desire to do that.  Now the question is, does fallen man retain any desire in his heart for God, for the things of God? 

Quickly, I will introduce really our next subject, which will be the biblical view of the radical character of man’s fallenness with respect to his desire for the things of God.  But before we get to that lecture, let’s just tie this one up by speaking of another distinction that Jonathan Edwards has made famous.  He makes a distinction between moral ability and natural ability.  Natural ability has to do with the abilities that we have by nature.  As a human being I have the natural ability to think.  I have the ability to speak.  I can walk upright.  I do NOT have the natural ability to fly through the air unaided by machines.  Fish have the ability to live underwater for great periods of time without tanks of oxygen, and so on, and diving equipment, because God has given them fins and gills.  He’s given them the natural equipment necessary to make it able, to make them ABLE to live in that environment.  Hence, they have a natural ability that I do not have.  God has given natural abilities to birds that I do not have.  Eh? 

Well, we’re talking about MORAL ability.  We’re talking about the ability to BE righteous as well as to be sinful.  Man was created with the ability to be righteous OR to be sinful.  But man has fallen.  And what Edwards is saying is that in his fallen state, he no longer has the ability in and of himself, morally, to be perfect.  Because he is BORN in sin, in original sin.  He has a FALLEN nature, a sin nature which makes it utterly impossible for him to achieve perfection in this world.  He still has the faculty of thinking.  He still has the ability to make choices.  But what he lacks is the inclination or the disposation, disposition toward godliness.  Now we’re going to see whether or not that’s consistent with what the Bible teaches about man’s fallen condition, but I’m just giving it to you now by way of preview. 

At this point, Edwards is merely echoing what Augustine had taught centuries earlier, with a similar distinction.  Augustine said that man had a liberium obitrium, or free will, but what man lost in the fall was libertos, or liberty, the Bible calls “moral liberty.”  The Bible speaks of fallen man as being in bondage to sin.  And those who are in bondage have lost some dimension of moral liberty.  Still make choices.  Still have a free will.  But that will is now inclined toward evil and disinclined toward righteousness.  There is none who does good.  There is none righteous.  There’s none who seeks after God.  No, not one. 

That indicates that something has happened to us INSIDE.  Jesus speaks about the fruit of the tree comes from the nature of the tree; that fig trees don’t produce oranges.  You don’t get corrupt fruit from a righteous tree.  There’s something wrong INSIDE of us in where our desires, our inclinations reside.  It is THAT that is in bondage.  But even that fallenness does not eliminate the faculty of choosing.  So there’s really no difference here between what Augustine is calling, when he says we still have free will but not liberty, it’s the same distinction that Edwards is making between moral ability and natural ability.  

*(using some comments on RC Sproul Dissertation about Free Will)*