Freedom of will
Freedom is one of those big important words.
"Give me freedom or give me death!" At some levels and in some contexts
the word carries with it the very essence of life and joy because
coercion, slavery, is such an ugly and brutal thing that
assures the slaves they're worth nothing or if they have any use at all
it's what their degenerate slavers make of them. They've been robbed of
self-determination and in contexts such as this a great moral evil is
perpetrated—some fundamental moral and spiritual truth has been
despised. In the West to enslave someone is illegal but it's more than
that; it's been made illegal because everyone in his/her bones (having
been shaped by the Scriptures) felt it was morally repugnant. So far so
good.
Free will is a whole different issue. For
atheists like Dawkins, Weinberg and Wilson freedom of will is an
illusion for "the will" itself is the product of physical necessity and
for the worst face of Calvinism even Adam wasn't free for God ordained
the Fall and Adam fell. In both these cases we have an iron-clad
determinism—one biological and the other theological. We should protest
both of these.
But I'm sure most of us in general terms think
of "the free will question" in terms of simple logic. Those of us who
are deeply religious don't leave it there but I'm sure that's where most
of us begin. We argue logically that we have a will that's free for if
we didn't then we couldn't be held morally responsible for our choices.
This makes sense, up to a point, but a lot depends on who it is we're
talking about and what it is we think we're "free" to do; introducing
the moral and ethical into the very definition of "freedom" complicates
matters.
Do you think Jesus was "free" to rape someone or to
torture a child? Hmmm. "Free" in what sense? you ask. Exactly! If we
say, free to choose between A and B the issue is simpler because it's an abstraction and the moral element is left out. In logic Jesus was free to rape someone or torture a child if we define freedom of will in abstraction, that is, if we define it independent of God and what he has created us to be.
A recent American survey of thousands of young people
tells us that the vast majority thought that the chief virtue was
something like "being yourself and pursuing your dreams come what may."
There's no surprise in this for "freedom" and "independence" are the
essence of life it would appear and it's certainly what many of the
adored celebrities stress.
But most of us think that if someone has it in him/her
to take pleasure from inflicting hurt on the defenceless they aren't
free; they're enslaved. Whether the abuser believes it or not is neither
here nor there; we would say a sadistic brute is a slave to evil. Jesus
certainly wasn't free to maim and behave obscenely. If we ignore God
and ignore how Jesus felt toward his God and Father; if we ignore all
moral concerns and turn "Jesus" into an abstract figure, an abstract
"human"—as distinct, say, from a stone or a salamander—then we could
speak of the freedom of his will to choose abomination.
As soon as we accept that God has created each one of us
and determined that the fullness of our humanity consists in our
likeness to him our definition of freedom undergoes a change.
If freedom of will is an essential part of true humanity and true
humanity is existing as and living out the image of God then all that
hinders that is enslaving. True "freedom" then—though we don't
experience it in anything like an absolute form—is the capacity to
pursue God's image in an ever deepening experience. It isn't the
capacity for self-actualisation as if the "self" was supposed to exist
independent of God and self-defined.
Jesus—the only truly free human—once told some people
that he could free them and this offended them. They'd never been slaves
to anyone, they told him, but he assured them they were slaves to sin
and needed him to free them (see John 8:30-36).
Arminian types beware for our dependence on God to live as free humans is utter and absolute—the rest is Pelagianism!