Free will

Free will is the philosophical doctrine that holds that our choices are ultimately up to ourselves. The phrase "up to ourselves" is vague, and, just like free will itself, admits of a variety of interpretations. Because of this ambiguity, the utility of the concept of free will is questioned by some. Several logically independent questions can be asked about free will.

In theology

The theological doctrine of divine foreknowledge is often alleged to be in conflict with free will. After all, if God knows exactly what will happen, right down to every choice one makes, how can one's choices be free? God's already true or timelessly true knowledge about one's choices seems to constrain one's freedom. This problem is related to the Aristotelian problem of the sea-battle: tomorrow there will or will not be a sea-battle. If there will be one, then it was true yesterday that there would be one. Then it would be necessary that the sea battle will occur. If there won't be one, then by similar reasoning, it is necessary that it won't occur. This means that the future, whatever it is, is completely fixed by past truths — true propositions about the future. (However, some philosophers hold that necessity and possibility are defined with respect to a given point in time and a given matrix of empirical circumstances, and so something that is merely possible from the perspective of one observer may be necessary from the perspective of an omniscient.)

Related Topics:
Theological - God - Aristotelian

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In Christian thought

In Christian theology, God is described as not only omniscient but omnipotent, which some people, but not most, (Christians and non-Christians alike) believe implies that not only has God always known what choices you will make tomorrow, but actually chose what you would choose. That is, they believe, by virtue of His foreknowledge He knows what will influence your choices, and by virtue of His omnipotence He controls those factors. This becomes especially important for the doctrines relating to salvation and predestination.

Related Topics:
Christian theology - Omniscient - Omnipotent - Salvation - Predestination

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Proponents of the opposing view would make the point that knowledge of a future happening is entirely different than causing the event to happen. The definition of predestination varies among Christians. Many hold that it does not imply that God chose certain people to receive salvation and the rest have no chance of salvation, but rather, He knows that not everyone will choose salvation, and He specifically knows who will and who won't. The Bible says of God, "...God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:3-4, NIV).

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Calvinists, however, embrace the idea that God chose who would be saved from before the creation. They quote Ephesians 1:4 "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight." In its purist form, Calvinism is an extreme version of theological determinism. One of the strongest defenders of this theological point of view was the Puritan-American preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards.

Related Topics:
Calvinists - Jonathan Edwards

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Edwards believed that indeterminism was incompatible with our dependence on God and hence with his sovereignty. He reasoned that if our responses to God's grace are contra-causally free, then our salvation depends partly on us and therefore God's sovereignty isn't "absolute and universal." Edward's book Freedom of the Will defends theological determinism. In this book, Edwards attempts to show that libertarianism is incoherent. For example, he argues that by ‘self-determination’ the libertarian must mean either that one's actions including one's acts of willing are preceded by an act of free will or that one's acts of will lack sufficient causes. The first leads to an infinite regress while the second implies that acts of will happen accidentally and hence can't make someone "better or worse, any more than a tree is better than other trees because it oftener happens to be lit upon by a swan or nightingale; or a rock more vicious than other rocks, because rattlesnakes have happened oftener to crawl over it." (Freedom of the Will, 1754; Edwards 1957-, vol. 1, 327).

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Non-Calvinist Christians attempt a reconciliation of the dual concepts of Predestination (determinism) and free will by pointing to the situation of God as Christ. In taking the form of a man, a necessary element of this process was that Jesus Christ lived the existence of a mortal. When Jesus was born he was not born with the omniscient power of God the Creator, but with the mind of a human child - yet he was still fully God. The precedent this creates is that God is able to abandon knowledge (or ignore knowledge) while still remaining God. Thus it is not inconceivable that although omniscience demands that God knows what the future holds for us, it is within his power to deny this knowledge in order to preserve our free will.

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However, a reconciliation more compatible with non-Calvinist theology states that God is, in fact, not aware of future events, but rather, being eternal, He is outside time, and sees the past, present, and future as one whole creation. Consequently, it is not as though God would know that Jeffrey Dahmer (for example) would become guilty of homicide years prior to the event, but that He was aware of it from all eternity, viewing all time as a single present.

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Arminians believe that humans always have free will, but God's prevenient grace is always calling them.

Related Topics:
Arminians - Prevenient grace

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Mormons believe that God has given all humans the gift of free will (or free agency in Mormon terms) and has also predestined or foreordained everyone to do certain things in life, including to return to his presence. Whenever an individual chooses to stray from the commandments of God, by their own free will, their predestination may be annulled.

Related Topics:
Mormons - Free agency

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Free will is important in the Catholic Church, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas being major early figures in the history of the concept. Catholic Christianity's emphasis on free will and grace is generally in contrast to the emphasis on predestination in Protestant Christianity (see the link to Catholic Encyclopedia below for more).

Related Topics:
Catholic Church - St. Augustine - St. Thomas Aquinas - Grace - Protestant Christianity

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Some philosophers believe that free will is equivalent to having a soul, and thus that (at least some) animals do not have free will. This is also the position of Jewish philosophy, which stresses that free will (Hebrew: bechirah chofshith) is a product of the intrinsic human soul (neshama); see further below.

Related Topics:
Soul - Animal - Jewish - Philosophy - Hebrew

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In Jewish thought

The belief in Free will is axiomatic in Jewish belief, and is closely linked with the concept of reward and punishment, based on the Torah itself: "I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse: therefore choose life" (Deuteronomy 30:19). Free will is therefore discussed at length in Jewish philosophy, firstly as regards God's purpose in creation, and secondly as regards the closely related, resultant, paradox.

Related Topics:
Axiomatic - Jewish belief - Reward and punishment - Torah - Deuteronomy - Jewish philosophy - Paradox

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The traditional teaching regarding the purpose of creation, particularly as influenced by Jewish mysticism, is that "This world is like a corridor to the World to Come" (Pirkei Avoth 4:16). "Man was created for the sole purpose of rejoicing in God, and deriving pleasure from the splendor of His Presence… The place where this joy may truly be derived is the World to Come, which was expressly created to provide for it; but the path to the object of our desires is this world..." (Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim, Ch.1). Free will is thus required by God's justice, “otherwise, Man would not be given or denied good for actions over which he had no control” http://www.aish.com/literacy/concepts/The_Essence_of_Mankind.asp. It is further understood that in order for Man to have true free choice, he must not only have inner free will, but also an environment in which a choice between obedience and disobedience exists. God thus created the world such that both good and evil can operate freely http://www.aish.com/literacy/concepts/The_Essence_of_Mankind.asp; this is the meaning of the Rabbinic maxim, "All is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven" (Talmud, Berachot 33b).

Related Topics:
Jewish mysticism - World to Come - Pirkei Avoth - Moshe Chaim Luzzatto - Mesillat Yesharim - Rabbinic - Maxim - Talmud

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In Rabbinic literature, there is much discussion as to the contradiction between God's omniscience and free will. The representative view is that "Everything is foreseen; yet freewill is given" (Rabbi Akiva, Pirkei Avoth 3:15). Based on this understanding, the problem is formally described as a paradox, beyond our understanding.

Related Topics:
Rabbinic literature - Contradiction - Omniscience - Rabbi Akiva - Pirkei Avoth - Paradox

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:“The Holy One, Blessed Be He, knows everything that will happen before it has happened. So does He know whether a particular person will be righteous or wicked, or not? If He does know, then it will be impossible for that person not to be righteous. If He knows that he will be righteous but that it is possible for him to be wicked, then He does not know everything that He has created. ...he Holy One, Blessed Be He, does not have any temperaments and is outside such realms, unlike people, whose selves and temperaments are two separate things. God and His temperaments are one, and God's existence is beyond the comprehension of Man… we do not have the capabilities to comprehend how the Holy One, Blessed Be He, knows all creations and events. know without doubt that people do what they want without the Holy One, Blessed Be He, forcing or decreeing upon them to do so... It has been said because of this that a man is judged according to all his actions.” (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Teshuva 5:5)

Related Topics:
God and His temperaments are one - Beyond the comprehension of Man - Maimonides - Mishneh Torah

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(The paradox is explained, but not resolved, by observing that God exists outside of time, and therefore, His knowledge of the future is exactly the same as His knowledge of the past and present. Just as His knowledge of the past does not interfere with man's free will, neither does His knowledge of the future http://www.aish.com/literacy/concepts/The_Essence_of_Mankind.asp. One analogy is that of Time travel: The time traveller, having returned from the future, knows in advance what x will do, but while he knows what x will do, that knowledge does not cause x to do so; x had free will, even while the time traveller had foreknowledge. This distinction, between foreknowledge and predestination, is in fact discussed by Maimonides' critic Abraham ibn Daud; see Hasagat HaRABaD ad loc.)

Related Topics:
Time - Analogy - Time travel - Foreknowledge - Predestination - Abraham ibn Daud

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Although the above represents the majority view in Rabbinic thought, there are several major thinkers who resolve the paradox by explicitly excluding human action from divine foreknowledge. Both and Judah ha-Levi hold that "the decisions of man precede God's knowledge" http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=363&letter=F. Gersonides holds that God knows, beforehand, the choices open to each individual, but does not know which choice the individual, in his freedom, will make. Isaiah Horowitz takes the view that God cannot know which moral choices people will make, but that, nevertheless, this does not impair His perfection. See further discussion in the article on Gersonides.

Related Topics:
Foreknowledge - Judah ha-Levi - Gersonides - Isaiah Horowitz - Further discussion

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The existence of free will, and the paradox above (as addressed by either approach), is closely linked to the concept of Tzimtzum. Tzimtzum entails the idea that God "constricted" his infinite essence, to allow for the existence of a "conceptual space" in which a finite, independent world could exist. This "constriction" made free will possible, and hence the potential to earn the World to Come. Further (according to the first approach), it is understood that the Free-will Omniscience paradox provides a temporal parallel to the paradox inherent within Tzimtzum. In granting free will, God has somehow "constricted" his foreknowledge, to allow for Man's independent action; He thus has foreknowledge and yet free will exists. In the case of Tzimtzum, God has "constricted" his essence to allow for Man's independent existence; He is thus immanent and yet transcendent.

Related Topics:
Tzimtzum - Infinite - Finite - World to Come - Immanent - Transcendent

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See also: Negative theology; Divine simplicity; Jewish principles of faith

Related Topics:
Negative theology - Divine simplicity - Jewish principles of faith

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