1) Free will is necessary for a creature to do either good or evil
2) Free will is necessary in order to truly love God, being the love God desires
3) Free will is necessary to exonerate God from the charge of being unfair, unjust, and not good (or to totally shift responsibility for evil from God to creatures alone or to "justify the ways of God to men")
4) Free will is necessary for creatures to be justly accountable and responsible for their crimes against God (and thus justly punished) or for them to merit any praise or receive credit in doing good
I have dealt with some of these points already in as condensed a manner as I could. In this posting I will try to condense my beliefs on the fourth point above. Those who have studied this area of philosophy, science, and theology (for the subject area touches each of these) will recognize how I am striving for brevity. I certainly could never be as expansive on this subject as Jonathan Edwards was in his mammoth work on the Freedom of The Will or Martin Luther in the verbose work titled "Bondage of the Will." One could write books of many pages on each of the points above. Actually there are numerous writings and debates of these points of discussion.
I certainly do agree, as a Soft Determinist, that some degree of free will must be possessed by the one accused of a crime in order to be held liable or "legally" responsible. It would seem to many to be an act of injustice to create a creature, then make him into a criminal, and then punish him for being a criminal. But, before jumping to conclusions, perhaps we should ponder that proposition and the consequences arising from it being the truth.
To my mind there is a sense in which it may be truly applied to God, and a sense in which it cannot be applied to God. I would also ask if it made a difference if we substituted the words "willingly and knowingly permit him to become a criminal" for the words "make him into a criminal"? Further, is it not true that God created creatures who he knew would sin and spend eternity in Hell? And, is it not true that he created such creatures who he knew would sin and so is a material cause of them becoming sinners?
God does not make anyone to sin, though he could prevent the sin of any, and does prevent many, but that does not mean that he is no cause at all, or is in no way responsible, as I have before demonstrated. Further, as I have shown, God creates people who he knows will sin and who will die in their sins, having rejected God and any offers of pardon. Further, God can in judgment remove providential restraints upon a wicked man and this removal leads to more wickedness. This is called "judicial hardening" of the hearts of certain sinners, which hardening is a punishment for sin and which is not remedial but rather leads to greater sins. God is thus the just cause of those greater sins. (See Acts 28: 26-28; John 12: 39-40)
"But for" God not judicially hardening, they would have been less wicked. God had that right to bring on greater judgment even though that judgment makes the wicked even more unrestrained to do evil. How many who have a "dead" or "cauterized" conscience sin more as a result of their consciences becoming so? How many drug addicts lost much of their free will when they became a slave to drugs? The point is this: in some sense God caused the hardening and the hardening brought more sin and wickedness. The ones being hardened were the blameworthy cause of their being punished with a hardened heart or dead conscience. There is a just cause and an unjust cause for doing anything.
Someone who was forced to do a crime, against his will, cannot be held to be guilty and liable for the crime. Our legal system is based upon this principle. Where there is no free choice to do a thing, the doer is not judged to be guilty. Yet, there still remains a kind of responsibility that cannot be removed or invalidated. Even the doer of the crime, though not found to have acted freely, say in a murder, nevertheless did kill. He may have, however, a valid excuse or justification. But, nothing can change the fact that the doing of the killing was a cause of the person being murdered. This is because "cause" is another word that is often used to mean the same thing as "responsible." Thus, even inanimate things are responsible in this sense. As when I say that the battery in the car being dead is responsible (is the reason) for the car not starting. In the sense of causation, the above person is responsible for the death, no matter what may have been the circumstances. Yet, in being declared in court as "not guilty," he will not be judged to be legally responsible.
Defining "responsibility" (and its kindred words like blame, guilt, liability) is similar to defining "free will." Both have their difficulties and lack of agreement. Lucifer, the angel who fell from heaven and became the Satan and the Devil, even has his own definition of what it means to have "free will." He faults God for not giving him more freedom, freedom to question his Maker, freedom to do what one wants without God finding fault with it, etc. The kind of "free will" that many Existentialists speak of is similar to that of Satan. It is the idea behind the words of the creature to his Creator - "why did you make me this way?" That idea is one that says "I ought to have the right to tell God that I am not happy with how he made me and that I want him, or perhaps demand him, to do it again with changes that I choose." These say God did not give them enough free will and self determination. We also see this very thinking among the devilish folks supporting "transgender" ideology, who think that they have the right and freedom to decide whether they are male or female, rather than nature or the Creator deciding. Many of those also in the "trans-humanism" camp have the same ideology, believing that we are destined to have the technology to recreate ourselves with implants and become semi immortal hybrids, half human and half machine (of which many movies today have as a plot). All these have a definition of "free will" and "self determination" that is condemned in scripture. Satanists today promote a kind of "free will" also, which is the freedom to do evil and to not have God to interfere.
I believe there are levels and degrees of responsibility. So too does our legal system. This is because we believe that there are degrees of "free will" and multiple causes of an act. There are what are called "mitigating factors" that are used in court in assigning guilt, responsibility, and causation. Such factors call for leniency and mercy at times in apportioning responsibility and punishment. This is why we have the legal concept of "mens rea." It refers to criminal intent. The literal translation from Latin is "guilty mind." It is the state of mind statutorily required in order to convict a particular defendant of a particular crime. In other words "the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty." Exceptions are known as strict liability crimes. In civil law, it is usually not necessary to prove a subjective mental element to establish liability for breach of contract or tort, for example. So we hear people say "it is more your fault than mine" and this shows that people generally recognize degrees of guilt and responsibility.
I also believe that I am responsible for the sin of Adam ("original sin") and believe in what is called "vicarious responsibility." That is the case when a supervisory party is liable for the negligent actions of a third party for whom they are responsible. We see this kind in employers being responsible for the negligent acts of employees or parents being responsible for the acts of their children. It is the kind of responsibility we see in both Adam and Christ (the second Adam). Christ takes responsibility for the elect, that is, for everyone who believes. He takes their punishment and pays their debts. Responsibility for others is therefore connected with the concept of "imputation" or "reckoning" (as Paul wrote about, especially in Romans), which are both accounting and legal terms.
God too, as we have seen, has in some sense claimed responsibility for the world being the way it now is. But, he is not to be blamed or declared guilty of doing evil or acting unjustly because he created creatures who he knew would be evil and evil eternally. C.S. Lewis would excuse God and say "God couldn't help it for that is the only kind of thinking creature he could create, one who was capable of becoming evil." But, as we have seen, God could have helped it. But, he chose not to create creatures who possessed free will and the power of self determination along with the attribute of immutability. Heaven is now a place where it is not possible for the elect angels and elect men to ever sin and yet they are free to do what every they want. But, they will have no desire to do evil. In this state they will not be robots or puppets, though righteousness will be their ingrained nature and habit.
Further, there are lots of scriptures that do seem to affirm that God may be a cause of people sinning. For instance there is that text where the Psalmist speaks of the relationship of Egyptians towards the Hebrew slaves, testifying that God "turned their heart to hate his people, and to deal subtilly with his servants." (Psa. 105: 25) It seems that God was the cause of the Egyptians hating his people and dealing with them in the cruel manner they did, and it seems that such was sinful behavior. So also we have God hardening of the heart of Pharaoh so that he refused to keep his word and promise and to obey God. It would take some time to deal with such texts and is not appropriate for such a condensed statement of my views on this subject. Such verses, however, do show that it is an error to say that God is in no way a cause of sin.
Also, we should keep in mind that the word "responsible," though often provoking negative thoughts and emotions, nevertheless may as well be used in respect to good things occurring. There is a valid giving of credit to those who do good, even though God gets the greater credit, for without him and his aid and providence no one could do any good. Thus, though God gives crowns to his people based upon merit, yet they all cast their crowns at the feet of Christ. They are rewarded for good service rendered and yet all their rewards are due to God's grace.
Responsibility, Causality, Blame, & Guilt
Does moral responsibility require free will? That is another reason why God gave the ability to freely will or choose between things having to do with right and wrong, and with pleasing God. Not only is free will a necessary attribute of rational creatures for them to love and choose God and the things of God and right, but is necessary to justly condemn those who choose sin and reject God's rule.
Britannica Dictionary definition of Responsibility (See here) is as follows (highlighting mine):
1) the state of being the person who caused something to happen
2 a) a duty or task that you are required or expected to do
3) the state of having the job or duty of dealing with and taking care of something or someone
4) the quality of a person who can be trusted to do what is expected, required, etc.
◊ To do something on your own responsibility is to do it without being told to and to accept the blame if it has a bad result. He changed the schedule on his own responsibility.
Britannica also, in an article written by Peter Singer and Maya Eddon and titled "free will and moral responsibility" (See here) wrote (emphasis mine):
"Free will and moral responsibility, also called problem of moral responsibility, the problem of reconciling the belief that people are morally responsible for what they do with the apparent fact that humans do not have free will because their actions are causally determined. It is an ancient and enduring philosophical puzzle."
"An ancient and enduring philosophical puzzle" indeed! Those who have studied and mused much upon it will no doubt confess the same. The same thing may be said about "the problem of evil" and "theodicy" for the philosophers and theologians. Some of course say that free will and determinism are contradictory and irreconcilable (thus Incompatibilism and a denial of Compatibilism). Others say both are true although very few are able to satisfactorily demonstrate how both are true. My belief is that one can find both free will (as I have defined it) and self determination on the one hand and divine predestination and predetermination on the other hand, to be taught and affirmed in holy scriptures. We also do not find where the bible writers wrote in order to explain the minute mechanics of how all this works.
Kevin Timpe wrote the following under "Free Will" (See here emphasis mine):
"Most of us are certain that we have free will, though what exactly this amounts to is much less certain. According to David Hume, the question of the nature of free will is “the most contentious question of metaphysics.” If this is correct, then figuring out what free will is will be no small task indeed. Minimally, to say that an agent has free will is to say that the agent has the capacity to choose his or her course of action. But animals seem to satisfy this criterion, and we typically think that only persons, and not animals, have free will. Let us then understand free will as the capacity unique to persons that allows them to control their actions. It is controversial whether this minimal understanding of what it means to have a free will actually requires an agent to have a specific faculty of will, whether the term “free will” is simply shorthand for other features of persons, and whether there really is such a thing as free will at all."
Agreed.
Do people lose their free will in that area where they lost "self control"? If free will is equated with self control, then we must say that there are degrees of free will and that it is relational to particular things.
Timpe says further:
"Whether or not one can have freedom of action without free will depends on one’s view of what free will is. Also, the truth of causal determinism would not entail that agents lack the freedom to do what they want to do. An agent could do what she wants to do, even if she is causally determined to do that action. Thus, both Hobbes and Hume are rightly characterized as compatibilists."
And,
"Some philosophers do not believe that free will is required for moral responsibility. According to John Martin Fischer, human agents do not have free will, but they are still morally responsible for their choices and actions. In a nutshell, Fischer thinks that the kind of control needed for moral responsibility is weaker than the kind of control needed for free will. Furthermore, he thinks that the truth of causal determinism would preclude the kind of control needed for free will, but that it wouldn’t preclude the kind of control needed for moral responsibility. See Fischer (1994). As this example shows, virtually every issue pertaining to free will is contested by various philosophers."
Indeed, this is a subject area where there is much disagreement. So, I repeat, these are my thoughts on this subject. I do not force them on anyone but only ask for an honest hearing.
Timpe says further:
"However, many think that the significance of free will is not limited to its necessity for free action and moral responsibility. Various philosophers suggest that free will is also a requirement for agency, rationality, the autonomy and dignity of persons, creativity, cooperation, and the value of friendship and love [see Anglin (1990), Kane (1998) and Ekstrom (1999)]. We thus see that free will is central to many philosophical issues."
We could write at length on many of these points but forbear for brevity's sake.
Charles H. Spurgeon in his sermon "A Safe Prospective" (See here) expresses my views. He said:
"Now, I believe in predestination, yea, even in its very jots and tittles. I believe that the path of a single grain of dust in the March wind is ordained and settled by a decree which cannot be violated; that every word and thought of man, every flittering of a sparrow’s wing, every flight of a fly, the crawling of a beetle, the gliding of a fish in the depth of the sea — that everything, in fact, is foreknown and foreordained. But I do equally believe in the free agency of man, that man with acts a will as he wills, especially in moral operations – choosing the evil with a will that is unbiased by anything that comes from God, biased only by his own depravity of heart and the perverseness of his habits; choosing the right, too, with perfect freedom, though sacredly guided and led by the Holy Spirit, yet in such a way that his disposition is trained to choose and prefer the right and the true, not violently driven in the teeth of his own reluctance; free in his agency, for the Son of God has made him free. I believe that man is as free as if everything were left to chance, and that he is as accountable as if there were no destiny whatever. Where the two truths meet I do not know, nor do I want to know. They do not puzzle me, since I have given up my mind to believing them both. They are thought by some to be antagonistic, the one contrary to the other. I believe them to be two parallel lines. They run side by side, and perhaps even in eternity there is no point of contact between these two grand truths. But if the predestination were a revealed thing, and we could see it, it would then become utterly impossible for human nature to receive the idea of freedom, or to believe itself to be at all independent in its action. Man would, to repeat the line of Longfellow’s, feel himself to be but one of a herd of “dumb, driven cattle,” made to do, whether he willed or not, just what had been ordained."
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