A Perspective on Free Will

This is a re-edited post that I wrote almost two years ago on my other blog.

Two points to start:

1. Just because you have conflicting desires doesn't mean that the strongest desire doesn't ultimately win out. After all you do make choices and, retrospection not withstanding, the choice you make is the choice which comports with your strongest desire at the moment of decision. This is incontrovertible for if the other desire(s) had been stronger (i.e. more pursuasive, appealing, contextually/situationally relevant, etc.) then it/they would have been chosen. If you choose option "C" out of "A", "B" or "C" then clearly option "C" was the most affective choice of the three. Now, option "C" might not have been the best decision, but how often is it that we actually choose the best option of those before us? Rarely is it the case in which there are no choices; an example would be if you were pushed out of a plane then you have no choice but to fall down. However, I would probably want to avoid, with previous choices, getting into a situation in which it would be possible for this to occur.

2. A factor that Christian libertarian free will advocates always seem to neglect including in the discussion about free will: sin. Sin taints and influences our will, our motives, to such an extent that we can do nothing but sin outside of our actions nestled within faith in Christ. What libertarians neglect to consider in the example of Adam and Eve is the sinful influence of the serpent. Take the serpent, who is twisting God's word, out of the picture and humanity's parents have no vested interest in the forbidden fruit. They want to argue that Adam fell by freely choosing a natural, good desire for a good thing over a stronger natural desire for a better thing, but I'm not entirely certain how choosing to disobey God is a "natural, good desire." From the Scriptures it seems clear that both Adam and Eve were deceived into making their decision. The deception is this: having the knowledge of good and evil is better than not having such knowledge, which is patently false in their case as per God's word to them.

Conclusion: Since the fall, the actualization of libertarian free will is an impossibility outside the redemptive work of Christ. Inside this work the effects of sin are still strong and practical freedom will not be realized until after the Second Coming. Pre-fall Adam and Eve had this type of free will and were deceived by the crafty serpent into believing that the benefits of eating the forbidden fruit were better than not eating it, i.e. their desire for the fruit had been altered from a state of prohibited to acceptable on account of the serpent's lies. Their motivations, their wills, towards eating/not eating the fruit were adversely affected. Their choice, however, was still in accordance with that which they most strongly desired at the moment of decision. What's fascinating here is that they had no idea what they were about to do was wrong. It wasn't until after the fact that they realized they'd done wrong. They knew that God said "don't eat" but God did't tell them why; He just gave them a warning about how they would surely die the day they ate of it. Death as a negative characteristic of nature was a concept wholly unknown to them. Then one day the serpent comes waltzing about and convinces them that God would surely not kill them if they ate the fruit. Their desire, in this instance, changed from wanting to obey God to wanting to become like God. The latter desire was the strongest on account of the serpent's clever rhetoric and so they ate.

We can look at another, classic, example. Someone holds a gun to your head in a dark alley and says "give me your wallet or I'll kill you." You have choices to make, a seemingly infinite pool of options to choose from depending on numerous external and internal factors: give him your wallet, give him your life, try to run, scream, try to disarm him, spray him with mace if you have it. Those are just a few general options (there is also many different ways to specifically go about accomplishing each of those options). What do you do? Well, whatever you end up doing will be in accordance with your strongest desire at the moment of choice, again irrespective of restrospection. Now there's lots of things that go into shaping what that strongest desire will be (a la the serpent influencing Eve and Eve influencing Adam) but the end result will always be the same.

Free will in this sense, then, is the ability to choose from a variety of "competing" desires within the framework of any given set of physical and spiritual circumstances. It is not the ability to choose whatever one desires irrespective of those circumstances, nor is it characterized by the ability to choose otherwise than what one does choose. It is also important to note that our responsibility for our actions is not founded upon our freedom, rather it is founded upon the righteousness of God. This is evidenced by the fact that non-believers are held responsible for disobeying in spite of not having the ability to obey. That is to say, their free will does not anywhere include the desire to obey God and, thus, it is not amongst those competing desires from which they can choose; nevertheless, they are responsible for their disobedience.In effect, this view of free will eliminates the problem of sovereignty and responsibility. Free will is understood within the confines of physical (i.e. laws of nature, material circumstances, etc.) and spiritual (effect of sin, influence of the Holy Spirit, etc.) limitation while sovereignty remains largely as it has been tradtionally understood.