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Questions About G-d 6: If God Is All-Powerful, Can We Have Free Will?
I made a short series of videos considering questions about G-d that I have noticed get asked from time to time. Below is a rewriting based on the script for one of the videos, followed by the video itself.
If G-d is all-powerful, can we have free will? Short answer: Yes.
The first thing is to clarify that I’m not just talking about free will (FW) in the compatibilist sense of the word used by people who try to reconcile FW with determinism. Compatibilists are people who think that we are free if we can do what we want to do, but maybe we also are determined because we can’t avoid wanting what we want.
I’m talking about what’s called libertarian FW: the idea that we have the ability to do or not do things.
The next thing to clarify is that omnipotence, or G-d being all-powerful, does not mean G-d can violate the rules of logic—for example, by giving people FW but also giving them no choices at all.
A lot of contemporary philosophers tend to recognize this as a reasonable limitation on omnipotence, or, better yet, as something omnipotence doesn’t actually mean–it doesn’t mean G-d can break the rules of logic.
The classical answer—the thing you’re more likely to find in medieval philosophers like Anselm or Thomas Aquinas—is that being able to violate the rules of logic would not be a strength, but a weakness. So of course G-d, who is all-powerful/omnipotent, can’t do it!
So–G-d’s omnipotence does not mean G-d has some ability to violate the rules of logic. That does not mean that G-d’s omnipotence is compatible with FW. It just means that omnipotence would either have to remove FW entirely, or not at all. There’s no halfway house where G-d gives us FW and still forces all our decisions.
But does omnipotence mean we have no FW?
The problem seems to be that we have some apparent conflict between G-d’s sovereignty and human free will. The idea is that G-d can’t have unlimited power without overruling free will—that our free will, if we have any, would put some limits on G-d’s power.
But, frankly, there simply is no problem here.
There never was.
The illusion of a problem may come from the idea that FW places limits on G-d’s power. Now, in a sense, that idea is true: If I am really making a particular decision with FW, then G-d cannot be forcing that decision.
But look at the alternative theory. Just suppose . . .
. . . that G-d’s infinite power really does destroy freedom.
You know what that means?
That means that G-d does not have the power to create us with FW!
So either G-d lacks the ability to create beings with FW, or else G-d has that ability but lacks the ability to control some decisions we make freely.
So which ability does it make more sense to say that G-d lacks?
On the one hand, there’s the ability to force every single decision.
On the other hand, there’s the ability to create people with FW.
We could stop there. We could just say that the ability to create people with FW is way better than the ability to force every single decision.
We could say that that is an ability worthy of G-d.
That’s fine. I agree.
But I think we can go a little deeper.
Why is the ability to create people with FW better? Because people like that are worth creating. It’s a better universe if G-d made it to include people with FW.
That means people with moral responsibility, and people who can cultivate creation in G-d’s name . . .
. . . with creativity.
In other words, it means G-d’s ability to make what the Bible, and all the Abrahamic religions, say we human beings are: the image of G-d!
But what about that other ability—the ability to control every decision? That’s an ability to . . .
. . . well, it’s an ability to . . . destroy FW!
But if FW is a good thing, then this isn’t much of an ability, is it?
If you wanna think like contemporary philosophers, I suggest you go ahead and do so. You could say, for example, that the ability to destroy FW is the ability to do a kind of harm, and that the inability to do harm is a reasonable limitation on the idea of G-d’s omnipotence.
But if you want to think in a way that is a little bit wiser, try thinking like Anselm and Aquinas: The ability to destroy FW is the ability to do a kind of harm, and that makes that particular ability a weakness, not a strength.
That is why we can have FW even if G-d is all-powerful.
That is why we can have FW . . . because God is all-powerful.
Published in Religion and Philosophy
When I have time, I occasionally think of C. S. Lewis and his statement that God views the dimension of time from His “Eternal Now”. He said that to watch a man do something from that perspective is certainly not forcing him to do something and is irrelevant to the discussion of free will. I don’t see any problem with that statement, but if God can view time in the way we view the spatial dimensions, it seems to me that the inescapable conclusion is that all points in time exist in much the same way that all points in space exist.
To quote Harry Callahan, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” I know mine, and I have to admit that I don’t know what that means. It may mean that our futures are not what we think.
If the ‘many worlds’ interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct there in no pro blame at all. He is omniscient and knows what happens in an infinite number of universes, but here in this particular universe I have absolute free will.
I am not a philosopher, and perhaps this is too simplistic, but just because God can do something in His omnipotence, doesn’t mean He has to. He chooses to use His power for our good because He loves us and wants us to come to Him.
Much like a parent who is teaching a child a new skill. When the child makes a mistake, or doesn’t quite have the right technique, the parent sits on his hands and lets the child figure it out with guidance. He does not take over and complete the task.
God has given us free will and lots of guidance, and is available if we get into trouble, but He expects and wants us to grow in our love for Him and to come to Him on our own, not because we have no choice in the matter.
If everything that can happen does happen, then I have no free will at all.
It’s 9:47 AM in Hong Kong, and my office is on the fourth floor. The version of me that dives head-first out the window at 9:48 and the version of me that remains at the desk and keeps working–neither is more who I am than the other.
There’s not even a decision between becoming the diver and becoming the stay-at-the-desker: Both happen at 9:48. The 9:47 version of me is not free to not jump.
Within each universe you have absolute free will.
No.
On this particular theory, in every universe I can’t help doing and not doing everything. That’s not free choice.
If there are “many” worlds and “many” of you, what does “I” mean in a global context?
At one point she says, “So why am I telling you this?” and gives an inconsistent answer. She should have said, “Because given the initial conditions, I had no choice.”
God is omnipotent. Does that mean God has power to do anything, or does it mean that God has all the power? Could there, in logic, be two omnipotent entities?
In one of my favorite novels the author put these words into the character of a new pope: “Yes, there are things God cannot do. For example, He cannot choose to not be God.”
All the power, and there couldn’t.
Which to me sounds like one is thinking like man. But God does not think like man. He can choose to cease his involvement with His creation, and, in essence, no longer be available as a God to His people.
Can He, though? Wouldn’t that be inconsistent with His goodness?
Are we all thinking about the God who was so disgusted with his creations that He washed them away, except for a few?
Certainly. But there are instances where He gets tired of men’s antics and withholds His benevolence. The Flood for example. Wandering the desert for forty years. The destruction of Sodom, the Babylonian exile. But then the question could be asked, was this removal of His loving kindness merely a lesson for the Jewish people ? A lesson taught with love? So in the long term, much longer than men could envision, it was a truly good thing?
Then the question could be asked can God be evil? Since vengeance is generally considered evil, was the Flood an evil act? Was destroying Sodom evil? How about turning Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt? Was that murder?
We are told that ‘nothing is impossible for God.’ Since that is the case, why question at all? God can be and is all things. And our petty questioning of His abilities just shows us how far we are away from His omnipotence.
I’ve never understood the statement that God can love “under one aspect” and “hate under another aspect”. We are told to hate the sin but love the sinner, but God, if He exists at all, is not bound by that command.
It’s sort of like John Wheeler, IIRC, telling his student that the only way we can model spatial curvature is by imaging an embedding space, but that is our limitation. If the Universe wants to behave like a hypersphere without an embedding space, who are we to tell It that It can’t?
If you find a better way to do justice and mercy than the biblical way, you let me know.
I would never offer advice to God, but I would have told them that if they chose to live that way, they were on their own, and walked away. Or as another character from my favourite novel asked, “Can the Creator repent of his creation?”
It was all those things, except for a removal of lovingkindness or “merely” a lesson. It was warned in Moses, predicted in more detail in Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and when it was over the people were permanently cured of idolatry.
G-d can do harm, but G-d cannot do evil or do net harm–same principle as surgery, but writ larger.
Nothing good is impossible with G-d. If you think like Thomas Aquinas, no real thing is impossible with G-d. (See here, doing a Ctr-F for “People like Anselm.”)
I don’t get it either. Who says that?
Who would command G-d anyway?
But G-d would practice the same policy, wouldn’t He? Sin is bad for the sinner–you love the sinner by hating the sin.
Among other concerns, that abandons the entire future to chaos and suffering.
> I don’t get it either. Who says that?
In the 1970s, I read a book by Malachi Martin that is long out of print. In one section, he discussed what he called “the dogmatic Jesus”, describing early Christian thought. I can’t remember the person he quoted. I can remember that he said “the dogmatic Jesus” is nearly incomprehensible to the modern mind.
I was not referring to someone commanding God, but rather to God giving commands to us by which He is not bound. IOW, Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.
PS: In describing Jesus as both fully human and fully divine on has to admit that to be fully human one has to have a “human soul”.
I spent probably fifteen years studying Catholic thought and ecclesiology before realizing I just was not a believer. One of the things I remember is that God doesn’t send souls to Hell. He lets them take that path. Same here.
Indeed. There’s no one who can command G-d. But G-d does not have the weakness of breaking Himself, and so practices that same perfection to which the commands He gives us lead us to conform.
Yes. The Church Fathers concur.
Indeed; but should He then let them drive a bus-full of souls with them?
One of the teachings is that the love of God and an understanding of Natural Law is “written in the human heart”. If true, they all have the option of getting off of the bus.
Well, sure–but there are still things that some people will do with the right (or wrong) encouragement, and won’t otherwise.
Good deep discussion, although I can appreciate philosopher, I’m just a spectator.
My simple idea is that without free will, there can be no love, and God is love. If you have no ability to choose, you can’t choose to love, and love can’t be chosen, only revealed.
My “philosophy” of free will is the “Back to the Future” version. Marty goes back he knows what choices have to be made for him to be there, but his parents, doc, etc have the freedom to make other choices. Therefore he is “omniscient” relative to that small thread.
Certainly this is an oversimplification since it can be “stacked” … everything had to happen as it did, and it just appears that there were other options,
The many worlds theory can solve the problem, but it seems to fail the parsimony principle (Occam’s razor), which again is no proof, a conjecture.
As @saintaugustine shows us, there are many interpretations deeper than my “from the peanut gallery” one, but when some “normal person” raises this issue, I give them them my “Free Will for Idiots” version.
What is the difference between God and G-d?
It’s an English-version derivative of the old Jewish tradition of not saying or writing the whole name of G-d. (I’ve seen “Gxd” and “Gd” as well.)
There are Ricochet Jews who much prefer this custom–even in English. I don’t see any problem with Christians doing it, so when I noticed Christians doing it here out of respect for Jewish members I joined in.