Do You Actually Have Free Will?
By Joel Settecase
In a recent exchange with the guys in the Hammer & Anvil Society, one of the brothers asked this:
Without free will do you inherently have a real choice?
I thought this was a good question, and I wanted to share my response with you. I responded with a voice message. Here’s what I said (very slightly modified for this article):
If your will is completely free, then there is nothing which determines at all what you will choose. You are equally likely to choose Option A, or Option B, or C, or D, for each and every [choice] that confronts you. There is nothing at all which influences your decision making to the point of determining it. What that means is that neither your preferences, predilections, circumstances, upbringing, [or anything else about you] is determinative in any way.
And yet we all know that’s not true. We have certain preferences which determine which options we will choose.
A will that is completely free is essentially random, which is no will at all. You think you’re making decisions, but there can’t be anything that definitively pushes you in one direction or another.
If, on the other hand, God is in total control and totally sovereign, then God makes sure that every action has a consequence. God makes sure that causes always have an effect, and that every effect is proportionate to the cause and a result of the cause. If all that is true, then now we can make real choices—choices that have actual import in the world. They are choices that come from us—the things that we desire, that we love, our affections….
The only way that can be maintained is if God is in total sovereign control over everything. But if God is in total sovereign control, then we don’t have a “free will.” We don’t have libertarian, unfettered, non-deterministic, free will.
[To summarize,] wunless God is completely and totally sovereign, we actually don’t have real choice at all. And [on the other hand], if our will is completely free, then we don’t actually have real choice.
The above explanation may have left you with more questions than answers. That’s understandable. So here are some resources that I shared with the Hammer & Anvil Society brothers. I hope they help you too. Happy studying.
I haven't fully watched or read all these resources, but I trust these teachers. Always test everything by Scripture (1 John 4:1)!
Book: The Freedom of the Will, by Jonathan Edwards.
Edwards masterfully explains how man is naturally able, but not morally able, to do good apart from Christ.
Podcast episodes from John Piper.
These are short and really useful. Piper is a gifted teacher and thoroughly biblical on most topics (including this one).
Articles from John Frame.
Frame is one of my favorite living theologians.
#1: “Determinism, Chance and Freedom”
Excerpt:
[T]he Bible teaches theistic determinism, one that is “soft” in James’s sense. Scripture renounces chance in the first and third senses above, but not in the second. And it teaches that human beings sometimes have moral freedom, usually have compatibilist freedom, never have libertarian freedom.
#2: Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Excerpt 1:
The libertarian argues that... no one is responsible for an act unless he 'could have done otherwise.' If I am strapped to a robotic machine which, using my arms, robs a bank, I am not to blame for robbing the bank. I 'could not have done otherwise.' Such is the libertarian argument.
I have always felt that this position lacked cogency. For one thing, it denies the rule of God’s sovereignty over the hearts and decisions of human beings....
Excerpt 2:
Further, libertarianism*, rather than guaranteeing moral responsibility, actually destroys it. How can we be held responsible for decisions, if those decisions are 'psychological accidents,' unconnected with any of our desires? Indeed, such a situation would, precisely, negate all responsibility.
*To be clear, Frame is talking about libertarian free will, not political Libertarianism.
I hope you find these resources helpful in your quest to understand the relationship between man’s moral responsibility and God’s sovereignty.
Here’s one more resource from The Think Institute that I think you will enjoy (Link). It’s a conversation between the members of the Hammer & Anvil Society about this very subject.