Divine Free Will

The Central Question: Does God Have Free Will?

The Problem

• God is necessarily all-knowing and all-good
• If God is all-knowing, He knows at all times all possible actions He can take
• If God is all-good, He cannot choose any action except the one that is "most good"
• Therefore, God seems "chained by His own being" and "forced to act in a specific way"
• Does this mean God lacks free will?

Defining Free Will

Human Free Will (Libertarian):

• The ability to freely choose between alternative options
• When I choose tea, I could have chosen coffee instead—the choice was genuinely open
• Requires: power of contrary choice (ability to do otherwise)

The Question for God:

• Can God do otherwise than what He actually does?
• Or is God's action determined by His perfect nature?

THE PROBLEM: God's Attributes Seem to Exclude Free Will

Problem 1: God's Perfect Goodness

The Dilemma:

• If God can choose evil, He's not perfectly good
• If God cannot choose evil, He lacks free will

Problem 2: God's Immutability

What Is Divine Immutability?

• God is unchanging and unchangeable
• God cannot change in His nature, knowledge, or will
• Numbers 23:19: "God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should change His mind"

The Problem for Free Will:

Making a choice requires:

• Considering alternatives (deliberation)
• Transitioning from potency to act (change from "could do X" to "actually doing X")
• Temporal process (time to think and decide)

But God is immutable—He doesn't change, deliberate, or experience temporal succession. So how can God make choices?

Problem 3: God's Eternity (Timelessness)

Problem 4: Divine Simplicity

What Is Divine Simplicity?

• God is simple—He has no parts or distinctions
• God's essence, existence, will, knowledge, and power are all identical

The Problem:

• If God's will is identical to His essence, and His essence is necessary, then His will is necessary
• There's no distinction between what God can do and what God actually does
• Therefore, God's "choices" are determined by His nature, not freely made

SOLUTION 1: Anselm's Redefinition of Free Will

Freedom as Choosing the Good

Anselm's Key Move:

• Free will is NOT the ability to choose between good and evil
• Rather, free will IS the ability to choose the good

The Rightness of Action

• Part of the rightness of any action is choosing to do it freely
• Being forced to do the right thing doesn't show goodness
• Therefore, God's freely choosing good (even though He cannot choose evil) demonstrates His perfect freedom and goodness

Implication

• God has perfect free will because He always freely chooses good
• His inability to sin is not a limitation but a perfection
• Just as being unable to lie or contradict Himself isn't a limitation on omnipotence, being unable to sin isn't a limitation on free will

SOLUTION 2: Aquinas' Eternal Act of Will

God's Free Will Without Change

Aquinas' Key Insight:

• God's very substance is an eternal act of will
• This is not an act having temporal duration—God is His own act of choosing

What God Wills Necessarily

• God necessarily wills His own goodness and existence
• Why? Because God's will is identical to His goodness and existence (divine simplicity)
• God cannot will against His own nature

What God Wills Freely

• God does not necessarily will things other than Himself
• God freely chooses whether to:
  • Create the universe or not
  • Create this particular universe or a different one
  • Create humans or not

Suppositional Necessity

The Key Concept:

• Suppositional necessity: Once God wills something (from eternity), He wills it immutably—it cannot change
• But: God freely chose which eternal will to have

No Real Distinction Between Potency and Act

The Problem:

• For us, there's a distinction between:
  • Potency (what we can do)
  • Act (what we actually do)
• We have many potentialities that we don't actualize

For God:

• God is pure act—He has no potentiality
• There's no distinction between what God can do and what God does

How Is This Freedom?

• God is determined by His own nature to act freely
• With respect to creating lesser goods, God is determined to be not-determined
• His nature determines that His will regarding creation is not necessary, and therefore perfectly free

SOLUTION 3: Compatibilism About Divine Free Will

God's Freedom Is Compatibilist

The Compatibilist Definition:

Free will doesn't require the ability to do otherwise (libertarian freedom). Rather, free will requires:

• Acting according to one's desires
• Freedom from external coercion

Applied to God:

• God's actions flow from His own perfect nature
• No external force compels God
• Therefore, God's choices are genuinely free, even though they're determined by His nature

Jonathan Edwards' Account

• Freedom is "the ability to act according to one's desires"
• God always acts according to His desires (which are perfectly good)
• Therefore, God is supremely free—more free than anyone else

SOLUTION 4: Divine Simplicity and Unique Freedom

God Is "Freedom Itself"

The Thomistic View:

God is uniquely free in a way nothing else is.

Why?

• Everything else has some external source or origin that determines it
• But God is Being Itself—no external power can constrain Him except Himself
• And by divine simplicity, God is Himself, His Will, His divine nature, His freedom
• His existence and essence are identical

The Implication

• The only account for who God is (including what He necessarily wills) is God Himself
• God's "necessity" is something willed by Him freely
• Advocates of divine simplicity call God "Freedom Itself"

The Self-Determined God

Key Point:

• God is determined by nothing but Himself
• God's nature determines Him to act freely
• This is not a contradiction—it's the perfection of freedom

The Theological Paradox: Free Will and Predestination

The Problem for Humans

Calvinism:

• If God is sovereign and knows all, then He has predestined who will be saved (the elect) and who will be damned (the reprobate)
• This seems to eliminate human free will

Process Theology Solution

Process Theology's Claim:

• God cannot have complete knowledge of the future
• The future is not determined but open to possibilities as a result of free will
• This limits divine omniscience to preserve human freedom

Criticisms and Problems

Criticism 1: Redefining Freedom Doesn't Solve the Problem

The Objection:

• Anselm's redefinition seems like avoiding the problem rather than solving it
• We normally understand free will as the power to do otherwise
• Saying "freedom is just choosing good" changes the definition to avoid the paradox

Criticism 2: Modal Collapse

The Problem:

• If God's nature determines His choices, and God's nature is necessary, then everything God does is necessary
• This leads to modal collapse—the distinction between necessity and contingency collapses
• If God necessarily creates this world, then this world is necessary (not contingent)
• But we think the world is contingent—it could have not existed

Criticism 3: God Seems Causally Determined

The Objection:

• If God must choose the "most good" action, His choice is causally determined by His nature
• This looks like determinism, not freedom
• Even if no external force compels God, His internal nature compels Him

Criticism 4: Logical Possibilities vs. Real Possibilities

The Problem:

• Aquinas says other worlds are "logically possible" but not "metaphysically possible" given that God has already chosen this world
• But if they're not really possible, were they ever genuinely options for God?
• If not, God's "choice" wasn't a real choice

Quick Reference: Does God Have Free Will?