On Free Will: 1- Scope Of Work

Alright, now is the time for a series on the big one: Free Will.

A major stumbling block to those first considering Universal Reconciliation is the notion that it neglects human Free Will.
Universalism claims that all people will eventually be reconciled with God, their creator. In infinite time, God will slowly return all his creation to his care.
Those who first hear about that immediately think: Wait, doesn't that over-ride people's wills?
I mean, what if some people don't want that reconciliation? What if they exercise their Free Will to just say no? To reject God?
I would like to discuss that. 

Note: this post assumes that you don't buy into the image of a vindictive God, Penal Substitution or any kind of legalistic theology, if you do then I'm afraid very little of this will make sense to you. You have been warned.

What is Free Will? What is its scope? What are we talking about here?
I mean, are we free to do anything?
Here's the short answer: No.
Here's the long one:

Let's first dissect free will, let's try to figure out where it fits into our world and so our theology.
Here's our problem description: Man has fallen. His Nature is fallen. His "Nature" is basically everything in the natural world, including his body, mind and everything around him.
Here's another way to put it, man has gone to Hell, where Hell is a place of torment, isolation and madness. (I've written about that before, so I won't re-iterate it all)
Salvation, the solution, is God's descent after him into Hell, then His Resurrection. Man takes this Salvation through Communion with God.
Now, let's try to figure out how Free Will fits into the problem, then let's see if it fits into how the solution is meant to work, then see where we go from there.

For starters, our fallen Nature is not something we choose.
To translate this from the realm of the abstract, let's see what this Nature comprises, and what it affects.
People are born into countries, times, traditions and religions that are not of their choosing.
They are born with color, sex and a genetic inheritance completely out of their control.
In fact if you think about it, your very existence is not something you have 'chosen', this is a frequently discussed point in existential philosophy, we have no choice in coming to life.
Then people are brought up in a family they do not choose, in a community they do not choose.
Can you choose if your parents love you? Can you choose if they love each other? Can you choose what ethics you are taught? What's socially acceptable in your community and what's not?

Those are all things that are completely outside the scope of "Free Will".
And here's the real problem, they are not only out of our control, they also cause other things to be out of our control.
Your temper, your intelligence, your sense of security, whether you're loved as a child, whether you feel loved as an adult, your social skills, all those things and much more are outside your control, yet they are things that shape your choices and determine your behavior.
How about your education? Also outside your control to a point, and then although you might feel like you have some choice in what to study, it isn't that simple..
You can only choose from a set of options, and that set is very limited, with many choices outside your reach.
The same applies to what you do for a living, and how much money you make, and therefore what social class you belong to, how you get married and raise your children, who you befriend, and this goes on and on.
So besides  those things outside your choice, there are things that you seem to be able to choose, yet your choice isn't absolute. It's limited. It isn't "free".

We can't over-estimate our power over our lives, Free Will, as commonly defined and used, has less to do with how our lives go than is usually preached.
There's a considerably large ego in that preaching, too, we tend to forget how much we aren't free to choose because we don't like to think of ourselves as less powerful beings.
And by the way, our access to technology has made that feeling more prominent; consider how much control you have over your "online" life, for example, then please consider that you don't have that sort of control over the rest of your life.


Now, as G. K. Chesterton put it, a Cosmic Philosophy is not constructed to fit a man, a Cosmic Philosophy is constructed to fit a Cosmos.
So, does a Cosmic Philosophy where "Free Will" plays a major role seem to fit this Cosmos? No, it doesn't.



Okay, that's all well and good, but you always have a choice to do what's right... right? We have moral freedom, to some degree.
Maybe.
But the choice to do what's right needs you to a. know what's right and b. be 'free' to choose it.
Doesn't that as well depend on our origins? Our upbringing and moral legacy? To some extent at least, we all know morality is dependent on circumstances.
We can get into an argument here about how a lot of good people come from bad homes, stories of radical conversion and that sort of thing, but I find that irrelevant because I don't think radical conversions are impossible, I just think they aren't merely a matter of choice.
Sin isn't a choice.
Where sin is concerned, Jesus has preached the opposite: "whoever commits sin is a slave of sin".

The idea that we sin because we are free to do so is not only unconvincing in a world where everything affects and is affected by everything else, it's also not biblical.

So, what, do we have no Freedom? Are we all predestined?
I am not a Fatalist, no, I do not believe that our lives are predetermined, I don't believe in predestination in any sense.
I do believe in Human Will, I just wouldn't call it "Free", and wouldn't put too much weight on it. I believe its scope of work is quite limited.
I think we do get to choose, but mostly our choices are about how to react to the hand we're dealt in life. And those choices themselves, are affected by that same hand.
Fr. Stephen Freeman has a blog post on this that I find excellent, a must read, actually.
And I believe in Freedom, I just think of it a little differently, I have it redefined in my head.
So next, I'd like to explain what that redefined Freedom is.
I think to do that, we should consider the mechanism by which we are saved.

Stay tuned...