Free Will (Part 2) by Tom M. Roberts
(reprinted from the Feb. 1999 issue of the Watchman Magazine,
www.watchmanmag.com)
The Risk of Free Will
"A command makes sense only if the recipient is capable of doing either what is required or forbidden, in other words, only if he is a responsible being. So the divine prohibition implies that man is morally free. Adam and Eve were free to render or refuse obedience to God. Since, as we noted earlier, freedom involves the presence of genuine alternatives, God could not give man the freedom to obey and at the same time withhold the power to disobey. 'Freedom to obey' is nothing if it is not also the freedom to disobey. Consequently, had man been incapable of disobedience, his fulfillment of God's requirements would not have been voluntary. And the word moral could not apply.
"The affirmation of moral freedom requires an open view of reality. When God gave man moral freedom, He was leaving undecided whether or not man would obey. In other words, He left open man's response to God's expectations of him. God might, presumably, have constructed man to respond to Him in only one way. But in that case moral experience would have been impossible, because man would not have been responsible for his behavior. Man is a morally free being, and the content of his decision to obey or disobey must have been indefinite until man himself made the decision." 2
"The fact that human beings (and angels before them) were created with free will, though, means that there was the possibility of or potential for evil. For if man is to have the ability freely to choose to love God, he must also be given the capacity to choose to hate and reject God. Thus in a sense the creation of free-will beings entailed a risk. But God was willing to risk the free choice of evil in order to have freely-chosen love and worship." 3
With these quotations, we introduce the thorniest of the problems of free will: sin. Why did God make man with the ability to sin? Why did God not make man with only the ability to do good? Did the Lord, as the creeds affirm, in contradictory fashion, "by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; (and here is the contradictory part, tr) yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established" (Westminster Confession of Faith, III:1)? Such statements beg the question before us and raise others. Is God responsible for man's sin as the First Cause, thereby responsible for man's eternal damnation since all creation was done unchangeable and by foreordination of "whatsoever comes to pass?" Or is man accountable for his actions precisely because God made him a free-will creature?
Since God is sovereign, He has the absolute right to do as he pleases. Yet we must conclude that he will not act in discord with his nature, even in creation. As James says, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man" (James 1:12). John adds, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (I Jn. 1:5). We can safely conclude, therefore, that God could not, because of his righteous nature, create immutably and unchangeably a man who must sin and cannot help himself except to do as created, then hold that man accountable for that sin. The alternative, presented in the Bible, is that God, as a sovereign, created man as a free, moral being so that man might choose to serve God, yet, by the nature of free will, provide: the potential (risk) that man would choose evil. In the moral sense, therefore, man himself is sovereign, in time (not eternity). Does not Ecclesiastes address the fact that man may act as he wills "under the sun" but that he should remember that "for all these things, God will bring thee into judgment" (11:10). Will we do that for which we have been created, or will we go astray? As the Psalmist said, "Jehovah looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek after God" (14:2). Only man, of all the creatures of God, can say "no" to God. This rebelliousness is the risk of free will.
I believe that the story of Job is an illustration of this very principle: "Will man willingly serve his Creator as God intended?" If you recall, Satan accused Job of serving God only because it was convenient (God made Job wealthy). God had stated that Job was a "perfect and upright man, one that feareth God" The Devil's accusation was: "Does Job fear God for nought!" (1:9)? What Satan was charging against Job (and, consequently, against all men) is that man does not choose to serve God because it is right and good, but that he serves God only for what he can get. God then permits Satan to test Job's free will (and he is testing ours today) to see if he will serve God out of a moral sense that it is right to do so even when suffering in the world that God created. In Job's case, God's purpose in creation was vindicated: the creature chose to serve the Creator, glorifying the works of His hands. Our case is still pending today. Will I serve God because I am able to do so with a free will that recognizes right and wrong and chooses the right?
The Origin of Sin
What is the origin of sin; where did it come from? If God is infinite in righteousness, how could sin originate in His universe? One of the arguments of the atheist against the existence of God is the reality of evil. The creeds have not adequately dealt with this issue of sin's origin, as we have seen, falsely accusing God of unchangeably ordaining whatsoever comes to pass, yet ignoring the consequential result that such charges God with creating sin. I believe the answer to the questions about sin lies in a proper understanding of the free will nature of man as a moral creature of God. Putting what we have found in numerical sequence for clarification, we find:
1. God is a sovereign Creator.
2. He has made many creatures that are not free or moral. These creatures glorify God by their existence (Psalm 19:1).
3. God chose to create yet another creature that would be both free and moral, man. But to be truly free, man must be able to obey or disobey, possessing the capability of and the potential for sin.
4. Man did disobey and, as an accountable being, is responsible for sin. He did not have to sin, but chose to do so (Romans 5:12), with the attendant consequences.
After affirming that God cannot be tempted with evil and that he tempts no man, James supports the above conclusions when he concludes, "but each man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is fullgrown, bringeth forth death" (James 1:13-15). Herein lies the origin of sin: within the human heart that has the highest potential of praise to God or the blackest depth of sin's degradation. Which shall it be? That is the work of choice, will, determination. All too often, we have chosen to do wrong and are in the bondage of sin (Romans 7:24). But let there be no mistake as to the origin of sin or of man's accountability for it. Recognizing the potential damnation of my soul through the choice to do evil, let me rather rejoice that I have the parallel potential to to achieve a "greater weight of eternal glory" (2 Corinthians 4:17), working God's will in my life. Heaven will surely be worth it all.
Footnotes:
1.What The Bible Says About God the Ruler, by John Cottrell (College Press), p. 398. [Editor's Note: see Part 1, last weeks issue.]
2.God's Foreknowledge and Man's Free Will, by Richard Rich, (Bethany Press), Chap. 3, p. 38.
3.Op. Cit.
VISIT OUR WEBPAGE ­ http://www.geocities.com/~cdillinger/cocbs/cocbshp.htm
PARTING THOUGHT
Happiness depends on external things that "happen" to us. Joy is a deep quality that we choose and partake of in spite of circumstances.
Be glad in the Lord and rejoice you righteous ones, and shout for joy all you who are upright in heart. Psalms 32:11 (NASB)