What is free will?

The words ‘Free will’ can start a firefight. As with most ideas of great controversy, it has nearly as many definitions as its controversy has contenders. Calvinists have one definition, Arminians another, other Calvinists a third, Roman Catholics their own brace, and Eastern Orthodox a load more. Non-Christians from ancient Greece to the modern day have their own take. Today, I don’t seek a universal answer; I just want to establish some possibilities in the words and also some answers that cannot be true, if ‘free will’ is real. In the process, you’ll see at least a part of what I mean when I endorse ‘free will.’[1]

The first step in defining ‘free will’ is separating the terms. ‘Free’ and ‘will’ must be defined separately; once this is done, we can determine what their combination means. The second term is the simpler: for my purpose, I would define the ‘will’ as our capacity to choose. Some would consider the ‘will’ to be a purely conscious faculty, but I do not believe that definition is sufficiently broad for the common use people put it to. We know that elements of ourselves we do not consciously consider have weight in our will, simply because we do not exhaustively reason out every decision we make. When I decide on spaghetti and meatballs, I do not have to establish my interest in spaghetti and meatballs as a general fact, consider my own hunger, test the time of day for suitability, and all the rest; most of this process happens in a moment, without strict analysis. A definition of the will which does only includes the consciously rational is a definition which leads to fatalistic determinism- the assertion that because my will is influenced by elements I do not control or notice, which are outside the direct analysis of my reasoning faculty, my will does not truly make choices.

It’s also Rousseau’s definition, kind of, if that helps.

‘Freedom’ I define, in deference to common parlance, as non-restriction. Now, two forms of restriction exist: authority and power. Authority is the restriction of a command and its duty. Power is the restriction of ability to effect an end, a mechanical operation. In other terms, I can be free from any proscription, or I can be free of any prevention.

The ‘will’, then, is the capacity to make choices. ‘Free’ is the status of being unrestricted by something. You cannot be ‘free’ from nothing because nothing is incapable of restricting; a lack does not restrict, though a lack can not-prevent a part of the free thing’s nature from restricting. A lack of ground under my feet does not restrict me from staying where I am, but a lack of ground under my feet also doesn’t restrict gravity from pulling me downwards.

‘Free will’ is thus a capacity to choose un-restricted. Un-restricted by what? Herein a major fault-line hides. We’ll start from the bottom and work up, non-exhaustively.

Our wills are not ‘free’ from the restraint of two elements at least: the nature of a will and the substance wills work upon. Our wills are not unrestricted by their own natures because if a will is not restricted to being a will, it’s no longer a will at all. In other words, a will that’s free from ‘will’-nature stops being a will by virtue of that freedom. Being include limits; even God has a definition, however self-referential.

Our wills are restricted by the substance they work on. I cannot choose without choices. A will with nothing to work upon is a null point, mere potential; it must have a circumstance to work upon. The sum of my possible choices is a restriction on my will engendered by logic and finitude: I have only so many things I can choose. Integral to this, from a psychological perspective, is that my choices are restricted to those possibilities I can conceive of. Self-immolation via willpower may be theoretically possible, but if I have no knowledge of how to trigger it, I am restricted from choosing it. (Or, if you will, consider Orwell’s stance on the use of deliberate destruction of vocabulary into order to cripple unwanted thought.)

My will is restricted also by being mine. If my identity is to mean anything, it must encompass more than just my will- my memories, my preferences, my name, my history, my relationships. If my will is truly mine, it must be integrated with the rest of my identity, shaped by that identity. My choices must be the result of who I am, or they are not my choices. Already we see a fundamental restriction on the will, a way in which it is not free: the will chooses based on the character of the person choosing. Otherwise, it cannot be the person choosing; such a will might be more free, but it does not belong to anybody and so cannot be ‘my’ free will.

This theory, that our wills are free but not attached to people at all, isn’t really far from one people have really held, admittedly. Behaviorism approaches it; transpersonal psychology, insofar as I understand its gobbledegook, gets even closer. Both deny the validity of ‘person’ as more than an aesthetic identifier of a region of particularly busy space-time, useful for practical purposes; the second in particular, however, retains an idea of some suprapersonal spirituality. An impersonal will, however, is nothing at all; nothing cannot make choices.[2]

The will is restricted, then, in existing, in having a nature, in the circumstances it makes choices as a response it, and in the character it makes those choices as a result of.

Is the will restricted by God?

Colossians 1:17 tells us that, “In [Christ], all things hold together.” The will, of course, is a part of this, as is the whole person. God, therefore, must mediate both the will’s self-consistency and its relationship with the rest of the person. Indeed, as the will is inherently relational- a choice involves at least two entities (one to choose, one to be chosen or not chosen)-, God is necessary to its very existence. This is a restriction by His power, most obviously, but because power and authority unite in God, and because He has a right to do all He does (Gen. 18:25; Job 42), we can be sure that He has a right to maintain the will’s existence, making it also a restriction by authority (not just is but ought).

The most pressing question, for the Arminian-Calvinist debate at least, is whether He has a right to decide what the will does, not just its existence (and whether He decides the same, though these two are the same question at the end of the day). All Christians acknowledge (because denying it proves the denier to not be a Christian) that He has the right to command us to choose one way or another, and that He exercises that right. His prescriptive will is therefore uncontroversial, within Christian circles, however controversial outside them.[3]

The blunt fact is this: God created everything. That ‘everything’ includes the will and all its results. This is a ‘power’ restriction, but God does not act unrighteously, and so we know He has the right to restrict the will in this way. Unless the will’s choices were not created by God (contra Genesis 1:1-2, Eph. 3:9, and Col. 1:16-17), He created them; the will, its choices, its circumstances, the character it draws on, every bit was created by Him from eternity. He decided the will and its choices would exist, which is identical to deciding what they would be.[4]

Nevertheless I believe in free will. How? Because when I speak of ‘free will’, I mean the following: the capacity to choose on the basis of my own character (in reaction to the circumstances). God’s free will is entirely self-referential: ultimately, He is the sum of His own circumstance and character. Even His creation is ultimately Him-caused. (If one part of that Creation was not His decision, He would then be making a decision ultimately caused by somebody other than Himself, submitting Himself and His actions to the influence of this other actor. Such is, fully embraced, eventually blasphemy.[5]) Man’s free will, meanwhile, is a creation of God, just as man’s nature is His creation, and so man is free to be man- just as God decreed. God bless.

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Footnotes

[1]  As a Calvinist with determinist elements in my philosophy.

[2] I think Islam also nudges towards this idea with Allah.

[3] Plenty of circles labelled ‘Christian’ are as Christian as Vlad the Impaler or Genghis Khan. Arguably less Christian, actually, due to their greater consciousness of the standard they break.

[4] Don’t plead ‘middle knowledge.’ Even if you hypothesize middle knowledge, God created that too, which means it just pushes the chain back a smidge farther.

[5] No, Arminianism isn’t blasphemy. It just contains the seeds for blasphemy, like nearly every other theological error. I say ‘nearly’ largely because I define blasphemy as something besides just denying God, so that mere atheism isn’t blasphemy in the Scriptural sense (albeit atheism and blasphemy partake of the same rebellion and sin, as per James 2:10).