The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Free Will and Universal Reconciliation

Evangelical Universalism Arguments for Evangelical Universalism
#8

This argument - and many of those that put forth libertarian freedom as the reason we are ultimately translated into heaven (“the pennies which are glued to the bottom of the box”) - I find flawed for a number of reasons. First, it assumes a LFW choice for God is something of which we can make a 50-50 probability about. I don’t think it’s possible to do that. Each free choice, it seems to me, if it is truly free, would have to have its own unknown probability, independent of all preceding and proceeding events. So you could not compound the probability of an event occurring simply because “it had not yet occurred.” Second, even if we could be near absolutely certain that, given enough time, all pennies will stick to the bottom of the box, it is still likely that out of 1000000000 pennies that ONE will not stick. Third - and I think this is most damaging - it seems the only guarantee for the conditions of which Reitan says the free willed choice is based on – actually “seeing” and “knowing” that choosing God is what he wants us to do, in our best interest, and in line with our desires – involves removing the epistemic distance required for that free choice to be made in the first place. In other words, it is to make us compatibilistically free.

I actually believe that this is what God in fact does. There is no need then to postulate “hypothetical box experiments” to show that God has to shake the box until the PENNY flips. I think God can and does IMPOSE HIMSELF on us in an irresistible way, both in this life and, eventually, forever in the life to come. Personal experience, Scripture, and the nature of God’s love and power - him desiring to fully disclose himself to us - all attest to this ability of God.

The real question is, why would God give us LFW in the first place if he could have made us compatibilistically free from the get go. I’ve tried to go into this on my recent post in the general discussion. In short, I think it has to do with the fact that, unless we were to experience some autonomy and causation ourselves, we could not be able to make the thought “God is the source of all my good” cohere in our minds. The concepts “I” and “source” would be meaningless to us.

#9

To be fair to Reitan, he doesn’t actually say that, if you read the full essay. He acknowledges that the probability may only be 70-30, or indeed any other number. His essential point is that there is always a possibility of the penny sticking, ie of a previously unrepentant individual repenting. And given an infinite amount of time, the possibility of anyone remaining unrepentant becomes vanishingly small.

The epistemic distance issue is far more challenging, and thus far nobody here has given an explanation which properly answers the question why, if God will one day save some people - or even one single person - by removing epistemic distance from them, in the process effectively destroying their freedom, does He not do so for everybody right now, and put an end to all this miserable mess we live in?

#10

Just to toss out a speculative answer to johnnies very good question concerning intervention, what if it was up to ‘us’ to make the conditions for Gods revelation? Ie what if God is waiting, willing for us to do ‘x’ so He could reveal Himself and end this mess?

#11

That’s a very good point. Curiously, when I first started writing about time travel, and trying to make it logically consistent, I discovered that having critical events for which everything else waited actually worked. If you have a character trapped in the past the time travellers could in theory rescue him one second later, unless his absence would in some way wreck history, in which case the time travellers see that he does the right thing after five days, and go to that point in the timeline to rescue him.

#12

I quite like that idea pog, thank you.

I find all the debate about compatibilistic free will versus libertarian free will very confusing. I’m with Paidion on this. For me, the situation is clear and obvious: we are, at all times, free to act however we wish, given our genetic inheritance, environmental influences and innate, God-given conscience. Otherwise, as the Calvinists believe, God is the author of every murder, every rape, every child abuse, an impossible blasphemy.

My italicised qualification is very important, however. As far as I understand it, libertarian free will requires that whenever we choose to do something we must be free not to have done that thing, or vice versa. But of course, that is an impossibility. To take an extreme example, in what way am I truly “free” to murder my wife, who I love very much? In one sense I am indeed “free” to poison her tea, and of course many spouses have done such things - for money, or lust for another woman, or whatever. But given that I really do love my wife, my love for her, along with my conscience, effectively overrides my freedom to do away with her. Hence my choice not to murder her is not free in the libertarian sense, in that I cannot but not do so.

Thoughts?

#13

I’m glad my idea met with general approval :slight_smile:. It’s what I hold to as part of my participatory/cosmic warfare/open theodicy. We are to pray ‘your kingdom come’ and we are to ‘hasten the day’ of His arrival. The second coming of Christ might very well come via, in and with the participation of the church. An idea, at least … :slight_smile:

Oh, regarding freewill, I think the whole thing is a mystery. But I think we make some choices in a limited, but libertarian anger, other choices are somewhat compatibilist if, others more determined or outside our control even if we think we made a choice. Humans are complex, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of freedom, brains, mind and behaviour.

#14

I agree with Pog that free will is a mystery. I believe it is a mystery because we cannot offer a rational account of the interaction of divine agency and human agency, and we cannot offer such an account because we cannot rationally comprehend God in his divine substance and cannot comprehend either his transcendence nor his immanence (see the long quote from Herbert McCabe that I posted in another thread). Hence sometimes the exercise of our freedom sometimes appears, to us, to be liberatarian, sometimes compatibilist.

Would it be accurate to say that in this life the human being is never truly free because he neither possesses all the necessary knowledge that he needs to make an irrevocable decision either for or against God and because, except for the saints, he is never free from disordered desires and passions (Talbott’s position)? And yet, having said this I must disagree with myself: the Apostle Paul clearly asserts that in baptism we have died to sin and risen to new life and freedom.

Clearly God does not present himself to the large majority human beings in an irresistible and utterly compelling way. We have no choice but to live by faith. Must we not presume that this living in and by faith is a valuable thing? “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” May it not be related to God’s purpose of soul-making, that it forms human persons in ways that cannot be accomplished in other ways?

#15

This cuts to the chase, akimel. But there is a very tricky little conundrum hidden in your statement. You say that God does not present himself to the “large majority” of human beings in an irresistible way, and I agree with you. He preserves the epistemic distance that is essential to our freedom - and without which it would be utterly pointless to create us in the first place.

But. And it is a huge but :smiley: . If God ever, once, lifts the veil of that epistemic distance, then surely he could do so for all of us. And yet he does not.

Why not?

#16

I approach it something like this: the epistemic distance between mankind and God was collapsed as far as it can go in Christ - in Jesus on the cross we really see God as He truly is (love etc). The rest is now just a matter of us seeing that revelation better; a mix of improving our spiritual eyesight (so to speak) and removing the barriers that blind us (sin, evil, demons, human nature, poor environment etc). God’s mostly done His bit already - and the Spirit constantly works as much as He can to illuminate us depending upon our ability to receive.

#17

I need to clarify my statement. I should have written “Clearly God does not present himself to the large majority human beings in an irresistible and utterly compelling way in this life.” I pray and hope that God will reveal himself “irresistibly” to every human being in the afterlife or at the general resurrection.

#18

But my question is, if God is going to do that - reveal himself irresistibly in the afterlife - then why doesn’t he do it now?

#19

I don’t think I have missed your point. For the “only one which actually happens” hasn’t happened yet. The outcome which will have happened (after it does) cannot be known in advance, unless it has been predetermined. And that is just the point. The future hasn’t been predetermined. That “one and only” outcome will be caused, at least in part by the free choices people will make, and these choices cannot be known in advance.

We are aware of what you are suggesting. But it isn’t logical. If God knows them in advance, then they are going to occur.
It is true that God knows all things, but the future does not yet exist, and so cannot be known.

There are no logical propositions about the future. A “logical proposition” is a statement which is either true of false.
Suppose it were NOW true that you will raise your hand at exactly noon tomorrow. Then it is impossible for you to keep your hand down at exactly noon tomorrow. Similarly, if it were NOW false that you raise your hand at exactly noon tomorrow, it would be impossible for you to raise your hand at noon tomorrow. Where then, is your free will? And so it would be with all other logical propositions about the future (if there were any).

So what sounds like logical propostions about the future are either statements of intention or prediction.
For example, if I say, “I will go to the city tomorrow”, I am not making a statement about a future action of mine; I am making a statement about my intention. I actually mean, “I intend to go to the city tomorrow.” If I say “It will rain tomorrow” I am making a prediction. Or if I say, “Detroit will win the game”, I am making a prediction.

If God (or anyone else) knows something, then that something he knows can be expressed in a sentence which is either true of false. But sentences about the future are neither true of false NOW. The sentence about you raising your hand at exactly noon tomorrow WILL BECOME either true of false at noon tomorrow when you make your decision either to raise your hand or to keep it down.

In conclusion, since sentences about the future are neither true nor false now, then their truth value cannot be known now. Their truth value is related to the decisions of free-will agents. That is why some of the predictions by God Himself, have sometimes not corresponded to reality. Just one example (there are several more). God said through the prophet Jonah, “Forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” This was NOT a conditional prophecy; it was an absolute prophecy. When God looked at the hearts of the Ninevites, it seemed that they would not repent. But they had free will! They DID repent. And so God changed His mind and did not bring about the disaster that He said He would bring.

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. (Jonah 3:10 ESV)

Now if God had KNOWN they were going to repent and turn from their evil way and that He wouldn’t bring disaster to them after all, why would He have SAID that He would bring disaster to them in 40 days? God doesn’t lie, does He? The scripture says He cannot lie. The only answer to this problem is that God DIDN’T KNOW they would repent and turn from their evil ways. By reading their minds, it seemed to God that they WOULDN’T repent. Thus the prophecy. But when they DID repent of their own free will, God repented (changed His mind) about bringing disaster to them.

#20

Johnny,

You may be interested to check out my response to this question in the general forum. I argue that, without libertarian freedom, we could not make any sense of the notions of “ourselves” and “causation.”

#21

I shared my best guess in the last paragraph of my comment–soul-making. Perhaps there is something special about the kinds of beings formed by the life of faith that God especially values.

#22

I can’t agree with this. If God is outside our timeline (as I think he is), his perception of time could be quite different. We experience choice then consequence, one happening after another, God quite possibly sees both at once.

I think “after this therefore because of this” is something that is so firmly a part of this life that it’s easy to fall into the trap of saying “this isn’t logical” when we mean “this is outside our normal experience.”

After all there are plenty of things such as relativistic effects, antimatter, and single photon interference that definitely do exist, but are so deeply counter-intuitive that at first sight they seem illogical until we learn to use a larger logic. How, for example, does the photon which has passed through one slit, know where the other slit is, or even that it exists, in order to form an interference pattern? Clearly illogical, but the pattern exists.

#23

Chris,

I’ve been reading that thread with interest. I agree with you that without freedom - libertarian or otherwise :smiley: - we indeed could not make sense of the notions of ourselves and causation. The same is true of epistemic distance.

My problem is with the idea that God may remove some individuals’ ‘freedom’, and the epistemic distance that is necessary for that freedom, in order to save them. As I say, if he is ever going to do that for anyone, then why doesn’t he do it for all of us, right now?

#24

Yes, thanks akimel. Sorry, my question was more rhetorical than actual. And I kind of buy the ‘soul-making theodicy’. Kind of … :smiley:

#25

No, when I said “isn’t logical” I meant “isn’t logical” as in formal logic. What I said wasn’t logical is your affirmation that “free choices are still free even if God knows about them in advance.” That statement is self-contradictory, and I have shown why in my previous post. The only way that it could be considered non-contradictory is to define “free choice” in an unusual way. If it is defined as soft determinists define it “actions which are not forced by external constraint” then the statement is not illogical. But if “free choice” is defined as “actions which could have been otherwise if the originator of the actions had chosen to do otherwise” then it IS illogical.

#26

I can see what you are getting at but I still don’t agree. I still think God is outside time and sees it all at once. However I don’t think we are ever going to resolve this, and propose leaving it here.

#27

I’ve been thinking a lot of this lately too. Perhaps God can’t really “remove” the epistemic distance without the free will of the creature “answering the knock at the door”? The issue I’ve always had with believing this is that a) it conflicts strongly with my personal experience (it seems oftentimes God has simply “taken away” my sins rather than me “conquering” them in any free sense); and b) it flies in the face of a guaranteed Universalism.

But maybe both those points are wrong. Perhaps a) is wrong because we simply don’t have the tools to adequately assess our own free acts. Introspection is notoriously unreliable. Perhaps it is not possible - or possible only very rarely - for us to be able to know with much confidence what part our free will has actually played in our interaction with God? *God *may certainly know, but maybe it’s not possible to know how our freedom and his grace have worked together? And maybe b) doesn’t follow either. (Check out my ideas on this in my thread about the “box of coins” analogy.) If we assume God has infinite time and can approach closed epistemic distance status at an infinite proportion, then is it not much more plausible than not – indeed infinitely more plausible – to suppose that all free wills will eventually open the door? If “probabilities” are irrational when applied to infinities, and if, indeed, we speak more truly when we speak of “practical certainties,” would it not be true to say that it is “practically certain” that, given infinite time and infinite grace, every person will freely climb the stair of being and become, well…gods?