Free Will
This issue has been raised by all of the authors we've reviewed to date as a major potential stumbling block to universalism, the argument being that there is no guarantee people will choose to be saved or perhaps remain so. Here are some thoughts on this issue.
Traditional View
‘Free will’ is defined by the dictionary as ‘the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate’. ‘Fate’ is defined as, ‘the development of events outside a person’s control, regarded as predetermined by a supernatural power’.
The traditional view is that, as God is entirely without sin, He cannot be the cause of sin. As a result, it is impossible for there to be any cause-and-effect relationship between God and mankind’s sins. Although God created us and could foresee how we were going to misuse our free wills, He did not, and never has, caused us to sin: we remain entirely free agents.
In discussions about free will, it seems that most mainstream writers believe it is significant that man consists of a body and a soul. Whilst they accept that the body is governed by the cause-and-effect rules of physics, they believe that the soul is not constrained by such mechanistic principles.
The idea of free will has obvious attractions, as it appears to broadly reflect how many people think about themselves. In our day-to-day lives, few of us regard ourselves as machines, nothing more than a collection of atoms that react in an entirely predictable way in accordance with the laws of physics. Instead, we think of the choices we make as being very real things, and things which are directly within our control.
The traditional view, therefore, offers an explanation for how sin could have occurred without it having been caused by God. It does this by proposing that our wills operate independently of the rules of cause and effect.
Problems with the Traditional View
There are two immediate problems with this proposition. To begin with, it fails to explain why an omniscient God would have created us if He knew how we were going to misuse our free wills. And, if He could not, or did not, know how we were going to misuse our free wills, then why did He take the risk of creating us in the first place? This would mean that God was gambling with the eternal fate of mankind, all of whom could, in theory, rebel against Him and remain in hell for ever.
The second problem relates to the concept of free will itself. Put simply, we can either believe that everything that happens has a cause, or we can believe that some, and possibly all, things happen without a cause. The latter is known as ‘acausalism’, and it leads to some very uncomfortable conclusions about human choices.
The reason for this is that if what we choose is not caused by anything, then our choices must ‘just happen’ to us. If that is true, however, then there would be no continuity with the past whatsoever. We would just find ourselves in a state of having made a choice that was entirely uncaused by anything that had gone on before.
Rather than implying control, therefore, acausalism is in fact the exact opposite. In an acausalistic world, choices simply arise in our minds without any cause and therefore without any possible explanation. We would simply find ourselves with desires and choices that were entirely unconnected with anything that had preceded them. As a result, the characteristics with which we were created, or even those that we had two seconds ago would be quite irrelevant. How could adopting these beliefs ever reassure us? Our choices would not be under our control; they would not be under anyone’s control - they would just happen.
A further issue with acausalism is that it would mean that how we behaved in the future would be completely unpredictable, as it would have no causal relationship with anything that had preceded it. How then could even God know the future? The future would not have been created yet; anything could happen.
Towards a Solution
The only solution to these problems is to believe that all things that happen have a cause. God knew we were going to sin, because He gave us good but imperfect natures when he created the souls of each and every one of us. God wants us to be tested and to fail, but then for us to find and love Him through repentance. And the reason for this might be that God knows that this is the only way in which we can achieve true salvation. We cannot fully appreciate good without a knowledge of evil, just as light cannot be fully appreciated without darkness.
Although this would make God the cause of sin, it would not mean that He was himself guilty of sin, as He would only be causing sin in others so that good would ultimately triumph over evil. When a man sins, he asserts his will without any regard for what is good, concerned only with his narrow, self-centred aims. God is clearly not guilty of this, as He allows sin to exist solely because it is the only way in which He can bring us to salvation.
As regards free will, we could believe that whilst we choose to be and act in certain ways, those behaviours are caused by various factors, principally our genetics and the characteristics we received when God created us. The interaction of these characteristics is extremely complicated, but to someone who is omniscient, who fully understands all of the causes, they are entirely predictable.
This does not mean that our wills are not free. We freely choose within the limitations of our circumstances. And one of those circumstances is that we have an imperfect nature, which in some situations will cause us to sin. We are like bridges. We can only bear a certain load before we crack and eventually collapse. We can choose how we like, but we cannot choose how we choose. And we choose as we do, because God created us in the way in which He did. We can change, but only if He created us with the potential and will to change.
Some will say that if this is true, then we are automatons. However, automatons are unconscious machines; we are conscious, living beings. Our predictability to God does not make us any less free than God Himself. God knows His mind perfectly and therefore how He will be and act in the future. He knows that He will never sin, as it is not within His nature to do so. None of this means that God is an automaton. Our predictability to Him does not make us automatons either.
The Scriptures
This explanation of sin makes perfect, logical sense and it preserves the concept of cause and effect in all things. It also ties in with everything that is said in the Bible. The scriptures tell us that God cannot even be tempted by evil, and that in His nature there is ‘no place for change or a shadow of turning’ (James 1:13,17).
The Bible also tells us that God ‘knows everything’ (1 John 3:20) and that ‘His understanding is infinite’ (Psalm 147:5). That knowledge clearly includes the future, as Psalm 139:4 says of God, ‘not a word is on my tongue, but you know it completely’. And Jeremiah 1:5 says that God knew him before he was even formed in the womb.
God therefore knew that we would sin. He also made provision for our sins in advance, as Christ is described as the ‘lamb slain before the foundation of the world’ (Revelation 13:8). And as God’s knowledge is infinite, He knows exactly how and when we will commit these sins. Jesus therefore knew that Judas would betray Him that night, and that Peter would deny Him three times before the cock had crowed twice (Mark 14:72).
God knows how and when we will sin, therefore, and yet He does not try to stop it from occurring. He also frequently does not stop sin from continuing when it does take place. The Bible says that God is all-powerful (Genesis 17:1; Jeremiah 32:27; Revelation 19:6) and that He ‘accomplishes all things according to the counsel of His will’ (Ephesians 1:11). It follows from this that sin must be part of God’s will and His plan for mankind.
The purpose of this plan is made clear in several passages. Romans 5:20 says that God’s laws were deliberately created ‘so that sin might increase’, because ‘where sin increased, grace increased all the more’. And Romans 8:20, 21 tells us that:
…the creation was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but by Him who subjected it in the hope that even the creation itself will be freed from the slavery of corruption to the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
Similarly, Galatians 3:22 says:
…the scripture shut up all under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those that believe.
Mankind’s initial fall from grace, therefore, together with our later sins are known by God in advance. And yet He neither prevents nor stops them, because they are part of His plan for our redemption.