Do I have free will or not, Mr Bible?
The question of free will has plagued the minds of philosophers, theologians, and ordinary people for millennia. The debate over what free will is and whether we as humans possess such a trait has not abated. If anything, it has increased in recent years. But what does the Bible say?
Can we find any help in God’s Word to answer the question of what it means to freely choose our actions and to be responsible for them? Since the time of the Reformation, the two basic answers that Christians have provided to this question have primarily centred on the theological legacies of Calvinism and Arminianism. The view of free agency associated with Calvinism is called compatibilism. The view advanced by Arminians and others, known as free-will theists, is called libertarian free will.
Proponents of libertarian free will offer two planks to their definition of free will. First, for any choice to be truly free, it must be sufficiently unmoored from the constraints of outside causal forces. That is, God cannot be said to determine any choice that humans make. Certainly, God and other sources can influence our choices. Still, ultimately, the view of free will asserts that we alone retain the power to choose in the direction we determine, because God granted us this freedom and He does not interfere with it.
Second, libertarian free will espouses what is known as the power of contrary choice. Suppose you are travelling along a road and you come to a “T” intersection. After considering all the factors that might lead you to turn left or right, you freely choose to turn right.
If the clock could be rolled back, however, and you came to exactly the same intersection under precisely the same circumstances, you could have equally chosen to turn left for no sufficient reason other than your freedom to do so. This also means that true free will is ultimately unpredictable. It is not possible for anyone, including the person making the choice, to know what choices might be made until they have taken place.
Proponents of libertarian free will believe that only this model of human freedom allows for moral responsibility and the opportunity for meaningful relationships. Greg Boyd, a leading proponent of this view, says: “The first condition of love [is] that it must be freely chosen. It cannot be coerced,” by which he means that God cannot determine our ability to love or not to love.
Boyd says that humans “must possess the capacity and opportunity to reject love if they are to possess the genuine capacity and ability to engage in love.” No meaningful relationship with God or others is possible without such unconstrained ability to make contrary choices.
Corrupted hearts can make only corrupted choices. To make truly God-pleasing choices, the heart must be transformed, made new, regenerated by the Holy Spirit.
Free-will theists such as Boyd believe that this model of human free agency is assumed by the Bible. They appeal to passages such as Joshua 24:15, Matthew 23:37, John 3:16, and 2 Corinthians 9:7. At first glance, passages such as these might seem to support libertarian free will. A different story emerges, however, when these texts are seen in the light of Scripture’s bigger picture of how human actions correspond to God’s actions.
Among other problems, this brand of free will undermines the meticulous sovereignty of God over all things (see Pss. 33:11; 103:19; Isa. 14:24–27; 45:5–7; 46:9–11; Dan. 2:20–21; 4:34–35; Rom. 11:33–36; Eph. 1:11). It undermines the doctrine of human depravity in which the Bible makes clear that the unregenerate are all under bondage to their sin (John 8:34; Rom. 3:10–18, 23) and have no power within to escape this bondage (Rom. 8:7–8). Furthermore, libertarian free will cannot account for divine foreknowledge. If a person possessed this sort of freedom of will, then it would not be truly possible for God to know our choices beforehand. How could we have the freedom to choose contrary to what God already knows for certain we would choose?
This leads us to consider the compatibilist view of human freedom and responsibility, which understands that every human choice has a dual explanation. First, God has ordained in eternity past and providentially ensures in the present all the options that human beings make. He does so in such a way that He never coerces us to act against our will.
For example, although God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, at the same time Pharaoh freely hardened his own heart (Ex. 10:27). Second, God’s sovereignty is compatible with the fact that we freely, voluntarily, and unconstrainedly choose what we most want to select.
What we most want to choose not only corresponds to what God has ordained but is simultaneously dictated by the condition of our hearts, whether good or evil. Corrupted hearts can make only corrupted choices. To make truly God-pleasing choices, the heart must be transformed, made new, regenerated by the Holy Spirit (Matt. 7:17–20; 12:33–35; John 3:5–8).
Solomon understood this mysterious intertwining of the human and divine, as expressed in several proverbs. “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Prov. 16:9). “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (v. 33). “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand” (19:21). “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will” (21:1).
These proverbs suggest that God is the ultimate but primary cause of human choices, while humans are the immediate but secondary cause of their own actions. The latter point indicates that we are not helpless marionettes dangling from some grand puppeteer’s strings. Our choices are real and meaningful.
The Bible is full of specific examples of compatibilism. Consider how Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery and bore culpability for their sin, and yet at the same time, God brought about their actions (Gen. 45:4–9; 50:15–18). Joseph famously declared to his brothers, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (50:20). In 1 Samuel 9:3–14, Saul and his servant made numerous decisions that on first reading appear to be inconsequential steps toward Saul’s encounter with the prophet Samuel.
They had full control over the steps leading up to this meeting. But then we come to verses 15–16, where an entirely different perspective lurks behind the scenes: “Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed to Samuel: ‘Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel.’”
In Acts 27, Paul assures his sailing companions that they will all be divinely rescued from a fierce storm according to an angel who revealed this to him. He says to them, “So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told” (v. 25; see v. 34).
God will certainly do it. Yet on the other hand, when some of the sailors try to escape from the faltering ship, Paul urges the centurion in charge, “Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved” (v. 31). God’s providence is not a form of fatalism in which human choices do not matter. Rather, God exercises His sovereign plans through the instrumentality of the purposefully exercised wills of His creatures.
Perhaps the most significant example of compatibilism is seen in the death of Christ. Nothing is clearer in Scripture than the grand plan of redemption that required God to send forth His Son to be our crucified and risen Redeemer. Peter makes this plain in his sermon on the day of Pentecost when he declares to the inhabitants of Jerusalem that Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (2:23).
Yet Peter does not exonerate the Jews of their culpable actions in the matter. He immediately charges them, saying, “You crucified and killed' Jesus 'by the hands of lawless men.” This dual explanation for the death of Christ is repeated in the prayer of the believers to God the Father in Acts 4:27–28. In this case, names are named:
For truly, in this city, there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.
There is tension and mystery in the paradoxical juxtaposition of the divine and the human in the choices we make. Sometimes Scripture emphasizes the divine perspective. Sometimes it emphasizes the human perspective. Sometimes, both perspectives are placed side by side. This assures us that in all the other instances, the two always go together. God is completely sovereign, and we are responsible for our voluntarily (freely) made choices.
Rev. Scott Christensen
