Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: arm@neon.stanford.edu (Alexander d Macalalad) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Random thoughts on free will, etc. Message-ID: Date: 11 Dec 89 08:31:52 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University Lines: 54 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu After reading the thread on predestination, I started thinking about free will vs. determinism, specifically with regard to sin. The question I have is this: if God knows our actions beforehand, and even further, if He intends for us to commit those actions, then is He not in some sense responsible for our sin? Conversely, if He is not responsible in some sense for our sin, then how is it possible for us to resist His will and do something other than what He intended? (Of course, I mean "He" in the genderless sense of the word.) The easy answer is that by our free will we have the choice to do His will or do something entirely different. But the implication there is that salvation is in our hands through the choices we make. If this were the case, then Christ would be just another prophet with a special message from God, rather than our Saviour. (Note that I am not arguing that one must consciously believe in Jesus Christ to be saved, since Jesus died to save all men, not just Christians. In fact, stating that we must believe to be saved implicitly assumes that salvation is (at least partially) in our hands.) Another answer is that sin has blinded us to God's will, and only by the grace of God are we able to do His will. I think this comes close to the Catholic position, but I am no theologian. Yet to me this position implies that by choosing when to give us grace, God is somehow responsible for the actions we commit without grace (i.e. sins). By analogy (and all the caveats that come with reasoning by analogy), if person A allows person B to walk on what A knows to be thin ice, then isn't A responsible in some way if B falls through the ice and drowns? I remember as an undergrad reading Thomas Aquinas' attempt to deal with this question and not being entirely satisfied with his answers. If I remember correctly, he asserted that God intends every action we commit, and that we should praise God for all the good we do, since we do good only by the grace of God, but we are entirely responsible for all of the evil we do, for how can God be responsible for evil? (I think this position comes closer to the Catholic position.) Yet there is a paradox here that I have not been able to resolve. Here are some thoughts I've had in trying to deal with this paradox. First of all, there is a problem with my definition of free will. So far I have been treating free will as a differential (i.e. a capacity to act different from how God intended me to act). So the paradox was partially due to the problem of how free will can exist when God intends every action. Perhaps free will means free from other people's will, rather than free from God's will? Even if that question is resolved, the problem of evil still remains; namely, how can evil exist in the world if God intends every action? How can God judge us if he intends all of our actions? What am I missing here? Alex Macalalad arm@neon.stanford.edu