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From: emjej@uokvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Free will and Love - (nf)
Message-ID: <5031@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Jan-84 23:13:05 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.5031
Posted: Fri Jan 20 23:13:05 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Jan-84 23:29:16 EST
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#R:ssc-vax:-74800:uokvax:8300029:000:3719
uokvax!emjej    Jan 19 16:20:00 1984

First, I'd like to thank David for his thoughtful response; now, to
comment further...

/***** uokvax:net.religion / ssc-vax!david /  6:16 pm  Jan 13, 1984 */
>...  You would make
>it seem that, for some to go to Heaven, others are *required* to go to Hell;
>as if it were some kind of prerequisite.  I don't think this is the case.

Perhaps I wasn't sufficiently clear. I was speaking in part to your
automotive analogy, which I took as suggesting for consideration that
it may be reasonable for the mechanic (God) to repair a car (the human
race) by trashing defective parts (the Midianites, although I'm not
sure why nubile women would be worth saving while children weren't).
Also, there is again the question of what knowledge God might have had
of the (even approximate) number of unrepentant sinners who would eventually
live and die, but as you point out...

>Again, we return to the topic of free will.

Yes. I'm not sure there is such a thing (Raymond Smullyan's *Is God a Taoist?*
dialogue in *The Tao is Silent* expresses my beliefs in regard to "free will"
better than I can). Even if there were, might not something akin to Asimov's
(fictional, so far) psychohistory indicate that with high probability x% of
all humans would wind up in Hell? (It's not even clear that that is necessary
to God; I forget whether it is A.J. Ayer or someone he quotes in *Language,
Truth, and Logic* that said that God would need no logic, because he would
immediately perceive all those propositions we laboriously derive, but the
same would probably hold for science, too.)

>I think that it is easy to see
>that, for love to exist, it must be given freely.  You can't force someone to
>love you.

I am pretty sure that *I* can't; I'm less sure about what God can do
(although in part the question requires that I check out your Lewis
reference (for which thanks, by the way) to see whether "Christian
love" is defined so as to rule out being compelled). On the other hand,
I could certainly see that if God were to create creatures that were
guaranteed to love Him, He might feel about them rather the way I would
about someone whose mean distance from me was inversely proportional to
the difficulties she was having with assembumbler. On the third hand,
maybe He feels that way anyhow--how can He *not* consider that those
humans who do love Him are doing so involuntarily? This would seem to
be a problem with omnipotence.

>I had supposed that the requirement of suffering wherever there is love
>was very generally understood.  For a quick example, take the love of one
>human for another one.  Sooner or later, one of them is going to die.  This
>will most certainly cause pain and grief (sometimes anger and resentment) in
>the other party.

I'm reminded of the myth of Baucis and Philemon, who came off rather
better at the hands of Zeus and Apollo (not that Z. and A. didn't
behave as obnoxiously toward others in said myth as Jesus did to a
certain fig tree). I've come (uncomfortably, when I think back on it)
close to that at least once, when I told someone that if they were
going to commit suicide, do it while we were both in the car. Cannot
God do at least as well? (It shouldn't be hard, in the latter case.)

>Anything less, and I might conclude that they didn't love
>each other after all, or that they aren't very human.

But then, if the mutually loving humans are Christian, won't they consider
that they will meet in heaven, and thereby not suffer?
/* ---------- */

Once again, David, thanks for your comments. I guess I flamed out on
religion when I was in high school here in the Bible Belt, so maybe I'm
at the point of being able to discuss such questions calmly. (I hope.)

						James Jones