Freewill and the Problem of Evil

My recent post God, Evil, and Original Sin has received several responses. James from AnAtheist.net responds in Free Will & Sin, positing that limited freewill could conceivably allow both freewill and a lack of evil. In the comments on my blog, the Conversational Atheist asks the question: “Do you have free will when you get to heaven?” Qohelet asks a similar question in commenting on James’s reply.

In Free Will & Sin, James presents an argument and supporting analogy in an attempt to demonstrate that the ability to will evil is not strictly necessary for freewill. His argument is essentially that any physical limitations we have already limit our will, and therefore restricting our capacity to do evil would not limit freewill in any unique way in which it is not already limited. To support this argument, he presents an analogy between our ability to fly and our ability to do evil.

This analogy confuses will and ability. We can certainly will to fly, but we lack the ability. To use James’s terminology, we have the ability to choose to fly, but we lack the ability to actually fly. Will, therefore, is not dependent on ability as James suggests. It is therefore possible to will something beyond one’s ability to perform it. Therefore, our inability to fly does not represent a limitation on freewill which God could have merely extended to include sin.

While the analogy is faulty, James’s point is at least initially a reasonable one. It does seem conceptually possible for God to have created a world in which humans were free to choose certain things, such as what good work to perform on a particular day or pick a favorite color, but be unable to will to perform an evil deed. However, there are two objections to this:

First, as argued in my initial post, this would not be true freedom. Humanity would essentially be much like Isaac Asimov’s robots governed by the three laws. We would be good, not of our own choosing, but only because God forced us to be so.

Second, at least in the Bible, the most important choice there is is to choose to obey or disobey God. In other words, the primary purpose of granting freewill is to allow us to choose Him. Giving us freewill without the ability to choose against Him would defeat that purpose.

Other Remarks

James also disagrees with my post in two points:

Prior Knowledge of Good and Evil

Your claim is that she had knowledge that eating the fruit was wrong before she had knowledge of right and wrong. That would be like telling my dog that barking is wrong and wondering why she still does it. – James

False. My claim is that she did know right (obey God; do not eat of the tree) from wrong (disobey God; eat of the tree) beforehand and that the phrase “knowledge of good and evil would be better understood as “discerning good from evil”. It is invalid to argue that my argument is absurd by substituting one’s own premises for mine. We can debate whether my premise regarding the proper interpretation of the phrase translated as “knowledge of good and evil” is, but the fact that our premises differ and James’s premises conflict with my conclusion does not make my argument invalid or absurd because it is not based on those premises.

Determining or Knowing Good and Evil

Rather than addressing my argument on the proper understanding of the original word “yada” in the passage of the creation and fall, James essentially begs the question, assuming his interpretation is correct because it is “obvious” that the Bible is “a primitive attempt” by ancient people to explain certain concepts and that my argument was essentially false because it was too complicated.

That the story is obviously a primitive attempt to explain various aspects of humanity is clearly not as obvious as James would like it to be. What is obvious is that if one insists on interpreting the Bible through the assumption that it is a primitive and absurd book, one can certainly arrive at primitive and absurd conclusions by insisting on simplistic interpretations rather than entertaining the possibility that the Bible might be reasonable. However, that assumption is far from justified.

The argument I presented may not prove with certainty that the passage must be understood in the manner I described, but it does demonstrate that there is good reason to understand it in a different way than James suggests. This interpretation presents a much more consistent and sensible conclusion, undermining his claim that this passage is necessarily absurd.

Freewill in Eternity

Regarding the question of freewill for the saved in eternity, I am not aware of a statement in the Bible which directly answers the question of freewill in eternity. I think the general assumption is that the process of sanctification (essentially, putting off the sin nature) which is completed upon entry into heaven renders believers into a state in which, while they could sin, they never will again. However, I think a good case can be made which suggests that freewill will be at least limited in heaven.

The primary reason is this: if it is true that evil must be a possible side-effect of freewill, evil would be possible in heaven. The possibility of evil implies the possibility of suffering, which is denied in heaven. If there is no possibility of suffering, there must be no possibility of evil, which implies a lack of full freewill. Freewill may exist in a limited form, such as James suggests in “Free Will & Sin”, but this argument presents a reasonable case against the kind of freewill we have now. The idea that sanctification produces believers who have full freewill, but simply will not sin sounds a lot like Adam and Eve’s original state in the garden, a state in which they were clearly capable of sinning.

Qohelet argues that this conclusion contradicts the necessity and importance of freewill that I argued for above and in my original post. This is not so and it seems to me the reason helps to explain why as Rhodes said, a world which includes evil is the best possible path to the best possible world. If, as argued above, freewill implies the possibility or even the probability of evil, the best possible world, that is, one in which there is no evil and therefore no suffering, is one in which freewill is at least not absolute. However, if another property of the optimal world is its inhabitants freely choosing to love and obey God, freewill is necessary for that optimal world, but can not coexist with it. Therefore, one can not begin with an optimal world. Freewill and lack of suffering are incompatible. Therefore, the optimal world must be preceded by a sub-optimal world with freewill, by which people can freely choose to love and obey God, making the optimal world possible.

Given the importance of freewill in most Christians understanding of the world, sin, and the gospel, this is certainly an important question. I would be interested in any views, comments, or insights other readers might have on this topic.