Is Free Will Real?

By Erin Baumgaertal

Part 1: Is Free Will Real?
Do people have free will? This is a broad question that could be answered in several ways. It is also a complex question that has been debated, discussed, researched, and written about in great detail. Here I will point out some basics things to consider when determining if free will is real.

Are the seemingly free choices you make just chemical reactions in your brain? In other words, are your choices determined by your physiology so that you have no actual choice in how you act? This question is best answered by another question: did you choose to ask that? Or are you just doing what your brain told you to do? And, what about my writing a response? Am I just doing what my brain chemicals made me do? The very question about free will actually helps to prove free will. That is because it takes free will to challenge the idea of it.

Making free will choices is something we all undeniably experience. If we held to determinism, that all our choices are determined and we have no free will, it would lead to absurdity. Without free will we would lose the ability to make rational choices, to know between right and wrong, and to be creative. Without free will we even lose the ability to love. This is because real love is choosing to place someone else’s good above our own. Love cannot be love if it is just determined by chemical reactions. Free will also allows us to have meaningful conversations. There is no way our physiology could know what kind of topics and questions may arise in conversations and be able to help you respond and answer. This very dialogue is only possible because of free will.

Finally, imagine the social atrocities that would occur if all our choices were determined. We would lose all ability to praise people for achievements and to hold people culpable for wrongdoing. Imagine a criminal standing before a judge and saying, “my actions were due to my physiology, I couldn’t help it!” We all know that would not be accepted in the court of law. So, we should also not accept that kind of thinking in our everyday lives.

Free will is something we all use every moment of every day. There is no explanation to why you are reading this article, and why I am writing it, unless we choose to do so. Now you get to choose whether or not to read the second part, which addresses a very important challenge to Christians: Can God be in total control, and man have free will?

Part 2: Can God be in total control, and people have free will?
The Bible teaches that God is in complete control of all things (sovereign). In Isaiah 14:24 God says, “just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand.” God has a plan, and He will make it happen. The Bible also shows that people have free will, meaning they can make choices. We see that God commands people to obey Him and allows them to disobey Him. In Genesis 2:16-17 God told Adam that he was free to eat from any tree except one and commanded him not to eat from that tree. Can God’s sovereignty and human free will both be true when they seem to be contradictory?

Consider what you are wearing. When you got dressed today, did you choose your outfit, or was your choice predetermined by God? When I wrote this article, did I choose to write it, or did God cause me to write? What if the answer is both? Could it be that you chose what to wear, I chose what to write, and God predetermined that we would do these things?

Understanding how God can be sovereign, while giving people free will, is challenging and has led to much theological debate. While our limited minds cannot fully grasp the concept, we should want to understand as much about this matter as God has made known because it will grow our understanding of God and how He relates to us. Also, learning about the topic can prevent us from taking extreme positions that lead to unbiblical understandings of God. One extreme position of God’s sovereignty holds that God is responsible for evil and minimizes God’s love for His creatures. Alternatively, an extreme position of human free will holds that God does not know everything, including the future free acts of people, so He cannot be fully in control.

A solution to these extremes is to take a balanced view that affirms both biblical teachings that God is sovereign, and people have free will. We will consider two points to help us understand this: first, that God is the ultimate cause of free will and, second, how He knows our free choices.

1. God is the Ultimate Cause of Free Will

God is the ultimate cause of everything, including human free will. Nothing could happen apart from His sustaining power. Hebrews 1:3 says He (Jesus) “upholds all things by the word of His power." While God is the sustaining cause of all things, He is not the cause of choices in the same way that a human is the cause of her choices (especially evil choices). Rather, God works through the free will of people. He can do this because the way He causes is beyond, and higher than the way we cause things. He works by permitting people to make good or evil choices, and He uses their choices to fulfill His purposes. For example, years after Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, he was able to say to them that what they intended for harm, God intended for good (Gen. 50:20). Also, God allowed people to sin by putting an innocent man—the perfect Savior, Jesus—to death on the cross, and God used it to offer salvation to the world (John 3:16). God is the ultimate cause of free creatures’ ability to choose, but He is not forcing their choice, or else it is not free.

2. God’s Knowledge of Free-will Choices

God knows everything that will occur, including our free choices. The future is determined by God, as He is the cause of everything that does and will exist. He chose to make this world, knowing how all free creatures would act. But God is not in time looking forward, waiting to see what choices people will make. Rather, He sees everything from an eternal standpoint, as if He were looking down on a calendar that contains all of history—past, present, and future—all at once.

From the human perspective, God’s knowledge of free will can be likened to watching a prerecorded football game. Once the game has been played and recorded, the plays and outcome of the game are set in stone and cannot be changed; they are predetermined. However, as the recording is being viewed, the plays being made are free actions. Though it can be known that a touchdown will take place prior to viewing the recording, when the touchdown is being watched, it is still a free act. This is only an analogy, so we should not take it to mean that God is reliant on free human choices. What it does mean is that God predetermines all that will occur, and this predetermined plan allows for the fact of human free will. One difference from the human perspective is that we view things within time (with before and after) whereas God sees all, decrees all, and knows all things actual and possible, even human free acts, in one eternal now. God is responsible for the fact that humans have free will, but man is responsible for their actions.

The Conclusion
People’s actions are ultimately caused by God in the sense that we can do nothing apart from His sustaining power in our lives. However, our choices are our responsibility because God made us as thinking, reasoning creatures and gave us the ability to make choices. This is why in the perfect environment of Eden Adam was given a choice to obey. When he disobeyed, he was held responsible for his choice because he had the ability to respond. This is hard to comprehend because we are limited beings trying to understand an unlimited God. However, we can understand enough to know that God’s sovereignty and human free will is logically possible. God can be in control while allowing and sustaining people to use their freedom.

Resources for Further Study

• Chosen But Free by Normal Geisler