Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (c. 354-430 A.D.):
For what shall be more free than free will, when it shall not be able to serve sin?
(Augustine of Hippo, A Treatise on Rebuke and Grace, 32; trans. NPNF1, 5:485.) See also: ccel.org.
Timothy Keller:
But a second problem looms—and it is, in my view, much more formidable. Is it really true that God could not create free agents capable of love without making them also capable of evil? The view that he could not has been called the libertarian understanding of free will. It says that God cannot lead us to do the right thing without violating our free will, and so evil is inevitable for free agents.
But the Bible presents God himself as sovereign and free (Ps 115:3), and not just capable of love but the very fountain and source of all love. Nevertheless, he himself cannot be evil. He cannot lie or break a promise (Num 23:19; Titus 1:2), he cannot be tempted by evil (James 1:13), he cannot deny or contradict his perfectly righteous and holy character (2 Tim 2:13; 1 Pet 1:16). If God has a free will yet is not capable of doing wrong—why could not other beings also be likewise constituted? Also biblical authors teach us that eventually God will give us a suffering-free, evil-free world filled with redeemed human beings. Suffering and death will be banished forever. That means we will be in God’s world but not be capable of choosing evil. Yet we will obviously still be capable of love.
Finally, many Christian theologians point out the biblical teaching on the nature of freedom differs sharply from modern views. The Bible characterizes all sin as slavery, never as freedom. Only when we are completely redeemed from all sin will we experience complete freedom (cf. Rom 8:21). We are free only to the extent that we do what God built us to do—to serve him. Therefore, the more capable you are to commit evil, the less free you are. Not until we attain heaven and lose the capability of evil are we truly and completely free. How, then, could the ability to sin be a form of freedom?
There is another strand of biblical teaching that undermines the free will theodicy. The theodicy assumes that if God gives us the gift of free will, then he cannot control the outcomes of its usage. But the Bible shows in many places that God can sovereignly direct our choices in history without violating our freedom and responsibility for our actions. For example, Jesus’ crucifixion was clearly foreordained and destined to happen, and yet all the people who, by God’s plan, brought it about were still making their choices freely and thus were responsible for what they did (cf. Acts 2:23). This indicates that it is possible to be free and nevertheless to have our course directed by God—at the same time, compatibly. There are scores of other examples of this. So God can give free will and still direct the outcomes of our choices to fit into his plan for history.
There is a final question about the premises underlying the free will theodicy. It assumes that despite the horrendous evils of history, merely having freedom of choice is worth it. But is it? What if you saw a child walking into the path of an oncoming car? Would you say: “I can’t violate her freedom of choice! She will have to take the consequences.”? Of course not. You would not consider her freedom of choice more important than saving her life. You would violate her freedom of will as fast as you could possibly do it. You would snatch her out of the path of the car and teach her how to keep that from happening again. Why couldn’t God have done that with us? Assume that the Fall of humankind happened the way the Bible says. Why couldn’t God have shown Adam and Eve a lurid, detailed full-length movie of all that would happen to them and to their descendants if they ate of the tree? Surely he could have scared them and convinced them to avoid eating the forbidden fruit.
In short, could the gift and maintenance of free will be the only or main reason God allows evil? The purpose of a theodicy is to reveal sufficiently God’s reasons for allowing evil and suffering so that we think it justified. Does the free will theodicy do this—does it really answer most of the questions? I don’t believe it does, nor do sizable numbers of other people. If God has good reasons for allowing the pain and misery we see, the reasons must extend beyond the mere provision of freedom of choice.
(Timothy Keller, Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering, [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2015], pp. 92-93.)
R. C. Sproul:
If there is no prior inclination, desire, or bent, no prior motivation or reason for a choice, how can a choice even be made? If the will is totally neutral, why would it choose the right or the left? It is something like the problem encountered by Alice in Wonderland when she came to a fork in the road. She did not know which way to turn. She saw the grinning Cheshire cat in the tree. She asked the cat, “Which way should I turn?” The cat replied, “Where are you going?” Alice answered, “I don’t know.” “Then,” replied the Cheshire cat, “it doesn’t matter.”
Consider Alice’s dilemma. Actually she had four options from which to choose. She could have taken the left fork or the right fork. She also could have chosen to return the way she had come. Or she could have stood fixed at the spot of indecision until she died there. For her to take a step in any direction, she would need some motivation or inclination to do so. Without any motivation, any prior inclination, her only real option would be to stand there and perish.
Another famous illustration of the same problem is found in the story of the neutral-willed mule. The mule had no prior desires, or equal desires in two directions. His owner put a basket of oats to his left and a basket of wheat on his right. If the mule had no desire whatsoever for either oats or wheat he would choose neither and starve. If he had an exactly equal disposition toward oats as he had toward wheat he would still starve. His equal disposition would leave him paralyzed. There would be no motive. Without motive there would be no choice. Without choice there would be no food. Without food soon there would be no mule.
(R. C. Sproul, Chosen by God, [Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1986], pp. 52-53.)
Cf. Johnathan Edwards:
By determining the will, if the phrase be used with any meaning, must be intended, causing that the act of the will or choice should be thus, and not otherwise: and the will is said to be determined, when, in consequence of some action or influence, its choice is directed to, and fixed upon, a particular object. As, when we speak of the determination of motion, we mean causing the motion of the body to be such a way, or in such a direction, rather than another.
To talk of the determination of the will, supposes an effect which must have a cause. If the will be determined, there is a determiner. This must be supposed to be intended even by them that say the will determines itself. If it be so, the will is both determiner and determined; it is a cause that acts and produces effects upon itself, and is the object of its own influence and action.
With respect to that grand inquiry, What determines the will? it would be very tedious and unnecessary at present to enumerate and examine all the various opinions which have been advanced concerning this matter; nor is it needful that I should enter into a particular disquisition of all points debated in disputes on that question, Whether the will always follows the last dictate of the understanding. It is sufficient to my present purpose to say, It is that motive which, as it stands in the view of the mind, is the strongest, that determines the will…
(Johnathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, [London and Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1845], Part I, Section II, pp. 5-6.)Note: See further: The “Will.”
Wayne Grudem:
b. On an Arminian View, How Can Evil Exist If God Did Not Want It?: Arminians quite clearly say that the entrance of evil into the world was not according to the will of God. Pinnock says, “The fall of man is an eloquent refutation to the theory that God’s will is always done.”[fn. 66: Pinnock, “Responsible Freedom,” p. 102.] But how can evil exist if God did not want it to exist? If evil happens in spite of the fact that God does not want it to happen, this seems to deny God’s omnipotence: he wanted to prevent evil, but he was unable to do so. How then can we believe that this God is omnipotent?
The common Arminian response is to say that God was able to prevent evil but he chose to allow for the possibility of evil in order to guarantee that angels and humans would have the freedom necessary for meaningful choices. In other words, God had to allow for the possibility of sinful choices in order to allow genuine human choices. Cottrell says, “This God-given freedom includes human freedom to rebel and to sin against the Creator himself. By creating a world in which sin was possible, God thereby bound himself to react in certain specific ways should sin become a reality.”[fn. 67: Cottrell, “The Nature of Divine Sovereignty,” p. 109.]
But this is not a satisfactory response either, for it implies that God will have to allow for the possibility of sinful choices in heaven eternally. On the Arminian position, if any of our choices and actions in heaven are to be genuine and real, then they will have to include the possibility of sinful choices. But this implies that even in heaven, for all eternity, we will face the real possibility of choosing evil—and therefore the possibility of rebelling against God and losing our salvation and being cast out of heaven! This is a terrifying thought, but it seems a necessary implication of the Arminian view.
Yet there is an implication that is more troubling: If real choices have to allow for the possibility of choosing evil, then (1) God’s choices are not real, since he cannot choose evil, or (2) God’s choices are real, and there is the genuine possibility that God might someday choose to do evil—perhaps a little, and perhaps a great deal. If we ponder the second implication it becomes terrifying. But it is contrary to the abundant testimony of Scripture.[fn. 68: See chapter 13, pp. 197–98, 201–2, 203–5, for scriptural testimony to God’s goodness, holiness, and righteousness, and chapter 11, pp. 163–68, on God’s unchangeableness.] On the other hand, the first implication is clearly false: God is the definition of what is real, and it is clearly an error to say that his choices are not real. Both implications therefore provide good reason for rejecting the Arminian position that real choices must allow the possibility of choosing evil. But this puts us back to the earlier question for which there does not seem to be a satisfactory answer from the Arminian position: How can evil exist if God did not want it to exist?
(Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, [Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994], pp. 349-350.) [bold in original]
Cf. Wayne Grudem:
d. Predestination Based on Foreknowledge Still Does Not Give People Free Choice: The idea that God’s predestination of some to believe is based on foreknowledge of their faith encounters still another problem: upon reflection, this system turns out to give no real freedom to man either. For if God can look into the future and see that person A will come to faith in Christ, and that person B will not come to faith in Christ, then those facts are already fixed, they are already determined. If we assume that God’s knowledge of the future is true (which it must be), then it is absolutely certain that person A will believe and person B will not. There is no way that their lives could turn out any differently than this. Therefore it is fair to say that their destinies are still determined, for they could not be otherwise. But by what are these destinies determined? If they are determined by God himself, then we no longer have election based ultimately on foreknowledge of faith, but rather on God’s sovereign will. But if these destinies are not determined by God, then who or what determines them? Certainly no Christian would say that there is some powerful being other than God controlling people’s destinies. Therefore it seems that the only other possible solution is to say they are determined by some impersonal force, some kind of fate, operative in the universe, making things turn out as they do. But what kind of benefit is this? We have then sacrificed election in love by a personal God for a kind of determinism by an impersonal force and God is no longer to be given the ultimate credit for our salvation.
(Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, [Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994], p. 679.) [bold in original]
Thomas Aquinas:
Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature.
(The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I. QQ. LXXV.—CII., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, [London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, LTD., 1922], Q. 83, Art. 1, Reply Obj. 3, p. 149.)
Note: See further: Concurrence (Concursus) — Primary and Secondary Causes.
John Calvin:
Because of the bondage of sin by which the will is held bound, it cannot move toward good, much less apply itself thereto; for a movement of this sort is the beginning of conversion to God, which in Scripture is ascribed entirely to God’s grace. So Jeremiah prayed to the Lord to be “converted” if it were his will to “convert him” [Jer. 31:18, cf. Vg.]. Hence the prophet in the same chapter, describing the spiritual redemption of the believing folk, speaks of them as “redeemed from the hand of one stronger than they” [v. 11 p.]. By this he surely means the tight fetters with which the sinner is bound so long as, forsaken by the Lord, he lives under the devil’s yoke. Nonetheless the will remains, with the most eager inclination disposed and hastening to sin. For man, when he gave himself over to this necessity, was not deprived of will, but of soundness of will. Not inappropriately Bernard teaches that to will is in us all: but to will good is gain; to will evil, loss. Therefore simply to will is of man; to will ill, of a corrupt nature; to will well, of grace.[fn. 9: Bernard, Concerning Grace and Free Will vi. 16 (MPL 182. 1040; tr. W. W. Williams, p. 32).]
Now, when I say that the will bereft of freedom is of necessity either drawn or led into evil, it is a wonder if this seems a hard saying to anyone, since it has nothing incongruous or alien to the usage of holy men. But it offends those who know not how to distinguish between necessity and compulsion.[fn. 10: Luther had made this distinction in his dispute with Erasmus: “By necessity I do not mean compulsion, but the necessity of immutability”; he explains that an evil man does evil spontaneously but that he cannot of himself leave off doing evil. De servo arbitrio (Werke WA XVIII. 634; tr. H. Cole, The Bondage of the Will, p. 72). De Castro virtually identifies the two. Adversus omnes haereses IX (1543, fo. 123 D).] Suppose someone asks them: Is not God of necessity good? Is not the devil of necessity evil? What will they reply? God’s goodness is so connected with his divinity that it is no more necessary for him to be God than for him to be good. But the devil by his fall was so cut off from participation in good that he can do nothing but evil. But suppose some blasphemer sneers that God deserves little praise for His own goodness, constrained as He is to preserve it.[fn. 11: In Defensio doctrinae de servitute humani arbitrii contra A. Pighium (1543), Calvin assails Pighius for this opinion (CR VI. 333 f.). Albert Pighius was a Louvain scholar who served Adrian VI and succeeding popes in Rome and who published various anti-Reformation books. Calvin’s treatise is a reply to his De libero hominis arbitrio et divina gratia (Cologne, 1542). Cf. also Augustine, On Nature and Grace xlvi. 54 (MPL 44. 273; tr. NPNF V. 139).] Will this not be a ready answer to him: not from violent impulsion, but from His boundless goodness comes God’s inability to do evil? Therefore, if the fact that he must do good does not hinder God’s free will in doing good; if the devil, who can do only evil, yet sins with his will—who shall say that man therefore sins less willingly because he is subject to the necessity of sinning? Augustine everywhere speaks of this necessity; and even though Caelestius caviled against him invidiously, he did not hesitate to affirm it in these words: “Through freedom man came to be in sin, but the corruption which followed as punishment turned freedom into necessity.”[fn. 12: Augustine, On Man’s Perfection in Righteousness iv. 9 (MPL 44. 295; tr. NPNF V. 161); On Nature and Grace lxvi. 79, quoting Ps. 25:17 (Vg. Ps. 24:17): “de miserationibus meis” (MPL 44. 286; tr. NPNF V. 149).] And whenever he makes mention of the matter, he does not hesitate to speak in this manner of the necessary bondage of sin.
The chief point of this distinction, then, must be that man, as he was corrupted by the Fall, sinned willingly, not unwillingly or by compulsion; by the most eager inclination of his heart, not by forced compulsion; by the prompting of his own lust, not by compulsion from without. Yet so depraved is his nature that he can be moved or impelled only to evil. But if this is true, then it is clearly expressed that man is surely subject to the necessity of sinning.[fn. 13: This distinction is similarly made, but with different terminology, in Reinhold Niebuhr’s view that man sins “inevitably” but “responsibly.” The Nature and Destiny of Man, first series, pp. 251-264.]
Bernard, agreeing with Augustine, so writes: “Among all living beings man alone is free; and yet because sin has intervened he also undergoes a kind of violence, but of will, not of nature, so that not even thus is he deprived of his innate freedom. For what is voluntary is also free.” And a little later: “In some base and strange way the will itself, changed for the worse by sin, makes a necessity for itself. Hence, neither does necessity, although it is of the will, avail to excuse the will, nor does the will, although it is led astray, avail to exclude necessity. For this necessity is as it were voluntary.” Afterward he says that we are oppressed by no other yoke than that of a kind of voluntary servitude. Therefore we are miserable as to servitude and inexcusable as to will because the will, when it was free, made itself the slave of sin. Yet he concludes: “Thus the soul, in some strange and evil way, under a certain voluntary and wrongly free necessity is at the same time enslaved and free: enslaved because of necessity; free because of will. And what is at once stranger and more deplorable, it is guilty because it is free, and enslaved because it is guilty, and as a consequence enslaved because it is free.”[fn. 14: Bernard, Sermons on the Song of Songs lxxxi. 7, 9 (MPL 183. 1174 f.; tr. S. J. Eales, Life and Works of St. Bernard IV. 498 f.); Lombard, Sentences II. xxv. 5, 9 (MPL 192. 707).] Surely my readers will recognize that I am bringing forth nothing new, for it is something that Augustine taught of old with the agreement of all the godly, and it was still retained almost a thousand years later in monastic cloisters. But Lombard, since he did not know how to distinguish necessity from compulsion, gave occasion for a pernicious error.
(John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.3.5; trans. The Library of Christian Classics: Volume XX: Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion: In Two Volumes (Vol. XX: Books I.i to III.xix), ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960], pp. 294-296.)
Francis Turretin:
V. First, such an indifference to opposites is found in no free agent, whether created or uncreated: neither in God, who is good most freely indeed, yet not indifferently (as if he could be evil), but necessarily and immutably; nor in Christ, who obeyed God most freely and yet most necessarily because he could not sin; nor in angels and the blessed, who worship God with the highest willingness and yet are necessarily determined to good; nor in devils and reprobates, who cannot help sinning, although they sin freely. So neither the constancy and immutability of the former in good destroys, but perfects their liberty; nor the inextricable obstinacy and firmness of the latter in evil prevents them from sinning most heinously and so deserving the heaviest punishment.
VI. What objection can be made here? (1) Is the divine liberty the same as ours? We answer that just in proportion to God’s liberty being more perfect than ours, so ought it to be farther removed from indifference (which instead of being a virtue is a defect of liberty). (2) That Christ, although he never sinned, still was not absolutely unable to sin; and that it is not repugnant to his nature, will or office to be able to sin? This blasphemy Episcopius and other Remonstrants have not blushed to put forth. We answer that far be it from us either to think or say any such thing concerning the immaculate Son of God whom we know to have been holy (akakon), undefiled (amianton), separate from sinners; who not only had no intercourse with sin, but could not have both because he was the Son of God and because he was our Redeemer (who if he could have sinned, could not also have saved us). Nor if he could be miserable could he for the same reason be a sinner. Misery for a time is not opposed to his most holy nature and contributed to the execution of his office because he was bound to pay the punishment of our sin and so to bear it by suffering. But he could not deserve it. (3) That the liberty of the saints on earth and in heaven is different? We answer that since the formal reason of liberty ought to be the same as to essentials, if the latter have a most perfect liberty without indifference, it cannot be said to belong to its essence.
VII. Second, the will can never be without determination as well extrinsic from the providence of God, as intrinsic from the judgment of the intellect (as has been shown). Bellarmine himself proves this by various arguments (“De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio,” 3.8 in Opera [1858], 4:338–40). Therefore when all the requisites for acting are posited, it cannot act or not act. Otherwise it would neither be created (because it would not depend upon God); nor rational (because it would act against the judgment of reason and seek evil as evil). Nor is it an objection that it is said to be of the nature of free will to determine itself (because subordinates do not contend against each other). It is indeed of the nature of the will to be determined by itself, but not by itself alone. Thus the determination of the will does not exclude, but supposes the determination of God.
VIII. Third, the volition of the highest good and of the ultimate end cannot be without the highest willingness. And yet it is not without great and unavoidable necessity. From the consent of our opponents themselves and the decisions of philosophers, we cannot abstain from seeking the highest good because no one can bring himself to wish to be miserable. Nor can it be said that free will is not occupied about the highest good or ultimate end, but only about the election of means. In the seeking for the highest good (true or false), the relation of virtue or of vice is principally situated. It is necessary that liberty (without which there is no relation either of virtue or of vice) should be occupied about it no less than about the means. Again, since the means are granted (having a necessary connection with the end and about whose election the will is occupied), it will be occupied freely indeed in electing them, but yet necessarily.
IX. Fourth, the indifference of the will being assumed: (1) the use of prayers and exhortations is taken away because God is asked to convert and sanctify us in vain, exhortations are employed in vain, if (any action of God being posited) the will cannot be moved from a state of equilibrium, and it remains always in its power to convert itself or not; (2) the promises of God concerning the production of holiness, and the efficacy of grace would be vain because he could not perform what he promised; for whatever he would perform about the will, it would always remain in equilibrium and indifference (adiaphoria). Now how could he thus be said to give to will and to do and so make a new heart? (3) All our consolation is gone because in whatever manner God acts in us, we can never be certain of grace if it depends always upon the will to admit or reject it and thus to frustrate every operation of God. (4) The empire of God over the will is destroyed (which would be independent of its own right) if, all the requisites for acting being furnished, it can act or not act. So man will be the author and principal cause of his own conversion, not God, because all the operations of grace being supplied, the will will always be in equilibrium, nor be determined by any other than itself.
(Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology: Volume One, trans. George M. Giger, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr., [Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 1992], 10.3.5-9, pp. 666-667.)
καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria
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