The puzzle of the freedom of
the human will has been and continues to be one of the most perplexing and
debated matters in theology and philosophy. In the twentieth century,
psychology and neuroscience began to make their own contributions to the debate.
On the one side of the equation, the notion of free will seems to be necessary
if there is to be any conception of morality. How can individuals be called
upon to act in a moral way if they are not in some sense free to do so? How can
they be held responsible for their intentions and their actions if they are not
made freely? If a person is compelled to act by factors extrinsic to them, then
they cannot be held liable for any consequence that results. Moral judgment becomes
impossible. Given that, like almost all theological systems, the Christian
Bible posits a moral universe in which human beings are agents who called to
act in the light of the divine character and in accordance with the divine
judgment, it naturally follows that Christian theologians have been attracted
to the notion of human free will and have sought to expound it at great depth.
Psychologist N. Rose echoes this tradition of thought when he writes:
We are not merely ‘free to choose’, but obliged to be
free, to understand and enact our lives in terms of choice under conditions
that systematically limit the capacities of so many to shape their own destiny.[1]
Human freedom is not simply
then a fact in the world but actually something that humans must rise to in
opposition to all that threatens it, as a means to human flourishing.
On the other side, there are
two kinds of difficulty. One is the rational puzzle caused by the embeddedness
of the human person in a world of cause and effect. When the will is shaped so
deeply by the forces that swirl around it – genes, parents, culture and even
advertising – then in what sense is there any real ‘freedom’ of the will?
Indeed: can we even explain the mental processes involved in making decisions
in terms of the word ‘freedom’ with any credibility? The brain is itself a
complex entanglement of subconscious and conscious thoughts, and it is by no
means evident that conscious thought precedes or in some way governs the
subconscious. In fact, there’s good reason to think of the process happening
the other way around.
The second problem is
theological and moral, and is most vehemently expressed by Martin Luther in his
debate with Erasmus. Human beings cannot resist sin, and indeed, there are none
that avoid sin. In Pauline terms we are possessed of a fallen sarx – ‘flesh’
– by which he means that there is something unavoidable about our lapse into
sinful behaviour because of something about us. We are imprisoned by our epithumia,
or ‘sinful desire’. The metaphor of slave-bondage or death, chosen by Paul
and revisited by Augustine and later Luther, reflects the profound corruption
of the human will to the degree that no simple and unaided decision of the
human will can overcome it. This point remains controversial: even in the midst
of his controversy with Pelagius, Augustine was loathe to reject the term ‘free
will’, and wanted rather to say that even though the will is free, men and
women freely but inevitably choose to sin. Others would say that humankind was
created with free will, but that free will was either lost of restricted
because of the fall. That the individual sins is still his or her fault, for
which they are still blameworthy. The theological conundrum was lessened because
it was refracted through the medieval theology of purgatory. Original sin
could be absolved by baptism, but individual acts could still be judged on the
assumption of a free decision to do them.
The Reformation insistence on
grace alone sharpened the contrast once more. For Luther, and for the Reformed,
if grace was to be truly alone in soteriology, then the state of human bondage
had to be absolute. The human will could not be described as ‘free’, since it
was bound and corrupted by its own habitual sinfulness. It is not simply a
matter of coaxing the human individual to choose differently; a wholesale
renovation of the human person by grace was necessary.
Nevertheless, the issue of
human free will is not simply determined on denominational lines. In the
seventeenth century, Jacob Arminius, a Dutch theologian who had a lasting
impact on Anglican theology and eventually, through John Wesley, on
Protestantism in general, restated the older, more optimistic position on human
free will. Arminius and Wesley would claim that they could reconcile this with
a Protestant soteriology, with its emphasis on divine grace. Eastern Orthodox
theology likewise still prefers to speak of a human free will which is not
inimical to its dependence on grace.
