Religious perspectives to understand the religious perspectives of free will and determinism lesson 15

RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES  Religious perspectives on the question of free will and the theories of libertarianism and determinism vary significantly.  Traditional Judeo-Christian view is that human beings are free, autonomous agents, responsible for their actions.  Genesis – Adam and Eve exercised their free will when disobeying the ruling of God.  Aquinas wrote: “man chooses not of necessity but freely.”  Mainstream Christians believe that we are free to choose to do good or sin. lesson 15

RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES  Alternative fundamental protestant (Calvinism) view is that God has already predetermined who will be saved and not.  This is called predestination  This is because:  God is all knowing  God is all powerful  Therefore he must know before the start what is going to happen.  God decides who receives salvation and who does not at creation. People are saved by Gods grace alone. lesson 15

FREE WILL AND PREDESTINATION Aquinas  Since the fall humanity has been stained with sin.  This is a loss of the righteousness that humanity had before the fall.  This is because humanity chose to go against their nature.  Human nature is thus in need of repair and is in need of redemption.  This does not prevent free moral action but suggests a weakening in the moral fabric of humanity that needs to be repaired by God. lesson 15

FREE WILL AND PREDESTINATION  As a convert the first theological problem was the question of Divine Predestination and Human Freedom.  Somewhere I read the following line from the Westminster Confession: “God from all eternity did...freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.”  I was attracted to this idea. It seemed to express the majesty and power of God over all that he had created. It also led me to take an optimistic view of events in my own life and the lives of others, events which struck me as bad or unfortunate. For I now viewed them as planned by God before the creation of the world—thus they must serve some good purpose unknown to me… William Rowe lesson 15

 My own conversion, must also have been ordained to happen, just as the failure of others to be converted must have been similarly ordained.  But at this point in my reflections, I hit upon a difficulty, a difficulty that made me think harder than I ever had before in my life. For I also believed that I had chosen God out of my own free will, that each of us is responsible for choosing or rejecting God’s way.  But how could I be responsible for a choice which, from eternity, God had ordained I would make at that particular moment of my life? How can it be that those who reject God’s way do so of their own free will, if God, from eternity, destined them to reject his way? lesson 15

FREE WILL AND PREDESTINATION Solution to predestination  Augustine points out that merely foreknowing or foreseeing that something is going to happen is not the same thing as causing it to happen.  Your foreknowledge that a man will sin does not of itself necessitate the sin. Your foreknowledge did not force him to sin.... In the same way, God’s foreknowledge of future events does not compel them to take place.... God is not the evil cause of these acts though God justly avenges them. You may understand from this, therefore, how justly God punishes sins; for God does not do the things which he knows will happen… Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430) lesson 15

 …Imagine scientists standing behind a screen observing everything we do, but not in anyway interfering in our actions. They may know enough about us to predict everything we are going to do.  But it does not follow that they cause what we door are responsible for it, if they always remain behind the screen and never interfere. So it would be with God, Augustine is saying, if God merely fore knows what we will do. Although foreordaining, or predestining something makes it happen, merely foreknowing it does not make it happen. In short, foreknowledge is not the cause of what is foreknown. lesson 15

THEOLOGICAL DETERMINISM Calvin affirmed that because God is: 1. Omnipotent – all powerful 2. Omniscient - all knowing  God because he is omniscient already knows who will go to heaven and who won’t go to heaven.  Future events including human choice is predestined to happen because God knows it before it does happen. There can therefore be only one possible future because if not then God would not be omniscient.  If this is so then humans have no moral choice.  Human salvation is predetermined by God and not by the actions of humans themselves. PREDESTINATION JOHN CALVIN lesson 15

Task Why is it important for religions that human beings have freedom, and why might religious beliefs about the nature and power of God work against that freedom? lesson 15

Title pages/ questions Put the titles, Free will, Libertarianism and determinism on separate pages. Start to list everything that falls into each category from your notes. This will help you when you revise. Or start making notes on which areas you are unsure of from the topic. lesson 15