If God is in complete control, how can we still have free will? Why this question is so important, and an attempt at a unique answer
*I will say from the start this is a longer post than normal. It’s because I think this question is important enough to warrant careful analysis. But at the end, there are very real and practical implications the answer to this question has.
When it comes to what separates us from the animals, free will has to be one of the top traits on the list.
Free will is one of the characteristics that makes us unique among living creatures. It means that we, among all creations, are responsible for the things we do. We can freely choose to do good, and we can freely choose to do evil. When we do good, we should be rightly praised for it. When we do evil, we should be rightly condemned for it. We recognize that as right; that’s the way it should be. We are not animals who act on instinct or evolutionary programming. We can choose whether we do right or wrong.
This is unexplainable if we are just physical creatures. If we are just a brain and body parts, then everything we do is predetermined by the chemical and electrical reactions in our brain, caused by the completely natural and impersonal interactions of atoms and molecules and chemical compounds. There can be no free will if we are purely physical with no immaterial being. Free will, then, is something special about us, something that sets us apart from all creation. It’s a way that we reflect the image of God.
But this same God who created us is not only the Creator of the universe, but also the Ruler of the universe. He is all-powerful. He is also all-knowing.
Here’s where that gets a little bit tricky: If God knew everything we were going to do before he created us, and he is fully in control of everything, then it seems that from the beginning of time, we were destined to do what we do. If God knows I am going to post this article, and God has perfect and complete knowledge of everything, then it’s logically impossible that I don’t post this article. It couldn’t happen any other way. In a sense, I cannot do anything other than what God knows will happen, even though I feel like I could.
So how is it possible that we actually have free will? This question might sound like just pointless philosophizing, but at the heart of it are some of the most profound, deeply personal questions people have ever asked about God. Why is there evil and suffering in the world? Is my pain part of God’s will? Why did God make me this way? And if God made me this way, how is he fair to hold me accountable for what I do?
The answer might seem pretty simple at first glance. Knowing what someone will do doesn’t mean they don’t freely choose to do it. If I know that my wife will choose Mexican over Chinese, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have the ability to choose. It could be the same with God. God knows what people are going to freely choose to do before he creates them, but he doesn’t make them do anything. That’s one view of the answer to the question, also known as the Arminian view, and probably the most popular one today.
But that might not be the whole story. We have to consider that God’s knowledge is different from our knowledge. God is not just an observer but our Creator. He made us a certain way, and at least to some extent the way he made us determines the kinds of choices we tend to make. Plus, the Bible says things like, “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps” (Proverbs 16:9). It speaks of God “predestining” people to salvation (Ephesians 1:5,11, Romans 8:29,30). It even speaks of him hardening people’s hearts (Exodus 7:3, several other verses). While these verses don’t ever say God makes people do things, it certainly indicates that God’s role in governing the world is more than just passive knowledge of what people will choose to do. In addition, how can God work out everything for good if he does not really exercise any control over human choices? The Bible is also crystal clear that, left to ourselves and our free will, no one chooses to do good (Romans 3:10).
So there is another view, one put forth by John Calvin and still known as Calvinism today. That is that we have free will, but it is limited. God, being in total control, has preordained everything that ever goes on in the universe. So our free will is limited to exercising the actions he already ordained we would do. Many will say, “That doesn’t sound free at all,” but the Calvinist can point out that we all know our free will is limited in some ways. We cannot choose to teleport to the core of the Earth. We cannot choose to stand unharmed on the surface of Venus. We cannot choose to instantly heal ourselves of the flu. Our free will is limited by the physical laws of the universe. No one would suggest that means we don’t really have free will. The Calvinist takes that a step further and says our free will is also limited by God’s sovereign decree.
But we’re left with a quandary here. The Bible says God is sovereign and exercises total rule over the earth. Nothing happens unless he decides it will happen (Isaiah 46:10, Lamentations 3:37). Yet, we are still held fully responsible for our choices. How can this be? The Calvinist viewpoint seems to hold us accountable for things God himself decided we would do, and the Arminian viewpoint seems to say that God relinquishes his sovereign control over human choices. The debate between these two views has continued to rage in the church, for over 400 years now.
As I mentioned above, it’s a lot more important than it sounds. The way we answer this question has profound effects on how we see God, how we explain God to other people, and how we relate to God.
If you were to ask me whether I think God determines everything that happens, or whether he leaves us to exercise our free will, I would say, “Yes.”
And I think the key to understanding this, I think, is understanding God’s middle knowledge.
“Middle knowledge” is God’s knowledge of conditionals and hypotheticals. For example, God knows what would have happened if Hillary Clinton had been elected as President of the United States. He knows exactly what the world would be like, down to the tiniest detail, if the Soviet Union still existed. He knows every little change that would have taken place throughout the world if the Cleveland Browns had won more than one game in the last two years. He knows the “butterfly effect” every action, no matter how small, will have, out to the eternal future. And he also knows what each person would freely choose to do in any possible set of circumstances. Philosophers would say that God has complete knowledge of all possible worlds — every possible state of affairs that could exist at any given time. There are a few passages in Scripture that seem to allude to God having this kind of knowledge (1 Kings 23, Luke 10:15). And if God is really all-knowing, it makes sense that he must have this kind of knowledge — this knowledge of all possible worlds.
Since God is all-powerful, it also follows that he has the ability to create every possible world. He doesn’t have to interfere with human free choices to do this. He can simply create the world in such a way that its initial conditions lead up to each person freely making the choices that are in accordance with his plan. But he does not predetermine what those choices will be.
If this is true, then humans truly have free choice. We freely choose to do everything we do, and it is possible for us to choose otherwise. Our choices are not inevitable; God’s foreknowing is not limited to the choice we make in this world, but he foreknows all the choices we would make in any world. God used his middle knowledge to create the world where the free choices of people would bring about his plan. We freely choose, but God is in control.
In this case, it makes sense to praise us for doing good and condemn us for doing evil, because the choices are ours — God did not predetermine our actions from the beginning. But it also makes sense to give God the credit for everything we do, because he creates the world in such a way that we make that choice.
I tend to favor this solution. Some actually call it Molinism (although I wouldn’t agree with every aspect of Molinism either). But I think this idea best reflects the tension in Scripture between God’s total control and human choice. I think it is the answer that best explains how we can truly have free will, and yet God can truly be in control. In fact, I think that if God truly has middle knowledge, it is very hard to say otherwise. And I think it is actually fairly compatible with either Calvinism or Arminianism, because it affirms both the sovereign choice of God and the free will of man. (On the flip side,
As I look back on this post, which is already rather long and rather dry, I see that it leaves lots of questions unanswered. But based on this explanation, I can address some of these directly in some of the next posts. It leaves (and maybe even raises) several big questions, both of which I will address within the next several days. Here are a couple I can think of, and I’m sure many of you could as well:
- Why didn’t God create a better world than this, without so much suffering and evil?
- Why didn’t God make us better? Why did he make creatures like us, so inclined to sin?
I’ll continue to explore this issue in future posts, while continuing to give my thoughts on other things as well. If you’ve made it this far, here’s 3 things I think this theory means for us personally:
- Things don’t work themselves out; God works them out. God made a world where he knew he could say that everything works out for the good of those who love God. He chose this kind of world over other possible worlds. So we have him to thank for how the events in this world come together for the good of those who love him, and when they don’t seem to be doing that, we can trust that from the beginning he knew what he was doing and what he was saying. He will come through.
- Our prayers have a very real influence on what God does. This theory implies that God knew our free choices logically prior to his decision to create the world. That includes when and how we would choose to pray, and whether he would decide to grant that request. That means his foreknowledge of our prayers could have influenced which possible world God chose to make.
- We have God to thank for every good thing we do. We don’t choose to do good because we have good hearts. We choose to do good because God made a world in which we are able to make that choice. Left to our own devices, we would only choose to do evil, and God would not have been unjust to make a world where we were left to our own devices and were cut off from him as we deserve. Instead, he made a world where he knew we would accept his grace and come to him. When we do something good, we should thank God for making it possible.
