Today for lunch I will go home, and maybe, if my wife is up for it, we will go out to lunch. This sentence is full of choices, some of them future choices. From my experience, those choices are freely made. They are an act of my will.
It may surprise you, but the natural conclusion of the philosophy that backs most modern-day scientific inquiry is that there is no such thing as freewill. Our consciousness is an illusion. It is merely the product of complicated chemistry that follows the laws of physics. Our “will” is an illusion, we are merely doing what our brain chemistry tells us to do. Does your brain chemistry force you to believe this? Because mine certainly does not. I will not type what I truly think about this, because I am a Christian and a pastor and WordPress might have some rules about such expression.
Of course, we have the ability to choose, and it is not resident in our brain chemistry. Our brain chemistry could have some influence on our choices and thinking, however. I would like to talk biblically about freewill and then return to the observable and scientific.
I am Lutheran, and the major confession of our beliefs is found in the Formula of Concord which we agree is based on the Bible. The Formula has a great deal to say about freewill, and I for one agree with it. It says that humans have gone through some stages of just how “free” our freewill truly is.
Adam and Eve, at the beginning, would have been the freest of us all. God wasn’t forcing their choices. Satan wasn’t forcing their choices. Nothing biological within them was forcing their choices. They just had no exposure to evil. They didn’t know what evil was. It didn’t even occur to them to doubt God–until Satan introduced the idea. For a short period, they were introduced to evil but were not yet evil themselves. With the breaking of their only commandment, don’t eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they became “evil”. What is “evil”? It was something that did not originate from God. It was inherently hostile to God. It was a genetic alteration which is referred to in the Bible as sinful nature. With sinful nature “freewill” isn’t completely free. It is strongly influenced by our biology and even potentially influenced if not controlled by outside spiritual entities. Such is the fate of everyone. We all have inherited this from our common ancestors. As such,
14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
1 Corinthians 2:14 (ESV)
We don’t choose God, because we can’t. Even when it feels like it, the Holy Spirit has to do something (I don’t know what) to us first. When we speak the Gospel, we do not inform or argue a person into the Kingdom. We expose people to the power of God’s Word and Spirit and maybe it makes a difference.
A person who is baptized into Christ (Romans 6:3f, Acts 2:38-39) has the Holy Spirit within and is free in a difference sense. With respect to freewill, we no longer can be controlled by outside evil entities. We still have sinful nature’s biology, so we are not perfectly free; but we do have the Holy Spirit to counter our biology. Does the Holy Spirit seize control of our will? No. Our will is always in play. We are led by the Holy Spirit, that is different. We are influenced by the Spirit, which is much closer to Adam and Eve than ever.
There is one more stage. At death we leave the tainted biology of our body behind. If we are connected to Christ, we will be in Heaven with a heavenly bodyhttps://afterdeathsite.com/2019/03/25/do-you-get-a-body-in-heaven/ What is the condition of freewill then? We cannot say that we don’t know what evil is. Can we choose evil and expel ourselves from living with God? Satan and a large minority of angels managed it.
While we live with sinful nature, it is hard to not have the fear of falling again. I am confident that whatever the status of our freewill at that point, and with the experience of the love and presence of God, that this will not be a realistic danger.
I will choose what to eat at lunch. I will choose with the Spirit’s urging how to serve God now. I can experience this. Science is limited in this arena because will is at most a part of the soul and possibly resident in the spirit. https://afterdeathsite.com/2024/03/26/your-body-soul-and-spirit/
Freewill and having a choice is great. But I am most grateful that God chose me.
Giving Christ 