What is Libertarian Free Will?
Libertarian Free Will (LFW) is the idea that man is able to choose otherwise than he will choose. It’s contrasted with Compatiblism Free Will (CFW), the idea that free will and determinism are compatible. These are alternative views of the will; both can’t be true about a persons’ will at the same time.
The descriptions “libertarian” and “free” distinguish LFW from CFW, but are otherwise redundant. For those holding to LFW, the will is always at liberty, and is always free, else it’s not a will. Arminius put it: “the will cannot be forced”.
The bible says people we have wills and make choices. Since LFW and CFW are alternative views and LFW is reducible to biblical phrase, “the will”, the question is which is right: LFW or CFW? If LFW is coherent and CFW is incoherent, LFW is biblical and CFW isn’t. Jonathan Edwards realized that the converse is true as well, and that’s why the bulk of “the Freedom of the Will” attempts to demonstrate the incoherence of LFW. I argued that Edwards’ view is inconsistent here, and plan on addressing Edwards’ arguments latter. But since LFW is about to undergo a detailed inspection by Edwards, I thought it might be helpful if we first described LFW. Contrast is helpful, so let’s start with what LFW is not.
What LFW is Not
LFW is not:
1) The ability to choose between good and evil – the fall disabled man from doing good, but fallen man is able to choose among evil options
2) The ability to avoid the consequences of our choices
3) The ability of our body to accomplish anything we choose – choices are mental resolutions which start the bodies action, whether or not the action is completed. If someone pulls a gun on you and says your money or your life and you attempt to escape, you made a choice to escape whether you get away or not.
4) The ability to choose both alternatives simultaneously – you can’t have your cake and eat it too
5) The ability to change the past – causation works forward in time - there’s no going back
6) The ability to create ex nihilo – We require God’s providential concurrence with every phase of choice
7) The ability to falsify God’s foreknowledge – We can, but will not do the opposite of what God foreknows. Foreknowledge and the future event are logically related, so if we suppose we will do the opposite, we must also suppose God foreknew that event.
What LFW Is
Choice is the action of the will selecting one alternative over another. The will is the faculty within man’s soul that’s able to choose either alternative. Being able to choose either option implies both options are possible, which implies neither option is necessary. When we say the will is free, it’s free from necessity, and it’s free to choose either alternative. With respect to time, the ability of the will precedes the will’s choosing. At one moment we have a choice, the next moment we actually choose.
Comments
Thanks, and yes that's the hope anyway. I will add a link to your blog and one on the SEA site as well sometime this weekend.
God be with you,
Dan
The ability to choose between good and evil – the fall disabled man from doing good, but fallen man is able to choose among evil options
I would say that LFW does not necessarily imply freedom to choose good and evil. You claim we can only choose between 2 evils without God, others may think that many choices are amoral yet we still have freedom in this. And I would add that someone who thinks we can choose between good and evil still believes in libertarian freewill, just a slightly different form to yourself.
LFW does not necessitate the ability to choose good, it merely allows the possibility with true option to be decided by other considerations.
The ability to falsify God’s foreknowledge – We can, but will not do the opposite of what God foreknows. Foreknowledge and the future event are logically related, so if we suppose we will do the opposite, we must also suppose God foreknew that event.
This needs clarity. I also think this is a major issue that many Calvinists struggle with. It needs to be clear that God's foreknowledge is based on our choices and that the fact that God knows before us does not mean that God is causative. If we choose otherwise then God would have known the other choice we made, we don't choose contrary to God's foreknowledge; we choose and cause, God foreknows this.
I would add an 8th though you hinted at it in your 3rd point.
LFW does not mean that men have the ability to make all theoretically possible choices. There may be a choice that man could make but that for whatever reason God prevents that thought. It is not that God is unable to override our free will at times, rather that he does not most of the time. Related to this is that God can prevent the evil action that comes from a free choice. A person may choose something but despite this God may intervene.
Great blog you’ve going there. I enjoyed your posts on freewill. I invite you to consider joining SEA.
Regarding the ability to choose between good and evil… I think Plantigana called the ability to choose between good and evil “relevant freewill”. I realize that’s when freewill gets interesting. But my point is that a definition of freewill shouldn’t mandate what the options have to be. To me, the argument that we have to be able to choose good, else we aren’t choosing is like saying if I can’t choose Clinton come November, I can’t choose between Obama/McCain. As long as we have at least 2 options, we can choose.
This issue impacts two theological questions: total depravity and divine impeccability. Even if God can only choose good options and fallen man without enabling grace can only choose between evil options, they can still choose.
God be with you,
Dan
I was reading the post prior to this one and was contemplating limited atonement. While I see this as both unscriptural and unnecessary it became clear that Calvinists think this because it is required by their logic. Because they claim men are unable to reject God and all God whom wills he saves, the atonement must be limited. If unlimited then it was sufficient for all and therefore was efficacious and therefore all men will be saved.
Compare the Arminian position: God is able to save all but only saves those who choose him, then the atonement can be for all but only applied to those who choose God.
Dan I appreciate what you have said on the free will issue. As this is a key area and an area that theological determinists often caricature and misrepresent our position, it needs to be carefully spelled out as you are doing. I just want to add some comments to what has been said so far.
Bethyada wrote:
“I would say that LFW does not necessarily imply freedom to choose good and evil. You claim we can only choose between 2 evils without God, others may think that many choices are amoral yet we still have freedom in this. And I would add that someone who thinks we can choose between good and evil still believes in libertarian freewill, just a slightly different form to yourself.”
Right, LFW refers merely to the fact that sometimes we have choices. God experiences LFW and yet never chooses evil, while we, in the eternal state will experience LFW and yet never sin.
A helpful notion is to distinguish between the capacity to have and make choices, and the range of choices that a person has available to him. When we speak of free will we are speaking of the person’s capacity for having and making choices (though their range of choices may vary due to circumstances, so coercion, constraint, etc. may sometimes eliminate certain possibilities thus affecting our range of choices though we retain the capacity to have and make choices).
“This needs clarity. I also think this is a major issue that many Calvinists struggle with. It needs to be clear that God's foreknowledge is based on our choices and that the fact that God knows before us does not mean that God is causative. If we choose otherwise then God would have known the other choice we made, we don't choose contrary to God's foreknowledge; we choose and cause, God foreknows this.”
I don’t think it is an issue of calvinists struggling with God foreknowing our choices. Rather, they like to use this as an argument against the reality of free will (i.e., they will argue that if God exhaustively foreknows all future events then we cannot have libertarian free will).
“LFW does not mean that men have the ability to make all theoretically possible choices. There may be a choice that man could make but that for whatever reason God prevents that thought. It is not that God is unable to override our free will at times, rather that he does not most of the time. Related to this is that God can prevent the evil action that comes from a free choice. A person may choose something but despite this God may intervene.”
This is an important point: advocating LFW does not mean that God can never interfere with, or suspend free will for a time in an individual’s life. My favorite example of this kind of intervention is when Nebuchadnezzar, a powerful king over a world empire at the time, gets prideful and God humbles him and has him eating grass like an animal. I would say that his free will was temporarily suspended in this case, definitely interfered with. But this is not the norm, this is the exception, and is parallel with miracles involving natural laws. God set up and created nature and natural law. So ordinarily water for example does certain things has certain properties. And yet when God miraculously parted the Red Sea for the Israelites to cross it, God was intervening and the natural laws and properties were temporarily suspended. Likewise, God sometimes does interfere with our capacity to make choices. But like miracles they are the exception, not the rule.
Dan wrote:
“But my point is that a definition of freewill shouldn’t mandate what the options have to be. To me, the argument that we have to be able to choose good, else we aren’t choosing is like saying if I can’t choose Clinton come November, I can’t choose between Obama/McCain. As long as we have at least 2 options, we can choose.”
Dan I agree with you here and this is a simple but important point: we have a choice when we are able to actualize from two contrary possibilities. A term I have been playing with lately to make this point and to better and more clearly explain things, is to call certain choices “binary contrary pairs”. By this term I mean that there are two possibilities, they are contraries (meaning by the nature of the situation that both cannot be actualized, one will be actualized with its contrary being excluded, and vice versa). Example, in a vote on a motion where raising one’s hand signifies that you vote Yes for the motion and keeping your hand down signifies voting No on that same motion. These are a “binary contrary pair” where actualizing one, excludes the other, and both cannot be actualized, but one of them will be. Where a person has a choice of some kind, some sort of “binary contrary pair” will be present. Sometimes people talk about LFW as involving both the ability to do something and to refrain from doing something. Well that is also a “binary contrary pair” (you either actualize the possibility of doing it, or you actualize the possibility of refraining from doing it, but you cannot do both, and you will do one of them).
When you start looking out for “binary contrary pairs” you start seeing them everywhere. The key is of course that we both experience them, because sometimes we really do have choices. And we find them in scripture as well.
What is also important to note is that those who espouse theological determinism, calvinism, where God supposedly predetermines every event that occurs, do not realize that their view logically entails that we never have a choice. That when we consider a “binary contrary pair” and believe that we can actualize either of the possibilities represented by the pair, if exhaustive predeterminism is true, this is illusory. Our belief is false. In reality, if exhaustive predeterminism is true, then we cannot actualize either possibility of the pair, we can and will only actualize the possibility that we are predetermined to actualize.
Of course if we are holding this false belief that we sometimes have choices, when in reality we never have choices, then Jesus also had this same false belief as on several occasions He says himself that he was facing a “binary contrary pair” and that he could actualize either possibility of the pair. Since he believed that we sometimes have choices, and He is God and his beliefs are never false, I am pretty confident in the reality of our sometimes having choices and facing “binary contrary pairs.”
Robert
Arminianism is fairly straight forward. From a TULIP standpoint, it affirms "T", rejects ULI and is silent on P. Here's a link to SEA's statement of faith:SOF
Again, I hope you will consider it. God has blessed me through SEA, and I trust He would do the same for you.
That's a great point you make on limited atonement. For the Calvinist, the atonement must be limited, or else everyone ends up saved.
God be with you,
Dan
Thanks for your comments.
Your term: "binary contrary pair" is a good one, and remindes me of Aristole's: "twofold possibility".
DE INTERPRETATIONE
It's towards the end of chapter 13.
God be with you,
Dan
I don’t think prevenient grace is always enabling everyone to do good. The point of prevenient grace is bringing people to Christ for salvation, not obedience to the law of Moses (i.e. doing good). Obeying the law wouldn’t save us anyways, and again, the point of prevenient grace is bringing us to salvation. So it’s not like prevenient grace completely cancels the effects of the fall.
Here’s my thoughts on how prevenient grace works. There’s three basis stages: 1) man without grace, 2) man under the law and 3) man under the call of the Gospel.
Without any grace, man is unable to do anything good.
The first instrument of prevenient grace is oddly the law. The law points out that we are doing wrong. This aspect of prevenient grace is universal in that everyone, at some point in their life, figures out that they are sinning. They can either respond to this illumination given by God by either ignoring it, in which case they go back to their ignorant and hardened state (i.e. the without grace state described above), or they can respond by struggling. If they struggle, they may further be illuminated by God to realize they are failing miserably. Again, they can ignore it, but if not they may be further illuminated by God to realize they are under God’s just judgment, and they may come to fear God’s wrath. Further, they may realize they need a Savior. At this point, God’s instrument, the law, has done its part.
The next instrument that takes over is the Gospel. God calls those who, through the law, realize they need a Savior. They are illuminated by God to the truths about Christ and forgiveness and so forth… and God also enables them to believe.
At every stage, we can say two things: 1) man can’t make any progress to the next stage without God and 2) man is able to reject and go back.
God be with you,
Dan