The Shape of Free Will

Over the last three days, I’ve spilled a considerable number of pixels in pursuit of understanding the problem of free will withing Christian thought. This is my last post on the subject, at least for now. When you say that humans have free will, the immediate response you get is:

“But if men have free will, then God isn’t omnipotent!”

In other words, if men have free will, then men must stand above God on some matters, at least. But this is a false dichotomy on its face. Let’s consider a single case to see why this is a false dichotomy. I have a dog. Specifically, I have a black and white English Cocker Spaniel named Cookie (well, Cookies and Cream, but we call him Cookie). Now, to Cookie, I’m omnipotent. I could refuse to allow him to sleep, or I could only allow him to sleep in certain places, or I could put him to sleep forever. In reality, there are a few places in the house he can’t sleep, but within those confines, he has free will to choose where he wants to sleep.

If we look at our lives, we find that, in reality, our free will has the same shape. We have free will, but it is constrained within limits God sets, both in time and in space. For instance, suppose you walk into a store with $100. Now, you have a choice, you can either spend that money, or not. But a funny thing happens when you pull your wallet out and actually spend the money. You can’t “unspend” it.

In other words, you had free will, but you’ve “used” it, and you no longer have that free will. You can choose whatever you want to, but you can no longer act on that choice. If we really look at our lives, we find this is the case in almost every decision we make. For time passes. We can’t “unwaste” the day we lost yesterday, we can’t “unmarry” the person we married (we can divorce, but that is only from the hardness of our hearts, and divorce isn’t the same thing as “unmarrying.”).

We simply can’t undo the past.

The shape of our free will is it’s limited in time and space in our everyday experience. Why, then, do we think it would be any different in our spiritual lives? In other words, God obviously designed Creation so our choices were limited through time and space. Why would our spiritual choices be any different than our physical choices?

I don’t think they are. In fact, I think God gives us free will within His omnipotence and omniscience. But that He controls our free will within time and space, to limit the damage (or the good) we can do. To keep our foolish decisions, in essence, from becoming eternally foolish decisions.