5. The Freewill Defense

Watch this lesson on YouTube, or listen to it here.

Access the slide deck here. 

Intro

1) This class finally gets to one of the comments and questions many of you have had up to this point.

A)   The problem of evil is not just why does evil exist? It is also, why did God even allow for it in the first place?

B) This is not only about moral evil, but natural evil as well. Why did God create a world where hurricanes kill lots of people and children are born with defects?

God desires the ultimate moral good: Love

1) What does God want more than anything else? Love. For us to willingly choose him from the heart.

A)   Deuteronomy 6:5 (ESV) / Matt. 22:34-38; Mk. 12:28-30 - 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

B) Deuteronomy 28:47 (ESV) - 47 Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things,

1) There is a difference in going through the motions and doing something because you want to.

C) Psalm 40:6–8 (ESV) / Heb. 10:5-10 (Jesus did this) - 6 In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. 7 Then I said, “Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: 8 I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”

D)   Psalm 51:16–17 (ESV) - 16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

E) Proverbs 8:17 (ESV) - 17 I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me.

F) Micah 6:6–8 (ESV) - 6 “With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” 8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

G)   God wants us to choose him: “You are my God!”

1) Jeremiah 7:22–26 (ESV) - 22 For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ 24 But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. 25 From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day. 26 Yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers.

2) Jeremiah 9:23–24 (ESV) - 23 Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, 24 but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”

H)   Lk. 15:11-32 – The prodigal’s father did not chase him, but he was ecstatic when he came home.

I)  Jn. 21:15-19 – Peter’s restoration: Do you love me?

J)  1 John 4:19 (ESV) - 19 We love because he first loved us.

2) If the highest good, and the thing God wanted more than anything else was rote obedience, then he could have created a world of robots who do simply what they are programmed to do.

Love Demands Libertarian Free Will

1) C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. 1952. p. 48

A)   “If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.”

2) Alvin Plantinga

A)   Sources

1) The Nature of Necessity, 1974

2) God, Freedom, and Evil, 1977

3) https://youtu.be/p2eS_1qN6G4?si=F7jbRFN40_ThD4Ni

4) https://youtu.be/n0tLRO8_qRI?si=4GYBVBdwP5qeSl-G

B) The argument

1) Notes

(a)   It’s very important to know that these bullet points, and this presentation is overly simplified to the point that it may even distort Plantinga’s work.

(b)   The highlight of these arguments is the strong language: must, requires, demands, etc.

2) God desires genuine love (morally significant relationship).

3) Genuine love demands free Will.

(a)   Love is not love if I don’t have a choice in the matter.

(b)   For there to be a choice, then the highest possible good demands the highest possible evil.

4) God, being all-powerful does not mean that God can do logically impossible things.

(a)   e.g. Can God make a square circle?

(b)   It is logically impossible that God can MAKE someone do something FREELY.

(c)   God cannot create a genuinely free creature who is simultaneously guaranteed to always choose good. To guarantee the choice is to force the choice, which removed the freedom. This is a logical impossibility.

5) Summary: Therefore, God cannot create a genuinely free creature who is simultaneously guaranteed to always choose good.

6) Conclusion: The presence of evil is not a lack of power or goodness in God, but due to a logical constraint imposed by the greatest good he desired to create, genuine freedom.

C) Summary from God, Freedom, And Evil, pp. 30-31.

1) “A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so.”

The Bible on Free Will

1) Genesis 2:15–17 (ESV) - 15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

A)   Here is the choice.

2) Deuteronomy 30:19 (ESV) - 19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live,

3) Joshua 24:15 (ESV) - 15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”

4) Proverbs 1:24–25 (ESV) - 24 Because I have called and you refused to listen, have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded, 25 because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof,

5) Matthew 23:37 (ESV) - 37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

6) Mark 8:34 (ESV) - 34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

7) Acts 7:51 (ESV) - 51 “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.

8) Revelation 3:20 (ESV) - 20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

Conclusion

1) We’re not finished with this. If we have free will, then how does God determine future events?

2) Summary:

A)   The thing God wants from us more than anything else is love. This is the highest moral good.

B) Love demands libertarian free will. If we don’t have a choice to not choose God, then our service to him is ultimately meaningless.

C) This is why God created a world with an option for evil. It is logically impossible to have love without at least the option for not choosing God (and the consequences that come with that).