Real Choice?

Did you choose to start reading this post?

You may have gotten here as a result of a search you did at Google. You may have clicked a link at someone else’s blog. You may have this site listed in your favorites. No matter how you came here, did you feel that you had a choice whether to read this entry?

This may seem like a foolish question.

But there are several different people who would argue that you were predetermined to read this article. Some of them are materialists who believe that the human mind is just an illusion, that our actions are completely determined by our genes and our environment. Some of them are philosophers who say that determinism is philosophically necessary. Some of them are theologians who say that libertarian freedom is an affront to God’s sovereignty.

What is necessary for someone to have a real choice?

We generally don’t consider a choice made under coercion as a real choice. But maybe a better way of thinking about this situation is to consider it a real choice made between limited options. A person who is threatened with death if he doesn’t renounce his faith in Christ still has a choice. He can choose apostasy or death.

No one has unlimited choices. I am limited by the laws of physics. I am limited by my previous choices. I am limited by the particular time and place to which I was born. I am even limited by the choices my parents (and their parents) made.

Would you consider a choice made under some kind of influence a real choice?

Our legal system considers certain choices made while suffering from “mental defect” as free from responsibility. In other words, it considers them not real choices. While we might think that some defendants use this strategy to avoid punishment for willful crimes, we would agree that some people are not morally responsible for their actions because of limited faculties of reason.

What about a choice made after some kind of brainwashing or programming?

When an individual is conditioned to follow the will of another person, we no longer consider that person to have a choice. We call these people victims of mind control. They may not be threatened with any coercive force. But they have been trained to behave according to the wishes of another person. Yet they would feel that they are making free choices.

Back to our question: Do you have real choices?

“Scientific determinism” would say, “No.” It is primarily based on Newtonian physics. The idea here is that everything has one or more causes and is strictly determined by those prior events. But the development of quantum mechanics has introduced probability into the deep structure of the world. This aspect of the issue is beyond the scope of this blog (and my brain).

It would appear that the philosophical determinists and the theological determinists are two completely different groups. The theologians start with the Bible after all. The truth is, however, that this is strictly a philosophical issue. (At this point I can hear some of my Reformed friends shouting through my DSL connection.)

What do I mean that this is strictly a philosophical issue?

First, the arguments of the philosophers and the theologians are essentially the same. While the theologians may have a different starting point, they follow the same basic line of reasoning as the philosophers who hold to determinism. Second, the theologians’ interpretation of the Scripture is shaped by their prior philosophical assumptions. They claim to be taking the Bible in its “plain meaning,” but those who start with different assumptions see an entirely different “plain meaning.”

In order to avoid the charge of attacking a straw man, I want to list some quotations from two highly respected proponents of theological determinism:

Understanding the Will, by Douglas Wilson

No man is capable of making a choice contrary to the strongest desire of his heart.

If the choice were not his strongest desire, he would not
have chosen it.

It is nonsense to talk of a free will, as though there were this autonomous thing inside of us, capable of acting in any direction, regardless of the motives of the heart. . . . Choices made apart from the desires of the heart? They would be an exhibition, not of freedom, but of insanity.

And what is a free man? He is someone who is free from
external compulsion and is consequently at liberty to do what his heart desires. . . . Under the superintendence of God, all men, Christian and non-Christian, have the freedom to turn left or right, to choose chocolate or vanilla, or to move to this city or that one — depending entirely upon what they want to do. The foreordination of God does not violate this; it is the cause of this.

It is impossible for a true choice to be autonomous in the sense of being independent of our heart desires. If there were a choice for which no reason at all could be given, we could no longer call it a choice.

The Bible teaches that God superintends the choices made by men. He may do so immediately through providential intervention or mediately through the use of secondary agents.

Man, as creature, is free to do as he pleases. He has this freedom only because God grants and sustains it —and perfectly controls it.

Answers to Objections to the Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, by Loraine Boettner.

If we admit free will in the sense that the absolute determination of events is placed in the hands of man, we might as well spell it with a capital F and a capital W; for then man has become like God, — a first cause, an original spring of action, — and we have as many semi-Gods as we have free wills. Unless the sovereignty of God be given up, we cannot allow this independence to man. It is very noticeable — and in a sense it is reassuring to observe the fact — that the materialistic and metaphysical philosophers deny as completely as do Calvinists this thing that is called free will. They reason that every effect must have a sufficient cause; and for every action of the will they seek to find a motive which for the moment at least is strong enough to control.1

Since man is a rational agent there must always be a sufficient cause for his acting in a particular way. For the will to decide in favor of the weaker motive and against the stronger, or without motives at all, is to have an effect with out a sufficient cause.2

God so governs the inward feelings, external environment, habits, desires, motives, etc., of men that they freely do what He purposes.3

Predestination holds that events come to pass because an infinitely wise, powerful, and holy God has so appointed them. Fatalism holds that all events come to pass through the working of a blind, unintelligent, impersonal, non-moral force which cannot be distinguished from physical necessity, and which carries us helplessly within its grasp as a mighty river carries a piece of wood.4

According to the doctrine of Predestination the freedom and responsibility of man are fully preserved. In the midst of certainty God has ordained human liberty. But Fatalism allows no power of choice, no self-determination. It makes the acts of man to be as utterly beyond his control as are the laws of nature.5

No man can be a consistent fatalist. For to be consistent be would have to reason something like this: “If I am to die today, it will do me no good to eat, for I shall die anyway. Nor do I need to eat if I am to live many years yet, for I shall live anyway. Therefore I will not eat.” Needless to say, if God has foreordained that a man shall live, He has also foreordained that he shall be kept from the suicidal folly of refusing to eat.6

Hence, only a person who has not examined this doctrine of Predestination, or one who is maliciously inclined, will rashly charge that it is Fatalism. There is no excuse for anyone making this mistake who knows what Predestination is and what Fatalism is.7

Instead of our doctrine of Predestination being the same with the heathen doctrine of Fatalism, it is its absolute opposite and only alternative.8

Let me make some quick observations.

Predestination teaches that God “governs the inward feelings, external environment, habits, desires, motives, etc., of men that they freely do what He purposes.” How is this any different than our victim of brainwashing? Inserting the word “freely” does not make these actions free. If God determines the conditions that determine the actions then he is determining the actions.

Boettner says that Predestination is nothing at all like Fatalism. He says it is “its absolute opposite and only alternative.” The only difference between the two is that in one case things are determined by a person and in the other case things are determined by an impersonal force. In the end, the results are the same. It matters little to the question of freedom whether the “agent” of determinism is God, an impersonal force, or a super-intelligent alien race.

Individuals are free to do what they want to do but they are not free to change what they want. God changes what some people want in order manipulate their actions to fit into his plans. Freedom to be controlled by something that you have no control over does not sound like freedom to me.

This theology reduces the will to a mathematical formula. The will is not an agent according to this thinking. It is the slave of the single greatest desire of the heart. This robs the term will of any real meaning. It also strikes me as an extremely naïve understanding of desires and aversions as processed by a human being. This concept, by the way, comes from Thomas Hobbes who said, “Liberty and Necessity are consistent; as in … the actions which men voluntarily do: which, because they proceed from their will, proceed from liberty, and yet, because every act of man’s will, and every desire, and inclination proceed from some cause, and that from another cause, in a continual chain (whose first link is in the hand of God the first of all causes) they proceed from necessity” (Leviathan).

Boettner finds it “reassuring” that the “materialistic and metaphysical philosophers” hold a position very similar to his. I would suggest that this is not a good thing. It indicates that his position is determined more by his assumptions than by some direct statement of Scripture.

Doug Wilson is guilty of bifurcation in this statement: “It is impossible for a true choice to be autonomous in the sense of being independent of our heart desires. If there were a choice for which no reason at all could be given, we could no longer call it a choice.” We must choose between

Our choices are completely determined by our single strongest desire.
Or we have absolutely no reason for making our choices.

Maybe we like several flavors of ice cream and decide to choose rocky road today. Does that require that we like rocky road the best? Does it even require that we like rocky road the best today?

To think of choice in this way is to rob the term of all its meaning. There is no choosing to be done. All is determined by our strongest desire.

Wilson says that man is “free to do as he pleases” and that God “perfectly controls” what he wants. In other words, an individual is free to do what he wants to do, which is what God wants him to want to do. No matter how many steps you put in the middle, God dictates this person’s actions. How can this be called freedom and language still have any meaning?

Boettner objects to free will because it makes humans into “a first cause, an original spring of action.” Is this not what it means to make a choice? Is this not an essential part of being human, that we have an influence on the future? In Boettner’s system, a human being is a cipher, entirely determined and programmed by a sovereign God.

We’re back to a false choice. Boettner says we must accept that humans are completely programmed to act and to will by God. Otherwise we are left only with the option that humans become God. There are many alternatives he is ignoring. Why cannot humans be initiators of “causal chains” without overriding God’s ultimate power? Is God’s sovereignty limited so that he can be in control only if he orchestrates ever minor detail?

Boettner says, “No man can be a consistent fatalist.” Yet the very argument he uses against Fatalism is equally effective against Predestination.

It seems to me that the God of Wilson and Boettner has an awful lot in common with the “God” of Deism. He lives outside the chain of determinism and sets everything in motion to achieve the ends he has in mind.

I began this post with several “desires.”

• I wanted to focus on the bankruptcy of the word “choice” as used by certain theologians.
• I wanted to keep the argument focused on the philosophical issues.
• I wanted to cut through some of the obfustication that surrounds this issue.
• I wanted to avoid an acrimonious tone.
• I wanted to create enough controversy that it would stimulate helpful discussion on this issue.
• I wanted to provide some new insight into an old dispute.
• I wanted to keep the post to a reasonable length.
• I wanted to make a new post because it has been too long since my last one.

I fear that these competing desires have kept me from realizing any except the last one.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”