Philosophical Thoughts on Free Will, Foreknowledge, and Predestination

This article follows up on my article outlining Catholic teaching on free will, grace, and predestination.

The Nature of Free Will

There are two areas of philosophical confusion which, in my observation, tend to make it difficult for people to understand Catholic teaching regarding issues surrounding free will, grace, and predestination.  The first area of confusion has to do with the idea of free will itself.  There is a tendency sometimes for people to focus so much on the freedom of the will that they forget that the will is not completely unpredictable and uncontrollable.  They cannot see how the idea of free will is compatible with the idea that God knows the future and even plans the future.  In Catholic theology, the entire future unfolds, down to its last detail, exactly according to God's foreknowledge and plan (the plan of "predestination").  If that is so, many wonder, how in the world can we really have free will?  For (it would seem) if God infallibly knows everything I am going to do in the future and even has planned everything I am going to do in the future in some way, then it is impossible for anything to happen differently than God knows and has planned, and so I can't make any different choices than the ones God knows and has planned for me to make.  So I would seem to have no free will at all.  So how can Catholic theology hold together free will, foreknowledge, and predestination?

At least part of the answer is that while, of course, coercion, force, certain psychological conditions, etc., can override or circumvent the will and so limit or remove its freedom, there are ways in which the will can be moved and directed which don't override or destroy freedom.  It can be helpful here to distinguish between "necessity" and "certainty."  As with many words adapted to abstract, philosophical use, people don't always use these words in the same way, so we don't want to be so rigid in our use of these words that we can't recognize differences of meaning in how we and others use them and so end up getting into meaningless, semantic fights.  Nevertheless, in some philosophical/theological circles, these words have been used in a way that can be helpful at capturing an important distinction.  We can think of the will being moved "necessarily" or "with certainty but not necessarily."  For the will to be moved necessarily is for the will really to be obliterated by having its options removed, so that the person willing can really only do one thing and it is impossible for him to do otherwise.  For example, say you want me to eat a cucumber.  It so happens that I hate cucumbers, so it is not going to be easy to get me to eat one.  You might attempt to get me to eat a cucumber by forcing me to eat one necessarily, removing my options and so circumventing my will.  You could tie me down and force the cucumber down my throat.  Or you could use a supercomputer to take over my brain and force my body to eat the cucumber.  Etc.

On the other hand, it is possible to move the will with certainty but without necessity, without removing legitimate options and thus circumventing and destroying the act of free choice.  Going back to the cucumber example, you might get me to certainly, yet freely, eat the cucumber by using persuasion, which involves appealing to my motives so that I freely alter my choice.  You might offer me $1,000 to eat the cucumber.  If you did that, I would certainly eat it (all other things being equal).  I would still hate the taste of the cucumber, but my distaste for cucumber would lose the battle with my desire to win $1,000.  If I really hated cucumbers and wouldn't do it even for $1,000, you could offer me $1,000,000, if you happened to have that kind of money on hand (and were that bizarrely obsessed with getting me to eat a cucumber for some reason).  In a case like this, you have performed an action that caused me to do something you wanted me to do, and made it certain I would do it, but without any overwhelming or circumventing of my will.

This can happen because acts of will, while free in some ways, are not arbitrary or groundless.  This is evident both from the law of causality as well as from a simple psychological examination of how the will actually works.  The law of causality does not allow that something can come from nothing.  If an effect occurs, it must have a cause sufficient to explain the effect.  The only alternative to this would be to have something coming from nothing.  But "nothing" is nothing and so does nothing.  It has no reality, and so cannot originate anything or exert any energy or activity to cause anything to happen.  It cannot be the explanation for why anything happens.  So if anything happens, if anything in reality undergoes change, some cause must have effected that change.  If there is anything in the universe that cannot explain itself, it must be explained by something outside of itself and not by "nothing."

And with regard to the psychology of willing, consider for yourself how you make choices.  When I examine the activity of my own will, I see this basic pattern:  1. I am aware of various states of affairs that could come about or be brought about.  I call these my "options."  2. My mind begins to examine its own desires.  What do I like?  What do I dislike?  What do I want to happen?  What do I not want to happen?  3. As this process continues, I recognize that, among the things I have some desire for, there are things I want more than other things.  In other words, I find that I have "preferences."  I prefer some states of affairs to other states of affairs.  Out of the complexity of my views, ideas, and desires, my mind attempts to sort out what I truly prefer to have come about or to bring about, all things considered, in that moment.  4. Finally, I am successful at determining my true preference in the current situation, and I settle on that preference.  This act of my mind settling on a preference is what I call the act of "choice."  5. Then, if what I have chosen is to perform some action, my body (or my mind) responds to the act of choice by performing the action (or at least attempts to do so).

Is this not how the action of choosing goes for all of us?  We can see, then, by looking at it, that the act of choice is not arbitrary or outside a nexus of causation.  My choice flows from my preference.  My preference is what I most desire or value in that moment.  (And I would add that, when I am thinking of "desire" here, I don't mean mere non-rational instinct, but what my rational mind values.)  And what I desire is a product of many, many things--my personality, my beliefs and values, all the circumstances that exist around me and inside of me at the time of my choice, the earlier circumstances that led to those circumstances, all my previous experiences, the entire previous history of my life, my DNA, the choices of my parents, the choices of their parents, the entire history of the universe, etc.  At the moment of my choice, I choose what I prefer, and the desires, values, beliefs, ideas, etc., that determine what I prefer do not spring out of nowhere.  They are what they are because of prior causes.  This is why you can cause with certainty, but without will-circumventing necessity, that I will choose to eat that cucumber.  This is why, if you happened to know everything about me and all the circumstances affecting my choice at any given moment, you could always predict with 100% accuracy what I would choose.  This is why, if you happened to have control of all the causal factors in the entire universe, you could ensure that I would always choose what you wanted me to choose.

Now consider God's relationship to the creation.  God is the First Cause, the Source of all reality.  There is no being in the universe that does not derive from him.  There are no chains of causes in the universe which do not ultimately trace back to his action.  And God is also omniscient, or all-knowing.  There is nothing in all of reality which he does not know thoroughly.  If that is the case, then it cannot be otherwise than that the history of creation will unfold according to God's perfect foreknowledge and plan.  When God created the universe, he knew exactly what he was creating, and he created exactly what he wanted.  And he knew everything that would result from that creation down through the entire chain of universal history from beginning to end.  He knew all the free choices that all creatures would make.  He knew all the free choices he himself would make as he would continue to interact with creation as its history continued to unfold, for he knew himself and his own preferential tendencies perfectly as well.  So God could not have created the universe without, at the same time, perfectly knowing and planning its entire history, down to the smallest detail.  As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it (#308), "[t]he truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator."

And none of this is in any way inconsistent with free will, for God's foreknowledge and predestination, understood in this way, do not at all overwhelm, obliterate, or circumvent anyone's free choices.  Just as you did not obliterate my free will when you offered me money to eat the cucumber, neither does God obliterate free will when he creates a universe and ordains a history in which he knows I will choose all the things I will choose in my life.  (See here--and particularly time index 17:00-20:53--for a helpful discussion of this same issue by Bishop Robert Barron.)

The Problem of Evil

All of this leads us to the second major problem a lot of people have with Catholic teaching in this area.  Even if I can see how God's foreknowledge and predestination are consistent with the freedom of my choices, yet if all of this is so, why does God's plan involve so much evil?  Why did he choose to create a world in which so much sin and suffering happen?  Why not create one where everyone makes only right choices and is always happy?  When we think of the will as outside of God's control, this can provide a kind of smokescreen, to an extent, against this second objection.  Why all the sin and suffering?  Well, God can't really do anything about it, because he can't control free will.  (Of course, this gets God off the hook from responsibility for evil only by removing his sovereignty as God, but people often don't press these sorts of things to their logical conclusions.)  But if God can control free will, if it is not outside the effects of his plan and foreknowledge, then how could God justifiably create a world in which all this sin and suffering happen?

I won't attempt to give a complete answer to this question here, because I have already dealt with it in a separate article to which I will refer you.  Sometimes this objection is expressed in terms of feeling like God is somehow still violating my freedom by exercising such absolute control over the history of my life.  I think this thought partly stems from a failure to fully recognize how different God's relationship with us is from our relationship with other creatures.  If you were to somehow gain absolute control over my life such that my entire life history became subject to your knowledge and plans, I would complain that you had violated my "free space," for no creature from outside of myself should have that kind of control over me, and you could only have gotten that kind of control by somehow conquering me from without and subjugating me illicitly.  But I make a mistake if I then transfer that feeling to my relationship with God.  God is my Creator.  His control over my life does not result from any kind of illicit conquest or manipulation or invasion of my "space."  His control arises from the fundamental fact of who he is and who I am.  The one who creates my fundamental essence and my entire world cannot but be the source of all that I am and cannot fail to exercise a kind of ownership and control over my life and my world that no mere creature could ever have.  It is his prerogative, and no one else's, to know fully and to determine the course of the universe's history and my history.  To complain about God's plan governing my life is like complaining against my mother for giving birth to me.  "If my next-door neighbor tried to give birth to me, I should be very upset!  So how I can tolerate you having given birth to me, Mom?"  Well, by the very nature of our relationship, my mother has a kind of role in bringing me into existence that my next-door neighbor can never have (unless, of course, my next-door neighbor happens to be my mother).  My mother's unique role is not a usurpation, but a natural and fully appropriate relationship.  And so is God's unique role in my life as my Creator and the one whose plan governs my life history.  

I talked above about how God's complete knowledge of and control over the factors that determine my choices make it so that I will choose precisely and only what God wants me to choose.  But does that mean that God wants me to choose to sin?  If a person should choose to commit a mortal sin, rejecting fundamentally a right relationship with God, and end up in hell as a result of this, was it God's will for this to happen?  The answer is: yes and no.  God hates sin and suffering.  He does not take delight in either of these things.  But he sees that the overall good of the universe, that which brings about the greatest overall goodness and happiness, is best achieved by allowing certain evils to occur.  So his design for the history of the universe was not set simply on stopping me from committing any sin or experiencing any suffering.  He saw that the best way to set up the universe was to ordain a set of circumstances such that it would come about that I would, at times, commit sin and experience suffering.  He did not produce sin in me (for sin is a negative thing, like darkness, rather than a positive being, like light), but he set up the world such that he knew the result would be that I would sin and that suffering would come to me--not because he delighted in the idea of my sin and suffering, but because he knew that allowing these things would bring about a greater good.  And this extends to all the sin and suffering in the universe, even to mortal sin and hell.  So God did not want me to sin, per se, but he wanted to create a universe in which I would be freely permitted by him to sin because he knew that this universe would be the one suited to accomplish his perfect purposes.

A Brief Note on Various Philosophical and Theological Schools of Thought

How does what I've said above relate to different philosophical schools of thought regarding the nature of free will?  There are two positions, broadly speaking, which are typically discussed--libertarianism and compatibilism.  I often find that there are ambiguities in terms of how these positions are defined that make it difficult to identify with either of the labels.  For example, sometimes the libertarian view of free will is defined as the idea that "it is possible to choose otherwise at the moment of a choice," and compatibilism is defined as the idea that "the will is free if, at the moment of choice, a choice is made according to one's own mind and will, voluntarily, even if it is impossible to choose otherwise because the will is determined by the strongest desires of the person."  But the phrase "able to choose otherwise" is ambiguous.  Are we talking about the ability of my mind to actually make choices between various options--that is, my ability to use my rational mind to settle on preferences?  Or does "able to choose otherwise" imply the idea that there is no certainty in choosing--that, at any given moment of choice, there is an absolute possibility that various choices might happen such that there can be no knowledge in principle about what choice will actually be made until the choice is actually made?  "Ability to choose otherwise" in the former sense is an idea that makes perfect sense and is an essential component of what it means to make an act of will.  "Ability to choose otherwise" in the latter sense is logically absurd (because it implies that totally uncaused events happen for no reason, thus denying the law of causality) and, far from being an essential component of the idea of a free act of the will, it is completely incompatible with how willing actually takes place.  It turns an act of will, which is really the act of a rational mind settling on a preference, and turns it into something fundamentally different--a totally random event which is independent of everything that comes before it (and therefore, absurdly, independent even of the person making the choice and any act of that person) but which produces actions and events in the world.

If we define "ability to choose otherwise" in the former, rational sense, then I could identify my position as libertarian.  But if we define "ability to choose otherwise" in the latter, absurd sense, then I would be inclined to say I am a compatibilist.  The libertarian view, taken in the absurd sense, is incompatible with Catholic faith, because it implies a fundamental incompatibility between the Catholic doctrine of free will and the Catholic doctrines of divine foreknowledge and predestination (not to mention that by obliterating the law of causality it destroys the very rational fabric of reality itself).

What about the various Catholic schools of thought pertaining to free will, grace, and predestination--in particular, Bañezian Thomism and Molinism?  I think that my account of free will above is consistent with any of the accepted Catholic schools of thought.  It doesn't take sides in the details of the disputes between these schools.  For more on my views regarding the Bañezian-Molinist dispute, and in particular how I understand Molinism, see here, here, and here.  All the historic, approved Catholic schools of thought agree on the fundamental theological points of Catholic doctrine regarding free will, grace, and predestination.  Here is how Catholic philosopher Alfred J. Freddoso describes the traditional Catholic teaching on free will and predestination and how both Bañezian Thomism and Molinism agree on this teaching:

According to the traditional doctrine of divine providence, God freely and knowingly plans, orders and provides for all the effects that constitute the created universe with its entire history, and he executes his chosen plan by playing an active causal role that ensures its exact realization. Since God is the perfect craftsman, not even trivial details escape his providential decrees. Whatever occurs is specifically decreed by God; more precisely, each effect produced in the created universe is either specifically and knowingly intended by him or, in concession to creaturely defectiveness, specifically and knowingly permitted by him. Divine providence thus has both a cognitive and a volitional aspect. By his pre-volitional knowledge God infallibly knows which effects would result, directly or indirectly, from any causal contribution he might choose to make to the created sphere. By his free will God chooses one from among the infinity of total sequences of created effects that are within his power to bring about and, concomitantly, wills to make a causal contribution that he knows with certainty will result in his chosen plan's being effected down to the last detail. 

This much is accepted by both Molina and the Bañezians. They further agree that it is because he is perfectly provident that God has comprehensive foreknowledge of what will occur in the created world. That is, God's speculative post-volitional knowledge of the created world -- his so-called free knowledge or knowledge of vision -- derives wholly from his pre-volitional knowledge and his knowledge of what he himself has willed to do. Unlike human knowers, God need not be acted upon by outside causes in order for his cognitive potentialities to be fully actualized; he does not have to, as it were, look outside himself in order to find out what his creative act has wrought. Rather, he knows 'in himself' what will happen precisely because he knows just what causal role he has freely chosen to play within the created order and because he knows just what will result given this causal contribution. In short, no contingent truth grasped by the knowledge of vision can be true prior to God's specifically intending or permitting it to be true or to his specifically willing to make the appropriate causal contribution toward its truth.

For more, see my problem of evil article, and my predestination article this article follows up on.  To see arguments relative to the deeper, most fundamental philosophical issues involved in all of this, see my case for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity in general here and here.

Published on the feast of St. Raymond of Peñafort.