Does the God of the Bible lack free will?

[Tcg]

Does the God of the Bible have free will or is it constrained by its own nature to never do evil?


If it is constrained by its own nature, did it gain knowledge of evil when that serpent of old rebelled against God and took a number of God's angels with it? If this is the case, are we to understand that God learned from its creation and that education came by complete surprise?


If the God of the Bible lacks free will, is that a bad thing?



Tcg

[ttruscott]

Does the God of the Bible have free will or is it constrained by its own nature to never do evil?

GOD chose HIS own nature as a full commitment to love eschewing all evil. HE is bound by HIS chosen and committed nature but not by any lack of free will.

[Wootah]

My thought here is that if God is unable to choose evil, would that imply a lack of knowledge concerning evil.

No. I am unable to choose to start a nuclear war, but I still realize it would be evil to do so. Lack of choice does not entail lack of knowledge of the choice.

Anyway, if the Christian god cannot do evil, then he is not all-powerful.

I might start here. Evil acts lose our power. God is all powerful. God does not do evil.

[The Tanager]

If I understand you correctly then, you are stating that God is constrained by its own nature to never do evil. Additionally, this doesn't represent a lack of knowledge.

I don't think being constrained by one's nature represents a lack of knowledge. But, honestly, I'm not entirely sure where I am on the first part. Is it that God literally cannot do evil or has such a nature that, knowing full well what evil is, could but never will choose to do what is evil? Or is that just semantics? I'm not sure.

God has a nature where He likes certain actions and dislikes other actions. God may be free to perform the disliked action, but is completely secure in who He is, has perfect knowledge about what truly matches up with His likes, so that He only does what he likes, even though He may be technically free to act otherwise. I've got to give this more thought.

Would you agree then that God has full knowledge of evil and that this knowledge is not based on any actual participation with it or even any ability to do so?

I think so.

Given your definition of free will, would you say that this lack of ability to do evil is not in fact an impediment to God's free will?

This is a bit tricky, too. There are choices in life that aren't moral choices, so lacking an ability to commit evil would not negate free will completely. But when we talk of free will, we are usually talking about freedom in moral choices. But is God even a moral creature, in that sense, since there is no standard above God, God has no duties to anyone, but will remain true to Himself. This feeds back into the first part of this post above.

[The Tanager]

What does a "perfect being" mean? How does it mean impossible to commit evil? I feel like you are using a different definition of "perfect" than I am familiar with. I've seen the conundrum before, would a perfect glass jar still break when it falls since all glass has a breaking point?

If free will to do evil is and must be a part of human nature as created by God then a perfect human would still be able to commit evil. Being perfect does not mean one is unable to commit evil.

I think that is a great question, which I'm still exploring. Is this "perfect" prescriptive or descriptive of God? If it is descriptive, then it's not logically impossible for a perfect being to commit evil, but it's never going to happen if they truly are a descriptively perfect being.

Perhaps God can be descriptively perfect because of His omniscience, omnipotence, etc. Humans cannot be on their own by nature. God intended this to be the case, so that we would fully rely on Him, but we choose not to. I'm starting to ramble now, though.

[Filthy Tugboat]

What does a "perfect being" mean? How does it mean impossible to commit evil? I feel like you are using a different definition of "perfect" than I am familiar with. I've seen the conundrum before, would a perfect glass jar still break when it falls since all glass has a breaking point?

If free will to do evil is and must be a part of human nature as created by God then a perfect human would still be able to commit evil. Being perfect does not mean one is unable to commit evil.

I think that is a great question, which I'm still exploring. Is this "perfect" prescriptive or descriptive of God? If it is descriptive, then it's not logically impossible for a perfect being to commit evil, but it's never going to happen if they truly are a descriptively perfect being.

As God is supposed to be different in nature to humans a perfect God may be incapable of evil but I believe humans are usually considered to necessarily be capable of committing evil, some sort of free will bargain or something
so a perfect human would be able to commit evil perfectly presumably. Whatever that could mean, I am unsure. Perhaps, considering humans naturally vary by quite a large margin we are all perfect in that we have so many different traits, cultures, beliefs, values? Anyone seeking uniformity would be trying to destroy this perfection?

Perhaps God can be descriptively perfect because of His omniscience, omnipotence, etc. Humans cannot be on their own by nature. God intended this to be the case, so that we would fully rely on Him, but we choose not to. I'm starting to ramble now, though.

So humans were not created perfect? I believe this is not what most Christians tend to assert. But perhaps I am wrong on what Christian doctrine is and how many believe this or that doctrine.

[The Tanager]

As God is supposed to be different in nature to humans a perfect God may be incapable of evil but I believe humans are usually considered to necessarily be capable of committing evil, some sort of free will bargain or something so a perfect human would be able to commit evil perfectly presumably. Whatever that could mean, I am unsure. Perhaps, considering humans naturally vary by quite a large margin we are all perfect in that we have so many different traits, cultures, beliefs, values? Anyone seeking uniformity would be trying to destroy this perfection?

Yes, I do believe humans are certainly capable of evil. To me, saying one could commit evil perfectly would be saying that they always make the morally worst choice. As to us all being perfect, I would say 'yes' if free will doesn't exist, because then we would simply be doing what we are determined to do.

So humans were not created perfect? I believe this is not what most Christians tend to assert. But perhaps I am wrong on what Christian doctrine is and how many believe this or that doctrine.

There are different kinds of Christianity, of course, but I can tell you my thoughts. I think humans were created descriptively perfect (i.e., they weren't created with bad wiring, so to speak), but not prescriptively perfect (or there would be no free will and no sin at all).

[ttruscott]

It is logically impossible for a perfect being to commit evil (i.e., not be perfect).

What does a "perfect being" mean?

...

If free will to do evil is and must be a part of human nature as created by God then a perfect human would still be able to commit evil. Being perfect does not mean one is unable to commit evil.

We were created perfect, ie, perfectly able to fulfill HIS purpose for our creation by our free will. But free will necessitates no coercion, even against choosing evil, that is, to become perfectly opposed to fulfilling HIS purpose for their creation.

The perfection of the decision to fulfill HIS purpose in our creation is called holiness. The perfection in the decison to never fulfill HIS purpose for our creation is called the unforgivable sin which ends in eternal banishment to the outer darkness.

[Filthy Tugboat]

[Replying to post 16 by The Tanager]

I was not specifically talking about being able to ommit evil perfectly but whether a perfect human would still be able to commit evil and if so would those evil efforts also be perfect? I wouldn't reduce a perfect human to only being able to commit perfect evil but also perfect good? This is working from your premise that perfection is inherently linked with morality. I do not believe perfection fits this definition and in fact don't share many concepts of "perfection" with believers as you may have seen in my proposition that being varied appears to play an extremely large role in our entire species both historically/culturally speaking as well as biologically speaking, and so, perfect humans must only be varied to be called perfect. I don't think there could be any other definition of "perfect" in relation to humanity.

I guess I need your definition of "prescriptively perfect" to continue this angle of the debate then.

[The Tanager]

[Replying to post 18 by Filthy Tugboat]

I think I was mainly looking at "perfect" there in the narrow context of moral perfection. To act morally perfect just means not committing evil, so any evil effort could not be perfect by definition. So, a prescriptively perfect being is incapable of doing evil (like a robot couldn't go against its programming). A prescriptively perfect being would only commit good. A descriptively perfect being is capable of evil, but constantly chooses the good in every case.

For instance, a baseball player is not a prescriptively perfect hitter. They can get a hit or get out. It is technically possible for a player to be a descriptively perfect hitter, where they would get a hit for every at bat. We would not do whether they were a perfect hitter until we watched them continue to get hit after hit. I'm not sure if that helps the distinction.

But you seem to be talking about perfection unrelated to this narrower sense. I'm not sure what you mean by equating being perfect with being varied for humans. That seems a strange definition of 'perfect' but I could be missing something obvious. I do agree every human is unique, although I do think there are still general guidelines concerning what human flourishing or fulfilling one's purpose or being a good human is.

[Filthy Tugboat]

[Replying to post 19 by The Tanager]

Is that what moral perfection would be though? Perfection implies absolutely free of fault or flaw but in Christian thought (as far as I am aware) humans necessarily need to be able to commit evil, it would be a flaw if they were incapable of doing so. So being morally perfect can never mean incapable of evil. Regardless of prescriptive (predetermined?) or descriptive it would seem to me.

Would you say that the Earth is prescriptively perfect for creating and maintaining life?

I am using perfect to mean what perfect is defined as:

having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be.

From all the evidence I can find, variety seems to be the most required and desirable quality for our species. Humans die, it is their nature so immortality would not be a part of a perfect human. Freedom to make damaging or incorrect decisions seems to be a part of human nature so absolute goodness or supreme intelligence doesn't seem to be what would make a perfect human.

This is how I look at the term perfect and I don't know if there is an alternative.