Is God Totally Free? | Episode 1313 | Closer To Truth

I'd like to know if God exists, because if God does exist, everything changes. What kind of God? A God that is supposed to be perfect, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good. Would a perfect God also be all-free? Is God able to do anything? Or is God limited in some ways? Can God uncreate the universe, eliminate the past, make 2 plus 2 equal 5? Lie? Sin? Does God deliberate? Make choices? Must God always do the best? I do not know if God exists, but this I do know. For me, God must make sense. That's why this question is important. Is God totally free? I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn, and Closer to Truth is my journey to find out. It may seem obvious. If God is God, then God must be totally free. God cannot be constrained by anything outside of God's own self. But the deeper I dig, the more questions I have. That's why I'm mesmerized by God's freedom, as insight into whether God makes sense. I attend a workshop on the theology of free will, held at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Participants are philosophers of religion. I begin with an old friend from whom I've learned something of God's characteristics, at least God as imagined by Western religions. A philosopher of the Christian religion at Oxford, Brian Leftow. Brian, in trying to understand what God is all about, one of the areas that seems more difficult is God's freedom, that God is fully free. Why are there some problems with God's freedom? Well, we ordinarily understand freedom as having options, having choices, being able to do one thing or another. And there have been arguments that God really doesn't have options or choices. The basic thought, I think, is that his goodness kind of limits and his rationality kind of limits what his options would be. For example, suppose that there really is a best thing God can bring about. Well, if you're perfectly good, surely you want the best. And if you've got perfect rationality, you see what the best is. And if you've got the power to do it, well, then you just do the best. And so, bang, if you're God, you're stuck with the best, so to speak. You're kind of a slave to it. Where there's an objective best, it seems like God would be, so to speak, forced to that by his nature. And where there's not an objective best, it seems like he would have no reason to go one way or the other. He'd sort of have to make a blind, random choice almost. It's an uncomfortable sort of picture because, for one thing, it makes us sort of the winners of a lucky divine lottery. You know, consider God could have had Leftau and you, or he could have had Schleftau and Schloun, who would have been just like us but just a little bit better. For every creature, there could be a slightly better one. And if there's no best, God would have no best guided reason to pick one creature rather than the other. So what would he do? Well, in this picture, he just kind of draws a card. Well, what do you know? We came out. And do you really want to think that God has no better reason for making you than just, well, I drew the card. Okay, I'll make him. So that's not a picture of God that I find congenial. It's also one, paradoxically, that makes him less rational than he might be because, after all, he's just kind of picking blind wherever he hasn't got a best to go by. A second picture of God would say, well, when there's no best, and maybe even when there is a best, he's got personal preferences, and those guide him. He's got likes, dislikes, loves, more of a personality, passions, and those can also guide his choices. Now, that would seem wildly anthropomorphic, reading into God the kinds of humanly aspects of our personality. Giving God a personality, you're diminishing God to kind of a superhuman. If you're going to say anything positive about God at all, you're going to make him somewhat human-like. I mean, even if you just say that God exists, well, that's something he's got in common with us. If you say God's got a mind, that's something he's got in common with us. The question is, what are the ways he's like us? Many people would say that it's a good thing about human beings that we love, that this is not a bad or a limiting thing. It's not one of the imperfections about being human that we love. God has loves. Having loves is a perfection. It's a good thing. If we could know that God loved, that would be a good thing to know about God. Brian poses the deep problem of God's freedom. If God is perfectly rational and perfectly good, God would seem without option or choice. But Brian rejects this kind of robotic God. Instead, he favors a God who has preferences, desires, loves. Sure, I'd favor such a God, too. But at what price? The price is God in the image of man. An anthropomorphic God. A superhuman kind of God. God as, well, Superman. A Superman God scares me. What about the other side of the God's freedom puzzle? How to understand freedom? Also attending the workshop is an expert on free will, Notre Dame philosopher Peter van Inwagen. Peter, how do you understand God's freedom? Well, freedom is freedom no matter who has it, even God. To say that someone is free is to say sometimes when a person makes choice, when it chooses between them, he was able to make the other choice. So I would say the same thing about God. Sometimes God makes choices, and when he makes the one choice, he was able to make the other choice. Now, I can give you examples of choices that perhaps God can't make. You know, classically, a decision that is, that would lead to a sin or to a moral evil. Some would say even to a less best situation, if there is a best in that case. If God cannot do that because of God's character or God's goodness, then God is to some extent not free. Well, all of us are to some extent not free. I think this is literally true, that I am not able to punch you in the nose right now in these circumstances. But you are able to do it if you, you're not metaphysically constrained. You are a good person, you like me as a friend, you know, you may be a little tired. But all these things are parts of my being at the present moment. They do metaphysically constrain me. I am simply unable to punch you in the nose right now. Okay, but there's a difference in what you're saying. If you didn't have any arms, I would say that's a different characteristic of your being unable to punch me in the nose. There would be an additional reason for me being. But that would be additional and sufficient. My present mental state is sufficient for my being unable to punch you in the nose. Would you say they're the equivalent? I'm not sure what you mean by equivalent. They're both true, and the word able means the same thing in both cases. Yeah, I would see a difference. I would see an affirmative decision. Okay, here's the difference. If I chose to punch you in the nose right now, I probably would. Whereas if I didn't have arms, if I chose to punch you in the nose, I wouldn't. All right, so what? I can't choose to punch you in the nose. Imagine a dish full of red candies. You offer one to Jake. Jake happens to have a pathological aversion to the sight of blood. The candies happen to be the color of blood. Jake is not only unable to take the candy, he's unable to choose to take one. Just as unable as if he had no arms. Maybe not for the same reason. He can't make that choice. God's inabilities are all like that. He can't make that choice because making that choice would be inconsistent with his nature. So he can't lie, for example, because choosing to lie would be inconsistent with his nature. In that case, we get into more complexities. Suppose a lie would lead to a future good. I mean, let's say the future is open in some way and God is doing planning and something he had promised at one time and the free action of free creatures all combine together, and suddenly what God had said was the wrong decision because of a lot of free creatures making free decisions, and God decides, well, I better lie because the better good is to do X, Y, and Z. Yeah, well, most theologians suppose that God is unable to lie. He wouldn't lie even to get the good that's needed. He'd have to employ some other means. This is supposed to be something God can't do. He can't lie. He can't break promises. He can't change the past. But I think there are two things here that are different. One thing is God can't do because they're logically impossible in some ways. So God can't create a married bachelor. God can't recreate the past in some way. But for God to make a decision that would be a suboptimal decision or to be morally wrong, the question is whether God is metaphysically unable to do it and it's just an absolute impossibility, a rigid impossibility, as opposed to a character ongoing possibility. You're saying there's no difference between those two? His character is rigid, you say. Doesn't that limit his freedom? My character in my present mental states make it impossible for me to punch you in the nose. But, of course, they could change. Right, right, right. Whereas God's character can't change. So at any given moment, he's unable to break a promise for the same reason that I'm now, the same kind of reason that I'm now unable to punch you in the nose. But the big difference is there that, in his case, it's metaphysically impossible for that to change, whereas in my case, it is metaphysically possible for it to change. I'd better sit a little further back. Yes, yeah, I would think so. Peter provides clarity. Freedom is the capacity to make choices, to select other options. So God and humans are apparently similar in that states of mind constrain intentional actions. But here's the difference. Human states of mind may change. God's may not. Why can't God change? Because God supposedly is perfect, and perfection cannot be improved. I have always been bothered by this. So here's what I'd want to know. How would a perfect God's preferences or loves, as Brian Leftow argued, affect God's freedom? I find Brian to ask him. So are you saying that God's love can enhance God's freedom by challenging or contradicting God's rationality? It does enhance his freedom, but I think it also enhances his rationality, oddly enough. First the point about freedom. If God can have loves, then he can, so to speak, be free from the domination of the best. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that there was a best creature God could possibly make, a super archangel. If God was bound to the best, he'd have to make that sort of thing. Suppose that there is a best creature like that, but suppose also that's not what he loves. What he loves is things like you and me. That's what he really liked the idea. If he can follow his loves, he can make us instead, or us in addition. Whereas if he was just bound to the best, that would be all he had reason for doing so. Now the odd thing is that that also makes him a more rational being, if that's the way God works. And the reason's this. In the God, just objective, value, computer, robot mold, if he hasn't got a best to go with, well then he's got really no reason to do one thing rather than another, and he just picks randomly. But suppose that God loves, that you love something is a reason to make it or to choose it or to do it. So his love gives him reasons to act, and having reasons to act on enables you to act more rationally. How does God have loves and likes and personality? When I have preferences, different preferences, different things, things change over time. Has God had these preferences from eternity and never changed? Preferences that never change get ossified. Okay. If God knows everything from all eternity, then everything he could base a preference on is there for him. The only way his preferences could change then is if his personality changed at some more basic level. But if he's already a perfect being by nature, then it seems like he's already got a perfect personality set. So you're embedding within a perfect being a personality, and that personality has to be static because everything was perfect from the beginning, so it can't get better or it can't even change. If there was anything about God's preferences that he saw he would have a reason to change, he would have changed it already because he would have known that there was a reason to change it from all eternity. Or there could have been circumstances change and... But he would have known the circumstances. Oh, right, okay. I mean, when you start out with perfect knowledge... Yes, indeed, perfect knowledge is a game changer. So, if God's perfection underlies God's freedom, how would God's perfection affect God's capacity to choose? That's it. That's the heart of the problem. Does God choose to act in a certain way? Or does God, a perfect being, have no choice in how to act because it is metaphysically impossible for a perfect being to act other than, well, perfectly? This distinction is the essence of the God's freedom paradox, which makes for a better God, a more perfect God, a God who can choose or a God who can only be perfect. I ask a philosopher of religion from Rutgers, Dean Zimmerman. Some people think that God's so free that God could just do anything. God could do things that we would regard as horrible, terrible. If God did them, they'd be okay. I think that conception of God and morality is flawed. You know, there are things which, if God did them, that wouldn't make them good. So, let's say we agree that morality sort of is objective and there's facts about it, and then the question is, could God do things that are bad? I think that a God who is worthy of absolute worship, trust, adoration, and so on, ought not to be able to do that. But there's a difference between ought not and cannot. Right. A being who could not possibly do anything bad is better than a being who could. I can argue the opposite. I can say a being who is able to but doesn't do it is better than a being that is impossible to do it. I'd like to think that we can retain the traditional conception of God as unable to do anything wrong, impeccable, and nevertheless free in a morally significant sense. The way I would hope to do that is to ask the question, what is it about human free will that's significant? If we were created by God with a certain kind of character, with certain kind of possibilities, and were completely constrained in what we do by things that are outside of us, then we wouldn't be free. In order for us to be free, there has to be some slippage. I agree with all that. Now apply that to God. Well, if the need for slippage is due to the fact that without it during our lives, we would be completely controlled by things outside of us and before us. In God's case, that's not a danger. God has nothing outside of God that's constraining God. Those threats to our autonomy, they're not there for God. Right, I understand that. Except you're defining goodness a morality in an absolute sense. Doesn't that impose a higher level of existence on morality than on God? I admit it does start to sound as though I'm saying right and wrong, morality, these are absolute rules that govern God and God's trying to decide what to do and has to consult the rule book, which is independent of God. I'm a bit torn on how to think about this, actually. When I first read Euthyphro as an undergraduate, Plato's dialogue, I was convinced right and wrong has to be built into the nature of reality that certain things are wrong and certain things are right. There's another position which is not so extreme as divine command theory, which is whatever God commands is right, but because there is a God, the best layer of the role of rightness and wrongness has to do with God's commands. That doesn't mean God could command anything and it would be right or wrong, but morality is somehow grounded in God's attitudes. So what are the implications of that overall for God's freedom? God has some latitude in deciding what is right and wrong, but not just anything goes. So which is superior, God or morality? I enjoy watching Dean struggle because it highlights the conflict I go back to Brian Leftow pressing the point of whether it is even possible for God to do other than that which God does. God doesn't do bad things, but is it the case that it is impossible for God to do bad things, almost logically impossible, or is it the case that God could do bad things because God's free, but chooses never to do bad things. You've really posed one of the fundamental issues about that. Does his goodness so constrain his choices that he can't choose to do an overall evil act? I'm inclined to say that yes, it does constrain him that way, that God is perfectly good by nature, and so his nature rules out doing bad. But if God thinks in a simulated way just to test his own powers and his own freedom, well, you know, can I do this? Would that be a logical contradiction in God so that it would be impossible, like, for God to add two and two and get five? It's just impossible for God to even imagine doing it. That's the way I think of it. So that makes God less free in some sense than you and I. In one respect, he's got fewer options. I accept that. And to you, that limitation would be part of a perfection, not an imperfection. Right, right. When thinking about God as a perfect being, you've sort of got to try and balance things off. Here you've got a place where goodness and freedom have to be balanced in a certain way. You can emphasize the freedom, but that would take away from the perfection of his goodness because it would leave him with a possibility of doing evil. Or you can emphasize the goodness, but if you push that far enough, you're taking away from the perfection of his freedom. You've got to choose one or the other. I think the balance of the arguments is for choosing perfect goodness. So if you're privileging goodness over freedom, that seems to elevate the concept of goodness to something above God, to where God has to conform to an absolute standard of goodness. I think a better way to look at it would be to say that the standard is set by his own nature. So that in the end, what God is conforming to is just his own nature. Help me understand why that's not circular reasoning. You're saying that the goodness is sort of part of God from the beginning, and yet God has to conform to this kind of goodness itself. It's like saying, does God create himself in some way? It's not that God creates himself, but that for God, the fundamental obligation is to be what he is. For us, to thine own self be true isn't necessarily good advice because sometimes we should be true to something better than ourselves. But for God, it's perfect advice. Why am I still not satisfied? Perhaps the rigidity of a perfect God. Perhaps I'm overvaluing the importance of God's choice or humanizing the meaning of God's choice. What follows from God's freedom? Can God's freedom explain God's actions? Does God's freedom clarify God's creation? I return to Peter van Inwagen. So, overall, what is your feeling about God's freedom? Is it limited? Does God have maximum freedom? He has the freedom to make choices between actions that are consistent with his nature. For example, I think he had a free choice between creating something and not creating anything. Some people would say that he had no choice because he had to give of himself to create. Where do you stop? The mind of the church has been different on that one because they say things wouldn't be any better if God had created than if he hadn't created. Creating, not creating another is better than the other. No good comes into existence. There's already full and perfect love between the persons of the Trinity, according to Christianity. In fact, the real mystery is why God would bother to create anything at all. But since he did, he was able to. I mean, we do choose, we human beings choose between incommensurable goods. That is, I imagine, a woman choosing between going to Harvard Law School and going to Juilliard School of Music. Incommensurable goods. Juilliard is for personal fulfillment. Harvard Law School is for social usefulness. There's no way to add up, in a John Stuart Mill kind of way, pluses and minuses and say which would make for a better world. And yet people do make such decisions. And so does God. And, well, why not? We don't understand free will very well, in my view. But if we don't understand it in the case of persons, I don't think that we're going to understand it well enough in the case of God to say there's a problem here about why God would choose one thing rather than the other when there wasn't some good reason to choose this one. Maybe God is constrained by his nature. If state of affairs A is better than state of affairs B, maybe God is constrained by his nature to choose A if he chooses either. But if they're of equal value, I think states of affairs can be of equal value, even total states of affairs. And what God chooses to do then can't be simply a product of his nature. I think whether there's a created world at all, it does depend on God's free choice. As a divine trait, God's freedom may not seem as impressive as God's power, knowledge, and goodness. But God's freedom may reveal whether such a God can actually exist. And if such a God does exist, what such a God may be like. Is this arrogance? Human creatures delving deeply into the mind of their creator. The test is whether God has real choices or tightly bound by God's own nature. It's naive to expect that all God's traits, as imagined by humans, all work smoothly together. Most philosophers would privilege God's goodness over God's freedom. Given the trade-off, they say, it's better for God to be good than for God to be free. I'd not be so sure. If there is a God, and if the created world represents God, I see uncertainties, probabilities, change, and choice. If I were to believe in God, I'd like an active, engaged, intentional God with options, alternatives, evolution, and growth, not static perfection. I'd hope a God that is totally free is closer to truth.