I’ve been working on writing a catechism, a distillation of the faith into concise questions and answers with brief supporting scriptures that could be the starting point for a conversation.
Cancer has gotten me off writing these for a few months now but, back by semi-popular demand, I hope to get back in the swing of things.
You can find the previous posts here.
III. The Son
12. If we believe in predestination, does this mean we have no free will?
Of course.
Remember, Jesus Christ is the Predestined One and obviously Christ is not not free. Indeed Jesus is the only fully free human being so liberated as to free others from their captivities and deliver them into the divine freedom we call Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We’re free in that we share in Christ’s freedom by our baptism and through our faith.
That freedom is freedom in Christ and, like Christ, is freedom for others reminds us that how normally think of the word ‘free’ (to have a will independent of any other agent) involes a false, idolatrous notion of God, for it pictures a god who inhabits the universe, existing alongside creatures, sometimes interfering with their lives and other times no, leaving them alone to be ‘free.’
Yet everything that exists exists- at every moment of its existence- because of the creative act of God.
Nothing that is can be except because of God
including our free spontaneous choices.
God is the Source of our free actions; therefore, there is no such thing as a human action independent of God. Our free acts are also, part and parcel, God’s creative acts. This does not constrain us; it is by them that we are ourselves.
Free will then cannot mean our acting apart from or independent of God acting upon us. Rather, like Christ, freedom menas fully cooperating with the action of God.
Freedom is embracing grace, the free gift of God.
