Four Paradoxes of Free Will

Four Paradoxes of Free Will

I've put one of my essays on what free will really is at the beginning of this article so that people will know what I'm referring to. If you've already read this, or read this, then skip to section two.

First off, some philosophical background to know where I'm coming from. Like many Christians, I believe that God is infinite. Not infinitely good, or infinitely wise, but an *actual* infinity. God is infinity, and infinity happens to wear a crown, so to speak. That is, infinity happens to be conscious, to feel emotions, love, pain, and so on, and this infinite being is everywhere and rules forever and ever. Bit of a big assumption from a non-religious point of view, but this is religious talk here.

Contents:
1: What is free will? (short version)
2: Four paradoxes of 'infinite' free will, and how this view of freedom answers four common objections to Christianity
Paradox 1: God knows how we're going to choose, but we have free will
Paradox 2: God ensured everything that has happened or will happen by making the world the way he did, but the way things have turned out isn't his responsibility; it's the responsibility of creatures
Paradox 3: God can't just make the saved
Paradox 4: With free will, something can be possible every second of every day, and yet will never happen over an infinite length of time

1: What is free will? (short version)

Now on to free will.

I'd say that none of our attempts to define free will 'feel' right. If we say that our actions are caused then we should blame the laws of physics when someone does something wrong. On the other hand, if we say that our actions are *not* caused then it sounds like they happen randomly, because the only alternative to stuff being caused that we can imagine is randomness. That would make doing the right thing a matter of chance.

I think that a good solution involves imagining two 'worlds' out there: a finite world and an infinite world.

Humans see the finite world. In the finite world, everything is a matter of cause and effect. In the finite world A causes B, which causes C, which causes D, and so on. People are determined in the finite world.

In the infinite world people are not determined, but that doesn't mean that they act randomly. The concepts of 'causation' and 'randomness' don't apply in the infinite world. It's a whole different 'ball game', where everything, including causality, is totally different. God lives in the infinite world, because God is infinite. Free will comes from the infinite world, and that's the only place where it can exist.

This situation explains why humans can't understand free will. We can't understand free will because it's very hard to use finite reasoning to understand the infinite.

OK, that might explain how free will can exist even though we don't understand it, but doesn't this mean that only God has free will? After all, only God is infinite. Or am I saying that humans are infinite? But that would put us on God's level.

My view is that humans are partly infinite and partly finite. Only God can be fully infinite, because God 'encompasses all possible infinities' in his being. That's why God can't make another God. But he can go 'halfway'. That is, God can make people partly infinite without making another God.

We get an infinite part of ourselves from God. This is our soul, and it is what makes us a child of God, a thing made in God's image, because nothing finite is made in God's image. We get free will, consciousness, and morality from our soul. But everything else about us *has* to be made finite, including our reasoning, knowledge, and body, because we cannot be all-infinite like God (by the way, animals also have a soul but not understanding - Job 39:13-17.)

This is how I see free will 'working': our physical bodies and soul together make up our personality. We get free will through our soul, and through our bodies we get something to express our choices with as well as reasoning and knowledge. The body sometimes appears to do what the soul does, so for instance, we have an emotional part of the brain, but only because the soul needs something to work with when God empowers it to interact with the body-brain. So we get 'brainy stuff'. But the brain never achieves what the soul does, it only appears to because God wants our brain and soul to interact, and the soul uses 'brainy stuff' to do so.

So free will can make sense, if you say that there's a mysterious 'infinite world' where there can be free will in a way that we can't understand. We get to have this freedom because God made us partly infinite, although we can't understand our infinite selves because our reasoning had to be made finite. We borrow our infinite soul from the infinity of God, and the soul and the body working together create our personality.

This is a dualism of the infinite and the finite, rather than soul and matter.

2: Four paradoxes of 'infinite' free will, and how this view of freedom answers four common objections to Christianity

Because free will comes from the infinite world, you can't use finite thinking to understand it without sacrificing the way things really are. This is because you're dealing with something that is infinite, not finite, so trying to understand free will with finite reasoning is going to lead to paradoxes and contradictions.

This point can be illustrated by three paradoxes, applying generally to the idea of infinity.

Take the paradox of the Grand Hotel by David Hilbert. In theory, you should be able to put a guest in every room of a hotel. But what if the hotel is an infinite hotel? If it's an infinite hotel, then you can never fill it with any finite number of guests. No matter how many guests go to the hotel, there will always be room, because the person in room 1 can move to room 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, and so on ad infinitum. Like you can't think of a 'highest' number (someone could beat you by adding a zero on the end of your number.) You would need an infinite number of guests to fill an infinite hotel.

This shows how the finite is an entirely different kind of number to the infinite, or different concept. The finite deals with the finite and can never interact with the infinite without help from the infinite. The infinite deals with the infinite, and through God's power can interact with the finite. They're very different concepts; the infinite isn't just 'much bigger' than the finite, but a different kind of thing. A difference of quality rather than quantity.

Another example of an infinite paradox is the paradox of the circle. Suppose you have a circle and a line to every point of the circle. You need an actually infinite number of lines to go to every point of the circle, because otherwise there'll be gaps when you zoom in closer and closer. OK, suppose you've drawn that circle and the lines. Now draw a much larger circle around that circle. And make the lines you previously drew go out to that even bigger circle. Now, according to finite logic, when you look at those lines in enough depth, there should be tiny gaps when they go out to the much larger circle, because that circle is, well, much larger. But that's not the case. No gaps will ever appear between the lines that have been extended out to the much larger circle, no matter how much you zoom in, because infinity is always infinity. This is a rather counterintuitive mystery of infinity.

You can also use infinity to show that 1 = 2.

Let's assign infinity some value. Like X. Let's say that infinity = X.

OK, now let's add infinity to infinity. What does infinity + infinity equal? Surely two infinities (using finite logic). So if we say that infinity equals X, then infinity plus infinity must equal 2X.

But infinity always has the same value. So infinity plus infinity remains infinity. That means that if we assign a value to infinity then we can show that numbers that are inherently different are the same.

So infinity = X. Infinity + infinity = 2X. But infinity is always the same, so infinity + infinity = X. But this means that 2X = X. That would imply that 1 = 2.

So infinity can be used to show that 1 = 2. This shows that there are clearly 'issues' with using our reasoning to understand infinity, to say the least.

(Visualization of the difference between infinity and finiteness below, click to enlarge)



We find infinity so hard to understand because God really 'messed up' our reasoning when he made us. He did this so that he *could* make us (that is, because only God can be fully infinite, we had to have finite reasoning). No matter how smart we get we'll still think in finite terms and use finite reasoning, even if everyone had an IQ of six billion. You can't be smart enough to understand these things and still be finite. If we could understand them, then we'd be God. No angel or human will ever understand these issues (it reminds me of Matt 24:36 "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only".)

All this means that we can probably expect to find 'true contradictions' whenever we analyse free will using finite language. We should expect to find truths about free will that seem to make no sense, but which are still truths - they are mysteries of infinity.

With this expectation in hand, lets look at four common 'paradoxes' of free will, which are often recast as objections to Christianity, and how the 'infinite' idea of free will resolves them.

Paradox 1: God knows how we're going to choose, but we have free will

Because free will cannot be comprehended with finite reasoning - not even with God's help - we have to mangle the concept of free will very badly whenever we intellectually 'establish' how free will works.

This mangled idea of free will - which is usually deterministic, but can be random - is then used to prove that God doesn't exist, which it does successfully within its domain in the finite world.  When you think about it, this isn't surprising, because God is as far from being finite as anything can get.

The most common 'repackaging' of free will in finite terms draws on deterministic logic.  Christian and secular philosophers won't necessarily say 'I believe in a deterministic idea of free will', where people's actions are determined, but this kind of thinking is implicit in the way both Christians and secular philosophers tend to understand free will.

Whenever someone says 'I can't have free will if God knows what I'm going to do, because I can't make God wrong, and so I have to do what God thinks that I'll do' they're drawing on deterministic logic, because that statement draws on deterministic logic to work.

For instance, if I drop a ball from a great height, then I can know that it will fall to the ground.  I am making a prediction about it falling to the ground with a high degree of certainty.  How can I make this confident prediction?  Because there's a force that will ensure that my prediction will come about - gravity.  People get the ability to predict things by knowing that something will ensure that they are right.

Similarly, if I predict that Tom will give me a million dollars tomorrow, and this isn't just me making stuff up, but involves actual knowledge, then something must ensure that I will be right.  My ability to know that Tom will give me a million dollars tomorrow must be correlated with some kind of 'guarantee' that he will do so.  Some possible guarantees are threats to Tom, the use of force, or even a mind control device that I've put in Tom's head, which will ensure that Tom will give me a million dollars tomorrow.

Basically, to have the ability to predict stuff perfectly, and not just be making stuff up, but to actually *know* the future with absolute certainty, requires us to obtain 'guarantees' of the future.  With guarantees of some kind we can predict that balls in the air will fall to the ground (with the 'guarantee' of gravity) and we can predict that people will do stuff (with the 'guarantee' of threats or mind control devices or stuff like that.)

All of this, obviously, uses a deterministic logic.  If something is up to chance then you cannot 'know' that it will happen. Therefore, to 'know' that something will happen you need a guarantee that it will happen. A guarantee removes chance. The removal of chance equals determinism.

This means that if God knows what we're going to choose then there must be some kind of 'guarantee' that God will be right.  Yet free will seems to require leaving things to chance.  Therefore, God's guarantee must remove chance. And this means that we don't really have free will according to the finite-reasoning philosopher.

The problem is, that's not free will.

What philosophers have done here is 'repackaged' their instinctual knowledge that we have free will into finite terms that can be understood.  This repackaging was then used to analyse God's ability to predict our choices in the Bible.  Philosophers have in this process hammered the square peg of free will into the round hole of finite reasoning; thought of free will in deterministic terms; visualised or imagined God's knowledge 'forcing' our choices to conform to his predictions.  There's been a bifurcation of free will into determinism or randomness/probability, forced on philosophers by the finite nature of our reasoning, when in reality there's a third option operating in the infinite world.  No one can intellectualise this third option but we make use of it in the part of us that's infinite (our soul).

This third option is the 'true' option, and if we understood it then we'd know that God's ability to predict our (and his own) choices is completely compatible with everyone having genuine free will.

To really understand what's going on with free will we must resist putting it into a finite 'box'.  Once we stop trying to intellectualise free will with our finite reasoning, then we can learn to embrace the paradoxes and ironically through ignorance get closer to the truth.  By embracing these philosophical paradoxes, by making it clear what humans can and can never know, we can learn something about God, the infinite world that he lives in and the nature of our own free will that we share with God.

Once we embrace these paradoxes as mysteries of infinity we can accept more readily, on the one hand, God having the power to predict our choices, and on the other hand, humans being genuinely free.

Paradox 2: God ensured everything that has happened or will happen by making the world the way he did, but the way things have turned out isn't his responsibility; it's the responsibility of creatures

In the Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus pointed out a common thought that causes many Christians to stumble over the idea that God made everything. If God made everything then isn't he ultimately responsible for what will happen? If God knew how everything would turn out when he made the world, that Adam and Eve would sin, that there would be horrible wars and so on, who would be saved and who lost, etc. then isn't it his responsibility the way things have turned out? Isn't the state of the world God's fault much like when someone pushes a boulder off a hill, they're responsible for what the boulder does on the way down?

As we saw earlier with the view that God's knowledge contradicts free will, the root of these types of theological problems comes from forcing free will into a 'deterministic' framework, when the reality is quite different.

I think that the basic argument structure borrows from the argument against free will in the first paradox. Basically, because God ultimately started everything off knowing what would happen, and because his foreknowledge takes away our freedom (according to the finite reasoning I talked about earlier), then God is responsible for all the evil in the world; all the bad choices.

The answer to it is that due to the nature of infinite free will, that we can't understand using our reason (we can't *ever* understand), we're completely responsible for our bad choices even though God puts us in situations where he knows we'll choose a certain way.

Because in the infinite world we have a choice; we have a sovereign free will. So ultimately, what we do is up to us.

The paradox is that in general terms, you can put someone in a situation where you know that they will do the wrong thing, and yet you are not responsible for their choice.

But how to explain that using finite reasoning? It can't be done. You can never know this intellectually like you can know that 2 + 2 = 4.

This wouldn't entirely excuse God if the situation he put us in were unfair, I should note. There are fair and unfair situations. But if the situation is fair, then it's not God's fault if we do the wrong thing, even though he knew that we would.

Paradox 3: God can't just make the saved

A third paradox of free will is that God couldn't only make people who would decide to come to Christ (Matt 13:24-29). This needs to explained in a theology where some people never choose to go to heaven.

One objection to Christianity is that if hell is such a nasty place, then God should have avoided making the unsaved. If God could have avoided making the unsaved, then why not avoid making them?

An all powerful God should be able to do a lot of stuff. He should be able to make only those people who decide to make certain choices. So what's going on?

It's important to remember that free will isn't determined or random/probabilistic, but involves a 'third option' in the infinite world. Even though this is the case, I'm going to use an analogy between free will and finite concepts to account for this third paradox.

In one respect, free will is a little like randomness (although the metaphor shouldn't be carried too far and people think that free will is affected by randomness, because randomness isn't a good thing in people.)

I think that in some respects, although it involves a completely different process (an infinite one), creating a person is kind of like triggering an event with a random outcome. Creating a person is kind of like flipping a coin, with a completely random 50/50 outcome, even for God.

If a coin toss is random then you can't make it go heads or tails - it could go either way. We cannot affect the outcome, and we cannot predict it either.

This is similar to God making a person, in that God cannot just make people who would go a certain way (i.e. have certain personalities), but he *can* still predict us. Whereas for human randomness, if anything's random you cannot make it go a certain way *and* you cannot predict it.

So when God creates people he hopes that they're going to turn out well, but it's *like* a random process as to whether they will... so God can't make sure that all the people he makes will make the best choices. But the other half of the paradox is that even though making a person is like a random process in this aspect, God still knows how we're going to choose, so free will isn't actually a random process. To even use the word 'random' is kind of a misnomer, because the infinite world 'third option' isn't determined or random at all.

And also, even though free will is *like* being random in this way, it's still a great thing to have. You'd think that being even slightly random would be a terrible thing for a person, because you'd end up doing crazy stuff that you didn't want to do, because you'd act randomly. I'm not saying that free will is random, I'm saying that it can be *compared* to random in certain aspects, in a superficial way when looked at through finite reasoning. Actually, the 'third option' that we can't intellectually understand is a genuine, great kind of freedom.

Paradox 4: With free will, something can be possible every second of every day, and yet will never happen over an infinite length of time

Possibility and probability go hand in hand in the normal view. If something is possible, then it has a probability. If something is impossible, then the probability of it happening is zero.

The fourth paradox of free will is that when it comes to free will, possibility has absolutely nothing to do with what's probable and what's improbable. Something can be possible again and again, every hour of every day for an infinite length of time, and yet will never happen.

Traditionally we say this about free will: if you have free will, then you can choose to do anything within your physical power, at any time. So it's *possible* for you to do anything within your physical power at any time.

According to finite reasoning, the fact that it's possible for you to do something *should* create a relationship with probability. There should be some kind of probability that you can assign to whether you will do something that it's possible for you to do.

For example, if it's possible that Jimmy will take a cookie from the cookie jar, then you should be able to assign an e.g. 70% probability that he will take it. You should be able to assign a probability to whether someone will go and see a certain movie, or marry a certain person.

But, if free will is a matter of probability, and we can do anything within our physical power at any time, then over an infinite length of time everyone would do everything.

The reason why everyone would do everything over an infinite length of time if free will can be analysed in terms of probability, is that in probability theory, if an event is possible, then it has *some* chance of happening. Even if the chance is absolutely miniscule.

And if any event has *some* chance of happening, then if that chance gets repeated again and again an infinite number of times, then the chance *must* come up eventually and the event happen.

For example, suppose that the universe is continually remade in the Big Bang, and that every time the universe is recreated there's a chance that a life form would evolve and write Hamlet. Over an infinite length of time, someone *has* to write Hamlet.

So if you lived for an eternity with probabilistic free will, then eventually you would choose to build a spacecraft with wood, or drive your car deliberately into a ditch repeatedly, because it's possible that you can do it.

And you would have no choice about it. As long as there's any probability of trying to make a spacecraft out of wood, then over an eternity you'll decide to do that. You simply cannot get out of it in the probability view of free will.

But this view is completely counterintuitive. Assuming I live forever, why should I be forced by probability to build a spacecraft out of wood? Why should I be forced to recreate the Great Wall of China in Alaska using books written about the American Civil War?

The conclusion is that when it comes to free will, possibility doesn't have anything to do with probability. It would if free will were finite, but in the infinite world, a different set of rules apply. In the infinite idea of free will you don't have to do everything that you can physically do. You can do what you want to do within your physical power. And if you never want to build a Great Wall of China out of books written about the American Civil War, then don't.

If you're a Christian, there's a second reason to defend the idea that you can be free to choose something every second of every day, and yet never choose it over an infinite length of time. And that reason comes from our concept of heaven.

Let's talk about heaven. According to Christianity, the people in heaven will be able to be perfect forever, but only because we'll all choose to accept God's grace forever (Rev 7:17). We'll still have the same old personality that has chosen to find doing the wrong thing attractive, but we won't act wrongly any more, because we'll be perfect through the work of the Holy Spirit dwelling inside us. Once anyone accepts the Holy Spirit, God can perform a miracle that will make them perfect as long as they accept the Spirit.

But no human can accept the Holy Spirit on their own. No one is good enough to genuinely know what it means to be perfect, and to want to be perfect, otherwise they already would be ("All have sinned" - Rom 3:23). So God performs a miracle on anybody who hears the gospel that allows them to genuinely accept what living a perfect life really means. For an idea of what we'll be like forever in heaven, look at 1 Cor 13:4-7. We'll be infinitely close to that, which as you can tell might be hard to live out in practice, and a hard transformation for sinful people to want forever. So through a miracle God can take away the character flaws that prevent every one of us from wanting to be perfect, so that we can accept the Spirit of grace. And God extends this miracle to everyone who hears the gospel, to allow everyone to accept his grace, although not everyone does. And through another miracle God can make us perfect as long as we continue to accept his Spirit.

Whether we'll go to heaven depends on our willingness to accept God's grace for an actually infinite length of time. On our own we're still not perfect, even though the Holy Spirit who dwells inside us will help us be perfect through a miracle. Without the Spirit, we're still people who chose desires that made doing wrong things the most attractive option. And we'll have free will in heaven. So it's possible for us to want to go back to being our old selves and reject the Spirit of grace in heaven. If someone would do this after a million years then they cannot go into heaven; someone cannot go into heaven if they would reject grace after a googol years. You can only go to heaven if you're willing to choose to accept God's grace forever and ever, and some people won't. Why? Because even though God performs a miracle so that our imperfect works and imperfect character traits don't prevent us from coming to Christ, we're still our old selves apart from God's miracles and are free to reject God's grace at any time in heaven. The only people who will be in heaven are those who want to put themselves under grace, suppressing any temptation against accepting it forever and ever.

Accepting God's grace for an actually infinite length of time is the only thing that protects us from hell. Hell does not occur because God does anything, rather it is an automatic process that happens when any soul sins (John 3:17). Because infinite souls must have a certain nature, sin kills souls (James 1:15). It's only through our spirit becoming one with Christ's Spirit that the atonement can have any effect to help us. If this doesn't happen then we die spiritually (Gen 2:17). Our soul doesn't have to be in hell for this to happen, a person could be anywhere and still be in hell. Hell is merely a process of sin killing a soul, which is either like life on earth if you're good, or much more painful if you're evil. In a sense, we're already in hell because suffering on earth occurs because of sin (Rom 5:12-14), and later on the scenery changes. It's also true that a righteous God will not allow sin into his presence, being a righteous God, and will cast those who reject his grace out of heaven. But even if God did allow those who reject his grace into heaven, then no sinners would be happy in heaven, because they would be killed by sin while they were in heaven, which would make heaven a hell for them.

For those of us who heard the gospel and held on to God no matter what, no matter the testings, trials and doubts, God has developed in us a character that is willing to accept his grace forever. That's why and how Jesus came to save that which was lost (Matt 18:11). We started off graceless, choosing to reject God, and we will join God in a state of grace after we are helped through testing and trials to want it so much that we'll want it forever (Luke 15:11-32.) (Note: I think that children and others outside accountability very likely go to heaven, so actually more people are saved than not saved. But exactly what's going on with this is ambiguous.) Through testings and trials, we will be brought to choose grace forever and ever as our deepest desire, against any contrary thought, and thus we will have chosen to be perfect in heaven forever. The parable of the loaves is that no one who could have been brought to accept grace forever will be lost (John 6:12, Mark 8:17-21). All the souls who could have been brought to accept grace forever have been allocated into history facing the kinds of tests especially helpful for them in choosing to accept God's grace forever, so that when they pass those tests, they have created a character in themselves that will choose God's grace forever instead of being graceless (Rev 1:19-3:22). Those whom God knows can never be brought to accept his grace whatever God does (the 'cursed' - Matt 25:41-46) have been allocated into history according to God's knowledge of how they will choose in every situation, so that everything they do will ultimately help those who are being brought to accept grace forever accept it forever (Rom 9:19-25, 1 Cor 10:13, Heb 12:11).

The finite idea of free will criticises this view quite severely.

If you adopt the determinist idea of free will, then we are saved or lost depending on how God chose to make us. In this idea of free will, God made some of us follow him, and some of us not follow him. We only act out our predetermined desires.

If you adopt the probability idea of free will (a competitor), then we would eventually choose to sin in heaven over an eternity. Rejecting the Spirit in heaven is a possible choice. So if free will is a matter of probability, then everyone in heaven will eventually reject the Spirit over an infinite length of time. This would disprove the Christian idea of heaven.

And the random idea of free will runs completely counter to any reasonable idea of what free will is, because being forced to act in a random way is not a good thing.

As hopefully I've laid out, we should reject all of these finite world understandings of free will. Free will is neither determinist, nor probabilistic, nor random. So we can be in heaven forever and ever, and always choose to follow God's will forever, and never sin because we will accept God's grace forever, but still have free will all this time. This is the promise of heaven (Rev 7:17).

To sum up this article, when we think in finite terms we bifurcate free will into determinism or randomness, or a hybrid of both, probabilistic free will. But none of these ideas reflect the idea of free will in our intuitions, or rather, the idea of free will sensed through our infinite soul.

This situation leads to the four paradoxes I've just outlined, that defy intellectual understanding and have to be taken on faith, faith both in an infinite God and that this infinite God made us in his image, giving us access through the infinite world to this thing called a soul.

If I'm right about free will being given to us through an actually infinite object - our soul - then perhaps by understanding all of these paradoxes about infinite free will we can get a better grasp of what an actual infinite is like, which could be interesting.

If I'm right about God being infinite and humans being partly infinite and partly finite, then if you applied finite reasoning to God, or to the things in humans that are infinite - free will, consciousness, morality, and many of our intuitions, which philosophers do, then you'd be using the wrong terms, asking the wrong questions, speaking the wrong language.

Why God is Good

Why is God good? How does God know what is good? How can God have free will if He can never sin (James 1:13)? And why can God never sin, but humans can?

The answer to these questions depends on a good philosophical understanding of who God is. One thing to remember is that God is infinite - an *actual* infinite. God is infinity, and infinity happens to wear a crown, so to speak. That is, infinity happens to be conscious, to feel emotions, love, pain, and so on, and this infinite being is everywhere and rules forever and ever. Bit of a big assumption from a non-religious point of view, but this is religious talk here.

A second very important thing to remember is that human reasoning is finite. Now, there's a big difference between finiteness and infiniteness. The finite deals with the finite and can't interact with the infinite without help from the infinite; the infinite deals with the infinite and through God's power can deal with the finite. They've very different concepts and the finite certainly can't imagine infinity well. This was shown by the paradox of the Grand Hotel by David Hilbert, designed to illustrate the absurdities of an actual infinity. Suppose that you have an 'Infinite Hotel' with a guest in every room. Are all the rooms occupied? No, because people can always move to the next room, 1 to 2, 2 to 3, and so on when someone new arrives. You can never fill an infinite hotel with any finite number of guests, because there'll always be room. Similarly, you can never reach infinity with your mind, because you can always add a zero on to the number you just thought of.

We see the infinite with our finite reasoning 'through a glass darkly' so to speak. We have a fairly good mathematical idea of what infinity is. Georg Cantor for example made some very good strides in understanding infinity with his theory of infinite sets, and Aristotle and others made great contributions. Most of what mathematicians know about infinity comes from these people. We don't see infinity very well because we use finite reasoning to understand it. Ultimately finite reasoning looks at everything with, well, finite reasoning. So finite reasoning looks at infinity with finite reasoning, which like a mirror reflects our finite understanding back to us. So we know infinity is there, and not much else. We have no idea what an actual infinity would really be like, or any great insights into the ways of existing that an actual infinity might have.

Christians believe (according to the philosophical interpretation of this essay) that infinity has a name: I AM - God, spoken about in the Bible. Unbeknownst to finite reasoning, from infinity comes consciousness, love, free will, morality, and everything that God is like. Why? That's how actual infinites 'are'. We can never, of course, work this out with finite reasoning, because finite reasoning always sees everything finitely, and we're talking about the infinite here...

When God made us in His image, He gave us a soul that is infinite like He is, through the power of the infinite. From the soul we get everything that makes us similar to God: love, free will, consciousness, our moral sense, and so on. And we get everything that makes us different to God from the finite world.

But why would God make us different to Him? Because there can be only one infinity, there can be only one God, and God is that God (Deu 6:4). So God alone can be all infinite, infinite in every respect. Our reasoning, knowledge, understanding, and body *had* to be made finite because we cannot be all-infinite like God.

It's because every creature had to be made partly finite that God had to give all his creatures finite reasoning and understanding. That is, create an infinite-finite connection through His power. There's something about having infinite reasoning that is one and the same with being fully infinite, and only God can be fully infinite. The fact all creatures must have finite reasoning means that only God can know some things - see Matt 24:36 "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only". Also see Ecclesiastes 3:11 "God has set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end". I.e. our soul is infinite, but our reasoning is finite, because only God can be fully infinite.

But then how can we have our *own* soul if we borrow our soul from God? Through the interaction between our soul and a finite body, our soul takes on its own personality separate from God. God makes this finite body, like the universe, out of an infinitely lesser part of Himself, through His power, and through His power our body is connected to that which is infinite.

Our physical bodies and soul work together to make our personality. Through our bodies, we get reasoning and knowledge which interacts with our infinite soul, the infinite soul then makes a free choice, and this choice is 'understood' by the body and gets carried out. The body sometimes appears to do what the soul does, so for instance, we have an emotional part of the brain, but only because the soul needs something to work with when God empowers it to interact with the body-brain. So we get 'brainy stuff'. But the brain never achieves what the soul does, it only appears to because God wants our brain and soul to interact, and the soul uses 'brainy stuff' to do so. Without a soul, a body is no more than a very complicated biological computer, with nobody 'in there'.

Animals have a soul as well as humans, but for some reason aren't morally responsible (Job 39:13-17.)

Now on to some of the questions in the opening of this essay.

Why is God good?

Because God is infinite, He has infinite reasoning and infinite logic.

God applies infinite concepts and infinite logic to infinite things. So, God applies His understanding of the infinite to the soul.

Using His infinite logic, God sees our infinite souls as they really are. He sees humans as they really are behind their physical bodies.

God made us in His image so that if anyone sees a soul as it really is, then that person knows that soul must be loved unconditionally forever and ever. So because God sees our souls as they really are, He knows that He must love us unconditionally forever.

God applies finite reasoning to the finite, and infinite reasoning to the infinite. The way an infinite soul is, it should be loved unconditionally forever.

God can never sin because He can never fail to see a soul as it really is. Because God knows everything, He cannot know something that is false. So God cannot fail to see a soul for what it is. Because of the way souls are, every soul deserves unconditional love, so God must recognise this and be perfectly good towards us.

This doesn't take away from God's free will, it's just that God will never act on a lie, and will never believe a lie. So He can never fail to respect a soul as it is. He can never choose not to love a soul, because that would involve choosing to believe a lie about the infinite soul.

So how does God know what is good?

Love comes from infinity. Every actual infinite knows about love, because that's 'just' how infinity works (this is obviously a mystery to our finite reasoning, but that's because our reasoning must be created finite, as explained earlier.)

It's hard to know how God makes a soul. The point is that He always makes it in such a way that it deserves unconditional love.

That's basically how God knows what is good. It comes from recognising a truth about the way persons are made, from God on high to all creatures down below with a soul. Anyone who recognises this truth about persons, and sees people as they really are, must love them completely (none of us can do this in practice without the Holy Spirit).

How can God have free will if He can never sin?

If God knows that people should always be loved unconditionally, then how can He be free to go against this knowledge? How can He ever choose?

Something to note here is that free will comes from the infinite world, from our soul, so it's not what we think it is. Ironically, to learn about free will, one must humble one's finite reasoning and accept that, like a child can't know many facts about the universe, we can't know the infinite soul through our reason (Matt 18:3).

We feel that we have free will in our intuitions, in our soul. More than that, we have no idea how free will works, and never can or will. God alone knows how it works, because God alone is all-infinite. You'd have to be all-infinite to fully comprehend something from an infinite soul like free will with your reasoning (there are many things that only God can know - Matt 24:36).

So it's safe to say that what we think free will is with our reasoning, and what we think it isn't with our reasoning, has no claim to being right. Our gut instinct is right, but only when it's unfiltered by the distortions given to us by our finite reasoning, since we can delude ourselves into changing our intuitions.

This is where this objection comes from: when we look at free will we divide it up into parts. You have someone's beliefs, someone's desires, and knowledge that they might be suppressing or encouraging. But these are finite distinctions. The truth is, that belief, desire, and knowledge are all part of a single indivisible whole that is called our 'free will'. And our 'free will' is itself a single indivisible whole with everything that we get from the infinite world, including our moral sense and consciousness. For there are no distinctions in infinity. Ten plus infinity is infinity, infinity minus ten is infinity. That shows that you can't make distinctions in infinity, like you can in finite understanding, because infinity is always infinity, nothing more, nothing less. So distinctions of free will into beliefs, desires, and knowledge are baseless.

So God not only *knows* that everyone should be loved unconditionally because He sees people as they really are, He also *chooses* to do that. The fact that God cannot fail to know that everyone should be loved unconditionally doesn't detract from God's freedom. Because distinguishing knowledge from desire, choice, and belief is a baseless distinction that comes from finite reasoning trying to understand the distinction-less - the infinite.

God can never believe a lie, so He can never sin. But God also chooses never to sin. If this sounds strange, then it should be seen as a mystery of infinity.

Why can God never sin, but humans can?

Because human reasoning is finite we cannot see people with our reason (although we do see people accurately with our moral intuitions, that come from the soul). We can never understand infinite logic, and yet infinite logic is what is needed to truly understand a soul. So if we search around, and try to find out how we should act towards others, then we will never work out that people deserve unconditional love using *only* our reason.

We can never see people the way that God does with limited (finite) reasoning (without faith). This makes it impossible to act towards people as they really are (as partly infinite beings).

Some of us are good relative to other humans, but none of us can compare to how good God is, because God sees and acts towards people as they really are. Whereas we literally *cannot* choose to go with our moral ideals all the time, because without infinite reasoning there's simply no way to will ourselves to do that.

But if that's true then how can sinning be up to us? Humans are surely helpless with our finite reasoning!

That comment doesn't follow, because we all have sovereign free will, so no one is forced to sin. Only God can violate that sovereign will, and He will never do so. So we are fully responsible for our sins when we sin, in the mystery of moral responsibility (to finite reasoning).

Our sins are made *possible* by finite reasoning, but never *ensured* or *necessitated* by finite reasoning. We can choose. And everyone chooses to sin.

In sum, this is why all humans can and do sin but not God.

How then can anyone be saved? If we accept the Holy Spirit, then He can allow us to see people the way that we would if we had infinite reasoning, through our faith and emotions. "Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" - 1 John 3:2.

The Problem of Suffering and the Answer to Job

The Problem of Suffering and the Answer to Job

I want to talk here about what I currently think about the problem of suffering, the problem of why a good God allows us to suffer when he could help us. (Note: I've recorded a podcast of this article here).

SUMMARY: I think that God is infinite and that people are partly infinite and partly finite. I say partly infinite because I think that we have to be partly infinite to be made in the image of an infinite God and relate to him. We can't be fully infinite like God because God alone can be fully infinite, but we can be partly infinite. Through the infinite part of us - our soul, we get the ability to feel stuff e.g. happiness and suffering, free will, morality, and so on, like God. Other living things have a soul as well but not understanding (Job 39:13-17). Through the finite part of us we get everything else, including our reasoning and understanding. Why is this important? Because if suffering comes to humans through our infinite soul... and finite reason can never fully understand the infinite... then we can never fully understand that through which suffering comes: our infinite soul. And I'd say that means never understanding suffering the way God knows about it. And it had to be this way. That's why it's OK for Christians not to know the answer to why we suffer in a way that would please philosophers, because we can probably never know the answer in such a way. So we should feel able to trust God's answer in the Bible.

In what sense are humans made in the image of God (Gen 1:27)? Is it being able to think that makes us in God's image?

Maybe. But then again, computers can think in a sense. With advanced enough technology, we could easily make thinking computers just as smart as we are. So either humans can design and build stuff in God's image, or being made in God's image is something more than this.

Let's look at the God who made us. There's an important distinction that people often forget about God, which is that he is infinite. Not infinitely good, or infinitely smart, but actually infinite. So we're made in the image of an infinite God.

This raises an interesting question: how can anything finite be made in the image of the infinite? You literally cannot imagine anything more different than a finite object and an infinite object. Humans in one sense have more in common with rocks than with God if we're finite, because at least rocks are finite. Yeah, but rocks can't think, you might say. But if thinking is just a matter of doing mental calculations, then actually we have more in common with computers than with God, because computers can 'think' in a sense and are also finite like we are. And advanced enough computers could think as intelligently as humans or be even more intelligent.

So there are a couple of problems with thinking that we have much in common with God if we're finite and God is infinite. Actually, it's relatively common to think that our finite language and knowledge are utterly inadequate to talk about the infinite hence = agnosticism.

Yet the apparent alternative of saying that humans are infinite like God makes no sense... it's even worse than saying that we're finite. If we were infinite then we could do an infinite number of calculations a second. Obviously, we can't. Being infinite would also make us equal to God, which is not the Christian view. Does this mean that we have to see humans as being *finitely* made in God's image, despite the problems?

But could there be a third option? What if you said that humans are partly infinite and partly finite? That way you could have the best of both worlds. If you said that human reasoning, knowledge and bodies are finite then you could make sense of our limited knowledge, power and understanding. And by saying that we're partly infinite you could show how we're made in the image of an infinite God without making humans in any way equal to God.

But why are we partly infinite rather than completely infinite? It's easy enough to suggest a reason: God *is* the infinite, all that is infinite is God, and there can be only one infinite ("Hear O Israel: the Lord is our God, and the Lord is one" - Deu 6:4). So through God's power we can use (or 'borrow') some of the infinite, but not all of it, as then we'd be God.

We're made in the image of God, and that means that we're like God in some way. What is God like? He feels things: happiness, love, hurt, joy, anger and so on. We're like that as well. Where do we get it from? I'd say from our infinite part. God has free will, so we get free will from there as well. And moral knowledge in the same way. Our infinite part could be called our (infinite) 'soul'.

But because we can't be fully infinite, we have to be made out of parts that are not infinite, and that means finite parts. Finite parts are infinitely less than God. So the rest of us, whatever isn't our soul, has to be made out of finite stuff, and that stuff is our physical body in this universe. Through God's power the infinite can interact with the finite in this way.

It's because every creature had to be made partly finite that God had to give all his creatures finite reasoning and understanding. There's something about having infinite reasoning that is one and the same with being fully infinite, and only God can be fully infinite, see for instance Matt 24:36 "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only". Also see Ecclesiastes 3:11 "God has set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end". I.e. our soul is infinite, but our reasoning is finite, because only God can be fully infinite.

There's a question of how we can have our own personality if we're actually borrowing our soul from God. I would speculate that as long as not all of infinity is used (i.e. all of God), then God can reuse infinity as many times as he wants to make many creatures. And that through our finite body and infinite soul interacting we take on our own personality different to God's.

But is there any need for a soul? Can't the brain account for why people act the way they do?

Well, just because we see our brain working when we make decisions doesn't mean that the brain is all that a human is. God needs to connect the finite to the infinite to make creatures, because creatures cannot be all-infinite. We must get our reasoning from something in the finite world, so why not use the brain as the source of finite reasoning and knowledge in humans? So clearly God has to give the brain a lot to do, since it is responsible for our reasoning, knowledge, and carrying out the free choices that we make through our soul. When we look at the brain doing lots of things, we're really looking at the brain doing its required tasks as the finite aspect of humanity (whereas we cannot look at the soul, as that's actually infinite.)

Wait a second, if we get the stuff that makes us like God from the infinite soul, then that means we get feeling from the soul. But don't we get feeling from the brain?

Not in the way we might think. God wanted to put something in our brains that would allow us to react quickly and easily when something happened in the physical world. So when a person reacts to pain, God wanted there to be something in the brain that would allow a quick response to pain. God wants our bodies to have automatic responses, to deal quickly and easily with situations that come up. And that requires circuitry in the brain that deals with emotions and feelings more generally. But I don't think that the circuitry in the brain actually does feel anything, I think it's just like the circuitry in a computer, only organic and a lot more complicated. It only helps our bodies react/act when we make choices in the infinite world. The circuitry itself feels nothing, any more than a box or a couch feels anything.

God has also given infinite souls to animals and other living things so that they can feel things. We can know this because our moral intuitions tell us that animals need to be protected, that come from God. They are given much less understanding of the things of God, however (Job 39:13-17).

Note: my attempt in the preceding section to make feeling things and suffering a part of the infinite world is *very* important for my argument.

OK, interesting thoughts, but what does this imply? I'll talk about what it implies for human reasoning and our ability to understand God before moving on to the problem of suffering.

If God is infinite and our reasoning is finite, then we have serious issues with ever understanding God through our reason. This is because finite reasoning can't deal with the infinite up close, but always has to approach it from a distance. That is, we always have to use the finite to understand the infinite. This means that we could be missing out on a lot of what the infinite is like when we talk about it. Also, the stuff we've worked out about the infinite sounds absurd and is hard to get one's head around.

For example, take the paradox of the Grand Hotel by David Hilbert. In theory, you should be able to put a guest in every room of a hotel. But what if the hotel is an infinite hotel? Well, you can't ever fill an infinite hotel with any finite number of guests. No matter how many guests go to the hotel, there will always be room, because the person in room 1 can move to room 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, and so on ad infinitum. Like you can't think of a 'highest' number (someone could beat you by adding a zero on the end of your number.) You would have to get an infinite number of guests to fill an infinite hotel.

This shows how the finite is an entirely different kind of number to the infinite, or different concept. The finite deals with the finite and can't interact with the infinite without help from the infinite. The infinite deals with the infinite, and through God's power can deal with the finite. They're very different concepts; the infinite isn't just 'much bigger' than the finite, but a different kind of thing. A difference of quality rather than quantity.

Another example of an infinite paradox is the paradox of the circle. Suppose you have a circle and a line to every point of the circle. You need an actually infinite number of lines to go to every point of the circle, because otherwise when you zoom in there'll be gaps. OK, suppose you've drawn that circle and the lines. Now draw a much larger circle around that circle. And make the lines you previously drew go out to that even bigger circle. Now, according to finite logic, when you look at those lines in enough depth, there should be tiny gaps between them when they go out to the much larger circle, because that circle is, well, much larger. But that's not the case. No gaps will ever appear between the lines going out to the much larger circle, no matter how much you zoom in, because infinity is always infinity. This is a rather counterintuitive mystery of infinity.

You can also use infinity to show that 1 = 2.

Let's assign infinity some value. Like X. Let's say that infinity = X.

OK, now let's add infinity to infinity. What does infinity + infinity equal? Surely two infinities (using finite logic). So if we say that infinity equals X, then infinity plus infinity must equal 2X.

But infinity always has the same value. So infinity plus infinity remains infinity. That means that if we assign a value to infinity then we can show that numbers that are inherently different are the same.

So infinity = X. Infinity + infinity = 2X. But infinity is always the same, so infinity + infinity = X. But this means that 2X = X. That would imply that 1 = 2.

So infinity can be used to show that 1 = 2. This shows that there are clearly 'issues' with using our reasoning to understand infinity, to say the least.

We find infinity so hard to understand because God really 'messed up' our reasoning when he made us. He did this so that he *could* make us (in line with my earlier explanation of only God being able to be fully infinite). No matter how smart people or computers get, we'll never even approach the kind of reasoning that God has. No matter how smart we get we'll still think in finite terms and use finite reasoning, even if everyone had an IQ of six billion. God is not just smarter than us, but has a different quality of reasoning, and understands things that it's not just a matter of 'smartness' to understand. You can't be smart enough to understand these things and still be finite. If we could understand them, then we'd be God. No angel or human will ever understand these issues (it reminds me of Matt 24:36 "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only".)

I'll now use what I've written to talk about suffering.

When atheists and Christians talk about suffering, they generally assume the 'commonsense' view of reality. In this view, when a hurricane hits, it seems obvious that someone could have been able to stop it. After all, we affect the physical world when we pick up a book, and we know that if we had really advanced technology then we could easily stop hurricanes. God, who is much more powerful than us, could easily stop the winds from blowing that hard, and could easily stop earthquakes and so on, which we could do with advanced enough technology. In fact, very advanced aliens who wanted to help us could probably get rid of all the suffering in the world. Am I saying that God is less powerful than extraterrestrial civilisations only a few hundred or thousand years more advanced than us?

Well obviously, if suffering was just in the finite world, and was just a 'finite world problem' then I'd have to agree with the atheist critic completely. Clearly, in the finite world, it would not be hard to stop any suffering. But there's a real question about which world the Christian is talking about when we talk about God preventing suffering... what if suffering is an 'infinite world' problem? What if suffering comes through the infinite world of the soul? It's not clear that the Christian is saying something illogical or odd sounding about the finite world... he/she could be saying something illogical or odd sounding about the *infinite world*. And that world could well have a really, really different logic to the world we see around us. This situation could frustrate people's attempts to disprove God.

Is suffering *really* a finite world problem? Suffering definitely manifests itself in the finite world and is affected by what we do there... but it doesn't seem like a finite world problem. Let me explain. Earlier I said that the ability to feel stuff comes from the infinite soul and brain working together. The body shapes the feelings, the feelings themselves come through the soul: the part of us made in God's image, the part of us that's actually infinite, that we borrow from God in some sense, that is actually 'up there' in the infinite world with God in some sense. So suffering doesn't actually come from things such as hurricanes or earthquakes, although those are immediate causes of suffering. Suffering must ultimately come from the infinite world, through our souls. So it sounds like suffering is in many ways an infinite world problem!

Sure, suffering manifests itself in the finite world, but the ultimate cause of and ultimate solution to suffering really has nothing to do with the finite world. I say ultimate solution because clearly we can lessen the amount of suffering in the finite world with our actions. Thinking finitely you could say that we create suffering everywhere in the world when we choose to sin, and God can't take this suffering away without cutting off our freedom completely, although this is just a finite reasoning guess. It's possible that God has made it so that suffering is reflected, like a mirror reflects images, in the finite world when suffering is created everywhere through sin, so that people don't suffer without any visible cause. So we would suffer, for example, from natural disasters. God needs to do stuff in the infinite world to get rid of suffering, not the finite world. And I'd imagine that God tries to lessen suffering as much as he can in the infinite world, since that's the only place where there can be a solution. I would not say that my attempt just then to explain suffering has to be right, the point is that suffering is mostly not a finite world issue.

There are a couple of difficulties here: although suffering is an infinite, not finite, world issue, it seems to be lessened and affected by what goes on in the finite world, which seems a little contradictory. It also seems contradictory that we can reduce suffering, but an all powerful God cannot even though he's doing everything he can to help us. This is one of the reasons why I'm appealing to suffering being an infinite mystery, through making suffering an infinite experience of an infinite soul. I hope that infinite logic (whatever that might be like) could explain such an odd situation.

Let's take a look at what the Bible says about suffering, to see what kind of logic might apply in the infinite world with regard to suffering:

Romans 5:12-14 "Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned - sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come."

So is Paul saying here that Adam's sin caused all the suffering in the world? When I first read this I used to think 'Huh? How does that even work?' Atheists would probably think that this sounds ridiculous... indeed it does, according to finite world logic. There is a very weird cause and effect thing going on here. How on earth does a couple of people's sins a long time ago affect anything today? It makes very little sense using our reasoning. (Note: The relationship between sin and suffering is probably very hard to understand, not direct or simple like we might think it is.)

Where I'm going with these thoughts is the idea that even though something like Romans 5 makes little sense in the finite world it could make complete sense in the infinite world. This opens the way for us to look at suffering with a Biblical perspective once we accept that suffering is an *infinite world* problem.

Philosophers often complain, why doesn't God just come down and tell us the solution to the problem of suffering if he exists? Why doesn't he explain everything to us and then we'll stop arguing against his existence?

The thing is, I don't actually think that God can even articulate the whole 'suffering issue' fully using finite language. It's an infinite world problem. Sure, God can give us the main points, clarify why we suffer to a good degree, and we'll certainly know that his explanation is right if he appears to the world and tells us himself. That would be nice, and would satisfy our doubts. But can we really know why we suffer in the way God knows why we suffer? The answer, I think, is no. Even when we get to heaven, all we're going to know is as good an answer as can be articulated in finite language, describing what is really an infinite world problem. We can no more understand something like our consciousness, free will or suffering than perfectly understand infinity, although God can hopefully give us the main points and maybe add a few layers of philosophical 'varnish'. Our conversation with God in heaven about suffering will be much like God trying to explain to us what it's like to be fully infinite. It's going to be interesting, but ultimately we won't be able to follow the reasoning very well because there's a lot of stuff there that finite reasoning just can't understand. Hopefully we'll get the main points.

That said, God has told us the truth in the Bible. He has actually told us pretty much what we're going to hear when we get to heaven about the problem of suffering, in passages such as Romans 5. Literally, in a way that we can't understand, that we will probably never understand fully even with God's help, Adam's sin (or the original proto-humans if you accept theistic evolution) caused all the suffering in the world. This suffering had to happen; God could not have prevented or lessened the suffering in our world without damaging an even greater good. This 'odd situation' arose somehow (considering God is perfectly good and powerful) through Adam's sin, because of which people in our world suffered terribly. And somehow it was a greater good for Adam to have that freedom even though it caused all our suffering (or if this sounds too strange, you could say that we were all present in the Garden and came to our current world at different times in history, and Adam and Eve are symbolic for us.) God told us the truth in Romans, it's just that there are missing puzzle pieces to contextualise the what, when and why in a way that would please philosophers.

When God does tell us why we suffered, when we get to heaven, I don't think the answer he's going to give is going to be a matter-of-fact 'This is why'. I think that the 'best' stuff God will use to help us understand suffering in heaven, the really helpful stuff, will be in providing the context (like this talk of infinity) for *why* we can't understand suffering fully, and our experience of God's love for us in heaven (Rev 21:4) which will comfort us in letting us know that there is an answer. I think that a big part of why no philosopher has solved the problem of suffering is that the answer can't be very easily translated into finite concepts or thought, and so Romans 5 is close to the best that we'll ever get.

To sum up: we are in a sense in the permanent situation of Job when it comes to understanding suffering. Many believe that God avoided giving an answer to Job, or made excuses to Job. The reality is that no matter how God tries to explain it to us, the answer isn't going to get much better than Romans 5. By answering Job the way that he did, God tried to make this situation plain to people (Job 42:3).

The thing is, this intellectual stuff can never get us anywhere, even if we had God as our personal teacher. In fact, our intellect will never get us anywhere with God. The infinite world is so totally different to the finite world that it's an entirely different way of existing, and finite reasoning can only ever see it through finite eyes. You'd need infinite reasoning and infinite concepts to know intellectually what God is like. This means to know about God we have to relate to God using the stuff that we have in common with God, the infinite stuff that humans and God share. And that is: feeling, morality, free will, love and so on, not anything from the intellect. Or we can know key points about God through revelation. This means that to know about God we have to connect with him on a personal level rather than on a level of abstract ideas which, being finite, can never know much at all about God (1 Cor 1:19-21). If anywhere, this is where the best intellectual answer to the problem of suffering is to be found.