Free will megapost

A collection of short essays (except the last one) in one post on various issues/problems to do with the idea of 'free will' in Christianity.

1. Summary of free will in a paragraph
2. Does God's foreknowledge contradict the idea of free will?
3. Why didn't God only make people who would follow Him?
4. Is God responsible for how everything has turned out?
5. How can God have free will if He can never be tempted to do evil?
6. Does the fact that we have original sin mean that humans are not responsible for our evil?
7. Wouldn't serving God take away our independence and free will?
8. Does the Bible say that humans don't have free will?

1. Summary of free will in a paragraph

What is free will? An answer I favour is that our intellectual reason isn't like what God has - ('My thoughts are not your thoughts' - Isaiah 55:8; Romans 11:34). But our soul, or something like that is like what God has (John 10:34). We get free will from the latter, but because the former isn't really like what God has it can never understand free will (from the latter) adequately. Something not like God is on the wrong 'level', or category of reality, to understand something that is like what God has. Moreover, to paraphrase Bertrand Russell, this means that we will always unconsciously translate anything to do with free will into non-free will language our intellect can understand.

2. Does God's foreknowledge contradict the idea of free will?

The 'God's foreknowledge contradicts free will, because we can't make God wrong' argument ONLY works if free will is something that exists within what you might call the 'three known causal categories'. The three known causal categories are: a) randomness, b) probability, and c) determinism. For a human the whole idea of a 'prediction' necessitates these categories. 0% certainty = randomness = no clue at all, 50% certainty = probability = it could go either way, 100% certainty = determinism = no chance of it not happening. We can never think outside of these known categories, or even imagine how any being possibly could... Determinism is the predicting category of the three, and that pretty much kills the idea of free will (for obvious reasons).

But free will doesn't necessarily have to exist within the 'three known causal categories'. Maybe it can exist in a completely different causal category, outside of cause/effect/probability/random 'space'. If so, then unfortunately we can never understand it (and it's very mystical). Yet it may not have to exist within those categories. If so, God could know something without forcing it to happen.

3. Why didn't God only make people who would follow Him?

I think if we understood it really well then we'd know that free will is *like* a random process in a couple of ways. Creating a person is kind of like flipping a coin that will come up 50/50 heads or tails. This is important because if a process is random then you can't make it go heads or tails. So God making a person is kind of like flipping the coin in the sense that God can't make someone on the basis of how they're going to choose, just like I can't make a random coin toss go the way I want. But unlike flipping the coin God *can* predict how we'll turn out - He just can't make only the people who will choose the way He wants.

So in some ways free will is *like* randomness, but it's not really random because randomness is a terrible thing in people. It's somehow a 'third option' out of cause and effect that mimics randomness in this aspect, but is overall a genuine, great thing to have.

In Matt 13:24-29 God says that there's some kind of ratio of people who'll choose the way He wants and people who won't. Salvation is kind of like a statistical generalisation of e.g. X:Y ratio that becomes meaningless on an individual level because individually everyone has the power to choose the way God wants. It's just that on a generalised statistical level God knows X:Y ratio will be saved. It's like individually most philosophy students can choose to study metaphysics but statistically only a certain proportion will. Individually every Internet user can visit Apple.com but statistically only a certain proportion will.

4. Is God responsible for how everything has turned out?

Question: isn't God responsible for how everything has turned out, by choosing to make things in the way that He did?

I think at some point, one has to make an intellectual leap and say that as beings with finite reasoning, our reasoning is on the 'wrong level' to understand the infinity of God effectively, which also includes the image-of-God in humans. This frees us from having to work out in-depth how something like free will could work, which might come from something Godlike (infinite) that human brains make use of (Ecc 3:11; John 10:34-36).

So I don't think that Christians can be expected to explain how a) God could predict something without narrowing everything down to only one possible outcome, and, b) how we could possess a 'thing' called free will where multiple outcomes were possible, although only one outcome in fact occurred (which is part of our intuitive grasp of the concept of free will).

This means that we can trust from our feeling that we have free will, that although God knew what would happen by creating the world, the fact that there is evil in the world is our responsibility.

5. How can God have free will if He can never be tempted to do evil?

To begin with, in Christian theology just like being physical is part of our concept of 'a stone,' so loving and rejoicing in doing the right thing is part of what it means to be a 'mind' or 'conscious.' Love and goodness is to consciousness what being physical, or existing in the universe, is to a rock. Mind/consciousness is a kind of substance or thing that follows different rules to physical stuff. One of these aspects of mind, different to rocks, is loving and being good. So mind is love.

Following this, there are two possible reasons why people are tempted by God is not.

The first is that because God is God, He's never tempted. Because we're not, we must be tempted. Never being tempted is a 'perfection' that only God can have.

A second possible reason is that our mind is localised in a brain, and the brain isn't sort of made out of love like our mind is. It's not bad or evil in any way, it's just not 'love', or has the connection to love, that 'mind' does. Our mind pulls us in the direction of loving others unconditionally. But since we use our brain to think, and the brain isn't love, we can step 'outside the box', as it were, and do anything.

The question is: why did God make us brain-Minds instead of 'Mind' by itself? Couldn't God have taken away the possibility of evil? The answer is that to be pure mind you basically have to be God, I think. So the above setup (which makes sin very likely) needs to be the case.

So for us, free will MUST INCLUDE the possibility of sin. But for God, genuine free will comes without the possibility of sin...

6. Does the fact that we have original sin mean that humans are not responsible for our evil?

Our intellectual reasoning and moral sense belong to different worlds. Our intellectual reason belongs to our brain in the universe, our moral sense belongs to the image of God... in whatever kind of reality that involves.

Our moral sense gives us our highest moral ideals, and tells us that we should never do wrong. But our intellectual reasoning can't understand how a person could have reasons for doing the right thing in every circumstance.

The closest that intellectual reasoning can come to morality is 'You should do the right thing out of rational self-interest' - game theory. 'You do a good thing for me and I'll do a good thing for you' - tit-for-tat morality (the flip-side of tit-for-tat is 'Hurt me and you're going to suffer horribly').

This is a bad thing in circumstances where the self-interested thing is the wrong thing morally.

If you combine this reasoning with free will, then what you get is everyone choosing to sin because our reasoning leads us to make choices in a certain 'rational' (i.e. game theoretic) way.

You don't need to appeal to evolution to explain why humans are basically selfish - you can appeal to humans having a form of intellectual reasoning that tempts us with game theory, tit-for-tat, self-interested, etc. reasons for acting.

So original sin is essentially the curse that we'll work out good and evil for ourselves, instead of copying what God thinks.

The fact that we think this way doesn't seem to take away our free will, or excuse our actions. If we want to do the right thing our moral sense makes it plain to us. If we want to reject original sin then God provides the answer in Jesus Christ. Original sin makes it impossible to do the right thing consistently, because it creates constant, tantalizing temptations to sin, but in each individual act we are free.

7. Wouldn't serving God take away our independence and free will?

Mat 4:8-10: "Again, the Evil One took him up to a very high mountain, and let him see all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; And he said to him, All these things will I give you, if you will go down on your face and give me worship. Then said Jesus to him, Away, Satan: for it is in the Writings, Give worship to the Lord your God and be his servant only."

One way of thinking about serving God is that it's like the ultimate 'protection mechanism'. Let's say that you had two people in a really heated argument, it would be very difficult not to say hurtful things to the other person which would hurt your relationship with them down the road. But if they were both focused completely on serving God, then they wouldn't even think of doing hurtful things because they wouldn't be concerned with what they wanted at that particular time, but only what God wants at that time. And God always wants people to love others. So by only focusing on what God wants, that protects us from doing what we think is right (but isn't) at a particular time. Serving God with all our heart and mind ensures that we will always do God's will, which is a 'protective cover' for helping us always love others and God as we should.

On a similar note, it's in the nature of God that God cannot be tempted by evil. All other creatures must be tempted at some point. This makes God the perfect person to refer decisions to, assuming our communication with God was clear.

Another argument that we should serve God starts by assuming that what makes us people is that we have minds. And having a mind makes you worthy of love and respect. People should care for you because you have a mind and have feelings, can suffer etc. Well, this is a little tricky to really convey, but God is not a mind on the 'human' level. He's a 'super-mind' which somehow encompasses more 'mind' than humans have. A 'super-mind', as opposed to a human-style mind, can do more stuff. A 'super-mind' can understand free will, everything about minds, is all-powerful, eternal, and so on. So the argument says that if humans deserve love because we have minds, then a 'super-mind' deserves even more love and respect, which is what God is.

Also regarding some issues we clearly think that limits to freedom enhance freedom. So it's illegal to yell 'fire' in a crowded theater without cause. So if you assume that humans are made to be 'love' like God, then it would enhance freedom to serve God in such a way that humans are love (i.e. by serving God like Jesus did).

8. Does the Bible say that humans don't have free will?

Rom 9:17-23: "For the holy Writings say to Pharaoh, For this same purpose did I put you on high, so that I might make my power seen in you, and that there might be knowledge of my name through all the earth.
So then, at his pleasure he has mercy on a man, and at his pleasure he makes the heart hard.
But you will say to me, Why does he still make us responsible? who is able to go against his purpose?
But, O man, who are you, to make answer against God? May the thing which is made say to him who made it, Why did you make me so? Or has not the potter the right to make out of one part of his earth a vessel for honour, and out of another a vessel for shame?
What if God, desiring to let his wrath and his power be seen, for a long time put up with the vessels of wrath which were ready for destruction: And to make clear the wealth of his glory to vessels of mercy, which he had before made ready for glory"

Does this verse say that humans have no free will? This has been used to argue that the Bible itself contradicts the idea of free will, since God is alleged to determine what people choose (for His glory).

I think that if a) and b) are true below, then one can show in a way that fits with Romans 9:17-23 that God wants everyone to be saved, offers salvation to everyone (in the next life if they never hear about Jesus) and that through a miracle by God everyone can say 'Yes'.

a) In one of the paradoxes of free will, although God knows before we're born how everyone will freely choose in an infinity of possible situations, God can't use this knowledge to make only the people who will freely choose in the way that God wants.

So if God knows that out of a hundred people He makes that 33 will choose to reject grace and 67 will not reject it, God can't use this knowledge to make only the 67 people who will be saved.

More about this here.

b) Given (a), God must deliberately make people who He knows will be damned in order to make anyone who is saved at all.

E.g. if the ratio of people who reject God versus not reject is 33:67, then God has to knowingly make an individual who will make 'cursed' choices (Matt 25:41) in order to make two individuals who will be happy forever.

You could describe the cursed individuals as 'clay vessels ready for destruction'. But they do the cursing themselves. But God knew they would do so before He made them! So God bears some responsibility. But it was nonetheless good to make them because their creation was a necessary part of making the saved given the 33:67 ratio or whatever it is.

So in a tricky way, both human freedom and divine sovereignty overlap here, and Paul is describing the 'divine sovereignty' side of things, where God bears some responsibility. But was God wrong to do what He did? Creating 'vessels ready for destruction' was needed to make 'vessels of mercy', so no.

To be more exact, God's actions are morally OK from our point-of-view as long as they fit with two requirements:

1. The ratio of the damned to the saved isn't too worrisome. E.g. if 90% of people are going to hell then it seems unlikely that God should create people even if it's based on a fair process. I'm not sure what ratio is 'alright', but as long as there's more happiness than sadness in reality overall, then it seems OK for God to make 'cursed' people as long that is needed to make saved people.

2. It's the outcome of a fair process. In the idea of grace there's nothing stopping the unsaved from coming to God; God offers salvation to both the unsaved and the saved and no one gets an advantage over anyone else in accepting it (over this and the next life). Every damned individual could be saved at any point over an eternity if they simply changed their mind and didn't reject grace(!) So damnation is the outcome of a fair process - the saved are only treated differently to the damned because they don't reject God's grace ("there is no respect of persons with God" - Rom 2:11).

(Note: What I just said is a bit confusing given the concept of heaven and hell. I wrote an article on a good way of looking at hell here).

It's a mystery how a) and b) works. Libertarian free will doesn't make sense from the perspective of finite reasoning so it's not a huge step from the not-making-sense nature of free will to accepting that free will works in a way consistent with a) and b). You have to accept the idea that free will is a mystery and somehow fits with a) and b) for this argument to work.

If you read the Romans passage above in light of these arguments, then I believe that you can reasonably interpret them in a way where God wants everyone to be saved but people reject His offer of salvation. For those who reject, God uses them for a dishonourable purpose to help the saved come to Him forever. It's only because God knows they will reject Him - and are a clay vessel made for destruction in the understandable way I talked about above - that God hardens their heart to use them for a dishonourable purpose if that is somehow needed to bring people to Him (through creating adversity in ways that God knows will do that).

What does the soul actually do? A discussion

From a forum discussion...

...As a philosophy undergraduate at my university I find myself in the interesting position of being probably the only really traditional dualist (among philosophy students) that I know of. I think a lot of Christians are moving to a less expansive view of the soul.

A good way I think of distinguishing the soul and the brain can be found from analysing David Chalmers' 'hard problem of consciousness' (Wikipedia article).

Say you have a brain that is structured in a certain way, so that it does a lot of things. The makeup of the brain can completely explain why it does a lot of stuff. The question is, could you have a brain without the brain actually feeling something like our experience of subjective phenomena? Could you have a brain that does lots of stuff without anybody actually being 'in there'? It seems that there is a kind of gap between having a brain doing stuff and that brain having a subjective awareness (note: subjective, unobservable consciousness is also referred to as 'qualia').

I would place the soul as what provides the subjective awareness. It is the extra thing, the missing piece, that transforms a brain that does stuff into a brain that does stuff and has a subjective awareness. So the soul and brain work together - the soul is the extra thing making us conscious (animals also have souls but not understanding, I would say, lest I deny animals consciousness).

(Note for readers: what is Chalmer's argument?

1. We can theoretically imagine physical bodies and brains acting roughly like we do but which have no inner subjective experiences (i.e. are not conscious)
2. If we can imagine it, then it is theoretically possible.
3. If it is theoretically possible, then there is an explanatory gap that we have not figured out between our brains and consciousness, that we need to figure out in order to fully understand why our brains are conscious.
4. For various reasons, this link is not likely to come from further scientific discoveries in understanding the brain. It can only come through philosophical speculation.

The discussion continues...)

...I would agree with the comments here that from what we can know from philosophy it certainly makes sense that this apparent 'gap' between functional states (or identity theory) and qualia could just be a result of missing, important knowledge of some kind. The 'water doesn't seem to have to equal H20 if you don't know much science, but in reality it does' type of response is a pretty good response.

So I would definitely say that it could be called an 'explanatory gap' rather than a gap that destroys physicalism... nevertheless, it is *some* kind of explanatory gap. I'm attracted to turning this 'explanatory gap' into a place for a real, dualist soul for a few reasons (soul defined as originator of qualia).

I'm quite perplexed by the libertarian free will problem, or how to have a really great kind of free will. Ultimately, any way I've read of explaining libertarian free will has fallen flat.

So in this 'explanatory gap' (provided by arguments like Chalmers') I'm attracted to placing a soul as a kind of substance that is totally unlike anything we can ever rationally talk about. The soul I see as something that draws on God in some way without being God... so from a world our reason can never access. It's because we can never fully understand this world that we a) Have free will, but b) Can never explain it satisfactorily.

That would probably be the primary reason I'm attracted to dualism... not necessarily because I'm a Christian. These days it seems that a lot of Christians are moving to a physicalist account of the mind. That sounds OK, as long as God can preserve our unique personalities when we die.

(Comment on how getting brain damaged affects personality)

...It's quite interesting the degree to which our conscious states are affected by physical states for any dualist. I think that the most a dualist can realistically say (such as myself) would be that the soul-qualia is basically the 'cherry on the top' of the 'cake' of a person, the cake being the physical brain. So we're significantly a physical brain, and the soul-qualia adds a bit of qualia.

But I add a caveat to this analogy: since we consider a person to be their mind, the 'cherry on the top' is actually the person, and the cake allows the cherry to 'sit somewhere', and thus exist in that way.

I'm not an epiphenomenalist like Chalmers. So I think that the soul-qualia, even though it's just the 'cherry on the top' does some important stuff. I think it somehow has the ability to remake the brain, which allows free will, somehow. So our qualia can influence our brain. I would say that the phenomenon of neuroplasticity is our soul-qualia exercising its free will (neuroplasticity being a very interesting area of research into how we can change our personalities by changing our patterns of thinking).

(Link - click show transcript - to account of research on neuroplasticity. This is a real, scientific area of research saying that we have the freedom, with a huge amount of effort, to 'choose' to change our basic personality, and is empirical evidence of free will.)

What determines the degree of 'sinfulness' the human race gets from original sin?

Continued from here.

Suppose that there is something called 'original sin' that biases humanity's choices towards evil. Why does it bias the human race to the specific amount of evil that we do? Why isn't the human race much nicer, with fewer awful events, or much worse, with more evil? What determines our sinfulness as a group affected by original sin?

The 'weight' of original sin is basically the push on the human will to make decisions in terms of game theory, and rational self-interest, rather than blindly doing the right thing.

So for example, in the prisoners dilemma, the rational thing to do is to act wrongfully (edit: meant to illustrate a principle; it's a good thing for those who commit crimes to get arrested).

From Wikipedia:

"Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies (defects from the other) for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent (cooperates with the other), the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?

...In this game, as in all game theory, the only concern of each individual player (prisoner) is maximizing his/her own payoff, without any concern for the other player's payoff. The unique equilibrium for this game is a Pareto-suboptimal solution, that is, rational choice leads the two players to both play defect, even though each player's individual reward would be greater if they both played cooperatively... Since in any situation playing defect is more beneficial than cooperating, all rational players will play defect, all things being equal."

Similarly, in the tragedy of the commons the rational thing to do is to act wrongfully. This has been proved mathematically. That is the self-interested thing.

The tragedy of the commons:

"As a means of illustrating these, [Garrett Hardin] introduces a hypothetical example of a pasture shared by local herders. The herders are assumed to wish to maximize their yield, and so will increase their herd size whenever possible. The utility of each additional animal has both a positive and negative component:

* Positive: the herder receives all of the proceeds from each additional animal.
* Negative: the pasture is slightly degraded by each additional animal.

Crucially, the division of these costs and benefits is unequal: the individual herder gains all of the advantage, but the disadvantage is shared among all herders using the pasture. Consequently, for an individual herder the rational course of action is to continue to add additional animals to his or her herd. However, since all herders reach the same rational conclusion, overgrazing and degradation of the pasture is its long-term fate. Nonetheless, the rational response for an individual remains the same at every stage, since the gain is always greater to each herder than the individual share of the distributed cost.

Because this sequence of events follows predictably from the behaviour of the individuals concerned, Hardin describes it as a "tragedy"."

So in sum, original sin 'weights' our choices in the sense that it makes game theory and rational self-interest very important in how we decide things. Original sin is the 'curse' (some would say blessing) to evaluate moral decisions based on game theoretic considerations, instead of 'blindly' doing the right thing.

Does the Bible say that humans don't have free will?

Rom 9:17-23: "For the holy Writings say to Pharaoh, For this same purpose did I put you on high, so that I might make my power seen in you, and that there might be knowledge of my name through all the earth.
So then, at his pleasure he has mercy on a man, and at his pleasure he makes the heart hard.
But you will say to me, Why does he still make us responsible? who is able to go against his purpose?
But, O man, who are you, to make answer against God? May the thing which is made say to him who made it, Why did you make me so? Or has not the potter the right to make out of one part of his earth a vessel for honour, and out of another a vessel for shame?
What if God, desiring to let his wrath and his power be seen, for a long time put up with the vessels of wrath which were ready for destruction: And to make clear the wealth of his glory to vessels of mercy, which he had before made ready for glory"

Does this verse say that humans have no free will? This has been used to argue that the Bible itself contradicts the idea of free will, since God is alleged to determine what people choose (for His glory).

I think that if a) and b) are true below, then one can show in a way that fits with Romans 9:17-23 that God wants everyone to be saved, offers salvation to everyone (in the next life if they never hear about Jesus) and that through a miracle by God everyone can say 'Yes'.

a) In one of the paradoxes of free will, although God knows before we're born how everyone will freely choose in an infinity of possible situations, God can't use this knowledge to make only the people who will freely choose in the way that God wants.

So if God knows that out of a hundred people He makes that 33 will choose to reject grace and 67 will not reject it, God can't use this knowledge to make only the 67 people who will be saved.

More about this here.

b) Given (a), God must deliberately make people who He knows will choose to be damned in order to make anyone who is saved at all.

E.g. if the ratio of people who reject God versus not reject is 33:67, then God has to knowingly make an individual who will make 'cursed' choices (Matt 25:41) in order to make two individuals who will be happy forever.

You could describe the cursed individuals as 'clay vessels ready for destruction'. But they do the cursing themselves. But God knew they would do so before He made them! So God bears some responsibility. But it was nonetheless good to make them because their creation was a necessary part of making the saved given the 33:67 ratio or whatever it is.

So in a tricky way, both human freedom and divine sovereignty overlap here, and Paul is describing the 'divine sovereignty' side of things, where God bears some responsibility. But was God wrong to do what He did? Creating 'vessels ready for destruction' was needed to make 'vessels of mercy', so no (and they do the 'destructing' themselves by freely rejecting grace, as God knew they would).

To be more exact, God's actions are morally OK from our point-of-view as long as they fit with two requirements:

1. The ratio of the damned to the saved isn't too worrisome. E.g. if 90% of people are going to hell then it seems unlikely that God should create people even if it's based on a fair process. I'm not sure what ratio is 'alright', but as long as there's more happiness than sadness in reality overall, then it seems OK for God to make 'cursed' people as long that is needed to make saved people.

2. It's the outcome of a fair process. In the idea of grace there's nothing stopping the unsaved from coming to God; God offers salvation to both the unsaved and the saved and no one gets an advantage over anyone else in accepting it (over this and the next life). Every damned individual could be saved at any point over an eternity if they simply changed their mind and didn't reject grace(!) So damnation is the outcome of a fair process - the saved are only treated differently to the damned because they don't reject God's grace ("there is no respect of persons with God" - Rom 2:11).

(Note: What I just said is a bit confusing given the concept of heaven and hell. I wrote an article on a good way of looking at hell here).

It's a mystery how a) and b) works. Libertarian free will doesn't make sense from the perspective of finite reasoning so it's not a huge step from the not-making-sense nature of free will to accepting that free will works in a way consistent with a) and b). You have to accept the idea that free will is a mystery and somehow fits with a) and b) for this argument to work.

If you read the Romans passage above in light of these arguments, then I believe that you can reasonably interpret them in a way where God wants everyone to be saved but people reject His offer of salvation. For those who reject, God uses them for a dishonourable purpose to help the saved come to Him forever. It's only because God knows they will reject Him - and are a clay vessel made for destruction in the understandable way I talked about above - that God hardens their heart to use them for a dishonourable purpose if that is somehow needed to bring people to Him (through creating adversity in ways that God knows will do that).

Do humans get the image of God through Jesus?

Some speculation on Jesus being the image of God versus humans being in the image of God...

For Christ:

Colossians 1:15-16: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him."

Colossians 2:9-10: "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority."

John 5:26: "For even as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son to have life in himself."

For humans:

Genesis 1:26: "Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness"

James 3:9: "With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness."

John 1:4: "In him was life, and that life was the light of men."

John 1:9: "The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world."

The question is: how can humans be made in God's image, since God is infinite and humans are finite?

Another question is: what does it mean to speak of an infinite God? What does 'infinity' in that context mean?

One answer is to say that the infinite is essentially a person, and a unified whole.


(Click to enlarge)

Suppose that the only way that something can be a person is through being infinite. Infinity, and only infinity gives consciousness, love, morality and free will.


(Summary of this view, click to enlarge)

I think what these verses COULD mean is that God incarnated Himself into creation as Jesus, as someone that could have both infinite and finite aspects. The infinite part of Jesus was God, God's soul and therefore personality, and the finite aspect of Jesus was His physical body in the universe (although all finite things are also held together in Jesus - Col 1:17).

I think that the way God made finite creatures in His image is that through Jesus God somehow gives finite humans access to His infinite qualities like personhood etc. Jesus gives 'light' (or 'image-of-Godness') to finite creatures.

So humans take on the 'image of God' through Jesus, through whom every human has access to infinite qualities like personhood, consciousness/mind, love, morality, and free will.

Jesus is the 'door' through which humans are made in God's image.

This explains how we have free will, consciousness, a moral sense that holds us accountable before God's standards, even though we can never explain it. Since our reason is finite. But we're not Gods - Jesus is God and we get these things through our existence in Christ, which people who never come to God will one day lose.

Is it impossible for God to be perfect?

Being a just and fair person is a good thing right? It's also good to be forgiving. Therefore a perfect person must express perfect justice and forgiveness, since those are both good traits to have. But surely someone who is completely just would demand justice at times when someone who is completely forgiving would forgive. Therefore, someone who is completely just and forgiving would be a self-contradictory mess. Therefore a perfect person is impossible, as this has no doubt proved, making a perfect God impossible, and therefore a perfect God cannot exist.

The above paragraph is not what I believe, by the way. The above argument has been argued at times to show that God is impossible. The reason why it's absurd is that clearly it makes sense to speak of someone as morally perfect. All they need are perfect intentions. But by placing 'justice' and 'forgiveness' into mental formulas what makes sense can be made to make no sense.

It just goes to show that our intuitions aren't very simple things that can be put e.g. into graphs and formulas. Our intuitions are very complex. So if someone tries to show that God doesn't exist using our intuitions then there's a huge danger that the intuition has been eliminated and in its place is a formula which doesn't quite capture it. I make the same general point in this article on God attribute contradiction arguments.

A doctorate could probably be written on exactly what's wrong with the above argument and the underlying principles it contradicts. We could spend a lifetime buried in philosophical books to show exactly how it's wrong. It just goes to show that we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss a concept if a formula contradicts it, if we have any reason to think that intuitively it can make sense (like the idea that there's a 'super mind' behind physical reality - i.e. God).

Why people are bad (it's not because of evolution); why original sin is so intractable

Humans are like someone standing with one foot in the sea and one foot on land. The foot in the sea is our physical body and brain, the foot on land is our 'mind' in the 'world of conscious awareness'.

A brain is distinct from a mind. Although the mind is based off the brain, the mind is not the brain. The mind arises out of the brain, and has many distinct properties (e.g. qualia) not possessed by the brain.

What do the brain and mind each contribute to making us who we are?

Brain/body:

Every act of intellectual reasoning
All knowledge (except knowledge given through the Spirit - 1 Cor 2:13-14)
Something to express free choices with

Mind:

Consciousness / Mind / Qualia
Love / A moral sense
Free will

So we don't work out the answer to any problem in the world of mind. Every act of intellectual reasoning comes from the brain.

This helps to explain why humans are bad (it's not because of evolution) and why original sin is impossible to overcome even though we have genuine free will.

Our intellectual reasoning and moral sense belong to different worlds. Our intellectual reasoning belongs to our brain in the universe, and is shared by such things as computers and calculators. Our moral sense belongs to the image of God, which is not the same thing as the brain, in whatever kind of thing/reality that involves.

Our moral sense gives us our highest moral ideals, and tells us that we should never do wrong. But our intellectual reasoning can't understand how a person could have reasons for doing the right thing in every circumstance.

The closest that intellectual reasoning can come to morality is 'You should do the right thing out of rational self-interest' - game theory. 'You do a good thing for me and I'll do a good thing for you' - tit-for-tat morality (the flip-side of tit-for-tat is 'Hurt me and you're going to suffer horribly').

This is a bad thing in circumstances where the self-interested thing is the wrong thing morally.

If you combine this reasoning with free will, then what you get is everyone choosing to sin because our reasoning leads us to make choices in a certain 'rational' (i.e. game theoretic) way.

You don't need to appeal to evolution to explain why humans are basically selfish - you can appeal to humans having a form of intellectual reasoning that tempts us with game theory, tit-for-tat, self-interested, etc. reasons for acting.

So original sin is essentially the curse that we'll work out good and evil for ourselves, instead of copying what God thinks.

The only way to circumvent original sin would be to act 100% on faith, to not even think about one's choices but just do the right thing all the time. That's the only way that someone could act on their moral sense in every possible situation. That's impossible for humans, like walking purely by faith.

That's why original sin is so devastating to morality: no one is going to act on their moral ideals all the time because there is no way that our intellectual reason can understand why we should ever do that. It's not because of evolution, but because God had to make us with a form of intellectual reasoning that makes selfishness make sense from a rational point-of-view.

I'm not saying that intellectual reasoning is bad, by the way. Like everything that God has made, it's good. We need intellectual reasoning to do stuff. But it has bad side-effects when it tempts us to do evil. And we couldn't have God's form of intellectual reasoning which doesn't have this side-effect.

Here's an overview of this:

Human sinfulness = free will + self-interest appealing to our rational faculty (think of game theory, tit-for-tat, reciprocal altruism, and the like...)

Original sin = free will + self-interest appealing to our rational faculty + God not protecting us from thinking in terms of rational self-interest.

God cannot be tempted by evil = free will + a moral sense + a second level added to the moral sense that is intellectual, not intuitive. This 'rational' moral sense is how God thinks intellectually, and always honours moral intuitions. Only God gets to have this.

Continued here.

My Theology in 60 Seconds

How are humans made in the image of God?


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How are humans made in the image of God? We may also ask: how can something finite have anything in common with an infinite God? Here's what I think is going on: before God made any of us, He decided to take on finite aspects and put Himself into finite reality. This would someday allow the creation of people apart from God. Because this process involved God taking on finite aspects, the resulting person who came from it - Jesus - is said to be the 'image of God' (Col 1:15). Through Jesus, God made other people who share in the image of God (John 1:9). God gives brains and bodies a share in the image of God by somehow giving us access to the infinite qualities in Jesus, although we're not God like Jesus is. It's through the image of God found in Jesus that we gain access to qualities like consciousness/mind, free will, love, morality and so on, which make us human and in God's image. Those qualities involve stuff that only the infinite can have, which is why we need to get them through God in the flesh (Jesus) to have them at all.

Free will


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How do we get free will? Free will doesn't seem to make sense in a lot of ways. We get free will through the image of God provided for us in Jesus. Jesus is God, and He gives us access to infinite qualities through Him. So free will is a phenomenon of infinity, borrowed from Jesus/God. We can't understand it very well because we use a finite brain to think, and that means we can only understand finite things. That's why we know that we have free will but have no idea how to explain it. It's the same with consciousness, which also comes through what we get from Jesus/God.

Suffering


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Suffering comes to us through such things as earthquakes, diseases, and evil people, but suffering *also* comes to us through the image of God (our soul), because the image of God makes us conscious rather than a robot.  So having the image of God enables us to suffer. This implies that we need to understand the image of God to have a 'full account' of why we suffer. But finite reasoning can never understand the image of God because the image of God is infinite, given to us by and through Jesus. So the 'problem of evil' must always leave relevant knowledge unexplored. That's why it's such a mystery (see Romans 5:12-14 for how the things of infinity affect the image of God.)

Where does morality and God's goodness come from?

If anyone saw infinity as it really is (i.e. with infinite reasoning) then they will love the person that they see with all their 'heart, mind, soul and strength'.  God loves us and never sins because He sees us as we really are, i.e. He sees our infinite image of God with infinite reasoning (1 John 3:2).  We have a moral sense because our image of God tells us that other people have the (infinite) image of God as well.  To love that which is infinite is to act according to the '2 + 2 = 4' of infinite reasoning.

Why does God value faith?

It's difficult to save people (Matt 19:25) because people will always have free will and finite reasoning in heaven. Why does this present a problem? Well, because our finite reasoning cannot know what infinite reasoning knows. So our finite reasoning constantly creates temptations in us to sin against God and other humans, because we cannot see God and other humans as they really are (i.e. their image of God) - 1 Peter 2:11 (see above). This is why all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. God develops our faith and trains us to rely on His word in this life because that trains us to place infinite reasoning above finite reasoning. Why is this important? Because you can only go to heaven if you are willing to accept God's grace for an eternity, and any temptation not to do that is always going to come from our finite reasoning. So it's important for God to help us prioritise infinite reasoning over finite reasoning, because that develops Christians so that they don't reject grace (from a finite reasoning temptation) over an eternity in heaven.

Why does God send people to hell?

God creates a soul by allowing the brain to access the image of God in Jesus. This makes our soul exist in God's infinite 'world', even though it's marred by sin. Now, it makes sense that if a soul (which ought to be like God) does something genuinely wrong, with no excuse, that this could sever or cut-off the soul's connection to God in God's 'world'. A holy and perfect God cannot allow sin in His/Her/Its presence. That's really, really bad for us because our soul gives us consciousness (see above). So having our soul cut-off from God in the 'world of God' infects all of our experiences with some degree of suffering and imperfection. It doesn't matter what's going on outside your head, no matter where you are, a soul cut-off from God's presence will always suffer. Either in a hell in earth (which is where we are), or in another hell. The only way out is to become morally perfect, like Jesus, because then your soul can connect to God, making you as happy as God. There is no 'other option'. Given these kinds of reasons, the only way for anyone to avoid hell forever (interpreted above) is to become morally perfect forever (which is only possible through the work of Jesus, John 14:6).

Informative links:
How are finite things different to an infinite God?
What's the deal with the atonement?
How is this theology - 'infinite God theology' - meant to succeed as an answer to tough questions?
My interpretation of original sin.
Why God lets Christians experience doubt and severe testing.
We can identify four paradoxes to finite reasoning in free will.
What is consciousness, how does it work and why does it love?

The relationship of God to creation

What is the relationship between God and creation, between the infinite and the finite? Sometimes a picture can be very helpful. The illustration below visualizes finite existence - which includes the universe - 'coming up out of' infinite reality. It also helps to show how infinity could be thought of as 'existence without distinctions' (rather than e.g. an infinite collection of things). Click to see full size:



You could say that infinity and finite existence are like a bookshelf that a book is resting on. Just like the book is completely supported by the bookshelf, so finite existence is supported by infinity. Existence with distinctions is completely dependent on existence without distinctions (see here for a look at this perspective and God).

This view also helps to explain how the universe is NOT God although 'In Him we live and move and have our being' (Acts 17:28) and 'In Him all things consist' (Col 1:17). Finite existence lives 'within' infinite reality (as the picture shows) but is not infinite reality. So panentheism (the idea that the universe is part of God) is wrong even though Acts 17:28 and Col 1:17 sort of make it sound like panentheism is right.

So the relationship between God and creation is the most dependent relationship that you could ever imagine. God not only sustains the universe (Matt 10:29), but also finite existence itself.

Picture illustrating this site's theology

This picture summarises this site's theology in one go. Click on it to view it normal size.



God is infinity. Literally. See an essay arguing for this view here.

From infinity comes consciousness (speculated on here) and love through the same process.

Humans are the finite mixed with the infinite.

An essay here is on the implications for this when it comes to figuring out free will, consciousness, the nature of God, the problem of evil, and so on.