2. Philosophy — the doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not simply determined by physical or divine forces.
Jeepers dear brother, but Dictionary.com gives an extraordinarily "flat" definition of free will. Compare with the entry for "free will" given in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
“Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives. Which sort is the free will sort is what all the fuss is about. (And what a fuss it has been: philosophers have debated this question for over two millennia, and just about every major philosopher has had something to say about it.) Most philosophers suppose that the concept of free will is very closely connected to the concept of moral responsibility. Acting with free will, on such views, is just to satisfy the metaphysical requirement of being responsible for one's action. (Clearly, there will also be epistemic conditions on responsibility as well, such as being aware—or failing that, being culpably unaware—of relevant alternatives to one's action and of the alternatives' moral significance.) But the significance of free will is not exhausted by its connection to moral responsibility. Free will also appears to be a condition [of] desert for one's accomplishments (why sustained effort and creative work are praiseworthy); on the autonomy and dignity of persons; and on the value we accord to love and friendship....The debate on free will has been going on for millennia by now, and the issue is still not "resolved."On a minimalist account, free will is the ability to select a course of action as a means of fulfilling some desire. David Hume, for example, defines liberty as “a power of acting or of not acting, according to the determination of the will.” (1748, sect.viii, part 1). And we find in Jonathan Edwards (1754) a similar account of free willings as those which proceed from one's own desires.
One reason to deem this insufficient is that it is consistent with the goal-directed behavior of some animals whom we do not suppose to be morally responsible agents. Such animals lack not only an awareness of the moral implications of their actions but also any capacity to reflect on their alternatives and their long-term consequences. Indeed, it is plausible that they have little by way of a self-conception as an agent with a past and with projects and purposes for the future....
4. Theological Wrinkles
A large portion of Western philosophical writing on free will was and is written within an overarching theological framework, according to which God is the ultimate source and sustainer of all else. Some of these thinkers draw the conclusion that God must be a sufficient, wholly determining cause for everything that happens; all suppose that every creaturely act necessarily depends on the explanatorily prior, cooperative activity of God. It is also presumed that human beings are free and responsible (on pain of attributing evil in the world to God alone, and so impugning His perfect goodness). Hence, those who believe that God is omni-determining typically are compatibilists with respect to freedom and (in this case) theological determinism. Edwards (1754) is a good example. But those who suppose that God's sustaining activity (and special activity of conferring grace) is only a necessary condition on the outcome of human free choices need to tell a more subtle story, on which omnipotent God's cooperative activity can be (explanatorily) prior to a human choice and yet the outcome of that choice be settled only by the choice itself....Another issue concerns the impact on human freedom of knowledge of God, the ultimate Good. Many philosophers, especially the medieval Aristotelians, were drawn to the idea that human beings cannot but will that which they take to be an unqualified good. (Duns Scotus appears to be an important exception to this consensus.) Hence, in the afterlife, when humans ‘see God face to face,’ they will inevitably be drawn to Him. Murray (1993, 2002) argues that a good God would choose to make His existence and character less than certain for human beings, for the sake of their freedom. (He will do so, the argument goes, at least for a period of time in which human beings participate in their own character formation.) If it is a good for human beings that they freely choose to respond in love to God and to act in obedience to His will, then God must maintain an ‘epistemic distance’ from them lest they be overwhelmed by His goodness and respond out of necessity, rather than freedom....
Finally, there is the question of the freedom of God himself. Perfect goodness is an essential, not acquired, attribute of God. God cannot lie or be in any way immoral in His dealings with His creatures. Unless we take the minority position on which this is a trivial claim, since whatever God does definitionally counts as good, this appears to be a significant, inner constraint on God's freedom. Did we not contemplate immediately above that human freedom would be curtailed by our having an unmistakable awareness of what is in fact the Good? And yet is it not passing strange to suppose that God should be less than perfectly free?
I don't think we're going to "resolve it" here. FWIW.
But why does it have to be "resolved?" i.e., "once and for all?" Any "resolution" would involve an unseemly presupposition that we humans can "know" God's will and purpose just as He Himself knows such things, and then to "reduce" the divine intelligence regarding such matters to the level of vastly imperfect human understanding. I daresay something tremendously vital gets lost in that translation....
Thank you so much for writing, HarleyD.
Thank you, sister.
This is not a definition but a philosophical discussion of free will. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy cannot define it. I also went out on the Catholic website and they can't define it as well. So how can anyone say the dictionary is incorrect or "flat"? And, if the dictionary is incorrect, then what is the correct definition and by who's standard?
I see a lot of people out here who say they support sola scriptura, yet no where in scripture is the term "free will" used (there is one place of a "free will offering"). However, "free will" seems to be something that everyone insists that we have even though
2) no one can define "free will", and
3) Augustine linked the idea of "free will" with Pelagius, calling it out in those specific term.
With all due respect, I think the Encyclopedia saying we really don't know what free will means is a total cop out. People know exactly what it means. They just don't want to admit that they are in error so they torture the concept and refuse to define it. Augustine knew what "free will" meant and it's clear his audience knew what it meant.
I went back to the Council of Orange's Canon which is where, from my understanding, the Church first formally denounced the idea of "free will". Without getting into all of the Canons (and the specific use of "free will"), please note Canon 6:
Thank you for injecting this thought into the discussion. It is a view I hold as well. Between the two extremes of either views, I accept that the truth is somewhere in between and which, when we finally meet our Lord face-to-face and know as we even are known, it will become crystal clear. I just think the absolute truth of it all is much too infinite for our finite minds at this stage. I am content to believe that God IS in control, that all things are evident and open in His sight, that He knows the end from the beginning and that He STILL allows the present to happen according to His good pleasure. I am eternally grateful that He opened my eyes to see His grace and created within me a new heart able to experience all that He works together for my good.
It is intellectually stimulating to discuss these things God has allowed us to know about, but I don't believe He intends us to be at enmity with each other over things we may only be able to nibble at the corners of. If it helps us to further our knowledge and appreciation of God and ourselves within His plan, that's good. If it draws us away to opposing corners in anger at brethren in Christ, it's not so good. Jesus said the world would know us by our love one towards another.