Assessing Analogies for Free Agency

A paper presented at the ETS annual meeting, Nov. 14–16, 2023, at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, San Antonio, TX. 2023 November 14, 2:50 pm, Convention Center Room 301A. It is a revision of a prepublication chapter 29 from a manuscript on the biblical teaching on humanity, Making Sense of Man: Enriching Classical Theology of Humanity with Biblically Based Perspectives.

Abstract

How do we assess the strengths and weaknesses of various analogies used to try to define free agency and to understand it? And what is free agency? We want to focus on the use of various analogies, rather than directly on free agency in itself. So for our purposes we can put forward a minimalist definition of free agency: free agency is the power to exercise morally responsible choice in making decisions.

One of the primary analogies is the analogy of physical causation. Is a decision of a free agent caused by prior conditions or not? If a decision is physically determined by prior causes, can it still be free? The use of the analogy of physical causation can lead to a dilemma. If a decision is determined by prior physical causes, it seems intuitively that it is not responsible. If, on the other hand, it is totally undetermined, it seems intuitively that it is random, and again not responsible.

There is therefore value in considering insights that might derive from other analogies. We evaluate the following analogies for their strengths and weaknesses: the analogy of multi-level causes (Job 1–2 shows events that involve simultaneously divine, demonic, human, and physical causes); sonship (decisions made in the context of the constraint of family love); translation (decisions constrained by language); writing a novel (with two levels, the level of the author and the level of the characters); divine necessity and freedom as analogous to human necessity and freedom; and necessity and freedom of the second person of the Trinity in relation to the first person. The last two of these are the most foundational. But the existence of mystery with respect to the Trinity suggests that mystery will also remain with respect to human necessity and freedom. Human necessity and freedom reflect on the level of the creature divine necessity and freedom.

***

We are exploring what analogies may help to illumine that nature of free agency. We are not trying to “solve” the mystery of human freedom. So, for our purposes, a comparatively simple conception of free agency will do: free agency is the power to exercise morally responsible choice in making decisions.

Now we consider the influence of analogies on the understanding of free agency. We begin with the analogy of physical causation, because this analogy seems to be one of the background issues in a dispute between the Arminian John Miley and the Calvinist Jonathan Edwards, who may serve as samples of two of the main views.

The analogy with physical causation

The Bible itself sometimes uses physical causation by way of analogy to show constraints on human action. Matthew 7:15–20 uses the analogy with trees bearing fruit:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

Biological causation takes place in the processes in which trees bear fruit. “Healthy” and “diseased” trees contrast; they are distinct as causes. The one produces good fruit and the other does not. Trees are also distinct as causes with respect to what kind of trees they are. Different kinds of bushes and trees produce different fruits. Fig trees produce figs, while olive trees do not produce figs but olives. “Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs?

Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. (James 3:12)

In Matthew 7, the false prophets act in a manner analogous to diseased trees. The false prophets produce bad spiritual fruit because they are spiritually diseased. But does that mean that the false prophets have no genuine agency? Do they produce what they produce by a mere physical causation, such as a salt pond yielding salt water?

Consider another passage. Romans 9:19–23 uses an analogy with clay pots and the causes that act on them:

You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.

The clay is subject to the physical manipulation of the potter.

Let us consider another case. The king’s heart is under the Lord’s control:

The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will. (Prov. 21:1)

This picture in Proverbs is particularly strong. Let us reflect on it.

A human being can turn a stream of water in another direction using his hands, or, if need be, larger barriers. By analogy, the Lord can turn the king’s heart. The heart is in his hand, and he can use his hand to turn the heart “wherever he will.” In the Hebrew language and culture, the “heart” signifies the inmost being, the source for everything else: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Prov. 4:23). To control the heart is by implication to control as well everything that flows from it. That is thorough control. It is confirmed by historical instances in which the Lord hardened people’s hearts, such as Pharaoh and Sihon (Ex. 4:21; 7:3; 9:12; etc.; Deut. 2:30).

We can also ask why Proverbs 21:1 singles out “the king” rather than anyone else. It is because the king, of all people in the society, is most able to conduct his affairs without constraint. People under him may have to obey commands from the king that would be contrary to their normal inclinations, and that they may even detest. But they find themselves under constraint. They are afraid not to obey, lest they suffer consequences from the king—even death. “A king’s wrath is a messenger of death, and a wise man will appease it” (Prov. 16:14). In contrast to the commoner, a king “does whatever he pleases” (Eccles. 8:3). It is true that there are some broad limits, even for earthly kings. But, in comparison to most human beings, they are under the least constraint. The Lord’s acts in turning their hearts illustrate in a key case what is true with respect to everyone else.

These passages in Matthew 7, Romans 9, and Proverbs 21:1 use analogies with physical causation. They make an important point. God always accomplishes what he undertakes to accomplish. The effects that he brings about take place as certainly as in the case of physical causes. Just as physical objects do not “talk back” to thwart the causes that impinge on them, so in a fundamental sense no one can talk back to God:

… for his dominion is an everlasting dominion,

and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,

and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth;

and none can stay his hand

or say to him, “What have you done?” (Dan. 4:34–35)

But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” (Rom. 9:20)

It should also be underlined that these passages do not harmonize with the standard Arminian explanation, namely that what God wills and what God wants is a product of knowing beforehand what a human being will do of his own free will. The verse in Proverbs 21:1 does not say, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he wants to protect it and assist it so that it flows wherever it wishes.”

The comparison with an inanimate thing, namely a stream of water, is not a good comparison to use, if one wants to affirm human control rather than divine control. But, having chosen this comparison, if an author wanted to make clear the ultimacy of human decisions, rather than divine sovereignty, the least he could do would be to explain that God is deferring to such human decisions. The author of Proverbs does no such thing, but rather its opposite: he provides a blunt and shocking picture of complete dominance by God. It is shocking, that is, to those who want to protect a certain conception of human freedom.

Every Bible reader has to take seriously these analogies, and not just wave them away.

Some people, however, do wave them away, or refuse to think about them, or construct elaborate speculative explanations not based on the Bible, because they want to protect human freedom.

What do we say? The physical analogies are genuine analogies, but they are limited. They do not mean to say that all causes are nothing other than physical causes. False prophets make decisions to speak their falsehoods; trees do not make decisions to bear fruit. Kings make decisions while streams of water do not. What is the difference? What more then can be said to indicate the meaning of human decision-making?

John Miley lodges an objection because he thinks in terms of physical cause and physical necessity:

If [as Miley interprets Edwards] motives dominate our choices, there is for us no freedom of choice. The theory can admit no power of our personal agency over our motive states. If we would attempt to control or modify these states we must choose so to do; but we cannot so choose, except as we are determined thereto by a motive. The motive must arise spontaneously. We have no power to cast about for reasons against a present impulse unless we are so determined by the power of a motive which must be on hand, if on hand at all, without any agency of our own. Necessity lies in such subjection to motive. It is the same, whatever the motive, or however it may be designated. A law of necessity has determined all human volitions. Not a single choice could have been avoided or in the least varied; not one could have been added to the actual number. We are the passive subjects of spontaneous impulses, and without any true personal agency, rational or moral.

There must be the same determining law for all finite intelligences, and even for God himself. In all the realm of mind a law of necessity reigns, has reigned, and must forever reign. Of all actual volitions, good and evil, none could have been avoided; nor could one have been added. It must be in the future as it has been in the past. Necessity is the universal and eternal law. (Miley 2:279–280)

A physical model

A key reason (beyond simply human stubbornness and sin) why some of the arguments do not persuade is because the idea of cause may be assimilated to a physical or mechanical model.

If our thinking uses a mechanical model, where can we find any real freedom? To find the real source of freedom, the temptation is to push back step by step. External action or inaction is determined by a choice. Choice is determined by will, will by strongest motive, strongest motive by character (the “heart”), character by what?

In a sequence like this one, difficulties confront both the Arminian and the Calvinist. For the Arminian, the difficulty is that a completely indeterminate act, without any prior influences, looks like an act arising from pure chance. If an act is completely arbitrary, an act of chance, human responsibility is not meaningful. On the other side, for the Calvinist, the difficulty is that acts determined by prior motives seem to leave human beings purely passive under the control of those motives. To this picture the Arminian objects, “If action is causally determined at every point, man is purely passive and there is no real freedom, but simply animal instinct.” If action is rooted in the heart (as a Calvinist would say it is), the heart must not simply be identical with animal nature or instinct; it must be somehow active (an Arminian concern).

This dilemma tempts people to press the debate further and further back. Thus Miley cannot rest with freedom of external action, but goes back to will. When it is shown that will is determined, he goes back to the agent who uses the will as an instrument.

He gets in back of motives by pointing out that motives are not always immediately acted upon, but we have the power of rational reflection and suspension of decision (2.291). “It is a fact that often under motive influence all volition toward the end is deferred and held under deliberation” (2.292). But then Jonathan Edwards can produce motives for this deliberation (second-order motives).

At each stage an Arminian fears that a deterministic explanation amounts virtually to physical determinism, which destroys responsibility. So he looks for an indeterministic decision in back of the causal chain. At each stage a Calvinist fears that a totally indeterministic event means a violation of God’s sovereignty and a reduction of human responsibility to meaningless chance. So he looks for deterministic explanation.

The central difficulty remains the same. If we have a deterministic physical causal chain, we apparently have no freedom, but fatalistic determinism. If we break the causal chain with a random event, we have pure chance and not human responsibility. But the difficulty arises partly from using the word cause, or related words like necessity, in such a way that we suggest physical or mechanical causation as the primary analogy. To his credit, Edwards makes a distinction between “moral causes” and “natural causes.” But his opponents may be stuck with an inability to see any real “freedom” in moral causes. What is a moral cause that differentiates it from a physical cause?

In recent decades, the philosophical discussion of these issues has been carried on with great sophistication. But, in my opinion, it has not solved the dilemma.¹

It cannot, because, in the end, all theories depend on analogies, and the analogy with physical causation cannot go far in illumining moral responsibility. Billiard balls are not morally responsible for their responses when they are hit by other billiard balls. And this is true even if we could introduce an element of pure chance or randomness, so that at certain points in its path, the direction of the billiard ball’s motion could not be precisely predicted.

The analogy of sonship

We may therefore explore whether other analogies,²

besides the analogy with physical causation, might throw light on the nature of human agency. Let us consider the analogy of sonship. Adam is the son of God (Luke 3:38). If the fall had not intervened, we all, as children of Adam, would also be children of God. We would belong to God’s family. The use of words like son, children, and family depends on an analogy between a human family and the family of which God is the father. So let us begin by asking what freedom means in the context of participating in a human family.

Within a morally healthy human family, the love relationship in the family acts as a kind of moral restraint, potentially of a good kind. The bonds of love condition what sort of actions family members contemplate. For a son to entertain longingly the possibility of betraying the family is already a violation of family trust (though not as serious a violation as if he actually carried out the betrayal). It is not a bad thing to be influenced by love in such a way that many of these vicious actions never come up for rational contemplation. In tension with some of Miley’s rhetoric, rational weighing of moral alternatives is not the be-all and end-all of freedom. The security and affection within a family depend on tacit trust as well. Freedom is freedom in communion with the family, and has constraints by means of love. We may then compare this situation to the family in which God is the Father and Adam and Eve as unfallen human beings are the children. Free action takes place in an atmosphere of love, according to which some choices are already excluded. The choice of betrayal is not a “real” choice, psychologically, because it never comes up for discussion. (Of course, for Adam and Eve, the serpent’s voice made it a topic of discussion.)

Now what about the situation after the fall? The most obvious way of characterizing the state of sinful man is that he has lost his sonship and is now a slave. In John 8:34, Jesus says, “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.” However, the analogy with slavery is a picture that is hardly likely to satisfy Arminians. The picture can easily suggest that the slave wants to be free, but that he is constrained from outside. He is an unwilling victim of circumstances outside his control. The element of personal responsibility and demerit for being the slave of sin does not come into the foreground. In John 8:34, the idea of a bondage that comes completely from without a person is rejected when Jesus points out that it is the person who “practices sin” who is the slave.

But we could also look at the fallen condition as one of being in the “family” of Satan. As Jesus says,

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. (John 8:44–45)

In effect, people born in sin belong to the family of the devil. The person who is a son of the devil is constrained by his character and his relations within the family of the devil.

Disinterested, completely autonomous “rational deliberation” is a delusion, because everyone already belongs to a family. Either one belongs to the family of God, or to the family of the devil: “We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). No one is in genuine isolation, as if to make decisions all by himself. Moreover, the devil puts people under delusions:

The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thess. 2:9–12)

Of course 2 Thessalonians 2:9–12 describes an extreme case, namely the delusions that come through “the lawless one” (verse 8), who is an antichrist figure. But the principles operative in this case cannot contradict the general principles with respect to free agency. Miley himself concedes that some people are in moral “thralldom.”

The analogy of translation

Now consider the analogy of translation.³ We could consider human action to be a kind of “translation” into action of the purposes of the actor. Could such an analogy help us to understand how a person’s actions are counted as responsible because they derive from his heart?

Actions are translations or expressions of who a person is and what he commits himself to. They may sometimes be faulty translations, if there are organic problems in the nervous system. The actions need interpretation in an evaluative process. Each person is responsible as a “speaker” or a communicator of moral meanings. We have an analogical illustration in Nehemiah 8:8:

They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

This episode involves either translation, or interpretation, or both. The speakers are constrained by the text, and by the sense of the text, even as they have choices in their words. Their words express the sense.

So far so good. This might be acceptable to an Arminian. But how can the matter of human moral inability now be expressed?

Consider the truths articulated in Romans 8:5–8. Verse 7 says that “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” Could we re- express this use of “cannot,” and other such uses, using the analogy of translation? Can we interpret Romans 8:5–8, Matthew 7:15–20, 12:33–35, and 1 Corinthians 2:14 as saying that the moral expressions of an evil “speaker” are evil? The passages say that it is impossible to break the link between the speaker and what he says. If he is of the flesh, what he “expresses” and how God evaluates him will be in conformity with his fleshiness.

But this analogy still leaves open the question of how the person himself changes. He changes in a sense in every act of moral expression. But how can he change a whole semantic pattern of speech from being good to being evil, or vice versa? In Adam, how did human beings change from having a competence in good speech to be not competent?

There is still a mystery here about human change. But if a person is in rebellion against God, he does not want to speak or act according to the former patterns of righteousness that belong to unfallen humanity. He starts speaking in the new patterns of unrighteousness. He gains competence in those patterns and loses competence in the old patterns of righteousness. Within this sphere of his competence in speech, he still has choices to do this or that. He chooses between words, and he chooses what sentences he speaks. But it does not dawn on him to go outside his “competence.” This picture is something like the inverse of the picture in which the son in a family does not contemplate betraying the family. The fallen heart does not contemplate not betraying God.

God can change a person back by the work of the Holy Spirit and by the purification of the word of God (Eph 5:26). With some beings God has stopped speaking in this way (the devil). But the gospel still addresses the human race.

The analogy of different levels of cause

We can also note how there are different “levels” of cause. Not all causes operate on the same level. The different levels may be analogous, in some ways, but we should not suppose that there is only one level. In particular, we cannot assume that all kinds of cause are like physical causes in their necessity. ⁴

Job 1–2 shows that we can distinguish at least four levels of cause.

God causing events. “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (1:21).
Angelic beings (including evil angels) causing events. “So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (2:7).
Human agents causing events. “[T]he Sabeans fell upon them [oxen and donkeys] and took them and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you” (1:15).
Physical objects causing events. “… with the edge of the sword” (1:15, 17). “[A] great wind came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead, …” (verse 19).

One level of cause does not exclude the others. The fact that swords killed Job’s servants does not compete with the Sabeans killing them. We can see both a personal cause (Sabeans with human choice and human responsibility) and a physical cause (a sword cutting through flesh).

In particular, causation by human agents must not be equated with physical causation.

An analogy with divine freedom

Consider now the analogy between divine freedom and human freedom. According to the Bible, God does whatever he pleases (Ps. 115:3). God has unlimited power. Human beings may in part do what they please. But they have limited power. They cannot fly in the air unaided, like birds, or travel into outer space unaided. So divine freedom and human freedom are not on the same level.

Nevertheless, there is an analogy between divine freedom and human freedom. God made man “in his own image” (Gen. 1:27). One aspect of the likeness is found in God and man both being moral creatures, having moral responsibility, and making morally related choices. We can imagine that some of the choices might have been different from what they were. God did not have to create a world. Moses did not have to kill the Egyptian (Ex. 2:12). (He was not robotically constrained.) So mankind has a genuine “freedom.” But an analogy is not an identity. It remains mysterious how human freedom might be similar and yet also different from divine freedom. It might help at least to observe that divine freedom is not “freedom” to do anything at all, even what is inconsistent with who God is. God cannot lie and he cannot deny himself (Num. 23:19; 2 Tim. 2:13). He does what he pleases to do (Ps. 115:3), not whatever we might imagine him doing. He is always consistent with himself. What he does is always good and never sinful, because he himself is unchangeably good. By analogy, human freedom is constrained both by who a person is and who God is. It is not an infinite freedom to do anything at all.

We can see a similar point if we consider the final state of humanity and the angels. The devil and his angels cannot change their character from evil to good. The saved saints in the new heaven and the new earth can no longer sin or turn to evil. All of them are morally responsible. There is still meaning in the human choice to continue to do good even when the temptation to do evil is completely gone and there is no longer any chance of falling away from good.⁵ This is an analog to the principle on the divine level that it is not possible for God to sin or do evil. To do so would be inconsistent with his character.

The analogy with a novelist

Consider another analogy. A novelist can write a novel with characters in it. There are two levels meaning, the level of the novelist and his purposes on the one hand, and the level of the characters and their purposes on the other hand. God is like a novelist. The world is the story that he writes. His complete determination of the entire story, from one end to the other, does not compete with the meaning of the characters and their decisions within the story.⁶

There are alternative possibilities for how the story in the novel might have unfolded. If the author had chosen differently, and one or more of the characters had chosen differently, the outcome in the story would have been different. By analogy, we can speak about different possibilities concerning God’s plan for history. If God had planned differently, and if some of the human beings has chosen differently, in accordance with that difference in plan, the outcome would have been different. The Bible does not teach that human beings ever escape from God’s plan or act contrary to his plan. But it does allow that there are other possibilities, because God could have chosen differently. Here are a number of texts that talk about some of these possibilities:

“Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O Lord, the God of Israel, please tell your servant.” And the Lord said, “He will come down.” Then David said, “Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?” And the Lord said, “They will surrender you.” Then David and his men, who were about six hundred, arose and departed from Keilah, and they went wherever they could go. When Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah, he gave up the expedition. (1 Sam. 23:11–13)

Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. (Matt. 11:21)

And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. (Matt. 24:22)

Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so? (Matt. 26:53–54)

Unless these men [sailors] stay in the ship, you cannot be saved. (Acts 27:31)

These texts talk about meaningful possibilities that never became actualities. The possibilities are meaningful because God’s decrees could have been otherwise.

The analogy of the second person of the Trinity

We may also consider personal relations within the Trinity. The eternal Son always acts in agreement with the Father and with the Spirit. There is no possibility of disagreement, because agreement belongs to the reality of the Trinity. This necessity is compatible with the freedom of the Son. Both stability and creativity have their origin in the Trinity.⁷

Moreover, when the Son takes on human nature, he has full human agency. Because of the union of the natures in one person, we know that the Son will not sin. This sinlessness is compatible with human free agency belonging to his human nature.

In sum, a number of analogies help to illumine how there may be free human decision- making within a context of divine sovereignty. (See Table 28.1.)

Analogy	Meaning of Human Agency
sonship	Decision making is constrained by relational bonds; a person is a son of God or a son of Satan.
translation	Action is in accord with inward purpose—constrained by regularities of systematic thought and behavior.
levels of cause (primary and secondary)	God as primary cause supports rather than negates angelic causation, human personal causation, and physical causation.
divine freedom	God’s acts are constrained by his character. He does only what is consistent with his character. Likewise for mankind.
writing a novel	The author of a novel is analogous to God; the characters in the novel are analogous to human beings in the world.
second person of the Trinity	The Son is free and does only what the Father commands him (John 12:49–50; 5:19).

Table 28.1: Analogies for Human Free Agency

The metaphysical framework for causes

We may also consider what may be the metaphysical frameworks in the background when people discuss causes and the relation of causes to free agency. In Western philosophy and theology, there is a complicated history. But for simplicity we may distinguish three primary metaphysical frameworks: biblical, Aristotelian, and modern scientific.

First, consider the biblical framework. As we have seen, especially with the first chapters of Job, we can distinguish several levels of causes, due to the activity of several different kinds of agents: God, angels and demons, human agents, and physical causes. The Bible never gives us a transparent theory as to how these levels relate to one another. For every event, the primary cause is God (Eph. 1:11). But the Bible also indicates the reality of secondary causes—angelic, human, and physical. The relation between primary and secondary causes expresses the relation between the Creator and his creatures. There will always be mystery, because the Creator’s work is analogous to but not on the same level with the work of creatures.⁸

Second, consider an Aristotelian framework. Aristotle distinguishes four kinds of cause: material cause, formal cause, efficient cause, and final cause. Andrea Falcon summarizes:

The material cause: “that out of which,” e.g., the bronze of a statue.

The formal cause: “the form,” “the account of what-it-is-to-be,” e.g., the shape of a statue.

The efficient cause: “the primary source of the change or rest,” e.g., the artisan, the art of bronze-casting the statue, the man who gives advice, the father of the child.

The final cause: “the end, that for the sake of which a thing is done,” e.g., health is the end of walking, losing weight, purging, drugs, and surgical tools.⁹

All four of these kinds of cause are meant to apply not only to human actions but to events in the natural world.¹⁰ The one-tiered system endeavors to encompass human intentional causes and causes in nature within one general system. The result is that the framework does not provide a built-in resource for distinguishing what might be the contrasts between human freedom on the one hand and the necessity of billiard ball collisions on the other hand. Nor does it picture “the Good” (the substitute for God) as an efficient cause, but only as a final cause. Other things are set in motion by desiring the Good as their goal.

The rise of modern science made people more and more dissatisfied with Aristotle’s fourfold approach.¹¹ Modern science focused exclusively on the material and efficient causes. The efficient cause became all-important; the material cause was scarcely viewed as a “cause” at all, but only the background situation in which efficient causes operated. Isaac Newton’s mechanics suggested to many people a world picture in which all outcomes were determinate and physical causes alone determined the outcomes.

We may wonder whether this shift in metaphysics, or a shift in the dominant world picture in Western culture, influenced theological discussions of free will. The older theologians discussed free will using some of Aristotle’s vocabulary. They expanded Aristotle in order to include God on a second tier. As Aristotle became less attractive, the theological discussions might also shift to focus on the newer scientific world picture and the dominance of efficient causes. Did Jonathan Edwards, for example, develop a picture of a more deterministic kind, partly because of the determinism that seemed to arise in the new science?

The physical determinism in the newer scientific picture is not the end of the story.

Nineteenth century physics, growing out of Newtonian mechanics, seemed to tell us that every detail of the future was physically determined by the positions and velocities of material particles at an earlier point in time. The rise of quantum physics in the twentieth century undermined this picture, because many quantum mechanical events could be predicted only according to probabilities, not with certainty.¹² This limitation was a limitation built into the theory itself, not merely a limitation in the current level of technical ability to make refined measurements.

Physicists and philosophers who were presuppositionally inclined to determinism hoped that the uncertainties were the product of an incomplete theory. Once we arrived at a complete theory, it would restore determinism. Others, presuppositionally inclined to indeterminism, hoped that the uncertainties could not be made to vanish. In the second half of the twentieth century, theoretical and experimental results related to the work of John Stewart Bell (“Bell’s theorem”) have seemed to confirm the unavoidability of a certain kind of indeterminacy. In the theory of quantum mechanics, indeterminacy has the last word.

It is true that this fine-grained indeterminacy is consistent with predictability in many events at the level of ordinary observation. The movement of a billiard ball is predictable—with reasonable precision, though not with absolutely perfect exactness. This predictability in ordinary life is nevertheless only a fortunate large-scale effect of the deeper unpredictabilities at the atomic level.

We should note an additional qualification. Both the deterministic picture and the opposing indeterministic picture are pictures confining themselves to physical causes. Neither one has the richness to provide an account of human freedom or, for that matter, divine freedom. (See Table 28.2.)

Metaphysical Framework	Kinds of Causes and Their Meanings	Implications for Human Action
biblical: multilayer causes	God as primary causes angels human beings physical causes	Human beings have distinct free agency on their own distinct level.
Aristotle: one level, four kinds of cause	material cause (composition) formal cause (shape) efficient cause (impulse) final cause (goal)	Human actions have purposes shaped by the person; but no separate level distinct from animals and rocks.
19th century physics as metaphysics: efficient cause only	physical forces	Human beings fatalistically determined by physical forces on the atoms.
quantum indeterminacy	only probabilistic outcomes	Man is the product of physical forces and pure chance.

Table 28.2: Metaphysical Frameworks for Understanding Causes

There is nothing the matter with using a limited focus on physical causation as one part of the investigations of science. But we produce difficulties if we regard the resulting picture as providing a complete, ultimate metaphysics. It then displaces rather than complements other perspectives, according to which we focus on divine choice or human choice. Moreover, we would suggest that it is not so helpful to try to follow the “obvious” path of somehow trying to fit human choice into the “gap” left by quantum indeterminacy. The trouble is that the dominating framework is then the physicalistic framework, which is easily construed to be impersonal at its roots. Persons are somehow going to be fitted into this overall framework, which is alien to persons. Instead, all of physics is to be fitted—as one perspective—into the reality of God who is personal, who rules the world personally, a God who gives and blesses and also curses personally in relation to human persons. The operations of physics are in his service.¹³

The analogy with writing a novel is useful because it gives us a picture with two levels of causes: the author of the novel and the characters. Or we can include a third level, because the novel also involves physical causes that surround the characters of the novel in their particular circumstances.

Conclusion

Because God is infinite, and because God and man represent two distinct levels of cause, two distinct levels of personal action, we cannot make completely transparent to ourselves what is the relation between the levels, nor what is the meaning of God’s governance. But analogies in the Bible and derivative from biblical paths of thinking can nevertheless help relieve the intuitive impression that divine sovereignty and human agency are in a relation of pure antimony or tension.

Notes

1
Marc Cortez, Theological Anthropology: A Guide for the Perplexed (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2010), chap. 5: “it seems unlikely that the debate will be resolved any time soon” (p. 130).
2
Muller, Divine Will, is instructive in taking us into the realm of post-Reformation Reformed theology, which had a richer framework in which to deal with the interaction of kinds of necessity and kinds of possibility. Though on the surface the use of analogy is not a primary tool, the whole system serves as an analogical framework, because it is two-tiered, with God and man on distinct levels (Divine Will, 324).
3
This analogy is partly inspired by Colin Murray Turbayne, The Myth of Metaphor (rev. ed.; Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina, 1970), who uses the analogy of translation to explain the relation of conscious perception to physical events, such as light falling on the retina and nerve signals arising from it.
4
The Westminster Confession of Faith says, “God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.” (3.1, italics added) Although, in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first Cause, all things come to pass immutably, and infallibly; yet, by the same providence, He ordereth them to fall out, according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently. (5.2, italics added)
5
G. C. Berkouwer, Man: The Image of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), chap. 9. Berkouwer makes the point that there is no such thing as an indifferent metaphysical choice between good and evil. Defining free moral agency in terms of power of contrary choice is therefore a perversion. His point touches on the issue of metaphysics, one of the four principles from Chapter 5 above.
6
John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Word of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2010), 156–159; Poythress, Chance and the Sovereignty of God, chap. 5.
7
Poythress, Chance and the Sovereignty of God, 58–61.
8
Vern S. Poythress, The Mystery of the Trinity: A Trinitarian Approach to the Attributes of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2020), chaps. 37–39.
9
Andrea Falcon, “Aristotle on Causality,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022 Edition), §2, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/aristotle-causality/>, based on Aristotle, Physics II 3 and Metaphysics V 2.
10
“This theory [Aristotle’s theory of causes] has in fact been developed primarily (but not exclusively) for the study of nature” (Falcon, “Aristotle on Causality,” §2). So Aristotle’s system is a one-tiered rather than a two-tiered or many-tiered system. Aristotle mentions “God” (or “Mind” or “the Good” or the “Prime Mover”) as a final cause. But it is one such cause alongside many others.¹⁰ Poythress, Mystery of the Trinity, chap. 25.
11
But objections to the usefulness of formal or final causes began much earlier (Falcon, “Aristotle on Causality,” §4).
12
Vern S. Poythress, Chance and the Sovereignty of God, chap. 8.
13
Vern S. Poythress, Redeeming Science: A God-Centered Approach (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006).