Does God have free will? Could He choose to do evil?

Freedom is a good thing. Rather, perhaps, it will widely be accepted by those reading these pages that freedom is a virtue to be treasured by a man once he has it, and to be fought for by the one who possesses it not. As an American, this is foundational to our view of society, life and governance. The second sentence ever written in this country stated that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Liberty is the central idea that conceived this nation, and it is the virtue that has fueled it ever since. We are to be free from tyranny, free from oppression and free to pursue that which brings us the most joy. Multitudes have fought for it. Thousands have died to gain it or preserve it. Yet, just like the virtue of love, so many do not know what constitutes true freedom.

Freedom of the Will

This question requires some preliminary work on our part. We cannot ask if God has free will if we do not fully comprehend what it means for one to possess free will. We must ask ourselves, “What is freedom? How do we know when a person or their will is actually free?” Once we establish answers to these questions, we will then be able to tackle the question: “Does God have free will? Could He choose to do evil?”
Freedom within a given political system is the social/political notion involved in discussions of rights and the authority of state and law. This political freedom has been called the freedom of permission. This sort of freedom, for which so many have fought and died, serves as a physical example of what we will be discussing in this chapter: Freedom of the will. Not all people find themselves in a situation of political freedom, but if freedom of the will is a reality, everyone will have it. With this in mind, some great thinkers have found freedom a subject to define and expound upon. The British logician Bertrand Russell once stated, “Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.” In other words, according to Russell, freedom as it pertains to a person’s will, is the ability to do that which one desires or wants to do. Indeed, even the President of the United States is not free to swim across the Atlantic Ocean. He may be the leader of a “free nation,” but he is not able to do all that he desires. He has obstacles which impede him from doing certain things, as we all do.

However, practicing free will regarding those things which we are able to do requires the ability to make decisions. We cannot freely do anything without freely choosing to. Napoleon said, “Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.” The contemporary French philosopher Simone Weil said, “Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose." True freedom is only realized when one is able to make decisions on their own accord and then proceed to bring their desires to fruition without impediment.

Is America a free country? In the political sense, yes! But what of the person who, when questioned about their actions says, “This is America. It’s a free country. I can do whatever I want.” It is a very popular perspective held by the democracies of the west, but fails to acknowledge an important difference between political freedom and freedom of the will for an individual. Is one free if and only if they have the ability to do that which they desire most? The President is not free to swim to England, for he is not able. But what if his desire was more doable, perhaps more sinister? What if one had an extreme dislike for a particular person who had wronged them in a merely subjective manner? What if their strongest desire in life was to see them suffer for their actions? Furthermore, what if they had the ability and authority to administer such suffering? Would they simply be acting freely? Hitler desired to exterminate the Jewish people. What if he had won the war and proceeded to do just that? The world might not have been experiencing political freedom, but Hitler would have had gained the ability to do that which he desired without impediment. Would that be an exercise of basic freedom of the will, the ability to do that which one desires most?

This line of thought leads us to a realization that freedom as it pertains to a person’s will cannot simply be the ability to do that which one desires, for sometimes what one wants contradicts that which is morally right. Thus, we propose that freedom be considered, at least in part, as the ability to do that which we ought. Whether a person admits it or not, we all have an innate sense of what is right and what is wrong. Regarding this, Aristotle again wrote, “And it is characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust; and association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state.” The concept of right and wrong is the foundation for all forms of society and government that have ever existed. Yet, not everyone or every people group agrees uniformly as to what is objectively right and wrong for everyone, at all times, in all places. Still, it is undeniable that each individual person has their own idea of what is right and wrong, just and unjust, good and bad.

For example, imagine you are at a bus stop and you see a man forget his briefcase and board the bus. You happen to know the man. He lives down the street from you, and it would be easy for you to return his briefcase to him. However, you find that the briefcase contains more than $10,000 in cash! You look around quickly. No one else is at the bus stop, and no one has seen the man leave the briefcase or you arriving to find it. If you walk away with the money, you are guaranteed to never get caught or even accused of any wrongdoing. You could really use the money too. Every inch of you desires to take the money and run. Yet we must ask, are you free to do so?
Some might say yes, you are free to take the purse in such a situation. The people who take this position will most often appeal to the lack of repercussions for their actions. The lack of witnesses would give you the upper hand. No one could prove you took it or that it was ever the man’s money to begin with. In essence, you would have authority over the situation, and some would take this to mean that you have the most free will in the given situation. However, this is ultimately an appeal to the atheistic argument that “might makes right.” In other words, all human morality is absolutely subject to the one or ones that hold supreme authority. This is how any tyrant or dictator treats their subjects. They are in power. They can enforce whatever rules and laws they wish, and thus their opinions become the moral law for their people.

Those who would claim that might does not necessarily make right assert that you would not be free to keep the money, for it would be against the law even if you were not caught. But let us suppose this occurred in a society where stealing was not considered offensive but rather in one that adhered to a “survival of the fittest” mentality. The man forgot his briefcase. It’s his fault. Finders become keepers. Would you be practicing freedom in a culture such as that if you decided to steal the money? I assert the answer to that question is no.

I assert the following statement is true. There is an objective system of rights and wrongs that exists outside of mankind but applies to every individual person. If such an objective “moral law” exists, then it holds authority over all men. If it is objective wrong for the man down the street to brutally beat his grandmother every morning, then it is just as wrong for the most powerful person on the planet to beat their grandmother. What is right and what is wrong would not be created by society, but rather would have existed from the dawn of civilization to be discovered by man.
If our assertion fails to be true, then there are no absolute values of right and wrong, but merely a matter of subjective opinions. Many ethicists take this latter stance when dealing with issues of morality. They think of such things as speeding tickets. It is very common to be going with traffic and be 5 or 10 miles per hour over the speed limit. Technically, you and every car around you are being driven by misdemeanor offenders. However, that is not how the law is usually carried out. There are levels of right and wrong, and it is all relative to what everyone else does. Now if a car zooms past everyone going 40 mph over the speed limit, the driver would be much more likely to be pulled over and issued a citation. The idea that an action we know to be bad looks to be good when compared to another’s worse transgressions is called moral relativism. The person who lies is not as bad as the person who murders. Therefore, as the reasoning goes, lying is relatively ok from a moral perspective. Most of us function this way in some or most facets of our lives, but I claim that this is not and cannot be how reality works.

Moral Law

When one says that all morals are relative, we must ask the necessary question, “Relative to what?” When something is described as being relative, there must be some foundation, some fixed point to which we can relate all other things. Take the speed of a car for an example. We say a car is going 50 miles per hour when it is traveling over the ground at 50 mph relative to the ground. We naturally assume the earth and the ground to be stationary. In doing so, we take earth to be our reference point from which we determine all vehicle speeds. Yet the earth is not stationary. It spins around it axis. At the equator, the surface of the earth is traveling at about 1000 miles per hour, relative to its axis. Furthermore, the earth orbits the sun at an astonishing 67,062 mph with respect to the sun. In each of these instances, though, we must adopt a point of reference with which we can describe the state of all other things.

The concept of relativity is not new, and it is indeed a proven physical fact. Einstein wrote extensively about knowledge anything is only possible when seen from a perspective that is relative to something else:


… two points on a practically rigid body always correspond to the same distance (line-interval), independently of any changes in position to which we may subject the body, the propositions of Euclidean geometry then resolve themselves into propositions on the possible relative position of practically rigid bodies.
Every description of events in space involves the use of a rigid body to which such events have to be referred.


We’re starting to see the problem with the idea that right and wrong are completely relative, for when we ask, “Relative to what?” all that is left at our disposal are themselves relative claims to right and wrong. Something cannot be relative to the relative, for this line of reasoning would not allow for any conclusion at all. Nothing could be right, and nothing could be wrong.

Furthermore, without an absolute in morality, we cannot measure anything in a moral sense. When I say a tree is 20 feet tall, most people would be able to visualize and understand how tall the tree is in their minds. The understood universality of the measurement of length known as a “foot” is used as an unchangeable standard. If a foot was relative and continually changed in length with the ebb and flow of culture, then we would not be able to measure length with any certainty at all.

Morality also functions this way. When someone says that one action is morally better than another, the statement can only make sense if there is an absolute best which all other actions can be objectively compared to. To not have such an absolute moral law would render any and all discussions regarding morality meaningless. The famed Christian scholar and apologist Normal Geisler writes, “Real moral disagreements are not possible without an absolute more standard by which both sides can be measured. Otherwise both sides of every moral dispute are right.” If that is the case, then morality has lost all meaning. In fact, it is just a figment of our collective imagination. If there are no moral absolutes, there are no morals at all.

Thus, if we can all agree that there is at least one thing that is morally righteous or one thing that is morally wrong, we must agree that there exist some moral absolutes. That is, there exist objective moral duties that apply to all persons, at all times, and in all places. The sense of “oughtness” is a sense of morality. We all have an objective moral responsibility because there is an objective moral law. We should be careful not to confuse is with ought. What someone is doing can change from time to time. What someone ought to do is always the same.

Opposing Worldview

Yet, there are those who vehemently deny that such objective moral laws exist at all. Commonly, the person who holds this view is either a skeptic/atheist or a postmodernist (one who denies all objective truth claims). We will first deal with the skeptical atheist.

If there is an intelligent Creator, then it is logically possible (one might say probable) that they created an objective moral law as well. If there is no such Creator, as the atheist would argue, then objective morality cannot exist for it would require a transcendent moral law giver, the very thing atheism foundationally denies. According to atheism, we live in an amoral universe that came into being by random chance. Any claim to right or wrong would just be strong personal preferences that have been adopted over time because they help the human race to survive. And yet even atheists think evil is something to be avoided, that happiness is good, and hard work is a virtue. How do they explain this?

Oftentimes, the atheist (we can include skeptics and naturalists here for our present purposes) will employ the theory of evolutionary ethics to explain the seeming objectivity of morality. Evolutionary ethics is an attempt to bridge atheistic naturalism with the reality of an imbedded moral sense. In simple terms, the theory puts before us two separate colonies of primitive man. One colony is of the random persuasion that stealing is a virtue and should be encouraged. The other colony randomly adopts the idea that stealing is bad and should be punished. In a world without any god, there cannot be any overriding cause or purpose. Even thoughts of right and wrong must be random in origin. But those thoughts that promoted the propagation of a certain colony would be accepted by future generations. Presently we see the cumulative collection of morals that are simply the result of a randomized process of “survival of the fittest.”

This theory has many problems, but its fatal flaw comes from its basic presupposition. It assumes that all things are the result of random, purposeless events. The result of random, purposeless events cannot possible be organized nor purposeful. Thus, if our sense of morality is the product of a random sociological evolutionary chain, then its end result is purposeless, and there would be absolutely no logical reason to pay any attention to them. The most these so-called morals have done is allowed primitive man to survive. Now that we have achieved total domination of the earth as a species, we should be able to reject whichever morals we choose without consequence. C.S. Lewis addressed this evolutionary model, which he called our herd instinct, the following way:


We all know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct – by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way… But feeling a desire to help [another person in need] is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not.


Lewis goes on to explain that we often have simultaneous impulses which make us desire to do opposite things. Suppose there is a man who yells of a great danger, and then pleas for someone to help him. One would likely feel the impulse to flee the danger and preserve oneself. They would also likely feel the impulse to save the man based on their herd instinct. How does one decide which impulse to follow? Logically, they will always follow that which they desire the most. But that isn’t always the case. We can all testify to times we did something not out of desire, but because we recognized it as the thing we ought to do. Thus, there must be a third thing that resides in us that tells us which impulse we ought to follow. This thing which judges what we ought to do cannot be itself one of the original impulses, for oftentimes we find ourselves doing that which we desire not to do, putting ourselves in harm’s way. This runs contrary to every human impulse, especially the strongest of human impulses, that of self-preservation.

Furthermore, if evolutionary ethics is true and has led us to have impulses that we label as morals, then we ought to be able to point to a single impulse inside of us and which would always be considered “good,” for we would still need a consistent point of moral reference to speak of good and evil, even if they were the product of random events. Regarding this, Lewis writes:


There is none of our impulses which the Moral Law may not sometimes tell us to suppress, and none which it may not sometimes tell us to encourage. It is a mistake to think that some of our impulses – say mother love or patriotism – are good and others, like sex or the fighting instinct, are bad. All we mean is that the occasions on which the fighting instinct or the sexual desire need to be restrained are rather more frequent than those for restraining mother love or patriotism. But there are situations in which it is the duty of a married man to encourage his sexual impulse and of a soldier to encourage his fighting instinct… Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses.


A second argument given by some regarding the origin of what is perceived to be an objective moral law is that it is simply a moral construct. That is, in the case of a democracy like the United States, a majority of the people within a society decide for general populous what is right and what is wrong. This is a postmodern view of morality that does not allow for an absolute transcendent moral law. Even though the philosophical movement known as postmodernity, or cultural relativism of all truth, is regarded as a recent movement, it was actually addressed and related to the topic of freedom as early as 350 B.C. by the great Greek philosopher Aristotle:


… there has arisen a false idea of freedom which is contradictory to the true interests of the state. For two principles are characteristic of democracy, government by the majority and freedom. Men think that what is equal is just, and that equality is the supremacy of the popular will, and that freedom means doing what a man likes. In such democracies everyone lives as he pleases, or in the words of Euripides, “according to his fancy.” But this is all wrong; men should not think it slavery to live by the rules of the constitution, for it is their salvation.


Aristotle is clearly stating what many of us already intuitively know. If the majority of people within a certain culture agree on a certain truth claim, it does not necessarily make the claim true. For years, the majority of western society claimed the Earth was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth. Might does not necessarily make right, and likewise majority does not necessarily make right. The objective moral law is the same way. If a culture were to arrive that by and large believed that it was good to physically beat those of a lower financial status than themselves, should their actions be considered acceptable in their culture? Another example, if the Nazi’s had won the war and converted the majority of the world’s population to their way of thinking, would that make their actions virtuous instead of evil? Of course not! Such thinking would be preposterous!

Aristotle doesn’t stop by pointing out the flaws of the postmodern ways of thinking about morality however. He makes a profound observation. In every society of every size, there have been given laws by which we ought to live by. Many consider these laws to be repressive. “So many rules,” some say, “take away our freedoms!” Yet Aristotle asserts that such laws are not to be thought of as bar of imprisonment and slavery, but rather as the very foundation on which our individual freedom is built.

Free Will Defined

What then shall we say about morality’s roll in freedom of the will? We have firmly established that there exists an objective moral law. Such an objective moral law should, in some sense, confine our freedoms. After all, even as a free country, the United States also implements laws so that society can function properly and efficiently. Laws are installed for our protection, and it is in this way that laws serve to uphold our freedoms. So whereas free will has been defined as the ability to do that which one most desires, we must modify our working definition of free will to be the ability to do that which one desires, granted they stay within the framework of the moral law. Some have simplified this definition to “the ability to do what you ought.”

Our definition of free will is not finished quite yet. Something crucial is missing. I offer the following scenario as an illustration:

John is a runner. He loves to run and takes every opportunity to run a mile or two; whatever time allows. He cannot remember a time when he did not want to run. It’s just in his blood and he can’t get enough of it. One Saturday afternoon, after mowing the lawn and taking care of some other odds and ends, John decides to go for a run through his neighborhood. It’s a beautiful day, and John is enjoying the wind and the sun as he runs down the sidewalk.

After he runs a few blocks, something catches the corner of his eye. Something big… and fast. It’s the Rottweiler that the Johnson’s never keep an eye on. But the Rottweiler has got his eye on John. Now John runs faster, faster than he’s ever run before with the dog close on his tail. With his lungs burning and legs straining, John makes it to his house and closes the door behind him just as the Rottweiler slams into it.

It is a simple story, but it brings to light a very important fact about free will. John was free to choose to take an afternoon run. He had no impediments. He had taken care of all the responsibilities that he ought to do for the day, and he was free to do as he chose. So John went for a run. He was acting according to his free will. However, when the Rottweiler started chasing him, something about John’s state of freedom also changed. Whereas before John could have stopped to chat with neighbors or tie his shoe, he could no longer stop at all. To do so would be a huge mistake. It did not matter at that point if John wanted to run or not. He had no choice, and without choice, there can be no free will.

Thus we arrive at a definition for free will that I assert is accurate and exhaustive. Free will is the ability to choose to do that which you desire most, within the limits set by the objective moral law, all the while having the ability to choose the opposite option in the event that circumstances were to change. The logical consequence of such free will is that with it, any individual can be held ultimately responsible for their own actions.

Does God Have Free Will?

At last, we find ourselves where we wanted to be from the beginning. Does God have free will? The short answer is yes, He does. In fact, God has the most freedom than any other person who will ever exist. However, the simple answer of “yes” will likely not quench the quizzical mind. Thus, we must realize what the will of the Judeo-Christian God looks like and how this influences Himself and all of creation.

There is one thing we must establish here and for the rest of this manuscript. When questioned as Christians regarding Christian teachings and beliefs, it is necessary to turn to those sources of information that are the very foundation for our faith. In Christianity, there are two sources of truth that can be attained. The first is what theologians call “general revelation.” This is the revelation of truths that are known by all persons at all times. The laws of logic, the reality of physical creation, the internal moral law are uniformly accepted by all peoples regardless of religious belief. The second source of truth is the Canon, Scripture, or Holy Bible. The Bible is known as God’s “special revelation” to His people. While most everyone adheres to the truths of general revelation, there is much more skepticism regarding the inerrancy and authority of Scripture.

It is neither the goal nor the scope of this text to exhaustively defend the truthfulness, authority or origin of the Christian Bible. If such topics interest the reader, you might look to Josh McDowell’s works The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict and Evidence for Christianity. Many other works of advanced archeological and historical studies have been done that offer strong justification for that claim that the Bible is true, accurate, and its original meaning preserved in the original Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew languages in which it was written. Thus, from this point onward, we will be addressing each of the questions levied towards Christianity in this manuscript with the understanding that as Christians, we accept the Bible to be true. It is from this platform that we will reason from the Christian perspective. If the reader takes exception to this presupposition, then I would strongly encourage the setting down of this manuscript until further investigation has been carried out regarding the validity of the Bible. The Bible is where God has chosen to reveal what He will about Himself. Without it, very little could be known about Him. With it, we can understand to a great degree the answers to the hard questions posed both in this chapter and the chapters that follow.

The theologian Wayne Grudem defines the God’s will as “that attribute of God whereby he approves and determines to bring about every action necessary for the existence and activity of himself and all creation.” If an all-powerful, sovereign God exists, this would be the expected definition of his will. Everything in existence is under his direct power, and He chooses what does and does not happen in all things. Scripture is clear about this teaching. We are told that God “works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.” In the original Greek, the phrase translated as “everything” is τὰ πάντα (ta panta). Paul, the writer of this Scripture, uses this phrase in many other places in the Bible, always in reference to all creation or everything that is in existence. Furthermore, the verb Paul uses that is translated as works in the above scripture is ἐνεργοῦντος (energeo, works, works out, brings about, produces). The tense of the verb is of great importance because Paul uses the present participle which indicates that this action of working out all things is a continual, ongoing activity on the part of God. God did not simply “kick things off” and then watch from His perch. He is active in all things by his own free choice.

The Apostle John writes, “For you [God] created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.” Again, all things, in every aspect are put under the authority of God’s will. There is no authority on earth or in Heaven that usurps the ultimate authority of God and His will. Paul writes, “…for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” God is bound by nothing and no one. He is truly independent. He has no need for anything or anyone , and He obeys no one but Himself. God did not create man out of loneliness or any other external compulsion for He already had perfect love, fellowship and community from eternity past within the context of the Trinity. Perhaps God’s greatest statement of His own ultimate independence was given to Moses at the burning bush, “I AM WHO I AM.” God defines Himself and exists by His very nature. This sort of independence is unknown to mankind. Regarding man’s dependence on others, Aristotle once wrote, “But he who is unable to live in society, or has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.”

God’s independence plays an important role in His free will. He is under no authority but His own, and thus He literally does whatever He wants. This also means that God is able to define His own character and attributes. For example, God is perfectly good, holy, just, gracious and merciful. Yet, at times in Scripture it seems as though God’s will does not correspond to the attributes He claims. God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, lived a perfectly holy and sinless life on this earth. Yet He was falsely accused by His own people, beaten, flogged, whipped and mocked, and ultimately He died an agonizing death by crucifixion on a Roman cross. Furthermore, we are told in the Biblical book of Acts that this was all carried out exactly according to God’s will: “Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.” Yet God, in his sovereignty and omniscience knew that this single act in human history would redeem mankind and bring the most glory to Himself.

It is at this point that some may take offense. How can a good and righteous God be so conceited so as to do all these things to maximize His own glory? To this, I respond by asking what else would a fair, just, all powerful, good God glorify? Anything that any intelligent entity does draws attention to something. We as people often draw attention to ourselves and our accomplishments. This is self-glorification on our part. If we draw attention to something outside of ourselves, we glorify it. This is idolatry. Both of these actions are sin. Why? Simply because there is someone else that deserves that attention. The person who created and is above all things rightly deserves any and all glory. If God is truly righteous and good, then He must conform all things to bring Himself ultimate glory. If the Christian God exists, this is the only possible way things could work.

This brings about another point that we should touch on briefly before discussing the arguments that the skeptic puts forth against the free will of God. Earlier in this chapter we were discussing the objective existence of a moral law that all of mankind is obligated to abide by. Part of our free will necessitates that we at least act according to this moral law, this system of rights and wrongs. But if there is such a thing as a moral law, if there exists actions that are objectively right and actions that are objectively wrong, who sets the standard? While the atheist has no answer, the Christian has the most powerful answer of all. The Almighty Creator God set down from eternity past what is morally and ethically right and wrong for all people, in all places and at all times. What does it mean for something to be “right” exactly? Grudem puts forth that what is right is “what ought to happen and what ought to be… whatever conforms to God’s moral character is right.” We would do well to remember this objective definition of righteousness during the rest of our discussion.

The Skeptical Arguments Against the Free Will of God

From the Christian perspective, it is easy to see why we would claim that God has absolute free will. If God can do whatever He wants, and if God is all-powerful, then He is free to do anything He wants and never has to do anything He doesn’t want! His will is perfectly free.

Yet, when one looks at these claims from atheistic or skeptical perspectives, philosophical problems appear to surface. An atheist rejects the concept of God completely. A skeptic cannot prove God exists sufficiently, so they also reject God. Thus to entertain the possibility that God has free will is pointless. Meanwhile, a person can only have free will up to a certain point. Their free will is limited by the physical world around them. We cannot choose to walk around the world, even if we wanted to. Furthermore, if there is no God, one must be in control of their own desires, or else have their desires developed through random events that occur outside their control. These desires directly affect how much free will one will have.

For example, if one desires to partake in unaided human flight, they will not be free to do so, for it is physically impossible. There is a physical obstacle preventing the desired action. If, however, they desire to purchase a computer, they may be free to do so. Yet circumstances come into play. Do they have enough money? Is there a store nearby with the computer they want? Do they have the transportation to go to the store? If they answer yes to all the necessary questions, then they are free to purchase the computer. The decisions an atheist makes during their life directly affect the freedoms they are able to enjoy. If they make decisions that allow them to obtain material goods and resources, they will have more choices and thus, more freedom. If they make decisions that allow them to gain more power and authority, they will also obtain more freedom. Freedom, for the atheist, is entirely dictated by the physical possibilities available to the individual.

It is from this perspective that the atheist may put forth an argument that attempts to refute the free will of God, if such a God were to exist. We present here two of the most common philosophical problems that the atheist or the skeptic will have with the free will of God.

Argument 1: An Omniscient (all-knowing) Being Does Not Have Free Will
The argument looks something like this: If one is all-knowing, they know all future actions perfectly, including their own. Furthermore, they cannot change their future actions, otherwise their future knowledge about these actions would be false, and they would cease to be omniscient. Therefore, an omniscient being must necessarily act according to what they know will happen in the future. Thus they are not able to act freely, for the option to do otherwise is not open to them.

Answer: The argument, while initially convincing, lacks critical insight into the nature of God. We know that God created all things that exist. If God created all things in existence, then He necessarily created time, which is a universal dimension that exists. The creator of something must exist outside of the thing created. Therefore God must exist outside the confines of time. In other words, God is eternal. This has two implications that will affect how we view God. First, God is timeless in His being. Psalm 90 says, “Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” In the book of Revelation, Jesus says, “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.” Similarly, the way God identifies Himself to Moses as “I AM WHO I AM” strongly suggests a continual present existence. He exists eternally. As Grudem puts it, “…God’s own being does not have a succession of moments or any progress from one state to another. To God himself, all of his existence is always somehow present.” This concept is nearly impossible for us to grasp, as our experience has been and will always be constrained by the dimension of time in this world. However, a concept being confusing in no way disqualifies it as objective truth (See Einstein’s laws of relativity).

Secondly, as God exists outside of the constraints of time, He must be able to see all time equally vividly. The term “future actions” and the knowledge of them do not apply to God. Furthermore, those things that have passed are seen by God just as God sees the present. The psalmist writes, “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.” No matter how far in the past an event might be, God remembers it perfectly. Furthermore we are told, “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years.” So we see that a day lasts for a long time, or as the Greek reading implies, forever in the eyes of God. Taking these two things together we must conclude that God sees and knows all past, present and future events equally vividly. This does not mean that God can only exist outside of time, for we must remember God is the creator of time, and the creator of time can interact with His creation in any way that He sees fit. In one sense, it is like a man who is looking at a long, straight piece of wire. He can see all lengths of the wire at all times, but he can also manipulate any part of the wire that he wishes at any time. In the case of God, the wire is time and is infinitely long in both directions.
With these truths in mind, we can see that God’s perfect plan was completely laid out before time began, now, and forever. Would He choose to change it? If He would choose to change it, then it wouldn’t have been perfect in the first place. Could He be forced to change it? If so, then He would not be all powerful, for He would be submitting to another authority. Given the very definition of God, this would be logically impossible. Thus God’s omniscience does not limit His free will.

Argument 2: A Perfect or Moral God Has No Free Will

This argument poses the following logical syllogism: Out of the many possible options in any situation, there will exist a “best” option (taking the theistic presupposition of an objective moral hierarchy to be true). A perfectly moral God must always make the best choice. If He did not, He would cease to be perfectly moral. God cannot do something that is less “good” than another option or else He would not be perfectly good. Thus, in every situation, God has only one choice: the most moral choice possible. From this, it is deduced, God cannot have free will by definition. He is incapable of making moral choices. There are no possibilities to choose from; only the best moral option is available. It is akin to telling a child they have a choice of 50 different foods, but by “choice,” you really mean you can only have the mashed potatoes and nothing else. Ever. There can only be one perfect option, and a perfect God must always choose it. Thus God’s choice in the matter is always predetermined, which is really no choice at all. Without choice, God cannot have free will.

Answer: We must start by saying that part of what this argument puts forth is true. God will always make the perfect and most moral choice. As for the rest of the argument, there are several flaws.

Concerning God always making the most moral choice, we must look to God’s attribute of absolute goodness, which Grudem defines as such: “The goodness of God means that God is the final standard of good, and that all that God is and does is worthy of approval.” Jesus himself said, “No one is good—except God alone.” The grammatical subject of Jesus’ statement includes you, me, and everyone else. Absolutely everyone that has ever lived, save Jesus (as He was God incarnate), cannot be called good. If this Biblical claim is true, then it would be a logical mistake to think that any one of us could understand that which is perfectly good. Instead, the sense of morality that God has placed on our hearts mixes with our personal and often selfish, distorting our view of what we take to be good. One of the important differences between God and us is that if God were to have an opinion regarding something being good, then that thing necessarily is good.

God’s goodness saturates the Scriptures. “The LORD is good and his love endures forever,” writes the Psalmist. In fact, the Psalms affirm the goodness of God over and over. When God first created the universe and everything within it, He saw all that He had made was “very good.” This was not an opinion. This was the thought of God, and as such it was objective truth. So if we are tempted to ask, “What is good?” we can only answer, “That which God approves is good.” This has serious implications at how humanity should look at the world around them. James tells us, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father.”

Furthermore, we are promised that if we believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord, then everything that occurs will be for your good. If we correctly perceive something as good, then it is flowing straight from God the Father. Grudem writes, “When we realize that God is the definition and source of all good, we will realize that God himself is the ultimate good that we seek.”

Now that we have considered what it means to say that God is good, we can begin to address the argument at hand. Remember that we defined free will to be the ability to choose that which you desire most, staying within the moral law, and having the option to choose otherwise. The argument finds its problem in this third requirement for free will. God can only do and be good. He can never be not-good in anything he wills. Thus He is constricted by himself so as to prevent His free will.
The refutation of this argument begins with recognizing the difference between desires and one’s nature. Desires can and often do change. One’s nature does not. What do we mean by one’s nature, namely God’s nature? God’s nature is to be the objective standard for perfection, goodness, morality and so on. God is all of these things. Without Him, none of them could exist objectively for there would be no external reference point. Furthermore, God desires everything that He is. Anything that deviates from His nature invokes God’s anger and wrath.
Without neglecting the skeptic’s argument regarding God’s inability to choose, let us consider for a moment the first two aspects of what it takes to have free will. Certainly God will always be within His own moral law, but what about His desires? Do God’s desires change? Can they change? And what impact does that have on His ability to choose?

Allow me to construct a personal example that will help us to answer some of these questions. One of the most foundational basic desires of a person is the desire for self-preservation. In the absence of external influences or deep emotional pain, a person would always choose to live rather than die. We could say this is one of Mankind’s attributes, much like God’s goodness. Now let us assume that a man who has none of these external influences affecting his actions finds himself in possession of a cyanide capsule. He knows that by choosing to swallow the capsule, he will certainly die. If he chooses to not swallow the capsule, he will live. He is under no psychiatric stress and is perfectly content with life. Under this assumption that there are no external or internal influences that would affect his decision would the man choose to end his life? If we are honest with ourselves, we must say, “Of course he would not!” He would always choose to neglect the cyanide and live. It is the superior choice according to the disposition of man.

Now, it is true that the man could succumb to external pressures, or emotional depression. These influences can and often do change a person’s desires. People are susceptible to such things, but God is not! God is both perfect and all powerful. There is no outside source that can affect His desires. His perfect power would always allow Him to choose the option He would naturally choose. And since God is immutable (He does not change), He will always choose the same optimal option.

Conclusion

Thus, the reality of the situation looks like this: God is able to do all that he desires. Moreover, God is always able to do that which he ought to do. And lastly, God does have the ability to do opposite of His nature. That is, God is able to choose to do evil if He wanted to. But, when the situation is looked at logically, we see there is absolutely nothing that could influence God in such a way so as to force Him act against His very nature. What is good is what God approves. In order for God to choose to do what He does not approve, He would have to somehow be forced or coerced into doing it. But an all-powerful God cannot be force by anyone to do anything. Thus God will always freely choose to do good.