Which had no less proved certain unforeknown

Human action assumes free will axiomatically. If it was merely a mechanical action like one billiard ball striking another, it means no more than a billiard ball rolling. We never sing the praises of an cue ball for its boldness in striking the eight ball, or admire the dexterity of the nine for jumping into the side pocket so adroitly.

I believe the relation of me to God is much the same as the relation of characters in my stories to me. Some of the character behavior is driven by plot logic: I cannot both have my characters fall in love and have them be automatons, because to love is to exercise free will. Logic does not allow this to me an as author. Some of the character behavior is due to deux ex machina that I introduce: I put a autobiographical character in the story, a sock puppet to represent my views and opinions, and he performs signs and wonders, because his character is based on the author.

The charactersface choices, otherwise there is no plot, and in that sense have free will. In another sense, I invent the whole of the plot and story. Then a strange thing happens: the characters come to life under my hand, and I find I don’t have as much control over them as I thought: logic once again constrains the story. The characters act out the nature they have made for themselves. A bad character cannot suddenly and for no reason become a good character. To do that requires some sort of plot intervention, a deux ex machina, a miracle.

So in that sense, I believe about God much like what some on this thread have said about DNA molecules. From one point of view it determines the outcome, but not from another. The difference is, that no reorganization or addition of dead bits of matter in motion, all of which move according to prior impulses given them by other matter in motion, can ever be heaped up to create free will, any more than an infinity of two-dimensional shapes can protrude one inch into the third dimension. Planes have no volume, and cannot get volume. Free will belongs to an universe where final cause obtains.

Determinists posit a universe where only efficient cause obtains. In the real universe, of course, one can address either the final or the efficient cause of a motion. The suicide falls in the river because of gravity (efficient cause). The suicide falls in the river because he aims to kill himself (final cause). The claim of the determinist is that a study of brain atoms will eventually find a ‘kill myself’ toggle, which, in the ‘on’ position makes a an suicidal, and in the ‘off’ position makes him love life. This idea ignores the affect ideas have on thinking. It merely confuses the matter used to express ideas with the ideas themselves, which exist outside the human brain. (If ideas did not have objective existance, then twice two would not equal four, except for those who chose to think so).

Let us distinguish this idea (that free will is gross manifestation of what, on a fine level is determined) from the idea of Washington in the history book (he has free will from his own point of view, and from mine, he had free will, even if his capacity for it has expired).

The past and the present are two different points of view for the same thing, time. Free will and determinism are not two different points of view for the same things: they are incompatable categories of thought, one relating to inanimate matter, the other to human action.

I am not sure to what earlier Christians you refer. Calvin is certainly a determinist. St. Thomas avers both the omniscience of God and the faculty of free will.

My position is something similar to that of Boethius, or, for that matter, John Milton.

So will fall
He and his faithless progeny: Whose fault?
Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of me
All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Such I created all the ethereal Powers
And Spirits, both them who stood, and them who fail’d;
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
Not free, what proof could they have given sincere
Of true allegiance, constant faith or love,
Where only what they needs must do appear’d,
Not what they would? what praise could they receive?
What pleasure I from such obedience paid,
When will and reason (reason also is choice)
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil’d,
Made passive both, had serv’d necessity,
Not me? they therefore, as to right belong’d,
So were created, nor can justly accuse
Their Maker, or their making, or their fate,
As if predestination over-rul’d
Their will dispos’d by absolute decree
Or high foreknowledge they themselves decreed
Their own revolt, not I; if I foreknew,
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault,
Which had no less proved certain unforeknown.

So without least impulse or shadow of fate,
Or aught by me immutably foreseen,
They trespass, authors to themselves in all
Both what they judge, and what they choose; for so
I form’d them free: and free they must remain,
Till they enthrall themselves; I else must change
Their nature, and revoke the high decree
Unchangeable, eternal, which ordain’d
Their freedom: they themselves ordain’d their fall.