Will (homily, a sermon)

Grant to us, Lord, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will.

Years ago when I was chaplain and religion teacher at Holy Nativity Episcopal School, in middle school classes we were reading the Creation and Fall stories at Genesis 2 and 3: 

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat …’.” And then

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the center of the garden, neither shall you touch it … .’”  

A student raised her hand and asked, “Why did God plant the tree in the center of the Garden if He did not want them to eat the fruit?”

That’s not a childish question, folks, that’s a rabbinical question. It’s a question that leads to greater knowledge and love of God; that helps reveal God’s will, and human will, and tells God’s understanding of human nature, and the nature of our human relationship with God.

Sometimes a child’s question lights up the room. Not just with delight, but an epiphany: AH HA!! 

Sometimes one of you says to me something that is so helpful to me that the lightbulb comes on, a realization, an epiphany. Just so this week as I read the Propers for today, contemplating what to preach on - -

I have preached on Jesus I AM the Bread of Life; I have preached from Ephesians; I have preached on this deeply personal story of David’s grief at the death of his son, “O Absalom, … “ the pathos is overwhelming. Like anyone who loses a child, David is inconsolable. Does God’s will or human Free Will play in that story?

As a pastor, I Was There, with too many families over the years. Including not only boating and other accidents, untimely deaths; Evelyn, an eagerly expected nine-month baby suddenly dying in the womb just as labor was due, so that in the delivery room we baptized a stillborn infant into the kingdom of heaven as her parents wept: surely not God’s will for that little family.

Several times over the years, the suicides of teenage boys, beloved sons, where families can never recover from grief, pain, guilt, self-doubt. 

In me, those memories are stirred again by this morning’s combination of human experience, by the story of David and Absalom, by our Collect for the Day about Free Will versus God’s will.

I vividly remember two occasions when I officiated funerals of beloved sons who had taken their own lives (in both cases by gunshot). In my sermon I tried to assure parents and siblings and other devastated loved ones, “This was NOT the will of God. The death of your cherished and beloved child was NOT God’s will for him, or for you. God’s gracious will for each of us is LIFE: health, happiness, holiness, life abundant.”

Both times I quoted Today’s English Version of Psalm 116, “How painful it is to the Lord when one of his people dies”. 

And yet both times, immediately after the service, once as we were loading the boy's casket into the hearse for the ride to the cemetery, I was confronted by someone who corrected me, “Father Weller: you are wrong. This WAS the will of God, everything that happens is the will of God”. 

Saying such evil things about God is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Almost nothing we humans do in life is the will of God. In both cases, these pathetic, self-certain individuals had already been “comforting” the boys’ parents with their “assurance”, “It was the will of God. I know how you feel, and we may not understand, but it was the will of God and we just have to accept it”. What foul theology.

Those, my memories, with today’s Collect, and David and Absalom, and a recent conversation with one of you, and that girl’s rabbinical question in the middle-school classroom, bring me again into confrontation with Free Will - an issue, a question, a doubt, 

a problem that has consumed philosophers and theologians and psychologists since that day in the Garden - - when Adam and Eve ate the fruit that opened their eyes to the knowledge of good and evil; that robbed us humans of wild creature innocence; that gave us our own agency in creation; that made humans, with Free Will (though selfish and sinful by nature) responsible for our actions, subject to discipline.

Do we have Free Will, or is everything already determined, the Will of God, and we are nothing but “actors”? WAS our disobedience in the Garden the will of God? That’s where the rabbinical question takes us.

Is there Fate that we cannot avoid? Does each of us have a Destiny we cannot escape? Is the course of the universe foreordained, and human life so ordered - - that no matter what we do, or the consequences, it was inevitable, unavoidable? Are the choices we make, our life and death decisions, a set part of God’s unchangeable will and we only THINK we had Free Will in deciding and doing and choosing and Acting?

Forty-some years ago, I had a little, private new car business (that should not surprise you about me!) - - one day a woman came to me to order a new car. She “spec-ed it out” and we filled out the factory order form, and she put down the deposit. Next day she telephoned me saying “I prayed about it, and God does not want me to have a red car”, and changed her order.  

Does God, whom we credit with all-knowing omniscience, indeed know, and have set in concrete, not only past and present, but future as well, such that, in the mind of God, everything that is, and ever was, and ever will be is laid out across eternity, a massive diorama to amuse the heavenly court that was so shamefully entertained by Job? “Let us make mankind in our image” - - are we but God’s imagination, just acting out our roles?

Let ME say NO!, that though Free Will is a human concept, Adam and Eve in the Garden set us free: we can accept God, or reject God. Obey or disobey. God may have a plan, but you can run afoul of it. God has a Will for you, a Dream for you, Hopes for you. You can strive to discern and live into God’s will, or you can go your own way (God loves you no matter what). Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”.

God’s gracious and loving Will. But obstacles foul God’s dream for us, both nature beyond our control, and we ourselves by our own Free Will and Sin.

This is why Jesus prayed in another Garden, “Not my will, but THY will be done”.

This is why we shall pray together this morning,       

Most merciful God,

we confess that we have sinned against you

in thought, word, and deed,

by what we have done,

and by what we have left undone.

We have not loved you with our whole heart;

we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. 

Have mercy on us and forgive us;

that we may delight in YOUR will,

and walk in your ways …

Theologians and philosophers argue and discuss, but still and always, it’s your choice, your decision - -

Your Free Will. Free Will: God’s loving gift to us from Genesis, the very Beginning. 

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Homiletical endeavor in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida. Sunday, 8 August 2021, Proper 14B, the Rev Tom Weller (Retired), Priest Associate of the Parish. Texts: Collect of the Day, 2 Samuel 18:5-9,15,31-33.

Art pinched online, with apology.

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2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33

The king, David, ordered Joab and Abishai and Ittai, saying, “Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom.” And all the people heard when the king gave orders to all the commanders concerning Absalom. So the army went out into the field against Israel; and the battle was fought in the forest of Ephraim. The men of Israel were defeated there by the servants of David, and the slaughter there was great on that day, twenty thousand men. The battle spread over the face of all the country; and the forest claimed more victims that day than the sword. Absalom happened to meet the servants of David.

Absalom was riding on his mule, and the mule went under the thick branches of a great oak. His head caught fast in the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on.

And ten young men, Joab’s armor-bearers, surrounded Absalom and struck him, and killed him.

Then the Cushite came; and the Cushite said, “Good tidings for my lord the king! For the Lord has vindicated you this day, delivering you from the power of all who rose up against you.” The king said to the Cushite, “Is it well with the young man Absalom?” The Cushite answered, “May the enemies of my lord the king, and all who rise up to do you harm, be like that young man.”

The king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

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Scientific American

Observations | Opinion

Yes, Free Will Exists

Just ask Schopenhauer

• By Bernardo Kastrup on February 5, 2020

Credit: Getty Images

At least since the Enlightenment, in the 18th century, one of the most central questions of human existence has been whether we have free will. In the late 20th century, some thought neuroscience had settled the question. However, as it has recently become clear, such was not the case. The elusive answer is nonetheless foundational to our moral codes, criminal justice system, religions and even to the very meaning of life itself—for if every event of life is merely the predictable outcome of mechanical laws, one may question the point of it all.

But before we ask ourselves whether we have free will, we must understand what exactly we mean by it. A common and straightforward view is that, if our choices are predetermined, then we don’t have free will; otherwise we do. Yet, upon more careful reflection, this view proves surprisingly inappropriate.

To see why, notice first that the prefix “pre” in “predetermined choice” is entirely redundant. Not only are all predetermined choices determined by definition, all determined choices can be regarded as predetermined as well: they always result from dispositions or necessities that precede them. Therefore, what we are really asking is simply whether our choices are determined.

In this context, a free-willed choice would be an undetermined one. But what is an undetermined choice? It can only be a random one, for anything that isn’t fundamentally random reflects some underlying disposition or necessity that determines it. There is no semantic space between determinism and randomness that could accommodate choices that are neither. This is a simple but important point, for we often think—incoherently—of free-willed choices as neither determined nor random.

Our very notion of randomness is already nebulous and ambiguous to begin with. Operationally, we say that a process is random if we can’t discern a pattern in it. However, a truly random process can, in principle, produce any pattern by mere chance. The probability of this happening may be small, but it isn’t zero. So, when we say that a process is random, we are merely acknowledging our ignorance of its potential underlying causal basis. As such, an appeal to randomness doesn’t suffice to define free will.

Moreover, even if it did, when we think of free will we don’t think of mere randomness. Free choices aren’t erratic ones, are they? Neither are they undetermined: if I believe that I make free choices, it is because I feel that my choices are determined by me. A free choice is one determined by my preferences, likes, dislikes, character, etc., as opposed to someone else’s or other external forces.

But if our choices are always determined anyway, what does it mean to talk of free will in the first place? If you think about it carefully, the answer is self-evident: we have free will if our choices are determined by that which we experientially identify with. I identify with my tastes and preferences—as consciously felt by me—in the sense that I regard them as expressions of myself. My choices are thus free insofar as they are determined by these felt tastes and preferences.

Why, then, do we think that metaphysical materialism—the notion that our choices are determined by neurophysiological activity in our own brain—contradicts free will? Because, try as we might, we don’t experientially identify with neurophysiology; not even our own. As far as our conscious life is concerned, the neurophysiological activity in our brain is merely an abstraction. All we are directly and concretely acquainted with are our fears, desires, inclinations, etc., as experienced—that is, our felt volitional states. So, we identify with these, not with networks of firing neurons inside our skull. The alleged identity between neurophysiology and felt volition is merely a conceptual—not an experiential—one.

T

The key issue here is one that permeates the entire metaphysics of materialism: all we ever truly have are the contents of consciousness, which philosophers call “phenomenality.”’ Our entire life is a stream of felt and perceived phenomenality. That this phenomenality somehow arises from something material, outside consciousness—such as networks of firing neurons—is a theoretical inference, not a lived reality; it’s a narrative we create and buy into on the basis of conceptual reasoning, not something felt. That’s why, for the life of us, we can’t truly identify with it.

So, the question of free will boils down to one of metaphysics: are our felt volitional states reducible to something outside and independent of consciousness? If so, there cannot be free will, for we can only identify with contents of consciousness. But if, instead, neurophysiology is merely how our felt volitional states present themselves to observation from an outside perspective—that is, if neurophysiology is merely the image of conscious willing, not its cause or source—then we do have free will; for in the latter case, our choices are determined by volitional states we intuitively regard as expressions of ourselves.

Crucially, the question of metaphysics can be legitimately broached in a way that inverts the usual free will equation: according to 19th-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, it is the laws of nature that arise from a transpersonal will, not the will from the laws of nature. Felt volitional states are the irreducible foundation of both mind and world. Although Schopenhauer’s views are often woefully misunderstood and misrepresented—most conspicuously by presumed experts—when correctly construed they offer a coherent scheme for reconciling free will with seemingly deterministic natural laws

As elucidated in my concise new book, Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics, for Schopenhauer the inner essence of everything is conscious volition—that is, will. Nature is dynamic because its underlying volitional states provide the impetus required for events to unfold. Like his predecessor Immanuel Kant, Schopenhauer thought of what we call the “physical world” as merely an image, a perceptual representation of the world in the mind of an observer. But this representation isn’t what the world is like in itself, prior to being represented.

Since the information we have about the external environment seems to be limited to perceptual representations, Kant considered the world-in-itself unknowable. Schopenhauer, however, argued that we can learn something about it not only through the sense organs, but also through introspection. His argument goes as follows: even in the absence of all self-perception mediated by the sense organs, we would still experience our own endogenous, felt volition.

Therefore, prior to being represented we are essentially will. Our physical body is merely how our will presents itself to an external vantage point. And since both our body and the rest of the world appear in representation as matter, Schopenhauer inferred that the rest of the world, just like ourselves, is also essentially will.

In Schopenhauer’s illuminating view of reality, the will is indeed free because it is all there ultimately is. Yet, its image is nature’s seemingly deterministic laws, which reflect the instinctual inner consistency of the will. Today, over 200d years after he first published his groundbreaking ideas, Schopenhauer’s work can reconcile our innate intuition of free will with modern scientific determinism.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

Most recently the author of The Idea of the World: A Multi-disciplinary Argument for the Mental Nature of Reality, Bernardo Kastrup has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). He has worked as a scientist in some of the world's foremost research laboratories, including the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and authored many academic papers and books on philosophy and science.