Grace and Freedom, letter to Joby

Rome, Feb 22, 1993

Dear Joby,

Jose has told me about your question, and I have seen the reply he has formulated for you. I have found it easier to put down, very roughly and imperfectly, some thoughts on my own, instead of adding to what Jose has written. One of your questions is, "God knows us from the womb. He knows our future and has planned our lives. So where does sin and punishment come in?" Let me just talk about three points here: human freedom, grace, and God's plan.

Human freedom

I begin by noting that we are talking in a christian context, in a context in which we take for granted the existence of God, and the fact that God is creator. If we did not, the problem of human freedom and God's causality would not of course have arisen in the first place. 

Now in order to talk about human freedom, we need to grasp certain prior notions. The first of these is that all created beings are dependent beings. Created beings depend on the Creator not only for the origin of their existence (creation) and for the continuity of their existence (conservation), but also in their very action. This is to say: no created being can act in total independence; its every action involves dependence on the Creator. 

This might seem strange, for once a being is created, why can it not act on its own? The problem might be envisaged in the following terms: fire is able to heat water; but if the fire is in the kitchen and the water is in the well, we are not going to get boiling water even if we wait for years. What then is needed? Well, the fire and the water must be brought together; there is needed some other agent who can bring fire and water in the proper relation where the action of heating can take place.

Let us take a more general case, where no human agent is involved. The heat of the sun can melt ice; but the sun will not melt an iceberg unless either the iceberg is brought to the equator or else the sun is moved to the North Pole. 

From these two examples we might conclude that created causes need to be applied to their activity; unless they are thus applied, their natural action does not follow. In certain cases we can think of human beings as the agents that apply causes to their objects, but in the general case of the universe, which is an enormously complex set of created causes, this agent can only be God. (This is of course a terribly rapid way of arguing, but I content myself with this.)

The point we are trying to make is that created causes are not primary causes; they are always secondary causes; the primary cause is God. 

The next point is to grasp that man, like all other created causes, is also always a secondary cause; the primary cause of his actions is God. But there is a difference: for other causes are not free, while man is free. Here the question arises, if man is a secondary cause, then, just like the sun which melts the iceberg, or the fire that heats the water, given the proper conditions his actions should follow. All that we need is that some agent (God) should bring about the proper conditions (just as in the case of the sun and the fire). Is then man really free? Or is his action not like the action of the sun and the fire?

This calls for an analysis of human action; for when we think of freedom, we tend to oversimplify; we tend to think of it as merely the act of choice. Now human freedom involves at least (1) the capacity itself, which we might call the 'will'; (3) the orientation of the will, which we might call the 'willingness'; (2) the act of willing. (In addition there is the relationship of willing with knowing, but I will not enter into it here.) 

Let us take for granted that we have the capacity to perform free acts. Again, the actual act of willing should not cause difficulties. What we normally tend to overlook is the orientation of the will, the willingness. And yet this is a fact of our experience: many acts of willing accumulate into a habit, an orientation, or at least a tendency; the more I practise the guitar, the better a guitarist I become; the more I practise football, the better a footballer I become. Similarly, repeated good actions accumulate into good habits, and repeated bad actions accumulate into bad habits. Now what is to be noted is the effect of such habits: when I have become a good guitarist, I am able to play the guitar with ease and without difficulty; when I have acquired the 'habit of football', I enjoy playing football; similarly when I have acquired a good habit, I find it easy to perform good acts, and when I have acquired a bad habit, it is very easy to perform bad acts, and very difficult not to perform them. So our acts of willing are conditioned by our habits, our willingness. 

Grace and sin

We have distinguished therefore the will, the willingness, and the act of willing. Let us now bring God into the picture. We say that God is the primary cause of all our acts; are we then really free? The answer is that God is not the direct cause of our acts of willing; rather, he works upon our willingness, our habitual orientation or tendency. God is constantly moving us to will the good; and that is what we call grace. 

But, you might say, does that not in the end come to the same thing? For once we have an orientation towards the good, does not the act of willing the good follow automatically? Here we must say that it does not: from our experience we know that having a habit does not make it impossible to do something that is contrary to the habit. Having a habit of smoking does not make it impossible to give up smoking, just as having a good habit does not make it impossible to do something contrary. So even when God moves us towards the good, even when God gives us grace, we are not compelled automatically to act according to that movement. 

But this might seem suspicious, especially after all our examples about the habits of guitar-playing and football, so let us go back to those examples. Let us think, not of the moment when one has already acquired these habits, when one is already an expert guitarist or footballer, but when one is just beginning. Parallel to this, let us think, not of the moment when one has already acquired a good habit, but when one is just a beginner. There comes a moment of grace, and it can be identified when we become aware of a desire, a willingness to do the good, where before there was not even that desire. This desire is usually not very  forceful; it leaves us quite quite free; and so freely we can choose either to go along with it, or else to go against it. Let us go further: if we choose to go along with this grace, the second time it will be a little easier to do the same; and the more we choose to go along with it, the easier it becomes; even if sometimes we choose differently, we come back quite easily. This is the experience of responding to grace, accepting grace, growing in goodness. Sin remains a possibility, but the more we keep responding to grace, the more easily we pick up courage, repent of our sin, take up our journey towards God. In the limit grace becomes habitual in us; this is what theologians refer to as sanctifying grace. On the other hand, one refusal of grace leads to another, and if we are not careful, we find ourselves with a habit of sinfulness.

So our distinction between willingness and the act of willing helps us to see how God can act on us and how we still maintain our freedom. It is necessary to add here that "God wills all men to be saved" (1 Tim 2:4), and that therefore we might draw the conclusion that God gives his grace to all men. If Jesus tells us that our heavenly Father in his great love sends rain upon just and unjust alike, and makes the sun shine upon good and wicked alike (Mt 5:45), are we to imagine that he would do less with the sunshine and the rain of his love and grace? So grace is given to all men; and yet all men remain free, and so responsible for their acts. So Saddam Hussein is free and responsible for his acts, as you and I are free and responsible for our acts. So free acts of goodness are possible, and equally freely we can and do sin; and since we are free, we are responsible; and if we are responsible for our acts, the question of punishment for sin should not be so difficult to understand, though here too we usually need a purification of our ideas of punishment for sin.

Again, note that God's action on our willingness is not the only way he influences us; for the whole of the universe is in his hands; as we noted earlier, he applies all things to their actions; and so he can affect not only our willingness, but also our characters, our temperaments, the concrete situations in which we are born, in which we find ourselves; and so in a thousand ways he can act so as to lead us towards himself; and yet our strip of freedom, narrow though it is, remains intact. We might add here that there is a variation here: as Jesus says, to whom much has been given, much will be demanded. The responsibility of one who has had the opportunity to study and reflect is certainly different from one who has never had such an opportunity.

God's plan

We have been talking about how God's action of grace does not mean that man is not free. But now the question might arise, if man is free, and can do what he wants, what about the plan of God? Are we to conclude that God's plan can be destroyed by man's free acts? 

Once again here it is a question of sharpening, clarifying, correcting some of our ideas. When we think of the universe, or when we think of God's plan, the image we have is that of a clock, where every part is perfectly in place, so that if any single part is removed or disturbed, the whole clock stops working. But the universe is not like a clock, and God's plan is not a piece of machinery that will grind to a halt if someone decides not to go along with it. True, God is in control over everything; but this control does not mean that in each and every case things have to go 'according to plan'. Human beings may choose not to go along with the plan of God; but God's plan goes ahead inspite of this. 

The key to grasping this point may be the idea of statistical laws; the clock as a system does not involve statistical laws, but the universe as a whole involves not only 'classical' laws (like those of the clock) but also statistical laws. I will not go into this now; suffice to say that, when I toss a coin, the probability of getting a Heads is fifty-fifty; when I toss it ten times, it is quite possible that Heads does not occur even once; but when I toss it a hundred times, it is quite impossible that Heads does not occur even once; in fact, it is quite likely that it will occur roughly half the number of times; and if it does not, then you will begin to suspect that there is something wrong with the coin, that someone is cheating. So the greater the number of tosses, the more likely is it that the occurrence of Heads will be roughly 50% of the total number of tosses. That is a rough indication of how statistical laws operate. Now the universe involves such statistical laws, in addition to the classical laws with which we are more familiar. Classical laws are involved in the prediction of eclipses of the sun and the moon; but it is quite possible that some day there will be some cosmic collision that will disturb our solar system, and then there will be no more eclipses; but the probability of such collisions is a question of statistical laws.

At any rate, our point was that God's plan has an element of statistical law; and so the presence of sin does not disrupt that plan. Since in fact God is in control of the whole process, he is able to lead all things towards their end while still leaving human beings quite free to choose whether they want to be part of his plan or not. Such choosing to be part of God's plan is really the fundamental thing; sin is understood in its proper dimension when understood as wanting to disrupt that plan; such a view also reveals the ultimate futility of sin. Again, sin is a very real possibility; and so Jesus asks us to pray in the Our Father: Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as in heaven. This prayer of Jesus becomes utter reality, first in the Garden where he prays that the chalice of suffering be taken away from him, but then ends: not my will but yours be done; and then on the cross: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. This is the central mystery in the life of Jesus: his total obedience to the will of his Father; it is the central mystery in our lives: learning to surrender ourselves completely into the hands of God our Father. To this point we are constantly led by the Holy Spirit who is God's grace, the love of God poured into our hearts (Rom 5:5); and yet in every moment and in every place we remain free, so that St.Paul can exhort us: Work out your salvation in fear and trembling; and elsewhere: We are led by the Spirit of God; let us then walk by the Spirit. We are led, and yet we have to walk. There, in essence, is the mystery of grace and freedom.

I end by noting my dependence on a Jesuit philosopher and theologian called Bernard Lonergan. Lonergan's doctoral thesis in theology was on the grace and freedom in the thought of the famous medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. The question of grace and freedom has been, as Jose has pointed out, one of the most debated points in the history of catholic and christian theology; with Lonergan I believe that Thomas Aquinas arrived at the solution to this difficult question; with Lonergan I also believe that almost immediately Thomas' solution was 'lost' in the sense that it was not understood. Things were so bad that at a certain point the Pope had to order the theologians to stop discussing and to just believe that God gives grace without taking away our freedom. The matter remained like that until our century, when it was opened up once again. I tend to believe that Lonergan has recovered Thomas Aquinas' solution; I also believe that Lonergan has, in his independent writings, and especially in his book Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, expressed that basic solution in terms of modern science and contemporary psychology. I thought it would be honest to end with this acknowledgement to Lonergan and to Thomas, for I began by saying that I would say what I think on the matter; but really I have been saying what I have learnt from others. But that is how I believe things always are: for like the guitarist and like the footballer, we have to be beginners before we become experts. I wish you well in your own search. 

 

"Not each act of the elect but only the general result of salvation is causally certain; just as God makes certain of the perpetuity of the species by the vast number of its members, so also he makes certain of the salvation of the elect by imparting so many graces that either the predestined does not sin at all or, if hedoes, then he repents and rises again." (VB 78-79). However, from INCW 672-74, it is not certain that Lonergan would maintain precisely the same thing. It is true that providence as predestination is a question of "a statistically certain causality" (VB 141), but it does not follow that only the general result and not each act is causally certain. What is true, in other words, is that the result is assured statistically and not by controlling each act. It follows that sin is possible; it does not follow that the divine plan is disrupted by sin. [Check the IN treatment of human freedom, linked with statistics.]

"Se Dio già conosce tutto quello che faremo, allora non c'è libertà; tutto è già stato deciso da Dio." 

La risposta è che non possiamo applicare la categoria di tempo a Dio. Allora non possiamo dire, "Dio ha pensato," "Dio ha deciso," "Dio già conosce," ecc. L'esistenza di Dio non svolge come la nostra, con un passato, un presente, e un futuro; per Dio tutto è presente. E' vero che Dio conosce tutto, ma non è vero che Dio lo conosce come futuro. 

"Ma anche se per Dio tutto è presente, rimane vero che Dio è onnipotente; e allora perchè non fa qualcosa di evitare il male, per impedire il peccato?"

Bisogna distinguere vari tipi di male: male physico, male morale. Il peccato è male morale. Le risposte sono diverse per ciascun tipo. Dio non impedisce il peccato precisamente perché nella sua intenzione l'uomo è libero. Perché allora creare esseri liberi con questa capacità terribile di infliggere danni enormi a vicenda e di fare un tale macello nel mondo? Perché questo è il rischio inerente quando vuoi avere esseri liberi. E perché solo un essere libero è capace di amare. E perché Dio vuole condividere il suo amore con degli esseri capaci di sapere di esser amati, e capaci di amare a vicenda. L'amore e la libertà: non c'è uno senza l'altro: sono strettamente legati. Quando togli la libertà, non ce l'hai più la possibilità di amore; hai una schiavitù, una servitudine, una compulsione.

Dio non impedisce il male physico perché ... Bisogna chiederci, che cos'è il bene. Bisogna riconoscere che Dio crea il tutto, e che in questa ordine ci sono cause secondarie che hanno una propria azione. Il mondo non è come un orologio.