Balkinization: Does God Mess With Free Will?

Does God Mess With Free Will?

Ian Ayres

A few years back in the movie Bruce Almighty, the character Bruce (played by Jim Carry) got to temporarily substitute for God. Bruce was omnipotent except for two rules. He couldn’t tell any one about his powers and he couldn’t change anyone’s desires. He could make people do things, but he couldn’t change their free will.

For economists, this is the ultimate “de gustibus non est disputandum” constraint. Stigler, GJ and Becker, GS (1977). De gustibus non est disputandum. The American.Economic Review, 67(2): 76-90. Even God can’t quarrel with people’s tastes or preferences.

But here’s a biblical pop quiz. When does the God of the Bible violate the Bruce Almighty rule and change people’s desires?

I can think of two examples (which come from my recent stint as a Sunday school teacher), but please let me know if you can think of any others.

The most famous example is that God repeatedly “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” to keep Pharaoh from letting the Israelites go. See for example Exodus 9:12 Apparently God wanted Pharaoh and his people to experience the pain of all the plagues (maybe so that God could prove to the Israelites or the Egyptians what God was capable of dishing out or maybe so God could make Pharaoh look like a fool for flip flopping).

But Pharaoh was not the only villain whose free will God froze. God also hardened the hearts of several enemies of Joshua:

For it was the LORD himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against
Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy,
as the LORD had commanded Moses. Joshua
11:20

But the more disturbing instance of God’s intervention with free will happens at the very beginning of the Bible. We all remember that Eve’s punishment was pain in childbirth. But that was only part of her fate:

16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with
pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

Genesis 3:16

This passage is truly disturbing. At least one interpretation is that God punished women by giving them pain in child birth and making their husbands rule over them. But God seems to have gone further. He had to make sure that women wouldn’t turn away from men (who would subordinate them and through impregnation cause them childbirth pain). So in this passage, God seems to take away women’s freedom to desire whomever they want. God ordains “Your desire will be for your husband.”

The punishment of heterosexuality

The mandatory heterosexuality of women can be read as part of God’s punishment for the fall from grace. Under this reasoning, epidurals and lesbianism are both rebellions against the will of God. Indeed, religious conservatives have argued that Eve’s punishment is evidence that the Bible views homosexuality as sinful.

But seen within the larger pattern of God’s heart hardening, it is more reasonable to view the “your desire will be” heterosexuality as merely part of women’s punishment and not a sign that homosexuality is sinful. Just as it would not be a sin for Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, the punishment of heterosexuality doesn’t mean that it would be a sin for women to desire women.

Indeed, the trifecta reappearance in our world of painless childbirth, the appearance of different sex unions where the man does not rule over the woman (pace MacKinnon) and the appearance of women whose desire is not for their husband might all be signs that the punishment is no longer in effect. You see, sin without free will is not even possible. Pharaoh’s failure to let the Israelites go when his heart was hardened by God cannot in good conscience be considered sinful. The reappearance of choice – of women that choose whether or not to desire husbands – opens up the possibility for sin, but it does not indicate that same-sex desire is sinful. Indeed, it may be a sign that we are step closer to the garden, a step closer to grace.

Posted 12:22 PM by Ian Ayres [link]

Comments:

In re "reductio ad absurdum" I can only respond "credo quia absurdum." Well, I don't, but some of the more obstreporous patristic philosophers certainly did. More to the point, the current epidemic of self-serving literalism among the "Christian right" is certainly fideism.

For what it's worth, I find the "Christian right" earn their quote marks for failing to be Christians, not for failing to be right-wing ideologues. The idea that Jesus would have sanctioned bombing abortion clinics, preventive war or even banning stem-cell research strikes me as profoundly misguided theology.

This leads us back to the subject, as the theology of the Old-Testament Right likely includes the main examples of the biblical God meddling with individual motivations. A quick search for "heart" and "harden*" at http://unbound.biola.edu/ turns up Deuteronomy 2:30 ("..for the LORD your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, in order to deliver him into your hand..").

I just can't see this stuff in the New, but then as an atheist I don't read it much and could be wrong.

# posted by

wcw : 3:07 PM

If, as religious conservatives suggest, Eve's punishment (desiring only her husband) is proof of God's preference for heterosexuality, then doesn't the FACT of homosexuality prove that the religious right's view that the Bible is literally true is wrong. The response, I suppose, is "free will". But if that's the case, then homosexuality disproves the post's premise.

# posted by

snead16 : 6:14 PM

An interesting topic, Ian. Here are some thoughts:

(1) "When does the God of the Bible violate the Bruce Almighty rule and change people’s desires?" Here are a couple of general examples:

Philippians 2:13. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

Titus 3:3-5. For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.

The question, though a good one, needs elaboration. I can think of three ways God could control my desires:

1. He could directly change my desires. "Grace" can be interpreted this way-- God directs my desires away from sin and towards good.

2. He could create me in such a way that He controls my desires, via my genetics and environment. This is one way to reconcile predestination with free will, as matter of the point in time at which you look at things.

3. He could reveal information to me that changes my desires without affecting my underlying preferences. This is another way to interpret grace, a less conventional one I think.

(2) Heterosexuality as punishment. Genesis 3:16 says

To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

That would be in category 2 above, so it isn't really a good example of God's changing any individual's desires. A woman normally looks to a man for satisfaction (and to children too), and is frustrated if she does not have a man. This is a deviation from the woman looking to God for her satisfaction. Lesbianism would be still worse (though the passage isn't about that), as being a deviation from the normal deviation. The woman's desire for her man puts her at his mercy; she will follow him even when he leads her astray.

It's interesting to contrast this with the man's punishment in Genesis 3:17-18:

To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

Most straightforwardly, Adam's punishment is painful toil, the analog of painful childbirth. If I may go a step further, though, the male motivation most analogous to woman's desire for her man is a desire for success at work, whether that work be making money or killing enemy soldiers. That is where he, imperfectly and often completely unsuccessfully seeks satisfaction instead of from God.

(3) These ideas are interestingly compatible with biology. A woman is most reproductively successful if she can find a dependable man who will take care of her and the children, since pregnancy requires a dependable partner. A man is most reproductively successful if he does well in his vocation and can support one or multiple families, since his sexual contribution is minor.

(4) You see, sin without free will is not even possible. Pharaoh’s failure to let the Israelites go when his heart was hardened by God cannot in good conscience be considered sinful.

Can one sin without free will? Yes, in the sense that (a) one can do bad acts that (b) rightly result in punishment. A mad dog bites and kills people without free will. The dog is shot, a punishment. Why punish him? Incapacitation, mainly, perhaps with retribution too, the same (minus deterrence, rehabilitation, and stigmatization) as legal punishments.

# posted by

Eric Rasmusen : 10:56 PM

What was the original sin? What was God's intention for human sexuality. Some have speculated that the original sin was a sexual act that deviated from the genital-genital form which was also contrary to reproductive potentiality. Marriage is meant to be free, total, faithful, and fruitful. Any sexual act which is not genital to genital and which intrinsically does not contain the potential for reproduction is contrary to our very nature as sexual beings. These sexual acts which are not genital to genital and which intriscicaly exclude the possibility of reproduction harm one's very self because they deny one the opporunity to totally give oneself to another. Sexual love is meant to image the "givingness of self to self in love." Sexual love is the highest icon in Christendom in its ability to express something of the ineffable dynamic of the inner life of the Trinity.

# posted by

Faust : 10:10 AM

I would note that Jonathan Edwards disagreed rather strenuously with your contention that "sin without free will is not even possible." I will not attempt to summarize his argument in a blog comment, however.

# posted by

sean : 5:32 PM

well its pretty obvious what's being hinted at here - that for a woman to be a faithfull hetrosexual wife is a punishment, and this somehow protrays lesbianism as a liberation of some sort. This is clearly an attack on the institution of marriage, meant to weaken by passive-aggressive means the holy ordained union of man and woman, the best case scenerio for raising children. Yes, this reasoning clearly came from a mind with too much spare time on its hands. Why, if I weren't such a God-fearing soul, I might call for some kind of action-figure judgment on your keaster. In fact, you kind of remind me of someone - now who might that be... hmm... I wonder... hmm... would it beeee... satan!? Oh, and I just want to state for the record I don't hate homosexuals unless they turn me on, which they by definition never do.

# posted by

John : 9:16 PM

You can feel free to read Luther's The Bondage of the Will for a defense of the existence of sin without "free will."

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